What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll get an even weirder answer if you ask. pop science‘s hit podcast. The weirdest thing I learned this week hit apple, spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else, listen to the podcast every other Wednesday morning. This is your new favorite source for the weirdest science-related facts, figures, and Wikipedia editors have spiraled into. popular science can be convened. If you liked the story in this article, you’ll probably like this show too.
Fact: Curly hair may have evolved to keep the head cool
Rachel Feltman
As a certified curly girl, I’ve always been fascinated by: Various shapes that human hair can take.But for most of modern history, science Grossly ignored research on curly, tightly coiled hair. Thankfully, this is starting to change, thanks in large part to the curious research and advocacy of Dr. Tina Rasisi. You can read more about Rashish and her research on the morphology and evolution of human hair. Here is a great article by PopSci alumna Hannah Seo.
In this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing, we dig into the following findings. One of Lasish’s most interesting studies. In 2021, she and her colleagues were able to demonstrate that curls can help keep your head cool. Humans have evolved to rely on sweat to regulate body temperature using evaporative cooling. But our large brains tend to overheat, so in an ideal world we wouldn’t want our brains to get hot enough to cause us to sweat in the first place. Perhaps that is why we lost almost all the rest, leaving the fur on our heads. That’s why we look quite strange next to other mammals, and even other apes. Hair blocks the sun’s radiant heat and prevents scalp burns and scalp burns.
Here’s the problem. Hair physically blocks sunlight from hitting your head, but it also acts as an insulator, trapping incoming heat.
Because of the firm curls, Tends to correspond to areas with high UV exposureGlobally speaking, Lasisi and her colleagues decided to test whether coils and ringlets were more effective at keeping the head cool than straight hair. They tested this using a fun and quirky setup with a mannequin wearing an attractive wig and a power cord attached. eye socket.
As expected, They found that wavy hair keeps the head cooler than straight hairOn the other hand, tighter cooling provides the greatest cooling effect. And any hair was better than being bald, considering the sun’s scorching effect on the skin over my skull.
Rashish and her colleagues believe that curls create a kind of spongy effect, allowing air to circulate freely and preventing heat from getting trapped there. Listen to this week’s episode of “Weird Things I Learned This Week” to hear more interesting facts about the evolution of curls and coils.
Fact: Turkish vultures spit projectiles in self-defense
Written by Liz Clayton Fuller
The yellow-bellied vulture is one of the heroes of the bird world. Although often misunderstood, these incredible birds contribute to society by eating carrion, the rotting flesh of dead animals. Carrion can carry all sorts of toxins and diseases, including anthrax, tuberculosis, and even rabies (see what I did there?). Incredibly, turkey vultures have highly acidic stomachs that allow them to ingest all of the aforementioned contaminants intact. Due to the acidity of the stomach, projectile vomiting strategy Particularly effective. While feeding on the carrion of their prey, they have featherless bald heads and huge nostrils to keep themselves clean and clean from carrion debris. they again,”Urhidrosis“Turkish vultures have certainly gotten a reputation for being a bit of a nuisance, as this is where the animals urinate on themselves to cool themselves down when they get hot, but they’re still awesome.
So how do yellow-bellied vultures find carrion to dispose of, which they perform an amazing service to humanity by scavenging?Turkey vultures have the largest and most The bird world’s powerful olfactory system It helps them find (already dead) prey. Their sense of smell can and does lead them to carcasses many miles away. Other vultures depend on the Turkish vulture They find carrion and chase it! When it comes to what kind of dead meat is on the menu, freshly dead meat is preferred. It is a common misconception that turkey vultures stalk and kill their prey, but they only arrive after the prey is dead. Aside from the fact that they have just died, yellow-bellied vultures are not picky at all. In Tennessee alone, we’ve seen them as scavengers for armadillos, skunks, cows, deer, groundhogs, and more. The next time you see a lesser vulture flying around, thank it for its work as nature’s cleaner.
Fact: A rebel Zambian astronaut tried to beat an American to the moon.
Written by Purvita Saha
It’s 1964 and the world is buzzing about it. space race between America and the Soviet Union.but Function of time magazine A new candidate has emerged: Zambia, a southern African country that has just gained independence from Britain. In the article, a science teacher named Edward Makuka Nkoloso revealed that he is training a team of 12 astronauts to take the country to the moon. No, they weren’t literally building space catapults, they had claustrophobic barrel rockets. But the candidates were learning to walk on their hands. That’s because Nkoloso thought it would require navigating the moon’s inhospitable terrain. Eventually, the teacher settled on a crew of his teenage girls, a missionary, two cats, and his own dog, Cyclops. But without funds, Nkoroso’s dream made his country folk fade into legend beyond Earth’s orbit. No one could be sure whether his effort was real or an attention-seeking stunt — as shown in the 2014 short film ” afronauts Reimagine it as pure fiction.
Perhaps Nkoloso would be proud of the growing importance of his region in today’s astronomy. From the MeerKAT radio array to the African millimeter-wave telescope, a multinational team of scientists is discovering never-before-seen wonders in the stars thanks to southern Africa’s clear skies. Above all, the proud Zambian interviewed time Over 60 years ago, he had a vision for the future.
