The Decomposers

On Saturday we took a walk down the shore to look at a dead fish we were told was there, and it did not disappoint. Yes, we take walks specifically for dead things. Although, I know, it's a dead fish, it didn't have much to live up to really. Kids in general have such a fascination with dead stuff - it's a good way to get a close up look at some species we don't see often and also it's fun to poke stuff with a stick. And this fish was so dried out that Beans immediately asked if she could touch it with her hand, which being weird cool like that, of course I agreed to. And then Bunny couldn't be outdone so she petted it too.

Our dead fish turned out to be a Longnose Gar. A super cool prehistoric looking guy with armor-like scales and a looong mouth full of pointy little teeth. Had my camera (phone) not been both out of batteries and in the cabin I would have taken a picture, but it was both of those things, so here's a artists rendition of what our fish would have looked like alive. Now picture it with just bones for a head, dry, no insides and it's fins slightly nibbled.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Longnose_gar.jpg

This did bring the questions up of where did the insides go and who is doing the nibbling? You'd expect to see all the guts dried up inside and such but it was empty as a drum. We know this because Beans thought it was funny to tap on the scales like, well, a drum. So, because this is a shoreline decomposition the main answer is probably a combo of scavengers led by one of Bunny's favourite birds - Turkey Vulture - and one of mine - Herring Gull - and then a large variety of insects and some other microscopic things we'll lump together and call "the decomposers" for now. This would be different if it was back in a forest somewhere, which would still have the vultures (they are patrolling everywhere) and decomposers but also throw in some crows, ravens and a coyote or two and subtract the gulls. And also someone's dog will roll in it.

Decomposition begins almost immediatly at death and involves two processes: autolysis, which is the body's internal chemicals and enzymes breaking down it's own tissue, and putrefaction (awesome name eh?), which is breakdown of tissues by external bacteria. This tissue breakdown releases gas which is that unmistakable "something is dead here" smell. Like when the mouse died in our wall.

So let's start big. Turkey Vulture. Yes, it's a little weird that a seven-year-old has it as one of her favourite birds, but they are pretty cool, if not pretty. It has an incredible sense of smell, which is really rare among birds - many of which can't smell at all. They have no feathers on their head so as not to pick up bacteria when they stick their heads in a carcass (my apologies to anyone having a snack while reading this). They also have a well developed immune system, which is why they don't get the diseases we would from eating decomposing things (like salmonella, botulism, cholera...fun stuff like that). Stop eating now if you were. They like freshly dead stuff but sometimes have to wait for a bit of "softening" before they can pierce through the skin. They eat the soft bits first.

How can you not love this face?
By Mjobling (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or 
CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I used to work with Herring Gulls, so I've got a bit of a soft spot for them. Which incidentally is probably on my head from where they used to smack me while I was working. These are not to be confused with the smaller Ring-billed Gull, which is the one you find eating fries in the parking lot. Herring Gulls are, for the most part, seafood eaters. They also like insects, worms, eggs, chicks of other species and carrion (dead stuff) if the opportunity arises, particularly dead fish. So this guy is one of our likely suspects for eating the Gar, considering there is no shortage of them where we were.

What are you looking at? Dead fish are easy to catch.
© Laura Erickson, MN, Tettegouche State Park, June 2010

Then in come the insects. Flies and their larva (everyone's favourite - maggots!), worms, beetles - ain't no party like a dead fish party! By eating away at the fish they open it up to the microscopic stuff. Maggots are so good at this, and so specialized to eat only dead, rotting things that they are once again being used in medicine for treating non-healing wounds.

So now that the big parts have been eaten, who does the rest of the clean-up? The Decomposers. It really should be a title of a movie or something, I think something mafia-related or maybe a funny heist film. But what it's really referring to in this case is a variety of bacteria. Bacteria have a really useful purpose here by breaking down everything that didn't get eaten into simpler matter, turning our dead fish back into soil.

There are 5 stages of decompostion - Fresh, Bloat, Active, Advanced Decay and Dry/Remains. Our fish was in number five - just bones and scales. Fresh is where the scavengers come in, taking what they can for dinner. The Fresh stage is the one where the body changes colour (livor mortis), goes rigid for a bit (rigor mortis) and cools down (algor mortis) and as any good fan of CSI should know, these are key for finding out the time of death (which doesn't matter for our fish really), also you need cool in-the-air swipey computers and a bunch of random pipetting.

OK, so I debated whether or not to put this one in, but then I thought,
why not, it's only a decomposing pig.
By Hbreton19 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or
GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Bloat is exactly what it sounds like - a build up of gases that cause the dead thing to puff up. Caution when poking things in the bloat stage with a stick, they can indeed pop. And that's not a fun kind of piñata. This is when the insects move in too. Active Decay and Advanced Decay are the time when the decomposers are really in their element. It is basically the massive breakdown of tissue (active) and the end of that cycle (advanced) where the maggots have had their fill and move on to the couch for a nap (OK, actually they pupate) and the bacteria clean up and do the dishes. Dry/Remains is where our fish was - skin/scales, cartilage and bones - only non-edible stuff is left. The end of the food chain. The nutrients go back into the soil to be taken up into the plant roots and begin the cycle back up again. The ultimate recyclers, those decomposers. There are bacteria (and fungi and actinomycetes) to specialize in nearly everything - dead plants, dead animals, poop - it all gets broken down and reused.

It's quite a feat in teamwork. All these creatures work together to make the world a cleaner place. Now if I can just get a gull to do my laundry...

Clouds (Sky Sheep)

So, it took some convincing to get both girls to the point where they accept that clouds are indeed made of water and not of fluff (and most disappointingly not of cotton candy, which I was able to debunk by pointing out it's lack of pinkness). I can't take all the credit - the Cyberchase weather watcher episode on fog may have helped a bit, because that's just a cloud on the ground. This doesn't explain the variability of clouds though - different shapes, degree of fluffiness (which isn't, but should be, a cloud measurement scale) and what Bunny asked about - colour.

Now, while I am not in any way a weather expert, I am a sailor. Which means weather has always been an interest, because when you are in the middle of a lake with a large metal pole you might want to know when lightning is coming (especially while in charge of other people's children who also have metal poles). I know which shapes of clouds mean a lovely day of sailing and which ones means get your butt back to shore. But what's with all the different shapes and colours if they are all just made of water? Bunny is not the first to wonder this - the first International Cloud Atlas was first published in 1896 (not to be confused with that recent movie that really has nothing to do with clouds at all).

The colour thing is pretty simple actually - density. Because clouds are made of water or ice crystals they break up light on it's way through which combine to make white (all light colours together make white - which by the way doesn't work in paint or playdough, that makes weird grey-mud-brown). When the clouds get thick or piled up then the light doesn't go all the way through and it looks darker - so nothing really changed composition wise, there's just more of it. If you get a whole bunch of clouds together they can also shadow each other creating an even darker or variable look.

Cool Aside Thing: When the light doesn't make it all the way through the water droplets in the atmosphere and bounces around in them, it breaks up into individual colours and we get rainbows. The water acts like a prism (think Dark Side of the Moon album cover but with a water drop) and reflects the light back at us all pretty and happy.

Now, shapes. This has also to do with density and also where they are in the atmosphere. I have borrowed this handy kid-friendly cartoon chart for some shape basics:

http://eo.ucar.edu/webweather/cloud3.html

See that tall puffy guy there on the right? He's the one that tells you to get your boat to harbour and make some popcorn for a light show. The other guys are pretty friendly. Now, before we get into any discussion about the above I'd like to put a disclaimer for any meteorologists reading this - I know there are sub-types and jargon and more classifications than this but we're not going to go there, ok? OK! There is an awesome cloud poster HERE from Environment Canada though if you want a bit more detail or just a cool ID poster for your wall to go next to your bird one.

A bunch of the names there are combos of each other which can't possibly be a coincidence, so here's why:

Cirro: curl, high

Strato: layer

Cumulo: heap
Alto: mid 

Nimbo: rain, precipitation    

So see - our cumulonimbus thunderbuddy there just means "heap of rain" cloud. Which is actually a pretty accurate descriptions of our last few weeks here, in which I sailed boats in my office parking lot. Today was very gray so it's a sky full of stratus, which decided to start raining right when soccer started, so I suppose if I look at my list below they were nimbostratus, but that's not fair because you haven't read that far ahead and now I'm cheating.

Quick overview of the main cloud types:

Stratus
These are the flat gray clouds that often make up what we would just call a "gray day" - no sky visible at all. Like a sky fog - covers everything. Sometimes they drizzle.

Nimbostratus
Dark gray and rainy looking, and often are rainy and that's why they are nimbos - that continuous light or steady rain that lasts a while. This was soccer today - steady (and windy, but we're not doing wind).

Cirrus
Wispy clouds that get blown around like streamers. Way up high and these are happy nice weather clouds. If you've got these your picnic is A-OK.

Happy picnic clouds
http://www.ec.gc.ca/meteoaloeil-skywatchers/default.asp?lang=En&n=5A0D647D-1

Altocumulus
Gray and poofy. They can mean thunderstorms are coming later, particularly in the summer.

Altostratus
Gray and cover the whole sky, but higher than the stratus ones. More rain forebearers.

Cirrocumulus
Little puffballs, like someone flung a bunch of cotton swabs up there. Sometimes they look like fish scales in which case you can call it "mackerel sky". I have no idea why a mackerel, it does seem an odd fish to choose. I feel like for here we should use "trout sky" or "bass sky". Maybe "salmon sky".

Fishy sky
http://weather.ou.edu/~smglenn/cirrocumulus.jpg

Cirrostratus
Really thin white clouds covering the entire sky.


Cumulus
These are your lying on your back looking at shapes clouds. Big, puffy and shaped like dragons, trains, and sheep (I really like sheep). The only bad thing about these guys is sometimes they get together and can turn into the next ones, which is awkward if you are doing your cloudwatching far from shelter.

Sky Sheep!
http://www.ec.gc.ca/meteoaloeil-skywatchers/default.asp?lang=En&n=5A0D647D-1

Cumulonimbus
Thunderstorm! Big and tower or anvil shaped. The bottom is dark gray, and sometimes you can see the sheets of rain coming down (and towards you). The condensation of all that water produces energy and then we get lighting, thunder and tornadoes. If you see this one remember to put down your deck umbrella.

You've been THUNDERSTRUCK
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/photos/clouds/#/cumulonimbus-cloud_910_600x450.jpg

Now, don't get me wrong, I love a good thunderstorm in the right situation. That situation is not on a boat with a large metal pole or in a small tent that is falling over, because I've tried both of those and I don't recommend them. I prefer a cup of tea and being on the inside of a large window.

More about clouds!
http://www.weatherwizkids.com/weather-clouds.htm
http://eo.ucar.edu/webweather/cloud3.html
http://ec.gc.ca/meteoaloeil-skywatchers/default.asp?lang=En&n=5A0D647D-1
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lmk/?n=cloud_classification

Itchy, itchy, scratchy, scratchy

It is middle of "bug season" here and we were outside the other day, enduring our weekend dose of biting, and we noticed that some of the mosquitoes were big, some were little, and some of the things biting us were actually flies.

So - who is actually biting us?

Biting insects are the source of a perverse sort of pride here in Ontario. While obviously they are a big, itchy, swarmy, bitey pain in the bum, there is a rite of passage to surviving the spring bug season and so year after year we sit at campfires and tents in the spring and early summer smacking ourselves and keeping the good people at Deep Woods and AfterBite in business.

While we joke about the mosquito being our provincial bird, we don't have that many species comparatively. We have about 80 species in all of Canada - and I know you are thinking that's a TON, but it's not. There are about 3000 species in the world, and with insects you have to say "about" when talking about numbers because there's no way we know them all and they have such minute differences that scientists constantly figure out what they though was one species is actually two or three or seven. Three of those 80 are exotic species, which means somewhere along the line mosquitoes decided that we didn't have enough and started hitching rides here (probably larvae in imported things with water). Ontario wins for most species out of the provinces with about 64, Quebec is runner up with 50 and BC next with 46. Go Ontario!

Mosquitoes have been around a LOOOOONG time. They show up in fossils around 89-99 million years ago. Yes, trapped in amber and no, so far they don't have cloneable dinosaur blood in them.

Crazy thing - not all northern mosquitoes eat blood. Some keep enough from their larval eating that they don't need to or they eat other things - Wyeomyia smithii breeds only in the water in the pitchers of Purple Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia purpurea) and the larvae preys on the even smaller organisms right there in that water. And in those that do require a blood meal, it's only the females that bite (Girl Power?). Both males and females eat sugar (mmmmm sugar) usually from flowers, and then in some species the females are the blood suckers to gain extra nutrients for egg laying.

They are attracted to carbon dioxide, so unless we figure out a way to breathe that doesn't involve expelling that we're pretty much always going to be a target. So once they land on us the proboscis (long bitey bit) injects a special saliva which prevents clotting and that's what we react to. Bunny was quick to point out that butterflies also have a proboscis, but their is used for only for flowers (good) and not people (evil) and is seriously not impressed with the idea of bug saliva being injected into her and an impressive "ugh" face was made. Beans wasn't really paying attention as she was busy scratching the giant bite on her neck.

I'm not posting all 80 mosquito species - but here's a few (I have made all the pictures in this post small so as not to disturb people with giant insects in their face):

Ochlerotatus triseriatus
Eastern Treehole Mosquito
Copyright © 2009 Ilona L.
bugguide.net

Culex pipiens
North American House Mosquito
photo credit

Anopheles walkeri 
 Permanent Marsh Mosquito
© Tom Murray

If you want to see more (and why wouldn't you want to see more!) check out - Family Culicidae - Mosquitoes

But the thing is here, with the biting and the buzzing and the hey hey, it's not just mosquitoes. The Blackfly is a famous Ontario resident, it's even got it's own song (link for the benefit of those who don't know about blackflies picking their bones in north Ontar-i-o-i-o, in north Ontar-i-o). There are 1250 species of blackfly worldwide (everywhere except Antarctica) and we proudly have 162 in Canada, in every single province - although BC tops the chart this time with 81. Nova Scotia is last, but I feel this means they win, with 13. Same deal - only females bite and everybody eats plant nectar.

Simulium sp.
Black Fly
© Tom Murray

And we're not done there. Here's some other stuff that bites, and still, only the females bite (it's an egg thing):

No See Um (Biting Midge) - these fit through screens, the little buggers
Copyright © 2011 tom murray
bugguide.net

The scourge of canoers feet everywhere - DEER FLY
Copyright © 2010 Stephen Luk
bugguide.net

Horse Fly - these tend to circle our heads while swimming causing much splashing and dunking
Copyright © 2012 tom murray
bugguide.net

I know, it looks like a housefly right? WRONG - it BITES YOU and is a Stable Fly
Copyright © 2006 Stephen Luk
bugguide.net

One that does not bite:

This guy I feel sorry for. He's a Crane Fly, but often gets mistaken for a giant mosquito and gets smacked anyway. He doesn't bite, he just wants to hang out and eat some nectar (and some crane fly larvae actually eat mosquito larvae!). New PSA slogan: Check before you Swat, he probably wouldn't even land on you but they do seem to like to hang out in doorways and on screens.

Please don't swat me!

Now, after all that discussion on how much it sucks that there are biting things out there when all we want to do is relax by the lake and have a marshmallow or six, it should really be pointed out that they all do serve a greater ecological purpose. They are a really important food source for a number of birds, dragonflies, bats, fish and assorted amphibians. I'm going to look at it as donating blood to a good cause.


More Mosquito Material:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/169
http://www.howstuffworks.com/zoology/insects-arachnids/mosquito.htm
http://www.wildspecies.ca/wildspecies2010/results-insects-mosquitoes.cfm
http://www.wildspecies.ca/wildspecies2010/results-insects-blackflies.cfm?lang=e

http://www.hww.ca/en/species/insects/mosquito.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_fly

Worm Sense

I've been asked a couple of times whether Beans and Bunny know that I'm writing about them and their never ending outdoor questions. The answer is - yes, they do and they have been quite involved in the whole production since the beginning. They've now started blatantly suggesting topics for me. In fact, Bunny started her most recent question by saying "Hey Mum! I've got a blog post for you...". It's a good question too - how do worms know where they are going if they don't have eyes? And although she ended up basically answering her own question - guessing "vibrations" when she stopped to think about it a bit - there was still quite a bit to look up and discuss.

I know I've already written about worms, but she's rather fond of worms so we talk about them a lot. We also pick them up, talk to them, pet them and rescue them. We do this with potato bugs too (and they had breakfast with us once) but that's a whole other story.

The following picture should take some of us back to Grade 11 science class (or was it grade 10? or 12? It was a long time ago in the olden days of plaid and army boots) where we dissected formaldehyde soaked earthworms. I think this was one of my first inklings of my future career choices as I thoroughly enjoyed taking apart the worms and in fact did several, helping out my more squeamish classmates. I ended up taking several physiology classes in university where I took apart a variety of dead vertebrates and invertebrates and my first biology job was in an avian energetics lab where I dissected birds for 8 hours a day. If anyone needs a bird separated into all it's individual parts - I'm your girl!

But this isn't about how cool the insides of animals are (and I fear I may be making myself sound rather macabre) this is about worms. So here's a worm's insides:

Betcha didn't know worms were so complicated!
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~rlenet/EarthwormAnatomy1.jpg

So worms have a lot of things! Notice anything they don't have? Eyes, ears and nose. That's 3 of the 5 senses missing - so they have to get by on touch and taste.

But they do have a mouth there and over there mouth is a lobe (prostomium - not in that picture) that closes it up but also has receptors to sense what's going on around it. This is what they use to feel their way around the soil. They also have a nerve cord running down their body with a larger part near the mouth, which acts as a "brain" (cerebral and subpharyngeal ganglia). This controls not only movement and digestion but also coordinates the senses in the body - they have touch, light, vibration and chemical receptors along their entire body - so Bunny was right about the vibrations. These receptors allow them to sense changes in acidity, humidity, touch and chemical composition - equivalent to our sense of smell and taste, even though there's no nose or tongue. Very key in determining the difference between "food" and "not food". Imagine if you had no sight, taste or smell - you'd have to just go around randomly eating things hoping some of it was actually food, which could be rather disastrous.

I think the coolest of all though is light sensitivity - there are light sensitive receptor cells on the body, so it does indeed know if it's underground or not. They can tell the intensity of the light and instinctively move away from strong light. The receptors sense if they are getting close to the surface and how strong the light is to help them determine if it's safe to go up (rain, night) or not (sunny day) which makes worms and vampires rather similar in their outdoor preferences, although I don't know if vampires travel in the rain so perhaps worms have an advantage.

Extra cool: these receptors are being studied in nematodes (roundworm), and they may be the precursor to the vertebrate rod and cone system of vision, which would be amazing because then this molecular similarity is in species over 540 million years ago.

Which means my eyes would be related to an ancient nematode. Awesome.


How we learned about worms:
http://cronodon.com/BioTech/Earthworm_NS.html
http://animal.discovery.com/worms/earthworm-info.htm
http://www.naturewatch.ca/english/wormwatch/resources/anatomy.html
http://www.naturewatch.ca/english/wormwatch/about/anatomy.html
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/invert.html

Eggnatomy

Normally the basis of these blog posts come from questions stemming from something we have seen or heard. This one came while we were eating, so we're now using a bunch of senses to figure things out and I answer questions about our dinner. Beans and Bunny love sushi. LOVE. Bunny can plow through salmon sashimi like nobody's business! But what Beans is really partial to is "fishy balls". I know what you are thinking - "but fish don't have..." I'll stop you there, what she really means is salmon roe sushi (Ikura if you happen to want to order it). A pile of squooshy fish eggs on rice, which amazingly she eats one by one with chopsticks.

Beans' coveted "fishy balls"

We've already talked a bit about eggs previously in reference to Beans' class hatching chicks in an incubator and their general breakfast and baking capabilities. But why aren't fish eggs aren't like chicken eggs? Where is the shell? AM I EATING THE SHELL?

Eggs are a pretty common thing in the world of reproducing things. Everything from insects to mammals pretty much uses an egg in some form. I mean there's a few other ways of reproducing, but eggs are by far the most common.

EGGSTRAVAGANZA!

In placental mammals (like us) they stay internal, which you can tell because well, we don't lay eggs. There's some fish and reptiles that have live young as well, and then there's a whole in between kind of internal egg but not placental thing we won't get into because we aren't doing reproductive strategies. So, for the most part, in birds, insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians, monotremes, molluscs.... you get the idea... they are external. They lay eggs, which then either hatch into offspring or get eaten, with or without rice and nori.

The key parts to have in an egg are protection (some kind of shell) and a food source for the growing chick (yolk). And obviously some parental genetic material if your goal is to get some sort of creature out of it. The eggs we eat are for the most part unfertilized, so although the female genetic material is in there it never develops which is thankfully why there are not partially developed chicks in your omelette.

There are three main kinds of eggs. Don't be scared by their titles - just think of it in this way: lecithal means "has a yolk" and the prefixes are just the size - small, medium and large. Like at Starbucks where they also name them arbitrary things and then look at you condescendingly because you can't for the life of you remember which one means medium and you really just want your soy chai latte.

Microlecithal
Small eggs with a small yolk. Usually laid in really high numbers as a reproductive strategy. This type of egg is used by things like clams, oysters, mussels, worms, sea stars, crabs, insects, butterflies... you get the idea. These usually hatch as a larva and finish developing outside the egg. 

Mesolecithal
Medium yolk. This means there can be a longer development period and some animals hatch fully formed instead of as a larva like hagfish and snails. Some still go through that extra stage though - like salamanders and lampreys. 

Macrolecithal
Eggs with a large yolk. The eggs are usually fewer in number and have enough food to get them through development. This is the one that vertebrates use, and also octopus, 'cause they are awesome like that. These are what we think of as eggs and are laid by birds, fish and reptiles. 

Shark Eggs. That's right. SHARKS. Even their eggs are cool.

In placental mammals (like us) there is essentially no yolk and there is basically a naked egg cell. We can get away with this because nourishment is provided by the mother throughout development.

So, if birds and fish are both macrolecithal then how are they so different?

All birds have the same egg structure - shell, some membranes, albumen (egg white), a yolk and some cool twisty bits (chalazae) that hold everything in place. The "blastodisc" (also called a germinal disc) is the part that would, if fertilized, start making a bird - and not some sort of nerf weapon, although it totally sounds like one. Every bird does theirs in their own special way - they come in a myriad of shapes, sizes, colours and textures. Some are even water-resistant!

Egg parts!

Fish eggs have generally the same parts, only the egg "shell" is a different substance and more of a membrane, which can be fairly tough depending on species. Fish eggs are soft until they are laid and then harden when they hit the water, but they never develop a calcium based shell like a bird. So yes, technically we are eating the shell of salmon eggs.

Amphibian eggs work much the same as fish - not surprisingly as they are both usually aquatic (although there are a few land-egg amphibians out there). The lack of a hardened shell means they all have to stay wet - either by water, a gelatinous goo or both. 

http://courses.bio.indiana.edu/L104-Bonner/Sp10/imagesSp10/L6/fishNfrog.jpg

Frogspawn

Reptiles are similar in structure to birds - they too have a shell, it's just usually leathery. Shells like this that form before laying are found in species that internally fertilize (otherwise fertilization would be really hard). The super cool thing about some reptile species (turtles and crocodiles mostly) is that the sex of the young is temperature dependent. Like in turtles - the colder eggs mean more males, females dominate for warm eggs.

I don't want to hatch, I'm cozy!

And no egg discussion would be complete without the awesomest of all egg layers - monotremes. I really should have put egg pictures but I can't resist a platypus face.

Platypus!
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/platypus/

Shortbeak Echidna
from Fir0002/Flagstaffotos

Not only are they wacky (and I mean that in the nicest way possible) they are the only mammals in the world to lay eggs. And of course they are in that mecca of all wacky animals - Australia. They do things a little differently though, the egg develops internally first and then outside for less time.  In comparison - a Ring-billed Gull will have her egg for a day before laying, then incubate on the nest for 3-4 weeks. A platypus will hold their little round white eggs internally for about 4 weeks and then incubate for 10 days. Echidnas tuck theirs in a pouch for 10 days before hatch (different than a marsupial which tucks their baby in a pouch). It's a lot like a reptile egg - soft shelled. In looking this up I learned two really important un-egg-related things though - baby Echidnas are called "puggles" and male Platypuses have poisonous hind spurs.

The only part of our egg discussion I wasn't able to answer in full was why we don't eat all the eggs and just stick to birds and fish. I'm not sure if there are people out there that eat frog or alligator eggs (I would suppose there are) but we don't. My guess would be that it has to do with the ease of harvest - catching a salmon full of roe is easy in comparison to getting an alligator egg. I know which I'd rather do!

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: 
it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.

-C.S. Lewis

Salt Water

My apologies for the black hole of blogging that was March. Between a trip to Florida and helping organize (and playing in) a hockey tournament, the chance to write has eluded me and the questions are building up. Now that I can't move from playing 9 hockey games in 3 days I might as well start writing as I'm fairly sure my hands are the only thing that can still move with minimal pain.

Now, back to SCIENCE! (said in the Magnus Pyke voice of course).

Bunny LOVES the ocean. I don't even think love in bold capitals is strong enough for the emotion she feels when she sees it. She's drawn to it, she can't just be next to it, she needs to be in it. For example, we stopped to have an ice cream on the beach and she ran in fully clothed ("I was testing the water and the wave just hit me").

Clothes, Schmothes

We live in the Great Lakes area so, while we are surrounded by water, usually water means freshwater. However, on our recent trip to Florida, Bunny and the ocean were together a lot and it brought up some questions for her about why ocean water was different than the lakes here. While she is an avid beach fan at home as well, it's not the same as running in the surf of the Atlantic Ocean. In particular, while the ocean is awesome, contains cool shells, waves and surfers, it doesn't taste that great. It's a bit salty.

We've talked about the water cycle before and they've seen enough environmental presentations (both at school and because I'm nerdy and take us to that kind of stuff in our free time too) to know how water gets into lakes and rivers and eventually makes it into the ocean. But that water doesn't have salt - so where is the ocean salt coming from?

A brief refresher in case you forgot about water cycles

All water has dissolved minerals and "salts" in it. And if Nemo has taught us anything it's that water eventually makes its way to the ocean, whether from rain, rivers or dentist offices. The types and concentrations of these are what makes the water fresh or saline, and it varies on the location and method of water accumulation. So what we consider "fresh" water actually still contains these dissolved salts and minerals, just in different concentrations and configurations so they aren't "salty" to taste. As for ocean salt, high concentrations of Sodium (Na) and Chloride (Cl) - around 85% of the total dissolved solids compared to less than 16% in rivers - makes it taste the way it does. And general consensus seems to be that there are two main ways it gets there.

1. Rocks
The rain that falls contains dissolved carbon dioxide from the air, causing it to be slightly acidic (this is not acid rain which it is a whole other kettle of fish, this is plain old regular rain). This erodes the rocks it falls on and causes those minerals to be carried with it along it's path to the ocean - whether that is through groundwater, lakes, rivers or simply raining next to the ocean and running back in. This isn't just sodium and chloride, it's also silica, calcium, magnesium, bicarbonate - there's a whole whack of stuff in there.

2. Underwater rocks and volcanoes
The ocean floor is made out of rocks that already contained sodium when the oceans formed, so when the oceans formed the sodium leached out. Then chloride comes out of the underwater volcanoes (I know, right, ridiculously cool) and hydrothermal vents - they get together and BAM. Sea Salt.

So while the lakes and rivers get all the stuff from the eroding rock, they don't have volcanoes or the original sodium stash, so they don't have the same amount of salt.

The salinity of the ocean is pretty stable, and has been for billions of years. The salt basically goes about it's little cycle of moving around and becoming rocks and then leaching back out again, so it's generally at 3.5% salt (35 parts per thousand - ppt). This means if you were to take 1L of seawater it would have 35 grams of salt. But this varies from place to place - The saltiest water is in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea (about 4%), because, well - it's hot there and there is more evaporation so a higher concentration. Cold areas have less due to glaciers and ice melting, less evaporation and usually higher freshwater inputs from land. The Baltic Sea ranges from 0.5-1.5%, the Black Sea is around 2%. Also areas near the mouths of rivers have less and there are often "brackish" low salinity areas where they meet the ocean - these result in some really cool diverse swamp areas that you can wander around while you are in Florida and other people are playing golf.

A neato figure for salinity levels

Image credit: Peter Summerlin, MLA candidate - Louisiana State University

So there you have it. Oceans - awesome to play in and delicious when evaporated and sprinkled on a nice fresh tomato.

Where we learned stuff from:

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/whyoceansalty.html
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/whysalty.html
http://www.palomar.edu/oceanography/salty_ocean.htm

Pruney Hands

I always thought your hands turning pruney in the water had to do with water entering your body, swelling your skin and your skin accommodating it's extra bits by wrinkling. So that's what I originally said to Beans when she asked, but some research (googling) to figure out the exact mechanics behind this has yielded some interesting results:

1. People are actually researching pruney hands
2. It may be more of an evolutionary adaptation than a simple biological response

So lets start from the beginning. Your skin has it's own oil, called sebum, which makes you waterproof (which is kind of like having a superpower). So that's why when you wash your hands, hang out in the rain or spill tea on yourself while writing blogs you don't automatically wrinkle up. Prolonged exposure to water though will make the sebum come off, which is when the water gets in there. Once you are dry it makes itself again and pretty soon you are oiled back up.

So this immediately begs the question - if sebum is everywhere, why do only the fingers and toes wrinkle up when it washes off?

The wrinkling isn't just a reaction to the intake of water, that's just the trigger. The wrinkling is the blood vessels constricting which is controlled by the nervous system. Turns out a while back scientists noticed that fingers that were severed or had blood flow constricted did not wrinkle - more proof that it's not just a response to excess water.

It may be (and the research is just beginning on this) that skin wrinkles rather than just swelling up to help us grip when we're wet. When it's raining or near rivers, this would have been an advantage to long-ago ancestors when hunting or gathering. Like tire grooves on your hands and feet. The researchers noticed that all fingers wrinkle the same - long channels starting at the top of the finger. We're at the point of evolution where a coincidence like that can't possibly be random. They are now looking to see if primates have the same response. It'd be pretty handy for climbing wet trees.

Do wrinkly fingers help us when Mummy makes us do the dishes while camping?

Other researchers are testing these theories - making people complete tasks in pruney and un-pruney states. And indeed they found that people could indeed handle things, like wet marbles, better while pruney. The next step is to determine if it's water runoff that makes it grip better or if the grooves change the skin's texture for added grippyness.

Just to help out, there is going to be some serious bath time experimentation in our house! I wonder if I should send them our data on ability to pick up tiny playmobil research sub accessories in the bathtub?