Yummy, yummy, yummy I got love in my tummy!

Image revised from http://morningnoonandnight.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/honey-does-not-spoil/

Appearantly, it's 12 little bugs, that bug around in the stomach of the honey bee, which makes it able for honey to live up to the paradox of being both sweet and seductive yet healthy and antibacterial. Without the bacteria in their tummies, the bees are left without a immune system and are therefore an easy target for outer, wicked forces. Out of the 12 bacteria, four belongs to the gram-positive genus of Bifidobacteria, while the other eight belongs to the Lactobacillus genus. It would be soooooo cooooool to know how they've evolved along with the bees and how their genome looks like!

Source: http://hd.se/skane/2008/08/12/helsingborgsforskare-har-loest/

It's the inside that matters...

Image revised from http://twi-ny.com/twiny.01.04.06.html

Yesterday, my boyfriend and I took the advantage of living close to Copenhagen (we live in the 3rd largest city in Sweden; Malmö) and went to see Bodies - the exhibition, which is currently on display for all those willing to pay a couple of danish crowns (150 dkr, but since I still have a student licence I only had to pay 120 dkr - jie-ha!). The exhibition shows the body, that we all posess (surprising, huh!), from an inside perspective. By removing all bodily fluids and replacing them with a polymerizing substance all cells are kept in place and thus it's able to reveal how organs, tendons, muscles, nervs ect., are organized. This creates an extraoirdinary view of the human body that I bet you've never seen before (unless you're Jeffery Dahmer or something).

Image revised from http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/photos/popup.asp?gtitle=Bodies%3A%20The%20Exhibition&SubID=1823&page=0&css=gtitle.css&pubdate=09/27/06

The only semi-negative comment to BODIES that strucked me during my walk through the exhibition is that I'm a bit tired of they way that muséums always presents things rooting from live sciences. It's always short "this is how it is"- and "scientist has found"-notes that presents the objects on display. This doesn't really invite the visitors to question facts any further, which really is the machinery that keeps life science going. If the visitors are encouraged to parcipitate in any activity regarding the exhibition, it's always to conclude something that is said rather than something that invokes curiosity to know more. I may be naive but I believe that science could "catch" more attention and draw more minds to the field if we had a more humble and encouraging approach when showing off some gleam of findings to the people. Just a thought! Having said that, here are some more images from the exhibition:

Image revised from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/nyregion/30bodies.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


Image revised from http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_13616.shtml


Image revised from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/photogalleries/cadavers_exhibition_museum/

Born kickin'

How about starting a new clade from this 6-legged Bambi? Would sure be something...

No candy for you, missy!

Ever thought about why your dog has a sweet-tooth and gladly indulge in your cookies and sweets, while if you offer your cat a piece he/she stares at you as if you were stupid just for thinking that he/she would even smell at it? Well, as much as some people would like to believe that cats are smarter than dogs (which is based on the independance of most cats compared to most dogs, which in turn is a false indication of intelligence since this reasoning would state that the lone ourangutangs are much, much more smarter than us human that likes to get along with all the other kids...but that's a whoooole different entry), this is not the answer to the candy question. Actually, cats can't taste the sweetness at all. Sometime during cat evolution the kittie ancestor lost the ability to have taste receptors for all things being sugary. I would think that this is ok since their diet is more dependant on amino-acids than carbohydrates (if I didn't have my childish liking of chocolate and cookies I would gladly remove this part of my genome too!)

Since this is not exclusive for our cute little homies that cuddles with us hairless primates, but concern all cats (tigers, lions, yeah you get it now) I suppose I'll be safe on a savannah if I dress up as a lolipop? This must be tested empirically...

Sources:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2063449

Yin and yan all in one piece

We'd like to think that our gender/sex/whatever lies behind the stating that "it takes two to tango" is someting essential ever since we became a sperm&egg hybrid. Well, you could say that it is like that on the paper but nature can't really read. There are therefore several interesting "neither male nor female" cases both in cell way (such as Klinefelter syndrome, Triple X syndrome, XYY syndrome, Turner syndrome and so on) and in body way (hermaphroditism and ovotestism). There's nothing wrong with individuals having these so called "symptoms", other than that they fall out of what we preceive as being normal. As if anyone were...

Anyway! There's more beautiful examples found in nature of how unspecific gender determination could be. One goes under the term "gynandromorphism". It basically means that in a specimen you can find both male and female characteristics. This has been found in moths as well as in some lobsters. Take a look at the claws of the crab in the upper picture and you can see that one side shows female features whereas the other show male features.

There are two possibilities in this "condition": the sex differences can either be separated in two sides of the individual (called "bilateral gynandromorphism") or be mosaic.


Images revised from: http://www.daltonstate.edu/galeps/images/jpegs/Papilionidae/Pa%20glaucus%20gynandromorph2.jpg http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/dual%20sex%20moth%20NHM.JPG

Even if they have male and female characteristics, they are unable to use them for reproductive purposes. This, I suppose, is a way of preventing the possibility for the ultimate incestous mating to happen (self-fertilization, that is) since this isn't really a good thing if you're not a flower.

I also found a site stating that they have a gynandromorphic finch! Read about it here.


Sources:
http://www.lobsters.org/ldoc/ldocpage.php?did=436 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynandromorph

The Guinae sea monster is waiting for your bare naked toes

It's things like this that makes me feel unconfortable in waters where I can't see the bottom. I mean, it has fur, four paws and a tail and its huuuuge. And it lurks under the surface waiting for YOU.

Well, what could it be? A hoax? A deformed and decomposed whale? A goldfish that's been living in the spill water of a nuclear power plant? One of Cthulhu's spawns? A new species? If its the latter, it would be sooo cool to see how a live specimen looks like.

Maybe its some old, extinct animal that's been frozen for millions of years in some ice mass far away, but due to the warmer climate it has thawed and drifted away with the sea current. Whatever it is, it further confirms that that chill I get down my spine when I'm swimming over black water, has reason for being there.

Want to see more? Then go to:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1833320/posts
http://www.scienceray.com/Biology/Marine-Biology/Six-of-the-Seas-Scariest-Monsters.115045

Mother maggot

I'm back from Wacken Open Air with a bucket full of good concert memories and stuff like that. This isn't really a curiosity post, but I had to tell the world that on the busride home I became the cradle for some newborn housefly maggots. It wasn't my intention at all, really. When a huuuuge fly landed on my leg I left it alone because I wanted to have a look at it before it flew away again. To my suprise, and somewhat to my disgust it started to shoot of small, twisting little maggots right on top of my leg. It managed to drop of abcout 10 little future flies before I was able to understand what really happened and waved it, and the maggots away. Quite a little adventure...