Happy New Year! | 2015 Review

Welcome back to my blog! I hope you all had a great Christmas and an  amazing new year!

So much in science happened last year. Until last year, Pluto was a place we knew pretty much nothing about but in 2015, we finally made it to Pluto, the images came back and the results where simply stunning. Scientists formulated a computer generated face of our past - shaking up the history of our origin. There was also a record breaking effort to travel around the world in a solar plane -  a journey however which was not difficulty free. Scientists also put in place some radical plans to protect endangered animals and to put poachers off of them. This involved things like marking shells of tortoises so they'd no longer be sell-able by poachers. Paris also held a major climate summit to formulate a deal to finally attempt to combat the growing issue of global warming. Finally, in December the UK had its first official British Astronaut, Major Tim Peake, who took off from Kazakhstan to spend 5 1/2 months on board the ISS. This event brought to a close a momentous year in science, although one which can hopefully be bettered this year!

How can we tell zoo animals are happy?

In most cases, days are the gone where animals are kept in tiny enclosures with nothing to do, but now scientists have come up with a method of measuring how happy they actually are. We now have a vast array of chemicals that we can actually measure to assess this, one of the best examples is cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone secreted by the adrenal cortex in response to stressful events. We can measure this through taking blood, but for zoo animals, if they're potentially distressed anyway it's better to look at the levels in urine, faeces or saliva. However scientists need to be careful that they don't misinterpret the levels because they can be influenced by things like the age or sex of the animal. We could also use preference tests to see what's best for the animal, so from different foods to sleeping materials. Although we need to make sure we don't misinterpret those results because like us, what we prefer may not be what's best!