Getting in the headspace of flying squirrels and fossil rodents with 3D brain models
Parlement of Foules is perhaps the first Valentine’s Day poem ever written and the earliest record of squirrels in the English language.
Rodents are worth studying for their own sake says Ornella Bertrand. We've used them in studies for making human lives better and more comfortable, but we don’t often pay attention to them for their own sake.
Ornella studies the natural history of rodents, early mammals, and their brains at the Catalan Institute for Paleontology in Barcelona. 3
She is currently investigating evolutionary changes in the brain and inner ear of arboreal and gliding mammals, like flying squirrels and marsupials.
Ornella: Sociality is fascinating, but it's difficult to estimate in the fossil record. You might find a bunch of fossils that died together.
But other fossorial (burrowing) rodents like the mountain beaver that lives in the Pacific Northwest of America, it's solitary. It's a weird little guy, with long nails, and not super social. They meet for mating.
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