Curio Cabinet

Where there’s a will, there’s a way…even if it takes a lot of digging. Connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea seems like an impossible feat, but it actually happened several times throughout history. From the ancient Egyptians to the Byzantines, various rulers attempted and failed to maintain a maritime passage between the two seas. The latest—and possibly the greatest—iteration yet is the Suez Canal. Located on the Isthmus of Suez, the canal opened on this day in 1869, and it continues to be crucial to global commerce as it connects Asia and Europe without the need to navigate around the southern tip of Africa.
 
Historians believe that the notion of connecting the Red and Mediterranean seas was first ideated by Pharaoh Senausert III of the Twelfth Dynasty in the 19th century B.C.E. The pharaoh envisioned a canal that would lead ships to the Nile River and through the Bitter Lakes, creating a lucrative trade route to Asia. A canal was created, but it became impassable by 610 B.C.E. due to sand deposition. Later attempts to connect the seas were limited in scope, capacity, and permanence. Various canal systems connecting the seas through the Nile and the Bitter Lakes came and went, and in at least one instance, the destruction of the passage was deliberate. Abu Jafar El-Mansur of the Abbasid Caliphate ordered the canal to be filled with sand in 760 C.E. to quell a rebellion in Mecca and Medina, and that was the last time that a passage between the seas existed for over a thousand years. It wasn’t until the 19th century that anyone would make earnest efforts to reconnect the seas. Instead of a system of small canals that made use of the Nile for the majority of its length, this new passage was designed to run straight through the Isthmus of Suez, making it the longest sea level canal in the world at the time.
 
The Suez Canal was commissioned by Mohamed Sa'id Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Egypt in 1854. That year, he tasked French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps with constructing the canal, and in 1856, the Suez Canal Company was given the right to manage it for 99 years starting from the date of completion. Construction was initially expected to take around six years, but was delayed by various setbacks. At first, construction was performed by forced laborers who were only equipped with hand tools and baskets. Many of the laborers died in 1865 when a cholera epidemic swept through the area, and the project eventually switched over to the use of dredgers and steam shovels, which greatly accelerated the pace of construction. Finally, the Suez Canal opened on November 17, 1869, to great fanfare, with the inaugural voyage attended by the wife of Napoleon III, Empress Eugénie. The canal was originally only 25 feet deep, 72 feet wide at the bottom, and up to 300 feet wide at the surface, but was expanded in 1876 to accommodate larger ships.
 
During its first full year of operation, the canal saw an average of two ships pass through it. Today, an average of 58 ships a day, carrying 437,000 tons of cargo, sail its waters. The canal remains significant to global commerce, and when a cargo ship got stuck and caused a blockage in 2021, it held up 369 ships at a cost of $9.6 billion in trade a day. Lesseps, however, didn’t fare as well as his creation. Following the success of the Suez, he was hired to construct the Panama Canal. Unfortunately, Lesseps wasn’t an engineer. Rather, his previous feat was largely that of organizing financing and creating political will. His attempt to dig another sea level canal through the isthmus nation proved disastrous. Between disease and the much more difficult terrain, Lesseps failed to make meaningful progress using the same techniques he employed before. The Panama Canal was eventually completed later by the U.S., which opted for a system of canal locks that allowed ships to change elevations, eliminating the need to dig straight through the entire length. Lesseps was one man who really should have rested on his laurels.

 
[Image description: A photo of a navy ship on the Suez Canal, from above.] Credit & copyright: W. M. Welch/US Navy, Wikimedia Commons. This file is a work of a sailor or employee of the U.S. Navy, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, it is in the public domain in the United States.

You don’t need to go out on a limb when saying that prosthetic devices have a long way to go, but what’s the hold up? Limb loss is a traumatic and life-changing experience, but despite decades of modern development, prosthetics aren’t as good of a replacement as many people hope. Recent advancements in technology, especially robotics, might make it seem like whipping up a bionic limb should be easy. In reality, though, making artificial limbs that can be controlled by biological brains is still an exceedingly difficult thing to do. Case in point: many amputees end up setting aside their prosthetic limbs, including bionic ones, due to them being too heavy, cumbersome, or difficult to use. One 2022 Austrian survey showed that 44 percent of upper-limb amputees eventually stop using their prosthetics. Some of the problems with bionic limbs, specifically, lie with the material and components themselves. Conventional motors, actuators, and heavy steel frames make for stiff, uncomfortable limbs that require a lot of concentration to use. Weight is a major factor in the usability of leg prosthetics because it can throw off a user’s balance and even cause injury over time. Some of these issues can be resolved by using softer, lighter, flexible materials that can mimic biological movement better than their old counterparts. When it comes to limbs that tie into a person’s nervous system, there’s one area of research that’s vitally important—sensory feedback. Bionic prosthetics can feel unnatural largely because they provide basically no tactile feedback, or sense of touch. To tackle the problem, researchers at the University of Chicago in Illinois and University of Technology in Gothenburg are working to create a neural interface via implants on nerves and in the brain. This interface could ensure good communication between a bionic limb and a person’s nervous system. While this technology is still being refined, it might not be long before a bionic hand can feel warmth, cold, pain, and texture. Here’s hoping that soon the line between technology and biology won’t be such a big hurdle.

Move over Moo Deng, there’s another pudgy baby in town! If you’re on social media, you’re probably familiar with the adorable “feud” between fans of Moo Deng, the famous baby pygmy hippo from Thailand, and Pesto, the baby King penguin born at Australia’s Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium earlier this year. While Moo Deng is beloved for being small (she is a pygmy hippo, after all), Pesto garnered international headlines for his whopping size. By the time Pesto’s gender could be determined, in September, he already weighed around 46 pounds. That not only made him the largest penguin chick the aquarium had ever housed, but also made Pesto heavier than both of his parents combined. No one knows why Pesto is so big; adult King penguins usually weigh between 21 and 40 pounds. His keepers expect him to lose some weight after he molts, but while fans may be a bit disappointed when Pesto loses his fuzzy, brown baby feathers, he’ll still be part of an incredible species possessing adaptations that help them survive extreme sub-antarctic temperatures.
 
Unlike their close relatives the Emperor Penguins, King penguins don’t spend much time on the Antarctic continent itself. Instead, they live most of their lives on Antarctic islands and in the waters surrounding them. Though conditions on these islands aren’t as extreme as those on Antarctica, temperatures still drop to around -4 degrees on land starting in autumn, with waters being even colder. To survive, King penguins have developed layers of sleek, almost fur-like feathers that trap heat tightly against their bodies, insulating them from the cold. Beneath their skin, a thick layer of blubber also helps to trap heat. They also possess adaptations that all penguin species share, like streamlined bodies for swimming and wings that function as powerful flippers. It’s thought that these water adaptations occurred around 60 million years ago, when penguins’ ancestors lived on the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. These ancient seabirds traded their ability to fly for the ability to swim expertly, and today there are 18 penguin species all of which survive primarily on fish. Of course, King penguins still have to contend with plenty of fearsome predators, from large seabirds that can snatch their newborn chicks to leopard seals and orcas that are just as agile in the water as the penguins themselves. Luckily, King penguins utilize an adaptation called counter-shading to avoid detection by some ocean predators. Since the penguins’ backs are black and their bellies are white, they’re hard to see from below, when they’re floating on top of the water. Who needs to fly away when you can’t be spotted in the first place?

 
[Image description: A King penguin stands inside a zoo enclosure.] Credit & copyright: Adam Harangozó, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

It’s so nice when the kids still call home after moving out. Voyager 1, the farthest man-made object from Earth, just dusted off a decades-old radio to say hello. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 was one of two unmanned spacecraft designed to collect data from the Solar System’s planets as they passed by. Voyager 1’s flight plan was only possible because of a rare alignment of the planets that occurs once every 175 years, and its trip into outer space was always intended to be one-way. However, the spacecraft has continued to send back data over the years, decades after its original mission ended in 1989. Far exceeding its original intended purpose and expected lifespan, Voyager 1 has been chugging along beyond the heliosphere, transmitting data back to Earth via radio all the while.
 
There have been a few issues, though. Last year, an error caused Voyager 1 to send back nonsensical data, a problem that took engineers five months to fix. More recently, the aging craft went radio silent, ceasing all communications. On October 16, at a distance of around 15 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 1 failed to send back data that was expected to arrive at that time. To reconnect with the craft, NASA sent a signal using an S-band transmitter on October 22, hoping to activate a backup radio transmitter on board that hadn’t been used since 1981. To their relief, they heard back from Voyager 1 on October 24, and now they’re trying to figure out what exactly caused the disconnection, which so far appears to be related to its voltage protection system. The system is only supposed to trigger for a certain number of reasons, and on activation, turns off all non-essential systems to conserve energy. Hopefully, they’ll be able to sort out the issue, but Voyager 1’s time may be coming to an end soon. John Casani, Voyager project manager from 1975 to 1977, said in a statement through NASA, “We didn’t design them to last 30 years or 40 years, we designed them not to fail.” After all this time, the craft will only begin to run out of energy for its scientific instruments next year, and communication will likely continue until at least 2030. They really don’t make them like they used to.

 
[Image description: A night sky filled with stars.] Credit & copyright: Felix Mittermeier, Pexels

Is it all in the hips, or all in our heads? While birthing is rarely a pleasant process for mammals, it’s particularly dangerous for humans. For a long time, this difficulty was attributed to the size of human brains at birth, but new research on chimpanzees suggests otherwise. If there’s anything that sets humans apart from their great ape cousins, it’s that we have the largest, most complex brains among them. While the human brain is resource-hungry and the body it inhabits is frailer than many other mammals of comparable size, these shortcomings are more than made up for by the immense advantage of higher intelligence. It would seem natural, then, that such a brain would come to evolve despite the risk it poses during birth. Then there’s the matter of the shorter, narrower birth canals that humans have as a trade off for being able to walk upright. In order to give birth with these factors, human babies rotate as they exit the womb. One common complication that results from this is shoulder dystocia, or obstructed labor. Without medical intervention, this can be fatal to both mother and child. This combination of large brains and narrow birth canals has been referred to as the “obstetrical dilemma,” and it was thought to be unique to humans.
 
However, paleoanthropologists at the University of Zurich believe that difficulty in birthing might predate the large brains of humans. According to their research, chimpanzees also have difficult births, despite not having the same cranial capacity or the ability to walk upright as humans do. Therefore, the researchers believe that the anatomical features that make birthing so difficult could have existed long before humans developed their oversized brains, perhaps in the last common ancestor shared by chimps and humans. Researchers also pointed out that australopithecines, one of humanity’s ancestors, probably dealt with difficult births too. You’d think it would get easier after a few million years.

 
[Image description: A black-and-white illustration of a chimpanzee walking.] Credit & copyright: Albin Mesnel, Édouard Riou, Edward Blyth, Alphonse de Neuville, Mammalia. Their various orders and habits popularly illustrated by typical species, 1870, Wikimedia Commons. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1929.