Carl Zimmer

@carlzimmer.bsky.social

6345

Followers

818

Following

153

Posts

New York Times columnist, author
carlzimmer.com

Posts Replies Media

On Wednesday the official number of cases in which cows gave people the flu rose to four. Today in my email newsletter, I look back at H5N1's evolutionary trail and imagine its possible paths from here. 🧪https://buttondown.email/carlzimmer/archive/fridays-elk-just-when-i-thought-i-was-out/

Friday's Elk: Just When I Thought I Was Out...buttondown.email These days I spend some of my time talking to virologists about a new virus that can move from quickly host to host. It uses a route that we don’t yet...

Denisovans lived for over 100,000 years on the Tibetan plateau, hunting snow leopards and golden eagles and other animals. Here's my story on these remarkable people [Gift link] 🧪 www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/s...

How the Denisovans Survived the Ice Agewww.nytimes.com A trove of animal bone fragments from a cave on the Tibetan plateau reveals how Denisovans thrived in a harsh climate for over 100,000 years.

In new experiments, scientists have given bird flu to cows and watched what happens. The results indicate the virus isn't spreading in droplets infecting airways. For those worried about the evolution of a new pandemic, that's good news--for now. Here's my story. 🧪 Gift link: nyti.ms/3RNOYhX

How Does Bird Flu Spread in Cows? Experiment Yields Some ‘Good News.’nyti.ms Scientists say that findings from a small experiment lend hope the outbreak among dairy cattle can potentially be contained.

The last woolly mammoths survived on a remote island till 4000 years ago, wracked for millennia by genetic disorders. Here's my story on what they can tell us about saving endangered species today. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/06/27/s...

The Last Stand of the Woolly Mammothswww.nytimes.com The species survived on an island north of Siberia for thousands of years, scientists reported, but were most likely plagued by genetic abnormalities.

Last year, I wrote about a dispute over some studies claiming to find a distinct microbiome in tumors. Today the most prominent one was retracted. 🧪 My story: www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/h... Retraction: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Researchers Dispute High-Profile Discoveries of Cancer Microbeswww.nytimes.com Three studies in elite journals found that tumors are littered with microbes. But several teams have been unable to replicate the work.

Plato wrote that thought “is a silent inner conversation of the soul with itself.” And yet recent studies on the brain find no evidence that we use language to think. Here’s my story on this fascinating debate. [Gift link] 🧪 www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/s...

Do We Need Language to Think?www.nytimes.com A group of neuroscientists argue that our words are primarily for communicating, not for reasoning.

How does a fish put both its eyes on one side of its head? Darwin's enemies thought the question was fatal to evolution. Now the rise of flounders and other flatfishes is coming into focus. 🧪 My story: www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/s...

How Flounder Wound Up With an Epic Side-Eyewww.nytimes.com Flatfish offer an evolutionary puzzle: How did one eye gradually migrate to the other side?

Scientists have been puzzling over a fossil called Pikaia for decades. Is this 508-million-year-old creature our pre-vertebrate cousin? Now researchers say the confusion came from how we looked it it. We've had Pikaia upside down the whole time. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/s...

Was This Sea Creature Our Ancestor? Scientists Turn a Famous Fossil on its Head.www.nytimes.com Researchers have long assumed that a tube in the famous Pikaia fossil ran along the animal’s back. But a new study turned the fossil upside-side down.

Please consider subscribing to my email newsletter! In the latest issue, I write about giant genomes and how I gave my blood to witness the power of junk DNA. 🧪https://buttondown.email/carlzimmer/archive/fridays-elk-life-keeps-throwing-more-junk-at-us/

Friday's Elk: Life Keeps Throwing More Junk at Usbuttondown.email Life Keeps Throwing More Junk at Us It’s been nearly ten years, but I can still see the blood flowing out of my finger. I was in a lab in Canada, chopping...

This little Pacific fern has the biggest genome yet found--50 times bigger than ours. Here's my story on the evolution of extreme genomes. 🧪 [Gift link] www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/s...

Scientists Find the Largest Known Genome Inside a Small Plantwww.nytimes.com A fern from a Pacific island carries 50 times as much DNA as humans do.

I do my best impression of a singing humpback whale on the Daily podcast today 🧪https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/podcasts/the-daily/whales-song.html

Whales Have an Alphabetwww.nytimes.com Until the 1960s, it was uncertain whether whales made any sounds at all.

Why do humans make music? 75 experts launched a study to find out--and each of them sang a song that they analyzed together. Here's my story (and some tunes!) 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/s...

Why Do People Make Music?www.nytimes.com In a new study, researchers found universal features of songs across many cultures, suggesting that music evolved in our distant ancestors.

Check out the brain worm edition of my email newsletter. buttondown.email/carlzimmer/a...

Friday's Elk, May 10, 2024buttondown.email The Brain Worm Edition As I was sitting down to write this email, I learned that my book Parasite Rex got name-checked today in a podcast (44:20). It’s not a...

With brain tapeworms in the news today, I thought I'd share this column from back in my Discover days, on the gruesome but surprisingly common disease known as neurocysticercosis www.discovermagazine.com/health/hidde...

Graphic Media

Labeled by Bluesky Moderation Service

Marine biologists and computer scientists say they have discovered that sperm whales use a "phonetic alphabet." Do they use it for a language made of underwater clicks? Here's my story. 🧪 [gift link] www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/s...

Scientists Find an ‘Alphabet’ in Whale Songswww.nytimes.com Sperm whales rattle off pulses of clicks while swimming together, raising the possibility that they’re communicating in a complex language.

The Biden administration has released its official new policy on overseeing potentially dangerous research on pathogens. Here's my story with Ben Mueller: www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/s...

U.S. Tightens Rules on Risky Virus Researchwww.nytimes.com A long-awaited new policy broadens the type of regulated viruses, bacteria, fungi and toxins, including those that could threaten crops and livestock.

Is anyone hearing the cicadas singing yet? Here's a short animation about this year's broods. 🧪https://www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000009443205/our-reporter-on-the-cicada-lifecycle.html

Video: Our Reporter on the Cicada Lifecyclewww.nytimes.com Two periodical cicada broods are appearing in a 16-state area in the Midwest and Southeast for the first time in centuries.

Mega-droughts, war, migration: What do 30,000 years of history reveal about how societies withstand collapse? I take a look at an intriguing new study for my Origins column. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/s...

What Makes a Society More Resilient? Frequent Hardship.www.nytimes.com Comparing 30,000 years of human history, researchers found that surviving famine, war or climate change helps groups recover more quickly from future shocks.

Do cicadas know something about prime numbers? For my email newsletter, I wrote about the stubborn mysteries of these insects. 🧪https://buttondown.email/carlzimmer/archive/fridays-elk-april-26-2024/

Friday's Elk, April 26, 2024buttondown.email Welcome to another edition of "Friday's Elk." I'm sending out this newsletter every other week, barring deadlines and such. It's free, but any support you...

Have you heard the cicadas yet this spring? In celebration of 2024's double-brood event, I wrote about how little we know about how trillions of insects know to emerge at the same time. 🧪 [Gift link] www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/s...

Cicadas Are Emerging Now. How Do They Know When to Come Out?www.nytimes.com Scientists are making computer models to better understand how the mysterious insects emerge collectively after more than a decade underground.

What is "airborne"? WHO has created a new common language for talking about how diseases spread. It took over two years to put it together. Here's my story 🧪 [Gift link] www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/h...

I recently went to Florence for the first time and ended up writing about Galileo, the city’s greatest scientist–and the stories we tell about him four centuries later. It’s in my latest email newsletter. Read here: buttondown.email/carlzimmer/a... Subscribe here: buttondown.email/carlzimmer 🧪

One of the many reasons tardigrades are amazing: they can withstand a blast of gamma rays a thousand times greater than a lethal dose for humans. I wrote about their molecular secrets of survival. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/s...

Bonobos--famous as "hippie chimps"--actually commit more acts of aggression than chimpanzees. I wrote about how this new finding is changing our ideas about the origins of human aggression. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/s...

For Quanta, I took a trip through the social life of viruses. Check it out! 🧪 www.quantamagazine.org/viruses-fina...

In my email newsletter today, I explore the hallmarks of life, why scientists don't agree on them, and whether A.I. can help broker an understanding. Contains a groovy organoid GIF. Check it out! 🧪 [Fixed link] buttondown.email/carlzimmer/a...

I wrote about people who survived a climate disaster 74,000 years ago thanks to resilience & versatility. Some scientists think they are the key to understanding how modern humans finally expanded out of Africa and survived on other continents permanently 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/s...

Aside from humans, there are only five species known to regularly go through menopause--all of them whales. A new study suggests many of the same evolutionary factors have produced it in every case. 🧪 [Gift link] www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/s...

For the "Ideas" series at the New York Times, I take a look at what might be called LifeGPT: letting large-language-model-like programs teach themselves biology by looking at data from millions of cells. They are learning fast. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/s...