Last fall, our class visited the sea otter researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Sandeep summarized many neat tidbits about otters from that trip on this blog. Two items that really piqued my interest involved otter mortality. In California, many otters die from disease or shark bite. What’s going on? I tracked down the answer during…
Full disclosure: I’m a dog person. (So is Sascha.) I love their exuberance. Excessive tail wags radiate into full body wiggles. At dinnertime, table manners are optional as they snarf their food. And then there are cats. From my cat-ownership experience, felines are completely aloof and obsessed with cleanliness. They eat dinner one nugget at…
1. Sea otters have the densest hair of any mammal – around 900,000 hairs per square inch (140,000 hairs/cm2)[1]. That’s more than 500X denser than the hair on the human scalp, which averages at 1600 hairs per square inch (250 hairs/cm2).[2] 2 Sea otters have individual preferences for prey. Some sea otters prefer to crunch…
Although it sounds like an unpleasant way to take dictation, this weighty sounding word has a pedestrian meaning. It is the act of sneezing. The National Institutes of Health says sneezes are triggered when the mucous lining of your nose or throat is irritated. Things like pollen, dust or pepper can set off a bout…
