In the news this month we’ve learned about a neotropical jumping spider discovered by Christopher Meehan of Villanova University in Mexico and Eric Olson of Brandeis in Costa Rica that is the only species of spider observed to subsist on a primarily vegetarian diet. Previously, spiders had not been known to consume any type of solid food, apart from occasional pollen fed to young in a single species of orb-weaver. The new species has been named Bagheera kiplingi.
And on the subject of vegetation, plant biologists at the University of Delaware and McMaster University in Canada conducted a study of more than 3,000 mustard seedlings and discovered that young plants are capable of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen explain why fresh eggs are more difficult to peel than older eggs. Bottom line: let your eggs sit for a few days before trying to make deviled eggs!
Most school children have at one time or another encountered a photo of a twisted bristlecone pine tree in California purporting to have begun its life before Abraham left Ur [the 'Methuselah' tree at ~4767 years old]. Science Daily reported last week that a spruce tree has been discovered in the Dalarna province of Sweden that is twice that age!
Yes, this not very old-looking little tree has been dated by researchers at Umeå University’s physical geography department at ~9550 years old. Just as interesting is that this ancient tree is a genetically identical clone of a previous tree – from whose roots it sprouted all those many years ago – and which left a few scraps of old wood in the area for researchers to analyze and a laboratory in Miami, Florida to date via C-14.
Researchers combing the Swedish mountains from Lapland to Dalarna have discovered a cluster of about 20 spruces that are all more than 8,000 years old. Which has to qualify the grove as the most ancient stand of virgin timber on the planet.
This is the final installment of our 50 Weird Science tidbits, odd factoids and strange-but-true trivia. There are of course more weird things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But these 50 should get you through at least one championship round down at the pub. By the way, the word “dreamt” is the only word in the English language that ends in “mt.” That’s a freebie!
41. Plants Have Family Values Too
Researchers from Canada found that plants can have complex social interactions despite being… um, vegetative. Plants will grow more aggressively near unrelated plants than when they grow near relatives from the same maternal family.
42. The World’s Most Dangerous Animal
The not-so humble mosquito wins this award hands down. Mosquitoes transmitting countless diseases kill more animals – including humans – than any other animal (or plant) on Earth.
43. Hot Bed [Bugs] of Sexual Deception
Both the males and females of the African bat bug, a relative of bed bugs, have evolved fake genitals in order to protect themselves from the species’ violent mating practices. Some females have fake genitals of both male and female variety! The species does manage to reproduce prolifically anyway.
44. One Species In Which Dad Does All The Work
In seahorses it’s the male who gets pregnant. He incubates the offspring for three weeks, spends about 72 hours in labor, then gives birth to up to 200 baby seahorses at a time.
45. Alternative Recycling of Humans
A Swedish company has developed a new, environmentally friendly means of dealing with the bodies of the dead. They freeze the bodies in liquid nitrogen, then use sound waves to smash them to powder. From which water is removed in a vacuum chamber and metals are screened out.
46. And Now for the Weather Report…
In the days when apothecaries kept leeches in jars, it was observed that when the weather was calm the leeches stayed at the bottom of the water jar. But when a change in the weather was coming, the leeches would rise to the top of the water. For storms the leeches would rise quickly, descending again when the storm passed.
47. Forecast: Sunny
A solar panel array covering an area of 100 by 100 miles in the US Mojave Desert would produce enough electricity to replace all the coal fired power plants in America.
48. Old Sol Is Expecting Visitors
A red dwarf star labeled Gliese 710 is traveling toward our sun at nearly 50 times the speed of sound. In a million years it will be within just over half a light year away. Our current closest neighbor is Alpha Centauri, just over 4 light years away. But don’t worry. In only 10,000 years a red dwarf called Barnard’s Star will be our closest neighbor.
49. Please Don’t Lick the Walls
The world’s only hotel made entirely of salt (including the dining tables and chairs) is the Hotel de Sal Playa in the Uyuni salt flats of Bolivia.
50. …And Don’t Drink the Water
97% of the water on earth is undrinkable. An estimated 20% of the world’s surface fresh water supply is contained in Lake Baikal in southern Siberia (the world’s deepest lake at more than mile in depth).
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Getting us past the halfway point in this series of things odd and quite possibly unknown, I’m going to go with some odd and interesting plant and animal facts, including an in-development “designer” breed of cat that just might steal my heart away from Maine Coons…
21. Did Tom Sawyer know these were under the raft?
These 7-foot, 220-pound Mississippi paddlefish are among the world’s biggest freshwater animals. Kin to sturgeon, they’re popular sources of meat and roe for caviar.
22. Designer Way to Help Endangered Tigers
Meet the Toyger! Breeding programs began in the 1980s to develop a breed of house cat that strongly resembles the mightiest of big cats. In 1993 Toygers were first registered with the International Cat Association [TICA], and now boasts grand champions. Must. Have. One…
23. Gorillas Do It People-Style
This pair of wild western lowland gorillas (nicknamed George and Leah) have the distinction of providing the proof that “people-style” is an alternative to “doggie-style” among our nearest animal relatives. Other than bonobos, whose notorious sexual procilivities may have served as inspiration for the Kama Sutra.
24. How Long Can a Germ Live?
The current championship crown belongs to an 8 million year old bacterium that was taken from the oldest known ice on planet Earth, and is now happily reproducing again in a laboratory petrie dish.
25. Where’d You Get Those Peepers?
An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain. The emu has even less intellectual gear. According to Tim Nielsen, bird supervisor of the Royal Adelaide Zoo, emus are a serious contender for world’s dumbest bird.
26. Those Notorious Killer Coconuts
It’s a fact. More humans are killed every year by falling coconuts than by shark attacks. When is Hollywood going to produce THAT blockbuster horror film?
27. Attack of the Zombie Roaches
Here’s another cool plot idea for Hollywood’s gaggle of horror movie producers – the tropical jewel wasp injects a venom into cockroaches that disables their insect version of free will, turning them into roach-zombies!
28. Mining for Golden Mushrooms
An Italian father and son – aided by their truffle-sniffing dog – unearthed a 3.3 pound truffle in Tuscany in 2007. Truffles are actually MORE valuable than gold, going for thousands of dollars an ounce. The Italian recordholder was expected to go for more than $200,000.
29. A Spice So Hot It Will Make a Ghost of You
The name of this chile pepper translates to “Ghost Chile” and it’s the world’s hottest chile thus discovered on the planet. The hottest jalapeno peppers rate 10,000 SHUs (Scoville Heat Units), and those bright orange habaneros can hit 100,000 SHU. The second hottest Red Savina is only half as hot as the ghosts – which weigh in at more than a million SHUs! Children, don’t try to eat these at home…
30. Accident as the Mother of Invention
The kitchen appliance staple known as the Microwave Oven was invented after a researcher happened to walk by a high-powered radar tube one day and a chocolate bar in his pocket melted.
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Lots of interesting science reports lately about all things neurological, in brains and in our remote sensor neurons. First up is a surprising (or maybe not so surprising) finding by a researcher at the University of Hertfordshire – the harder we try to mentally suppress our thoughts and desires, the more we will indulge in the activity we’re trying to suppress.
Resistance to Thoughts of Chocolate is Futile
This research project dealt with something quite simple, chocolate. Which some say is addictive, but that’s a whole different area of research. Dr. Erskine of Hertfordshire divided 134 young (avg. age 22) people into two groups to investigate how our thinking affects our behaviors.
The participants were asked to try two brands of chocolate and answer questions about which they preferred and why. Then they were given two periods of thought verbalization where they were to talk about their thoughts while alone. On top of this they were told they must think about – or not think about – certain things. Including chocolate.
Among those told not to think about the chocolate which was still present and available to them, consumption of chocolate was significantly higher than in those who could think about chocolate all they liked. Among those who were told to go ahead and focus on thinking about chocolate, the males ate significantly more chocolate than the females.
It’s always nice to get scientific confirmation of things we already know. Meanwhile, psychologists at the University of Pittsburgh tell us that Human Decision-making Takes Multiple Brain Regions Performing Individual Functions, something most people who think about such things also already knew.
It’s not new news that there is a hierarchy of brain regions that separately receive inputs from our remote sensors and process the information before we become aware of what we are perceiving. What psychology professor Mark Wheeler tells us IS new is how these regions work together for decision-making – knowledge integration and action planning based on the perceptual information.
Decision making forwards the processed information to the object processing, reasoning and memory circuits for evaluation and classification in line with previous experience and memory.
A particularly interesting finding from studies at Drexel and Northwestern Universities tells us that Brain Activity Differs for Creative and Noncreative Thinkers. They found that creative thinkers made use of more right-hemisphere involvement in their thinking, which indicates that creative thinkers process more loosely connected or “remote” associations between elements of a problem than noncreative thinkers do.
From that report, “…creative and methodical solvers exhibited different activity in areas of the brain that process visual information. The pattern of “alpha” and “beta” brainwaves in creative solvers was consistent with diffuse rather than focused visual attention. This may allow creative individuals to broadly sample the environment for experiences that can trigger remote associations to produce an Aha! Moment.” Cool.
Finally, in the weird world of serious sensations that aren’t what they appear to be, researchers at the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University report that they’ve (once again) discovered the World’s Hottest Chili Pepper.
We fans of hot chili peppers already know that the alkaloid chemical capsaicin in pepper ribs and seeds is what stimulates our heat and pain sensing nerves to think we’re being badly burned, when no actual burn tissue damage is taking place. It apparently evolved as a way for the plant to get its seeds distributed by only certain animals (birds) and not by others (mammals).
To get a feel for the ‘heat’ this Indian “Ghost Chile” [Bhut Jolokia] is capable of producing, consider the lowly jalapeno, which has a Scoville heat unit [SHU] index of about 2,500. Those firey habaneros rate from 300,000 to 500,000 SHU, making them among the hottest known until now. The previous record holder was the Red Savina, which measured at a solid 577,000 SHU.
The Bhut Jolokia ghost chile weighed in at a cool million SHU. Not very likely to find its way into that pickled pepper jar on the bar at the local pub, as the reaction just might really hurt somebody. The researcher do think it may have an impact in the processed food industry, since it would take much less of the pepper to impart some serious heat to chiles, salsas, sauces and stews.
Links:
Resistance to Thoughts of Chocolate is Futile
Human Decision-making Takes Multiple Brain Regions Performing Individual Functions
Brain Activity Differs for Creative and Noncreative Thinkers
What Makes Peppers Hot May Also Be Cool For What Ails You
World’s Hottest Chile Pepper Discovered