Animal

One of the most important things to be aware of in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is that bells are the driving force of your island. Bells are the backbone of the game's economy. Without bells, you'll face criticism from the Happy Home Academy, get hounded by Tom Nook to repay loans, and stare longingly at the amazing items that Nooks Cranny sometimes has to offer. Unfortunately, making bells initially seems tedious. But it doesn't have to be. New Horizons is already the most successful entry in the entire franchise.…

Over 120 million laboratory rats and mice are used worldwide each year. Many are used to study distressing conditions like cancer, arthritis and chronic pain, and nearly all spend their lives in small, empty box-like cages: a kind of permanent lockdown.  Our new analysis shows that this restrictive, artificial housing causes rats and mice to be chronically stressed, changing their biology. This raises worrying questions about their welfare – and about how well they represent typical human patients.We identified this…

A Maryland man who lived with a transplanted, genetically-modified pig's heart for two months may have died due to a virus that targets feral animals, The New York Times reported Thursday.  Dr. Bartley Griffith, a surgeon focused on transplants at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, performed the animal-to-human surgery on the patient, David Bennett Sr., and also reported the complication as the patient's health torpedoed.The procedure initially had been deemed a success. It took place in January 2022, after…

Ordinarily, when studying the behavior of animals, scientists have to watch many hours of video footage of the creatures going about their daily lives. That may soon no longer be necessary, however, thanks to a new critter-watching computer system.Currently being developed by a team from the University of Zurich and the ETH Zurich research institute, the technology utilizes an image-analysis algorithm which makes use of computer vision and machine learning.When utilized to analyze lengthy video recordings of animals in…

Animal Crossing is probably one of the best-known social sim video game franchises out there, with the original coming out in 2001 on the Nintendo 64. Since then, it’s gone through many iterations, but the most recent version on the Switch is the most popular, and it’s called New Horizons. If you’ve seen all the buzz around it but haven’t picked it up, now is an excellent time since Best Buy has it discounted down to $40 from the usual $60. If you’re not familiar with life and social simulation games in general,…

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game for completionists, giving you tons of things to collect that can take up a lot of your time. In particular, bug catching can eat up lots of your time, especially since so many of them only appear during certain times of the year. Each month, different bugs come and go, even though the overall list might not change much from April to May, for example. In this guide, we’ll go through the new Animal Crossing: New Horizons May 2022 bug list, including tips on when they appear,…

One of the nifty features of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is its ever-changing seasons that are a reflection of the real world. When it’s winter in real life, it’s winter in Animal Crossing, meaning there are always new things to enjoy as you play. As each month goes by, the selection of fish that appear throughout the game changes, so you’ll always want to be aware of the selection for any given month. Sometimes, certain fish are only available for a few months out of the year, while others appear more frequently.…

If you say “jump” I say “how high?” – and a new robot from UC Santa Barbara says “over 100 ft (30 m).” The research team says that’s higher than anything else has ever jumped, be it robot or animal, thanks to a unique design that multiplies its stored energy.The strange robot looks like a toy rocket sitting atop two intersecting bicycle wheels. The “tires” of those wheels are carbon-fiber compression bows, while the spokes are rubber bands extending from a spindle running up the center.To make the device jump, a motor…

Make way for Disney Dreamlight Valley, a new Disney-inspired life-sim that feels as if Disney adults got their hands on the Animal Crossing source code. In combination with yesterday’s formal announcement, I had the opportunity to participate in a hands-off demo to see a bit of the vision the developers at Gameloft have for the game. It’ll be difficult to resist the allure of talking about a brand new Disney game entirely in Disney song lyrics, but I’ll do my best to rein in that impulse. Hey! Clear the way in the old…