A Formica ant suspends a drop of aphid honeydew between her mandibles (which bristle with 7 or more teeth), as she drinks it. 
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Question for readers to answer:

Macaque monkey,  Crab-eating macaque (Macaca fascicularis) in Lopburi, Thailand.  Photo courtesy of 'Chris huh' and Wikipedia.

If a human yawns in front of a monkey, will the monkey yawn?

Deadline:  June 4.  We will publish the best answers on June 9.

You get the credit.

Click here to give me your answer: Answer the question.


Interacting with nature by K:

How to Offer Wild Birds Shelter in the Winter

Not all birds migrate south for the winter.  Winter is a hard season for birds, and many risk freezing to death at night. It doesn't take much effort or money to provide shelter for them, and it can make a huge difference to the little feathered guys!

More Articles >>

 

 

Fast answers: 

Animals  Airspace  Astronomy  Humans  Physics  Plants         Add-a-comment

Animals

Do shrimp have a heart? Ginger, Kerrville, Texas  Yes they do.  It's a longitudinal blood vessel lying along the middle of the shrimp's back. Shrimps have a blood system (like insects) that opens into the body cavity so that all the organs are bathed in blood.

Do giraffes see in colour ?  Jackson, Arusha,  Tanzania  Yes, they distinguish between red, orange, yellow-green, green, blue and violet.

Can giraffes swim? The established wisdom seems to be that they can't. However, someone (who left an online comment) saw giraffes swimming on a TV program. I would love to know for sure.  Zen, London, England  Probably they can, but rarely do.  In fact, nobody has ever seen giraffes swim, says NatureWildlife.com, but we have found wild giraffes on an island surrounded by water at least 14 feet (4 m) deep.

What does a octopus do when it is threatened by a predator?  Brittany, Orange,  New South Wales, Australia  It depends on the octopus.  The extremely toxic blue-ringed octopus displays his brilliant blue rings to warn a predator off.  

"Many octopus have a pair of 'eye spots' that they can flash", says biologist Roy CaldwellThis may startle predators just as the eyespots on a moth do. 

Most octopuses release a reservoir of dark inky dye, which might serve as a smoke screen and/or be noxious disabling the predators chemosensory organs.  Other species can release ink mixed with mucus.  This forms a brown or black glob that hangs in the water and looks somewhat like the octopus.  Often, as the octopus releases the deceptive glob, it changes color (usually to white) and gets away.  The predator attacks the glob and gets nothing more than a mouth full of bad tasting ink. 

Octopuses also can change their skin coloration to go unnoticed. 

Several octopus species drop their arms off their body when attacked.  "The wiggling autotomized arms will even lock onto the predator with its suckers,"  says Caldwell.  "This is usually sufficiently distracting to allow the octopus to escape."  Re-growing lost arms is a snap for an octopus. 

I have a female cockatiel, 3 years old. How come she lays eggs? Since there is no male, at all and never has been, this is very strange! Rachael, Shoalhaven, NSW, Australia  All female birds lay eggs, whether or not there's a male present.  The eggs are unfertilized in your case, and won't hatch.  It's important to let your bird sit on her eggs and not to throw the eggs away because otherwise she might keep laying eggs to replace the ones thrown out, and get exhausted. 

If you let her sit on the eggs undisturbed, she'll probably reach a total of between 6 and 10 eggs, which she will sit on for several weeks until she loses interest.  When she neglects sitting on the eggs for several consecutive days, then you know it's safe to toss the eggs out.  Female cockatiels will go through this egg-laying process once or twice a year.

Airspace

Why do aircraft use electrical components that run at 400 Hz frequency?  The higher 400 Hz frequency cause [up to seven times] more reactive losses compared to 60Hz frequency.  So why do aircraft use it?  Bharti, Faridabad, India  The reason aircraft use 400 Hz frequency instead of 60 Hz is to save weight and volume. 400-Hz devices are usually smaller and lighter.  The lighter the aircraft, for a given power system, the higher it's performance.  That's why Charles Lindbergh didn’t take a radio when he flew across the Atlantic.

Astronomy

Are the photons or electrons (not sure which) that we see in TV snow/static left over from the big bang? Maria, New York State.  Yes (the radiation is microwaves now).  "Turn your television to an 'in between' channel, and part of the static you'll see is the afterglow of the big bang," says NASA.

Reader's Comment:

My comment has to do with seeing the residue of the Big  Bang in snow on the TV screen. A good answer, but becoming vanishingly small in applicability. I think it applies only to *analog* TVs.

There are three things that keep it from being approximately correct for digital TVs -- the nonrandomness that comes from the screen's inherent quantization, effects of noise rejecting RF digital filters in the receiver, and the way that PLL digitally synthesized signals work in the presence of little or no input from the RF and IF stages of the receiver. In digital TVs, what the snow represents is a bad digital approximation to wandering around in the quantum noise weeds of the transistors in the PLL synthesis circuitry.

BTW, I have an experimental validation of the nonrandomness of snow on digital TV screens. Get an old analog TV and tune it to no channel and get a nice uniform field of snow. Lean close to the screen so the screen image fills your visual field and stare at it without blinking for as long as you can. Soon you will start seeing circular patterns in the snow. These are not actually there; they are being created by your optic nerves and brain in an attempt to deal with pure randomness of input. (This has a sensory analogy in Delirium Tremens...) If you try the same experiment with a digital TV you will find it is much harder, if not impossible, to get the circular patterns to begin forming. This is because the human nervous system is happy with nonsensical input as long as it is not truly random.   Bob, Marietta, Georgia

What is the time frame for a black hole? If a black hole is infinite or near infinite in density does that mean that it's time frame relative to us is stopped or very slow? Tom, Jersey City, New Jersey  The gravity of a black hole is, indeed, enormous --- so great it bends light back down into the black hole, says physicist Rod Nave.  Light cannot escape the event horizon.  Suppose daredevil you are in a spacecraft, and decide to dive into the black hole.  How does time pass for you and me, far away watching?  You perceive no difference in how time passes.  In you go, time passes normally.  But I see a big difference.  The closer your spacecraft gets to the event horizon, the more the hole's gravity bends the light reflected from your spacecraft, and the longer that reflected light takes to reach me.  It seems to me that time has slowed, and slows more until it stops as you reach the event horizon.  There, at the horizon, the light from your craft bends back down into the black hole, and I never see you enter the hole.

What is the the name of the new planet which is found in space?  Priya, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.)  The planet's name is Gliese 581 C  — a name derived from its sun, the dim and distant red-dwarf star (Gliese 581), about 20.5 light-years away.  The planet is about 50 percent bigger than Earth and five times more massive.  It is the first extra-solar planet found that could support life.  Gliese 581 C may have liquid water, announced astronomer Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland on April 24, 2007.

Humans

What would be the best way to sanitize toothbrushes?  Leigh,  Closter, New Jersey  According to the American Dental Association, sanitizing toothbrushes is a waste of time.  At least, it does nothing to improve health.  They recommend replacing a toothbrush in three to four months.

Reader's comments:  Actually a co worker that is a microbiologist did a test to help her
daughter in a high school science project and found that you should actually replace your tooth brush 1 time per week (she said just go to the dollar store and get cheap tooth brushes) because when she ran micro tests on the brushes it was amazing that there was coliform on the brushes very quickly just from being in the same room as the toilet and the aresol created from flushing the toilet spread the bacteria everywhere and toothbrushes were an excellent haven for these germs to grow. Joe, Rochester, New York.

Under "Humans" - What's the best way to sanitize a toothbrush, try OraQuel, http://www.OraQuel.com. The American Dental Association has in fact published several reports stating links exist between improper oral care, cardiovascular and other serious illness. Links are posted on the site to many reports in respected journals.  Someone, World

What is the national language in England?  Kikki, Plantation, Flordia  England, like the USA, has no official national language (designated by legislation). 

I have two girl babies. But I wish a boy. Can medical science help me to born a boy baby?  Saima, Lahore, Pakistan  None of the easy procedures that we have developed to influence the sex of the new born has been proved to work, according to the rigorous standards of medical journals.  But because they haven't been proved effective, doesn't mean they don't actually help. 

If you want to try, here are some tips on how and when to have sex so it favors a boy-child, according to Dr. Shettles, who wrote a book on the subject (How to Choose the Sex of Your Baby) and researched sperm characteristics in the 1960's.

Men produce two types of sperm:  y-sperms that determine the baby will be a boy and x-sperms for a girl.  Dr. Shettles noted y-sperms are smaller (verified recently) and perhaps faster and weaker than x-sperms.  So, he recommended these practices to give the boy-producing y-sperms their greatest chance to succeed in fertilizing the egg:

  • The most important thing is timing of intercourse in the woman's monthly cycle.  Since the y-sperms are fast, have sex close to when the woman releases the ripe egg (ovulation).  Two days before ovulation through a few days after ovulation work best.  The fast y-sperms can then beat the slower x-sperms to the egg, and you end up, maybe, with a boy baby.
  • Since the y-sperms are weaker, you need to help them reach the egg by releasing them as close to the egg as possible.  Deep penetration and rear-entry (doggy style) helps.
  • The environment in the woman's womb makes a difference.  The more acid it is, the more likely it will kill the weaker y-sperms.  A woman can help make her womb less acidic by having an orgasm.

"It's difficult to put too much faith in this type of folk-lore stuff," cautions Michael Tucker, scientific director of Georgia Reproductive Specialists.  Y-bearing sperm are a little smaller and, therefore, lighter.  But whether this truly translates to being faster and weaker is "a little dubious to me!"

"This topic is obviously an ethical minefield," says Gail Sullivan, retired assistant research professor of medicine at the University of Virginia Health Science Center.  She, however, calls our attention to another "interesting (and expensive)" method of sorting x- and y-sperms by the amount of DNA the sperms carry. 

The female-producing x-sperm contains more DNA than the male-producing y-sperm.  Researchers use a fluorescent dye to stain sperm in semen; the dye binds to sperm according to the amount of DNA it carries.  They shine a laser beam on the sperm, and separate the brighter glowing x-sperms from the dimmer y-sperms. 

The procedure (called MicroSort) costs about $6000, but shifts the 50:50 x- to y-sperm ratio in semen to 90% x or 75% y.  Then parents can choose the sorted semen they desire for insemination, and thereby achieve family balancing.  It's not perfect, but in the 1,000 pregnancies and 900 births so far (January 2006) 91 percent of parents who wanted girls succeeded, and 76 percent of those who wanted boys succeeded.  MicroSorting can also reduce the likelihood of having children with x-linked disease.

Physics

Using a telescope, if I could look into a mirror located far away from the earth, would the reflection I see be in the past? James, St. Louis, Missouri  Yes, it would, James, because light travels at a finite speed; it takes time to travel to the far away spot and back again.  You would see your reflected self from the past.

Does a person get more wet running through the rain or walking through the rain (given the same distance walking or running from point A to point B, number of raindrops, steadiness of rain, and other variables all constant.)  Mark, Phoenix, Arizona.  Run, don't walk to stay about 40% drier. 

Plants

Is a peanut a fruit?  Mikayla, Smithfield, North Carolina  Yes.  A peanut is the fruit of the peanut plant.  After the plant sprouts from a planted seed, and grows about 18 inches, yellow flowers appear and bloom for about a month.  After fertilization and the flowers fade, the young fruit forms a pointed stalk called a peg. The 'digging stick' peg points and grows downward. The fruit (i.e., peanuts) develop a woody outer shell (the peanut shell), and the pointed fruits bury themselves —  in the ground!
 

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