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As It Happens6:291st images humpback whale sex is between 2 malesWhen biologist Stephanie Stack first saw the photographs of two humpback whales mating in the warm waters of Hawaii, she says her mind was "completely blown.""When I realized that it was two males, it was not what I was expecting," she told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. "I thought, oh my gosh, this is incredible."Stack, chief biologist at the Pacific Whale Foundation in Maui, says this is the first time humpback whale sex has been documented. She…

Quirks and Quarks17:24How documenting the disappearance of the great auk led to the discovery of extinctionWhen species cease to exist, we often say they went "the way of the dodo." But it might be more fitting to say they went "the way of the great auk" because it was the Icelandic bird's disappearance that led to the discovery that humans activities could make a species go extinct.In his book The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction, Gísli Pálsson retraces a 1858 trip two…

As It Happens6:13More than 100 possible new marine species discovered in a single deepsea expeditionDuring a research expedition off the coast of Chile, Erin Easton says her colleagues were constantly showing her some amazing new sea creature they'd just discovered."It would just be, like, 'Erin, Erin, Erin, look!'" Easton, a marine scientist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal."It is beyond my wildest dreams of what we could have expected. It felt like every time we went…

The first private spacecraft to softly land on the moon carries a Canadian instrument that will test the possibility of building an observatory at the Lunar south pole.The phone booth-sized lander by Intuitive Machines, named Odysseus, launched on Feb. 15 and touched down on Thursday near a small impact crater about 300 kilometers from the moon's south pole.It was a stressful event with navigation and communication issues, but 15 nail-biting minutes after it landed, mission control confirmed that they were receiving a…

As It Happens6:05Spider webs catch more than prey. They're also jam-packed with animal DNAJosh Newton probably isn't very popular with spiders. After all, the Australian scientist has a tendency to go around undoing their hard work. "I liken it to when Princess Fiona in Shrek makes some cotton candy for Shrek from spider webs, where she collects a stick and just wraps around the spider web for him. But I do it with a clean, sterile stick," Newton, a PhD candidate in life sciences at Curtin University, told As It Happens…

The Current16:20Huge ancient city discovered in Amazon"Wow" was all archaeologist Stéphen Rostain could say when LiDAR (light detection and ranging) laser technology revealed several ancient cities hidden deep in the Amazon rainforest."It's a gift for an archaeologist," he told The Current's Matt Galloway. Using the laser-scanning technology, researchers have uncovered a complex network of farmland, roads and neighbourhoods in Ecuador's Upano River Valley.The cities are believed to be between 2,000 and 3,000 years old,…

As It Happens6:35How scientists tracked the 1,000 km journey of a woolly mammoth using its tuskWith nothing more than a tusk, researchers were able to track the 1,000 kilometre journey of a woolly mammoth that lived 14,000 years ago. "The fact that we can actually regenerate her movement, her place along a landscape … all comes from a few remains at this site gives us insight into behaviour of an animal that once existed and lived with ancestors of the first people here in Canada," Hendrik Poinar, an evolutionary…

As It Happens6:44AI used to create comedy special of dead comedian George CarlinA new comedy special starts with the quote, "I'm sorry it took me so long to come out with new material, but I do have a pretty good excuse. I was dead."The voice sounds like comedian George Carlin, but that would be impossible, as Carlin died in 2008. The voice in the special is actually generated by an artificial intelligence (AI). "This is not my father. It's so ghoulish. It's so creepy," Carlin's daughter, Kelly Carlin-McCall, told As It…

As It Happens6:31NASA moon mission delays are nothing to worry about, says astronaut Chris HadfieldRetired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield says that, from where he's sitting, the Artemis moon missions are coming along just fine.NASA announced Tuesday it is delaying two upcoming missions — including the flight meant to carry the first Canadian astronaut around the moon — due to technical issues with its spacecraft that could pose a danger to the crew.Artemis II, the first crewed mission to the moon in half a century, was…

Quirks and Quarks18:53Unearthing a small-brained hominid species that challenges human exceptionalismIn 2013 renowned paleoanthropologist Lee Berger sent a couple of cave explorers into a cave system in South Africa to see what they could find. Little did he know they’d return with photos of fossilised hominid remains that would upend everything we thought we knew about what makes us special. He and his colleagues discovered an entirely new species of ancient human relatives, called Homo naledi, that lived a few hundred…