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Before Christmas, I was trying to explain quantum theory to the grandchildren and mentioned Schrödinger's cat, where the cat is both alive and dead before the box is opened. The children were sceptical. "Surely," they said, "if you carefully observe the box from the outside, sooner or later the 'cat' will interact with one or …

I have always found it strange when physicists say that they repeat quantum experiments. They repeat only certain parameters – they cannot ever repeat precisely the total physical environment. All they can do is repeat part of that physical environment. And that being the case, how can they be sure that aspects of the overall …

I am a scientist who has studied wild baboons in Kenya for over 50 years. While I agree with much of what Christine Webb says in her book, The Arrogant Ape , looking at humans through what I call my "baboon glasses", constructed over decades of research, shows just how exceptional humans are ( 15 …

Eddie Clutton makes excellent points in condemning "fur babyism", which reduces a dog or cat to a toy, accessory or infant. They aren't any of these things – they are individuals of a species different from our own, in ways that we ignore to their detriment, e.g. crating them for our convenience, flattening their faces …

Michel Brahic tells us that the formation of the last universal common ancestor from a soup of chemicals was "an extremely unlikely event, with a probability estimated at less than 1 in a billion" ( 6 December, p 30 ). He then goes on to speculate that life elsewhere in the universe, if it exists, …

Anthony Laverty's article "Running out of road", struck a chord with me as someone who hasn't had a car for most of my adult life and who now has a little Corsa that's about 15 years old ( 22 November, p 19 ). I think the psychology of driving is something that needs a lot …

Am I alone in finding highly distressing the report into how to achieve successful pup delivery in oxytocin-deprived mice? Many of these mice and their pups are reported to have died without the assistance of an experienced mouse midwife. Pain and distress must have accompanied these deaths ( 29 November, p 13 ). While experiments …

I accept that ancient peoples may have selected sites for social and spiritual purposes because of unique soundscapes, but, for cave art, what if sound was mostly important to help find the right place? For an artist, tall ceilings would be good so smoke from a large light-giving fire would gather high up, allowing clear …

I very much enjoyed Miriam Frankel's article "Do we live in a simulation?". But she inadvertently hints at an interesting theory and then ignores it. Just assume, as others have, that this is a simulation designed entirely as a time machine to study humanity. After setting the "internal" clock of the simulation to run many …

Andrea Halpern is a professor of psychology at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania (6 December, p 46)