Marmosets Practice Crying in Womb, New Study Suggests

Monkeys eat fruit during the annual Monkey Festival which resumed after a two-year gap caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, in Lopburi province, Thailand, November 28, 2021. REUTERS/Jiraporn Kuhakan
Monkeys eat fruit during the annual Monkey Festival which resumed after a two-year gap caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, in Lopburi province, Thailand, November 28, 2021. REUTERS/Jiraporn Kuhakan
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Marmosets Practice Crying in Womb, New Study Suggests

Monkeys eat fruit during the annual Monkey Festival which resumed after a two-year gap caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, in Lopburi province, Thailand, November 28, 2021. REUTERS/Jiraporn Kuhakan
Monkeys eat fruit during the annual Monkey Festival which resumed after a two-year gap caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, in Lopburi province, Thailand, November 28, 2021. REUTERS/Jiraporn Kuhakan

Baby marmosets begin practicing the face and mouth movements necessary to call their family for help before they are born, shows a study published in the journal eLife.

This finding may also apply to humans, as ultrasounds in the third trimester of pregnancy have shown developing humans in the womb making crying-like movements.

The first cries and coos of humans and other primates are essential to their survival. In addition to allowing them to call their family members for help, these vocalizations and interactions with their parents and other caregivers lay the groundwork for more complex communication later in life.

"We wanted to know how those very first neonatal vocalizations develop," said lead author Darshana Narayanan, from the Neuroscience Institute at Princeton University.

Narayanan and colleagues conducted ultrasounds two to three times per week in four pregnant marmosets for a total of 14-17 ultrasound sessions per marmoset, starting when the face first became visible on ultrasound and ending the day before birth.

The team used the ultrasound scans to longitudinally track the head, face and mouth movements of the developing marmosets and compared them with the newborn marmosets' movements when they called out.

The team found that the developing marmosets' head and mouth movements coordinated initially, but the mouth movement became distinct over time. Eventually, they became almost indistinguishable from movements made by crying newborn marmosets briefly separated from their mothers within the first 24 hours after birth.

"Our experiments show that marmosets begin practicing the movements needed for important social calls even before they can generate a sound," Narayanan says. She adds that studying these movements further in marmosets may help scientists learn more about the development of social vocalizations in other primates, including humans.



Scientists Drill Nearly 2 Miles Down to Pull 1.2 Million-year-old Ice Core from Antarctic

An international team of scientists announced successfully drilled one of the oldest ice cores yet - The AP
An international team of scientists announced successfully drilled one of the oldest ice cores yet - The AP
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Scientists Drill Nearly 2 Miles Down to Pull 1.2 Million-year-old Ice Core from Antarctic

An international team of scientists announced successfully drilled one of the oldest ice cores yet - The AP
An international team of scientists announced successfully drilled one of the oldest ice cores yet - The AP

An international team of scientists announced Thursday they’ve successfully drilled one of the oldest ice cores yet, penetrating nearly 2 miles (2.8 kilometers) to Antarctic bedrock to reach ice they say is at least 1.2 million years old.

Analysis of the ancient ice is expected to show how Earth's atmosphere and climate have evolved. That should provide insight into how Ice Age cycles have changed, and may help in understanding how atmospheric carbon changed climate, they said, The AP reported.

“Thanks to the ice core we will understand what has changed in terms of greenhouse gases, chemicals and dusts in the atmosphere,” said Carlo Barbante, an Italian glaciologist and coordinator of Beyond EPICA, the project to obtain the core. Barbante also directs the Polar Science Institute at Italy's National Research Council.

The same team previously drilled a core about 800,000 years old. The latest drilling went 2.8 kilometers (about 1.7 miles) deep, with a team of 16 scientists and support personnel drilling each summer over four years in average temperatures of about minus-35 Celsius (minus-25.6 Fahrenheit).

Italian researcher Federico Scoto was among the glaciologists and technicians who completed the drilling at the beginning of January at a location called Little Dome C, near Concordia Research Station.

“It was a great a moment for us when we reached the bedrock,” Scoto said. Isotope analysis gave the ice's age as at least 1.2 million years old, he said.

Both Barbante and Scoto said that thanks to the analysis of the ice core of the previous Epica campaign they have assessed that concentrations of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, even during the warmest periods of the last 800,000 years, have never exceeded the levels seen since the Industrial Revolution began.

“Today we are seeing carbon dioxide levels that are 50% above the highest levels we’ve had over the last 800,000 years," Barbante said.

The European Union funded Beyond EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) with support from nations across the continent. Italy is coordinating the project.

The announcement was exciting to Richard Alley, a climate scientist at Penn State who was not involved with the project and who was recently awarded the National Medal of Science for his career studying ice sheets.

Alley said advancements in studying ice cores are important because they help scientists better understand the climate conditions of the past and inform their understanding of humans’ contributions to climate change in the present. He added that reaching the bedrock holds added promise because scientists may learn more about Earth’s history not directly related to the ice record itself.

“This is truly, truly, amazingly fantastic,” Alley said. “They will learn wonderful things.”