Pandas thumbs
Pandas are kind of awsome, with their “thumbs” and bamboo-eating abilities. “The way in which the giant panda, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, uses the radial sesamoid bone — its ‘pseudo-thumb’ — for grasping makes it one of the most extraordinary manipulation systems in mammalian evolution. The bone…
Binary fission
“Our cells” are eukaryotic cells, the same type found in other animals, plants and mushrooms. The other type of cells is prokaryotic cells, which bacteria and archea have. Procaryotic cells reproduce in the manner shown here. Here is a short and easy read about binary…
Bulging botulinum
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on home canning and botulism. They both explain the dangers more fully and link to the USDA complete guide to home canning to help you do it as safely as possible. For an overview of the…
Shark Eggs
Each egg case contains one pup, which takes between six and nine months to hatch. Other egg-laying shark species have different egg shapes: this article has pictures of some of them. Most sharks actually give birth to live youngs. —– Monterey Bay Aquarium “Horn Shark”…
A family of large cats
WWF has more fun facts about snow leopards. Davis, Li and Murphy (2010) “Supermatrix and species tree methods resolve phylogenetic relationships within the big cats, Panthera (Carnivora: Felidae)” looks at several earlier works on big cat phylogeny and discusses some issues with them, mainly that…
Elaeomyxa cerifera
Sarah Lloyd has done a lot of work studying slime moulds, including this one. In real life they look like this. At least when photograped up close, they are tiny, as shown here. Even though many look like it, slime moulds are not fungi. They…
Parrotfish
Some large parrotfish species can poop up to 405 kg of sand each year. Although estimates vary, it’s clear that they can produce a lot of sand. Perry et. al (2015) found that up to 85 % of new sand on a beach in the…
Basic mitosis
Mitosis is a topic in most introductory science classes, but it can be hard to grasp the whole process. Hopefully this makes it a bit easier. McIntosh (2016) provides a thorough overview of mitosis, if you want to read more about it, because there is…
PCR
Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is a topic in most introductory science classes, but it can be hard to grasp the whole process. Hopefully this makes it a bit easier. The initial description of the PCR process was discovered by the Norwegian scientist Kjell Kleppe and…
Photosyntesis
Photosyntesis is a topic in most introductory science classes, but it can be hard to grasp the whole process. Hopefully this makes it a bit easier. Learn more here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5264509 —– Johnson (2016) “Photosynthesis” https://doi.org/10.1042/EBC20160016