Curio Cabinet

They may be small, but they’re a big deal. Scientists at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science have published a study in the journal Nature npj Viruses, detailing a slew of newly-discovered giant viruses that shape ocean life. While the ocean is vast and home to some of Earth’s largest creatures, the base of the food web still consists of its smallest denizens, including algae, amoeba, and flagellates (microscopic organisms defined by their single, whip-like tail that is used for movement). These organisms are greatly affected by giant viruses, which, as their name implies, are much larger than most viruses, with some even being larger than bacteria. Such viruses can cause havoc in the delicate balance of the ocean’s food web. Among other things, they can cause algal blooms, which can be directly harmful to animal and human health.
 
As significant as their ecological role is, giant viruses were poorly understood until recently, and little was known about their genome. To learn more, the researchers pored over existing marine metagenomic datasets and were able to identify 230 novel giant viruses, along with 530 new proteins. Some of these proteins were found to be linked to the viruses’ ability to manipulate the process of photosynthesis in their hosts, possibly explaining how they lead to algal blooms. In fact, figuring out how to deal with algal blooms was one of the motivations for the research. One of the study’s co-authors, Mohammad Moniruzzaman, explained, "By better understanding the diversity and role of giant viruses in the ocean and how they interact with algae and other ocean microbes, we can predict and possibly manage harmful algal blooms, which are human health hazards in Florida as well as all over the world.” Even some of Earth’s biggest problems are caused by small things.

[Image description: A digital illustration of green viruses against a blue background.] Credit & copyright: Author-created illustration. Public Domain.
 

These dinosaurs might have been impressive to look at, but their table manners were awful. While most animals have to chew their food thoroughly, it seems that wasn’t the case for sauropods, some of the largest dinosaurs ever to walk the Earth. Based on a recently discovered fossil, scientists now believe that sauropods hardly chewed their food at all.
 
Sauropods were members of Sauropoda, a clade of enormous, long-necked, vegetarian dinosaurs. Yet, for a long time, scientists didn’t know many specifics about sauropod diets. Paleontologists made the assumption that they ate plants based on two factors: they had flat teeth, which are good for processing plant matter, and sauropods were huge, meaning that there was no feasible way for them to have depended on anything other than plants, much like large herbivores today. Besides, their gigantic bodies, long necks, and long tails would have made them clumsy hunters. Now, not only do we have confirmation that sauropods ate plants, we know quite a bit about how they did it.
 
Researchers discovered a cololite—fossilized intestinal contents—that belonged to Diamantinasaurus matildae, a species of sauropod that lived around 100 million years ago. By performing a CT scan on the cololite, they found that the remains were composed entirely of plant matter. The leaves of the fern-like plant were largely intact, suggesting that the sauropod barely chewed them before swallowing. This means that sauropods were probably bulk feeders, ingesting as much plant matter as possible and relying on the natural fermentation process inside their digestive systems to break down their food. It’s a more extreme version of what many herbivores do today. Cows and other ruminants rely on fermentation to digest their food, and they also spend much of their time ruminating, which means they regurgitate their food to chew it again. You really needed a strong stomach to live in the Cretaceous period.

 
[Image description: A black-and-white illustration of a long-necked sauropod dinosaur.] Credit & copyright: Pearson Scott Foresman, Wikimedia Commons. This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Pearson Scott Foresman. This applies worldwide.

These wild equines have got a bit of a mean streak, plus a whole lot of stripes! The rescue of an escaped pet zebra in Tennessee has recently gone viral after the animal was airlifted to safety, but very few people will ever own a zebra. That might seem odd, given that their close cousins, horses, are some of humanity’s most prized domesticated animals. There are plenty of good reasons why zebras have never been domesticated, though, and why you’ll (hopefully) never see a person riding one.
 
Zebras are part of the genus Equus, along with horses and wild asses. These three groups represent the only living members of the family Equidae, and zebras are the only ones that have never been domesticated by humans. There are three species of zebras, and all of them live in grasslands, shrublands, and savannahs across eastern and southern Africa. There, they live in herds of up to 20 individuals, eating grasses and small, shrubby plants. Their beautiful black-and-white stripes make them stand out to human eyes, but they also break up their individual silhouettes, so that predators have a harder time pinpointing a single zebra. That’s important, since zebras have to survive amongst some of the most fearsome predators on the planet, including lions, hyenas, crocodiles, and wild dogs, among others. When confronted by predators, zebras will group close together to deter them. When that isn’t enough, however, zebras can and will fight, lashing out with powerful kicks and bites.
 
Unfortunately for humans, the behavioral adaptations that make zebras so perfectly suited for their African home are exactly the ones that make them impossible to domesticate. Zebras are aggressive enough to fend off lions, so would-be-zebra-riders don’t stand much of a chance. Zebras have a strong “ducking” instinct, which helps them protect their throats from predators in the wild. In a domesticated setting, it means that zebras are all but impossible to lasso or leash, and that they struggle against bridles. Zebras also don’t have a hierarchical herd structure, like wild horses do. This means that there are no leaders in wild zebra herds, which would make it pretty difficult for a zebra to accept a human as its leader. All in all, while zebras might look a bit like horses, they’re really a different stripe of creature entirely.

 
[Image description: A zebra walking through grass and brush.] Credit & copyright: Alvinategyeka, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

When it comes to engineering, there are always new uses for old standbys. Putting ice in your drink is a pretty rudimentary way to keep cool when it’s hot out, but Manhattan is putting a new twist on it by using ice to cool an entire building. Most modern air conditioners are a double-edged sword because, while they keep people comfortable and safe from extreme heat, they also consume a lot of electricity. As average global temperatures continue to rise, that puts more and more strain on city’s power grids, especially during peak daytime hours. The cooling system at New York City’s iconic Eleven Madison building is different. It does most of its work at night, when the city’s energy grid isn’t nearly as taxed.
 
Created by Trane Technologies, the system is called an ice battery. Every night, it uses electricity to freeze water into around 500,000 pounds of ice. During the day, the ice is used to cool the air being pushed through the building’s vents. Since electricity costs more to produce during peak hours, the system can lower energy bills by as much as 40 percent. The ice battery also drastically reduces the overall amount of energy used to cool the building, which is good news for the grid and the environment as a whole. If more buildings adopt ice batteries in the near future, it could reduce the need for more power plants to be built, even as the climate continues to warm. That’s less land and fewer resources that will have to be devoted to cooling buildings.
 
Of course, it still takes quite a bit of electricity to freeze ice, even at night. Research is already underway to see if chilled but unfrozen water might be a viable alternative. If enough buildings and homes are able to use such thermal energy storage systems to replace traditional HVAC systems, the environmental impact would be enormous, even though the new systems aren’t entirely carbon neutral. A step in the right direction is always better than a step back.

 
[Image description: A piece of clear ice with a jagged edge on top.] Credit & copyright: Dāvis Mosāns from Salaspils, Latvia. Flickr, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

What's the matter, cat got your head? Burmese pythons and other invasive species have been wreaking havoc in the Florida everglades for years, but it seems the local wildlife is starting to fight back. Burmese pythons are a particularly big problem in Florida. The snakes have no natural predators once fully grown, and they are prolific at multiplying. State officials have tried everything to get rid of the reptilian invaders, including declaring open season on the snakes and rewarding hunters for every one they bring in, but it seems that nothing can wipe them out completely. Meanwhile, pythons are capable of eating anything that can fit inside their surprisingly stretchy jaws, including other, native predators like alligators. For years, scientists have been keeping a keen eye on the state’s python population, and part of that includes strapping radio trackers on male pythons during breeding season. The males lead researchers to nests, so that eggs and female pythons can be removed.
 
Yet, when scientists rolled up to the location of one of these radio-tracked pythons recently, they didn't find a cozy love nest. Instead, they found the snake’s decapitated body, which weighed a whopping 52 pounds. After setting up a trail camera near the corpse, they found the culprit—a common bobcat happily munching away on the remains. This marks the first time that a bobcat has been known to take down a python, and it's all the more shocking considering the python's size. While bobcats have never been known to hunt and eat pythons, the snakes have been found with bobcat claws still inside them. This led scientists to believe that bobcats were unable to defend themselves against the snakes. On paper, it's obvious why—adult bobcats weigh around 30 to 40 pounds, while Burmese pythons can weigh around 200 pounds. Maybe nature has simply had enough, or maybe this cat was just particularly skilled at punching (or clawing) above its weight.

 
[Image description: A bobcat in tall grass from the chest up.] Credit & copyright: National Park Services, Asset ID: 8859334f-c426-41db-9049-96e7d5dd5779. Public domain: Full Granting Rights.