Yay Barnacles!

I bet you didn’t know that the barnacle (the little animals that look like rocks that are always stuck to the bottoms of boats and docks) have the largest penis to body size ratio in the animal kingdom.

Yup, it’s true.

Barnacles reproduce sexually. That means one barnacle needs to be able to deliver their sperm into another barnacle. The only problem is they cannot move. So to fix that, nature gave them super long penises. They literally can send their penis out, let it float around in the water until it bumps into another barnacle and then crawl in and inseminate the other barnacle.

Isn’t nature really badass?

White vs. Dark Meat

Continuing with the Thanksgiving theme, today I think you should know the biological difference between white and dark meat in turkey.

Everyone knows that turkeys cannot fly (well, they can for very short distances – nothing crazy) and they rely on their legs to get around. It’s also kind of common sense that these are not exactly the most petite members of the bird family. Lugging all of that weight around requires strong leg and thigh muscles. These and other strong muscles are comprised of slow-twitch fibers. Slow twitch fibers are associated with muscles that need to work constantly for long durations of time. To sustain these muscles, more myoglobin (a muscles version of hemoglobin) is needed.

Sidenote: myoglobin has a very high affinity to oxygen and is therefore perfectly suited to carry oxygen to the muscles. Muscles need oxygen to work. Oh, I totes will do a post about how oxygen binds to hemoglobin in the future! Anyhow, back to dark meat…

More myoglobin (and more blood vessels to deliver the myoglobin) makes those muscles much darker. On the other hand, fast-twitch muscles, such as in the breast and wings, are lighter because they do not need such a large supply of oxygen from the myoglobin because they only perform short spurts of energy – then they can rest.

So there you go…

And so you know, I don’t work for the rest of the week and that means there will probably not be another update until Monday. Have a great Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving

Since Thanksgiving is in a few days, I think a great place to start would be to dispel the popular myth that the reason everyone wants to sleep after Thanksgiving dinner is because of the turkey.

Let’s do a quick background first…

There are 20 naturally occurring amino acids that the body must have to survive. Amino acids are linked together by the body to create proteins that carry out the functions of the body. Some amino acids can be created by the body, but others must be obtained through eating. Tryptophan is one amino acid that must be brought into the body. One important use of Tryptophan in the body is to make serotonin, a neurotransmitter that promotes slow-wave sleep in humans. So yes, Tryptophan does make you sleepy, but…

When you eat Thanksgiving dinner you are consuming lots of high protein foods that contain large amounts of all the amino acids. All of these amino acids are rushing into the bloodstream and fighting to get shuttled across the blood-brain barrier where they can then begin working. Tryptophan is one of the scarcest amino acids and has to compete with 5 other amino acids that require the same protein transport across the blood brain barrier. That means very little tryptophan actually makes it into the brain and there is very little serotonin level elevation. There are also ties between tryptophan and melatonin – yet another chemical associated with sleep. To avoid more intense biochemical pathway description, just know that this still is not why you get tired after Thanksgiving dinner.

So why do we get tired and want to lounge around?

We ate too much. It’s that simple.

When you are finished eating your body switches into a parasympathetic neuronal response (rest and digest). To increase digestion the body will put the majority of its energy into increasing saliva and gastric acid production. High levels of protein-fat in the stomach paired with stretching of the small intestine all increase lethargy too. More blood is rushing to the digestive track and the body is dropping blood pressure and heart rate to save energy. More blood to the digestive tract needs to come from somewhere. Less blood to the brain and muscles means you will be much more tired. Some wine and cocktails don’t help keep you awake either.

So next time you sit next to someone who tries to come across as the smart person at the table and is like, “oh my tryptophan is kicking in!” Respond, “Shut up hoe and sit down! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And Here We Go!

We all know my love of random science facts, especially when I am a little drunkie faced at JRs. To better help all of my friends (mainly Deb) learn my random facts; I am putting them up in a blog. I’ll try to update daily. Let me know if you have questions and I’ll research it and post my answers for you!