Rats who wear poisonous armor!

 The article I read from Atlas Obscura discussed a recent study on African rats.  Scientists found that they are social creatures (meaning that they hang our with friends and family).  The most interesting finding in my opinion was that these rats have specialized hairs along their sides.  These hairs come out pretty easily and are able to absorb and hold a toxic substance made from plants.  So these rats have a pretty sophisticated method to kill off predators.

I enjoy finding out weird animal facts, especially when they are being clever.  Animals have incredible adaptations and behaviors to help them survive.  As humans, we can learn from these behaviors and traits to make our lives better.  I like to think that when we see value in animals based on their intelligence that we will be kinder to them and keep their habitats safe.  As a little class connection, it is SO interesting (and kinda scary) to me how certain chemicals are poisonous.  I like to look up the specific method that poisons work--like... do they block oxygen from binding so the victim suffocates?  do they damage cells to the point that the cells die off or dissolve?  

Perhaps this makes me sound like a creep-o.  Oh well.  I'm a creep.  I'm a weirdo.  What the heck am I doing here?  (Do you know the song reference?  Mad respect to you if you do).

Armored Rat Article

Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 21, 2021 at 8:35 AM

    It's truly strange how some animals have adapted to survive. Do you think the rats use the poison consciously or do you think it's dumb luck that it gets on them?

    ReplyDelete
  2. chrheaJanuary 21, 2021 at 10:53 AM

    I think that a lot of evolution is dumb luck that sticks because it works. So the fact that the poison sticks to their sides and the fur comes out easier there was, at some point, dumb luck. It stuck around because it helped the rats survive. But the initial behavior to collect the poison... I'm not so sure about that one!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Law enforcement intercepted a ricen laced package and letter sent to Donald Trump that supposedly came from St. Hubert Quebec. A women has been arrested in the case but they are still investigating.  Ricin is a highly toxic compound extracted from castor beans that has been used in terror plots. It can be used in powder, pellet, mist or acid form. If ingested, it causes nausea, vomiting and internal bleeding of the stomach and intestines, followed by failure of the liver, spleen and kidneys, and death by collapse of the circulatory system .
Read more

Current event

I am just doing a trial current event-  Are you supposed to put the link to your article in the summary?  Do you know how to do that?  My current event is an article from the magazine The Week.  It is titled   It's not just the germs — it's also the genes  The article discusses how a person's genes play a part in how viruses react within that body.  It talks about how some people may get a virus more seriously than another & how scientists can look at that information and develop therapies from.  Just so you know The Week pulls articles from other sources-  I did backtrack to check the source they got the original article from & it checks out. 
Read more

Over 87,000 papers published on coronavirus since start of pandemic

 Over 87,000 papers have been published about this global pandemic. When most people think of the pandemic going around right now, they think about how awful it all is. How many people have died, how many people have lost a family member, or how many people they have lost relationships with friends or family. But, do people ever think about how this event will go down in history, and how it will affect science studies in the future? We never know what type of science we will come across in the future, but we can say that science evolves every day, and things are constantly changing. This is why so many people are interested in this pandemic. The more we know about this pandemic, the more we can do to try and change is. So, what will science bring in the future? And how will it impact future in sciences? We won't know the answer to either of those questions for a long time, but we can certainly say that it will evolve so much, and make things a lot more interesting.    htt...
Read more