For us, who have a minimal knowledge of biology, understanding how Ebola works is tough. This makes it so much easier.
Here’s another one of Kurzgesagt‘s amazing explanation of how things work. This time the channel explains Ebola – A 5 minute crash course. It’s always good to know…
Logically thinking, why on earth would an alligator – an ancient reptile – respond to music playing on a Tuba. Well, they do. And why they do it, is not totally clear. Specifically, they respond to a note called the B flat note (musicians would know).
Some time during the 1940s when the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York was at the american museum of natural history, the note B flat was played. Eerily, a seemingly innocuous vibration in the air, created by a musical instrument disturbed Oscar – a resident alligator in the museum. It seemed that after hearing the note Oscar started moving a lot. Since there were a bunch of scientists there, they got interested. And devised an experiment to recreate this reaction in the alligator. Here’s what they found [Link to the paper]
Several years later, at Gator land in Kissimmee, Mickelsen played a deep B flat on a Tuba to a male alligator named Toxic. The decades old experiment was recreated. For the first few tries the gators proved to be a tough audience and then it worked. After a few tries, with the B flat note the Tuba maestro was able to make the gators bellow vigorously. Here’s a video of what happened.
That’s not all, there’s something very universal about this particular note. Interestingly, there’s a lot to the note B-flat than it meets the eye. Listen to a musical Robert Krulwich’s report which is discussed in the following NPR talk. Blackholes hum the B-flat and GI tracts can be resonated using the same magical frequency.
Do you remember those massive, muscular Belgian cows? Those super cows were a result of patient selective breeding over many years. No steroids of genetic modifications were involved. Well, there’s something else very similar to how these cows came into existence, which you probably see everyday and yet never realize. Broccoli!
Several years back, probably 1000-2000 years ago, there was no broccoli. It came about in existence after some patient horticulturists selectively bred wild cabbage plants. Broccoli is actually a human innovation, which became popular in modern times only when, in the 16th century, farmers in Italy started growing it. It came to England only in 1720 and to America, much later, in the last century.
With every iteration of selection, cabbage plants with larger and tastier buds were selected and reproduced over and over again. Broccoli, to some extent, can actually be considered as a man-made food. In other words, it was invented / designed by man.
Man-made, yes. But not a genetically modified organism. So, your organic broccoli is as organic as anything else which is classified as organic.
via [PonderWeasel]
If you are one of those people who like to have orange juice in the morning just after they have brushed their teeth, you probably know how bad that tastes. Drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth brings about a very repulsive taste in the mouth. If you haven’t tried that, try it once. Trust me, toothpaste + orange tastes awful.
Water, fluoride, detergent and abrasives are the four major components of toothpaste. And the most common detergent (used to form foam) is called Sodium Lauryl Sulphate, or SLS. SLS has some strange effects on your taste receptors. It suppresses the receptors which help you taste sweet
Also, it destroys a compound called phospholipid – compounds meant to suppress the bitter taste. These are the two accepted reasons as to why drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth is probably a bad idea.
If you didn’t know, most white sand you see on some beaches around the world, has at some point in time, passed through a fish called the parrot fish. It’s an amazing ecological role the parrot fish plays.
An interestingly similar ecological role is served by a marine animal with a very leathery skin called the sea cucumber. Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg explains why these organisms have such an important role in the marine environment.
Basically, while scavenging for algae or minute aquatic animals, sea cucumbers ingest a lot of sand. As it passes through their bodies, the digestive system increases the pH of the sand, making it more basic. When this comes out, the sand is clean and turned basic. This way it plays a chief role in countering the negative effects of ocean acidification.
It also helps coral reefs survive by supplying them with calcium carbonate (a by product of its digestion process) and helping them maintain a net inflow of calcium carbonate.
The ammonia that comes out also makes the bed more fertile, making it much more suitable for coral reefs to grow.
Watch these underwater vacuum cleaners in action below.
Wasps are active during the day time, and hornets too. It is during the morning (and the day time, when the sun is out) when they carry out most of their activities like digging into the ground. In fact, there’s a reason why they do it all mostly during the time when the sun is out.
The brown and yellow coloured stripes they have on their bodies are good to warn predators. Besides that they also serve one other interesting purpose – to harvest solar energy!
Researchers have figured that the brown and yellow stripes on the bodies of hornets and wasps have special kinds of gratings that help them to absorb most light, without reflecting much of it. With these gratings they are able to funnel in light from the sun by increasing the surface area for more efficient absorption.
It is believed that when the sun is out, the yellow and brown bands wasps and hornets have on their bodies are able to absorb sunlight and are then able to convert it into electrical energy – which they, purportedly, use to conserve energy and carry out metabolic functions. Researchers also believe that they use up this energy to dig up nests and fight other insects.
Here’s what the paper says:
The complex structure of the cuticle is produced by extracellular secretion from the epidermis. It is constructed as a composite consisting of chitin filaments, structural proteins, lipids, catecholamine derivatives, and minerals. The Oriental hornet cuticle (the exoskeleton) exhibits a brown-yellow pattern…The yellow segments protect the cuticle from potentially harmful solar UV radiation, similar to the role of melanin in the brown color segments of the hornet’s body…The yellow segments contain xanthopterin, which is housed in an array of barrel-shaped granules…the voltage between the hypocuticle and the exocuticle of the yellow stripe showed a negative potential at the hypocuticle with respect to the positive exocuticle. In response to illumination of the yellow stripe, the difference in potentials between light and darkness increases…The fact that the Oriental hornet correlates its digging activity with insolation, coupled with the ability of its cuticular pigments to absorb part of the solar radiation, may suggest that some form of solar energy harvesting is performed in the cuticle.
– (Plotkin et al. 2010:1075)
Source [AskNature]
I haven’t been ever stung by a jelly fish, but from how Destin says it in the video, and other people I’ve seen getting bitten, tells me that it is something no one would want to experience in their life. If you did not know, the sting is awfully painful.
A jelly fish uses venom, not poison. They are two different things. Which means that a jellyfish stings you and uses extremely tiny hypodermic needle like things to inject toxins in your body.
But doesn’t jellyfish seem like a bunch of jelly floating around with no visible prickly parts? how does something so soft actually go about inserting something sharp into your skin?
Turns out, on the surface of those long tentacles these fish have, there are microscopic organelles called nematocysts which it uses to sting you. Even a tiny brush with those tentacles can trigger them. The more interesting part is that these tiny needles act very fast, and like I said, they are also very tiny. So, to see them you need a really high frame-rate camera attached to a microscope.
That is exactly what Destin does in the video below. It’s fascinating to see those tiny stingers do their work so fast under a microscope. Not many get a chance to see something like this.
Just FYI. In case you ever end up getting bitten by a jellyfish, please don’t ask your friend to pee on it. There’s a word going around that this helps, but in reality it doesn’t. In fact it can make it worse. Instead try washing it off with sea water. And then use a credit card to scratch the sting to remove any nematocysts stuck in your skin.
Don’t believe me? Please watch this…
It has perplexed humanity from as early as the Ancient Greeks. So which came first, the chicken or the egg? We take a crack at this curious conundrum.
The internet is full of media saying that pain can be measured in units called “del”. According to them 45 del is the limit of pain a human can endure and yet, they go on to say that child birth is associated with 57 del of pain (apparently it is equivalent to 20 bones getting fractured at a time) and getting kicked in the nuts is 9000 del of pain.
I know getting kicked in the nuts, or giving birth to a child is not a joke. It is indeed extreme pain. But if it’s more than what a human can endure, most of us shouldn’t be alive, going by the “del” logic.
Thanks to ASAP Science, I now know that there’s no unit of pain called del. It just doesn’t exist. Dol is something that quantifies pain to some extent. Still, pain is a subjective experience. So it’s hard to give it a standard number.
Super human strength comes with a price. While chimps have the muscle power to lift 16 people over their head, they do not have the accuracy of movement like we have. Agreed, we aren’t anywhere as powerful as chimps, but we sure are precise.
To most of us, looking at things from a distance, it often seems like the age of exploration is over. It seems like there’s not much left to be discovered. Only a few who strongly believe that the age of exploration is far from over, and work hard to keep exploring, end up finding new things.
Take for instance the part of ocean that remains unexplored and unseen by human eyes today. According to NOAA’s website this unexplored part is about 95%, even today!
In fact, it is estimated that 96% of the universe is made up of some mysterious thing (called the dark matter) which we haven’t even started to figure yet.
If you think that is taking it too far, we don’t even know our bodies completely yet. Just last year (in 2013) a new body part in the human body was discovered!
Nathan Wolfe, a biologist and explorer, talks about how most (as much as 40-50% of it) of the genetic information found in our own gastrointestinal tracts doesn’t classify under any kind of biological form we have ever known – Not plant, animal, virus, bacteria or fungus. Biologists call it the biological dark matter.
There are unknowns all around us and they are waiting to get discovered.
A deep sea dragonfish, or specifically Malacosteus niger, has a special pigment in its eyes which helps it see better in the deep dark sea. This pigment, isolated from the eyes of this dragonfish, in the year 1990, was found to be a derivative of Chlorophyll.
The marine biologist Ron Douglas of City University London, who was able to isolate it then, found that the pigment gave this fish an ability to absorb red light. Of course It did seem abnormal to find a chlorophyll derivative inside an animal’s eye. Moreover, the animal had learned to use it to enhance its vision! At that time it was conjectured that the chlorophyll came to the fish through some bacteria, and it somehow found a way to put it to good use.
A couple of years later (in 2004) an ophthalmic scientist at Columbia University Medical Centre read about it and started testing the derivative on other animal’s eyes. Recently, by using it on mice and rabbit eyes, the researcher has been able to enhance their night vision, by enhancing their eye’s ability to absorb red light.
It is highly possible that, in the near future, the pigment could somehow be made safe for human eyes, and be used to enhance their nightvision. Soon a better nightvision could be as easy as ingesting a pill, or using eye drops made out of this derivative. How great would it be for the special ops team! Of course, the U.S. Department of Defence is very interested, and has started funding his research now.
What do you think would a monkey do if it was treated wasn’t treated equally as another monkey? Would it actually know it was being treated unequally?
Yes, they know it very well. Wild monkeys who have never been tested with something like that also have this ability to figure out unequal treatment. In fact, their preference for food is often, as quipped by the professor in the video, in correlation with the particular food items price in the supermarket. They usually have a greater preference for a higher priced food, than a food which comes cheap. But that is only a fun way to say it – not always.
A monkey normally doesn’t mind doing a task for a cucumber. But they tend to like grapes more than a cucumber – remember, grapes are costlier at a supermarket. So, if you keep two monkeys who can watch each other while being fed. One is give cucumber, while the other is given grapes, chaos happens. Watch what happens in the video below.
It’s heartening to know that animals have a fairly good idea when they are being mistreated.
Mike, a Wyandotte rooster, born in the month of April (year 1945), was an average male chicken living an average chicken life at some barnyard in Fruita, Colorado. On September 10th 1945 this changed. The rooster was no longer a normal male chicken of some random barnyard. It was making news.
The second world war had ended and families no longer were required to cut down their consumption of meat. So, a farmer’s wife, Clara Olsen decided to treat her family with a nice meal after the numerous sacrifices made in the second world war. She asked her husband, Lloyd A. Olsen to chase down mike and kill Mike for the night’s meal.
Lloyd did exactly that. He took aim and cut off Mike’s head. Normally, like all the chickens make erratic movements after getting cut, Mike with no head on his body started running, spewing blood around too.
Unlike all the chickens who spurt out blood and no longer have enough of it to remain alive, Mike’s bleeding stopped after a while and he stood up. Now Mike was a headless chicken moving around the barnyard. With no eyes, or even a head for that matter, mike started walking around and running into objects.
Soon, Mike adapted to this situation and started living a normal life. Except, he was a chicken without a head. Mike went on to live for 18 months, sustaining on food and liquids that were dropped using a dropper into the hole in his neck. Mike sure had the will to live.
Mike was a celebrity now. Life magazine published a piece on him. People from all over the country came around, just to have a look at a live headless animal walking around like nothing had happened.
Mike, Mike, where is your head.
Even without it, you are not dead!
Was the song little girls then started singing while playing around at school
Confused, the farmer took Mike to the University of Utah to get him checked by researchers. It was found that the brain stem at the top of his neck didn’t get cut. He still had the part which controlled his motor functions, and that was, more or less, enough for a chicken to lead a headless life. Basically, just enough to move around and continue normal body functions – like to digest food and respond to stimuli.
Even today, Mike has a festival named after him – Mike The Headless Chicken Festival – which is Fruita’s highlight during the year.
via [RoadsideAmerica]
I had never heard of these creatures before. A couple of days back when I learnt about them, I was totally fascinated. Psuedoscorpions are teeny tiny bugs that look a lot like scorpions. They are also popularly known as false scorpions or book scorpions.
False because they aren’t really scorpions, and they don’t even have stingers like scorpions do. They do have those scorpion like claws. Book scorpions because they are often found in old dusty books.
Psuedoscorpions are very tiny. They are about one tenth of an inch long. Here’s is a comparison of it with a thumbnail.
They are found all over the world, and yet they aren’t seen around a lot because they are pretty secretive creatures. Other times when people do see them, they usually mistake them for a small spiders or ticks. If you happen to see one, don’t be scared because of their scorpion sounding name. They are harmless. Nor do they destroy any of your stuff.
More about it in the video below.