Letters archive

Chris Sherwood's excellent piece on animal communication, "If only they could talk", reminded me of an essay I wrote for New Scientist more than 30 years ago ( 21 May 1994 ) headlined "Why can't we talk to the animals?". Even way back then, we and other animals could "talk" with one another using visual …

While it would be fascinating to decode the messages that lie behind a cat's purr, a dog's bark or the clucking of a rather overfed chicken, I think we have to be aware of our strong instinct to attribute human qualities to these creatures. While they undoubtedly display intelligence, it is expressed in a way …

Your articles on nutrition brought several strands of information together nicely, although, as with previous round-ups of this, it seems to sum up as "more fibre, less red meat and sugar, more variety" ( 2 November, p 32 ). One theme that I would like to add is that those of us in affluent societies …

Good to hear that the largest-known prime number has been found – but at what cost in terms of energy consumption? Rather than rewarding the finder with $3000, perhaps that money would be better spent on carbon offsetting ( 2 November, p 19 ).

I agree with Daniele Oriti that "we have to embrace the fact that we make reality", and note readers' responses. We need to keep in mind that relativity and quantum physics have comprehensively undermined our classical, or Newtonian, view of reality ( 12 October, p 40 , and Letters, 2 November ). For instance, we …

Your story on how the Neanderthals really died amid the rise of Homo sapiens , based on regional occupation, sounds like a perpetual hunt/war between the two groups. It would have started with Neanderthals hunting invasive "weak" humans until our species got smarter and tried to eliminate them ( 12 October, p 36 ). Those …

Despite its name, Barnard's star isn't in Barnard's galaxy ( 26 October, p 30 ). A new type of energy storage device that could be used on Mars is a supercapacitor ( 2 November, p 12 ). In our look at precision nutrition, we misattributed a quote to Regan Bailey ( 2 November, p 38 …