A Schooner of Science

Brontomerus mcintoshi – the dinosaur with thunder thighs

// February 23rd, 2011 // No Comments » // Recent Research

Brontomerus. Image by Francisco Gascó

Across my twitter feed today we welcomed a new dinosaur. Brontomerus mcintoshi was named for it’s “thunder-thighs” and as honour to retired physicist and avocational paleontologist “Jack” McIntosh.

I hope Jack has no hang-ups about his thighs, as I can assure you if someone called a dinosaur “Thunder-thighs skelletti” I would whap them with my peg leg.

But I’m sure Jack is pleased to hand his name to this butt-kicking dinosaur. With huge thigh muscles, as shown by bone fragments, Brontomerus may have kicked his way out of hairy situations.

The authors of the paper suggest kicking could have been used by males fighting over females (or indeed, females fighting over males, which I put forward as an equally possible alternative.) If capable of delivering crippling kicks, they probably used their legs against predators as well.

Another suggestion is that Brontomerus used the thighs as a kind of “dinosaur four-wheel drive,” according to co author Matt Wedel, which helped them climb rough and hilly terrain.

The paper is based on a healthy smattering of bone samples from two individuals, a juvenile (a few years old) and an adult. The samples represent about 10% of the total skeleton, not much, but people work with less. With an incomplete skeleton, caution has been advised in describing its behaviour and good-looks. But I say, if you want to go ahead and imagine the dino as Xena trained in kickboxing, why the hell not?

Authors with fossils. Image by Linda Coldwell

Brontomerus is a sauropod, one of the long-necks, as are the familiar members Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus (my personal favourite. It’s fun to say!) It was found in Utah, North America, and lived about 110 million years ago.

Until recently, the Early Cretaceous Period was a bit of a black hole for fossils. After the stegosaurus, but before T-rex and duckbills, there was a gap. Now paleontologists are looking at rocks from that period, they’re uncovering more about that mysterious time.

It seems to me like there have been a LOT of new dinosaurs found lately. Three found in Queensland, Australia, plus Mojoceratops and Linheraptor Exquisitus.

According to Mike Taylor’s fact sheet on Brontomerus, “although the first dinosaurs were named almost 200 years ago, more than half of all known dinosaurs have been discovered in the last 30 years.” At least it’s not just me.

Check out their blog or read the paper (warning: PDF)

Michael P. Taylor, Mathew J. Wedel, and Richard L. Cifelli (2011). A new sauropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Cedar Mountain Formation, Utah, USA Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 56 (1), 75-98 : DOI: 10.4202/app.2010.0073

Death of a hive, a science story

// February 1st, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Recent Research, Science Communication

Image by By Richard Bartz

It was late afternoon, and Aethina could smell a hive in danger.

Heavy with eggs she felt compelled to investigate. The scent wafted softly though the hot and hazy air, so faint it was barely discernible.

Driven by survival, she flew as fast as she could. Weak as the smell was it was hard to tell which direction to go. Through trial and error she travelled across small hills covered with brown grass, wilting seedlings, and huge angular mounds of dirt.

Finally she reached an ocean of bright yellow flowers heads pointed towards the sun. Interspersed between the identical tall and bristled stems were smaller flowers in purples and whites.

Like islands in the sea, these were safe havens for bees, providing a delicious variety to an otherwise blandly repetitive diet. But Aethina wasn’t hungry for nectar. The hive was close, she could smell it.

As a larva, Aethina had heard stories of her ancestors. Generations upon generations ago they had moved across an ocean too. Their land was dry like this, but filled with foreign flowers. They had travelled, said the stories, inside sweet melons.

Suddenly Aethina could see it, the hive. The smell radiated from it, a beacon of hope and danger.

She alighted and walked through the entrance.

At once the guards sprang upon her. Stinking of bee, they buzzed angrily and tried to push her outside. Her own smell must have set them off. To fend off the aggressive attack, Aethina turtled her head and legs under her hard shell. The guards could find no purchase on her smooth surface, and their suicidal stinging could not penetrate her armor.

With small steps, Aethina sneaked deeper into the hive, avoiding the cracks that riddled the tunnels. Below she could hear the cry of her kin, trapped below. As she watched, hunched under her shell, an apparently very stupid bee dripped honey down the crack, feeding her kind as though they were bee grubs.

One step at a time, slowly, slowly, Aethina forced her way though the tunnels. The attacks continued as she inched her way along, turning this way and that along the chambers.

Suddenly the attacks stopped. Poking out one antennae, and then two, she investigated her surroundings. The bees seemed to be gone, perhaps called on another mission.

There was no time to lose. Silently Aethina laid her eggs as quickly as possible, hiding them near the honey-filled pots that rose like ornamental ponds in mosaic. When they hatched, her larvae would have plenty of food nearby. It would be enough for them to molt into adulthood and find their own hives.

Unless removed by the bees, her children had a good chance of surviving. Eating, growing fat on sweet sugar and proteins, they would gradually destroy the hive. No place lasted long after becoming a Small Hive Beetle Nursery. It was only fair. After all, bees had killed her mother, and would kill her in a heartbeat.

Bees were nasty insects, particularly in this melon-founded land. There were other species of bees, natives with a barbaric tendency to catch her kind and mummify them alive. Armed with balls of sticky resin during the day, they created a lacy resin curtain every night that was impossible to get through. The old saying came back to her “Always lay near Apis, never Austroplebeia.”

For good measure, she dusted spores from her six legs. Yeast. It would consume the honey to produce more of the attractive alarm scent that guided her to the hive. Soon there would be even more beetles, and as the larva fed, the yeast would eventual turning the hive from it’s well-ordered structure into a slimy mess. It would seal the fate of this hive.

Served the bitches right, thought Aethina viciously, as she crawled into a crack to take advantage of idiot-bee hospitality.

-

This story is based on scientific fact. Since their accidental introduction in 2002, African Small Hive Beetles (Aethina tumida) have been decimating Australian hives of honey bees (Apis mellifera). Their larva consume the hives, while the yeast they bring in converts hives to slime. But the native bee (Austroplebeia australis) destroy the beetles with resin balls and build resin curtains.

Further reading
Stingless bees entomb beetle invaders by Anne Dolin at Aussie Bee.
Beetle and yeast team up against bees by Not Exactly Rocket Science.
Ellis, J., Hepburn, H., Ellis, A., & Elzen, P. (2003). Social encapsulation of the small hive beetle ( Aethina tumida Murray) by European honeybees ( Apis mellifera L.) Insectes Sociaux, 50 (3), 286-291 DOI: 10.1007/s00040-003-0671-7

Radioactive decay of teaspoons in the workplace

// January 30th, 2011 // 19 Comments » // Just for Fun, Recent Research, The Realm of Bizzare

Have you ever noticed a mysterious loss of teaspoons at your workplace? Maybe it’s not teaspoons, but some other cutlery item. At my old work it was forks, which dwindled even when I bought new replacement ones. At the Australian National University neither spoon nor fork were safe, causing some students to eat salad with two knives as chopsticks.

The same thing was happening at the Burnett Institute in Australia. Teaspoons were critically low, no matter how many new ones bought. Clearly it was time for science.

“Exasperated by our consequent inability to stir in our sugar and to accurately dispense instant coffee, we decided to respond in time honoured epidemiologists’ fashion and measure the phenomenon,” they said in the paper.

They numbered 70 teaspoons and placed them in tearooms around the institute. Lo and behold, they started to disappear. Every week they counted the remaining teaspoons, probably with a lot of suppressed giggling and delight.

After five months, 56 out of 70 teaspoons disappeared, that’s 80%. The half life of the teaspoons was 81 days.

Teaspoons in communal tearooms disappeared faster than those in tearooms specifically for certain projects. Expensive teaspoons disappeared no faster than cheap ones.

According to the study, “at this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased annually to maintain a practical institute-wide population of 70 teaspoons.” The cost? About $100. Extrapolate that to the workforce of Melbourne, some 2.4 million people, and you’re looking at quite a wad of cash.

And it’s not just economic loss, it’s also workplace satisfaction. “Teaspoon displacement and loss leads to the use of forks, knives, and staplers to measure out coffee and sugar,” the study suggested. Staplers? You know it’s a bad day in the office when you’re measuring sugar with a stapler. Indeed, nobody in the office said they were “highly satisfied” with the number of teaspoons in a survey they conducted at the end of the study. Yes, they even did a survey.

But why are teaspoons such hot property?

The study gives a few possible theories. Perhaps there are so many teaspoons, people don’t think it will matter if they take one home. Over time the small acts of thievery add up until there are no teaspoons left.

Alternatively, and I can say this no better than the authors, “Somewhere in the cosmos, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, walking treeoids, and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, a planet is entirely given over to spoon life-forms. Unattended spoons make their way to this planet, slipping away through space to a world where they enjoy a uniquely spoonoid lifestyle, responding to highly spoon oriented stimuli, and generally leading the spoon equivalent of the good life.”

Their final theory is les choses sont contre nous “things are against us.” “Resistentialism is the belief that inanimate objects have a natural antipathy towards humans, and therefore it is not people who control things but things that increasingly control people,” says the study. Think of all the time you spend cleaning, buying, repairing, using and selling things. Do items really control our lives, sending us on some materialistic goose chase for reasons we cannot yet understand? I can only assume Yes.

I want to hear from anyone who has experienced this phenomenon, be it spoons, forks or knives. What goes missing in your workplace, and why do they constantly disappear. And what is the spoon equivalent of the good life?

Lim, M. (2005). The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute BMJ, 331 (7531), 1498-1500 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.331.7531.1498

Massive hat tip to James at Disease Prone, who said my posts had slowed down and suggested this paper.

Sometimes scientists just have to douse experiments in alcohol

// January 15th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Recent Research

Superconductor supermarket. Image by andreasmarx

In which scientists get drunk and pour their beverages on compounds to create superconductors.

It’s no secret that I cook better with wine. I’m not just talking about a dash of red in pasta sauce or half a bottle of cheap white in risotto. I mean, when I’m tipsy I’m generous with the flavours and cook in a twirling, happy sashay of creation. But who knew it was the same with science?

Superconductors are metals at very low temperatures (6 Kelvin) which gain certain properties: Namely that the normal resistance drops to zero and they start conducting electricity incredibly well.

The experiment conducted at the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan involved soaking compounds (powders of iron, tellurium and tellurium sulfide) in different fluids, then cooling them and testing how well they conducted electricity.

First experiment: pure water. Results = boring. (10% superconducting volume fraction)
Second experiment: water plus ethanol. Results = yawn. (11%)
Third experiment: pure ethanol. Results = worse than water. (6%)

At this stage, I can only assume the scientists got drunk. They got a variety of different drinks (whiskey, sake, wine, etc) poured out 20 mL shots and soaked the compound in their boozy concoctions. When they tested conductivity, the results were surprising. Whiskey did well, beer did better, and red wine was streaks ahead with a whopping 63% of the material showing superconductive properties. For some reason commercial drinks created better superconductors than pure ethanol and water.

Here’s a graph of the results.

Graph by Keita Deguchi

As you can see, red wine is a clear winner, followed by white wine, beer, sake and other commercial drinks. At the bottom is boring old ethanol/water. Clearly what was lacking was a bit of FLAVOUR. That, or oxygen, particulates… actually they don’t know why it happened. More experiments need to be performed. Probably every Friday night from 3pm.

Still, it’s a fantastic case of serendipity. Plus, once the results were in, all the drinks were ALREADY THERE for celebrating! Sweet!

The paper is available free from arXiv – Deguchi K. et al “Superconductivity in FeTe1-xSx induced by alcohol”

A Vampire Flying Frog by any other name…

// January 11th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Recent Research

Vampire Flying Frog. Image by Australian Museum

Actually, it’s not QUITE as cool as it sounds.

This new frog species, the Vampire Flying Frog, was discovered in Vietnam by scientists from the Australian Museum. Rhacophorus vampyrus was a latecomer to the International Year of Biodiversity, which yielded a wealth of newly discovered creatures.

But the name. The name. To be honest, it reminds me of the ten shelves in every bookstore devoted to vampire teen fiction. I’m all for making science sexy, but seriously. In the paper it doesn’t even say “Vampire flying frog” as in the media release and all the news articles. It actually says “Vampire tree frog” which sounds less vampiric and more like it drinks tree sap or something.

The name makes a promise that the frog doesn’t deliver on. Now if the frog looked like THIS then I would applaud the name.

The Flying part is true enough. There are several species of tree frog that are called “flying frogs” because they can glide. It’s a good quality to have when you live up in trees. With larger hands and feet and extra webbing they can parachute through the air.

Tadpole with fangs. Image by Australian Museum

The Vampire part is… well… it’s neat. The tadpoles have fangs.

Normally tadpoles have beak-like mouth pieces, but this one has two black, hard fang-shaped appendages made of keratin (the same stuff as your hair.)

According to the scientists, it looks too big to be involved in feeding but might help the tadpole hold onto tree bark. The frog creates foam nests, laying its eggs in water-filled tree-holes.

More details on the tadpoles will be published in another report. The original report can be downloaded in pdf by clicking through the citation: Rowley, J. et al. (2010). A new tree frog of the genus Rhacophorus (Anura: Rhacophoridae) from southern Vietnam Zootaxa

Another cool thing about the frog is it changes colour. In daylight it’s a pale tan, but at night it’s stunning brick red. I don’t know if that’s a normal thing for tree frogs. Any herpetologists in the house?

Connecting via common ancestors and Genographics – Interview with Wolfgang Haak

// December 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // Recent Research, Science Communication

At the Genographic Event at the RiAus I also interviewed Dr Wolfgang Haak, who spoke about Y-chromosome markers to determine paternal ancestry. He’s been involved in the Genographic Project for three and a half years.

What are the benefits of understanding ancestry?

It’s pretty much a personal thing, at the end of the day, because I suppose everyone’s interested in his or her own genetic history. This is my personal driving force, finding out more about myself. Where’s my place in this planet, in this world, where do I tie into the global picture? That’s a big motivation for me, and as I find out more as I work with people that it’s the same motor or driving force with them as well.

We share a common ancestry after all, there’s a common interest in our genetic history as well.

What first attracted you to the Genographic Project?

I have always been interested in genetics, but I actually come from an anthropologic background and genetics is certainly a part of that. I also come from an Ancient DNA lab. This was a step further into more modern population genetics. This is about getting both things together. Having a modern day perspective, plus adding a timely depth to that picture that we get from modern day diversity.

Tell us about your own ancestry, have you genotyped yourself?

Yes, I’ve done both. Mitochondrial, I’m haplogroup H, and I can further pin that down to group H1, so that is a Palaeolithic, Mesolithic one that might have come into Europe prior to the last glacial maximum, around modern day Spain or Italy or even a South Eastern refuge. It’s not entirely clear but we’ll find out over the next couple of years.

On the paternal side its even more enigmatic. I’m part of a North African lineage that probably originated around the Horn of Africa, so there’s that connection on the Eastern side of Africa where it connects to Saudi Arabia, and that has a high frequency there into the Nile Valley, and from it spreads into South Eastern Europe. Not entirely sure when it spread across the Mediterranean region, but probably historic times rather than prehistoric times.

Genographics, Neanderthals and Cannibalism, an Interview with Carles Lalueza-Fox

// December 8th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Recent Research, Science Communication, Sex and Reproduction

After the event last night about the worldwide Genographic Project, I caught up with Prof Dr Carles Lalueza‑Fox, the first speaker on the night, for a quick interview. He’s an expert on Neanderthals, or Neandertals I think we call them now. Named after the Neander Valley where the first specimen was discovered.

What first sparked your interest in studying Neandertals?

When the first Neandertal sequence was retrieved in 1997 I had been working on ancient DNA for a while, but then Neandertals seemed to be something in a different league.

In the first ten years it was only possible to get mitochondrial DNA from Neandertals.

For me, I really liked Neandertals and human evolution as a child. Ancient DNA was something particularly difficult at the time, and the thing that brought me to the subject.

How human do you think Neandertals were?

How human?

Yes, tricky question.

Haha, yes. It’s a very long question, a very difficult question. One must always take into mind our tendencies are always fluctuating. We saw them as a very primitive human lineage in the early 20th Century, but I’d say that now we’re turning to the point where we see them as very similar to us.

Maybe the best thing to think about Neandertals is they are more different from us than any modern human to any other modern human. That’s the way we should think about them.

If we want to think of them as a different species that’s fine for me, but there is a range of difference between us and the Neandertals.

The cuts found along Neandertal bones you suggest are evidence for cannibalism. Could they just be an example of de-fleshing prior to burial?

Well, yeah, it might be right in some circumstances. But this is not only cutting, you know de-fleshing the bones. It’s also fragmenting the bones with small stone tools, very small fragments, and even the skull, and the faces. For me it’s very difficult to think that this kind of post mortem activity is something more because this is a complete destruction of the bones.

It’s very similar to what we see in other sites with fauna, the bones are broken to extract the marrow in the same way.

And it’s a pretty common thing, well, not common these days, but certainly we humans have our own history of cannibalism.

Yes, well there are several sites with the signs in Neandertals. But you almost think that life was very tough and they were structured in very small groups, so the fact that you find another one… I mean you’d say “hey, we are Neandertals all of us,” but I’d say that’s a modern conception.

Whereas for them it might be “hey, you’re not one of my family I may as well eat you.”

Yeah, the idea of humankind, in fact, is very recent. After the second World War, and the UNESCO thing. So even the idea of humankind is more recent than we might think now.

And what do you think of the possibility of Neandertals and humans mating?

I think it’s plausible with the data we have. It was probably something that was a minority, restricted in time and space, it was nothing important in my view. The thing is we can detect it now in non-African modern humans is because this was an expanding population, so even a small event of just a few, say it was, this was amplified later on.

How marsupial embryos develop (a short story)

// December 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // Recent Research, The Realm of Bizzare

An opossum joey. Image credit Anne Keyte

Marsupials are just plain weird when it comes to procreating.

I’m not talking about bifurcated penises (where the penis has two heads) although that’s pretty freaking weird. I’m talking about the embryos.

When a baby marsupial is born after a 4-5 week gestation, it’s a tiny pink speck of nothing much. About the same size as a jelly bean, it’s hairless, blind, and most of its brain has not developed.

In this state, the joey has to crawl across its mother’s fur and find its way into her pouch. Inside the pouch it continues to develop, growing on the nutrients it sucks from a teat.

It stays there for several months before it emerges, looking more like an animal and less like a little pink alien.

This bizarre method of procreation is the subject of a recent study into developmental biology. The writers, Anne Keyte and Kathleen Smith, found that although a joey is extremely underdeveloped when it is born, some of it features are accelerated. For example it’s forearms grow much faster than the rest of it. The joey has guns! It uses those strong arms to meander through mountains of fur and into the pouch. By comparison, its hindlegs are undeveloped and almost like jelly.

The study used opossum embryos and compared them to mouse embryos of the same age. They used two markers, Tbx4 and Tbx5, to track the development of the fore and hind limbs respectively. Both these genes were switched on earlier than in the mouse, but the forearms were especially beefy. Strangely the hindlimbs do not develop early like the forelimbs, even though the genes are switched on in both.

Not only is gene expression different in marsupials, the forearms were also allocated more red blood cells during development. This gives growing cells the energy they need to become big and strong. The spinal nerves grew into the forelimb buds differently as well.

This research rules out the assumption that limbs arise because of signaling from partially developed organs. The organs in a marsupial are simply not developed enough.

Marsupial faces also develop at an accelerated rate to allow the joey to suckle when it gets to the pouch.

But why such the strange method of procreation. Did marsupials not even THINK to evolve themselves a placenta??? “There are probably 50 explanations for why marsupials develop outside the womb, and none of them are very good,” says Anne.

Keyte, A., & Smith, K. (2010). Developmental origins of precocial forelimbs in marsupial neonates Development, 137 (24), 4283-4294 DOI: 10.1242/dev.049445

Science that’s only skin deep

// December 3rd, 2010 // 2 Comments » // How Things Work, Recent Research, Science Communication, Sex and Reproduction

I’m a guest blogger for the RiAus, and this post also appeared on their fancy website. To tell the truth, I really wanted to call this post “Hormonally Yours” in homage to the Shakespeare Sisters (anyone?) but I’ll save it for another post.

Recently I was in Arnhem Land, visiting some Indigenous communities with a couple of friends. While I was there, I got pretty jealous of everybody’s darker skin. “It’s so well suited for Australia,” one of my friends lamented. “I should be in Norway or something.”

Pale skin like mine is not great for Australia. I tan pretty easily, but only after being burned bright red. While I was in the NT I slathered sunscreen religiously, but still managed to get a highly embarrassing burn on my lower back when I was building a sandcastle (an epic sand turtle, actually. Totally worth it.)

Anyway, enough about me and my weirdly tanned lower back (it’s been months! Why won’t it go away?) Let’s talk about Nina Jablonski, an anthropologist. In 2000 she suggested a new reason why skin colour varies so much. It’s not an adaptation to protect against skin cancer and sunburn, like I always thought it was.

It’s real job is to keep us highly fertile by maintaining a delicate balance between two key vitamins: Vitamin D and Folic acid.

Pica's skin tone matched her UVB exposure like her scarf matched her dress. Image by Monja Con Patines

Vitamin D is obtained through some foods, but mostly from drinking in sunshine. UV light turns cholesterol into Vitamin D, which then goes to either your liver or kidneys to be converted to an active form.

Once active it helps white blood cells like macrophages kill bacteria, and helps control levels of calcium and phosphate – important for building healthy bones.

Deficiency in Vitamin D causes rickets, a disease resulting in soft, easily broken bones and deformity which can lead to early death.

So getting enough UV (specifically UVB light) is important to not dying, and therefore having reproductive success later in life. It’s been backed up by Yuen, A. (Vitamin D: In the evolution of human skin colour DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2009.08.007)

Natural selection favours soaking up UV.

Penny stayed under foliage at noon to protect her folic acid. Image by Monja Con Patines

Folic acid is obtained in leafy vegetables and fortified cereals. Rather than being made by UV, the light can destroy folic acid by literally breaking it apart. (Jablonski, N. The evolution of human skin coloration DOI: 10.1006/jhev.2000.0403)

Critical for DNA synthesis, folic acid is essential during pregnancy when a lot of new cells are being made.

Folic acid prevents against 70% of neural tube defects in embryos. Its destruction by UV is bad news.

Natural selection favours avoiding UV.

So there’s an ideal amount of UV light that needs to get through the skin – enough to produce Vitamin D, but not too much to destroy all the folic acid. Getting the balance right for the environment you’re in means higher fertility, which drives natural selection

This is what Nina Jablonski thinks caused the evolution of skin colour through the sepia spectrum we see today. Dark skin, with high melanin, stops more UV light. That’s exactly what you want if you live in a place with a lot of sun, like places near the equator. Light skin lets more UV in, which is great if you live somewhere overcast and not very high on UV.

Understanding how your skin colour (NOT your race) influences these two vitamins is important in being healthy. It’s more important now than ever, because we humans travel a LOT.

Sadly, Australia is pretty high in UV and I am pretty white. Thank god for sunscreen.

Things are rarely that simple though, and I imagine there’s a few different things going on that connect UV light to skin colour.

On Tuesday the RiAus is holding an event called Skin Deep: Exploring human ancestry. They’ll be showing a preview of a new SBS documentary about skin colour scientific research, as well as results from the Genographic Project. Basically they took DNA samples from a lot of volunteers and some national identities, and now they’re giving us the goss on who’s related to who’s secret love child.

I’ll be there, I’d love to see you (though seats are limited.) I’ll be the one tweeting in the corner. Follow me @CaptainSkellett

Would love to hear from anyone who took part in the Genographic Project, and anyone who didn’t. Who would you most like to be related to? For me it’s David Attenborough, then I can dream of inheriting his voice.

Physics of lapping lets cats drink without mess

// November 24th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // How Things Work, Recent Research, Science at Home

First up, apologies on the lateness of my post. A whole week has gone past! Oh me! I humbly do beseech you to forgive this old salt and do throw myself upon the deck in penance. Me only defense is that I have just moved from Canberra to Adelaide, and me Schooner does need an awful lot of bubble wrap. To distract you from me own slackness, I have scoured the nets for the cutest science story evah. I ply you with kittens thusly:

.

Cats are a more delicate and refined animal than messy, smelly and drooly dogs. I’ve always been a cat person. I think they have higher standards. Turns out they also drink better than dogs.

Both dogs and cats lack the complete cheeks that humans have, which means they can’t drink water by suction like we can. Dogs get around this by using their tongues as a ladle, cupping the water from bowl to throat.

Cat’s do it differently. They lap water briskly, but not like a ladle. Instead, they DEFY GRAVITY and make the water lift up into the air like a glorious floating blob of refreshment.

Sounds crazy, but it’s true. When they dip into the dish, water adheres to the dorsal (top) side of their tongue. The surface tension (sweet, sweet hydrogen bondage) of the water drags a column of water into the air. The cat can thus pull water into its mouth using inertia.

The competition between inertia moving water up and gravity pulling it down sets the lapping frequency of the cat. Smaller cats with smaller tongues lap faster to drink, large cats lap slower. Observation of lapping frequency in big cats like lions shows the same kind of trend, suggesting they use the same physics as the household feline.

Cats might do this because it’s a neater, cleaner way to drink and it keeps their whiskers nice and dry. Whiskers have an important sensory function, so it’s worth the effort to keep them tidy.

The research was published in Science, and began when a researcher was watching his own cat drink. A video of the researcher and cat is below, and shows in super slow mo exactly how water defies gravity when a cat enters the equation.

Did you hear that? Did you? Not only is it physics, hydrogen bonding and gravity defying, plus, PLUS, the tongue could have implications for robotics of the future. Yeah. Robot cat tongues. It’s going to happen.

Actually tongues are very interesting. They obviously have no bones for support, so instead they have a muscular hydrostat system where support comes from muscles. The same thing happens in octopus tentacles, where muscles stretch in one of three directions: Along the tentacle (longitudinal), across the tentacle (transverse) or wrapping around the tentacle (helical.) When an octopus moves, one muscle contracts to become shorter which forces the muscles around to stretch, supporting the movement like a skeleton.

Cats and octopus. You know this post was worth the wait.

Reis, P., Jung, S., Aristoff, J., & Stocker, R. (2010). How Cats Lap: Water Uptake by Felis catus Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1195421