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Panther, a toilet-using cat, photographed in San Francisco on 22 August 2005. He is ten years old and has been using the toilet since the age of six months.  Photo courtesy of 'Reward.'Readers contributed to December's walking geese question.  Here's your next question: 

Can a domestic cat be trained as well as a dog? Because, I've tried to train mine with not much success...  Vicky, Maracaibo, Venezuela

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Indian corn

Q: Why are some corn kernels colored? And why those particular colors? Jeannine, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Indian corn. Photo courtesy of CIMMYT, copyright, used with permission.Indian corn. Photo courtesy of CIMMYT, copyright, used with permission.

A: Why are heads on top of necks? Why are hearts connected to blood vessels? Why are kernels colored? The answer is the same: genes. Genes govern everything from the tiniest molecular interaction within a cell to the shape of the whole body and also the color of corn.

Corn kernels have different colors because of genes that control color. Each kernel is an individual with its own set of genes, like an embryo. Kernels are siblings housed on the same ear and so naturally have many different colors. By naturally, I mean, through the course of natural selection. One-color ears are unnatural products of human selection.

Livestock feeders prefer vitamin-rich yellow kernels, Southerners like white kernels, and Native Americans favor blue. Years of deliberate selection, careful pollination, and storing of seeds produced these single-color corn ears.

Saying an ear naturally has many colors does not completely answer your question: why these colors? On a deeper level: what does color do for corn?

In general, colors help a plant attract or repel other organisms or hide from predators. Colors also occur as an integral part of biochemical reactions. For example, the chlorophyll in green leaves reflects green light as it absorbs red and blue light from the Sun during photosynthesis.

Some studies suggest corn pigments promote resistance to insects or fungi that invade an ear of corn.

By the way, corn has been around a long time. Primitive peoples of Central America or Mexico were the horticultural geniuses who first cultivated corn at least 5,600 years ago.

Update (March 23, 2009)  This just in from Science News:  Maize was domesticated from its wild ancestor more than 8700 years according to biological evidence uncovered by researchers in the Mexico’s Central Balsas River Valley. This is the earliest dated evidence -- by 1200 years -- for the presence and use of domesticated maize.

Further Surfing:

Is Indian corn poisonous?

Sale of Indian Corn in 1846

(Answered June 1999, updated Aug. 1, 2007 and March 23, 2009)

 

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