TIL Daily

Hermaphroditic Civil War horse statue links heroism to maleness.

Above is a picture of a statue in Lexington, KY, in honor of Civil War general John H. Morgan. It depicts him on his favorite horse, Black Bess. The inscription is “Gen. John H. Morgan and His Bess.”

Here’s what’s interesting about this: Bess, as you might guess, was a mare — a female horse.  The statue, however, has testicles. You can see them in the picture. The sculptor gave Bess testicles because he considered a mare an unworthy mount for a general — despite the fact that Morgan himself seemed to think she was just fine.

Story via Lies Across America: What Our Historical Sites Get Wrong, by James W. Loewen. 

The ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids may have been able to move massive stone blocks across the desert by wetting the sand in front of a contraption built to pull the heavy objects, according to a new study.

“Hey guys, got some spare blood? Promise it wont hurt!”

Animals that consume blood for sustenance are sanguivorous. Sanguine means “consisting of, or related to, blood”.

Vampire bats are the only purely-sanguivorus mammals, and have razor-sharp teeth and numbing saliva to keep their food sources asleep. The blood thinners in their saliva keep the blood flowing for several minutes after the initial bite.  Despite their blood-sucking nature, vampire bats are some of the few mammals that will adopt another bat’s young should the mother die of disease or from predators. The young cling to their mothers for over three months, and rely upon their mother’s milk to supplement their diet for between five to six months, until the young learn to hunt sufficiently well on their own.

The Animal Kingdom, Arranged After its Organization; Forming a Natural History of Animals, and an Introduction to Comparative Anatomy. A scientifically updated translation of the works of Baron Cuvier, 1854.

Of the 1100+ bat species, only three are sanguinovores. Their comparatively-huge neocortex (the part of the brain that controls “personality” and what we consider to be “interpersonal relationships” resides here) is thought to be a direct result of the difficult nature of blood-dependence.

Blood is a surprisingly poor food source. In terrestrial mammals (the vampire bat’s only food source), it’s completely water, sugars, and proteins, and the lack of fats in it means that if vampire bats don’t consume at least 50% of their body weight in blood every 48 hours, they will die.

Brahmin moth, Brahmaea wallichii

The Brahmin moth, Brahmaea wallichii (Brahmaeidae) is a stunning moth up to 160 mm wingspan, with wavy lines and alternating light and dark colors that provide considerable camouflage on tree bark.

Brahmaea wallichii is found in the north of India, Myanmar, China, Taiwan and Japan.

As shown in the bottom photo, the caterpillar of this moth is equally breathtaking. This one is in the 5th instar; from the egg to this stage it only needed 3 1/2 weeks, and it grew in this time from only 5 mm to a length of 9 cm. 

In wild the larvae feed on Fraxinus excelsior, Ligustrum and Common Lilac. They are able to neutralize plant toxins produced by Ligustrum. The species is named after the botanist Nathaniel Wallich.

[Source]

Hey chickadees, want something to do while I’m off doing that “being social” and “getting married” thing? I mean, besides giving me a wedding gift of cat surgery money? ;P

Learn some chem with Compound Interest! Okay, I know it’s a painful subject. In fact, organic chem is why I gave up my initial desire to become a veterinarian. But despite the pain, it’s fascinating. And Compound Interest is a master at accurate, catchy infographics, helpful study advice, and chemistry lessons from the most unexpected places.

They’re also proponents of stopping bad science, and stopping bad reporting of good science, so they’re ace in my books. 

Compound Interest on Tumblr

Compound Interest on Facebook

Official Compound Interest Infographics

Seriously guys, I cannot express my level of new-found fascination with chemistry thanks to these guys. I’d forgotten how cool it was and how much I really loved the chemistry of microbiology, even when I didn’t always understand it.

Ascidians | ©billunder   (Bass Point, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia)

Ascidians are an evolutionary link between invertebrates and vertebrates. They have a primitive backbone at some stage of their life cycle, but in other aspects they resemble invertebrates. Adult ascidians are ‘sessile’ (unable to move around) and filter food particles from the water by pumping water in one siphon and out the other. Their common name of sea squirt arises from their habit of squirting a jet of water when you stand on or near them when they are uncovered at low tide [1].

The photo shows a colony of Botrylloides magnicoecum, commonly known as the Magnificent ascidian. This species, widespread in the Indo-Pacific, forms large colonies in a wide rage of colors from cream, through yellow and brown to dark blue. The Individual zooids are very small, only 1 or 2mm, usually arranged in parallel rows forming lobes. They share an exhalent siphon in centre of the lobe [2]. 

These Genius Dolphins Are Using Sea Sponges As Tools

The first thing to know is that dolphins can be divided into two groups, and those groups are ”spongers” and ”non-spongers.” The non-spongers are the dolphins that are probably the ones you think about when you have occasion to think about dolphins: smooth, sleek, nimbly darting through the water. 

But the spongers! The spongers are slightly less physically nimble, but possibly much more intellectually nimble, than their fellow cetaceans. And that’s because, as they swim, they carry sea sponges in their beaks—an activity that may help to protect their sensitive snouts from sharp rocks, stingrays, urchins, and other things that might plague them, particularly as they forage for food along the seafloor. Dolphin sponging is a recent discovery: In 1997, scientists observed a group of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins engaging in the practice in Shark Bay, off the coast of Australia.

The behavior, Justin Gregg notes in his book Are Dolphins Really Smart?, has since been traced back to approximately 180 years ago, to a single female who has been nicknamed “Sponging Eve.” Scientists now believe that more than 60 percent of all female dolphins in the area practice sponging. And while the behavior seems to be transmitted for the most part along mother-daughter lines, as many as half of the males born to “spongers” in the area grow up to become spongers, too.

Keeping Track of the Globetrotters

A new study by Guy Abel and Nikola Sander suggests that, contrary to popular belief, people have not been moving between countries — that is, changing their countries of residence — at a steadily increasing rate since the early 1990’s. International migration is an important social and economic force in countries, but tracking migrants is difficult, and furthermore, countries measure migration in many different ways, making comparisons of migration flow, especially at the global level, a challenge.

The authors of this paper have developed an interactive data visualization titled “The Global Flow of People,” that illustrates their work. It is available at www.global-migration.info.

Read more about this research from the 28 March issue of Science here.

[Image by Nikola Sander and flow estimates by Guy Abel, Wittgenstein Centre & Vienna Institute of Demography, Austria. Please click here for more information.]

A cave located on Spain’s Canary Islands, in what was probably the aboriginal region of Artevigua, could reveal an unsuspected knowledge of astronomy by the ancient islanders since it marks equinoxes and solstices, while inside it the light recreates images related to fertility.

The cave was used as a temple and, besides its astronomical function, the light creates in its interior a mythological account of fertility, the likes of which exist nowhere else in the world,” archaeologist Julio Cuenca, who has investigated the area since the 1990s, said.

The Fruita tooth, Fruitadens (2010)

Phylum : Chordata  Class : Reptilia Order : Ornithischia Family : Heterodontosauridae Genus : Fruitadens Species : F. haagarorum

Late Jurassic (154,7 - 147,7 Ma)

75 cm long and 0,75 kg (size)

Morrison formation, USA (map)

"Lunar eclipses are supposed to be red, yet when the Moon passed through Earth’s amber shadow on April 15th, many observers witnessed a softly-glowing band of turquoise blue. Robert and Elisabeth Slobins send this picture of the phenomenon from Fort Myers, Florida:

"The source of the turquoise is ozone. Prof. Richard Keen, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Colorado explains: ‘During a lunar eclipse, most of the light illuminating the Moon passes through the stratosphere, and is reddened by scattering. However, light passing through the upper stratosphere penetrates the ozone layer, which absorbs red light and actually makes the passing light ray bluer!’ This can be seen, he says, as a turquoise fringe around the red.