Join us for a mind-blowing festival of ideas and experiences
11 February 2022
Our award-winning festival, New Scientist Live is back to stimulate, challenge and inspire with some of today’s biggest scientific discoveries and ideas.
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Premium
Chimp evolution was shaped by sex with their bonobo relatives
24 May 2018
Some chimpanzee populations gained useful DNA from interbreeding with bonobos, and one may even have become more gentle and “bonobo-like” in its brain structure and behaviour
We may have got the evolution of our big brains entirely wrong
23 May 2018
Many scientists think that our big brains evolved to help us cope with the complexities of social living, but a model suggests it was more to do with finding food and lighting fires
World's most-spoken languages may have arisen in ancient Iran
23 May 2018
About 3 billion people speak Indo-European languages like English and Hindustani, and it seems the first such tongue was spoken south of the Caucasus mountains
People adapted to the cold and got more migraines as a result
3 May 2018
A gene variant that helps humans cope with colder climates also seems to have put people living in northerly regions at a higher risk of migraine
Surprise! Having a big brain really does mean having less muscle
28 February 2018
It’s an evolutionary mystery how humans and other primates found the energy to support their large brains, but now it seems sacrificing some muscle might have helped
Sheep learn to recognise celebrity faces from different angles
8 November 2017
The animals were as good as humans at recognising mugshots of the same celebs from different angles, showing sophisticated brain processing of imagery
