Seven Scientific Discoveries From 2024 That Could Lead to New Inventions

Part of being human is to create—to invent objects and ideas that will make life possible, simple and enjoyable. Homo sapiens have been innovating for more than 300,000 years, ever since the first stone tools. But nature—the iterative process of evolution—is as old as life itself.

Now, engineers sometimes look to other kinds of life for ways to improve our medicines and make our technology better. This year, for instance, inventors took a tip from jellyfish to create a non-toxic, fluorescent spray that can make fingerprints visible at a crime scene. Inspired by green fluorescent protein found in jellies, they created two dyes that bind to the negatively charged molecules in fingerprints and glow under a blacklight.

In another breakthrough, researchers built an ultra-sensitive microphone informed by spider silk, which vibrates with the subtle perturbations of sound waves moving through the air. By mimicking that strategy, the microphone can be made more compact than standard ones, which are instead designed after the human eardrum. Building on this invention, researchers said in May that spider silk could continue to revolutionize sound technology—from helping to identify hearing loss early to picking up on low-frequency sounds known to precede tornadoes that might enable life-saving early warnings.

But before these advancements could come to be, scientists first needed to learn something about biology. In 2024, researchers tested the metabolism of fruit bats, analyzed the mechanics of swimming fish, and took note of the wound-healing abilities of both primates and ants. Each of these endeavors and others might open the door to developments in engineering or medicine down the line.

Here are seven scientific discoveries from this year that could lead to new inventions in the future.

Sea creatures can merge their bodies together

The bizarre love life of the anglerfish | Surprising Science

Finding love, for a male anglerfish, means looking for the bright lure—or following the scent—of a female, to whom he becomes fully devoted. And devotion, for the male anglerfish, means gripping on with his teeth to her underside until their bodies fuse together, his eyes fall into disuse, and their bloodstreams become one. The male loses his organs and becomes, essentially, a permanently affixed source of sperm for the female.

This bizarre love story is a mating strategy known as obligate sexual parasitism, and according to research published in Current Biology in June, it might have helped anglers to dominate the deep ocean.

Between 35 million and 50 million years ago, the ancestors of anglerfish evolved to lose their habit of “walking” on modified fins in shallow water and instead shifted into the deep sea. This transition happened during a period of global warming that drove other organisms extinct—and, according to the research, it happened at the same time that the anglerfish evolved sexual parasitism.

Genetically speaking, two things needed to happen for the fish to have success with this mating strategy. For one, females had to become much larger than the males. Importantly, they also had to lower their immune defenses so that the female’s body would not attack the tiny male as it joins to her.

Such a suppression of immunity is “crucially important” to organ transplant procedures and skin grafting in humans, as Thomas Near, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University and a co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It’s an interesting area for future medical research.”

A similar feat is performed by comb jellies, primitive sea creatures distinct from jellyfish that are thought to have been the first lineage to break from the common ancestor of all animals on the evolutionary tree. A separate team of researchers reported in Current Biology in October that comb jellies, when injured, can merge their bodies together—two heads, one nervous system.

Like the anglerfish, fusing comb jellies might point scientists toward a mechanism that could prevent organ transplant rejection. Some experts, however, see potential in another direction—studying how the creatures’ neurons work together could shed light on nerve regeneration.

Matabele ants produce antibiotics to heal injured nestmates

Life for a Matabele ant is dangerous. The sub-Saharan ants exclusively feed on termites, but hunting their favored prey involves infiltrating the insects’ colonies, which are heavily guarded. When Matabele ants go on the attack, about 20 percent of them might come away with injuries to their legs.

If those wounds become infected, it could be a death sentence. But the colonies have figured out how to heal their fighters: The ants generate antimicrobial secretions to prevent infection.

In a paper published in Nature Communications in late December 2023, researchers report that Matabele ants can distinguish between peers with infected and uninfected wounds, potentially due to a difference in the hydrocarbon profile of their exoskeletons. They’ll target treatment on the individuals with infections, secreting a substance with more than 50 components boasting antimicrobial and other healing properties.

In a series of experiments, the team either separated injured ants from their colony or let the other insects attempt to heal the wounds. They found that injured ants isolated from their peers faced 90 percent mortality within 36 hours of the injury. But the Matabele ants under the care of their colonies saw only 22 percent mortality.

“With the exception of humans, I know of no other living creature that can carry out such sophisticated medical wound treatments,” says study co-author Erik Frank, an animal ecologist at the University of Würzburg in Germany, in a statement.

The ants’ stunning medical abilities have the potential to help where human ones are falling short. For instance, several strains of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa infect humans and have evolved to resist many of our antibacterial treatments. The same bacteria infect Matabele ants, so researchers suggest something in the insects’ secretions might help fight the pathogen in our own wounds.

Clams use the first known natural fiber optics

Nestled within heart-shaped shells, the soft body of a heart cockle dwells away from light. To get the nutrition it needs, the clam relies on photosynthetic algae that also live in the shell. But to give the algae access to sunlight without exposing the clam to harsh radiation, the heart cockle has developed the first known use of fiber optics in nature, according to research published in Nature Communications in November.

Humans have been producing fiber-optic cables—bundles of glass or plastic fibers that quickly transport light and enable the internet—since the 1970s. But it turns out that the walnut-sized heart cockle “was way ahead of us” in terms of fiber-optic innovation, per a statement about the discovery.

Scientists found that the clam’s shell, made from a type of calcium carbonate called aragonite, is mostly built with plate-like structures. In between, however, are so-called windows, where the aragonite is instead stretched into hair-like fibers. These avenues transport red and blue light—the best wavelengths for photosynthesis—into the shell while blocking harmful ultraviolet radiation. In computer simulations, the researchers tried to find a more efficient structure by testing different sizes, shapes and orientations of the fibers, but they revealed that the clam’s method was the optimal design.

In the future, engineers could mimic the mollusk’s construction and create aragonite fiber-optic cables that might out-perform the ones we have today. These devices of tomorrow could rapidly transport information over long distances and revolutionize wireless communications. They might even allow for a key innovation: transmitting light without an expensive reflective coating on the cable, which is needed by the standard technology today, per Science News’ Elie Dolgin.

The findings might also inform conservation work in the oceans. The clams, because of this innovative “sunblock,” limit the UV light that could damage their DNA and that of the algae. As such, heart cockles tend to avoid bleaching in warmer waters, a phenomenon that affects both corals and other clams. Researchers say that using this fiber-optic technology could shield corals and their symbiotic algae in heating oceans.

“Can we maybe take inspiration from that to engineer new algae or new corals? A little bit more resilient, a little bit more robust?” study lead author Dakota McCoy, an evolutionary biophysicist at the University of Chicago, says to NPR’s Ari Daniel. After all, she adds to Science News, “billions of years of product design have gone into this.”

Fruit bats have a special metabolism that prevents diabetes

When humans consistently eat too much sugar, it can contribute to developing diabetes, a condition in which the body can’t properly use insulin to regulate blood sugar. Worldwide, diabetes rates are expected to increase by 46 percent by 2045. But fruit bats don’t have that problem—they regularly eat twice their body weight in sugar-filled fruit each day without developing the autoimmune disease.

To understand why, researchers compared the DNA, kidneys and pancreas of Jamaican fruit bats, which have a diet high in sugar, and big brown bats, which have a high-protein diet of insects. They shared their results in Nature Communications in January.

In the fruit-eating bats, the pancreas contained more cells related to producing insulin and glucagon, hormones that regulate sugar. They found genetic changes that help the bats react to and process a vast amount of sugar. And the kidney, which filters waste from blood, helped the bats’ bodies retain electrolytes. The organ had more cells meant to trap these salts, which resulted in fruit bats having more diluted, watery urine compared to big brown bats.

“Even small changes, to single letters of DNA, make this diet viable for fruit bats,” Wei Gordon, co-lead author of the paper and a biologist at Menlo College, said in a statement. “We need to understand high-sugar metabolism like this to make progress helping the one in three Americans who are prediabetic.”

Researchers say the findings could help create a way for the human body to better detect insulin or sugar and react to it. But questions remain: Are other organs, such as the liver or small intestine, also involved in regulating sugar for Jamaican fruit bats? And can these findings apply to other kinds of bats, let alone humans?

Using the new knowledge to treat people with diabetes won’t be immediate; it’s “very much down the road,” Gordon told NPR’s Ari Daniel in August. But if researchers succeeded in finding an application to human health, “that would be the ultimate, ‘Wow, we did it.’”

Fish swim in schools to save energy

Scientists have long understood that schooling together with their peers makes fish like the giant danio less vulnerable to predators. The coordinated expansions and contractions of the group could confuse a potential attacker and make any individual fish a less likely target. But researchers wondered whether schools serve another purpose, too: helping fish save energy.

To answer this question, researchers put giant danios on a type of treadmill for fish—essentially, a closed loop for swimming that uses a propeller to create a current. As the fish moved against the flow, high-speed cameras captured their motions, and a probe measured how much oxygen they consumed, to reveal their energy expenditure. In some trials, the fish swam in a group; in others, they swam alone.

The findings, reported in PLOS Biology in June, showed that danios grouped in schools of eight used up to 79 percent less energy than the ones swimming solo. Essentially, like bikers in a peloton, the schooling fish could weather turbulence and save energy. No matter whether they were swimming in rough or calm waters, the school used the same amount of energy. A single fish had to increase its energy use by about 22 percent to maintain its speed against a current.

Understanding these hydrodynamics could pave the way for advances in robotics. A fleet of flying drones, for instance, could follow the same principles to move together and save power. Or, possibly, swimming robots could take the shape of several schooling fish, rather than a single large one. Such devices might be able to tally fish populations or search for sources of pollution underwater, per Science News Explores’ Andrea Tamayo.

But the findings could also have implications for fish themselves: As oceans warm, fish will have to expend more energy to swim and maintain their body temperature. So, taking note of their energy requirements when they move could help scientists to better predict how the animals will fare in a changing world. “In the face of climate change, we really want to understand things like [the energy needs] of fish,” David Coughlin, a fish biologist at Widener University who was not involved in the study, told Science News Explores.

Tardigrades use extreme dehydration to withstand stress

What can defeat a tardigrade? The eight-legged, microscopic animals are known for being nearly indestructible. They can bear the heat and pressure around deep-sea vents, endure temperatures just short of absolute zero and withstand several thousand times the radiation that would kill a human. The vacuum of outer space? Exploding out the barrel of a gun at nearly 2,000 miles per hour? Tardigrades can survive it. Even the five mass extinctions on our planet couldn’t wipe them out.

These funny-looking creatures, also known as “water bears,” can weather these extreme conditions by entering what’s known as a tun state. They’ll suspend their metabolism and eject 95 percent of their moisture, essentially shriveling into a dehydrated ball. In a paper published in PLOS One in January, scientists probed just how this hardy adaptation works.

When researchers exposed tardigrades to the extreme cold, or things like sugar, salt or hydrogen peroxide, the animals began to produce free radicals, or oxygen atoms with an extra electron. As a result of their added charge, free radicals are very reactive and can destabilize DNA or proteins. Some scientists have even proposed that free radicals can lead to aging in humans and other creatures, though that idea is disputed.

Free radicals in tardigrades react with a protein called cysteine, the team discovered, but when those reactions are blocked, tardigrades can’t enter tun. Without cysteine, tardigrades also weren’t able to survive freezing, even though they don’t enter tun under that condition. This suggests the protein might play a larger role in the water bears’ overall survivability. The findings might shed light on human aging or long-term space travel, or on dormant states such as cryptobiosis, researchers say.

A second study, published in Protein Science in March, took this one step further and looked at how tardigrades endure tun. One of their tricks is to use what are known as known as cytoplasmic abundant heat soluble proteins, which form a gel that keeps the tardigrades’ cells hydrated. Those researchers ejected the proteins into human cells and found they did the same thing—made the cells more resistant to stress and slowed their metabolism.

To Silvia Sanchez-Martinez, lead author of the second study, this research doesn’t mean we’re about to start preserving entire humans in an ultra-resilient, dehydrated state. Instead, she told Discover magazine’s Cody Cottier, it might teach doctors how to pause tissue decay in organ transplant or trauma situations, such as in a war zone. Potentially, “we can stop or halt some of the injuries until we can address them properly,” she said.

Chimpanzees use the forest as a pharmacy

When chimpanzees are sick or wounded, research shows they might soothe themselves as humans do—by seeking out medicines. But in their case, the primates use the forest as a pharmacy, seemingly picking and choosing leaves and woods with healing properties.

In a study published in PLOS One in June, researchers describe following two groups of chimpanzees in Uganda’s Budongo Forest for eight months. They tracked what the animals ate, as well as whether or not they showed signs of illness, determined by checking for wounds and testing their urine and feces. The team zeroed in on a group of 13 plants eaten by the apes that had little nutritional value but carried antibacterial and anti-inflammatory benefits. In several cases, chimps with ailments went out of their way to look for these plants.

Scientists say this behavior could be a window into new drugs for humans. “We can’t test [every plant] in these forests for their medicinal properties,” says study lead author Elodie Freymann, a primatologist at the University of Oxford in England, to BBC News’ Victoria Gill. “So why not test the plants that we have this information about—plants the chimps are seeking out?”

In another instance of self-medication, scientists recently witnessed an orangutan heal his own wound. In a paper published in May in Scientific Reports, researchers described the curious case of Rakus, a male Sumatran orangutan in Indonesia. The animal sustained a wound on his cheek, and just days later, he started chewing a plant called yellow root and rubbing its juices on the sore. The next day, he ate the plant—even though yellow root typically makes up only 0.3 percent of the orangutans’ diet. In less than a week, the wound closed, and it remained uninfected.

Beyond potentially pointing humans toward discovering new natural remedies, the incident also suggests the ability to self-medicate originated long ago in the primate lineage. As study co-author Caroline Schuppli, a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, told Nature News’ Gayathri Vaidyanathan, “it shows that orangutans and humans share knowledge.”