Elephant corpses are centres of attraction for living elephants. They will visit them repeatedly, sniffing them with their trunks and rumbling as they do so. This is a species-specific response; elephants show no interest in the dead of any other type of animal. And they also react to elephant bones, as well as bodies, as Dr Wittemyer has demonstrated. Prompted by the anecdotes of others, and his own observations that an elephant faced with such bones will often respond by scattering them, he laid out fields of bones in the bush. Wild elephants, he found, can distinguish their conspecifics' skeletal remains from those of other species. And they do, indeed, pick them up and fling them into the bush.
Coca-Cola distribution is so broad, its marketing so expert that the Gates Foundation has urged vaccine campaigns to mimic its strategy.
Across the planet, 1.8bn human beings drink water contaminated with faeces.
Death through overwork is considered to be such a feature of the workplace in Japan that there is a word for it: karoshi.
Humans have always sought to intoxicate themselves.
Looking after someone with dementia can wipe out even a prosperous family.
The promise of a longer life, well lived, would round a person out. But this vision of the future depends on one thing – that a long existence is also a healthy one. Humanity must avoid the trap fallen into by Tithonus, a mythical Trojan who was granted eternal life by the gods, but forgot to ask also for eternal youth. Eventually, he withered into a cicada.
In 2016 a coroner's office in Ohio had to store corpses in refrigerated lorries for a week because residents were overdosing on opioids faster than their bodies could be processed.
How young is too young? Rich democracies give different answers, depending on the context: in New Jersey you can buy alcohol at 21 and cigarettes at 19, join the army at 17, have sex at 16 and be tried in court as an adult at 14.
Nothing ages faster than yesterday's dreams of tomorrow.
People around the world produce an estimated 6.4 trillion litres of urine every year.
Kids not born in the '90s, also didn't have kids in the 2010s. It's the echo of the echo.
Those who live to be very old are never previously famous. Few in the world know them, and they know almost nothing of the world.