Happy Wednesday!
Today’s joke:
Why did the turtle cross the road?
… To get to the shell station. 🐢
5 Fun Facts: Platypus Edition!
Platypuses are pretty unique animals. In fact, they look so unique that European naturalists first thought they were a hoax! Here’s some fun facts:
🥚 They are one of only two mammals that lay eggs (the other is echidnas, another animal from Australia)!
🥾 Males have venomous spurs on their back legs. The venom is strong enough to give humans severe pain and even kill smaller animals!
🦷 They don't have stomachs! The food goes straight to their intestines! What makes this even crazier is that adult platypuses don't have teeth. Instead, they use gravel to help grind their food up enough so that they can digest it!
🦆 Platypuses use electroreception to find food. They have highly specialized sensors in their bills which can detect motion and electrical signals from muscle contractions in their prey. It’s pretty fascinating! You can read more about it here.
Platypuses eat worms, insect larvae, shrimp, crabs, snails, little fish, and much more. Adult platypuses only weigh around 6 pounds - in other words, they're pretty small. So, most of the food they eat is also pretty small.
🦴 Scientists now believe that dinosaurs and platypuses co-existed! It was first reported in 2023 that fossils of a platypus cousin, Patagorhynchus pascuali, were discovered in Argentina that were more than 70 million years old. In fact, scientists now believe that platypuses first appeared more than 112 million years ago, well before dinosaurs went extinct!
👉 Want to see them in action? The San Diego Zoo has a special web cam set-up so you can watch them yourself!
Trivia Corner: Our days are getting longer??
Did you know that Earth’s rotation is slowing down? 🌎
A day is defined as how long it takes for the Earth to complete a full rotation on its axis. So, how long does that take? 24 hours?
Well, it turns out that every day is slightly longer than the previous day because Earth’s rotation is slowing down. This could be due to tidal braking from the moon’s gravity, mass redistribution from climate change as melting ice caps redistribute mass to the equator (similar to how an ice skater can slow down by extending their arms), or changes in the Earth’s core.
However, even though we’re technically getting more time, you don’t need to adjust your calendar. It’s estimated that the average day only increases by about 1.8 milliseconds per century. That means that 600 million years ago, a day was just 21 hours! 🕰️
Myth or Truth: Our Brains 🧠
We all know our brains are incredibly important. Our brains are responsible for everything from thinking, decision making, sensory processing (including processing what we see, touch, and hear), our memories and emotions, controlling all of our voluntary and involuntary movements (including how we regulate our body temperature and basic life functions like breathing, our heart rate, and digestion), and much more. Our brains are very complex, and we’re still learning more about how it all works!
Here’s some quick fun facts about our brains:
1 - Even though we may feel like we’re constantly forgetting things, the brain has an almost unlimited storage capacity! It can hold up to 2.5 petabytes of information - equivalent to 3 million hours of TV shows! 📺
2 - Our brains are big consumers! Even though our brains make up only about 2% of our body weight, they consume around 20% of our body’s energy! 🔋
3 - Our brains are fast! Information travels fast between our neurons. In fact, scientists have estimated that they can send signals at speeds as fast as 268 miles per hour! 💨
So, is it true that we only use 10% of our brains?
No - because almost all parts of our brain are active - even when we’re sleeping! When scientists use advanced technology to measure brain activity (using scans like fMRI or PET scans), they’ve seen almost every part of the brain light up with some activity, even during simple tasks. Even when we’re resting, our brains are busy doing a lot to keep us alive! 💪
Science in the News: the Dire Wolf
Recently there’s been a big splash in the news about scientists from Colossal Biosciences bringing the dire wolf back from extinction! So, what did they do and what does it mean?
What is the dire wolf? 🐺
The dire wolf is a large species of wolf that went extinct 12,000 years ago. Here’s some key characteristics of the dire wolf:
Size: dire wolves were larger than modern gray wolves, often weighing between 110-176 pounds (modern gray wolves are usually between 66-176 pounds, depending on where they live).
Strength: dire wolves had powerful jaws and teeth that could crush bones and were adapted for hunting large prey. They were apex predators (they were at the top of the food chain, with no natural predators), and often hunted bison, horses, and mammoths for food.
Habitat: they roamed across North and South America, living in grasslands, forests, and the mountains.
Most likely they went extinct due to climate change and not having enough food to hunt.
How did scientists bring them back? 🧬
First, scientists extracted DNA from dire wolf fossils. DNA that old is often degraded and of poor quality. However, recent advances in gene sequencing and bioinformatics have enabled scientists to reconstruct large portions of the dire wolf’s genome (a genome is the complete set of DNA in an organism).
Next, scientists compared this reconstructed genome with the genome of the modern gray wolf. They identified differences in 14 genes that were responsible for the dire wolf’s distinctive coat color and stronger jaw.
Using genome engineering (a special technology which allows scientists to change a cell’s DNA to turn certain genes on or off), scientists took gray wolf embryos and targeted and changed all 14 of those genes.
These edited embryos were then implanted into surrogate gray wolves, which gave birth to pups that have some dire wolf characteristics.
What does this mean? 🔎
So, did they really bring the dire wolf back? While they have some physical characteristics of dire wolves, such as their white coat and powerful jaw, they are really just modified gray wolves. Genetically, more than 99.9% of their DNA is still that of gray wolves, not the dire wolf. So, no, scientists haven’t really brought the dire wolf back from extinction. However, they have given us a picture of what it might have looked like to see dire wolves in real life!
👉 What species (if any) would you want to see brought back from extinction? Leave a comment and let us know!
Picture of the Week: Chunk!
Image from T. Carmack (Katmai National Park)
The Fat Bear Week 2025 competition has a winner - Chunk (aka Bear 32), who is estimated to weigh an impressive 1,200 pounds despite having a broken jaw!
Have a science or animal-related picture you want us to highlight? Send it to us at [email protected] or @science.answers!
Thanks for reading, you made it to the end! See you next week!
Answer to the Trivia: Gluons are massless elementary (subatomic) particles that mediate the strong interaction between quarks. Quarks are the building blocks for protons and neutrons, which in turn make up atomic nuclei (the central cores of atoms). Science keeps getting smaller and smaller!