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When the battle is done the victors head home, their march broken only to gather the wounded, who are hauled back to base for life-saving treatment.
Not a heroic scene from the second world war, but the daily grind for African Matabele ants, which leave their nests in the hundreds to launch raids on feeding termites – and risk life and limb in the process.
Researchers who study the ants have shown before that the social insects pick up their injured and carry them home. Now, the ants have been spotted caring for their casualties: cleaning their wounds and perhaps even administering antibiotics to fend off infections.
It is an unprecedented glimpse of nursing in nature, a programmed behaviour that significantly reduces deaths in the ant colony. “What we show, for first time in the animal kingdom, is a proper treatment focused on a wound,” said Erik Frank, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Wurzburg. “We have anecdotal observations of wound care in other animals, but none that have been studied scientifically.”
Matabele ants, or Megaponera analis, reach 2cm in length(0.8in) when fully grown, and feed on termites for breakfast, lunch and dinner. To find their next meal, the ants bypass the well-defended termite mounds and instead send scouts into the savannah to spot termites feeding on dead plant matter under the ground.
When a scout returns with a termite sighting, the ants prepare a raiding party of up to 600 individuals which head straight for the location. On arrival, the larger ants break through the overlying mud, while the smaller ants swarm in to kill their prey and carry the carcasses home.
The raids are rarely without casualties on the ant side. About a third of the smaller ants that take part in termite hunts lose a leg at some point, courtesy of the termites fighting back and nipping off their limbs. Many ants lose only a single leg, but others are maimed so badly they can no longer stand.
In three years of field experiments in the humid savannah woodland at Comoé National Park, Ivory Coast, the scientists watched more than 200 ant raids on termite feeding grounds. They noticed that ants returning from a hunt performed a swift triage on any casualties they encountered. If the injured had only one or two legs missing, they were picked up and carried home. But if their injuries were much worse, the ants were left behind.
To study the insects more closely, the researchers moved six colonies into artificial nests at the national park’s research lab. There, scientists captured remarkable footage of ants caring for others with missing limbs. “We don’t know if they are just removing dirt from the wound or applying an antimicrobial substance to fight off an infection. But we do know that if they don’t receive the treatment, 80% die within 24 hours. If you allow the treatment for an hour, the ants survive,” said Frank.
Injured ants call for help by sending out distress signals in the form of pheromones. When help arrives, the injured ants tuck in their legs so they can more easily be carried back to the nest. Frank showed that coating dead ants in pheromone summoned helpers, but the ants soon moved on when their fallen comrades failed to tuck into the right position.
The scientists believe a simple rule governs which damaged ants are saved in nature. After battle, the first priority of an injured ant is to stand up into a resting position. From here, it can release pheromones to call for help. “Heavily injured ants cannot get up again, they keep thrashing around, ignoring everything around them,” said Frank. As a result, the most severely injured either fail to call, or do not assume the right position to be carried home, and are left for dead. “It’s very simple, but it enables the ants to triage the injured. If you can stand up you are still useful,” said Frank, whose research appears in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“One of the fascinating things about ant society is you can get very complex and sophisticated behaviour without any need of cognition or knowledge of what you are doing,” Frank said.
The internet is a weird place. Part of this is due to how things linger rather than disappear, as they tended to do with more “traditional” media. Nowadays, people’s jobs can (rightly or wrongly) be endangered for tweets they wroteyears ago. The adage about “today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip papers” seems no longer to apply.
This is particularly true when a headline or story from years ago can be found by a group or community on a social network that missed it previously, so they share it widely and it ends up in your feeds long after it’s been “forgotten”. It can be a bit confusing for those of us who grew up solely with televised news. It’s like watching the weekend football roundup when it’s suddenly interrupted by a report that the Berlin Wall has come down.
Case in point: yesterday I saw several examples of a story from 2015 about how scientists have discovered that cheese triggers the same part of the brain as hard drugs. A lot of people seem to be sharing this again (even me, thinking it was new). You’d assume someone well-versed in neuroscience like myself would easily recognise an old story like this. So why didn’t I?
Stories like this are hardly uncommon. You can barely go a month without some study or report describing something supposedly innocuous as having the same effect on the brain, or activating the same brain regions, as drugs of abuse, be it sugar, pornography, religion, sex, Facebook, music, or, apparently, cheese. Give it a week, something else will be cited as stimulating our brains just like the most powerful narcotics. Maybe walking on crunchy leaves or taking your bra off after a long day will be described as the equivalent of inhaling a bin-bag full of cocaine?
It’s really tricky to smuggle this through customs, particularly with the sniffer dogs.Photograph: Steven Mark Needham/Getty Images
There are some worrying implications of this common, persistent approach of comparing anything pleasurable to hard drugs. Firstly, drugs are “bad”. Whether you agree with this, that’s the conclusion we’re constantly presented with. They’re illegal, damaging to health, ruin lives, cause crimes, are a constant blight on society, and so on. Consider the infamous “this is your brain on drugs” campaign which, for all its flaws, was widely successful. The notion that “drugs damage your brain” was widespread and enduring. In many ways, it’s true.
It wouldn’t take any great leaps of logic, then, to argue that anything that has the same effects as drugs of abuse is also bad. So, if you’re worried about what too much sugar/cheese/porn/Facebook is doing to you or those you care about, evidence suggesting they’re similar/tantamount to drug use is going to really vindicate your concerns, and possibly justify “clamping down” on such things.
On the other hand, maybe these accusations of scaremongering are themselves just scaremongering? Maybe those who raise concerns about the nature of how something affects us are doing so for 100% benign and well-intended reasons? However, even if that is the case, there’s no getting around the fact that such “just like drugs” comparisons display a fundamental misunderstanding of how the brain works, and this isn’t helpful in the long run.
Anything that causes us to experience pleasure, in any context, invariably involves activity in the brain’s mesolimbic reward pathway. It’s a deeply embedded area of the brain, made up of many links between the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area. It’s very complex, but basically these regions are responsible for reviewing what we’re experiencing and deciding whether it warrants the sensation of pleasure, and supplying this pleasure, or “reward”, if the answer is yes. The neurological processes that govern this area use dopamine, hence dopamine’s frequent labelling as the “pleasure chemical” or similar.
However, so fundamental is the reward pathway and so many and varied are the things we can experience that there are countless links and connections to it, which can be affected by sooooo many things. Imagine if the digital records of all the world’s money were stored on one server (ignore how incredibly unwise such an arrangement would be and just go with it). Think of how many things would be connected to this server, and how many ways it would be activated, and how often. The brain’s reward system is a bit like that, but more complicated.
The opioid system, for instance, which is (usually) governed by endorphins and related chemicals, has potent effects on the activity in the reward pathway. Alcohol apparently induces its pleasing effects by interactions with the endorphin-dependant processes. The “addictive” effects of cheese are apparently due to it containing large amounts of the protein casein, present in milk but at much higher levels in cheese because of how it’s made. Casein activates the opioid system, inducing pleasure. It makes evolutionary sense when you think about it: the whole point of the reward system is basically to encourage positive, helpful behaviours and deter unhelpful ones. And when we’re newborns, we survive solely on a diet of milk. If you didn’t like drinking milk, that’d be bad, but if milk gets you “high” in some way, that’s less likely to happen.
Milk is essentially creamy heroin. Milkmen are worse than dealers. Cows are basically kingpins of their own internal-drug cartels.Photograph: Paul Slater/Apex
The problem is, though, why do these fundamental, crucial, ancient neurological processes get labelled as the bits that drugs work on, as if that’s what they’re for? Drugs are, in many ways, the interlopers here, not the foodstuffs, sensory experiences or behaviours that activate the reward system via the many existing processes that have evolved to produce just such a reaction. By contrast, drugs of abuse stimulate the reward pathways directly, or “artificially”; they’re chemicals we introduce to our systems to do just that, so they throw off the checks and balances we’ve evolved over the aeons and cause unpleasant results such as powerful addictions. If someone said withdrawing money from your account is just like robbing a bank, you’d probably take issue with this, but in neurological terms the “just like using drugs” claims aren’t too far off this logic.
Of course, this too is an oversimplification. The stimuli, foods and behaviours we’re able to indulge in these days are not like anything that’s come before due to our technical advancement, so it’s foolish to say they’re “safe” by default. As ever, the truth is far more complex and nuanced.
This doesn’t change the fact that labelling the reward-inducing parts of the brain as the “drug” bits is both unfair, unhelpful and, in many ways, meaningless. You can write a thank you card and a ransom note with the same pen, but that doesn’t mean your card will make the recipient call the police. The hand you use to wield an axe can also be used to stroke a baby’s face; the baby will remain uninjured.
And hey, Valentine’s Day is coming up, but have you noticed how the word “love” is 50% made up of the vowels “o” and “e”? These are clearly the most romantic vowels, so be sure to use those the most when chatting someone up. Technically, this would make the most effective pick-up line: “HEllO Old crOnE, OnE wOuld lOvE tO dO sEx On yOu, yEs?”
Of course, specific letters are used in many different ways and contexts, to argue that some are more romantic because of one example of their use is a ridiculous conclusion. But in many cases, so is arguing that because something uses the same brain regions that drugs work on, that they are just like drugs themselves.
And I don’t even like cheese that much.
Dean Burnett takes an in-depth look at how things make us feel pleasure in his upcoming book The Happy Brain, released 3 May. His debut book The Idiot Brain is available now, in the UK, US and elsewhere.
Are you tired of the constant need to tap on a glass keyboard just to keep up with your friends? Do you wish a robot could free you of your constant communication obligations via WhatsApp, Facebook or text messages? Google is working on an AI-based auto-reply system to do just that.
Google’s experimental product lab called Area 120 is currently testing a new system simply called Reply that will work with Google’s Hangouts and Allo, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Android Messages, Skype, Twitter direct messages and Slack.
Reply aims to take the smart AI-based suggested replies that are available in Google’s Gmail and Allo apps to the next level. In an email test sent to volunteers, acquired by Android Police, Area 120 says: “You probably get a lot of chat messages. And you want to be there for people, but also for people in the real world. What if replying were literally one tap away?”
The system can apparently work out what people are saying to you and suggest one-tap answers, but Google says it will go further, taking your location, your calendar and other bits of information into account. One example was using your location to send and instant response to “when can you be home?” using your preferred method of transport and the time it’ll take to wherever your home is.
Reply will also be able to tell everyone you’re on holiday, automatically checking your calendar and replying as appropriate. Plus it will have an advanced do not disturb mode that will silence your phone and tell people you can’t chat right now, but also scan incoming messages for important stuff so that “Reply can make sure to get your attention even when your phone is silent”. There will be no escape.
There’s certainly something to be said for freeing people from the constant strain of digital keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, but at some stage it’ll just be robots talking to robots, and by then should we even bother?
An Amazon Echo owner has tried to get a television advertising campaign for the smart speaker banned after the Alexa virtual assistant attempted to order cat food when it heard its name on an ad.
An Amazon TV ad for the Echo Dot, which can perform functions such as make shopping lists and play music with voice commands, features people using the device in different situations. In one a man’s voice says: “Alexa, reorder Purina cat food.” Alexa responds: “I’ve found Purina cat food. Would you like to buy it?”
A viewer lodged a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), saying that the ad was irresponsible because it caused their Echo Dot to order cat food. Amazon confirmed that the complainant’s device did place an order for the cat food but it had been cancelled by the customer.
Amazon said it was aware of the potential issue and “marks” ads so that Alexa is not triggered. In addition, customers are required to confirm a purchase, which is automatically cancelled if they do not do so, the company said.
Earlier this month Amazon used its technology to stop devices from interacting with its Super Bowl TV spot, which featured celebrities including Gordon Ramsay, Rebel Wilson and Anthony Hopkins taking over from Alexa when she “loses her voice”.
YouTube’s chief executive, Susan Wojcicki, joined a lineup of tech and media executives lambasting Facebook at a conference in California.
Wojcicki, whose own company is facing intense criticism over its handling of shock-jock vlogger Logan Paul, suggested Facebook should head further down the path it started on when it announced plans in January to de-prioritise news content.
“They should get back to baby pictures and sharing,” Wojcicki told Code Media in Los Angeles.
But the CEO said Facebook’s increasing attempts to establish itself as a video platform do not keep her awake at night: “[Y]ou always have to take your competitors seriously, but you don’t win by looking backwards and looking around.”
She wasn’t the only one using the stage to attack Facebook, which has become one of the industry’s favourite punching bags in recent months. BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti joined in, arguing that Facebook should extend its revenue sharing practices to the news feed itself. “Most of Facebook’s revenue is in News Feed, and that’s where they’ve not shared revenue,” Peretti told the conference.
The social network does split advertising revenue from instant articles, or videos posted to the site, but Peretti argued that that isn’t enough. “These are places with a lot less distribution so there’s a lot less revenue.”
But Peretti’s broad advice for Facebook was the opposite of Wojcicki’s: the social network, he said, needs legitimate news content, because otherwise it will be overrun with bad actors. “Facebook will have no chance to control what’s in News Feed if the only lever they have is traffic, because the only way to say ‘we want influence over this content’ is if you have a lever of content and a lever of revenue.”
Facebook defended itself at the conference, with the company’s head of News Feed, Adam Mosseri, and news parternships manager Campbell Brown, arguing that it was trying to help publishers in other ways. Brown argued that the perception that Facebook is a blank slate for all types of content is wrong, noting that the site is fine with “leaning into quality news” and “broadly trusted publishers” at the expense of clickbait.
Mosseri said that Facebook’s “integrity effort” was based on the company’s “values” and “standards”, but warned that it wasn’t entirely certain how it was going to do that.
A stated goal to increase users’ “time well spent” was stymied, he said, by the lack of clarity around what that means. “We’re trying to figure out how to best measure and understand that [and] trying to understand … what people actually find meaningful.”
A Seoul institution, the speciality here is gomtang, a highly nutritious beef bone soup (and a great hangover cure) – which has been made the same way since the restaurant opened in the 1930s. In fact gomtang is the only thing on the menu, although there are several variations. The beef stock is boiled for a long time with radish, so it is full of flavour – and is best enjoyed with a side dish of radish kimchi. Hadongkwan has many loyal regulars and you often see three generations of family dining together there.
I try to come to this no-frills restaurant whenever I’m in Seoul. Budae-jjigae (aka army base stew) was invented after the Korean war when food was scarce and Koreans had to scrounge or smuggle the ingredients – mainly meat, sausage, spam, and baked beans – from US army bases, mixing them with local flavours gochujang (chilli paste) and kimchi to create a strange hybrid stew. A small portion is enough for two, and the larger size can be shared between four (£13-£23).
Although it began as a solution to post-war food shortages, budae-jjigae is now a nostalgic favourite, viewed as the ultimate comfort food by the older generation and fashionably retro by the young. Increasingly, tourists are also seeking out this simple eatery which has been serving its version of the stew, using the same recipe, for 45 years, and also features a dish called Johnson tang, which is budae-jjigae without the kimchi.
It is in the Itaewon district, which draws a lot of tourists thanks to its concentration of hip bars and restaurants.
• 18 Itaewon-Ro 49-Gil, Hannam-Dong, Yongsan-Gu, no website
Tosokchon Samgyetang
This prestigious restaurant opened over three decades ago – and its reputation is reflected in the long queues, especially during summer. Samgyetang (£15-£20) is the most popular dish in summer – a whole chicken stuffed with fresh ingredients including ginseng; it is renowned for being one of the healthiest dishes in Korea. To add additional flavour have it with insam-ju (ginseng liquor £7). Tosokchon is in Bukchon Hanok Village, where traditional hanok houses have been preserved and protected.
The fried chicken and draft beer at this independent bar in trendy Apgujeong is not to be missed. As well as the chicken, I recommend the deep fried crispy pepper (£15), filled with seasoned mince and then deep-fried in batter. Hanchu is next to the shopping mecca of Garosu-Gil, or “tree-lined street”, so makes a great post-shopping pitstop (it doesn’t open until 5pm).
• 68 Nonhyeon-Ro 175-Gil, Sinsa-Dong, Gangnam-Gu, no website
Mingles
Mingles is a modern, fine dining restaurant in the buzzy Cheongdam-dong district which has been awarded one Michelin star. It is a personal favourite of mine, as they serve modern Korean dishes which are true to traditional Korean tastes. The chef, Mingoo Kang, is a growing celebrity in Korean cuisine (previous stints at Nobu) so book as far in advance as you can – maybe even before you book your flights to Seoul. Lunch is £45-£50, dinner £100 (both excluding drinks and service), but well worth it if you want one splash out meal.
I head to this place every time I’m in town for Korea’s famous street food – ddukbokki (rice cakes in spicy sauce). I also enjoy the squid, chili, prawn tempura and kingsize wangkimbab (Korean rice roll), odeng (fishcake) and soondae (Korean black pudding). It’s open from 6pm to 6am.
• Nonhyeon-dong, Gangnam-gu
Saebyukjib
I love coming here after a few drinks late at night. It’s open 24/7 and known for its Korean table barbecue but I always have the ddaro gukbab (soup made with beef stock, Chinese leafs and radishes) or yookwhei bibimbab, which is lightly seasoned raw beef on top of “mixed rice” (under £10) with a few more drinks. Many young people head here on Friday and Saturday night after clubbing, so you might spot few K-pop celebrities, too.
• 6 Dosan-daero 101-gil, Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, on Facebook
Omiga
At this restaurant, which is just around the corner from my home, I order the dolsot jeongsik – rice cooked in a hot stone pot and laid out with soup and about 25 different types of side dish. This type of dining is caled hansang, which translates as “table full of food”. At the end of the meal, pour the excess water into the stone pot and drink it. It’s £20 but worth every penny.
• 585-13 Sinsa-dong, Gangnam-gu
Wooraeoak
Wooraeoak is known for its incredible naengmyeon (cold buckwheat noodles), another Korean dish that’s very popular in summer, and usually accompanies a bulgogi (Korean barbecued beef). Wooraeoak is the longest running is one of the oldest Pyeongyang-style naengmyeon houses in Seoul, somewhere you can find an authentic taste of North Korea.
Food Court at Hyundai Department Store (COEX branch)
The COEX is a large-scale business town of assembly halls, exhibition halls, the Korean City air terminal, Intercontinental Hotel and Hyundai Department Store. The food court at the department store is a sleek, city-centre spot where you’ll find all the latest Korean food trends. I would recommend the ddukbokki spicy rice cake (under £7).
If you need a push to visit Vienna, here it is: 2018 marks a century since the end of the city’s modernist era. To celebrate the creative output of Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg and many others, Austria’s capital will host a huge number of exhibitions this year.
Fin-de-siècle Viennese culture was the envy of the liberal world. This year is the 100th anniversary of the deaths of four of the movement’s leading lights: painters Klimt and Schiele, architect Otto Wagner and graphic artist Koloman Moser – though there were many others, too. Between 1890 and 1914 Austria was a gorgeous melting pot of ideas. The city was buoyed by the wealth of the Habsburg Empire – those guys loved a baroque palace, there’s one on pretty much every street corner. Alongside them lived Jewish immigrants who had new money and full civil rights. This equality meant that they could build avant-garde houses, commission interesting artists and run salons where progressive politicians and establishment figures met and mingled with psychoanalysts, writers and painters.
Prost: the American Bar, designed by Adolf Loos in 1908.Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
This unique period deserves to be celebrated, so go and see the renovation of the art nouveau Secession Building – home to the modernist artists and the first European exhibition space dedicated to the movement. Head for the “Klimt Bridge” at the Kunst Historisches Museum – a viewing platform first made for the 150th anniversary of Klimt’s birth which gives the perfect view of the artist’s 13-painting cycle decorating the museum’s arches and pillars. At the Leopold Museum there’ll be a great Egon Schiele show which includes his poems and writing alongside the paintings for the first time. Mahler, Schoenberg, Wagner and many others will all be given their creative due. The Museumsquartier – a clever development of baroque and modern buildings situated in the former Habsburg court stables – houses nine of the city’s major museums, so you’d have to be extremely lazy not to catch some of these shows during a visit.
But the city itself is the greatest exhibit. Walk the inner districts and you’ll see the stark art nouveau architecture of the Austrian Post Savings Bank, the delicate flowers decorating the tiled Majolica House on Linke Wienzeile, and the white and gilded domes and facades of the underground stations at Karlsplatz and Kettenbrückengasse, all monuments to Wagner’s skill. (If you visit the Majolica House, stroll through the Naschmarkt, a food and flea market that’s been there since the 16th century. Don’t leave without eating some of the local cheese or flicking through the vinyl.)
The Vienna Workshop was a commune of applied artists established in 1903 who created modernist furniture, jewellery and ceramics – and if you head to the city’s shops, you can still find a rare mix of traditional craftwork and modernist treasures on sale. Lobmeyr is famous for chandeliers, but drinking glasses by Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos are bestsellers in their shop on Kärntner strasse. Similarly, Wiener Silber Manufactur has Koloman Moser boxes alongside contemporary silverware in their boutique and designer Vally Wieselthier’s china is available at Augarten’s chinaware store.
Finish your window shopping with a cocktail at the American Bar. The mirrored and tiled interior is the work of modernist architect Adolf Loos and it’s been the drinking hole of choice for everyone from Jean Cocteau to Quentin Tarantino. You can still smoke inside here and many other bars in Austria, though hurry – a ban is being mooted by Parliament.
To go the full modernist, stay at the boutique Hotel Topazz. Murals in its rooms pay homage to the Vienna Workshop artists and the unusual oval windows across its facade play on a Koloman Moser design. It’s also cosy and the views from the rooftop bar it shares with sister establishment Hotel Lamée, are something else.
Window on to Vienna: Hotel Topazz.Photograph: Anna Blau
Oh, and if you’re enjoying the idea of art in everyday city life, then do head to Am Hof Square in the old town. Olafur Eliasson may not be part of the modernist movement, but his light installation Yellow Fog drifts across the front of the Verbund-Gebäudes building here each night. It reminds me of director John Carpenter as much as anything else but in a city of statues and monuments, it’s a great change of pace.
Luckily those modernists were a sensible bunch. They may have rethought art as we know it, but they didn’t mess with tradition when it came to local food. If you’re into faddy clean eating, then you need to rethink your life on many levels, but for now, let’s focus on the fact that you will find eating in Vienna stressful. This is a meaty, potatoey, buttery, offaly, cakey kind of city, and all the better for it. If you genuinely care about the provenance and preparation of your food, you’ll be happy here. Most of the wine and beer is extremely local – produced within the city walls – the meat is organic and this is the only city I’ve ever been to where the waiter boasts about the purity of the tap water as they put it on the table. Fresh from the mountains, apparently.
Exhibitionist: the recently renovated Secession Building.Photograph: Christian Stemper/Peter Rigaud
There are many amazing traditional restaurants. I can’t recommend Lugeck, with its swimming-pool tiles and beer-glass chandeliers, highly enough. The sausage, strudels and salads here are outstanding. Petz im Gusshaus, where the menu is created from what the chef finds in the local market each day, is great for offal. No, really. Especially the offal pasta. Keep your fingers crossed that there are some lungs in the market when you visit. Beuschel – calf lungs – is a traditional Viennese dish.
But there are also smart new takes on the old school in this vibrant, forward thinking city. The name Meissl & Schadn is a Viennese restaurant legend, but their new premises, just opened at the Hotel Grand Ferdinand, feeds modern versions of the boiled beef and schnitzels of yore to sophisticated diners in polonecks who look like graphic designers (and probably are: this city is still a hotbed of creativity). Or try Labstelle, which is cool but cosy and unpretentious, and has a great cocktail menu to sample alongside their Austrian cuisine.
Vienna has won the award of most liveable city an amazing eight times now. And you really should come and see why. This year’s centenary offers a unique insight into its history but there’s a thoroughly modern city to be discovered, too.
Way to go
Flights with My Austrian airline from £93 (austrian.com). Rooms at Hotel Topazz (hoteltopazz.com) from £139. For more information about events to mark the centenary of Viennese modernism, go to wien.info
It’s early evening and the gates to the wildlife park have been closed to the public. All is quiet, except for birdsong, the gentle rustling of wind in the trees and an occasional excited shriek from a gelada monkey. We (my six-year-old daughter Nell and husband Huw) are gathered around a fire pit along with four other families who are trying out Camp Baboon, a new night-time wildlife and bushcraft experience at the Wild Place Project, a satellite venture run by Bristol Zoo.
The 125-acre estate – which once belonged to aviation pioneer George White – opened four years ago and is home to cheetah, zebra and okapi, as well as a number of rare and critically endangered species such as eland, lemurs and, most recently three giraffes. Camp Baboon, which launched last August, means visitors can now stay overnight in one of 10 wooden cabins and explore after dusk.
“In the unlikely event that an animal escapes, we ask that you return to your cabins immediately and wait there until we give the all-clear,” says Matt, our guide. The kids grin, eyes shining at the thought that there might be a stray creature lurking behind us.
Matt and his colleague Tom lead us into Blackhorse Woods, an ancient woodland on the estate, alive with native bird and wildlife species. Beneath the dappled shade of a parachute shelter we learn some basic bushcraft skills, which are essential, we’re told, when doing fieldwork in the wilds of Madagascar, Cameroon or the Congo – places the conservation team regularly visits.
The writer’s daughter at the centre, which is home to three endangered giraffes.Photograph: Kari Herbert
We start with firelighting: first using cotton wool and firesteel, then solar power with a stainless-steel parabolic mirror and finally a bow drill, a simple implement that uses friction to generate heat. The primeval thrill of nurturing a tiny spark into a blazing fire is undeniable. With charcoal on our fingers and smoke in our hair we tour the park.
The emphasis here is on conservation. Since opening to the public in 1836, Bristol Zoo claims it has helped save over 175 species from extinction through breeding programmes and established over 30 field conservation and research projects worldwide. The Wild Place offers a glimpse into this work.
“Most people don’t realise it but there are fewer giraffes than there are African elephants,” says Dr Bryan Carroll, chief executive of the Bristol Zoological Society. “This is why the new giraffe house and enclosure at the Wild Place is so important. It allows us to become part of an international breeding programme while working on the ground in Cameroon to protect their last giraffes.”
There are 10 en suite wooden cabins on the site
We wander through delightfully ramshackle areas, such as a Cameroonian-inspired marketplace and a replica Madagascan village and school, giving visitors an idea of the places the conservators work in.
The project supports villages in places such as Cameroon, Tom tells us. “We provide them with saplings and seeds, and kits to make beehives so they can make and sell their own produce. In that way they are less likely to poach animals for a living.” We visit a replica of an eco-guard’s hut, complete with some grisly exhibits, including confiscated tools and traps. “Poachers are often people who live in poverty and don’t see any other choice,” he says. “Our aim is to provide resources and education so they do have other options, as well as donating equipment such as quadropter drones to anti-poaching patrols.”
A group learns bushcraft and hears about the centre’s work in Cameroon
Night falls. The sounds in the park change. With such a small group, the kids have already become a little gang, sharing torches, holding hands, as we head back into the trees. Long ago, these woods would have been home to auroch, a kind of giant cow; lynx, brown bear and wild boar. There were wolverines too, says Matt – “kind of like badass badgers”.
The darkness is deep and the sounds unfamiliar. A large shape moves silently beside us. There’s a gasp and a giggle from my daughter and her new friend as eyes glint back at them from between the trees. We have reached Wolf Wood.
We switch off our torch. There’s a snap as a twig breaks; a crunch of dry leaves underfoot. The wolves appear to be within touching distance. There’s magic in this moment, a sense that we truly are in the wilds, though thankfully there’s a fence between us. Reluctantly we move on, it’s getting late, there’s a campfire to light and marshmallows to be toasted.
Evenings end with a campfire, stories and toasted marshmallows
Lanterns are lit through the meadow as we return to camp, stories shared around the fire, then it’s time for bed (the cabins prove comfy – each comes with a double bed, bunk beds, en-suite shower and a small deck overlooking the campfire).
At dawn we’re woken by the cries and barks of the gelada monkeys. From the highlands of Ethiopia, these extraordinary-looking endangered primates are also known as “bleeding heart baboons” for the red patches on their chests. They sit on their haunches and study us, the early morning sun lighting their golden manes. We do the rounds with the keepers as they check on the animals, making sure they are happy and well fed. Then, when it’s our turn to eat, there’s a final surprise in store, we’re having breakfast with the giraffes.
On the balcony of the giraffe house we tuck into croissants, fruit and hot drinks, while our long-necked neighbours nibble on fresh leaves and acacia tree pellets alongside. One day as a family we may be lucky to see them in the wild, but for now, as an insight into wildlife conservation, this is a fun place to begin.
Way to Go
The Camp Baboon experience was provided by the Wild Place Project. Prices start from £87pp – this includes an overnight stay in a comfortable cabin (sleeps 4), bush skills classes, morning and twilight tours of the park, dinner and breakfast, as well as free entry to Wild Place Project for two days and Bristol Zoo Gardens on the day of your departure.
Six more UK wildlife sanctuaries
Native wildlife, Surrey The British Wildlife Centre in Newchapel is home to more than 40 native species, many of which are endangered, including pine martens, wildcats and water voles. • Open weekends, bank holidays and school holidays, £11.50 adults/£8.50 children, britishwildlifecentre.co.uk
Wolves, Berkshire
One of the Trust’s 10 wolves.Photograph: Alamy
Ten wolves live at the UK Wolf Conservation Trust near Reading. Visitors can take them for a walk or learn lupine language on a howl night. • Open Wednesdays, £8 adults/ £5 children, £10 for howl nights, £75 for walks, ukwct.org.uk
Seals, Cornwall The Cornish Seal Sanctuary in Gweek rescues up to 60 sick, injured or stranded seal pups every season, caring for them until they can be returned to the wild. The best time to see the pups between September and March. • Open daily, from £10.85 adults/£8.75 children, sealsanctuary.co.uk
Hedgehogs, Bucks
A baby hedgehog at Tiggywinkles.Photograph: Alamy
Tiggywinkles near Aylesbury is a wildlife hospital with a specialist hedgehog unit. Visitors can peek at the patients and meet the permanent residents, including a blind hedgehog and a three-legged deer. • Open Monday to Friday, £5.10 adults/£3.20 children, sttiggywinkles.org.uk
Horses, Norfolk Redwings cares for more than 1,500 horses, ponies, donkeys and mules at five rescue centres. Caldecott in Norfolk is the biggest; other centres are in Essex, Warwickshire and Angus. • Open Friday to Monday, free, redwings.org.uk
Primates, Powys Wales Ape and Monkey Sanctuary near Abercraf, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons, rescues primates from zoos and laboratories, including chimpanzees, baboons, capuchins and marmosets. • Open daily, £8.50 adults/£5 children, ape-monkey-rescue.org.uk
After much anticipation, and speculation that Apple has missed the boat and handed victory to Amazon’s champion Echo, the HomePod smart speaker is finally here. But is it actually any good? And why exactly does it cost four times as much as an Echo?
The HomePod is a voice-controlled speaker that listens out for its wakeword “Hey, Siri” and then starts streaming what you say to Apple to interpret your commands and play whatever it is you wish. The fabric-covered cylinder stands an iPhone X-and-a-bit tall (172mm) with a diameter of an iPhone X (142mm), weighing 2.5kg (14.4 times the iPhone X).
It’s quite a lot bigger than Amazon’s Echo or Google’s Home, and bigger still than the Sonos One, but it’s also the least assuming. Available in black or white, it has a small gloss touch-sensitive disc on top with light-up plus and minus buttons and a hidden centre display that flashes colour when Siri is listening for you. The rest of the visible surface is wrapped in mesh fabric, with a hidden rubber foot on the bottom.
It looks at home on a book shelf, the top of an AV unit or on the kitchen table, but also doesn’t stand out, until you start playing music.
Hey, Siri
Siri’s spot on the top of the HomePod shows it’s listening, but it is still some way behind Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
The HomePod may technically be a smart speaker, but really it’s all about the music and less about the utility of a voice assistant. That’s partly because Apple’s Siri is some way behind Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant, both in form and function.
Siri is the only smart assistant that offers a choice of male or female voices, which is a nice change, but isodd mix of well prepared set pieces of personality intermixed with clumsy text-to-speech smashes the illusion of being anything other than a dumb robot. But you don’t have to take my word for it – Siri is the same on the HomePod as it is on an iPhone.
On the HomePod Siri can set one timer, but not multiple or named timers like Alexa and the rest can; it can control some smart home devices as long as they’re hooked up to Apple’s HomeKit system; it can answer some relatively limited questions and do the usual unit conversions and calculations. You can also set it up so that Siri can send text messages, create notes and reminders, using the iPhone and account of the person who set up the HomePod when it is on the same wifi network. But that means anyone with access to the speaker could send messages pretending to be its owner – there is no multi-user support at all.
Siri is also meant to be able to send messages through WhatsApp and a handful of others, but I couldn’t get it to work – Siri kept saying “WhatsApp couldn’t find” my contact, despite me holding a text conversation using WhatsApp on my phone just fine. Finally, the HomePod can also acts as a giant speakerphone for calls made by an iPhone, which works surprisingly well, but the speaker made a very loud buzzing noise for five seconds at the end of a call and I couldn’t figure out why.
Siri can hear you on the HomePod as well as Alexa on an Echo, even over music and noise such as a cooker hood going full blast. Sometimes it heard me even when I thought it didn’t, because the screen on top is difficult to see from distance, prompting Siri to follow up with an “uh huh?” when I remained silent. I often found that Siri was too loud, though, booming out of the HomePod when quietly listening to music. Its volume is linked to that of the music, but at 20% volume or less Siri was too loud and there was no way to make it quieter.
Playing Christina Milian instead of Arctic Monkeys
The HomePod’s rubber foot comes with a familiar logo.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
Siri’s natural language interpretation still lags behind the competition too, particularly Google’s Assistant. Generally Siri is right about 70% of the time, with some amusing accidents when requesting music, such as asking for AM by Arctic Monkeys and getting AM to PM by Christina Milian or, more bafflingly, getting Eye of the Tiger when asking for “Fauna – Original Mix”.
I asked for “Glaciers by Blue Sky Black Death” and got Glass by Incubus, while it took three goes to get Siri to play Euphoric Tape II by the same band, forcing me to listen to snippets of random songs in the process. Once it finally managed to play Euphoric Tape II, it then refused to play either Euphoric Tape I or Euphoric Tape III, always defaulting to the second of the group’s three albums.
Siri normally got there in the end after multiple attempts, but it was certainly frustrating. You can control the HomePod with the Music app on an iOS device, which I resorted to for all but generic requests for genre, playlists or artists, but confusingly there are two ways to send music to the HomePod in the same app.
The HomePod doesn’t support Bluetooth streaming and doesn’t have an analogue line-in, but does support Apple’s AirPlay. You can send audio from apps, including Spotify, that implement AirPlay but you lose any advanced audio control through Siri, limited to volume, pause and skip. Your iPhone or iPad needs to remain on and connected to the same wifi network too, as it is the conduit through which the audio flows.
To send music to the HomePod from the Music app on the iPhone you have to select AirPlay, tap on the bottom bubble, then slide the now playing pane down so you can select the music you want.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
With the Music app, however, you can also instruct the HomePod to go directly to iTunes or Apple Music to play tracks, which works more like Spotify Connect – your phone doesn’t have to be on all the time for it to continue playing. The trouble is the way you do that isn’t immediately obvious. You have to open the now playing dialogue, tap on the AirPlay button and then wait for the HomePod to show up as a separate bubble below the now playing bubble, which also lists the HomePod as an output but via AirPlay.
The biggest drawback of the HomePod is how locked down it is to Apple’s devices and services. You have to have an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad running iOS 11.2.5 to set it up. It will only play music natively from Apple Music, iTunes purchases or iTunes Match, meaning no radio other than Beats One, and it can only be controlled from an iOS 11.2.5 device. You can AirPlay audio to it from an Apple TV, a Mac or iTunes on a Windows PC, or from apps on an iOS device, including from Spotify or similar, but that’s no good to anyone with an Android device – an issue for any household that isn’t homogeneously Apple.
Expansive, beautiful sound
The combination of seven tweeters and a woofer makes it a genuinely fantastic listening experience.Photograph: Noah Berger/AFP/Getty Images
While Siri may not be the quite up to scratch compared to its rivals, and getting non-Apple Music to it is more difficult, one thing Apple has nailed is the HomePod’s sound. The HomePod sounds genuinely fantastic for anything from hip-hop and EDM to rock and classical. There’s no adjusting the music to your taste – it’s Apple’s way or the high way – but the sound is deep without being overburdened with muddy bass, light without being shrill and with great separation, meaning you can pick out individual voices, instruments or notes easily. Nothing gets lost, while everything remains rich, full of energy and ambience. It even sounds brilliantly full range at volumes as low as 5%, which is something most competitors fail to do.
Apple says its combination of seven tweeters and a woofer, all controlled by its A8 processor, continually adapt to the position of the speaker in the room and the music it is playing. The result is a surprisingly wide and enveloping soundscape from a mono speaker that puts the competition to shame. It sounds just as good against a wall as it does in the middle of the kitchen table. But it’s worth noting that because the sound is less direct, it carries further in directions you might not want it to, which might annoy the neighbours.
Observations
The volume buttons on the top change the level by 5%, but voice requests for volume changes alter the level in 10% increments – you can specify a certain percentage, with decimals rounded up, so “volume level 12.5%” became 13%
HomePod works just fine with iTunes Match, including music you have uploaded that isn’t in the Apple Music library, meaning you don’t need an Apple Music subscription if all you want to listen to is your own music library
Setup is simple – place the unlocked iOS device with Bluetooth and wifi on near the HomePod, wait for the setup dialogue box to pop up and after a couple of taps it’s ready to go (although it failed at the wifi setup the first time I tried)
Siri was pretty loud out of the box, so make sure you don’t set it up at night or be ready with a finger on the volume down button
Apple’s promising an update for AirPlay 2 and stereo pairing of two HomePods together for later in the year through a software update
You can mute the always-listening mics, but there’s no visible indicator that Siri is no longer listening
Price
The Apple HomePod comes in two colours, white or space grey (black) for £319.
For comparison, the second-generation Amazon Echo costs £90, the Echo Plus costs £140, the Google Home costs £129 and the Alexa-integrated Sonos One costs £199.
Verdict
As a simple wireless speaker the HomePod sounds truly brilliant, knocking the socks off most of the competition, including systems costing more. But because it is locked down to Apple-only devices and services it might not be as easy to fit into your existing setup as competitors such as Sonos. Missing true Spotify support will be a deal killer for many, as will the inability to play radio stations and the lack of multi-user support.
As a smart speaker, the HomePod is let down by Siri, which simply isn’t up to the standards set by rivals, but the fundamentals are there. The microphones work, so Siri can hear you, and responses are fast, just limited, meaning it could be fixed. Whether Apple is able to catch up to the capability and quality of Alexa and Google Assistant, remains to be seen. It certainly hasn’t managed to on the iPhone for the last couple of years.
So as it is now, the HomePod is an Apple-lover’s dream speaker; if you treat it more as a voice-controlled wireless music blaster than a Amazon Echo or Google Home competitor then you’ll love it.
But if you want the ability to play Spotify natively, to control more than just the limited number of HomeKit devices, or to simply deliver that advanced voice assistant experience, the HomePod isn’t there yet.
Pros: brilliant sound, can hear you very well, full production at low volumes, choice of male or female voice
Cons: Siri not up to scratch, no Bluetooth or analogue audio in, no native Spotify or radio, no Android or Windows support
More than 600,000 people have signed an online petition calling on Snapchat to revert its update back to the original design.
The app’s latest redesign, which was released last week, focused on separating “media content” from that of “friends” among an array of other interface changes.
Snapchat Stories, which are videos and photos shared among users that vanish after 24 hours, also now appear with individual Snaps and direct messages.
The “Remove the new Snapchat update” petition, which is hosted on Change.org, was authored by Australian user Nic Rumsey.
“Many users have found that it has not made the app easier to use but has in fact made many features more difficult,” the petition reads.
“There is a general level of annoyance among users and many have decided to use a VPN app to go back to the old Snapchat, as that’s how annoying this new update has become.
“This petition aims to help convince Snap Inc to change the app back to the basics, before this new 2018 update”.
The update has outraged millennials and celebrities alike, with many protesting that the new interface is cluttered and difficult to use.
Under the comment section of the petition one signatory wrote, “I am signing because Snapchat is my favourite app, me and my friends use it all the time. I find this update confusing and childish-looking and I am considering no longer using it as long as the update stays.”
Others took to Twitter to voice similar concerns.
I’ve had the Snapchat update for a few days now and still haven’t figured out the equation. I’m so confused. Do any of you guys have the answer key?
The Snapchat update is a bigger mess than that one notebook I’ve been using for all my classes, starting on whatever page I open to and storing all my papers under the front cover
Model and TV presenter Chrissy Teigen also weighed in on Twitter, asking rhetorically “How many people have to hate an update for it to be reconsidered?”
I’m seeing this same comment so often. I liked that you guys felt like we were friends. I’m sad it doesn’t feel like that anymore. How many people have to hate an update for it to be reconsidered? https://t.co/PI7OAf9Qlg
Some of Snapchat’s users have complained the app was updated automatically, causing the loss of some messages or archived data.
Despite the pleas, parent firm Snap Inc. currently has no plans to reconsider the original design. In a statement, a spokeswoman said “updates as big as this one can take a little getting used to, but we hope the community will enjoy it once they settle in”.
Facebook’s default privacy settings and use of personal data are against German consumer law, according to a judgement handed down by a Berlin regional court.
The court found that Facebook collects and uses personal data without providing enough information to its members for them to render meaningful consent. The federation of German consumer organisations (VZBV), which brought the suit, argued that Facebook opted users in to features which it should not have.
Heiko Duenkel, litigation policy officer at the VZBV, said: “Facebook hides default settings that are not privacy friendly in its privacy centre and does not provide sufficient information about it when users register. This does not meet the requirement for informed consent.”
In a statement, VZBV elaborated on some of its issues: “In the Facebook app for smartphones, for example, a location service was pre-activated that reveals a user’s location to people they are chatting to.
“In the privacy settings, ticks were already placed in boxes that allowed search engines to link to the user’s timeline. This meant that anyone could quickly and easily find personal Facebook profiles.”
The Berlin court agreed with VZBV that the five default settings the group had complained about were invalid as declarations of consent. The German language judgment was handed down in mid-January, but only publicly revealed on Monday.
The court also ruled eight clauses in Facebook’s terms of service to be invalid, including terms that allow Facebook to transmit data to the US and use personal data for commercial purposes. The company’s “authentic name” policy – a revision of a rule that once required users to use their “real names” on the site, but which now allows them to use any names they are widely known by – was also ruled unlawful.
In a statement, Facebook said it would appeal, adding: “We are working hard to ensure that our guidelines are clear and easy to understand, and that the services offered by Facebook are in full accordance with the law.”
A week after the Berlin court ruled against Facebook, the social network promised to radically overhaul its privacy settings, saying the work would prepare it for the introduction in Europe of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a sweeping set of laws governing data use across the EU.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, announced the changes, saying they would “put the core privacy settings for Facebook in one place and make it much easier for people to manage their data”.
The European Union’s new stronger, unified data protection laws, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), will come into force on 25 May 2018, after more than six years in the making.
GDPR will replace the current patchwork of national data protection laws, give data regulators greater powers to fine, make it easier for companies with a “one-stop-shop” for operating across the whole of the EU, and create a new pan-European data regulator called the European Data Protection Board.
The new laws govern the processing and storage of EU citizens’ data, both that given to and observed by companies about people, whether or not the company has operations in the EU. They state that data protection should be both by design and default in any operation.
GDPR will refine and enshrine the “right to be forgotten” laws as the “right to erasure”, and give EU citizens the right to data portability, meaning they can take data from one organisation and give it to another. It will also bolster the requirement for explicit and informed consent before data is processed, and ensure that it can be withdrawn at any time.
To ensure companies comply, GDPR also gives data regulators the power to fine up to €20m or 4% of annual global turnover, which is several orders of magnitude larger than previous possible fines. Data breaches must be reported within 72 hours to a data regulator, and affected individuals must be notified unless the data stolen is unreadable, ie strongly encrypted.
Facebook has faced repeated attacks from European regulators, particularly those in Germany, over issues ranging from perceived anti-competitive practices to alleged misuse of customer data.
Since March 2016, the company has been investigated by the German Federal Cartel Office over allegations it breaches data protection law in order to support an unfair monopoly. In an interim update in December last year, the office said that it objected to the way Facebook gains access to third-party data when an account is opened. This includes transferring information from its own WhatsApp and Instagram products – as well as how it tracks which sites its users access.
In October, Facebook was the target of an EU-wide investigation over a similar issue. The Article 29 Working Party (WP29), which oversees data regulation issues across the European Union, launched a taskforce to examine the sharing of user data between WhatsApp and Facebook, which it says does not have sufficient user consent. When the data sharing feature was first announced in 2016, the group warned Facebook that it may not be legal under European law, prompting the company to pause the data transfer until a resolution was found.
“Whilst the WP29 notes there is a balance to be struck between presenting the user with too much information and not enough, the initial screen made no mention at all of the key information users needed to make an informed choice, namely that clicking the agree button would result in their personal data being shared with the Facebook family of companies,” the group told WhatsApp in October.
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