Tag Archives: Modern Notion

Alligators Bellow Their Size, And So Do You

Alligators use their deep bellows to broadcast their size, like shouting their measurements into a megaphone, according to a study published this month inThe Journal of Experimental Biology. The research adds to what science already knew: birds and mammals—including you—use sounds to let everyone around them know how big they are.

Read more at Modern Notion.

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Be Careful What You Flush: Common Meds Could Ruin Your Summer Clambake

The drugs we take daily—Advil, Innopran, Prozac and the Pill—harm the marine life that forms the base of the aquatic food chain, and those effects could move right up the chain to us.

Luciane Alves Maranho of the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Sao Paulo, Brazil, exposed bristle worms—segmented critters that live in the oozy sediment on the bottom of a lake or ocean—to trace amounts of drugs prescribed for seizures, pain relief, heart conditions, depression and birth control. Maranho found that our common medicines changed enzymes in the worms’ central nervous systems and adjusted their cellular energy. The study appears in the August 2015 issue of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety.

Read more at Modern Notion.