We've all heard of binocular vision, but this fish has eyes like telescopes. While every other animal has eyes with lenses that focus light and make images on a retina, deep sea denizens called spookfish are absolutely unique in their optics - they use reflecting mirrors instead ! Most astronomical telescope makers prefer mirrors instead of lenses, since they tend to be more efficient at collecting faint amounts of starlight and produce sharper distortion-free images. The first person to highlight the advantages of mirrors over lenses was Isaac Newton - but of course, he had no clue that the same design was being used for millions of years, solving a very similar problem in the low-light environment of the deep ocean. This story appeared around January 2009, but I bring it up because it showed up in this week's episode of Material World, a science show on BBC Radio. Material World is one of the best radio/podcast science program available, and features great stories, lively debates and bad puns galore. Another fantastic weekly science radio show is Quirks & Quarks, on CBC's Radio One. Check them out, and look through the large archive of previous shows that you can listen to -- one of the best ways to get through mind-numbing tasks.
Now fish oil is supposed to be great for the brain, but methinks it can't really be that good: after all, it didn't help the fish that ended up in the jar of oil, right ? (Give me a break, folks - it's been a hard week). However, fish were swimming about with their cranial computers long before anything even considered crawling out of the water. A recent fossil find looks at the mineralized brain of a 300 million year-old iniopterygian (an extinct relative of sharks and ratfishes) from Kansas, imaging its fossilized optic nerves and auditory regions in fantastic detail. But wait, these sharks were swimming around in Kansas ?? They must have had rocks for brains !
One of the most spectacular annual rituals in the marine world is the Great Sardine Run. Every year millions of sardines congregate in the warm currents off the South African coast, in turn attracting hordes of hungry predators all eager for the treat. The dolphins first herd the sardines into huge whirling masses called 'baitballs', at which point sharks join in the festivities, as do Cape gannets that dive-bomb the baitballs from the air and swim underwater picking out fish ! The sight of a gannet swimming around nonchalantly alongside sharks and dolphins is quite unforgettable - and if at first you find it unbelievable, you can watch the video again and again: packing into sardines, or gannet get any worse ?
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
Someday I'd like to experiment and see how well "berries on a thread" work to catch fish. In the meantime, our nearest dearest relatives have figured out how to land an easier (perhaps tastier) catch. While tool use among chimpanzees is old news, a recent paper shows fascinating evidence of technology development - a small group of Central African chimps seem to have invented some nifty new tools to fish for termites. First a termite-fishing primer: find yourself a nice termite mound; then poke some holes in it with a stick. Next, insert a flexible stem into the hole and wait for some termites to angrily bite into it. Withdraw, slurp up those proteins and repeat. However, if you're a chimp with a Goualougo Triangle education, you would first chew on the stem to flare the end out - that way you can catch up to 10 times as many termites, see. As the old saying goes, teach a chimpanzee to fish and you feed him for life.
I wonder if I could get them to fix my bicycle one of these days.
