[Posted by Chuck Almdale]

Sumatran orangutans start crafting their engineering skills as infants

At six months old, human infants are still working on sitting up by themselves. But baby orangutans at that age are already developing their engineering skills. This is not innate, they are taught.
Article by Elizabeth Anne Brown at Science News Magazine, 17 May 2024.

If human children were this smart, maybe they could build their own child-sized furniture from Ikea.

The largest known genome belongs to a tiny fern

The plant can fit in your hand, but its genome is over 50 times the size of the human genome, or 160 billion base pairs compared to 3.2 billion. One wonders what all those genes are up to?
Article by Jake Buehler at Science News Magazine, 31 May 2024.

Both articles contains links to other interesting articles.