Pay close attention the next time you play a Bach concerto to your pet crocodile. If you look closely, you might just see him tapping his toes to the rhythm.

It is true. Crocodiles react to the complex frequencies heard in music such as classical music. This means that, just like mammals and even fish, they have a hierarchical way of processing sensory stimulus, enabling them to navigate their way through the world they live in.

Professor Lee Berger shows what is behind the doors of the Phillip V Tobias Fossil Hominid vault. 

• Professor Garth Stevens

Our dependence on technology brought on by Covid-19 makes cognitive and emotional demands that, unaddressed, threaten our mental wellbeing.

Although technology has undoubtedly often advanced living conditions throughout history, this is not an inevitable nor necessarily equitable outcome. New forms of alienation will emerge to co-exist with these advancements. We need to be vigilant of the deleterious effects in the unfolding relationship between new technologies and social life.

What’s the best thing you can do for your brain today? Move!

The discovery also points to food being shared and the use of wooden digging sticks to extract the plants from the ground

Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains: panorama (Credit: Ashley Kruger)

Researchers show that multi-dimensional quantum communications with twisted light is possible down legacy fibre networks

A PhD student at Wits University, along with colleagues from Wits and Huazhang University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, found a way to transfer data securely across optical fibre networks. 

Humans prepared beds to sleep on right at the dawn of our species – over 200 000 years ago.

Immunising pregnant women with a potential vaccine against RSV could prevent the most common cause of pneumonia in their babies.

Professor Shabir A. Madhi of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, is the lead author of the study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday, 30 July 2020.

And the mating mozzies story: For the first time, scientists have identified male mosquito-specific pheromones that influence mating rituals.