This Week in Science: Microbes found still alive in an 'Iceman' preserved for thousands of years; birds join the sweaty club of animals that masturbate; amputated pieces of a sea cucumber could be effectively immortal; and much more!
Scientists Find Signs of Active Life in Ötzi The Iceman
Ötzi the Iceman has been frozen for 5,300 years, but he's so well preserved that scientists have now detected living microbes still inside him.
It is, to be clear, impossible to tell whether these active microbes are the descendants of a long, unbroken line quietly making their home on Ötzi's body for millennia, even in the ice-cold, or whether they were dormant and revived after the mummy was thawed.
Read the full story here.
Thousands of Brain Scans Reveal A Worrying Consequence of Night Shifts
MRI brain scan data has revealed that overnight shift work is linked to a loss of tissue volume in certain areas of the brain.
If shift work is stopped, however, those reductions are partially recovered within two and a half years, on average.
What those losses and gains actually mean for human health or behavior is unclear.
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Strange Event Might Have Been A Primordial Black Hole Winking At Us
A strange signal could have come from a star's light being warped by a tiny, ancient black hole – a leading candidate for dark matter.
The mass of this primordial black hole would be only about as much as three of Earth's Moons, and it would have an event horizon about the same size as the period at the end of this sentence.
Read the full story here.
It Turns Out Birds Masturbate Too, And Evolution May Explain Why
A new study has found that birds masturbate in the wild and in captivity. The behavior may have some strange evolutionary roots.
"Despite assumptions that masturbation among captive birds like parrots is a result of their often-solitary living, our study finds that it is natural, healthy, and widespread across diverse bird species, even in different environments," says Chloe Heys, a biologist at the University of Lancashire.
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A Sea Cucumber's Amputated Tissue Refuses To Die. Could It Live Forever?
Pieces of a sea cucumber continue to survive and grow more than three years after amputation. It may live "indefinitely".
"We are seeing pretty stunning growth and diversification of cells literally years after this tissue was removed," explains marine biogeochemist Rachel Sipler from the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science, a nonprofit research institute in the US.
"It's like a lizard that loses its tail. We know some lizards can grow new tails; we're talking about whether the tail can grow a new lizard."
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AI Finds Potential Ozempic Side Effects Hidden in an Unexpected Data Source
An AI analysis may have identified unreported side effects of Ozempic – by trawling hundreds of thousands of comments on Reddit.
" Clinical trials are the gold standard, but by design, they are slow," says computer and information scientist Sharath Chandra Guntuku.
"This is not a replacement for trials, but it can move much faster, and that speed matters when a drug goes from niche to mainstream almost overnight."
Read the full story here.