What’s New in Science #11 | Human beings destroying the planet

Three interesting pieces of news from the world of science that should make you rethink the way we live as the dominant species on planet earth.

Day or night, do not disturb

Make way for Naughty Homo Sapiens… He’s here to steal your time and space, if you’re a non-human mammal, shows a study published in the journal Science. We know that human beings are an apex super-predator capable of driving other animal species to extinction by encroaching on and destroying their wild habitat space. Now, a new dataset from studying 62 species across 6 continents shows that because of human daytime disturbances like hiking, mining, urban development, agriculture, etc., animals are increasingly being forced to shift their waking and foraging hours into the night, the time of day when ‘do not disturb’ signs hang ironically on our doors.

Making light of darkness

Unlike homo sapiens, plants don’t ask for much. Just give them some sunlight, water and carbon dioxide and they’re happy. But now, researchers are finding that they can make do with even less. Plants have generally been known to use chlorophyl A to absorb visible red light (680-700nm) for photosynthesis. But scientists studied cyanobacteria called Acaryochloris, and understood that they are able to photosynthesise using light (760 nm wavelength) that is so weak we can’t even see it, called infra-red. Scientists say this opens up new possibilities of plant life on other planets that thankfully may be too dark for humans to colonise.

Imagine the extinction of human beings

We better hope that there won’t be a superhuman species in the future. They could wipe us Homo sapiens out. Because that’s what humans do to close members of their ape family, a study has shown, after examining the 2,300-year-old skull of a gibbon that went extinct in the 18th Century. Junzi imperialis was likely the pet of Lady Xia, grandmother of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. Historical records show that the ancient Chinese thought of gibbons as noble and gentlemanly and blessed with spiritual powers. Today, due to deforestation, destruction of habitat, and hunting, Gibbons have become the rarest primates on earth. Hmm.