The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Science

Hot Monkey Love- Chimps Put Out for Meat

My apologies to those readers who are offended by the title of this post, but it is based upon science. The following clip helps to document how relations between chimps are conducted.

Come to think of it, maybe we aren’t all that different from chimps. Quite a few of the boys took their wives out for a steak dinner on Valentine’s day. Maybe we should take notes. 😉

The oldest profession isn’t restricted to humans. A new study found that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex.

By stealthily following a group of about 20 adult chimpanzees in Côte d’Ivoire’s Taï National Park, behavioral ecologists Cristina Gomes and Christophe Boesch of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany carefully noted which male chimpanzees copulated with which females. The researchers found that she-chimps put out more often for males that shared food with them at least once, compared to stingy males who never offered meat.

Apparently, buying dinner is a good way to improve the chances of getting lucky on a date, even if you’re a chimp.

The primates’ food-for-sex barter occurs indirectly, over the course of weeks or months, with males seeming to accrue credit with the ladies by plying them with meat killed on a hunt.

Make Sour Things Sweet

Kind of interesting.

But after chewing the fruit and rubbing the pulp against the tongue, the berry, known by a promising name — “miracle fruit” or Synsepalum dulcificum — releases a sweetening potency that alters the taste buds.

For about 15 to 30 minutes, everything sour is sweet.

Lemons lose their zing and taste like candy. Oranges become sickeningly sweet. Hot sauce that usually burns the tongue tastes like honey barbecue sauce that scorches as it trickles down the throat.

Through word of mouth, these miracle fruits have inspired “taste tripping” parties, where foodies and curious eaters pay $10 to $35 to try the berries, which are native to West Africa.
About five months ago, a Miami, Florida, hospital began studying whether the fruit’s sweetening effects can restore the appetite of cancer patients whose chemotherapy treatments have left them with dulled taste buds.

“What happens in patients is the food tastes so metallic and bland, it becomes repulsive,” said

Dr. Mike Cusnir, a lead researcher on the project and oncologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center. “Most of the patients undergoing chemotherapy have weight loss. Then they cut further into their diet and then this furthers the weight loss. It causes malnutrition, decreased function of the body and electrolyte imbalance.”

Undersea Volcano Erupts

I find this fascinating.

The eruption began Monday after a series of earthquakes near Tonga, a 170-island archipelago between Australia and Tahiti, residents told the Associated Press. There were magnitude-5.0 quakes there Sunday night and Monday afternoon, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Though the Wellington Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) issued an advisory for the area, the plume isn’t engendering island residents and so far hasn’t hurt fish or other animals, according to the AP.

Yesterday a plume rose to between 15,000 and 25,000 feet (4.6 to 7.6 kilometers), the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program reported. “It’s a very significant eruption, on quite a large scale,” Tonga’s chief geologist, Kelepi Maf, told the Times of London. This is not unusual for this area and we expect this to happen here at any time.

Paralyzed Man Walks Again

This story was really interesting. I wonder why I haven’t seen more about it.

“He has been confined to a wheelchair for 20 years. Now a paraplegic man is walking again, and his doctors call it a miracle. CBS13 went to Manteca to find out how a spider bite helped get him back on his feet.

“I closed my eyes and then I was spinning like a flying saucer,” explains David Blancarte.
A motorcycle accident almost killed David 21 years ago. At the time he might have wished he was dead.

“I asked my doctor, ‘Sir what happened? I can’t feel my legs’,” said David.

Ever since, David’s been relying on his wheelchair to get around. Then the spider bite. A Brown Recluse sent him to the hospital, then to rehab for eight months.

“I’m here for a spider bite. I didn’t know I would end up walking,” says David.

A nurse noticed David’s leg spasm and ran a test on him.

“When they zapped my legs, I felt the current, I was like ‘whoa’ and I yelled,” he says.

He felt the current and the rush of a renewed sense of hope.

“She says,’your nerves are alive. They’re just asleep’,” explained David.

Five days later David was walking.”

Blue Whales

I intend to watch the National Geographic special on Blue Whales. I think that they are incredible.

  • Blue whales can grow up to 100 feet (~30 m). Lengthwise that’s the equivalent of two city buses and longer than an NBA basketball court.
  • They can weigh up to 200 tons. That’s about 8 DC-9 aircrafts or 15 school buses.
    In fact, their tongue alone weigh as much as an elephant. About 100 people can fit in a blue whale’s mouth.
  • A blue whale heart is the size of a Mini Cooper and can weigh close to 2,000 pounds (~907 kg). Its heartbeat can be detected from two miles away and a human can easily crawl through its major arteries.
  • Blue whales can produce sounds louder than a jet engine (188 dB vs. jet engine’s 140 dB) and can communicate with other whales up to 1,000 miles away.
  • A single adult eats about 4 tons of krill (tiny shrimplike animals) a day.
  • The spray from a blue whale’s blowhole is almost as tall as a three-story building (30 feet or 9 m).
  • A toddler can fit into its blowhole.

Here is a link to some more incredible facts.

Mammoth Found in Los Angeles

I thought that this was pretty cool. Think that I might have to take a walk on down to the George C. Page museum. Been a while since I got to see the tar pits.

Now, at least 10,000 years later, visitors in Los Angeles, California, can see the remains of “Zed,” a Columbian mammoth whose nearly intact skeleton is part of what is being described as a key find by archaeologists at Los Angeles’ George C. Page Museum.

Zed was discovered at a construction site in the heart of Los Angeles. An earth mover helping to build an underground parking garage near the L.A. County Museum of Art uncovered the mammoth’s skull, according to project director Christopher Shaw.

“The skull was hit and shaved off … by a scraper,” Shaw told CNN Thursday. “We don’t know just how smashed up it is, but it’s fairly intact because it’s a huge jacket we put it around.”

The mammoth’s fossil was among 16 deposits at the site that archaeologists wrapped, along with the surrounding dirt, in plaster jackets, creating 23 boxes weighing between 5 and 53 tons that were then lifted out intact.

The construction was being monitored by an archaeological consulting firm because the site is so close to the La Brea tar pits — an archeological site that has yielded 100 million bones belonging to 300 species of mammals and birds.

Construction on the parking garage began in 2006, but it took two more years for all the recovered materials to be handed over to researchers at the Page Museum, who began analyzing the various fossils in June, Shaw said.

“It’s very exciting for us because each one of these … could be different ages in the past 10,000 to 45,000 years,” Shaw said.

John Harris, the head curator of the Page Museum, publicly announced the finding of “a whole new treasure trove of fossils” on Wednesday. He described it as “the most important discovery” for the museum “of the last 90 years.”

Shaw said the announcement was made to “create interest” in the museum’s discovery.
Among the most interesting items is likely to be Zed, who is believed to have died in his late 40s. Mammoths are thought to have had an average lifespan of about 60 years.

Not all of Zed’s remains have been cleaned off and analyzed.

“Right now we have opened the plaster jacket of four sections that were excavated, including vertebrae and ribs and pelvis, one tusk and the lower jaw,” Shaw said. “It will take another six to 12 months to open everything.”

Shaw said both of Zed’s tusks were found intact, which is very rare.

“Previously, we’ve found mammoths but the tusk material was very poorly preserved,” Shaw said. “It’s very exciting to us to have these two complete, beautifully preserved tusks.”

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