A recent paper by an international team of researchers shows that the skill of some songbirds to extemporaneously innovate musical repertoire equals that of human musicians.¹ Since none of the apes have this complex human-like capability, the discovery poses a big problem for the evolutionary model of human origins.

After investing so much time and effort to understand how body parts interact, scientists keep turning up new and unforeseen connections—often when they ask the right questions. New and strange developments inspired a team to ask wacky questions about a unique white blood cell called Ly6C^hi. And they found some profound answers.