Amazing animals

Humans like us also make 'active' polypeptides. Five simple amino acids in a row are Opiorphin, in saliva, ~6 times stronger than morphine:

Opiorphin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not very much though. Being a straight chain, swallowing (into an acidic stomach) breaks it. So 'purpose' (if any) seems elusive.

 

Late reply - sounds appealing but seems to require opiorphin production to spike with oral pain. do not know.

Interestingly, human fossil teeth suggest that cavities were less of a problem. Pointing to purified sugar in diet. Of course, teeth could always break from physical overloading.

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Venom book gets a timely writeup:
How Venomous Creatures Can Kill You--Or One Day Save Your Life

 

Let us broaden the topic to include amazing plants

BBC - Earth - There is 'alien DNA' everywhere, thanks to gene thieves

Pretty good science writing on a topic that is not easy to organize

Horizontal gene transfer was previously treated as mostly done by bacteria. If this is not the case, and not particularly limited to extremophiles, it will echo through our understanding of evolution and 'the species concept'.

 

Everybody loves birds because they can fly. Some in the family of Swifts do almost nothing but fly:

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)31063-6

Long bird flights, including airborne sleeping was previously known, but this is (in the current vernacular) sick. I am a long-term fan of swifts both from personal experience (they swooping under field hammock and making micro-fighter-jet noises) and because of their well-known aerial mating. I mean, seriously...

But now with small data loggers (above) it is known that some scarcely ever come down. Except to lay eggs, which seems the only thing that can't be done 'up there'.

 

DDT inventor chemist got a Nobel Prize for it. Those were optimistic times.

Evidence of DDT (DDE) as endocrine disrupters is all out there. No reason for an interested person to be uninformed.

An important current mosquito-control problem is resistance to DDT and several other biocides. Critters with short life cycles and 'r-selection' are particularly adept at developing such resistance. Higher up the food chain, there is bioconcentration in fatty tissues, longer life cycles and 'K-selection'. That's just how the thing works. These are realistic times.

 

Time for a new amazing animal, the periodical cicada.

Feeds on root juice as a youngin. Emerges as adult with no mouth, but highly effective noisemakers. Bzzz bzzz bzzz.

Different populations emerge on 17, 13 and perhaps other cycles. How they know?

Now is the time for one of those populations:

CAES NEWSWIRE | 17-year Cicadas

 

Cephalopods change their color and structure for several reasons, including:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170502095116.htm

Oh Yeah. They are most different from other groups of 'thinking' animals (a few mammals and birds). Been around since animals got multicellular, more or less. If life is mostly limited to watery planets (as has been suggested), then something along these lines may be more common than what we normally think of as smart animals.

Present company included.

 

Cephalopods are also distinctive in that their brains are not entirely in one place. Such has also been argued for human males, but not convincingly demonstrated

 

Continuing a theme that animals are amazing because of mating styles, I give you...the dragonfly.

If the ladies are being pursued in flight by gents, and not so inclined, they drop out of sky and play dead. And, it seems effective. So, you can scratch off necrophilia. Lizards do that though. Man oh man.

 

Winning at necrophilia:

Male Frog Extracts and Fertilises Eggs From Dead Female – Phenomena

 

Well, yeah. We have reached a stage of noticing that these critters intellectually interact with other organisms and their environment. There is no indication that they notice us noticing. There is no indication that they might search for ET, develop technology, etc.

They just do what they do, as they have done for very long. This is my uninspiring idea about ET. Being marine, squid-like, and not motivated to reach beyond. Most ET may very well be similar. (Well that ain't quite right - most ET ought to be single-cell sludge but you know what I'm saying).

Here on Earth we had land animals 1.0 which were dinosaurs. Not offering any evidence of transcending, 'just doing their stuff'. They hit a major bump; exo impact and maybe large volcanic action. So, bye bye 1.0. At least they 'gave us' birds to utilize atmosphere.

From that rubble came land animals 2.0 which are mammals. I want to say that land environment is so variable and varying that it leads to intellect 'ashore'. But the much longer dominance of dinosaurs argues against that. Maybe (just maybe) lower CO2 led to higher variability and push towards intellect. Does not seem to be a knowable thing.

In any case, now among land animals we have humans - ecce homo. Doing tools beyond compare, and wondering who else might be doing the same.

Perhaps, not many. A Galaxy filled with cephalopods (or similar) would be 'quiet'. Not lonely, in that all of them would be working their worlds without thought towards elsewhere. It would not be radio-emission-rich.

Maybe, in just a few worlds, a succession of rare events led to intellectual land animals, always pressed by environmental changes to do things new, different, better. It seems to be like that here. It may also be like that on other worlds, but they may be few and distant.

 

Narwhals:

deadspin-quote-carrot-aligned-w-bgr-2

One big exotooth used to stun fish. This is an oddity, but there seem to be many cases where large animals do or become something outrageous. They are not just larger versions of small animals. They innovate.

 

Haast's Eagle is extinct. Was about twice size of extant eagles.

Haast's eagle | New Zealand Birds Online

Hard to image 18 kg of eagle about to lift 240 kg of moa (also extinct) but that's the story