MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

And it’s time for this week’s science roundup with our buddies at NPR’s Quick Wave podcast – Regina Barber and Maria Godoy – within the studio. Hey there, you two.

MARIA GODOY, BYLINE: Hey.

REGINA BARBER, BYLINE: Hey.

KELLY: So you might have introduced us three science tales – three that caught your eye this week. What have you ever acquired?

GODOY: Nicely, we have an outbreak of the Nipah virus in Kerala, India…

BARBER: What mysterious pink diamonds in Australia in the present day inform us about what occurred on Earth a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of years in the past…

GODOY: And the way cockatoos woo their lovers by moonlighting as drummers.

KELLY: (Laughter) OK, so virus, pink diamonds and romantic cockatoos. I acquired to go for the third one first. Maria, inform me concerning the wild palm cockatoos. They’re drumming out love songs?

GODOY: Yeah. That is as fabulous because it sounds. So these palm cockatoos solely dwell in distant components of northern Australia and lowland New Guinea, some offshore islands. Feminine cockatoos solely lay one egg each two years.

BARBER: Which implies they should be tremendous choosy about selecting a male mate.

GODOY: Proper. And as TLC taught us all within the ’90s, they do not need no scrubs, which suggests…

BARBER: (Laughter).

GODOY: …The male palm cockatoos should go all-out to persuade the females to mate with them. Rob Heinsohn has been learning these birds for many years. He is a conservation biologist at Australian Nationwide College, and he says the males placed on a reasonably unimaginable present. They begin off by whistling and making a lot of calls and noises to catch her eye.

ROB HEINSOHN: And on the identical time, he is erecting his huge crest. And he is blushing his crimson cheeks, and he is bobbing and dancing on the department, twirling, doing all the pieces he can to get her consideration.

KELLY: OK. I’ve crimson cheeks imagining him erecting his huge crest…

(LAUGHTER)

KELLY: …On his head, proper?

GODOY: On his head.

KELLY: Oh his head.

GODOY: Sure, on his head.

KELLY: OK.

GODOY: It is a household present.

KELLY: So fast-forward to the drumming – what occurs?

BARBER: Nicely, that is the large finale, proper? After he is been whistling and bobbing, the male cockatoo goes out on a limb and makes a giant present of slicing off the largest tree department. And he does it along with his invoice to mainly present how sturdy he’s.

GODOY: After which he whittles that department down along with his beak and begins drumming. And in a brand new examine revealed by the Royal Society, researchers report that every chook truly has his personal most popular model of drumstick. Some like them quick and fats. Others desire lengthy and thin. Generally they use seed pods, too. However they every have their very own signature instrument model.

BARBER: Not solely that – every chook has its personal signature drumming model, too. Heinsohn says he can acknowledge which male palm cockatoo is drumming simply by listening – kind of like folks say you may inform when Keith Moon is drumming on a Who album.

(SOUNDBITE OF PALM COCKATOO DRUMMING)

KELLY: OK, I am unsure The Who’re dropping any sleep over that, however, Maria, inform me what the feminine cockatoos are doing whereas all this is occurring.

GODOY: Yeah. Nicely, so Heinsohn says this entire elaborate musical mating show is how male palm cockatoos present they’ve the brains and creativity to be worthy as mates. So the females watch this carefully the entire time, and the males do these shows again and again till they lastly get the woman.

KELLY: Till they get the woman – so a cheerful ending. That’s pleasant.

Talking of pleasant – pink diamonds. That is our subsequent subject – pink diamonds in Australia – Regina.

BARBER: Yeah. So for a very long time, the Argyle Diamond Mine in Western Australia loved a bounty of pink diamonds. Till they closed in 2020, they had been the main provider of them. However the entire time, geologists have been stumped by how the diamonds acquired there and when.

GODOY: Yeah. See, pink diamonds are stunning, however they’re very uncommon. Like, for those who scooped up 500 random diamonds from Argyle…

KELLY: As you do.

GODOY: Yeah, precisely – just one could be pink. They usually’re much more uncommon at different mines, which makes them fairly coveted stones. Should you’ll bear in mind, Ben Affleck gave J.Lo a pink diamond throughout their first engagement within the early aughts.

KELLY: So many engagements in the past. OK, so pink diamonds – you stated they’re very uncommon. Why?

BARBER: It is as a result of they require a unique sort of physics to be made. So you might have your basic, colorless diamond, and that is constructed from pure carbon put below excessive stress. However one of many researchers, geologist Hugo Olierook, says pink diamonds are broken diamonds.

HUGO OLIEROOK: You’ll be able to injury a diamond. You’ll be able to truly take that diamond and twist it and bend it slightly. And for those who bend it and twist it simply the correct quantity, it turns pink.

BARBER: And the constructions inside a diamond get compressed, and the sunshine touring via the pink diamond makes it that coloration.

GODOY: So geologists have lengthy recognized that diamonds are typically shaped deep down.

BARBER: Greater than 90 miles deep down.

GODOY: Contained in the Earth’s crust. They usually tended to type again when there have been supercontinents on the floor of the earth.

KELLY: OK, cling on, ‘trigger I am attempting to maintain up right here. Supercontinents – that is once they had been all smushed collectively, like a gazillion years in the past?

GODOY: Yeah, precisely. So Pangea is the latest one. There was one other supercontinent referred to as Nuna, and scientists assume that these pink diamonds had been created throughout the formation of the Nuna supercontinent some 1.8 billion years in the past.

BARBER: Yeah. And Hugo and his colleagues wrote about this within the journal Nature Communications this week. And thru extra exact relationship, they had been ready to determine that when Nuna broke aside 500 million years later, the diamonds spewed out. The subcontinents banged collectively and stretched, which brought about a volcanic eruption of diamonds.

KELLY: A volcano of diamonds.

BARBER: Sure.

KELLY: Superb.

GODOY: Signal me up.

KELLY: OK, now our closing story that you’ve got delivered to us – it is slightly bit extra of a downer, however it’s an fascinating detective story.

BARBER: Yeah.

KELLY: That is an epidemiological thriller. It’s in southern India. It is an outbreak of a virus referred to as the Nipah virus. Inform me extra.

GODOY: Proper. Nicely, so Kamala Thiagarajan wrote concerning the outbreak for NPR’s Goats and Soda weblog. It is the fourth outbreak within the state of Kerala since 2018. There’s been two deaths – the primary one was on the finish of August – and 6 instances to this point.

KELLY: Six instances to this point – and what does it do to you?

GODOY: Nicely, this can be a virus that jumps from animals to folks. Fruit bats are the first hosts, and it is on the World Well being Group’s record of viruses with pandemic potential. And the standard signs can embody extreme respiratory issues like pneumonia, even encephalitis, which is mind swelling, and that may deliver fevers, complications, generally disorientation and even result in coma.

BARBER: And the virus could be lethal, too. There was a giant outbreak in Malaysia within the late ’90s that killed over 100 folks.

KELLY: Ugh. OK, this sounds terrible. Do we all know how this present outbreak – the one in India – started?

GODOY: Nicely, scientists know that Nipah can unfold from bats to people when bats contaminate issues folks eat or drink. In some previous outbreaks in Bangladesh, that is been via the sap of date palm timber. And when folks drank the palm sap, they acquired sick. Researchers are testing bats in Kerala for the virus to see if that may be the case right here, however they have not discovered but precisely how this outbreak began.

BARBER: However they do know that when this explicit pressure of Nipah virus jumps from animals to folks, it might unfold from human to human via bodily fluids or contaminated meals.

GODOY: And a number of other instances on this outbreak are linked to a hospital the place the primary one that died was getting handled. So it appears that evidently the contaminated particular person went to the hospital, and it started to unfold from there. Now, containment measures have been put in place, and docs in Kerala are optimistic.

KELLY: Me too – very a lot wishing them luck in containing that individual outbreak. Maria Godoy and Regina Barber from NPR’s science podcast, Quick Wave, which is the place you may find out about new discoveries and on a regular basis mysteries and all of the science behind the headlines. Regina, Maria, thanks.

GODOY: Oh, thanks.

BARBER: Thanks.

(SOUNDBITE OF SLVR SONG, “BACK N FORTH”)

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