Talking point: Cuddly carnivores, tired and distracted, sex and virgin mice Four caracal cubs are introduced to the world for the first time at the Animal Park zoo in Berlin. Also known as the desert lynx, the carnivores are native to Northern Africa, the Arabian peninsula and southwestern Asia. Scientists are one step closer to understanding why people with insomnia have trouble issues concentrating during the day. Researchers from the University of California studied 50 people - half of whom slept well and the other half who had primary insomnia. They found that those with insomnia performed similarly to the good sleepers on basic memory tasks. But as the tasks got more difficult, good sleepers were able to use more resources within the working memory network of the brain while those with insomnia were not able to. The insomniacs were And those with insomnia were, for the entire time, unable to turn down the "default mode" regions of the brain that are active when minds are wandering. The scientists are hoping to use the information gleaned from the study to create treatments for the disorder, which affects about 40 per cent of adults in Canada. Who knew mice were so promiscuous? Researchers from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna have found that female mice will mate with not one, not two, but several males if they can choose their partners. Male rodents are prone to infanticide, and are more likely to kill their young if they are virgins, so the females tend to mate with multiple virgin males to reduce the danger to their offspring, the researchers say. It's thought that females can tell which are virgin males by scent markings, and that females are more likely to mate with multiple males when they all have similar levels of scent markings. The scientists also found that litters created by more than one male were smaller than when the female had had multiple partners, but only when there was "intense" competition among males. //optional trim:Though the scientists aren't positive of the explanation, they're working on developing further studies to broaden their understanding.// All I know is a door into the dark. Seamus Heaney The poet, playwright and Nobel Prize winner died on Friday in Dublin.