Numlock News: February 25, 2026 • Kakapo, Matcha, Chrysalis

Feb 25, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Matcha

Demand for green tea from Japan jumped 98 percent in 2025, reaching 72.1 billion yen (US$463 million), with exports jumping 43 percent to reach 12,612 metric tons. That’s the first time that the export volume came in above 10,000 tons in 71 years of tracking, and it’s in no small part thanks to the surge in interest in matcha. The current export price for green tea is 5,716 yen per kilogram, which is up 86 percent over the past five years. Thing is, though, that’s not even close to hitting global demand, which is seeing buyers go to China and South Korea for matcha. Indeed, Japan’s tea plantations have seen the harvesting area decline by 29 percent over the past decade, thanks largely to a labor crunch.

Mao Kato, Nikkei Asia

Perception

A new analysis found that the rate at which animals can perceive flashing lights is linked to their overall pace of their lifestyle. All organisms have what’s called a maximum critical flicker fusion rate, which is the rate of flicker at which animals can no longer perceive flashing. For rats, it’s 47 flashes per second; for humans, it’s around 65 flashes per second; for dogs, it’s 84 flashes per second; for birds like the collared flycatcher, it’s 138 flashes per second; for dragonflies, it’s 300 flashes per second. Get down to starfish, and they can manage only 0.7 flashes per second. The new study found that species from dimmer environments had lower temporal perception, and slower rates of temporal perception were found in slower-moving species. If anything, I think this means that we need to seriously revisit the Animorphs books.

Kevin Healy, The Conversation

Rediscovered

A new study published in Performance Research compared the recent recordings of a work that had been lost for 120 years by British composer Ethel Smyth and only reemerged in the 1990s. The issue is that no tradition of interpretation survived — there were no instructions about tempo or expression or dynamics, and no known historical recordings. The three pianists who have played Aus der Jugendzeit all had significant differences in how they approached it. For instance, the 1995 interpretation by Liana Gavrila-Șerbescu opened it at 125 bpm, the 2017 version of the piece by Heloise Ph. Palmer opened at around 75 bpm and a 2020 interpretation by Carolyn Enger took a completely different approach to the end of the matrial finishing by falling from 70 bpm to 30 bpm while another of the pieces finished by closing at 95 bpm. Essentially, once lost, it’s actually really difficult to rediscover a piece of forgotten music, even if the notes remain.

Georgina Gould, University of Surrey

Rhinos

From 2024 to 2025, a group of researchers from South Africa fitted the horns of 33 rhinos in Limpopo Rhino Orphanage with pellets containing radioactive isotopes as a conservation effort. It was such a success that last July, the researchers obtained government approval to keep up the good work. South Africa’s 15,000 rhinos remain under threat, as poachers have still killed 10,000 since 2007. Removing the horns from the rhinos has been one strategy to deprive poachers of their targets. This new strategy is to literally make the horn radioactive. The fitting stresses the rhino out and has to be repeated every 18 to 24 months. However, at 21,500 rand (US$1,300), it’s actually cost-effective over the five-year life of the treatment. The point is that any powder made from the ground horns will be radioactive, untransportable and unfit for human consumption, deterring poaching and aiding in their eventual capture.

Matthew Ponsford, MIT Technology Review

Party’s Over

The official data on 2025 exports for the U.S. alcohol industry has come out. It turns out that permanently disrupting the global architecture of trade means lots of people will stop drinking what you’re selling. U.S. wine and beer exports fell by 26 percent year over year, with exports falling by a breathtaking $472 million. Wine took most of that brunt, with exports falling by 33.5 percent year over year. For liquor, it’s also pretty bad. Alcoholic beverages excluding wine came in at $2.8 billion, down $215 million year over year. Imports collapsed too: the U.S. saw a $1.1 billion decline in wine, beer and related products, not to mention a $3.1 billion decline in alcoholic beverages excluding wine. Wine exports to Canada alone fell by 76.8 percent.

Stephen Bradley, Vinepair

Titan 1.0

A new study proposes a revised origin for Saturn’s rings, which are only a few hundred million years old — younger than one might expect. There are a number of odd things about the Saturn system — its rings are young, its wobble isn’t tied to Neptune as much as we’d expect it should be, the moon Iapetus has a funky tilt to its orbit and the large moon Titan has very few craters and an eccentric orbit. One theory that would address all of these peculiarities is a hypothetical moon (researchers call it Chrysalis) that at some point was gravitationally tossed toward Saturn, crashed into Titan 400 million years ago, erased all of Titan’s craters in the process, booped Saturn’s orbit and shattered into the debris that became the rings (and possibly the moon Hyperion too). The adjusted orbit of that hypothetical moon would also have destabilized a bunch of inner moons and ground the rings, too.

Leah Crane, New Scientist

Kakapo

The flightless parrot of New Zealand, the kakapo, has been brought back from the edge of extinction thanks to tireless work and some good luck. With the entire population relocated to remote islands off the coast of New Zealand, populations have risen from 50 birds to over 200 in just 30 years. This year appears poised to be a big one for the birds in terms of reproduction. It’s a pretty big deal since these birds have a strange breeding process: seasons only happen every two to four years and depend on rimu trees bearing a lot of fruit (which the birds like to eat from). This year saw a bumper crop of berries, the first since 2022, meaning that it was a mating year for the parrots.

Charlotte Graham-McLay, The Associated Press

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