Archive for August, 2021
Tomatoes may turn you into a zombie
Posted by mark in Nature, Uncategorized on August 24, 2021
The latest issue of Chemical & Engineering News reports alerted me to the discovery by a team of Brazilian botanists that tomatoes communicate sensory information back to their parent plant. The scientists worked this out by letting a hungry caterpillar gorge on wired-up Micro Toms much like my ripening cherry tomatoes (pictured). This seems a bit callous to me from the perspective of a plant. However, it is sweet for the sake of science (and the future butterfly).
Based on statistical analysis of the variation in signals*, the researchers concluded that the tomato plant sensed its fruit being eaten. Therefore, they hypothesized that the parent could fight back by emitting chemicals such as this one discovered by a University of Wisconsin biologist that makes attacking caterpillars eat each other .
Be careful the next time you squeeze tomatoes on the vine to check their ripeness—they might not like it and take revenge by turning you into a zombie. (Wow, that took a dark turn!)
* For experimental details, see Fruit Herbivory Alters Plant Electrome: Evidence for Fruit-Shoot Long-Distance Electrical Signaling in Tomato Plants, Frontiers of Sustainable Food Systems, 20 July 2021.
Squirrels best Olympian gymnasts and jumpers for acrobatics
As reported by the New York Times on Thursday, this month’s Science features amazing experimental results that illustrate how squirrels learn to leap and land on tree branches without falling. Cognitive scientists and biomechanics experts at the University of California, Berkeley, put wild fox squirrels to a test that varied distance and flexibility of branches for a payoff of peanuts.
The wily rodents adapted to challenging conditions by bouncing off walls like parkour athletes, which you can see in this video posted by Independent.
The researchers concluded that “the squirrels’ remarkable and consistent success was due to a combination of learned impulse generation when assessing the balance between distance and branch flexibility and the addition of innovative leaps and landings in the face of increasingly difficult challenges.”
By the way, these Berkeley boffins hope to translate their newly discovered squirrely techniques into smarter robots. That is very alarming!
For even more a-maze-ing feats, check out this YouTube video posted recently by Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer, who goes all out to stymie squirrels with ingenious backyard obstacles:
PS: After years of trial and error, I finally defeated my bird-feed thieving backyard squirrels by mounting a Perky-Pet 340 Transparent 16-Inch Squirrel Baffler in wobbly fashion on the metal pole, and placing it away from any nearby branches and structures. : )