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Hammerhead Heat | EVery Record | Tall Odds

Hammerhead Heat | EVery Record | Tall Odds

TCK #101

Steve Burgess
May 20, 2023

Important announcement: This newsletter will have a new name on June 3rd! I’ve decided to rename our weekly convo to help others see what we’re all about.

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hammerhead shark swims by frightened fish

photo by David Clode

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.

More like ham-brr-head shark

EVery Record

There’s breaking records, then there’s breaking the record for most records broken in a day. Rimac’s Nevera EV set 23 new “bests” for production cars.

Street legal 0-60 mph in 1.74 sec
0 to 248 to 0 mph in 30 sec
Stable enough to eat ice cream at 186 mph

All this highlights the potential of EVs to outperform combustion powered cars. Rimac will try to trim the 5k lb. beast before attempting curvy records such as Nurburgring’s 154 turns. Dom Toretto would never.

All 23 broken records here (plus a video)

Tall Odds

Odds are you didn’t know giraffes could analyze statistics. While they won’t be coming for your job, they do join primates and parrots as the only animals known to consider probability.

Experiment had 2 bins with carrots and zucchini mixtures
Giraffes prefer carrots, obv
1 random veggie from each was hidden in a hand

Giraffes often chose the hand representing a higher probability of carrots based on what they saw in the bin. Preset veggie ratios helped rule out random choice or scent bias. Yeah, but can they figure it out on a graphing calc!?

Giraffes, oddly uncoordinated eating with their tongues