New research finds fruit flies make decisions based on their expectations about the likelihood of a reward and pinpoints the site in the fly brain where these value adjustments are made, enabling researchers to directly test a theory about how the brain enables this behavior on the level of neural circuits.

Using ancestry decomposition techniques an international research team has revealed a deeply divergent ancestry among admixed populations from the Angolan Namib desert. This unique genetic heritage brings the researchers closer to understanding the distribution of genetic variation in the broader region of southern Africa before the spread of food production.

Even without a central brain, jellyfish can learn from past experiences like humans, mice, and flies, scientists report for the first time. They trained Caribbean box jellyfish (Tripedalia cystophora) to learn to spot and dodge obstacles. The study challenges previous notions that advanced learning requires a centralized brain and sheds light on the evolutionary roots of learning and memory.

Primate species with better color vision are not more likely to have red skin or fur coloration, as previously thought.