Cracking the enigma of bird migration
Plus pig organ transplants, new geckos found in India, making wine sweeter with a simple lighting trick, removing your own appendix, fish that drink water, and a meteorite that fell on a pillow
Hello. How have you been?
It’s been a little over a year since I started this newsletter. I started by writing about COVID-19 vaccine trials and by dispelling vaccine myths. Since then, I’ve covered a lot more.
In the past year, I've written a detailed science book on COVID-19 and many long-form articles. I’ve given TV and newspaper interviews and have hopped on podcasts and webinars. I have live-tweeted new research-articles as they posted and have done something called Twitter Spaces too. ;-)
Around a thousand people like you open this email every week. I really appreciate it (even if some of you open the email just to delete it). But I really need to sit down and think about what value this newsletter brings to you and to me.
I like the direct connection and I certainly haven’t run out of things to talk about. But I also know that you’re inundated with information. To make both your time and mine worthwhile, and to keep this newsletter from stagnating, I need to figure out the best way to share information that is useful, actionable, and interesting. I’ll be back after a hiatus once I do that. :)
Now onto the interesting bits…
Migratory birds can efficiently travel large distances on very little energy. How do they do it? How do they know where and when to go? This is the topic of my most-recent column in Hindustan Times.
One of the most magnificent discoveries in science this year (that even made the cover of Nature) is that migratory birds use quantum effects to navigate. They can “see” the earth’s magnetic fields using a quantum compass in their brains.
There’s more about this discovery in this wonderful video created by Nature.
Coupled with their ability to tell when they have to migrate (mainly from changes in light that reset internal clocks) and the ability to navigate from the pattern of stars in the sky, they possess some truly remarkable traits. Why do we use “bird brain” as an insult, again?
Birds also undergo massive physiological and behavioral changes before migration, fattening up on energy-rich food before flight and shriveling up guts they don’t need during long-distance flights. Loner birds also become social and fly in groups.
But there’s also some bad news. In our cities, light pollution is messing with their hardwired abilities to navigate at night. Around a billion birds (that’s right, billion with a “b”) die each year from collisions with tall buildings that keep their lights on at night. There’s a simple fix that many U.S. cities are employing now. By switching off lights at night, we can prevent birds from dying while also cutting down on electricity bills.
Climate change is also changing the amount food available at their summer and winter habitats. It is also increasing the distances they have to travel.
There’s also recent research that shows that rising temperatures are changing the shapes of animals. A lot of this is happening because of Allen's Rule- animals in warmer climes tend to have larger appendages.
To maintain body temperature, homeothermic animals (birds and mammals) have to dissipate a lot of the heat that their bodies produce.
To be able to get rid of excess body heat, bird beaks are getting larger. Mammalian ears are also expanding. There's good evidence now (comparing historical specimens in museums with living ones) that animal shapes are changing because of the climate crisis.
A new species of gecko was found in the Western Ghats of India
A recent paper has documented the discovery of 12 new dwarf geckos in India, including one named Jackie’s day gecko (Cnemaspis jackieii) after Jackie Chan. This photo was taken by Saunak Pal, one of the discoverers of the gecko.
A woman found a meteorite on her pillow
A 1.3 kg meteorite crashed through the roof of a Canadian woman’s house and landed on her pillow where her head had been moments earlier.
The chances of a meteorite big enough to penetrate a roof and hit a bed are about one and 100 billion per year.
An expert interviewed by NPR estimates that the meteorite has gone up in value because it is a “hammer stone” with a unique story. It might fetch up to $127,000. The woman is grateful to be alive and would like to keep the meteorite.
25 years after an ill-fated pig heart transplant in India
Twenty-five years ago in a village in Assam, a well-trained surgeon transplanted a pig’s heart into a 32-year-old man with terminal heart disease. The patient died, the surgeon was jailed, and the incident made global news. Last week, a few days after my long newsletter on the science and ethics of pig-to-human transplants was posted (which is free-to-read here) there were reports of the first successful pig-kidney transplant.
I’ve followed the science and ethics of xenotransplantation research (animal to human transplants) for over a decade. It’s an example of a cutting-edge field where science intersects with society,. Millions of people die because of lack of donor organs.
But pigs are not humans. We are separated by 80 million years of evolution. To trick the human immune system to accept “non-self” organs and to remove viruses that are embedded in pig genetic material, pigs have to be massively “humanized” through genetic engineering. Scientists have used many approaches. Most recently a Pig 3.0 with dozens of genetic modifications was created in a lab in China. It is the most extensively artificially modified animal on the planet. Surprisingly despite its changes, it lives and breeds.
But this is where it gets into open questions. Just because we can do an experiment, should we? Are animals simply factories for human use? How will we know when the benefits outweigh the risks of xenotransplantation?
These are all open questions I pose in my piece.
Wine tastes sweeter in red light
Here’s a simple trick to fool yourself or your friends.
The color of ambient light changes the perception of the taste of wine. A wine in red ambient light is sweeter than the same wine in white or green light. And the same trick works for tea or coffee in a red mug too.
There’s also a practical application here. The amount of money people are willing to pay for wines (and probably for other sweet beverages and desserts) goes up in a red ambient environment.
The original research was published in Journal of Sensory Sciences.
The time a Russian doctor operated on himself
The bleeding is quite heavy, but I take my time. My head starts to spin. It's going to end badly. A day longer and it would've burst.
Using a mirror and staying conscious, in Antarctica in 1961, Russian doctor Leonid Rogozov had to remove his own appendix to save his life.
I had heard about this remarkable true-story in a BBC broadcast. On Twitter, my friend Parag shared an excellent This American Life segment on it.
If evolution hasn’t turned your brain inside out, you haven’t understood it.
— Douglas Adams
Do fish drink water?
Here’s a question that children often ask. But don’t brush it aside. There’s a logical answer to it.
If the fish live in freshwater , they drink little if any water and pee like crazy, otherwise they pop. If they live in saltwater, they drink la lot and and pee very little or else they shrivel up. This is because of osmosis and differences in salt concentrations inside and outside fish that live in freshwater or saltwater.
What else I’ve read
I ‘ve recently finished this excellent book on the data science and bibliometrics behind scientific research. This book should be useful to anyone seeking to learn more about scientific trends.