IFLScience - We Have Questions

Is it possible to predict the future by slicing open a farm animal and peering inside its liver? Scientists of the 21st century would surely be skeptical about approaching this question, but for the curious minds of ancient times, it was a tried and tested method for looking ahead and foreseeing what the gods had in store for you, your family, or your world.

 

Known today as liver divination, this mysterious art was mastered by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians, two mighty civilizations that flourished in Mesopotamia and carved their names into the bedrock of history. 

 

We spoke to Dr Selena Wisnom, author of The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of History, who believes liver divination is a surprisingly insightful window into this world and the emergence of science. After all, it did manage to predict the election of Trump…

 

Polar Bears International (PBI) is serious about protecting bears, and in the pursuit of reliable data have gone to some extremes in the past. From burying scientists alive out in the snow to novel collar-camera setups that have enabled them to predict when polar bear moms and their new cubs are going to emerge from their dens.

In an era of “drill, baby, drill,” now is a tougher time for polar bears than ever before. An essential step towards getting them the protection they require centers around demystifying their denning habits and what young bears need to survive, so we caught up with Dr Louise Archer, PBI’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Toronto Scarborough, to find out what she’s been working on with a team in Svalbard, Norway.

There’s a strange phenomenon reported among some recipients of organ transplants whereby people report altered memories, tastes, and personality changes. A particularly curious example included a woman who, having never much liked chicken nuggets, found herself compelled to eat them after receiving an organ from a man who had nuggets on his person when he died.

Similarly perplexing changes in taste have also been reported among the recipients of bone marrow transplants, from loving gherkins to switching from white to red wine. This is something the UK-based stem cell charity Anthony Nolan knows a thing or two about. We spoke to their senior medical officer Dr Tania Dexter to find out more about what these transplants entail, how they've changed people, and why we think it happens.

This interview previously featured in the March 2025 issue of CURIOUS, IFLScience's e-magazine. Check out the full issue to explore: Can We Really Trust Our Memories? Is Robotic Surgery The Future? And The Floating Mountains Of Zhangjiajie.

https://www.iflscience.com/can-we-really-trust-our-memories-find-out-more-in-issue-32-of-curious-out-now-78264

Humans smell, there’s no denying it, but are some of those smells sending out chemical signals we aren’t consciously aware of? Are we, like ants, giving off pheromones? 

 

We spoke to Dr Tristram Wyatt, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford, to find out.

 

It’s perhaps one of the greatest injustices of human bodily functions that the yawn has become so stigmatized in social settings. Crack one out and you’ll likely receive accusations of being bored or rude. It seems ironic, really, because the science of yawning tells us that, if anything, it’s a sign you’re trying harder to pay attention.

That’s what we discovered when we sat down with Dr Andrew Gallup, Teaching Professor of Behavioral Biology at Johns Hopkins University and a bit of an expert in yawning. We wanted to find out why this open-mouthed action seems to be so incredibly catching, and discovered along the way that there’s a hell of a lot going on when we yawn.

When we talk about death, we often say things along the lines of “it's a fact of life,” but the view can be very different when you’re facing the real and imminent prospect of no longer existing. Given the chance, can we be so sure that we wouldn’t try anything for a little more time?

According to neuroscientist Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston, most of the general public would like 10 years more life than they’re statistically likely to get when asked “how long do you want to live?”, and it seems the hunger for more doesn’t diminish as time goes by.

So, what if there was a way that we could postpone the seemingly inevitable by capturing the essence of who a person was, and storing it until future technologies enable us to bring them back? If we found a way to lock in someone’s way of thinking, their memories, and all the parts that make them unique, could we postpone death indefinitely? And why is it nobody’s tried just popping someone’s brain in another body? Join us as we explore all of this and more in this special bumper episode of We Have Questions.

Snow is beautiful, but also powerful and destructive – and, if we’re honest, a bit confusing. For something made entirely of water, it can come in many forms: light and fluffy, sticky and heavy, shaped like a perfect snowflake, or falling in needle-like flecks. Its consistency changes a lot, but so does its color, which got us wondering: why does snow sometimes look blue?

To find out, we reached out to Dr Andrew Schwartz at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab in California. As no strangers to snow, and we were delighted to learn that yes, their research sometimes does involve just frolicking in the stuff.

Wake up? Brush your teeth. Going to bed? Brush your teeth. The dental routine of being a human can be a bit monotonous, but it’s an important step towards maintaining a happy mouth. It can be slightly baffling, then, to spot a photo of a bonobo with a seemingly perfect grin. How are wild animals getting away with it as we dutifully march off to our next dental hygienist appointment? Why don’t animals have to brush their teeth?

It's a question that led us to the office of Peter Kertesz, who, as well as seeing human patients, is Dental Consultant to ZSL London Zoo and numerous other wildlife establishments around the world. A quick glance at his website shows Kertesz tending to the teeth of everything from elephants to tigers and dolphins with the help of dental nurse Monika Mazurkiewicz.

We sat down with Kertesz to find out more about what it’s really like doing dentistry on non-human species, and why their days aren’t bookended by scrubbing their mouth bones.