Letters archive

Chelsea Whyte reports that in only seven species of mammal do females exhibit leadership ( 29 September, p 8 ). Leadership is a difficult concept to apply to animals, and indeed different definitions seem to be applied in each of the seven species cited. I cannot offhand think of any species of large long-lived social …

I feel safer with the pilot having the same outcome as me! @wotsapnin isn't quite ready for the driverless aircraft of the future ( 6 October, p 42 ) .

Thank you for Chelsea Whyte's article on milk alternatives ( 22 September, p 22 ). It is high time that the question about the ecological and health impact of "alt-milks" is addressed in more detail – please write more! The perceived benefits and harms of these "milks" have been left to marketing and the fashions …

• The data artist with whom Hannah Redler-Hawes co-curated the LMAO exhibition is Julie Freeman ( 29 September, p 44 ). • Estimates of the number killed by Allied bombing raids on Germany in 1939-45 are in the hundreds of thousands ( 6 October, p 16 ).

Chelsea Whyte lists alternatives to cow's milk ( 22 September, p 22 ). Potential convertees should be cautious as not all alternatives are what they seem, with price not necessarily being a helpful guide. Soya milk can contain as little as 5 per cent soya beans. The best I've seen in the UK is 12 …

You describe a mantis shrimp that "creates a force that shatters aquarium glass" ( 29 September, p 40 ). This is simply not true. I'm a senior aquarium service technician with over 25 years of experience, and this is one of those stories that gets tossed around, yet there's no actual proof of it ever …

Simon Oxenham repeats the standard New Scientist suggestion that a liberal outlook is the default in Western societies and that, conversely, a current propensity for conservatives to support right-wing "populist" parties is pathological ( 15 September, p 24 ). His assertion that higher voter turnouts may lead back to "a more familiar political landscape" is …

Andy Coghlan writes that the bombs dropped in the second world war rattled the edge of space ( 6 October, p 16 ). The total bomb load dropped on Vietnam in the mid 1960s and early 1970s was some three times that dropped on Europe over a similar timescale. One would expect a similar reduction …

Simon Terry and Stephanie Howard raise the ethics around deliberately causing extinctions, with the example of mosquitoes that infect people with malaria being genetically engineered to spread sterility in their species ( 13 October, p 24 ). Couldn't we instead engineer a mosquito not to carry the plasmodium that causes malaria? That would still allow …

Alastair Mouat writes that the head brewer at his Edinburgh brewery could distinguish between the same canned beer produced at different locations ( Letters, 15 September ). How does he know the head brewer wasn't having them all on?