Category: Science and Tech

By Anupum Pant

Elephants are amazing creatures with an amazing memory. It is often said “an elephant never forgets”. Also elephants display intelligent behaviour all the time. They have an astounding capacity to tackle novel and unforeseen circumstances by rapid and effective change of behaviour. Here’s what happened once in India.

An elephant was ordered to follow a truck and was designated a task of lowering logs into holes that were already dug. It was doing the allotted task nicely, when suddenly it stopped. The animal refused to put in this new log that was supposed to be lowered into a hole. It held the log up in the air and waited. When the elephant mahaout went out to check what was wrong, he found a dog was sleeping inside the hole. Only when the dog was shooed away by the mahaout, the elephant went ahead and lowered the log in there.

But that is just one of those many instances when an elephant showed such flexible behaviour. The video below talks about more such instances. And you can read more here [Link]

By Anupum Pant

The human body is made up of around 10 trillion cells. That’s a number too huge to even imagine in the head. But the number of bacteria in a typical human body is about ten times that number. Yes, you are more bacteria than you are you. The good news is that most of them are good or benign ones. The whole community of other living organisms have a major impact on everything on your life. However, not everything is known about all the things in your body yet.

Similarly, the full mechanism of all the ways in which viruses affect us is still being studies. And an interesting study comes along.

Scientists from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Nebraska have discovered a kind of virus, which they call the “stupidity virus”, is something that they believe affects human intelligence. They don’t seem to make you unhealthy in any way. There’s a lot to be sceptical about it for now. But, considering the sheer amount of information we don’t have, let’s keep an open mind about it.

They found these viruses in throat cultures of a few healthy subjects. 44% of the healthy subjects who tested positive for this virus recorded an average of 7-9 IQ points less. I know, IQ tests can’t be trusted, but that’s fine.

At least, now you have someone to blame when you score low on your tests.

[read more]

By Anupum Pant

I was in the bus today. Considering the hot desert sun outside, it was fairly dark inside. The moment I stepped out,  sneezed. For once again it felt like there was something about the sun that made me sneeze. Instantly I was reminded of the countless times this has happened to me in the past. I asked a couple of friends and I found that most shared a similar experience. I had to find out more about it.

Turns out, about third of the people in our planet have their brains wired in a way that makes them sneeze when they see the sun – or more specifically, when a sudden change in light intensity occurs. It’s called photic sneeze reflex, photoptarmosis or simply “sun sneezing”. It’s one of those phenomena which are not totally understood till now, but there’s a good explanation for it.

It’s been noted for a long time. Even Aristotle had documented it in The Book of Problems. According to him it was the nose getting heated by the sun which caused it. However, his explanation for it wasn’t very accurate.

An English philosopher Francis Bacon proved his theory wrong by closing his eyes and letting his nose heat in the sun. He didn’t sneeze. His theory was that the sun made eyes water and the moisture in in turn irritated the nose, which causes you to sneeze. Not really.

This is how scientists explain it – As we all know, an irritation in the nose causes sneezing. That is because a nerve called trigeminal nerve senses irritation and sends a signal to the brain. This nerve is very close to the optic nerve. So, when the eye is exposed to sunlight, the optic nerve sends an electric signal to the brain. This signal, scientists think, leaks into the trigeminal nerve too and makes it fire a signal (saying “irritation”). And then you sneeze.

As it is understood presently, this is a genetic trait that is passed on to the offspring with a 50% chance of the offspring showing the same trait. So, if one parent sneezes in the sun, one out of two of his kids will have the same reflex.

[Read more]

By Anupum Pant

On the seabed, a mysterious geometrically symmetric circular pattern measuring about 6.5 feet in diameter was spotted. The pattern resembled crop circles. The artist wasn’t known for some time and there were many stories sprouting on the internet.

It was found later using underwater cameras that the artist was a puffer fish. Male puffer fish make this beautiful sculpture to attract a female puffer fish. It has since been observed that more ridges and more shells a male puffer fish adorns its sculpture with, more are the chances it would attract a mate.

By Anupum Pant

Of course there are owls like the burrowing owl and the short-eared owl  who are active during the day, but most owls hunt in the darkness. The ones who hunt at night rely on stealth to surprise and catch their prey. For this, owls have evolved in a really beautiful manner.

Firstly, owls have very dull coloured feathers which allow it to blend with the surroundings. At night, or even during the day, such colours make them virtually invisible among tree barks and leaves. Do you see an owl in this picture? Trust me, there is one. Try looking closely.

But there’s another more interesting way by which owls are able to execute the silent kill. Over the years, they have evolved to produce feathers which have tiny serrations on one edge of some of their feathers. These reduce the wing flap sound significantly.

More interestingly, owls who hunt fish, who don’t need to be silent, don’t have these serrations. That’s because it serves no evolutionary advantage for them.

By Anupum Pant

I talked about chillies the other day. It’s really interesting how plants evolved to spread their seeds and migrate to places.

When seeds drop off near a plant, it’s bad for the mother plant because the young one starts to compete with it, for food and nutrients – not a very good thing to keep your genetic line alive. So to avoid this from happening plants adapted by putting their seeds in these sweet things called fruits. As if inviting animals and humans to pick it, eat it and throw the seed at some place far away. In case the seeds get eaten, they usually don’t get digested and still fall out with the droppings to some new place. Also to prevent seeds from going away before they were mature, as they were pumped with a chemical called tanin, unripe fruits evolved to be dry and sharp tasting.

But cranberry plants thought of trying something different. Instead of wasting precious sugar by putting them in fruits, they put in tanin into the cranberries – which is what gives that not-sweet taste to cranberries. That also meant the fuits would taste bad and animals won’t eat them (but we still do, all those years of evolution for nothing?). To get transported to places far away, cranberries got a design that featured an air pocket inside so they’d float. When the fruit becomes ripe, it drops onto the water, floats and goes to a distant place to spread the genetic line.

To make it worse for the evolutionary plan, cranberries floating in water makes it even easier for humans to harvest them.