ME student discovers a unique fact about polar bears | Hacker News Reader

ME student discovers a unique fact about polar bears

coe.berkeley.edu

83 pointsbane15 comments

There are probably a lot of unique facts about many many animals, but almost nobody has the equipment (money) and the time (money) to do it. Lots of scientific biology missions are now out of funds. It's more profitable doing soap operas with animals for TV shows.

There's actually a lot of research money and time put into the field called biomimetics.

One of the more publicized examples of this research was Stickybot [1], a gecko-inspired robot that can climb vertical surfaces. Commercial examples in robotics are not hard to find either: Boston Dynamics' robots, ASIMO, Festo's Seagull UAV etc.

The Ortiz Lab does fascinating research [2] on the material properties of exoskeletons.

Then there's the study of the camouflage exhibited by cephalopods. This video report on Science Friday is worth watching: http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201108053

[1] http://bdml.stanford.edu/twiki/bin/view/Rise/StickyBot [2] http://web.mit.edu/cortiz/www/

That had better not be a knock at Meerkat Manor.

It took until a year ago to figure out how a cat drinks water. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11...

Botany = even worse. I remember when it was discovered how trees communicate infestations - through the air. The experiment involved two plants separated by glass - the soil, then the air. This experiment could have been performed in the 1700's.

My Scotch Pine trees are all dying. The extension guy says "just plant different trees". 20 years of invenstment dismissed. Probably because nobody knows squat about treating trees.

Do you know what they are dying from?

Some nematode spread by a moth. Attacks the roots I believe.

Its hard to treat trees. Their circulatory system is primitive, doesn't circulate much, is anisotropic. So not much leverage to apply treatments even if they existed.

I don't know much about plants but have resolved health issues of my own that doctors said couldn't be resolved. I read a book some years ago with a true story in it about a man in a village saving a fruit tree by starting an ant war. The tree was being destroyed by an infestation of (I think) large red ants. The villager kept bringing leaves with black ants to the area. Even though the black ants were smaller, they eventually won and the tree was saved.

So I'm wondering if you can research natural predators/enemies and import them to kill off the nematodes?

The other thought that occurred to me: I am wondering if you can get the soil tested and if there is some way to determine there is a nutrient deficiency that could be remedied. Again, I don't know much about plants so that I don't know where you would need to go to get info like that. But my best understanding is that a nutrient deficiency can compromise an immune system. Alternately, a high availability of something desired by the predator can attract them. So I am wondering if that would be a helpful approach.

Just thinking out loud.

Best of luck.

Another interesting fact about polar bears: They have black skin, but layered with fur comprised of fibre-optic-like hairs which allows them to soak up heat radiation from the sun.

...in 2003.

This headline sounds like copy for a sleazy weight loss ad.

Whole animal biology tends not to get the resources that the DNA hackers get. This narrowing of the facts base may be problematic if we want to preserve the fauna for the offspring.

I'm wondering if this fact is indeed unique to polar bears. Did they check other mammals that live in similar conditions, i.e. Arctic fox would be a candidate.

So, if you see nothing, there could be a polar bear RIGHT THERE.

Huge PR miss for Science Exchange. She says she could only do her experiment because she had access to some fancy rare scope.

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