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Past Shows
May 26, 2007
 Download an MP3 of the entire program (22MB) (available Saturday, two hours after broadcast).
Riddled with Life
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Riddled With Life, by Dr. Marlene Zuk |
Parasites, and the diseases they cause, are a basic fact of life. All species on the planet have their specific diseases to deal with. And we, as humans, spend a lot of time and energy trying to rid ourselves of disease. But Dr. Marlene Zuk, a professor of biology at the University of California, Riverside, thinks we should embrace disease, as a positive force in our lives. After all, if we beat back one disease, another one is going to rise up and take its place. All this battling against disease, she says, has forced our own evolution, and if it wasn't for the parasites we literally wouldn't be the people we are today. In her new book, Riddled With Life: Worms, Ladybug Sex and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are, Dr. Zuk suggests that parasites are so important, they might just be running our lives.
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Jawbone of a T-Rex
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Tyrannosaur skull from CT scan |
Tyrannosaurs had the most powerful bite of any land animal before or since. Dr. Eric Snively, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta, and his colleagues have discovered how this ancient behemoth survived its own bite. Other large carnivorous dinosaurs had weaker bites because their jaws wouldn't allow them to bite harder without breaking. Tyrannosaurs, however, had a special bony reinforcement in their upper jawbones that allowed them to bite powerfully through bone and flesh like it was bloody butter.
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Babies watch Language
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Babies can differentiate languages visually - Courtesy, Infant Studies Centre, UBC |
When human babies enter the world, they're faced with some pretty incredible challenges. One of these is learning their parent's language. From all the information they're hearing the babies need to figure out what are the words, and what those words mean. Last year, we learned that infants are born with an innate ability to tell apart a full range of speech sounds, regardless of whether those sounds are found in their parent's native language. Now new work builds on this, showing that small children can tell apart different spoken languages just by looking at the speaker's face. However, as they age, this ability is lost, unless the child comes from a bilingual household, in which case the ability to tell languages apart through visual cues is maintained. Dr. Athena Vouloumanos, an assistant professor of psychology at McGill University, is part of the team that made the discovery.
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Army Ants Lie Down on the Job
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Ants plug holes to help others home more quickly - Courtesy, Scott Powell |
To see a colony of army ants on the march is an extraordinary thing. Up to half a million ants swarm out of the colony at once, to collect other insects to bring back home. Their approach to hunting means they need to move their colonies frequently, and that, in turn, means they don't want to waste time building permanent roads through the undergrowth. This creates a problem, since the trails through the leaf litter are full of potholes, and this slows the ants down as they return home from a raid. So army ants have developed a unique solution. If an army ant is returning home without any prey and it comes across a hole, the ant will throw itself down, plugging the hole and providing the rest of the ants with a faster journey home. Prof. Nigel Franks, from the University of Bristol, discovered this behaviour dramatically improved the colony's ability to collect food.
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Spying on Whales
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The Slocum Glider |
Dr. Jim Theriault, a defense scientist with Defense Research and Development, Atlantic in Halifax wants to spy on whales. He's working with a cleverly designed, low power, stealthy autonomous submarine that can listen in on whale conversations, and send back their locations to staff on land. The point of this exercise is to try and locate vulnerable toothed whales before loud sonar and seismic experiments are done in the oceans that might harm them.
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