Quirks and Quarks

Blood drinking bats can suck energy out of their protein-rich meals

Vampire bats are famous for exclusively drinking blood, but they’re also surprisingly good runners. And part of why that’s surprising is that blood contains very little carbohydrates or fat, which most other mammals rely on for fuel. So Kenneth Welch and Giulia Rossi at University of Toronto Scarborough ran bats on a specially-designed treadmill to find out more. They discovered that the bats can almost instantly convert the amino acids in their blood meals into usable energy. The research was published in the journal Biology Letters.

Canada’s most prestigious science prize goes to garbage science

Dr. Kerry Rowe of Queen’s University’s Civil Engineering Department has been awarded this year’s Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering for his critical work in designing landfills that have to contain our waste and pollutants for generations.

UK sugar rationing in the 1950s led to lower risks of illness late in life

Sugar was rationed in the UK from 1940 to 1953 due to the war and postwar austerity, and so was consumed at about the level nutritionists now recommend. Dr. Claire Boone from McGill University was part of a new study published in the journal Science which found that the limited sugar intake by people in the UK during pregnancy and the first couple of years of life resulted in significant decreases in diabetes and hypertension.

Reinventing the wheel to understand how the wheel was first invented

The invention of the wheel is a milestone in human technological evolution, but it’s not clear how it happened. A new study combines design science and computational mechanics to virtually re-invent the wheel and understand the developments that could have led to the creation of the first wheel-and-axle system. The research, led by Kai James from Georgia Institute of Technology, adds support to the theory that the wheel was likely first invented by Neolithic copper miners in around 3900 BC. The research was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

Can high tech fishing gear limit losses of endangered whales?

The endangered North Atlantic Right Whale has had a long and rocky road to recovery after the depredations of commercial whaling. One of the major threats to the species today is fishing line entanglements. In a documentary, producer Sonya Buyting explores how researchers, like Sean Brillant from the Canadian Wildlife Federation, and fishers, like Greg Beckerton in New Brunswick, are trialing high-tech ropeless fishing gear to save the whales while still preserving the fishers’ livelihoods.

Canadian bird flu case raises potential pandemic concerns

A teen in BC critically ill with H5N1 bird flu has raised concerns about a new pandemic, since it’s not clear how they acquired the virus. Researchers are closely monitoring the virus as it spreads, primarily among animals for changes that could indicate it spreading more easily in humans. Matthew Miller, the Canada Research Chair of Viral Pandemics from McMaster University, says the timing of this case is particularly concerning given the potential for influenza viruses to mix now that we’re heading into flu season and wild birds are migrating.

Sighted and blind people can learn to echolocate equally well

Echolocation — using sound reflections to sense surroundings — is best known among animals like bats and dolphins. But many blind people have also learned to echolocate, and a new study has shown that sighted people can learn to do it just as effectively as those without sight. Dr. Lore Thaler, a professor in psychology and director of the human echolocation lab at Durham University in England, and her team published their findings in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

An elephant’s shower shows sophisticated tool use

An elephant at the Berlin Zoo has learned to manipulate hoses to wash herself, and is fascinating researchers, including Humboldt University PhD student Lena Kaufmann, who is investigating tool use in non-human animals. In a recent study, published in the journal Current Biology, Kaufmann and colleagues gave Mary the elephant different hoses to test her abilities, and she quickly either adapted to use the hoses to meet her end goal, or got frustrated when the hoses didn’t work and bit the hose in anger. What’s also interesting is a companion pachyderm that has apparently learned to sabotage these showers by kinking the hose.

Pesticides used on farms attract bumblebee queens, not to their benefit

Researchers were surprised and disturbed to discover that in tests, young queen bumblebees hibernated in pesticide-contaminated soils. During her PhD studies at the University of Guelph, Dr. Sabrina Rondeau found that bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) queens seemed to prefer soil samples containing pesticides, even when presented with a pesticide free soil option. They’re not clear on why the bees would prefer soils with pesticides, but are concerned with the impact this might have on their reproduction and survival. The study is published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

A writer speaks for the trees, and says we have much in common with them

There are about three trillion trees on our planet — about four hundred for each of us. And we literally couldn’t live without them. They take in millions of tons of carbon dioxide each year, and provide us with oxygen. Saving our forests is a big step toward saving our planet from the challenges from climate change. Dr. Daniel Lewis, an environmental historian at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California writes about just twelve of the the most exotic, important and interesting species we share the Earth with in his book The Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of our Future.

Reintroducing Hawaii’s sacred crow to the wild

The world’s most endangered crow, the Hawaiian crow or or ʻalalā, is making tentative steps towards a comeback. After going extinct in the wild, only 120 birds remain in captivity, in two facilities operated by the San Diego Zoo. Over the years, researchers have attempted reintroductions in the bird's native habitat on the Big Island of Hawaii, but those efforts have all been unsuccessful. Recently, the team tried something different - reintroducing the birds to a different island than their native home. The initial release happened in October and so far, the team, including Bryce Masuda, has high hopes and positive signs from their latest attempt.

Lasers tell us about the pterosaur’s unique tail

The great flying reptiles of the dawn of the age of dinosaurs, the pterosaurs, took flight with delicate but flexible internal tail structure that allowed it to work like a kite. Scientists used recently developed technology to enable them to see a lattice-like structure in the soft tissue in the early pterosaur soft tissue that was otherwise invisible to the naked eye. Natalia Jagielska, a paleontologist at the Lyme Regis Museum in Dorset, England, said their kite-like tail vane would have stood upright and could have functioned as a display and to help them in flight. The study was published in the eLife journal, Evolutionary Biology.

How gophers help re-seed volcanic landscape with life

After Mt. St. Helens exploded in 1980 it left a shattered, ash-covered, barren landscape behind. But the one-time reintroduction of gophers to one area led to a remarkably fast recovery of plants and other fauna. Forty-years later, changes to the environment are still being documented by Dr. Mia Maltz, assistant professor of Microbial Ecology and Soil Earth at the University of Connecticut, and her team. They published their research in the journal Frontiers in Microbiomes.

Desert ants’ magnetic navigation

Desert ants that navigate the endless sands of the Sahara use the Earth’s magnetic field to find their way, which is not unusual. But unlike other animals like birds and turtles they don’t appear to have an internal compass that aligns north and south. Instead they are unique in that they use a more subtle cue – the polarity of the magnetic field. A study looking at this led by Dr. Pauline Fleischmann, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oldenburg in Germany was published in the journal Current Biology.

Celestial body mysteries: dark comets and meteorites from young asteroid families

The thousands of small celestial bodies in our solar system are now a bit less mysterious, thanks to several recent discoveries.

One group of astronomers have traced back the origins of 84 per cent of all known meteorites that have pummeled Earth to just a few young asteroid families in the asteroid belt. Michaël Marsset, from the European Southern Observatory in Chile, said collisions in the asteroid belt create a collisional cascade that produces fragments, some of which end up raining down on Earth as meteorites. Two of their papers were published in the journal Nature and a third in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Another group of astronomers have identified two populations of stealthy dark comets that are something in between a comet and an asteroid. They’ve found fourteen of these objects whose orbital motion is comet-like, but which lack a visible tail like regular comets. Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, said they’ve found two types of these unusual solar system bodies: larger ones in an elliptical orbit out to Jupiter and smaller ones in orbit around Earth. Their study was published in the journal PNAS.