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[scienceguy22]

When pigs lawyered up: the strangest court cases in history. -

This was in medieval times, circa 1200s-late 1700s, 500+ years. Animal trials were held across France, Switzerland, Germany & Italy. They declined by the late 1700s, as Enlightenment ideas reframed animals as non-mortals. The description of crowd sizes gives you an idea that these trials & subsequent executions were very popular, ranging from 100s to the low thousands. An interesting book written byRod Philips, entitled Cats: A History, writes that animals—especially pigs—were arrested, jailed, tried, & sometimes executed in formal courts across Europe. Believe it or not, animals were imprisoned in human jails, same as humans, while awaiting trial. Charges ranged from injury to humans to homicide if they killed a child. Unbelievably, some animals had legal representation using surprisingly sophisticated arguments, & sometimes, animals did win & were acquitted because the onus of responsibility was shifted onto the owners of the animals. Subsequently, the owners were sometimes charged with negligence or involuntary manslaughter. When the animal was still found guilty, sometimes their sentences were reduced.

The most famous case revolved around rats in 1552, & all the rats had to be summoned. But there was only one problem—they needed safe passage, & the large feral cat population made safe passage impossible. Therefore, the rats' absence was justified, & the trial could not proceed. The court accepted Bartholomew Chassene's, the lawyer's, arguments as a legitimate procedural issue. Cats were surprisingly absent from courts, likely because people were superstitious & afraid of them; they were seen as liminal, supernatural, or simply too independent to be held "responsible." In other cases, when a sow was found guilty of infanticide & executed, her piglets were acquitted because they were too young to understand or participate in the sow's murderous spree. In the case of horses, when they kicked someone, their lawyers argued that horses are easily startled, or the victim approached incorrectly, or that the horse acted "according to its nature." Many horses were released. Sometimes the sentences were commuted & the animal returned to the owner. Cruelly, sometimes the animals were mutilated so that they could no longer cause damage, but they were not killed, or they were simply banished from the village.

Donkeys & cows were sometimes pardoned for "kicking, goring, trampling, or crushing people," & medieval courts regularly saw these accidents as crimes. But sometimes a good lawyer proved the owner was negligent, sparing the animal execution & the owner was fined. Vermin such as rats, mice, & even insects including locusts, caterpillars, & beetles were put on trial, as well as weevils & moles. Their crime? Eating grain stores, destroying vineyards, ruining barley, wheat, rye, or oats. Causing famine risk, damage to property, & threatening the community's survival. Vermin, however, were not tried in criminal courts; rather, their trials were tried in church courts because they were seen as God's creation, & their behavior was interpreted as "moral disorder." Only the Church could issue curses, excommunications, or blessings. Surprisingly, vermin sometimes prevailed. Courts ruled that even vermin have a right to live, & humans must tolerate some damage.

Pigs roamed freely in medieval towns, often scavenging in the streets & near homes. Because they were large (200-300 lb) (90-136 kg) & strong, they could easily kill children. What does all this tell us about medieval thinking? That they projected human morality onto animals. They needed ritual justice to cope with tragedy. They believed the world was a moral hierarchy, not a random place. So they used trials to restore order, not to solve the practical problems. The trials were not for the animals—they were for the people watching. Today, we no longer try animals—we try owners. But the medieval logic still survives in dangerous dog laws, strict liability for livestock & in animal welfare statutes. The shift has turned away from animal guilt to human responsibility.

[scienceguy22]

Announcement.

I've been invited for a once-a-week lecture for the public on various science topics, and it does require me to travel. Due to time constraints, I won't be able to give more info for the day. I'll always inform you when I'm gone. Thanks for your understanding—see you tomorrow. I'll see you the same time, same place. Until then, hoping all the chemistry in your life turns out just right.

[scienceguy22]

The fish that refused to go extinct.

If Earth's history were condensed to 24 hours, this ancient fish, coelacanths, would clock in at 8 PM, dinosaurs at 10:30 PM—the fish were already ancient elders. These fish first appeared 470 million years ago, 170 million years before the dinosaurs. According to genetic research, coelacanth DNA changes at the slowest rate of any fish and among the slowest rates of any vertebrate. Their genome size is 3 billion base pairs (similar to humans). Stable deep-sea habitat, very few predators, & little environmental change are reasons for their long-term survival. In addition, they have a low metabolic rate, and a slow metabolism means fewer mutations per generation. Their mutation rate is among the lowest measured in vertebrates. They live deep. cold & quiet lives—like a creature in a museum that never needs remodeling.

The females develop eggs internally, & the embryos grow inside the mother's body for about 5 years before being born. The young hatch from eggs inside her, then emerge fully formed about 14 (35 cm) long. They emerge tail-first, ready to swim immediately. No placenta, so nutrients come from the yolk only. This is one of the longest gestations in the entire animal kingdom. The brood size is usually 20-30 pups. African coelacanths live for about 100 years. Their long life is explained by their cold, deep habitat (2,300 ft/700 m); low activity—they drift rather than chase prey; slow metabolism; & few predators. They were thought to be extinct for 66 million years until they were rediscovered off South Africa in 1938. The rediscovery shocked science—imagine finding a living dinosaur in your local harbor—that's the analogy of what happened. It was identified by J.L.B. Smith, who realized it was a living fossil.

They're up to 6.5 ft (2 m) long & weigh 200 lb (90 kg). They have lobed fins that move like limbs—these are ancestors of amphibian legs. They're the missing link between fish & the 1st creatures that crawled onto land. They're found in deep volcanic caves near the Comoros, Madagascar & South Africa. Their color is an iridescent blue with white spots. They're carnivores, eating squid & small fish. They are nocturnal hunters using electroreception to detect prey. Another reason for their long-term survival & old age is a low oxygen metabolism, adapted to hypoxic depths. A slow heartbeat conserves energy & lipid-rich tissues without the need for swim bladders. They are considered Critically Endangered because there are only a few hundred individuals. The threats come from deep-sea fishing & habitat disturbance. There are fewer coelacanths than giant pandas—and they're much harder to find.

[scienceguy22]

The naked butt: nature's least safe unfiltered fanny fallout.

An interesting & dare I say weird study was carried out after a nurse who worked in the operating room asked something most people would be too polite or shy to ask: "Can a fart contaminate an operating room?" It's not as silly as it sounds: during surgery, everything must be sterile. An Australian science communicator, Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki & microbiologist Luke Tennet decided to find out. They asked a colleague to break wind directly onto 2 Petri dishes from about 2 inches away: once while clothed & once with trousers down. The results were published in the British Medical Journal—hey, this is serious stuff. The result? Two kinds of bacteria on the exposed plate were described as being found on the skin and/or in the gut—either Enterococcus faecalis, E. coli, Bacteroides, or Staphylococcus epidermidis, which was found on the skin. The kicker is that bacterial transfer only occurred when the emitter was not wearing trousers (naked), but no bacteria were transferred if the farter had trousers on.

This was never to serve as evidence for flatulence being a major vector of germs; in fact, these bacteria are very similar to the 'friendly' bacteria found in yogurt. Even naked ones are a minor vector at best. The only reason bacteria showed up at all is that the 1st blast acted like a tiny air cannon. Dislodged skin & perianal microdroplets were blasted out, which landed on the agar (seaweed) in the petri dish. The final takeaway is don't fart naked near food, just to be on the safe side. After all, farts are not perfectly sterile in real-world conditions, but the gases themselves do not carry bacteria—they only offend the nose (mostly due to hydrogen sulfide, methanethiol, & dimethyl sulfide). The odiferous compounds, though, make up less than 1% of the gases we emit, with nitrogen being 59%, hydrogen 27%, CO₂ 9%, & methane 7%.

[scienceguy22]

Why did scientists choose Lager for the beer taste test? How 1,000+ molecules decide whether you like a lager.

Beer is a "flavor amplifier" due to alcohol, carbonation, bitterness from hops, sugars, proteins & acids. These interact with mkolecule4as & boost their sensory impact. The CO₂ bubbles push aromas upward into your nose, alcohol acts like a solvent, & the hops' bitterness makes any harsh molecules even harsher. Volatile compounds like esters & floral molecules evaporate easily & give a pleasant, fruity, sweet aroma. These are loved by most beer drinkers. Whereas non-volatile compounds are drivers of harshness, as summarized in Chemical & Engineering News. The "bad" molecules that make some beer drinkers turn their noses, medium-chain fatty acids, can make beer taste soapy, waxy, & harsh. Oxidized hops can create a metallic, stale, or puckering sensation. To analyze beer's compounds, scientists used liquid chromatography (LC), a process that pushes beer through a long tube in which beer is separated into 100s of tiny chemical "lines," each representing a different compound.

They also used gas chromatography (GC), where volatile molecules evaporate, which highlights aroma molecules—the ones your nose detects. After LC & GC separate the molecules, this is followed by mass spectrometry (MS), which blasts them apart into charged fragments, then weighs those fragments & produces a unique molecular fingerprint. Scientists compare these fingerprints to databases to identify each molecule. MS can detect 1,000s of molecules (as in our lager beer sample) at unbelievable levels—even parts per billion (ppb) or parts per trillion (ppt). MS is the core identification tool in what is known as "flavoromics." Lager was chosen for the taste test because it is the most "neutral" of beers for human tasters. It's the best "control beer," making off-flavors easier to detect.

It's interesting to note that when several of the "bad" compounds were dissolved in plain water, trained testers could barely detect them, but when added back to beer, drinkers described the result as "harsher, sharper & more bitter." The finding points to one of the central lessons of flavor chemistry (flavoromics): taste is not simply the sum of individually detectable ingredients. Flavor emerges from complicated interactions among alcohol, aroma compounds, sweetness, carbonation, & the brain itself. The 4 nonvolatile compounds that strongly correlated with consumer disliking included feruloyl 3-hydroxyagmatine, p-coumaroyl-hydroxyagmatine, & N1, N10-diferuloylspermidine—scary names that sound less like beer ingredients & more like rejected villains from a Marvel movie.

All these molecules share a common fragment that forms the basis of cinnamon's flavor. One of the molecules, ethyl 3-methylthiopropionate, was bipolar because one part of the molecule (thiol) is notorious for some of the worst stenches in chemistry—the kind that can clear a lab of even the most hardened organic chemists in a Miami minute. The other part of the same molecule is pleasant (an ester)—a diverse class of volatile compounds found throughout nature in some of the most delightful flowery scents & fruity flavors. (Joke time)! What is the definition of an organic chemist? Someone who washes his hands before he goes to the bathroom. What happens when the two unlikely compounds join together? Strangely, you get the good, the bad, and the ugly. Some describe the beer like a sweet onion; others say it's sulfurous, fruity, tinny pineapple, musty tomato with metallic ripe & canned notes, savory green with hints of horseradish & tropical notes, cheesy, or like cabbage. (No wonder I don't like beer.)

Finally, did you ever wonder when beer was first produced & where? Beer was first produced in ancient Sumer (Mesopotamia) around 5,000-6,000 years ago. They made it from barley, baking a special bread (called "bapir"), crumbling it into water & letting wild yeast ferment it, & they would drink the cloudy, porridge-like beer through straws. A staggering amount of Sumerian grain was sent into ale, something like 40% of the total. The ordinary workman received a ration of just 2 pints a day, but senior dignitaries received more than 8 pints, some of which was used as currency. At the time, the citizens only drank ale because water came from irrigation canals, which were badly contaminated, rather than free-flowing streams. So of course, there was no coffee, no tea & no grape wine.

Most of the brewers in the ancient world were women. Sumer had 8 types of barley ale, another 8 from wheat & 3 made from mixed grains. The quality of their beers was variable. Indeed, the Code of Hammurabi (1750 BCE) sounds very much like the 1980 Campaign for Real Ale in its condemnation of "understrength & overpriced." Ale cures many ills, except the ones it causes. Or, as Shakespeare said, "Do you think because you are virtuous, there shall be no more cakes & ale?"

[scienceguy22]

The California chemical that almost went boom & the smelly problem that accidentally led to Plexiglas & modern cataract eye surgery.

It is no longer a problem because firefighters sprayed huge amounts of water for hours on the outside of the storage tanks to keep the metal cool. They injected a chemical foam inside the tanks to smother vapors. They used drones to find the hot spots. The chemical stored inside is methyl methacrylate (MMA). The tanks were stored at GNK Aerospace in Garden Grove, & authorities had ordered mass evacuations in the area as a precaution. As a result of the incident, multiple class-action lawsuits were launched. The suit accused GKN of failing to maintain the MMA tanks safely, creating a public nuisance & operating ultrahazardous activities near homes. So far, the lawsuits have not been settled.

It's not actually MMA itself that is dangerous. MMA is a liquid monomer used to make acrylic plastics, but when MMA forms long chains (called polymerization), it becomes exothermic, & if the heat can't escape, you get bulging tank walls, valve failures, flying metal pieces, a fireball, burning MMA on the ground, & potential boiling liquid expanding vapor explosions, shortened to BLEVE. The big tank holding 34,000 gallons (129,000 L) can explode, releasing harmful vapors, causing fire, blast damage to homes & residents nearby, & potential secondary releases of burning or decomposing chemicals. The tank is only 35 mi (56 km) away from Los Angeles. Believe it or not, the chemicals involved here (methylmethyl acrylate & its polymer polymethylmethacrylate) lead to a fascinating story that I'll tell you about.

It all began with a terrible smell with pits full of, believe it or not, dog poop. In Stuttgart, Germany, in 1904, a young German chemist, Dr. Arthur Röhn, worked near old-style tanneries. Back then, tanners softened animal hides in pits full of dog poop. The smell was unbearable. So he invented a synthetic tanning chemical he named Oriphon. This became the 1st successful synthetic leather-processing product. He became very wealthy, which launched his career. Arthur partnered up with an Austrian businessman, Otto Haas. Their company became a giant in acrylic chemistry. Rohm discovered a way to form long chains of the monomer MMA forming PMMA discovering that when they linked together, they would form a clear, hard, shatter-resistant plastic we know as Plexiglass (Perspex) in Europe. This was the first truly clear, strong, glass-like plastic. From this material, Arthur created the first eyeglasses made of plastic. Then, a Canadian chemist, William Chalmers at my alma mater, McGill University, figured out a way to scale it up. It was affordable, consistent, strong, & ready for industrial use.

PMAA soon became a wartime material, & it was used as a clear, protective canopy over pilots' heads. The Germans used it as well, but it was of a poorer quality, so it cracked in cold weather & yellowed faster. Allied Plexiglass was simply better, & pilots found that even if it would shatter after crashes & some splinters went into their eyes, doctors noted their eyes tolerated PMMA extremely well & they did not have severe immune reactions. This observation changed medicine. A British eye surgeon, Sir Harold Ridley, realized that if the eye accepts Plexiglass, why not make a lens out of it? And in 1949, he implanted the 1st successful artificial lens made of Plexiglass (Perspex). This was the birth of cataract surgery.

Before this, cataract patients were left with thick "Coke-bottle" glasses because the natural lens had to be removed. Ridley's PMAA lens changed everything. Later, surgeons refined the technique. Dr. Cornelius Binkhorse (Netherlands) & Dr. Marvin Kwitco (Montreal) developed ways to anchor the lens, shape the lens, & implant it safely, combining PMAA with silicone. These improvements made cataract surgery safer, faster (now it could be done within 2 hours on an outpatient basis), more predictable & more widely available. Modern Plexiglass lenses are flexible, foldable, crystal-clear & inserted through tiny incisions (0.08-0.12 in/2-3 mm), requiring no stitching.

Even MMA has important uses such as road markings (yes, the paint on highways), adhesives & glues for cars, airplanes, boats & for construction, & dental materials such as dentures & crowns, orthopedic surgeons use MMA as "bone cement" in hip & knee replacements & for waterproof coatings. One of the most well-known tourist destinations in Japan is the Hippopo Papa Cafe, where patrons sit on a Plexiglass toilet seat encircled by three sides of a massive Plexiglass aquarium while responding to nature's call amid tropical fish. PMAA (Plexiglass/Perspex) is widely used for aquariums. When you fly, you're looking out of Plexiglass windows. It's also used for taillights, instrument panels for cars, & motorcycle windshields. Architects use them for skylights & building windows. They're used for display cases in museums & in home decor for shelves, artificial chairs, tables & lighting fixtures, eyeglasses & artificial teeth. In hospitals, PMAA is used for incubators, surgical instrument housing & protective shields.

Finally, it solved the problem of penile injury for 2-3-year-old boys undergoing toilet training. There were 9,000 reported cases of penile injury from dropping heavy toilet seats made of solid wood, porcelain-coated wood, or heavy composite materials on their penises. Physicians became rightfully concerned. The solution? Sloped lids, slow-drop mechanisms using Plexiglass. The lid is super-light & takes 3-5 seconds to close instead of 1/2 second. The rock group even wrote about it on the Styx album "The Serpent is Rising," a short, humorous hidden track referred to as "Plexiglass Toilet Seat," kind of a musical joke about a man who gets stuck to a Plexiglass toilet seat. It's one of the strangest—and most practical—uses of acrylic plastic. My little nephew's mom cannot be more overjoyed.

[scienceguy22]

When war stops being human, robots bleed oil, not tears.

But the good news about using humanoid robots in war is that no one comes home in a coffin. Robots do save soldiers' lives; in fact, we know this because they have saved many Ukrainian lives in the war against Russia in Ukraine. Some of those robots carry explosives or remote-controlled automatic weapons. They have succeeded in keeping Ukrainian soldiers alive while under fire. Robots can enter minefields, sniper zones, drone-watched trenches & collapsed buildings. On the other hand, using robots in warfare raises the psychological barrier to conflict. Robots can unintentionally make war feel "cleaner," which is dangerous. Not to mention autonomous systems can make catastrophic mistakes. Even the best AI today misidentifies targets, & can get confused by smoke & camouflage. A robot can get jammed or spoofed.

I think that more & more this will be one side of warfare, with humans commanding robotic formations. We might even see robot vs. robot skirmishes. A U.S. tech firm announced plans for 100,000 humanoid robots for military & strategic operations. So far, robots have traversed difficult & bumpy, uneven terrain where even Russian soldiers had a hard time navigating. Robots are certain to change war, but they won't remove its tragedy. War stays terrible, even if fewer humans are on the front

[scienceguy22]

The cursed gummy bear of Lake Huron.

It's actually not a single animal but rather a colony of thousands of tiny animals all fused into a single gelatinous mass up to 2 ft (60 cm) wide, each with its own tentacle, crown & mouth that filters microscopic food from the water. Each individual is called a "zooid," but together they're called "bryozoans." It lives in freshwater. The whole blob behaves like one creature even though it's actually made up of thousands. They have a unique way of eating. The feeding crown is composed of a ring of tentacles lined with beating cilia. This creates water currents that push food into it, like a tiny vacuum cleaner with waving fingers. They eat algae, bacteria & detritus. Their tentacles trap food with mucus. & deliver it to their mouths. Their gut is U-shaped, & each one has a mouth, stomach, intestine & even an anus. They have no brains (they don't need one because water flows over them constantly, delivering oxygen & food). What more do they need? An internal cord connects the thousands of individual zooids. That helps distribute nutrients.

The colony's body is a firm, rubbery Jell-O-like mass that zooids sit on. That's why it feels like a water balloon full of grapes. or a giant gummy bear that melted & re-solidified underwater. There are 4,000 species, & they have been around for over 500 million years. They've survived mass extinctions, ice ages, the rise & fall of dinosaurs & the breakup of continents. When it gets cold outside & the lake freezes over, bryozoans release microscopic hard pods that are encased in a tough, chitin-like shell (like the tough hard shells of insects) called "statoblasts," & these can withstand freezing & drying & can remain dormant like Sleeping Beauty herself until conditions are right.

Statoblasts are so tough that a fish can eat them, digest everything around them, poop them out...& the statoblast still hatches later into zooids when the temperature warms up in the spring. Interestingly, the bryozoan colony produces these "seeds" that can withstand extremely cold winters despite dying in the winter. They are found in the western U.S., Europe, Canada, Japan & Korea. They attach to logs, rocks, docks, boats, aquatic plants & even mussel shells. Underwater, they look like alien eggs or a giant brain—oddly cute & horrifying at the same time.

[scienceguy22]

All's well that ends without an explosion.

I'm talking about what I think is a very ambitious project by NASA which is to place a nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030. And we're not the only ones who have such plans—now China & Russia also want to have a nuclear reactor on the Moon, but by 2030. NASA & the U.S. Dept. of Defense (DoD) have formally committed to deploying a fission surface power reactor on the Moon within 4 years. They signed an MOU (memorandum of understanding) to develop, fuel, authorize & prepare the system. Once established, it should provide continuous power for years without refueling. The nuclear generator will be truck-sized so that a lunar base doesn't freeze or go dark during the 14-day lunar night. The power for continuous fission (the splitting of atoms as opposed to fusion, the joining of atoms) will range from a 100 kW continuous fission system (enough power to run 30 homes) to 500 kW (enough power to run 150 homes). They plan to use their lunar base for mining, erect a launchpad & establish a habitat complex for the "Moonies," all of which will require 1-10 MW (megawatt) scale power, which is 1,000 times more than a kW.

Energy will be needed to extract oxygen from regolith (the layer of rocky material that covers the lunar surface). Inside regolith there are metal oxides (about 43% by weight), from which oxygen can be extracted. Energy will be needed to mine & process metals, to operate launchers & to run rovers, drills, life support, comms & cryocoolers. The problem is that unlike Earth, where reactors dump heat into air or water, on the Moon, there is no air or water. The solution? Large thermal radiators that radiate heat away as infrared light. They will have to coat the radiators with dust-resistant shields because lunar dust is razor-sharp. The dust clogs radiators, scratches surfaces, & jams moving parts. Rather than ship fuel back and forth from the Earth to the Moon, the plan is to send the reactor already loaded with highly enriched, long-life fuel, like a long-life battery.

Other challenges include the Moon's extreme temperatures (-410°F to +250°F / -246°C to +121°C). Moonies will have to endure constant tiny high-speed micrometeorite impacts that can puncture radiators, cables & shielding. Imagine living on the Moon & being sandblasted by BB gun pellets that travel faster than bullets. The Moon has regular shallow earthquakes that can last for hours. Humans will, of course, need shielding from radiation, & electronics & reactor components will need to be protected. Shielding for the reactor is heavy & will be costly to launch. High-voltage cables will need protection from the harsh lunar environment. NASA scientists & engineers will have to guarantee the nuclear core stays safe even if the rocket explodes, because a crash could scatter radioactive material.

They'll have to ensure there is a sufficient supply of spare parts—even if a $5.00 bolt breaks, you don't want to send a $2 billion rocket to deliver a new one. They will have to design a brand new class of lunar reactors. No reactor has ever run in lunar gravity, vacuum, dust, or extreme temperature cycles. It's not a "copy-paste" from Earth—it's inventing a whole new machine. The reactor must endure a roller coaster from hell before it reaches space. Robots will be needed to unfold radiators, connect cables & activate systems autonomously. Every challenge above adds a delay risk. My assessment is a 60-70% likelihood of a prototype reactor being delivered to the lunar surface by 2030-2032. It's more likely to slip somewhere in the mid-2030s.

As for the joint Russia-China goal of 2035, I give it a 50-60% likelihood of a lunar reactor by 2035-2037. They face the same challenges, & Russia's economy is suffering in large part because of the war in Ukraine. But sooner or later, from one nation or another, nuclear power on the Moon will happen. This is the new space race & whoever controls lunar energy will control the lunar industry.

[scienceguy22]

The 1% that changes everything.

Primates (the great apes), as you probably know, share 98-99% of our DNA, yet there is one thing humans have that no other species in the world shares—the white around our eyes. Isn't that weird? What is the reason for that? First of all, the "98-99% similarity" refers to DNA letters, not to how genes are registered, expressed, or shaped by evolution. A tiny difference in regulatory genes can produce massive differences in visible traits, especially on the face. The white around our eyes is known as the "sclera." That is controlled by pigmentation genes, regulatory switches that turn pigment on or off & developmental timing genes. Humans developed the whites around our eyes to make gaze direction extremely visible, which supercharged communication, cooperation & trust. Humans are evolutionarily designed to broadcast where we are looking. The visible large, bright white sclera creates a marked contrast with the iris & the pupil, making gaze direction obvious.

Other primates have dark brown or black sclerae, making their gaze hard to track—likely an adaptation to conceal intentions. Human sclera evolved as a social communication tool, helping us coordinate, cooperate & understand each other's intentions. Biologists consider this one of the most sophisticated nonverbal communication systems in the animal kingdom. Being able to see where someone is actually looking helps with joint attention ("Look over there!"). It helps with teaching, learning, coordinated hunting or foraging & silent communication during danger. This is called the "cooperative eye hypothesis." The white sclera emphasizes our gaze, making it harder to deceive others. It reveals micromovements of the eyes; it makes lying or hiding intentions more difficult & signals honesty & prosocial behavior. A bright sclera makes it easier for babies to track a caregiver's attention & interpret emotional cues. This strengthened parent-child bonding & improved our survival.

Prey animals don't want prey to know where they are looking. Primates in competitive social groups hide intentions to avoid conflict. Thus, dark sclerae act as camouflage. Humans are the exception. Our evolutionary pressures favored cooperation over competition.

[scienceguy22]

The lever that points North.

How do homing pigeons find their way back home, which is 1,000 mi (1,600 km) away? The world record is 7,200 mi (11,600 km) away, yet somehow, they find their way back "home." They have several biological "tricks" to enable this. One is that their liver stores iron (like mammals, including humans), & the iron can accumulate into iron-rich crystals. Macrophages, specialized immune system cells that eat up bacteria, pick up the iron, which then migrates to the pigeons' beak.

And it turns out magnetite (the iron-rich crystals) behaves like a tiny compass needle, & when the bird rotates, the crystals experience torque (a twisting force that rotates). The macrophages tug on nerve endings, sending signals into the nerves in their eyes. The nerves tell the brain, "you're facing north" or "turn left." Nerves can detect forces on the order of picograms (trillionths of a pound force), similar to how your skin feels a single hair brushing it. The pigeon's brain integrates magnetic information with the sun compass, olfactory cues, landmarks, wind direction & memory maps. The end result is a multi-sensor GPS system. Their internal magnetics, called magnetoreception, provide heading & the other senses provide position.

Pigeons naturally have homing ability because they evolved on rocky cliff regions where returning to the exact nest site was critical. Humans selectively bred them for navigation accuracy for thousands of years, & they have saved thousands of lives because of this ability in both world wars.

[scienceguy22]

When dinner leaves whip marks on your back.

A Japanese woman appeared at the ER in the hospital with a back that looked as if she had been whipped. Upon questioning & medical examination, doctors determined the whip-like streaks were not self-inflicted. Japanese researcher Takehiko Nakamura in 1977 called the condition "flagellate dermatitis" after the flagellants, a medieval religious sect whose members would whip themselves to demonstrate their faith. Today, we call the condition "shiitake dermatitis," which can occur when shiitake mushrooms are eaten. The chemical in the mushrooms is called lentinan, a beta-glucan polysaccharide that survives light cooking. If fully cooked (350-400°F (175-205°C) for 5-7 minutes), lentinan breaks down & becomes harmless. This is why people who eat shiitake raw in salads, lightly sautéed, or in quick stir-fries are the ones who get the rash.

Having said that, shiitake dermatitis is exceedingly rare, with only about 100 cases seen in the medical literature. When lentinan survives cooking, your immune system sees this & releases protein messengers called interleukins, part of a family called cytokines. Interleukin-1 binds to receptors, opens up blood vessels leaking fluids, causes swelling & irritates nerves & causes itching, all of which can occur when eating raw or undercooked shiitake mushrooms. Lower levels of interleukins are beneficial because they instruct your immune system to remain calm and refrain from overreacting to foreign substances that they do not consider to be harmful. But when they perceive danger, it acts like a fire alarm, telling the body to respond immediately. The same thing goes for lentinan, the compound in shitake mushrooms. In controlled doses it is a helpful immune stimulation, as in IV cancer therapy, but too much causes a chaotic immune stimulation & a back that looks as if someone had whipped you. Notably, the unfortunate woman's rash was gone 3 weeks later with the help of corticosteroids & antihistamines.

[scienceguy22]

Blue Mars Blues—when the Red Planet turned blue.

Well, at least it looked blue on NASA's Psyche spacecraft multispectral imager. On May 15, Psyche had a close flyby with the Martian surface, passing within 2,864 mi (4,609 km) of Mars for a gravity assist maneuver—a slingshot to boost its speed toward the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche. During this time its multispectral imager captured high-resolution views of Mars' southern highlands, including the Huygens crater, producing surreal "blue & bruised" imagery. The reason the Red Planet looked blue is due to something known as Rayleigh scattering—when sunlight passes through Mars's thin atmosphere at a grazing angle, shorter wavelengths (blue light) scatter more efficiently than longer ones (red). This is the same physics that makes Earth's sky blue. Psyche saw Mars as a crescent, meaning sunlight skimmed through the upper atmosphere, amplifying blue scattering near the limb.

NASA was simply testing color balance & exposure, intentionally exaggerating color contrast to validate their sensors & see how well they could tell minerals apart. The result? A "blue Mars" illusion—not because Mars changed color, but because the camera & the lighting made it look that way. To give you an analogy, imagine photographing a red desert at twilight through tinted sunglasses—the shadows & haze make it look bluish. That's exactly what Psyche saw.

[scienceguy22]

The whale in the mirror: Belugas join the self-aware club.

Beluga whales showed behaviors in a controlled mirror test—bubble play while watching themselves, mouth inspection, barrel rolls & even returning to watch themselves playing with a loop—that strongly suggest mirror self-recognition, a cognitive ability previously confirmed only in great apes, dolphins, elephants & magpies. Researchers set up a two-way plexiglass mirror in the beluga habitat in the New York Aquarium. This allowed whales to approach from different angles & observe their reflections without human interference. A juvenile beluga named Maris swam up to the mirror, blew bubbles from her blowhole & bit the bubbles while watching her reflection. Bubble play is normal in belugas, but doing it while monitoring one's own reflection indicates self-directed behavior. Her mother Natasha later repeated the same behavior in front of the mirror. Belugas also performed barrel rolls & opened their mouths while watching the mirror—behaviors identical to those seen in dolphins that had passed MSR tests (mirror self-recognition).

These are classic "contingency testing" behaviors: "If I move, the reflection moves"; "if I open my mouth, the reflection opens its mouth," providing the first scientific evidence of self-awareness. One beluga left the mirror, fetched a hoop & returned with it to observe how the object & it looked in the mirror. This is extremely rare, suggesting object-mediated self-inspection, comparable to apes using objects to examine themselves. The mother copying the calf's bubble-biting suggests social learning & shared curiosity about mirror-related behaviors. This stunned researchers because although belugas were suspected to be capable of self-recognition, it was never proven. We always knew belugas were intelligent, but the mirror test behaviors push them into a whole new tier. This isn't just "smart"—this is self-directed, reflective, exploratory intelligence—the kind that is associated with self-awareness, joining a handful of confirmed self-aware animals, including humans.

Beluga brains have a highly folded neocortex & a large cerebrum, indicators of intelligence, higher learning & complex cognition. Simply put, more folds = more brain surface = more processing power. A big cerebrum means more room for thinking, planning, & learning, as demonstrated in belugas' strong social behaviors. Belugas have exceptional white matter connectivity. White matter is the communication highways between brain regions. Belugas have dense, long-range white matter tracts, all of which support fast learning, social intelligence, complex communication & self-monitoring. Their world is complicated—so evolution gave them the mental hardware to handle it. Self-awareness helps them in coordinated group movement, in mother-calf teaching, in social bonding, in navigating ice cracks & in attacking prey & avoiding predators. The more difficult question now that we know they can identify themselves in the mirror is whether humans can see them well enough to protect them.

[scienceguy22]

The snake with a fake head on its butt.

I'm talking about a brand new species of snake found in China called Calamaria incredibilis. The snake measures about 8-9 in (20-22 cm) long, has a slender, brownish body, is non-venomous & has a tail that is short, blunt & shaped like its own head. The purpose of the fake head is to act as a decoy to trick predators into attacking the wrong end, giving the snake time to escape. In fact, if Calamaris is attacked, it immediately coils its body, tucks its real head inside the coil & exposes only the fake-headed tail. It turns out that even if its tail is bitten, it is resilient and disposable, and if it survives, it will eventually heal. Scientists found 2 specimens of this new species separated by 100s of miles on the road, which is surprising because these are burrowing snakes, but in both these cases, the snakes ventured out from their burrows & wandered on roads where they were spotted.

Its name, Calamaria, refers to the genus of small, burrowing reed snakes found across Asia, & "incredibilis," Latin for "unbelievable," was chosen because the researchers themselves were astonished by the tail-end mimicry. Scientists confirmed it was a new species using micro-CT scanning, which is basically X-ray vision that builds a 3D model of the skull without cutting the animal open. The fact that they never observed another snake with the same skull structure demonstrated that the skull shape was distinct enough to be a new species.

[scienceguy22]

When Texas had a sea monster bigger than a school bus.

I'm talking about T. rex—no, not the fearsome king of dinosaurs that ruled the land, but one that ruled the sea called Tylosaurus rex (T.rex) in what is now Texas. 80 mya, parts of North America, including Texas, South Dakota & Kansas, were covered in a vast inland sea that was full of fish, sharks, turtles & 2 huge predators—one called Tylosaurus rex, measuring 43 ft (13 m) long & a smaller predator called Tylosaurus proiger that measured 30-40 ft (9-12 m). T. rex of the oceans was indisputably more massive & strong, with a skull built for stronger muscle attachment & more violent feeding behavior. (Note: This article will only focus on the marine T. rex.) Rex ate pretty much anything it liked, including Tylosaurus proiger shearing through plesiosaur ribs as if they were spaghetti, as well as fish, turtles crushing a large sea turtle shell like a styrofoam cup, & great white sharks crushing them & serrating them & snapping them in half. It would be like a bear trap closing on a loaf of bread. Its teeth were serrated like a saw & tore right through flesh & hard shells.

Its skull had an extra bony pocket for neck muscle attachment, indicating heavier jaw musculature than other tylosaurs. This is similar to how modern crocodilians have expanded crests for jaw-closing muscles. Imagine the strongest crocodile on Earth, then scale it up to school bus size. For all its violence & velocity, Tylosaurus rex was much more than a 43 ft (13 m) engine of muscle & serrated teeth—it was the embodiment of an ocean that no longer exists, a world where the water itself seemed to breathe predators. It rammed, crushed, & carved its way through the Western Interior Seaway, rewriting the rules of what an apex predator could be. And though its bones now sleep in stone, every fossil still carries the echo of a creature that ruled without hesitation, without rivals & without fear. In the end, Tylosaurus rex didn't just dominate its sea—it defined it.

[scienceguy22]

When a zombie volcano begins to burp.

While we're on the subject of zombies, I'd like to shift our attention to so-called "zombie volcanoes"—those older than 12,000 years old but younger than 2.6 million years. They're called "zombies" because they haven't erupted for that length of time but still show seismicity, gas emissions, or deformation. They are technically dormant but not extinct. One such zombie volcano is situated in Bolivia & called Uturuncu, the tallest mountain in Bolivia, standing 3.7 miles high, or 19,711 ft (6,008 m). It hasn't erupted in 250,000 years but is showing active volcano-like behavior because magma, gases, & briny fluids are circulating through a huge hydrothermal system.

It sits above the Altiplano-Puna Magma Body, the largest known active magma body in the Earth's crust. It's geologically dead...but physiologically twitching. This has created earthquakes, gas emissions & ground deformation in a "sombrero" pattern. To date, no zombie volcanoes have erupted. The longest dormant volcano that did erupt was dormant for 9,000 years in Chile. Volcanologists assure everyone that Uturuncu will not be erupting anytime soon. They attest that the volcano is simply letting off steam, degassing, & venting its pressure, burping if you will, much like a giant geothermal spa.