Curio Cabinet

If you’d like to be immune to most viruses, resilient against cancer, and have the ability to fly, what you actually want is to be a bat. A new study published by researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution works to reveal the secrets behind the winged mammals’ hale and hearty nature. The secret to bats’ extraordinary immunity to diseases (like ebola) that kill other mammals lies in their inflammation response—or, rather, their lack of one. In humans, many symptoms of illness are actually the result of our bodies’ own immune response. This includes inflammation. Bats don’t experience the same level of inflammation, allowing them to tolerate viral loads that would kill most other mammals. It’s also the reason that bats are famously disease-ridden (the technical term is viral reservoir) and easily spread diseases, even as they remain unaffected by them. Recently, after using long-read sequencing, which allows scientists to study much longer fragments of DNA than other methods, researchers found that the DNA of the Jamaican fruit bat (Artibeus jamaicensis) and the Mesoamerican mustached bat (Pteronotus mesoamericanus), lack the gene for interferon(INF)-alpha. This protein is produced by other mammals’ immune systems to fight viruses. Instead, bats rely on INF-omega, which is more potent. Researchers have theorized that targeting genes that produce INF-omega in humans could one day be used to treat viral illnesses. As for cancer, long-read sequencing revealed the presence of 6 DNA repair genes and 33 tumor-suppressor genes in bats. These are genes aren’t entirely unique to bats, but bats do seem to use them more effectively than other animals. It’s possible that, one day, gene therapy using bat immunity as a blueprint could treat cancer in humans as well. Seems like a good idea, as long as no one grows wings.

[Image description: A black-and-brown bat with brown eyes hanging from a green treetop.] Credit & copyright: Pixel-mixer, Pixabay
 

That’s no dog, that’s a dingo! A video from Australia, which showed a dingo committing literal daylight robbery, recently went viral. The tenacious pup swam to a boat where it proceeded to steal food and even a handbag. While dingoes may look similar to domesticated dogs, they’re considered wild animals. In fact, these pirate pests have actually carved out a niche for themselves in one of the planet’s harshest ecosystems.
 
Dingoes first arrived in Australia thousands of years ago, though it’s not known exactly when. Genetic analysis shows that dingoes are closely related to East Asian domestic dogs, meaning that they were likely brought over by humans who used them to hunt vermin. Archaeological evidence shows that dingoes have been in Australia for at least 3,500 years, but they likely arrived no earlier than 12,000 years ago. That’s around the time that rising sea levels separated Tasmania from the mainland, and no dingoes are found on Tasmania today. On the mainland, though, they went from human companions to apex predators.
 
Unfortunately, dingos were considered pests by many early Australian settlers looking to raise livestock. This led to massive culling programs in southeastern Australia that all but wiped out dingoes in the region. Then, farmers constructed a 5,600-kilometer-long fence meant to keep out rabbits, a more recently-introduced invasive species. The fence did little to keep rabbits out, but it did keep dingoes out. Settlers didn’t understand that dingoes had, by then, become an integral part of Australia’s ecosystem, even filling the ecological niche left over when thylacines (or Tasmanian tigers) went extinct. Without dingoes to keep kangaroos and other herbivore populations in check, the fenced-in area has become overgrazed, leading to a crash in biodiversity. The effects are so drastic that, today, the difference in vegetation levels on either side of the fence can be seen from space.
 
The dingo is listed as a vulnerable species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Despite the fact that they weren’t originally wild animals, they’ve been part of the ecosystem for so long now that their demise would likely mean ecological disaster for Australia. Dingoes are still being baited, trapped, and hunted as pests, while conservationists work to educate the public about the valuable role dingoes play, as wild predators. It might be a long road ahead, but every dog has his day.

 
[Image description: A tan-colored dingo stands in green grass.] Credit & copyright: TheOtherKev, Pixabay

Not everyone can be a Nobel Prize winner, so why not aim your ambitions just a tad lower? For those conducting scientific research that “makes people laugh…then think” there’s the Ig Nobel Awards, which just selected ten winners for 2023. The prize has been used since 1991 as a way to honor scientists who make quirky or humorous discoveries. One of this year’s winners was chosen for their research on why scientists like to lick rock samples, while a team of international engineers was selected for trying to reanimate dead spiders.
 
According to the journal Nature, “The Ig Nobel awards are arguably the highlight of the scientific calendar.” While the “Igs,” as they’re also called, might seem like a mocking jab at frivolous research, they’re actually just the opposite. The award recognizes the value of oddball endeavors. The rock-licking study, for instance, was actually about the effectiveness of a real technique used in the field by paleontologists. Jan Zalasiewicz, who won the chemistry and geology prize, expounded in the study, “Wetting the surface allows fossil and mineral textures to stand out sharply, rather than being lost in the blur of intersecting micro-reflections and micro-refractions that come out of a dry surface.” In the case of the dead spiders, the engineers were taking inspiration from the arachnid’s anatomy to develop better mechanical grippers. They found that when spiders die and curl up, their legs are returning to their default “gripping” state. Based on this principle, the gripper they designed opens when pressure is applied instead of the other way around and is better at holding irregularly-sized objects.
 
Overall, the award is a tongue-in-cheek way for the scientific community to recognize the ostensibly absurd nature of their shared work while rewarding legitimate research. The awards are largely presented by Nobel Laureates and at least one Ig Nobel winner went on to win a Nobel Prize later. So it’s safe to say that the Igs are all in good fun. Even the prize money is absurd: each winner is given a “cash reward” of a $10 trillion dollar bill. Of course, that’s in Zimbabwe dollars, which haven’t been recognized as legal tender since 2009. Who said that scientists have no sense of humor?

 
[Image description: Two arms, each holding a large, gold trophy, reach in front of a yellow background.] Credit & copyright: Anna Shvets, Pexels

Who’s that rarefied, long-legged beauty in pink? No, it’s not Barbie—it’s the flamingo. Some of these fine, feathered flyers were recently blown astray by Hurricane Idalia and found themselves scattered across the U.S. There have been sightings of them from Texas to Ohio, but even without the storm, these plucky proprietors of pink plumage have been spotted in places beyond their usual hangouts due to a number of factors.
 
Most flamingos in the U.S. reside in Florida, where they are a native species. There aren’t that many of them left in the Sunshine State, though, since overhunting nearly drove them to extinction in the early 1900s. When Hurricane Idalia struck the Southeastern U.S. this year, some Florida flamingos fled outside of their natural range to avoid the storm, while others got caught in it and were knocked off their usual flight paths by force. Luckily, the birds should be able to get back home. Flamingos may look like fussy fashionistas, but they’re actually hardened survivors that have conquered some of the harshest environments on Earth.
 
Flamingos have been around for about 30 million years, making them quite a bit older than humans, and they’ve survived so long via some impressive adaptations. While no one knows why they’re pink, we do know how they become pink. A flamingo’s diet consists mostly of plants and brine shrimp. The pigments or carotenoids in these foods are absorbed by the flamingos’ feathers. Flamingos aren’t born pink, but rather a dull gray. Luckily, it doesn’t take long for flamingo chicks to grow their adult feathers, and they retain their pink hues as long as they have a decent source of food. Flamingos have very attentive parents who feed them something called “crop milk,” a high protein liquid produced in the crop, a muscular pouch near their throats. Besides these adaptations, flamingos have unusual beaks that almost appear to be attached upside-down. These are used for filter feeding. While standing in shallow water, flamingos dip their heads down and take in whatever plant matter, insects, or shrimp they can, using their beaks like scoops. They then expel the water through thin, comb-like plates inside their beaks. Flamingos’ legs also look as if they’re pointing the wrong way because they seem to bend backwards at the knee. However, the bending joint that’s visible is actually their ankle. Their knees are hidden under their feathers, much closer to their bodies. Flamingos can stand on just one of these long, sturdy legs for hours at a time—even sleeping in that position. They do this because their unique anatomy lets them use less energy to stand on one leg than on two. Some scientists believe that this also allows them to conserve heat when it’s cold. Their legs have thick, durable skin, which is particularly useful for flamingos living near alkaline lakes. These bodies of water have high concentrations of highly corrosive carbonate salts that would be deadly to most other animals, yet adult flamingos are practically immune to them.
 
Despite these incredible adaptations, flamingo populations around the world are only tenuously safe. Per the The International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species, American flamingos and greater flamingos are considered species of “least concern.” Meanwhile the Andean flamingo is considered “vulnerable” and the Chilean flamingo is considered “near threatened.” The greatest threats facing the latter are hunting, habitat loss, and pollution, but all species can be affected by storms or flooding, which are increasing in severity and frequency with climate change. Then again, maybe flamingos will surprise us—they’re so weird, you never know what surprises they’re hiding under their gorgeous getups.

 
[Image description: A pair of deep pink flamingos stands in front of a flock of lighter-pink flamingos.] Credit & copyright: Alexas_Fotos, Pixabay