Science

The giraffes were quietly doing arithmetic the whole time

A Barcelona experiment set out to see how far a giraffe's brain could stretch.

Give a giraffe two boxes of carrots and a few seconds to think, and something unexpected happens behind those long-lashed eyes. Researchers at the Barcelona Zoo ran four giraffes through a shell-game setup with hidden carrot pieces, shuffling snacks between containers and letting each animal pick the box it thought held more. As Erik Barnes reports, the giraffes landed on the fuller container about 68% of the time, a hit rate that suggests they weren't guessing at all.

The scientists think the giraffes were mentally adding the carrots up before choosing, joining a small club of animals that turn out to be quietly numerate. It puts them in company with chimpanzees picking the bigger pile of chocolate and other creatures whose brains keep doing things we assumed were ours alone. But the researchers ran a second version of the test, and that's where the giraffes' math skills hit a very specific wall.

Do you have a GOOD picture to share?

Send us your best images, and we may feature them as the image of the day. Be sure to tell us a bit about your pic.

And what did we learn?

We learned that GOOD readers are people of action! Yesterday, we shared a story of a boy who dove into action (literally) to save a life. Almost 40% of you leap into action when it’s called for, and close to 50% of you have the level-headed composure to pick up the phone and call for help.

• The one who moves first, thinking later (38.8%)

• The 911 caller, keeping a clear head (46.7%)

• I can admit it, I'm the one who panics (6.7%)

• I'm the bystander, taking it all in (7.9%)

Health

Spain eats at 9 p.m. and remains one of the healthiest countries on Earth

The number on the clock matters less than one habit almost nobody talks about.

I was in Spain during college, and after our first day of classes, my friends and I strolled up to a nightclub a little past ten, only to find them vacuuming. We were stunned. They'd already closed and were cleaning up for the night? Nope. They wouldn't open for a few more hours. The Spanish, I learned, are nightowls. As such, dinner routinely lands past 9 p.m., and somehow Spain still ranks among the healthiest countries on Earth.

As Erik Barnes reports, the popular 5-to-7 p.m. dinner window is really just a suggestion aimed at people clocking a nine-to-five, and it falls apart the second you look overseas. The dietitians Barnes talked to mostly refuse to name one "correct" time, because the real answer depends on a question you have to ask yourself first, and it has nothing to do with dinner at all.

Exploration

We finally spoke octopus, and it answered

What happens when a marine biologist tries an animal's own hand signals underwater?

Know, dear reader, that I work hard to bring you an accurate newsletter, and that my research into whether the plural is octopi or octopuses* dragged me down a rabbit hole I am only now clawing out of. Worth it, because the creature at the bottom of that hole turned out to be a genius.

Octopuses have three hearts, blue blood, and skin that changes color in a blink, which is why scientists keep calling them "alien." But the strangest thing marine biologist Dr. Alex Schnell caught on camera for National Geographic's Secrets of the Octopus wasn't the biology. It was a conversation. Filming on the Great Barrier Reef, her crew watched an octopus named Scarlett hunt alongside a coral trout, the fish doing a headstand to flag where a crab was hiding. As Schnell reports in this story by Adam Albright Hanna, a fish with no hands had found a way to gesture. So she wondered: could she gesture too?

* - It’s neither! Octopuses is standard English, while octopi comes from mistakenly treating the Greek-derived word as Latin. The true Greek-style plural is octopodes, but unless you want to sound fancy at the aquarium, stick with octopuses.

Who’s a GOOD boy/girl?

Image of the Day has its own lane, but the pet pics keep arriving, and I am not made of stone. So every Friday, I’ll share one reader-submitted photo of a favorite pet. Want yours featured? Send it along.

On July 10, 1962, the U.S. Patent Office granted patent number 3,043,625 to a Swedish engineer named Nils Bohlin for something you probably clicked into place this morning without a second thought: the three-point seatbelt. Bohlin had come to Volvo from the aviation world, where he designed ejection seats, so he knew a thing or two about keeping bodies in one piece at high speed. His genius was simplicity: one strap across the chest, one across the hips, buckled with a single hand, snug enough to actually work.

Volvo could have guarded the patent like treasure. Instead, the company made it "open," meaning every other automaker on Earth was free to copy the design at no cost. Volvo essentially decided that saving lives mattered more than cornering the market.

The ripple effect is almost impossible to overstate. The three-point belt is now standard in virtually every car on the planet and has been credited with saving well over a million lives. Not bad for a guy who spent less than a year sketching out the fix. Next time you buckle up, thank Nils. 

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💬 From the group text…

I’ve never heard a barrel organ. I’ve never even heard OF a barrel organ, but this is some mechanical magic to start off your weekend.

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