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Kakapo Wins New Zealand's Bird of the Year

New Zealand’s rare green kakapo parrot and chick. Photo: AFP
New Zealand’s rare green kakapo parrot and chick. Photo: AFP
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Kakapo Wins New Zealand's Bird of the Year

New Zealand’s rare green kakapo parrot and chick. Photo: AFP
New Zealand’s rare green kakapo parrot and chick. Photo: AFP

Kakapo, a critically endangered large parrot that can't fly and hides during the day is back in the limelight having been named New Zealand's bird of the year for an unprecedented second time, The Guardian reported.

The green and fawn kakapo– the world's heaviest, longest-living parrot – first won in 2008. After conservation efforts, the population of this large parrot has risen from 50 during the 1990s to 213 now.

Also known as "mighty moss chicken," the famous parrot used to live throughout New Zealand, but today survive only on predator-free islands.

Male kakapo emits a loud booming sound to attract females and smell "like the inside of a clarinet case, musty and kind of like resin and wood," said Laura Keown, spokesperson for the competition.

"The things that make kakapo unique also make them vulnerable to threats. They are slow breeders, they nest on the ground and their main defense is to imitate a shrub. Those qualities worked great in the island of birds the kakapo evolved in but they don't fool introduced predators like stoats, rats and cats," she explained.

Another endangered bird, the antipodean albatross, which is often caught in fishing nets, won most first-choice votes out of the more than 55,000 votes cast but under the competition's preferential system the kakapo came through. Organizers said they hoped the antipodean albatross did not feel robbed.

"The competition has boosted environmental awareness, compared with 15 years ago when bird of the year started. It is definitely part of a shift in thinking about the needs of New Zealand's unique environment and native species," organizers said.

It has also introduced the public to some weird and wonderful characters. The world's most famous kakapo is Sirocco, who reputedly thinks he is human. It has toured New Zealand to promote the plight of his species.

In 2009, he rocketed to global fame after attempting to mate with zoologist Mark Carwardine's head during filming for the BBC documentary Last Chance to See with British actor Stephen Fry, who likened the bird's face to that of a Victorian gentleman. The video of the incident, with commentary from Fry has had more than 18m views. Scientists believe kakapo can live for around 60 years.

Under the last Labor-Green government, the Department of Conservation received the biggest funding boost it has had in 15 years.

The government has promised to put cameras on all commercial fishing boats, and New Zealand has a goal to be predator free by 2050.

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Scientists Produce Painstaking Wiring Diagram of a Mouse’s Brain

This image provided by the Allen Institute on April 8, 2025, shows a digital representation of neurons in a section of a mouse's brain, part of a project to create the largest map to date of brain wiring and function, in Seattle, Wash. (Forrest Collman/Allen Institute via AP)
This image provided by the Allen Institute on April 8, 2025, shows a digital representation of neurons in a section of a mouse's brain, part of a project to create the largest map to date of brain wiring and function, in Seattle, Wash. (Forrest Collman/Allen Institute via AP)
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Scientists Produce Painstaking Wiring Diagram of a Mouse’s Brain

This image provided by the Allen Institute on April 8, 2025, shows a digital representation of neurons in a section of a mouse's brain, part of a project to create the largest map to date of brain wiring and function, in Seattle, Wash. (Forrest Collman/Allen Institute via AP)
This image provided by the Allen Institute on April 8, 2025, shows a digital representation of neurons in a section of a mouse's brain, part of a project to create the largest map to date of brain wiring and function, in Seattle, Wash. (Forrest Collman/Allen Institute via AP)

Neuroscientists have produced the largest wiring diagram and functional map of a mammalian brain to date using tissue from a part of a mouse's cerebral cortex involved in vision, an achievement that could offer insight into how the human brain works.

They worked out the cerebral architecture in a tissue sample the size of a grain of sand bearing more than 200,000 cells including roughly 84,000 nerve cells, called neurons, and about 524 million connections between these neurons at junctions called synapses. In all, they collected data that covers about 3.4 miles (5.4 kilometers) of neuronal wiring in a part of the brain that processes visual information from the eyes.

"The millions of synapses and hundreds of thousands of cells come in such a diversity of shapes and sizes, and contain a massive complexity. Looking at their complexity gives, at least us, a sense of awe about the sheer complexity of our own minds," said neuroscientist Forrest Collman of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, one of the lead scientists in the research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The cerebral cortex is the brain's outer layer, the main site of conscious perceptions, judgments and the planning and execution of movements.

"Scientists have been studying the structure and anatomy of the brain - including the morphology of different cell types and how they connect - for over a century. Simultaneously, they've been characterizing the function of neurons - for example, what information they process," said neuroscientist Andreas Tolias of Baylor College of Medicine, one of the research leaders.

"However, understanding how neuronal function emerges at the circuit level has been challenging, since we need to study both function and wiring in the same neurons. Our study represents the largest effort to date to systematically unify brain structure and function within a single individual mouse," Tolias added.

While there are notable differences between mouse and human brains, many organizational principles remain conserved across species.

The research focused upon a part of this region called the primary visual cortex, involved in the first stage of the brain's processing of visual information.

The research was conducted by the MICrONS, short for Machine Intelligence from Cortical Networks, a scientific consortium involving more than 150 scientists from various institutions.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine created a map of neural activity in a cubic millimeter of the primary visual cortex by recording brain cell responses while the laboratory mouse ran on a treadmill while watching a variety of video images, including from "The Matrix" films. The mouse had been genetically modified to make these cells emit a fluorescent substance when the neurons were active.

The same neurons were then imaged at the Allen Institute. Those images were assembled in three dimensions, and Princeton University researchers used artificial intelligence and machine learning to reconstruct the neurons and their connection patterns.

The brain is populated by a network of cells including neurons that are activated by sensory stimuli such as sight or sound or touch and are connected by synapses. Cognitive function involves the interplay between the activation of neurons and the connections among the brain cells.

The researchers see practical benefits from this type of research.

"First, understanding brain wiring rules can shed light on various neurological and psychiatric disorders, including autism and schizophrenia, which may arise from subtle wiring abnormalities. Second, knowing precisely how neuronal wiring shapes brain function allows us to uncover fundamental mechanisms of cognition," Tolias said.

One key finding highlighted in the research involved a map of how connections involving a broad class of neurons in the brain called inhibitory cells are organized. When these neurons become active, they make the cells to which they are connected less active. This stands in contrast to excitatory cells, which make the cells to which they connect more likely to become active. Inhibitory cells represent about 15% of the cortical neurons.

"We found many more highly specific patterns of inhibition than many, including us, were expecting to find," Collman said.

"Inhibitory cells don't just randomly connect to all the excitatory cells around them, but instead pick out very specific kinds of neurons to connect to. Further, it was known that there are four major kinds of inhibitory neurons in the cortex, but the patterns of specificity break up these categories into much finer groups," Collman said.