Category: Biology

By Anupum Pant

There’s a game on Android and iOS called Blendoku. In it, you are given a bunch of colours and are expected to arrange them into a gradient. Most levels are doable. But at times you get stuck and only trial and error seems to get you ahead. That’s because sometimes when the colours given to you to arrange into a smooth gradient are so close to each other, it becomes very tough for you to distinguish between them.

However, some women don’t seem to have that problem with arranging colours like this. These woman, due to a special gene found only in women, are blessed with something called tetrachromacy – a kind of a super vision.

Normally, humans have 3 kinds of cones, each of which is sensitive to red, blue and green. Some women, have a fourth kind of cone, supposedly a yellow one and are able to see 100 times as many colours as we see. To them, two colours which seem completely indistinguishable to you are clearly different. They can’t explain what they see. Just like you can’t explain the colour red to a blind person. The only way to determine that they do have a super ability is to check their genetic make up.

By Anupum Pant

Anand Varma, a photographer recently started keeping bees in his backyard. That was because National geographic had asked him to shoot a bee related video. He teamed up with a bee lab from UC davis and learned how to actually raise bees.

After a couple of months living with the bees, and understanding the problems (pesticides, diseases and habitat loss, and a blood sucking parasite) they’ve been facing lately, Anand Varma came out with this amazing timelapse video of life of a bee, right from the day it is only an egg.

By Anupum Pant

If you ever spot a bird stealing stuff from your picnic basket, especially things made up of bright plastic, which isn’t even food, don’t be surprised. There’s a great chance it might be a male bowerbird.

The male bowerbird, to woo the females has to amass blue coloured things. So, remember that all the blue stuff you take to the picnic might not come back.

By Anupum Pant

A tadpole’s life is tough. In the initial few days, before it can move around with ease, it is susceptible to becoming the dinner of several other creatures. But the darwin’s frog, a frog wich looks like a leaf, grows to be about 2-4 cm at most, has a trick up its sleeve to avoid this.

After the female has laid eggs and the ones that have hatched, the male frog of this species gobbles up its kids and keeps them in its vocal sac to raise them. The tadpoles grow inside the male’s vocal sac and when they are ready to face the outside world, the father spits out his sons.

By Anupum Pant

I consider the phrase “organic foods” mostly a farce and there’s a reason behind it. Since agriculture began, farmers have, for generations after generations, picked the most desirable traits, like the best colour, size, taste etc. Today, the average vegetable or fruit you see in the market is easily labelled organic, as long as it has been grown with certain conditions met.

In reality the average fruit or vegetable has gone a drastic change in its genes and has transformed in appearance since back then. So much that you wouldn’t even recognize the old real varieties of fruits if they were placed in front of you. In fact, broccoli didn’t even exist back then. But that is probably fine, because the kind of genetic selection was mostly a slow and natural process with a tiny bit of human intervention when it comes to selecting the best traits. Just like the muscular Belgian cows which aren’t exactly GMOs.

For fun, let’s look at this infographic which shows what a watermelon looked like and what it looks like now, after extensive selection breeding.

See that tiny watermelon? Today the heaviest one ever grown was more than 121 kilograms. More of these infographics can be found at [Vox]

Okay, like I said, that is mostly natural. But there are not so natural ways that have been figured out to speed  up the selection process.

Mutations or physical variations in cultivation is where it started. But it was a very slow process. Picking the best traits generation after generation.

A much faster process of making several kinds of variations emerged in the year 1940. This time, plant breeders approached the tedious problem  of selection with a fairly new tool called atomic radiation.

Scientists soon found that when plants were exposed to radiation, it would damage (or simply scramble) the DNA and would cause a random mutation every time. This approach helped them generate a vast number of random, good and bad mutations at a much higher rate than the natural way. And larger number of variants meant, larger probability of finding the most desirable state very fast. We no longer had to wait for generations.

Thousands of variants produced by this kind of mutation breeding, either by radiation like gamma rays, thermal neutrons, X-rays or by exposure to certain chemicals have been recorded in the government’s database at – IAEA.

One great example of this is the ruby red grapefruit. As wikipedia tells us…

Using radiation to trigger mutations, new varieties were developed to retain the red tones which typically faded to pink. The Rio Red variety is the current (2007) Texas grapefruit with registered trademarks Rio Star and Ruby-Sweet, also sometimes promoted as “Reddest” and “Texas Choice”. The Rio Red is a mutation bred variety which was developed by treatment of bud sticks with thermal neutrons. Its improved attributes of mutant variety are fruit and juice colour, deeper red, and wide adaptation

And if you are one of those who don’t believe in wikipedia quotes, then here’s an extract from a book called Radiation and Modern Life: Fulfilling Marie Curie’s Dream By Alan E. Waltar…

 

Although I’m not suggesting that it is dangerous to eat these kind of fruits and vegetables, I’m making a point that the whole organic food industry is a farce designed to make your pockets lighter.

Crops produced through this kind of mutation breeding has been sold safely in every supermarket store today. No labels whatsoever are placed on them that mention these unnatural genetic alterations that were done to create the delicious fruit of the day. These are even be labelled organic when they are grown with organic food production requirements. They need not undergo any separate testing. But is clearly not very organic when you consider its genetic origin.

By Anupum Pant

Ninja slug is one of those 100 new species (since as 2007) that have been found in Sabah Borneo, an island in Malaysia. These are the longest insects (although not insects, they are more closely related to Octopi) among any new ones that have been found. They are only found in a fairly high altitude region of Borneo, from 1200 to 1900 meters. They live on tree leaves. And since they are slugs, they of course don’t carry around their own homes (read shells). Actually, no. More about the shells later.

In the map below marked with a red place marker, in the whole wide world, these ninja slugs are found just there. No where else.

They have long tail-like-things, about three times the size of their heads, behind their bodies which are usually wrapped around their bodies like a cat would normally do while sleeping. That is the reason they were almost given a scientific name with “Felis” in it. But the scientist who first discovered it wanted to name it after his girlfriend. and he called it “Ibycus Rachelae”.

These creatures fall into a category known as the semi-slugs. That means they sort of have a shell on them, but it isn’t a shell that’s enough for them to live in.

What is most interesting about them, the actual reason I even decided to write about these ninja slugs is their unusual breeding ritual. The males of these slugs are probably considered dangerous by their females. That’s because the males like to fire hard harpoons like darts made of CaCo3 towards their females during their mating process. Also commonly known as “love darts.” – as shown in the electron microscope image here. And that’s how we gave them the name, ninja slugs.

These harpoons penetrate the skin of the female and are said to create a hormone in the female which probably increases the chance of the  male impregnating the female.

Life’s certainly tough in the slug world.

By Anupum Pant

If you ever get a chance to pet a shark, remember to not pet it with a stroke from its belly to its spine. Any other direction is fine. But that one will get you into trouble. There’s a reason for this…

Shark skin is a lot like any other fish’s skin. Full of scales. However, shark scales come with a twist. Their scales, called the dermal scales are made up of thousands of miniature shark teeth.These look like bristles macroscopically and help shark move better in water by pushing water down.

Much more about sharks in Robert Hueter’s talk below…

By Anupum Pant

Denial of service attack is a hacker’s way of shutting down a website by flooding it with useless traffic. It is literally creating a traffic jam with useless traffic that doesn’t allow the good, genuine traffic to pass by. You do a similar thing with your brain all the time, without knowing that you are doing it. Nikola explains how…

By Anupum Pant

When you are at rest, about 10-20% of the energy you consume is consumed by the brain. That’s how much fuel it burns! Also, thinking hard can actually burn more calories than not working up your brain. But before you may think that this could be the best way to lose weight, you should consider again.

“Levels of Blood-glucose levels dropped when people were asked to perform intellectually challenging tasks than those who did simple tasks.”

That’s because, as compared to an average idle mind, which burns about 0.2 calories a minute, the brain burns about 1.5 calories per minute when it is thinking hard. That’s still not enough to keep you fit, considering a single chocolate chip cookie adds about 150-200 calories to your body.

By Anupum Pant

The mango tree, the avocado tree, and the ginko biloba shouldn’t be here. They should have been long dead.

Trees depend on animals or other such external agents to disperse their seeds. As animals can’t breakdown seeds, they eat the nice fruits and let the seeds out in some other place where a new plant grows.

But the trees I mentioned above have either seeds that are massive, or have stinky seeds like the ginko biloba. These plants depended on animals that no longer exist. The avocado tree, for instance depended on probably a massive ground sloth who could eat the avocados whole without choking to death. Or Ginko biloba probably depended on an animal which loved those stinky seeds. They are long gone. But the trees live by. Thanks to us humans – who plant mango trees and avocado trees because they are tasty. and the Ginko biloba because they give a nice shade.

By Anupum Pant

A brightly coloured truck originating from a mosquito factory nearby, loaded with millions of mosquitoes, goes by, making a loud announcement through the massive loud speaker system mounted on its top saying something like, “We are releasing millions of genetically engineered mosquitoes in your area.” How would you react to something like that? I’d be stunned. Although it’s no reason for me to be startled, I’d still run for my life. You’d probably do the same, unless you are in the small town of Jacobina, Brazil and you know exactly what’s going on.

Something similar is happening in other places like Cayman and Malaysia too.

Chikungunya and dengue  fever are very nasty tropical diseases which are spread by the Aedes mosquitoes. These can lead to troublesome syndromes and also cause death. And malaria is already a big killer, taking about 600,000 lives every year. Widespread in Africa, Asia, and India, these diseases have now spread to the Caribbean, and the US too.

Not many people are really putting innovation into making this stop. The usual methods to deal with mosquitoes like poisoning water where they lay eggs and fogging small areas are still the only state-of-the-art methods that are in use. One company, oxitec, wants to do more.

What do you think you need to stop dengue, chikungunya and malaria from spreading? Oxitec thinks, more mosquitoes is the solution. But there’s a catch to it. The more mosquitoes they are putting in the system are actually genetically modified mosquitoes – killer mosquitoes.

Oxitec factories, like one world’s largest mosquito factory somewhere in Brazil is making male mosquitoes that have their genes altered. So, when these are released and they start mating, they produce an offspring that does not survive for very long. So it never grows up to bite. If enough GMO males are released from time to time, and the numbers of females are less, this method works the best.

See how these factories work – Link

There’s still a lot of things this method has to prove to the government to make it a standard method to eliminate mosquitoes.

There are of course some problems associated with the process. Like one being: The method is based on the principle that male mosquitoes do not bite and only the safe kind of gender, genetically modified males will be released. But the process which makes these, makes about 300 females in a 3 million male population. That’s the error. And no one knows what happens when a GMO female mosquito bites you. That’s one reason it is still under review of the food and drug administrations.

via [TheGuardian] [Oxitec]

By Anupum Pant

99% of the species that ever lived have now become extinct. Most of this wiping of animal species is caused by certain events that suddenly happen from time to time.

About 440 Million years ago, most species (86% of all the species) were killed when shallow sea waters got frozen due to global cooling because all the carbon dioxide was sucked away by volcanic rock..

347 Million years ago some thing similar happened, but this time all of the oxygen from water was sucked away by algae – too many plants.

250 Million years ago, during the permian extinction, 70% of land and  95% of ocean life was wiped off the face of earth. This was when volcanic gases destroyed the ozone layer, ocean temperatures rose to an average of 40 degree Celsius and acid started raining from the heavens.

Only 50 million years later a huge rift cracked earth, split the america and europe and spewed massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Uncontrolled global warming killed more than 80% of all the species which had tried to recover in these 50 million years.

Soon bigger dinosaurs started roaming the earth and were believed to have been wiped off by a massive asteroid the size of a small town which made such a huge impact that it blew massive amounts of dust in the air, blocked the sunlight and killed all dinosaurs.

Now, human population burst has created an unusual imbalance in the planet. Massive amounts of CO2 is already being thrown into the air – increased 25% in the last 50 years. The population of one species is unusually high. Thanks to the world dominated by us, the rate of species getting extinct is about thousand times higher than the natural rate!! That’s a certain 6th mass extinctions is soon to come – in about the next hundred years. As always, it will hurt us, the species at the top of the chain, worst, and also because the probability of it hitting us would be massively higher than it hitting any other species. It’s coming, and nothing that’s going on now looks like it’s going to stop.

However, on the brighter side, there are so many of us that the probability of some of us not getting killed by the massive extinctions is also pretty high. In that case, for those some of us who manage to escape it, life will be tough. But, they’ll carry our race further? We can only wait and watch.

By Anupum Pant

Very recently, Varvara, a gray whale has seem to have broken the world record for the longest migration by a mammal. A study published in the biology letters mentions this gray whale which travelled from Russia to Mexico and then back travelled approximately 14,000 miles in 172 days, beating the previous world record of the humpback whale which was at around 10,000 miles.

But that’s tiny compared to birds. Birds like Arctic Tern, which holds the world record for the longest migration by any creature known, travels from Greenland to Antarctica after a zigzag path that’s about 44,000 miles away.

The final prize however goes to the Alaskan bar-tailed godwit, because when it goes it doesn’t stop. In a flight lasting for about 8 days, the bird goes from Alaska to New-zealand, about 7000 miles with no stops whatsoever!

India has a problem of men zipping open their pants and starting to pee on random walls on a street. That’s not to demean my country, but I’m sure most developing countries face a problem similar to this one. It is a fact and I can’t deny that. These people sure had one interesting way to deal with it. But there’s another one.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade is a common thing people like to say. So, when a country gives you a lot of under educated men peeing on the streets, give them lemon trees.

Yes, it works. Of course it comes with a flavour no one would like to have, it sure does nourish the citrus trees. Human urine is more than 90% water and rest of it, besides the bad odour of it is mostly nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Definitely a better thing to give to citrus plants, than your pet’s pee. Just make sure you do not contaminate the fruit, or the leaves themselves. Rest, the tree will take care.

Here’s what Tangurena has to say:

Urine is very high in nitrogen. One can observe how plants handle the quantities humans would produce by observing the yards of people with large dogs. Plants usually get “burned” from the quantity of nitrogen deposited by the dogs.

If your compost heap has a lot of straw/cellulose, then it probably needs more nitrogen. If you want to use your own stuff to fertilize plants, mix it about 50% with water in a bucket (or watering can) then apply it to plants. Fill the bucket/watering can indoors, and wash it out afterwards.

By Anupum Pant

This eagle seems to have perfected the art of grabbing goats by their weakest parts and pushing them off a cliff to serve itself dinner. Who said a bird can’t kill a big animal like a goat?

Reminds me of that fish which jumps out of water and grabs a bird flying in mid air.