Body & Brain

Knights’ bodily burden, go-to-sleep nerve cells, rat empathy and more in this week’s news

It’s hard being a knight
Knights decked out in battle gear use twice as much energy to storm the castle as their less shiny counterparts. Scientists from the U.K. and Italy tested energetic demands using fight interpreters wearing replicas of 15th century armor, which added roughly 40 percent to the interpreters’ body weight.