Fertilized chicken eggs can be sexed by “sniffing” volatile chemicals emitted through the shell, according to new work by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and Sensit Ventures Inc., a startup company in Davis. The work is published May 22 in PLOS ONE.

The study shows that it is feasible to sort eggs by sex, early in incubation, based on volatile organic chemicals, said Professor Cristina Davis, associate vice chancellor for interdisciplinary research and strategic initiatives at UC Davis and co-author on the paper.

— Read more in Sexing Chicken Eggs by Scent at UC Davis.

Heavy seas and a rising tide made it difficult to carry out a postmortem, but Antonio Fernández Rodríguez, head of the institute of animal health and food security at the University of Las Palmas, was determined to find out why the whale had died.

Suspecting a digestive problem, he inspected the animal’s colon – and felt something hard stuck to that part of the intestine.

— Read more in Pathologist finds €500,000 ‘floating gold’ in dead whale in Canary Islands at The Guardian.

The scientists tested the same six volunteers against one another for six nights. They found that the mosquitoes were most attracted to a participant who gave off high levels of carboxylic acids, which are produced by skin microbes and sebum, an oily residue secreted by glands in the skin. The volunteer least attractive to the mosquitoes emitted not only low levels of carboxylic acids, but also lots of eucalyptol, a plant-derived compound that is common in a variety of foods and is known to repel mosquitoes.

— Read more in How to Build a Scent Smorgasbord for Mosquitoes at The New York Times.

“Here we show that bumblebees rely on their own scent marks, which they deposit at their nest entrance while leaving for a foraging trip, to find back home when the visual cues are not sufficiently reliable,” said first author Sonja Eckel, a PhD student at the Department of Neurobiology of Bielefeld University in Germany.

— Read more in Bumblebees Use Scent Marks to Navigate Home at Neuroscience News.