Tag: food

Superstitious Pigeons

By Anupum Pant

B.F. Skinner was an American psychologist, a behaviorist, and a social philosopher. He was also the inventor of the operant conditioning chamber – A.K.A the Skinner box, is a box which is used to study animal behaviour. For example, you can use it to train an animal to perform certain actions in response to some input, like light or sound.

Using one of his favourite animals, he designed an experiment where he trained a pigeon in order to examine the formation of superstitious beliefs in animals. Here’s what he did.

He placed a couple of pigeons in his setup which was designed to deliver food to them after certain intervals. Of all the things, the timing of food delivery by this apparatus wasn’t related to one thing for sure – behaviour or actions of the bird.

And yet, after some time in this automated setup, the pigeons developed certain associations which made them belief that the food came when they did something. They had developed superstitious beliefs.

For instance:

One bird was conditioned to turn counter-clockwise about the cage, making two or three turns between reinforcements. Another repeatedly thrust its head into one of the upper corners of the cage. A third developed a ‘tossing’ response, as if placing its head beneath an invisible bar and lifting it repeatedly. Two birds developed a pendulum motion of the head and body, in which the head was extended forward and swung from right to left with a sharp movement followed by a somewhat slower return. – Wikipedia

The bird behaviour isn’t much different from what humans do…

The pigeons started believing in a causal relationship between its behaviour and delivery of food, even when there was nothing like that.

It’s almost like the humans blowing on the dice, or throwing it harder to make a favourable number appear. Even when blowing or throwing a dice harder doesn’t hold any causal relationship with the event of good numbers turning up.

During other times, when people bowl down a bowling ball and twist  their bodies towards right to make the ball go right, they have in fact unknowingly developed a superstitious belief, just like the pigeons that there’s a causal relationship between turning their bodies and curving of the bowling ball. In reality, there’s nothing like that. The ball goes where it has to, irrespective of how they turn their bodies.

Just like in the superstitious pigeon’s case, the food would have appeared anyway. The pigeon didn’t have to do something to get it.

via [Wikipedia]

White Sand is Mostly Parrot Fish Poop

By Anupum Pant

Walking on the sparkling white sand on a sunny beach in Hawaii, sounds wonderful, right? Who’d even think, the white sand on Hawaii beaches, which people love walking on, is actually something that is excreted by a certain kind of fish called the Parrot fish…at least most of it – about 70% of it is poop.

Now, I suppose people walking on the beach must be all grossed out. But they shouldn’t be. It isn’t too bad after all. The sand (poop) doesn’t even smell like anything bad. It looks and feels completely fine. There’s actually no reason to be grossed out.

This is how it works…

The Parrot fish spends most of its time eating sea weed and polyps which grows on coral most of the time. When it tries to puck it off, thanks to the protruded mouth of a parrot fish, it scoops off a part of coral too. The coral and sea weed mixes and gets crushed in its throat.

The sea weed and polyps eventually get digested, while the crushed coral comes out as it is. As a result, it poops out the undigested  crushed coral.

Interestingly, in the process of taking off a chunk of coral and munching it, the parrot fish does two good things.

Firstly, it helps the coral in removing all the parasites and other things growing on it. The fish is considered to be a natural cleaner of corals. Had there been no parrot fish, corals would have died.

Secondly, the parrot fish does a great service to its own beak in this process. As a result, the beaks don’t grow too much.

The parrot fish eats a lot, and each one of them can produce about 100 kg of “sand” every year. It has been confirmed by scientists that about 70% of the sand that is present on all the tropical beaches has come out of the back side of a parrot fish at some point of time.

This is what a parrot fish looks like and this is how it poops out sand…

Bonus fact: Our planet is old and fresh water is less. So, it’s valid to say that all the water molecules that are there now have passed through something really bad, and there’s a high chance that all of it has passed someone’s urinary tract at some point.

The New York Pizza and Subway Ride Connection

By Anupum Pant

This is funny and interestingly true at the same time. According to Eric M. Bram of New York, there’s an unspoken rough law that says – there’s a connection between the price trends of a pizza* and a subway ride ticket in the New York city.

Their prices have remained more or less same for about 50 years now, moving up and down together! If one goes up, the other has been seen to move in the same direction too. The trend has been observed to be more or less valid for the last half century. 

Don’t ask why. I say, just go with the flow.

It was first observed in the year 1980 by Eric M. Bram. He observed that there was an uncanny similarity in the price of a slice of a pizza and a subway token in the year 1960, in the NYC – Both 15 cents.

In the 70s pizza started costing about 35 cents. So did the subway token! and so on…

Fairly recently, in the year 2002, when the price of pizza was about $2.00, and the price of a subway token was $1.50, it was predicted that the price of the subway ticket would rise. And as the “law” states, it did!

Again in the year 2005, the price of pizza went up to $2.25 and it was predicted that the subway token price would rise. It did again!

Once again in the year 2007. In 2013 the fare moved to $2.50, again just after the average pizza price had risen to the same price. No one probably knows why.

With 50 years of record, I’m pretty sure that the trend is going to keep up. Some one from the future, living in New York could confirm it in the comments section below.

So, if someone starts mass producing pizzas, floods the pizza market in the NYC, and drops the price, will the Subway ticket drop too? Someone should try that. 

*When we say pizza here, specifically, we are talking about a plain tomato + mozarella + crust pizza only.

Genius Stray Dogs of Moscow

By Anupum Pant

Back in the old days, there weren’t as many fast food centres and restaurants in Moscow (anywhere actually). So, stray dogs of those times didn’t find many people holding food stuff. Instead of begging for food, the dogs preferred searching for it on their own. Probably bins of residences and factories were the best places to find food.

Soon, fast food centres and restaurants started pooping and factories started converting into shopping centres, in the new world. This changed something. Dogs started feeling a need to adapt to the city life. For one, their strategies to forage for food changed. Stray dogs started developing better techniques to get food.

Gathering Food in a City

They started sneaking behind people who carried food. And just when they felt the moment was right, they barked. The men got scared and dropped the food. Moreover, they’d jump and bark just behind the head of people to startle them. They don’t bite, their aim is to just get the food somehow. Other times, packs of dogs send out smaller and cuter dogs to beg for food!
To make their food finding efficient, they have figured out which one of the many people would actually get startled. Dogs turned into dog psychologists. The dogs of today know Muscovites better than Muscovites know the dogs.

Travelling in the Subway

Besides that, the stray dogs of Moscow have mastered using the subways. To travel across the great city, the dogs move around in the subways with the humans as if it’s totally normal. Unlike the domesticated dogs, these dogs have mastered the art of handling dog stress that is associated with loud sounds. What scares the domesticated dogs, has become normal for the stray dogs of Moscow now.

The most amazing part is that, even if they can’t read, they somehow know where to get in and where to get out. Scientists are guessing that it could be the signature scents they associate with various stations. Or may be there’s something else. It’s hard to know. That is the reason there are people who’ve been formally studying local stray dogs for 30 years now!

The thing is, even the city people love these dogs. In fact, they even have a dog’s memorial statue in one of the subway station. Watch how the city dogs move in train…

By watching the traffic lights, dogs there have even learnt to cross the street. After I read and watched what these dogs have been doing, I’ve found new respect for these seemingly “not so clever” animals.

Still they have a long way to go before they can get as smart as crows of Japan. [Link]

Practical, Impractical and Bizarre Ways to Lose Weight

By Anupum Pant

Here are some impractical, practical and bizarre ways to lose weight scientifically:

1. Practical – Switch to Smaller Plates [Study]

While it may sound like switching plates won’t help your diet, it actually greatly affects the way you see, and consume food. In the long run it helps you lose weight effortlessly.

If you don’t believe me, I suggest you look at the following common optical illusion – Tell me which one of the circle that is filled with black color, is larger?

You know the answer. Although they don’t look equal to our not-so-smart brain, both of the circles are really equal in size. But what does that tell you?

Moral: Think of the black circle as food. Put it in a larger plate and you think it is less food, and you don’t mind adding little more food to it. Whereas, if you use smaller plates, the amount food looks like it is a lot already. As a result, if you own only small plates, you won’t add more food. Who am I to tell you that little changes give big results.

It has been proven by scientists that using smaller standard plates will reduce your consumption by around 20% every time. 20% is not less!

Note: Similarly, if you want to drink less, you could try replacing your short and stout glasses with taller glasses. This technique is based on another optical illusion known as the T-Illusion – which says that we tend to over-estimate the length of objects placed vertically. See it for yourself. [link]

Other Good Ways: In fact, before moving on to the bad ways, you must know that there are several good ways to lose weight without even trying hard. For instance:

  • Drinking good amounts of cold water can help to some extent.
  • Or, you could try making it a rule to turn away and use stairs, every single time you come across an escalator.
  • When you are travelling in a bus, make it a rule to always get down one stop before your destination.
  • An apple before breakfast everyday can help you lose weight by making you feel full due to its fiber content. – [Source]
  • Just place a mirror in your kitchen or your refrigerator door. Yes, that helps. How? See this – [Video]

2. Bizarre – Excessive Gum Chewing? [Study]

Wait! Before you try this, let me tell you, this is one of those impractical / bizarre ways to experience severe weight loss I was talking about in the first line of this post. Since excess of anything isn’t good – backed by the fact that in ancient China people committed suicide by eating a pound of salt – chewing excess gum probably isn’t a good way to lose weight. I mention it just for the sake of information.

Sugar-free chewing gums contain Sorbitol – a laxative. Chewing these in excessive amounts – about 15+ a day – can cause serious weight loss and chronic diarrhea.

You’ll end up in the hospital if you try this.

3. Impractical – Don’t get Married. [Study]

Although deciding to remain single all your life is not so impractical for everybody, you could consider it socially impractical (at least in orthodox Indian societies).

Yes, studies prove that Married men were 25% more likely to be overweight or obese than single men or men in committed relationship (i.e. dating or engaged). – Thanks to UsefulScience.org

Now, go and subscribe the budding 59 Seconds channel on YouTube and buy the book. That is what I am doing…

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Radiotrophic Fungi Feeds on Gamma Radiation

By Anupum Pant

Background

On April 26th 1986 a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine and is still considered the worst nuclear power plant accident ever (another one happened in Japan recently). The massive explosion spewed out huge amounts of radioactive particles into the air which spread till Europe.

As a result of this tragedy, it was reported that 31 people died within a few months due to acute radiation sickness. In total, more than 200 people were affected. It is estimated that deaths caused due to cancer by Chernobyl may be around 4,000 among the 5 million persons living in the surrounding area.

The disaster was responsible for turning green trees, in the 10 square kilometers of pine forest around the reactor, into red trees. Eventually the trees died and the forest has been called the “Red Forest” ever since.

Today, an area covering 30 km in all directions from the power plant has been labeled as the “zone of alienation“. Mostly it is uninhabited by humans (excluding those 300 odd residents who have decided that they won’t leave). Till date, the radiation levels remain extremely high. Workers who are responsible for rebuilding the place are only allowed to work for a maximum of five hours a day for one month and are asked to take a 15 day rest after that.

With an environment where the radiation level even today is about 500 times higher than the normal environment, it is estimated that the area will remain uninhabitable for humans for the next 20,000 years.

But something lives inside the still-highly-radioactive ruins

Few years back when a robot was sent into the devastated reactor, it returned with samples from the walls of the ruined power plant. These samples contained a black colored substance which piqued the researchers’ interests.

After performing several tests on these samples they concluded that the black samples comprised of two kinds of fungi. Both of them contained a pigment called melanin (the pigment that colors our skins). The fungi had been using melanin to convert radiation into chemical energy. It was mind-boggling for everyone to learn that amidst the toxic sarcophagus a creature was living and was feeding on gamma radiation for making food and to grow. Scientists decided to call it, the “radiotrophic fungi” – the fungi which feeds on gamma radiation.

It is like plants using solar radiation for making food, just that, in this case, the frequency of the electromagnetic radiation being used, is different.

Feeding the spacemen

Scientists say, since the pigment is also present in our skins, and as ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space, in the future, astronauts could probably rely on melanin as a source of food during long missions or for living on other planets; Just like the radiotrophic fungi does.

According to Dr Casadevall:

While it wouldn’t be enough energy to fuel a run on the beach, maybe it could help you to open an eyelid.

Taste Areas on the Tongue is a Lie

By Anupum Pant

Background

At some point in your school education, each one of your science books has shown you the ‘tongue map’ [Image]. There are solid demarcated boundaries shown in that diagram. The boundaries shown enclose areas on your tongue which exclusively specialize in tasting specific kinds of tastes. According to it:

  • The back of your tongue is responsible for the bitter taste.
  • Sides are responsible for sour and salty tastes.
  • And the tip is for tasting sweet stuff.

What it is really?

Unfortunately, it may be hard to digest the fact that taste areas don’t work that way. Although some parts are slightly more sensitive to specific tastes, mostly, all parts of your tongue can taste all the four (or five, or six) tastes almost equally. There are no taste area demarcations. Please don’t unsubscribe me for debunking something that you’ve believed in all these years.

Agreed it isn’t completely BS, you can call it an oversimplification of something. But one thing is for sure – It shouldn’t be shown on science books. The worst part – We have known this fact for more than 30 years and we still continue to propagate the misconception in school textbooks.

Where did this start?

It started a century back when a German scientist D.P. Hainig did a study which relied on subjective whims of his subjects. In five words, it was not very scientific. They were asked to report which parts of their tongues tasted which flavor. And THERE! He had a result – The tongue map.

Test at home

All said, I tried this at home. Since the ‘sweet buds’ are said to be located on and near the tip of the tongue, I found that it would be easy to isolate these buds by sticking out my tongue (and looking dumb by doing that. Fortunately, I did it in a closed room). Now, I placed a few sugar crystals in the middle part of the tongue. I made sure that it never touched my tip. The sugar did not taste sweet at all. And as soon as I retracted my tongue, the sweet taste was felt. Confusing!

However, salt tasted salty at the tip of the tongue. According to the map, it isn’t supposed to.

Well, that test wasn’t really scientific. It was exactly what the German scientist D.P. Hanig did to come out with the tongue map. It was busted in the year 1974 by a scientist named Virginia Collings.

Tiger Fish Jumps Out of Water and Catches Flying Birds

By Anupum Pant

It is normal for birds to swoop down and catch fish from water. But, since 1940s, stories about a meter-long-demonic-African-fish leaping out of water to catch birds in mid-air have been told. They were only stories; no one had seen the actual occurrence…Until now.

Recently, a video of it happening was captured by a team of researchers from North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa, and was posted on YouTube. As expected, the video went viral. Who wouldn’t love watching a fish-eating a bird! I put it on repeat and must have watched it 10 times already.

In the video you see a Tiger fish (Hydrocynus vittatus – literally means a ‘spotted water dog’) that lives in African fresh waters. It is one of the largest predators there and lives with a larger cousin, the Giant Tiger fish (Hydrocynus goliath). The Tiger fish can measure as much as 1 meter in length. On the other hand, giant tiger fish (not seen here) can reach up to 1.5 meters in length.

Taking shots around the South African lake in the Mapungubwe National Park, they were not really expecting to record a video in which a fish would fly out of the water and catch a swallow. Rather they were there to study migration and habitat at the lake. The team was surprised to see this. The director said:

“The whole action of jumping and catching the swallow in flight happens so incredibly quickly that after we first saw it, it took all of us a while to really fully comprehend what we had just seen.”

Given that a fish in water, or even human beings for that matter, cannot see beyond a specific window (The Underwater Optical Man-hole), this fish does an amazing job of tracking and striking a bird in mid-flight with so much precision. Cheers for that Mr. Tiger Fish.

Agreed the video isn’t clear, but it the first of its kind. Soon, I hope, we’ll see HD, NatGeo quality videos. Watch it on video here: [Video]

Myths on Facebook – Negative Calorie Foods

By Anupum Pant

I have never felt the necessity to pay attention to diet related news/facts till date (now I do).
So, never in my life had I read the phrase “negative calorie foods”, until yesterday, when a friend posted the following “WTF fact” on Facebook:

Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it.

BS! I cried, and like with everything I read on the internet, I was skeptical about this too. Hence, I decided to investigate. Here is what I found out.

Negative Calories in theory

Theoretically, it is indeed possible for edible items to be negative calorie foods. It works this way.

The body takes more calories to process a negative calorie food item than it (the food item) provides to the body. That basically means that you can sit all day, eat celery, fill your tummy and still keep losing weight. Sounds too good to be true. Exactly!

A Myth

It has been proved once and again that the number of calories your body burns while processing food is tiny when compared with the calories in that food item. So, scientists haven’t yet found a truly “negative calorie” food item.
For instance, a stalk of celery provides 6 calories to the body, but the body expends only half of a single calorie digesting it. That is +five and half calories. As expected, It isn’t negative. In fact, none of the foods advertised have been conclusively proved as actually negative calorie foods. Except one, which again, isn’t really food.

Ice cold water is the only known negative calorie thing you can ingest. It needs more amount of calories to get processed in the body than it give the body.  Most of this energy expended by the body goes into warming up the ice-cold water.

Celery is still good

However, that doesn’t mean celery is not a healthy food item. When compared to other greasy things you could ingest, celery of course is a good alternative (if you are looking to eat healthy). In terms of calorie intake, you’ll be doing great by eating a lot of celery to fill your stomach. But, positive calories mean that you’ll not lose weight unless you get moving. No wonder, virtually every dietitian has a load of celery mentioned in his/her diet plan.

Also, note that, while it is a good food, it isn’t something you could survive on. If you are thinking of trying an only-celery diet, you should know that you’ll be depriving your body of several necessary nutrients by trying that. Consult an informed nutritionist before trying a diet plan.

Finding an informed Nutritionist

To confirm if it is a good nutritionist you are talking to, you could probably test them by innocently inquiring if celery is a negative calorie food item or not. If he/she LOLs and tells you that it is a myth, it would be a good idea to go to them for diet plans.

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Why Do Bad Eggs Float?

By Anupum Pant

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Instead of cracking up an egg which has been stored for a long time, to end up disgusted by the ‘rotten egg smell’, or the smell of a gas called Hydrogen Sulfide, a simple and a fairly well known way to check if an egg has gone bad, is to drop it in a glass of water and see if it floats. I found out about this first, from an article written at Frugal Living, and spent some time to confirm its claims – Bad eggs float.
If you take my word for it (you should!), it really does work. The article describes this three-point test to find out if an egg is good to eat.

  1. If the egg sinks and lies on its side, it is a fresh one. It is good enough to be eaten.
  2. If it sinks and stands up on a point, or is at an angle, it is good enough. You can still use it up for making hard-cooked eggs or bake it.
  3. But, if an egg floats, it needs to be discarded.

Why does this happen?

To understand, you’ll have to think of a chick – a young chicken.

Poor Chicks: Before chickens come out of the egg, they develop lungs and need oxygen to breath. Sitting inside a sealed egg, with no cords attached, for the chick to survive, oxygen has to come in from somewhere. For that, let us look inside.

Egg Science: The outer shell of an egg has two membranes under it. When an egg is laid, it is warm and starts cooling which contracts the inner part of the egg more than the shell and pulls the two membranes apart. As a result, air gets trapped in between the membranes (not enough air initially for it to float).

How does the air come in? The shell of an egg isn’t as simple as it looks. It has about 7000 tiny pores in that shell which let the air pass in and let the carbon dioxide pass out of it. This is how the chick breathes. And the reason, eggs boiled in colored water during Easter, get colored from the inside.

So, as there are pores present in the shell, bacteria enter the egg and start decaying the biological matter inside. This produces a smelly gas (and other gases too), Hydrogen Sulfide (also present in smelly farts). The gases from this decomposition, and the air from outside, keep increasing in volume as time passes.

Corollary: This is exactly what explains these floating bad eggs – Greater the amount of gas inside, older is the egg and the better it floats in water.

Side note: Egg shells and the two membranes inside have the ability to stop the invasion of micro-organisms and bacteria, but over time bacteria manage to enter.