Curio Cabinet

This dry winter air has us parched. If only we could pull water from thin air! Actually, fog catchers have been doing just that for decades, making it easier to hydrate some of the driest parts of the world. Now, the technology has made a leap forward thanks to a new innovation from the Canary Islands. Fog catchers were first invented in the 1970s by Chilean physicist Carlos Espinosa to bring water to Chile’s arid Antofagasta region. One of the driest places in the world, the northern region was experiencing a severe drought when Espinosa developed the idea to place fine mesh at high altitudes, where moisture is abundant, to catch said moisture and drain it into containers below. It worked, and fog catchers have been deployed in other parts of the world to great success. However, this technology hasn’t changed much until recently. Researchers in the Canary Islands have developed a new technique called “cloud milking.” Unlike fog catchers, a new device called a fog collector gathers moisture from clouds while solving some of the problems that plague traditional fog catchers. Since fog catchers are made from a fine mesh, they are easily damaged by strong winds along with the structures that hold them up. The solution involved taking a little bit of inspiration from nature. Fog collectors gather moisture using fine metal fronds modelled after pine needles. This allows air to pass through freely, even in strong winds. The collected water is released freely into the ground without using any energy, and there’s no need to dig wells. So far, the new invention has proved to be a resounding success. As part of an EU-backed project called Life Nieblas (Spanish for cloud), the Canary Islands have deployed fog collectors to combat the increasing desertification of recent years. When you can’t find an oasis, make your own.

 
[Image description: Fog over a rainforest, from above.] Credit & copyright: Ayacop, Wikimedia Commons. The copyright holder of this work, has released it into the public domain. This applies worldwide.

You know what they say, there’s no “human” in “team.” According to a paper published by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ants are smarter than humans…at least when it comes to teamwork. Working together is certainly something that Homo sapiens can do, but we’re just not as efficient at it as ants. To prove this, researchers pitted a team of humans against a colony of longhorn crazy ants and had them perform the same task, but at different scales. Both humans and ants were placed inside mazes with identical layouts and were made to move a T-shaped object through it. The ants worked in teams of around 80, while humans worked in groups of up to 26 as well as an individual working alone. To level the playing field, the human subjects were made to wear face masks and instructed not to speak or communicate (after all, ants can’t exactly talk to each other.) Under these conditions, the ants thrived, performing their given task successfully in a cooperative manner. On the other hand, humans easily grew frustrated and often resorted to “greedy” actions that led to them ignoring the contributions of their team members, and prevented them from performing the complex task. The conclusion? Complex intelligence isn’t always better when it comes to solving problems. Lead researcher Prof. Ofer Feinerman wrote, "We've shown that ants acting as a group are smarter, that for them the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In contrast, forming groups did not expand the cognitive abilities of humans. The famous 'wisdom of the crowd' that's become so popular in the age of social networks didn't come to the fore in our experiments." Two heads might be better than one, but three is still a crowd.

[Image description: A close-up photo of an ant on a green leaf.] Credit & copyright: Egor Kamelev, Pexels
 

They’re some of the cutest critters around, and they’ve made quite the comeback. Fur seals, as their name suggests, are covered in visible fur, unlike many seal species which have sleek skin or very, very short fur. Unfortunately, the very fur that gives these marine mammals their name has also made them a target for hunters at various points in history. Northern fur seals, for example, were nearly hunted to extinction in the early 19th century before being protected by law in 1915. Yet this species has bounded back in unexpected ways. This year, the Farallon Islands near San Francisco, California, where northern fur seals were once hunted for their blubber and pelts, saw record numbers of baby seals born. Of the 2,133 fur seals counted on the islands during a recent population survey, a whopping 1,276 were new pups.
 
It shouldn’t be too surprising that fur seals are resilient. They originally evolved as land mammals around 15 to 17 million years ago, but quickly took to the water in pursuit of abundant aquatic prey. To this end, they developed flippers, streamlined bodies, and, like other members of the clade Pinniped, which includes walruses and sea lions, they have plenty of adaptations to help them survive in conditions that humans would find inhospitable. Northern fur seals’ fur is extremely dense, with around 350,000 hairs per square inch, and it’s made up of two layers—thick, outer guard hairs for protection, and a soft inner layer that keeps heat close to the body. A layer of blubber also protects the seals’ organs from frigid waters, as does their hefty overall size. Females can weigh up to 120 pounds, while males can reach a whopping 600 pounds.
 
Fur seals are pelagic, meaning that they spend the majority of their lives in the open sea. Northern fur seals are relatively solitary animals, only returning to land and gathering in groups each summer to breed. While at sea, fur seals sleep by floating on the surface with three flippers sticking out of the water to minimize heat loss. While half of their brain sleeps, the other half remains partially conscious–just enough to ensure that the seal doesn’t drown. Unlike most mammals, who need long periods of REM sleep, fur seals only have short bursts of REM sleep while at sea, which has led scientists to study their unusual sleeping patterns. When they’re awake, fur seals are capable hunters, feasting on more than 60 different species of fish. Squid can also make up large portions of their diet, depending on place and time of year. During breeding season, though, male fur seals stop eating entirely, focusing instead on mating and on fighting off aggressive male rivals. Males commonly lose around 20 percent of their body weight each breeding season. Even for a New Year’s resolution, that seems a bit extreme.

 
[Image description: A close-up photo of a brown Northern Fur Seal’s face.] Credit & copyright: Greg Thompson/USFWS. This image or recording is the work of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.