Talkative African grey parrots are charismatic internet stars. A global scramble to source and sell the birds threatens their survival.
African Grey Parrots Are Popular—And It’s Fueling Illegal Trade
African grey parrots are internet stars. It’s easy to see why—the charismatic birds sing, tell jokes, and sling profanities. But how do the endangered birds get from African forests to your feed?
Wildlife crime reporter Rene Ebersole joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe her investigation into the global parrot trade, and the black market for wild African greys that is threatening their existence.
A motherlode of RNA viruses collected from the ocean contains thousands of new species and vast genetic diversity.
The ocean is the largest region of the planet and remains a source of newly discovered species. But what do you do with a treasure trove of new viruses? A research team wrote in Science last month about finding thousands of new RNA viruses, and five new taxonomic phyla, in water samples from around the globe.
Tune in Tuesday, June 22 at 12:00 p.m. PT, to a special Science Friday Zoom webinar featuring senior aquarist Christina Biggs talking about all things cephalopod!
Attendees can listen in as Science Friday producers record an interview before the broadcast on the radio show. They’ll have a chance to chat with fellow listeners, ask Christina questions via chat, and could be selected to ask their question live on the show.
What a 'World of Warcraft' glitch taught epidemiologists about pandemics (2022)
In 2005, World of Warcraft introduced a new raid: Zul’Gurub, with its final boss, Hakkar the Soulflayer. And with Hakkar came a special ability called Corrupted Blood.
This was an (initially) time-sensitive hit-point draining spell that could be continuously spread to another player, if close enough — like a virus. Eventually, they’d die. Players soon discovered a glitch that could take the infection out of the raid using their pets and minions, quickly leading to an unprecedented virtual pandemic in 2005. Within hours, entire in-game cities were infected, including NPCs who could spread the virus without dying.
As WoW Redditor SneakyPaladin1701 recounted: “The scale of the devastation was unparalleled. There were plenty of people trying to cause mischief.” Some players attempted to social distance and others tried to quarantine major cities, while healers attempted to keep the infected from dying.
... In a research paper published a few years after the Corrupted Blood outbreak, epidemiologist Nina Fefferman and grad student Eric Lofgren remarked on the sociological similarities between the reactions of players within the virtual space and real-life responses to an epidemic.
... WoW’s Corrupted Blood ... response was heavily informed by the players’ considerable emotional investment and attachment to the development and survival of their characters; thus, they responded in WoW just as they would have done in the real world."
In 2005, the Corrupted Blood outbreak brought WoW cities to their knees. Researchers say there’s something to be learned in players’ respons
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+ Excerpts via Science Friday, 2021:
When the pandemic hit last year, people reacted in different ways from complete denial to volunteering to help others. Some people flouted the rules while others didn’t leave the house, and some even used it as an excuse to hurl racist insults and physically assault other people. These actions may have seemed unpredictable, but a group of epidemiologists was not surprised. They’d seen this all play out in another pandemic in 2005, one that happened online in a video game called World of Warcraft.
... in a virtual world, it spreads very easily and very quickly. ... [NPCs] all got infected with this thing, so they were walking around infecting everybody else asymptomatically, which is also a very weird thing, which is not supposed to happen.
... And also, the longer you play in the game, the more health and wealth you build up. So [it was similar to] when people get COVID and they say, oh, it wasn’t that bad.
... [But] some of the lower level players, the people that just didn’t have the time to invest that much into their characters and build up all that health, and those people were just getting wiped out like crazy. And you would really get sick. You would just– a fountain of blood would come out of you. It wasn’t like you just turn into a skeleton and disappeared.
... it was really fascinating to [epidemiologists, modelers] because they were reacting in ways that no mathematical model would have predicted.
... So, yeah, can you describe those reactions and just some of the amazing similarities to how that epidemic mirrored our real-life pandemic now?
... And I think one of the things that we’re seeing in parallel is that a lot of people don’t take infection seriously if it is not personally a risk for them. So you see a lot of people talking about coronavirus and they’re like, well, I’m young, I’m healthy. The mortality rate isn’t that high for me, so why should I care?
And I think in the Corrupted Blood case, there was a lot of that similar thing where this is bad if you’re high level but it’s not all that big a deal. But the server is being destroyed by this epidemic. The economy has been crippled. Everybody, can we cooperate for a little bit and get rid of this is I think the important parallel there.
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In 2005, a software bug triggered a pandemic in the video game World Of Warcraft. It ended up foreshadowing many aspects of today’s COVID-19
