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Baby Shark | Chilly Gills | Sharknado

Issue #111

Author

Steve Burgess
July 29, 2023

Big news! We’re up and running on our own domain!

Now on to our normal programming…Welcome to Shark Week! Here are some of my favorite stories about our fishy friends.

-Steve

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Baby Shark

Mommy shark is all it takes to make baby shark. Thanks to automixis parthenogenesis, a smoothhound shark’s egg combined with another cell at the same time to make a baby.

  • Parthenogenesis has been observed in 80+ vertebrates

  • Last resort when females cannot find a mate

  • Results in reduced genetic diversity

Mommy shark lives in an all-female tank with zero male interaction. It’s thought that most shark species are capable of reproducing like this under the right circumstances. When isolated in an aquarium, what is a lady shark to doo doo doo doo doo doo?

Quick! (poll)

Better song to have stuck in your head?

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Check out last week’s results in “Unnatural Selection” below

Chilly Gills

To stay warm in cold water, just close your gills…and be a hammerhead shark. Researchers observed how these cold-blooded swimmers run hot on the hunt.

  • Predators regulate body temp. to stay quicker than prey

  • Hammerheads lack heat regulation seen in other sharks’ gills

  • Closing gills prevents heat from escaping

Tagged hammerheads maintained body temperature at hunting depths, only chilling as they breathed during ascent. Think of it like zipping up your coat on a cold windy day. Next shark evolution - pit zips.

Sharknado

Sharks can’t fly, yet, but their skin is ready just in case. AeroShark is bringing evolution’s skin “tech” to airplanes.

  • Created a thin film emulating shark-skin “riblets”

  • Riblet: 50 micrometers high (aka 1/500th of an inch)

  • Covering 950’ of a Boeing 777 reduces fuel consumption by 1%

Swiss and Lufthansa use AeroShark’s film on 22 planes to reduce CO2 emissions by over 29k tons while saving money on ~9k tons of jet fuel. This small step towards zero-emissions airliners will remain useful regardless of engine technology. Cool, now make it look like a whale shark.

Clickables

👱‍♀️ If “Barbie Girl” was written by 6 classical composers

🚗 Highway rumble strips play songs at the right speeds

💪 Gym in a box for working out anywhere

🌊 Uhm, we have a gravity hole in the ocean 

Unnatural Selection

Last week: “Would you rather have a robot…”

surgeon 20%, dentist 80%

Potential breakthrough: robo-dentist that understands vowel-only speech. Revolutionizing modern dental-cleaning conversation.

Make sure you vote up top for next week’s “Unnatural Selection”!

st3v on site

Shark Songs

st3v snorkeling with a fake shark fin

They actually asked st3v to host Shark Week this year but he was too busy pretending to be one. (dark mode users: this week’s st3v looks better in light mode!)

Forward to a friend!

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Robo-Doc | Grand Theft Combo | Disco Mouse

Robot removes liver | Car combos prevent thefts | Disco mouse researching cancer

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