"What The Vampire Said To The Horseshoe Crab: 'Your Blood Is Blue?'"

When we talked about the oxygen-carrying molecule, hemoglobin, that is present in most animals, we also mentioned that some, instead have hemocyanin, which causes the blood to be blue when oxygenated.  Check out this NPR story about the amazing things being learned about the properties of this blood in horseshoe crabs:



and this PBS video, "Blue Blood at $15,000 a quart"!

Repost: Swim bladders and the "Barry White of the Sea"

Here is the link to the NY Times story I mentioned in class on vocalizations made by fish using their swim bladders.  The article highlights several cases in which obnoxious noises were assumed to be anything BUT made by fish and those who suggested fish as the culprits were called crazy!  As I mentioned the swim bladder is thought to be evolutionarily homologous to the early lung and both develop as outpockets of the gut (in the early stages of development). A paper by Zheng et al., published in 2011 in PLoSONE looks at some of the evidence for the "homolog" idea, and their results "provide molecular evidence of the relatedness of the fish swimbladder and mammalian lung."

Black drum

Here also is the link to some of the cool sounds fish make, including the "Barry White of the sea", the black drum.

And one more link: this one describing research by SFSU professor Roger Bland on the vocalizations of the toadfish in SF Bay.

Toadfish

And one more thing about swim bladders....   Some people eat them.  From Wikipedia: "In some Asian cultures, the swim bladders of certain large fishes are considered a food delicacy. In China they are known as fish maw, 花膠/鱼鳔, and are served in soups or stews. Swim bladders are also used in the food industry as a source of collagen. They can be made into a strong, water-resistant glue, or used to make isinglass for the clarification of beer.

Swim bladder display in a Melaka shopping mall"

Repost: Why Giant Bugs Once Roamed the Earth

We've talked a bit about gigantic dragonflies found in the fossil record from the Carboniferous period.  I mentioned that a recent study on oxygen limitation in insects suggests that the leading theory about these giant arthropods  - that they got big because the high levels of O2 made it possible - may not be correct.  Interestingly they propose that young insects HAD to grow large to avoid oxygen poisoning.

Read more here (the National Geo article, which is also the source of the photo above).  The original research article by Verberk and Bilton in PLoS ONE is here.

Verberk WCEP, Bilton DT (2011) Can Oxygen Set Thermal Limits in an Insect and Drive Gigantism? PLoS ONE 6(7):

Swim bladders and the "Barry White of the Sea"

Here is the link to the NY Times story I mentioned in class a few lectures ago on vocalizations made by fish using their swim bladders.  The article highlights several cases in which obnoxious noises were assumed to be anything BUT made by fish and those who suggested fish as the culprits were called crazy!  As I mentioned the swim bladder is thought to be evolutionarily homologous to the early lung and both develop as outpockets of the gut (in the early stages of development). A paper by Zheng et al., published in 2011 in PLoSONE looks at some of the evidence for the "homolog" idea, and their results "provide molecular evidence of the relatedness of the fish swimbladder and mammalian lung."

Black drum

Here also is the link to some of the cool sounds fish make, including the "Barry White of the sea", the black drum.

And one more link: this one describing research by SFSU professor Roger Bland on the vocalizations of the toadfish in SF Bay.

Toadfish

Save your breath....and use it to generate electricity!

You may have thought that inhaling and exhaling held their own intrinsic values and that was plenty.  In with the good air, out with the bad air.... 

But seems there's much more you can do with the CO2 coming out of your nose.  Of course there is the music potential: Nose flutes,   Nose harps...

But now there's even more...  from Science Daily,  "Electricity from the Nose - Engineers Make Power from Human Respiration".  Who knew?