Artist's reconstruction by Katie Browne/U.T.Austin
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You've heard a lot on this program about climate change, and many of the impacts it might have on our fragile planet: melting glaciers and rising seas, shrinking water tables and disappearing farmland; changing landscapes and endangered habitats. Add to that picture the coming population boom and the increasing demand for natural resources in Asia and Africa, and you get a pretty grim picture of the world in 2050. But don't despair: you'll hear from the author of a new book who says it could all be good news for Canada.
You'll also hear about the remarkable reproduction cycle of the world's largest fish, the whale shark; we'll learn why certain worms are really social parasites; we'll meet a Canadian scientist who has discovered why big bat brains are too much baggage; and we'll begin with the the evolutionary march of the penguins.
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How the Penguin got its TuxedoA 36-million-year-old fossil of an extinct giant penguin has been found in Peru.
Inkayacu paracasensis is named after the Quechua words for "water king" and the Paracas National Park where it was discovered. At 1.5 metres in height, penguins at that time were much larger than the biggest ones today, Emperor penguins. Evidence of scales on a flipper and feathers were part of the remarkable find.
Dr. Julia Clarke, a paleontologist from the University of Texas at Austin, discovered that apart from new information about feather structure and the shape of flippers, penguins at that time were a different colour. By studying colour pigments in the feathers called melanosomes, and comparing them to present-day birds, they were able to conclude that the giant penguin was reddish brown and grey.
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The World in 2050
Imagine a world, in the not-too-distant future, where the population is exploding, wild species are disappearing, the environment is under attack, and the cost of both oil and water are skyrocketing. As a result of climate change, seas are rising, crops are burning, and millions of people are on the move. It's a grim picture, but according to
Dr. Laurence Smith, it could be good news for what he calls The New North - Canada, and the other 7 countries that lie north of the 45th parallel. That's the dystopian vision that Dr. Smith paints in his new book,
The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future. Those 4 forces are demography (population growth and shift), growing demand on natural resources (such as oil and water), globalization, and climate change. Dr. Smith is a professor of geography, and earth & space sciences, at UCLA in California.
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Whale Shark Littering
Photo courtesy Jennifer Schmidt, copyright
University of Illinois Board of Trustees
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Whale sharks are found in oceans all over the world, including the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian. They are normally 12 to 13 metres in length, but can be as long as 20 metres, making the whale shark the world's biggest fish. Despite its size, it is elusive and therefore difficult to study. That's why, when
Dr. Jennifer Schmidt, from the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Illinois in Chicago had the chance to study frozen embryos from a female that had been caught in 1995, she was very surprised to discover it had been carrying 304 embryos, an astounding number. The embryos were in various stages of development, and genetic analysis revealed they were all from the same father. This suggests that the female whale shark stores sperm from a single mating, then fertilizes her own eggs as she sees fit.
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Social Parasites
Reproductive trematode surrounded by soldiers
courtesy Ryan Hechinger
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Social animals, such as ants, bees and blind naked mole-rats, are endlessly fascinating to scientists because of their complex social organization and the different forms they take, depending on what their job in the colony is. Now another, even simpler, creature has joined the "social" club.
Dr. Ryan Hechinger, a research biologist at the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has found that a species of trematode flatworms - also known as flukes - have social organization. These parasites live inside snails, and set up a colony of clones that includes large reproductive forms, but also small, agile and ferocious soldier forms. The soldiers defend the snail host against any other trematode that attempts to colonize it.
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Bat Brains Travel Light
Hoary bat - a migratory species
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Liam McGuire, a PhD candidate in the Department of Biology at the University of Western Ontario, has been studying bat migration, a little understood phenomenon. He wondered if migratory bats emulate migratory birds, whose brains are smaller than non-migratory species. He found that they do, and has also suggested that his bat research can explain why. Migration is such an energy-intensive phenomenon that bats and birds have likely evolved to minimize the amount of brain "baggage" that they carry with them.
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Saturdays at noon, Mondays at 11:00 p.m., Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. (in some markets only)
We're coming to Halifax in early June for our annual Quirks Question Roadshow, and we want to see you there. Stay tuned to this space for details.
Saturdays at noon, Mondays at 11:00 p.m., Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. and Fridays at 5:00 a.m. (ET)
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