Archive for April, 2009
First of all, let’s chat biotechnology, or, ‘biotech’, as those in the industry call it.
The concept of biotech has been around for ages, just, not given the fancy term. For instance, planting seeds to produce food, fermenting juice for wine and churning milk into cheese are all processes that use some derivative of a plant [...]
The female lays her eggs in the male’s tummy pouch, he then incubates them for about 30 days, then they hatch.
Seahorses do not have a stomach; they eat constantly to help get enough food to digest.
Seahorses do not have teeth; they have a fused jaws, so they kind of suck up their food like a [...]
Some products need a little something extra to basically hold it together. Certain ice creams, lip sticks and even beer use a derivative of red seaweed, called carrageenan, to emulsify the products.
Do you have another great question? Check out www.beachchairscientist.com and let us know what you always ponder while digging your toes in the sand!
No. I mentioned in the very first BCS blog entry that the horseshoe crab is a “sweetheart of an animal” and I will continue to defend that statement. Some people may think that the tail spine, or telson, is poisonous. What the telson is simply used for is to flip the animal over when a [...]
Sea glass can be thought of as a well traveled piece of history. The hard substances that you find have spent a considerable amount of time floating in the ocean. It has been tumbling along the sand and water for so long that that the glass, slate or what have you, has been polished by [...]
According to the Discovery Health Channel, it is estimated that 1 in 3 beach goers do not know how to swim. The rational is that if you were not taught as a child then there is a hesitation to learn to swim as an adult.
Do you have another great question? Check out www.beachchairscientist.com and let [...]
You may not notice it, but, sea urchins have very thin tube-like suction cup feet, just, like their close relative the sea stars. These feet are useful to grasp onto pieces of seashells, peebles or seaweed to disguise the sea urchin from other near by predators.
Click on this post to see what eats a sea [...]
As paleontologically-inclined artist and author Ray Troll likes to say, people—and by extension, all mammals—are just really complicated fish. Since mermaids are widely believed to be the optimistic misapprehension of common manatees by sadly sea-addled sailors, the fish species most closely related to mermaids would be…well…us, mammals.
But we’ve only scratched the surface here. Check [...]
Nope, here is a short list of terms used to describe certain groups of ocean animals when they congregate together.
Jellyfish swim in a smack.
Whales swim in a pod.
Herring swim in a seige.
Penguins walking together on land is called a waddle.
Do you have another great question? Check out www.beachchairscientist.com and let us know what you always [...]
Not to be confused with the question, “What is the biggest fish in the sea?” the largest bony fish in the ocean is the ocean sunfish. The biggest fish in the sea is the whale shark, but, sharks do not have bones, they have cartilage. Cartilage is the bendy material that makes up our noses [...]
