REVIEW Nature´s science

We had some good blogs over this three moths, and I think we should review the most popular with youtube videos:

The microbiome was the first and one of the most popular blogs of the month.

How a yellow blob can solve mazes is a mery interesting and popular subject, that is also very popular.

This video shows my question about if we should get rid of mosquitoes.What do you think?

COULD YOU CREATE A GODZILLA

Godzilla is normally considered an amphibian that has suffered large ammouts of radiation and has become a gargantic monster on the sea that goes on land and fires up buildings and cities.My question is,How could you create a godzilla with thoes abilities?
To be a creature that can go on water and land.But amphibians die if the contact salt water, so our best chance is it to be a reptile.Then there is the problem with size, a creature the size of godzilla may not colapse on sea, but on land the metric cube law (mass grows faster than force) makes it imposible to stand uprigth without colapsing in  the soil, even if it walked in four legs it would sink in soil.To make godzilla a fire breathing monster it would need to save the gas produced by her digestion and eat some flameable metals.
But could godzilla even exist as it is?Well, here is a video that will help you find out.

Why do SCORPIONS GLOW?

Fireflies,squids,jellyfish,coral,fish,crustaceans, they all give of light, but in some of them the reason why is still a mistery.Scorpions are aracnids with a sting on the end of their tails,they're normaly active at night.But when you bounce Ultraviolet ligth on them they glow.That may be as a natural sunscreen(coral sunscreen), but scorpions mostly appear at night.Another posibility is that they mimic flowers, but in the desert flowers just blowsome at some days of the year.So what's the answer, well it will become a mistery for years to come.

Letter from AUSTRALIA:sugar gliders

There is no marsupial weirdier that the sugar glider, a gliding marsupial that pollinates flowers in Australia.It has it´s characteristical two black stripes around his eyes and along his back.Surely I got a photo of one in the midle of the air.
Srely I can go back to my town and end this madness.

Letter from PATAGONIA:cougars

I made it from Costa Rica to the forgotten mountain range around Peru and Argentina, famous for giant tarantulas, llamas, plains, anteaters,vipers and cougars.They live all over the Americas,but is very hard to see one.They feed on medium sized prey in the mountain such as marmots or ungulates.I managed to take a great shot up close.

letter from CANADA:narwhals

From one pole to another,I'm in the northern part of Canada, in a trip to see what climate change is doing to our planet.Here live one of the smallest contributors to climate change and is one of the most affected, the Inuits(people of the village).They need wild animals to feed on, without them there is no hope.These people have rights, and one of them is their culture.These people are connected to the sea, the ice, the wolfs, the bears and the narwhals.They are the whales of myth.They will be one of the most affected by the oil industries and rising seas that have caused trauma and habitat relocation in some cetacean species.Surely I managed to take a shot of a male getting ready for battle.

letter from COSTA RICA :three toed sloths

In the jungles of Costa Rica many creatures stand out, but sloths don't seem to take the attention of people, but they are curious creatures.Their closest relatives are anteaters and pangolings. Sloths do not eat insects but are in fact a place to raise them.Sloths have tiny larvae in their hair feeding on the plants on top of it that grow on it (making it the only green mammal).Then the larvae turn into moth like creatures that lay their eggs in the sloths poop until they hatch. I hope to see one soon, while I wait, see you later!

THE REASON WHY WE SHOULD PUT A PRIZE ON A FOREST

Nature is our most valuable resource, but it shouldn't be for free.We all need water to live, but we don't need oil to sustain ourselves.Think about this, oil companies dig and destroy zones of forest for big oil reserves...That will feed our population for eight days and eight days only.

New conservation efforts put a prize on every tree and creature on the rain forest by the carbon absorbed by the individual or other ecological favours and jobs of other species to create a natural capital.This means that the forest is officially not for free.

THE DEEP

We live greatly in our low pressure non reactive air rich surface, but life doesn't evolve well in non reactive surroundings, it need minerals and high temperatures to rearrange the molecules properly.
Today many animals live there,feeding,hunting,glowing,swimming,crawling...
Yeti crabs roam the edges of the trench for bacteria, tube worms feed on the particles that come from above.
Squid roam the open deep sea.
But we never got there, maybe we should take some of their tricks.Use water as a structural support to support water pressure, be jelly like instead of robust.
That we can't get there at first doesn't mean it isn't worth the time to get there, we must try harder to go toward.We went to the deep blue above us but we forgot what was under our feet, what our world holds, we went up because we were afraid of what was under the surface, we must remember that our ancestors went to the cave to protect themselves from the snow, then we found our way to the outside, to never hold back.

NATURAL? DON'T THINK SO...

There has been a lot of talk about GMOs and mass production lately.
Actually if genetic change by humans is a serious subject we should also consider that over many generations our crops and farm animals have been selected by us humans for more nutrients or less diseases.
Today the new technology of CRISP lets you modify a gene in a much shorter amount of time.
But it has some problems like gene exchange between wild and tamed salmon in salmon farms.
People think that GMOs will make you sick, but that isn't necessarily true.Organic tomatoes for instance have been genetically modified to have more nutrients.We still have a little love of nature, that may be why its more probable that you buy something with the word "natural" or "organic" in it.

POOP SAVOUR

Poop is disgusting,Or isn't it? In the natural world poop is a precious material for plants and bacteria.Flies and beetles need poop to feed and lay their eggs.Poop is rich in nitrogen and ammonia that are the main food of plants and some bacteria.Herbivores need tough digestive systems, but even then some herbivore digestion isn't very effective, such as elephant digestion, that's why there is a lot of undigested fivers in their poop, which can be nutritious food for fiver loving microbes.
Other animals like bears eat berries and poop their seeds along with his poop that will help them grow.
Fruit bats in south america contribute in 50% of the amazon's rain forest whole pollination system.

Maybe we are the weird ones that clean our poop before someone else can use it, is rubbish for us,but isn't for anyone else.

THE TOUGHEST PLACE ON THE SEA

We may think that the toughest place would be one with enough pressure to crush your bones or somewhere without a bite or somewhere where is too hot to survive without vaporising.
But for many creatures the toughest place is one without a secure medium that rushes with the waves and crushes with the coastline rocks.Is the inter-tidal zone, a place where the sea level rises and drops in a regular basis and where little oxygen is to be found.The few fishes that live here do partially breathe air from the surface.Many of the creatures from deeper waters wouldn't survive the waves and the loss of oxygen and would parish.Invertebrates here move slowly and have tough armour to be protected from the waves.They take the advantage of mineral exchange from deeper water to obtain nutrients.In low tide creatures are trapped in rock polls that work as a temporal ecosystem separated from the sea.

EXPLORING EARTH TO REACH THE FURTHEST REGIONS OF SPACE

When the mission Galileo detected an icy surface on the moon Europa it revealed a theoretical sea that had more mass that all of earth's liquid water combined.That alarmed scientists with the possibility of life in Europa.It had liquid water, high temperatures and minerals, all needed for life.

Of course something as a trip to mars or the moon will take around 10 to 20 years to get out of the ground.So to make time NASA is funding expeditions to the most similar place on earth that resembles Europa,the Gakkel trench in the arctic ocean.Where sunlight never reaches.There they found new species of sponges and lots of microbes.

But still, if there is life out there, we will never be really prepared for what's coming...