Category: Biology

By Anupum Pant

In the year 2013, a whole colony of baboons, consisting of 112 individuals started acting weird suddenly. No one had an idea what had happened, nor does anyone know for sure even now.

Completely opposite to what they usually did, like moving around, grooming each other or getting into tiny fights, they sat still, facing away from the visitors. It seemed as if they had gone on a strike, for no apparent reason. Of course there must have been a reason. But it couldn’t be figured out.

They were brought food by the zoo keepers. Normally they’d have ran towards the person carrying meals, this time they didn’t. Even the apples and other fruits that were placed around in their perimeter remained untouched.

This wasn’t the first time this was seen by the zoo keepers. This had happened three more times in the past. In the year 1994, 1997 and 2007. The 2007 was even more weirder because all of them were facing the same direction during the “strike”.

As always, conspiracy theorists said that they must have seen a UFO, or a snake more realistically. But that couldn’t have happened as the zoo keepers didn’t find any missing snakes in the zoo. Nor were they following the emotions of a depressed leader, as theorized by someone, because in the past years when this had happened, the colony had different leaders. It was also said that some visitor might have scared them by sporting a bright shirt with a print of some predator on it, but in that case they’d have been moving around more, not sitting still like this.

No one knows for sure why this happened.

via [Listverse]

By Anupum Pant

As we get older we become far more selfish, being altruistic then is something that requires extra effort. Although some of us retain the ability to give without expecting anything back, most of us don’t. Something changes while we grow up. It probably has something to do with the kind of environment we’re raised in.

I say we lose this ability as we grow because it has been proven now that we are naturally altruistic. Researchers at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, show in their experiments how little kids have an innate impulse to offer assistance when a person shows that they need it.

In fact, chimps do this too. However they aren’t very enthusiastic about offering help when something seems to be out of reach. But we sure share this spontaneous altruistic motivation with chimpanzees. It certainly has deep evolutionary roots.

By Anupum Pant

For the last few days the internet has split into two factions. One, who see the dress (everyone knows which dress) as blue and black, while the people from the other group see gold and white.

Well, it of course is blue and is kind of an illusion which this image explains the best. CGP Grey tweeted this, and he’s probably one of the most reasonable man on the internet. And then there was the ASAPscience’s video about Colour constancy –  a feature of the human colour perception system which ensures that the perceived colour of objects remains relatively constant under varying illumination conditions. That I must say is the final word on it. Please let’s be done with this now.

By Anupum Pant

“Imagine an alien that could float through space with a giant brain shaped like a doughnut, eight arms on its head and three hearts pumping blue blood.”

This thing that I’m talking about is no alien. It’s the cuttlefish – A flesh eating creature that can hide from predators pretty well. Of course octopus does it well, cuttle fish does it better!

This interesting long documentary talks a lot about the kings of camouflage. You might want to check the first few minutes.

By Anupum Pant

Remember the time I talked about melatonin? Well, Dr. Wiseman tells us again, the art of good sleep. It all comes down to not looking at your smartphones, or any other screens, before going to bed. In fact, keep them away, or face down, even when they are on a shelf close to the bed.

By Anupum Pant

Vultures are usually associated with death. Like if you see a vulture circling above, you’d think something died. So, all you might think about them is that they are creepy. Of course they are. They have an uncanny ability to digest contaminated meat. Also, there’s more.

When vultures are stressed, they vomit. Probably this makes them lighter to move away faster. It also probably serves an evolutionary purpose for them by preventing the ingestion of something harmful, and by expelling noxious substances once ingested. Who knows they do it for something else. But one thing is for sure, if you see a group of vultures perched up  above, don’t try to hurl a pebble towards them, they’ll probably send a stream a vomit towards you.

Vultures also urinate on their own feet. It is believed that they do this because it helps to keep them cool, given they can’t sweat like we do. It’s also believed that their urine helps them to keep their feet free of all the dangerous microbes from the rotten flesh they feed on.

So, that’s about vultures and their unusual habits.

By Anupum Pant

When the amount of light is low, everyone knows that your pupils become larger (they dilate, as it is said). Now dilated pupils make people look more attractive and this has been known since the 16th century when women would use a solution made out of a toxic plant called Belladona to make their pupils big, and make themselves appear more attractive to men. But that used to make their eyes go bad with time.

Instead this is what Dr. Wiseman advices. Take your date to a candle light dinner. There’s a scientific reason why these dinners work. Both your pupils dilate and both appear more attractive to each other. Dang!

Although in the initial test which he does in the video, I thought the left picture was better because it looked less scary to me. So candle light dinner probably won’t work for me.

By Anupum Pant

I love watching animals using camouflage to blend into their environments. We’ve seen in the past that some octopus have a really good ability to blend into their surroundings, to either save themselves from predators, or be efficient in catching prey.

This preying Mantis, after it has reached a certain age, turns into a mild pink colour and sits on top of plants. An untrained eye would perceive it as just another flower. But if you care to look carefully enough, you’ll see that it’s a Preying Mantis. It’s easier to see it in the video though.

By Anupum Pant

It’s sad that elephant tusks are interesting items and attract ivory poachers. But their other teeth, are more interesting in a way because they actually determine the natural lifetime of an elephant.

Elephant’s main diet consists of grass, and it’s high in silica – a very abrasive material. At any point of time, an elephant uses only one tooth in each of their half jaw – a total of four teeth in the mouth. They use their teeth in sequence, one by one. As abrasive material wears their tooth out badly in the front, it is pushed and replaced by the tooth growing behind it. This replacement happens only 6 times. And every new teeth is stronger than the previous one.

The last molar usually erupts at the age of 25 and lasts longer than the other. The elephant has to manage it well because this one serves it for the rest of its life. So, they rip the grass out and shake it off to drop most of the silica off their roots. When this wears, the elephant can no longer chew its food properly. Thus malnutrition sets in and the elephant dies by the time it is 60-70 years old.

In controlled environments like zoos, elephants are usually fed with softer food after all their teeth are gone which enables them to live slightly longer this way.

Kangaroos have a similar thing going on in their mouths too.

A company that would make elephant dentures could probably be a very profitable company due to the great demand of its product – it would extend the life of elephants. However, it’d be tough to find elephants with jobs who could pay for a luxury like this.

By Anupum Pant

Jane wasn’t a “scientist”, but she has been around chimps for five decades. It all started when she was twenty four years old. Since then she has gotten close to chimpanzees, learned their behaviour and culture in great detail, developed a deep relationship with them, and has helped to bridge the gap between humans and animals. At first, the scientific community did not receive her studies well, but soon they had to.

Through subsequent years, Jane opened the world’s eyes to the complexity and richness of chimpanzee communities, writing of close family bonds, dominance struggles among males, human-like communications such as pats on the back and hugs, and much more.

Here are two touching videos which capture the essence of her life’s work.