Ari Daniel
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We finally know how horses produce these two tones at the same time.
Horse whinnies are made up of two tones, one low and one high.
A team of researchers wanted to know more, since it's rare for mammals to produce two simultaneous frequencies like this.
So they videoed the vocal tract of whinnying stallions.
They CT scanned half a dozen horse larynxes.
And they audio recorded the whinnies of several horses with a rare disease that tends to paralyze one of the vocal folds.
Elodie Briefer is an animal behavioral scientist at the University of Copenhagen, and she and her colleagues conclude that a whinny is a unique blend of vocal fold vibration that generates the low pitch and a whistling above the larynx that produces the high pitch.
For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel.
Rana Celebi, a medical historian at Istanbul Metapol University, and her colleagues analyzed the residues of a set of ancient Roman bottles.
The use of especially animal fecal matter was once considered a potent treatment for infections and inflammation.
The team also found aromatic compounds, perhaps to mask the odor.
It's worth noting that some modern physicians are using feces for a hard-to-treat bacterial GI infection as a kind of reset of the gut microbiome.
Most didn't contain anything that interesting, but one of them… …ended up revealing something even more surprising and medically significant.
Specifically, we're going to talk about a vaccine to fight HIV.
That is correct.
Right here, Nate.