We learned a lot about Atlantic herring this week thanks to the team at Texas A&M. For starters, we did not know that they travel in schools that can number in the billions… which is great for the species and terrible for disease control. That density is why an international team at the University decided to look closely at the fish's immune genetics, and what they found is fascinating: they identified more diversity in the genes that lets the immune system recognize invading pathogens (MHC class II genes), than has been documented in any other vertebrate studied to date… including humans.

The likely explanation is millions of years of evolutionary pressure. Living in massive, dense populations means constant exposure to viruses, bacteria, and parasites, and the fish that carry a wider range of MHC variants are better equipped to recognize whatever shows up next. The long-read sequencing approach that made the research possible is itself notable, since MHC regions have historically been too repetitive and complex for older sequencing methods to resolve cleanly.

For us, the practical value isn't in herring specifically. It's in what this technique unlocks for studying immune gene diversity in the species we actually treat, particularly in food animal and aquaculture contexts where disease resistance and genetic diversity in breeding populations are ongoing concerns.

It's also a reminder that Texas A&M's VMBS program has been on a run lately. A separate and equally interesting study out of the same college recently linked microplastic exposure to fatty liver disease.

A new review in Frontiers in Veterinary Science pulled together 78 studies covering 91 physical simulators used in veterinary surgical training over the past decade, and the picture it paints of how we teach surgery is more uneven than most of us would probably guess.

The majority of simulators are low fidelity, developed in academic settings, and built around one species and one common procedure: canine sterilization. High-fidelity models exist, but they're overwhelmingly commercial (read: expensive) which means there is a difference between what students in well-funded programs get to practice on versus everyone else.

Those gaps matter as much as what's well covered. Orthopaedics, neurosurgery, and large animal or exotic procedures are all practiced less, despite being routine parts of clinical practice, and validation of these tools is inconsistent at best. Fifty-eight of the 92 studies that claimed to assess content validity didn't actually involve veterinary experts in the evaluation, leaning instead on student feedback, which is a very different thing.

None of this is a knock on simulation itself. The review is clear that simulators reduce reliance on live animals and cadavers in line with the 3Rs for more humane animal research, and low-fidelity models in particular seem to build real confidence even without bells and whistles. But if we're sending new grads into practice having trained almost exclusively on canine spays, it's worth asking what that means for their first orthopaedic case or their first large animal emergency. If you happen to be mentoring residents or advocating for training budgets at your school or hospital… bookmark this one and add it to your recommendation.

While it’s not our usual topic of conversation, we found this human interest story on Dr. Nyoni Winchester from the WHO somewhat interesting. As a first-generation veterinarian from Tobago now teaching at St George's University in Grenada, she built her career around clinical veterinary science and public health, which turned out to be exactly the right combination for what she's spent the last few years doing: figuring out what rising temperatures actually mean for livestock and the people who work with them.

As a fellow in the PAHO and University of the West Indies Climate Change and Health Leaders program, Winchester hosted Grenada's first symposium on heat threshold development and spent time on farms interviewing workers about how they cope with heat. This is work that she says surfaced practical, low-tech fixes as much as policy recommendations: scheduling outdoor labor around peak temperatures, moving elderly patients' appointments to cooler hours, rethinking livestock workloads on the hottest days. When her fellowship funding ran short, she used what was left to buy fans, wide-brimmed hats, and reusable water bottles, distributing them directly to farm workers and to elder care and women's shelters.

It's a small story in scale but a useful one in framing. One Health conversations tend to focus on zoonotic disease, but Winchester's work is a reminder that climate itself is a shared health threat running through animals, agriculture, and humans.

We know, we know. You’re probably thinking, ‘are they really recommending the Odyssey to me? It’s the biggest movie in the world right now, and everyone is talking about it.’

But that’s exactly why we wanted to join the conversation. We’re not usually ones to get caught up in pop culture moments, but this one is worth the hype. And not just about the movie either….

If you’re looking for your next read, we highly recommend Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation of The Odyssey. It’s approachable, simple to understand and uses simple syntax in modern English. But it’s not just a retelling, as she preserved the original Homeric Greek poem’s exact line count and updated its traditional dactylic hexameter to the traditional English iambic pentameter, keeping it accessible to modern readers.

Her introduction alone is worth it, covering the poem's history, setting the scene in Ancient Greece, and exploring its themes before you're off on a ship with Odysseus himself.

That translation is also, indirectly, what inspired Christopher Nolan's new film. Go see it… and in theatres if you can. It is a big, ambitious, and bold piece of filmmaking that’s worth the price of admission and will be talked about for years to come. It’s the first feature film to be shot entirely on 70mm IMAX, and leverages every bit of extra screen available to it in that format. We recently learned there are only about 40 theatres in the world that can run the IMAX film, so we’re feeling grateful to have seen it in one.

Is the movie true to the source material? Yes and no. While it’s very close, Christopher Nolan slightly modified the plot and massively modified the character traits. But the Odyssey has been retold and reshaped for three thousand years, so we’d argue this is just the latest chapter in that long chain.

Then if you’re deep into the Odyssey rabbit hole like us, bring it full circle by checking out: