Oh it’s times like this I miss not having all my certifications on hand, cause this romance book blogger has got enough actual certified science and licensed know how to fill a fairly substantial wall.
Just from what I have handy atm, Robert Tisserand is one of the worlds leading experts on aromatherapy, and he talks extensively about the safe (and unsafe) uses of essential oils, including medical interactions with drugs, and how the base compounds react with basic physiology and the environment.
I’ve taken the liberty of screen shotting the summary on the known effects of essential oils on the olfactory system, and highlighted parts which are relevant to you having breathing issues:
So basically even though it can help some people feel relief with correct use, if you are triggered by scents or suffer from breathing problems, the use of essential oils should be done with extreme caution. And shoving menthol directly under the nose is not even remotely in the same vicinity as using caution.
Essential oils should be used in a well ventilated space and applied to safe spots to the body, away from mucous membranes. Directly under the nose, on the skin, is not one of those safe spots, though I know plenty of people who will tell me they do it all the time and they’re just “fine”. (Nb: if you’re one of those people that’s your choice, but don’t inflict it on anyone else, especially children or people with allergies)
If it’s a diluted mixture (which those rollerball things tend to be) your chances of skin damage are reduced, but you’re still at risk from developing a sensitivity, or from personal irritation due to existing sensitivities.
Also here’s what Poison Control has to say about it:
Some nasal inhalers contain menthol. The menthol makes us feel as though we are breathing easier, but it does not actually help with congestion. In fact, it appears that more inflammation develops.
There’s also an article in the Canadian Respiratory Journal to back this up, which breaks down how menthol works to soothe breathing difficulties with some actual science and figures if you’re interested:
Nasal resistance before testing was similar on both occasions. No differences were found in respiratory frequency (mean ± SEM) (menthol 17.0±1.1 cmH2O/L/s; sham 16.9±0.9 cmH2O/L/s), minute ventilation (menthol 7.7±0.5 cmH2O/L/s; sham 7.9±0.5 cmH2O/L/s) or total inspiratory time/total breath time (menthol 0.4±0.1 cmH2O/L/s; sham 0.4±0.1 cmH2O/L/s). The upper airway resistance was similar during menthol (3.47±0.32 cmH2O/L/s) and sham (3.27±0.28 cmH2O/L/s) (P=0.33) inhalation.
CONCLUSION:
Inhalation of menthol does not alter upper airway resistance in awake human subjects.
Basically, the tl;dr version: menthol doesn’t increase your ability to breathe, it merely cools things down, providing relief from the symptoms of inflammation, while not actually increasing your airflow capacity.
So shoving menthol under your nose, isn’t going to actually help your breathing problems to resolve long term. If anything it may trigger them into being worse if you are sensitive to fragrances, or suffering from some form of inflammation which may be worsened by the use of volatile oils, which is another name for essential oils. Sounds a lot less friendly than “essential” though, doesn’t it.
Anyway, I hope these are useful to you. Good luck with avoiding the rollerball.
A new species is evolving before scientists’ eyes in the eastern United States.
Wolves faced with a diminishing number of potential mates are lowering their standards and mating with other, similar species, reported The Economist.
The interbreeding began up to 200 years ago, as European settlers
pushed into southern Ontario and cleared the animal’s habitat for
farming and killed a large number of the wolves that lived there.
That also allowed coyotes to spread from the prairies, and the white farmers brought dogs into the region.
Over time, wolves began mating with their new, genetically similar neighbors.
The resulting offspring — which has been called the eastern coyote
or, to some, the “coywolf” — now number in the millions, according to
researchers at North Carolina State University.
Interspecies-bred animals are typically less vigorous than their parents, The Economist reported — if the offspring survive at all.
That’s not the case at all with the wolf-coyote-dog hybrid, which has developed into a sum greater than the whole of its parts.
At about 55 pounds, the hybrid animal is about twice as heavy as a
standard coyote, and her large jaws, faster legs and muscular body allow her to take down small deer and even hunt moose in packs, and the animal
is skilled at hunting in both open terrain and dense woodland.
An analysis of 437 hybrid animals found that coyote DNA dominates her
genetic makeup, with about one-tenth of its DNA from dogs, usually
larger dogs such as Doberman pinschers and German shepherds, and a
quarter from wolves.
The animal’s cry starts out as a deep-pitched wolf howl that morphs into higher-pitched yipping — like a coyote.
Her dog DNA may carry an additional advantage.
Some scientists think the hybrid animal is able to adapt to city life
— which neither coyotes or wolves have managed to do on their own —
because her dog ancestry allows her to tolerate people and noise.
The coywolves have spread into some of the nation’s largest cities —
including New York, Boston and Washington — using railway corridors.
The interbreeding allows the animal to diversify her diet and eat
discarded food, along with rodents and smaller mammals — including cats,
which coywolves eat skull and all — and they have evolved to become
nocturnal to avoid humans.
The animals are also smart enough to learn to look both ways before crossing roads.
Not all researchers agree the animal is a distinct species, arguing
that one species does not interbreed with another — although the
hybrid’s existence raises the question of whether wolves and coyotes are
distinct species in the first place.
But scientists who have studied the animal say the mixing of genes
has been much faster, extensive and transformational than anyone had
noticed until fairly recently.
“(This) amazing contemporary evolution story (is) happening right
underneath our nose,” said Roland Kays, a researcher at North Carolina
State.
THIS SHIT IS SO WILD AND IT’S ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING. If you’d like to watch the entire Nature documentary referenced in that “watch this report” link, you can find the whole thing on Youtube. It’s a terrific documentary and a really interesting look at an animal most people don’t even seem to realize exists. The extent to which coywolves have adapted to urban life and the ways in which they’re very distinct from the species they’ve sprung from is pretty incredible.
This is my masters’ degree in anthropology. I’d show you my BA, but it’s at my parents’ house. I’m three and a half years into a PhD in physical anthropology. I’ve been employed to do physical anthropology at one of the world’s best natural history museums. My area of study? Teeth and diets. I’m not here to argue veganism or vegetarianism, I’m here to tell you, point by point, why you’re devastatingly misinformed about our place in the primate family tree, along with my peer-reviewed sources behind the jump. I know we live in a “post-truth” society so maybe being presented with the overwhelming consensus of the scientists who currently work with this material is meaningless to you, and honestly, this probably isn’t going to make a bit of difference for you, but I can’t let this slide. Not in this house built on blood and honor. And teeth.
1. The evidence for being closely related to chimpanzees is vast and well-understood thanks to advances in DNA analysis. We share a huge amount of DNA with them, and not just repeating patterns in non-coding DNA. We have numerous genes that are identical and likely diverged around 7 million years ago, when Sahelanthropus tschadensis was roaming the earth. S. tschadensis was a woodland species with basal ape and basal human-line traits. The most notable was the positioning of the foramen magnum towards the central base of the skull and not emerging from the back suggests bipedality. This, along with other traits such as small canines worn at the tip, which implies a reduced or absent C/P3 honing complex (the diastema), suggests that this is actually a basal trait and the pronounced diastema we see in other species was a trait that came later. But more on that later- back to chimps and what we mean by sharing DNA. Our chromosomes and chimp chromosomes are structured far more like each other than other mammals. Furthermore, the genes located on these chromosomes are very similar. Chromosome 2, for instance, is nearly identical to two chimpanzee chromosomes. (Chromosome 2 in humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans is different from Chromosome 2 found in apes and is actually the remnant of an ancient mutation where Chromosome 2 and 3 merged- you can see that from its vestigial centromeres and the genes found on it. We can’t get DNA from fossil material, but Neanderthal and Denisovan subfossils have demonstrated that this reduced chromosome count- we have one fewer pair than apes- is a typical trait of the Homo genus). Here’s a side by side comparison of Human and chimpanzee chromosomes.
Gene coding regions are colored- bands at the same place mean that there’s two identical genes at that locus. Our similarities to lemurs, on the other hand, aren’t on homologous chromosomes. We have similar coding around the centromeres but the genes express themselves differently. The structure of non-ape primate genes is also significantly different; when the first chromosomal comparisons were done between humans and lemurs back in the 1990s, it was discovered that lemurs have much more highly-concentrated heterochromatin at their centromeres, whereas the structure of human and chimpanzee centromeres is similar. The major differences in chimp and human DNA are in the noncoding regions; most of our genes have identical structures.
2. All primates evolved from a lemur-like organism, not just humans. Here’s one of them. I’ve seen her in person. Pretty cool, huh?
Her name is Ida and she’s a member of the genus Darwinius. But that’s just like saying all primates evolved from something that was basically a tree shrew- which is also true. See, one of the main points of evolution is that organisms are continually changing throughout time. We didn’t jump from lemur-like organism to human; changes were slow and gradual and the lineage isn’t really a straight tree. The fossil species we have and know lead to different lines branching out. Some things died off, some things flourished. Heck, look at the Miocene- twelve million years ago, there were hundreds of ape species. Now there’s twenty-three. (Sixteen gibbons, two chimp species, two gorilla species, two orangutan species, and one human species. There’s also some subspecies of gorilla and gibbon, but I’m only counting the primary species.) It’s hard to trace things back, but saying that we evolved from lemur-like species is obtuse and obfuscates the real point, which is that Homo and Pan descended from a relatively recent-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things common ancestor.
3. Our dentition is unique to the extant primates, but not australopithecines. Our teeth look very much like other members of the genus Homo, the extinct ones, as well as many of the australopithecines. We also have very similar enamel proportions to gracile australopithecines; apes have much thinner enamel overall.
But what did australopithecines eat?
Everything. We know they were eating fruits and nuts based on microwear analysis and strontium analysis, but we also know they were eating meat- and in pretty decent quantity, too. We’ve found all kinds of butchering sites dating back millions of years and in association with Australopithecus garhi, the earliest tool user, but we can also see this in tapeworm evolution. There’s many, many species of tapeworm in several genera. But three of them, in the genus Taenia, are only found in humans. And these species diverged from… carnivore tapeworms. Their closest relatives infect African carnivores like hyenas and wild dogs.
Tapeworms that are adapted to the specific gut of their host species need a certain environment, as well as a specific cycle of infection so that it can reproduce. A tapeworm that infects hyenas is going to be less successful if it somehow makes the jump to a horse. But if the hyena tapeworm was able to adapt to our gut, that suggests that our stomach was hospitable enough for them chemically to survive- which brings me to the intestines.
4. Our intestines are also unique. Yes, we have longer intestines than carnivores, but we also don’t have cecums like herbivores. We are omnivores and that means we still needed to retain the ability to digest plants.
The key to being omnivores is omni. All. I’m not saying we should only be eating meat, I’m saying our ancestors ate a varied diet that included all kinds of things. If we weren’t omnivores, why would we have lost the cecum’s function? Why is the human appendix only a reservoir for the lymphatic system, as it is in carnivores? The cecum is an extremely important organ in herbivores, as it houses the bacteria needed to break down cellulose and fully utilize fiber from leaves. But we don’t have that. Instead, we compensate with a long gut. Our ancestors absolutely did eat fruits and nuts and berries, but they also ate other stuff. Like scavenged carcasses and bugs and probably anything they could fit in their mouths. Which- actually, primate mouths are interesting. Humans and chimpanzees have enclosed oral cavities, thick tongues, and jaw angles much more like herbivores than carnivores- suggesting a herbivorous ancestor. That’s not something I’m arguing against at all. But again, we have adaptations for eating meat and processing animal protein because we are an extremely opportunistic species.
5. Our canines are true canines. First, semantics: having a diastema does not canine teeth make. We refer to the canine teeth by position- even herbivores, like horses, have them. They’re the teeth that come right after the incisors. All heterodonts have the potential same basic tooth types- incisors, canines, premolars, molars- in various combinations and arrangements. Some species don’t have one type of teeth, others don’t have any- but it’s silly to say that the canine teeth aren’t canine teeth just because they don’t serve the same function as a gorilla’s or a bear’s or some other animal’s. It’s basic derived versus primitive characteristics.
Now that we’ve got semantics out of the way, let’s talk about that diastema. The lost diastema is a derived trait, which means that our ancestors had it and we lost it over time. All other extant non-Homo primates have a canine diastema. All of them. However, when you look at australopithecines, we see that many of them either don’t have it or have it in a reduced capacity. At the earliest known hominin site, Lukeino, we see Orrorin tugenensis with reduced canines compared to ape fossils and modern apes- and… you do know that apes don’t use their canines for eating meat, right? Like, primate canines serve a very different purpose than carnivorans’ canines. It’s suggested that the large canines are for social display moreso than anything dietary- bigger, more threatening teeth are useful if you’re a gorilla or chimpanzee fighting to the top of your group’s social structure.
I’m going to refer you to a blog post written by Dr. John Hawks, a good friend of my advisor and generally a pretty cool guy. He’s got a nice writeup on the evolution of hominin teeth and how the human line’s teeth have changed through time.
Also, of course our teeth are going to be smaller. When we compare archaic Homo sapiens fossils to modern skeletons, their teeth and jaws are much more robust. This is likely related to the introduction of soft foods- and by soft, I mean cooked grain mush- to the diet around the time of domestication, right before the population explosion that happened about 10k years ago. In general, post-domestication human jaws are much smaller and more crowded than any other humans and hominins that came before.
6: Neanderthals did die out, but not in a catastrophic event like we think of with dinosaurs. While there are no living Neanderthals today that we would classify as Homo neanderthalensis, there is plenty of evidence that we interbred and likely outcompeted them as a species due to our overwhelmingly large population size (hypothesized based on number and locations of remains found). While there’s only a small percentage of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA lines in human populations today, it’s quite likely we lost a lot of that due to genetic drift and population migration- Neanderthals, after all, had a much more limited range than Homo sapiens sapiens. Their eventual extinction is a mosaic of events- outcompetition plus assimilation. The line between Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis/Homo sapiens neanderthalensis is blurry- there’s some physical anthropologists who actually think we should be including them within our species as a subspecies- but they are extinct in that the specific subset of hominins with distinct karyotypes and potential phenotypes no longer exists.
Have you read “Brave New World”? The author of that book, Aldous Leonard
Huxley, was born on this date in 1894 in Godalming, Surrey, England.
Huxley came to the United States via New York on the ship SS
Normandie in 1937 and settled in Los Angeles.
In 1955, Huxley, known for being a humanist and a pacifist, was planning
to become a naturalized citizen of the United States; however, on the petition
he wrote “no” to the statements agreeing to bear arms or serve in the Armed
Forces in a noncombatant role if required.
Therefore, the naturalization proceedings were adjourned and Huxley
withdrew his petition.
In our holdings, we have his petition for naturalization
(pictured here), even though he did not become a citizen, along with the
withdrawal form.
Huxley authored many novels, providing many
thought-provoking quotes, and here is one of them: “There are things known and there are things
unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”
I love this. There’s another one where they go to a wine tasting and give people a glass from a $20 bottle and they hate it, then a glass from a $200 bottle and they love it. But then they reveal that both glasses are actually from the same $20 bottle.
Wealth and it’s trappings is a false construct meant to elevate those that
Have.
This is just like that Penn and Teller “Bullshit” thing where they went to a high-class restaurant and had a “water steward” present different brands of bottled water to people, claiming this water was from a mountain somewhere or that water was from a glacier, and then the people would talk about how different they all tasted. Except all the water came from the same source: The garden hose outside the restaurant.
I gotta naysay here. Seatbelts do a LOT of harm. Not everyone can wear one and not everyone wants to risk it. Just among my own friends and people I know in general; 4 females had a breast cut completely or partially off due to a seat belt. 6 people had their throats cut, to an obviously non-lethal degree. 2 had their stomach’s cut open to a horrifying degree that I won’t elaborate on.
Not even counting the uncomfortably awkward belt locations for particularly large, small, fat, skinny people. Females with large breasts get the joy of holding the belt in place or adjusting it every couple seconds.
They’re awkward, uncomfortable, painful, and can often cause the injuries in an accident. Sometimes it’s just better to forgo the belt.
Those injuries caused by seat belts more than very likely would have been deadly had they not been wearing them. To have enough force to cut skin or cut off a breast in an accident is far more than enough to cause someone to go flying through the windshield of a car, to slam them into the steering column, or through a window resulting in deadly injuries or causing an even bigger accident for other drivers now that your body is in the road along with your crashed car. Are you really going to risk being a smear of ground meat on the pavement because your seat belt was a little uncomfortable or it might cut you? Then I got good news for you, there’s a wide variety of devices made specifically to make seat belts more comfortable and reduce that risk.
These make it so that your seat belt won’t cut your neck, a simple sleeve of padded fabric that velcros around it, meaning you can put it anywhere on the belt.
This one does something similar, by readjusting the positioning of the seat belt to move it farther away from your neck and hey, helps a bit with having boobs in the way.
They even make ones for children too.
Boobs still in the way? While it’s pretty silly looking, this helps keep the seat belt in place so you don’t have to keep adjusting it.
And if you’re overweight, they make seat belt extenders so you can still be safe.
But maybe you’re still unsure, then listen to the CDC and all of their sources.
“More than half of the people killed in car crashes were not restrained at the time of the crash.1 Wearing a seat belt is the most effective way to prevent death and serious injury in a crash.Seat belt use is on the rise. Laws, education, and technology have increased seat belt use from 11% in 19812 to nearly 85% in 20103, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. “
“Most drivers and passengers killed in crashes are unrestrained. 53% of drivers and passengers killed in car crashes in 2009 were not wearing restraints.1Seat belts dramatically reduce risk of death and serious injury. Among drivers and front-seat passengers, seat belts reduce the risk of death by 45%, and cut the risk of serious injury by 50%.4Seat belts prevent drivers and passengers from being ejected during a crash. People not wearing a seat belt are 30 times more likely to be ejected from a vehicle during a crash. More than 3 out of 4 people who are ejected during a fatal crash die from their injuries.5Seat belts save thousands of lives each year, and increasing use would save thousands more. Seat belts saved almost 13,000 lives in 2009. If all drivers and passengers had worn seat belts that year, almost 4,000 more people would be alive today”
The number of those who escaped injury [by wearing a seat belt] increased by 40% and those with mild and moderate injuries decreased by 35% after seatbelt legislation. There was a significant reduction in soft tissue injuries to the head. Only whiplash injuries to the neck showed a significant increase.”
Fifty-five percent of those killed in passenger vehicle occupant crashes in 2008 were not wearing a seat belt…”
“Wearing a seat belt reduces the risk of fatal injury by almost 50%. For children, the risk of fatal injury is reduced by 71% with the use of child safety seats.“
“Of those thrown completely out of a vehicle in a car crash, 75% died. Only one percent of people totally ejected from their cars had on a seat belt during the crash. Over 30% were not wearing seat belts.“
Conclusion? Wear your fucking seat belt. Tell your kids to wear their fucking seat belt. Tell your friends and family to wear their fucking seat belts. Time and time again it’s been proven that you are significantly more likely to survive a crash if you’re wearing one. Most people think they’re uncomfortable, but when you’re in a crash it can save your life. I’d rather be mildly injured than dead.
Wear your seat belt.
2017 and people are still trying to spread the myth that you don’t need to wear a seatbelt.
People really don’t wear a seatbelt????
This reminds me of a story from WW1
When they first introduced Helmets to the troops fighting in trenches the number of head injuries suddenly skyrocketed and people wanted to take the helmets away again.
Until they realized that the reason for this was the fact that most of these head injuries would have been fatal if it wasn’t for the Helmets.
guess what, it’s time for another episode of Weird Biology! today we’re going to learn about a creature that looks like a stained-glass window, but stalks the oceans with toxic might powered only by the wind like a sailing ship of old.
that’s right, it’s the devil’s own shopping bag-
the name is almost longer than the animal.
The Portuguese Man o’ War is a floating jellyfish relative called a Hydrozoan. it was named after the 18th century sailing ship, apparently by a blind person. “oh, it looks like a sailing ship under full sail” no it doesn’t, shut up. it looks like a rogue walmart shopping bag that blew into the Atlantic and makes a living by strangling innocent sea turtles.
but like the aforementioned plastic bag, the Man o’ War uses its lovely blue-purple air sac to catch the breeze. it wanders in groups through the warm waters of the Atlantic, driven along by the wind and tides. kind of poetic, really.
as long as you don’t look underwater, anyway.
I’m about to ruin it for everybody, hang on.
like so many other things in life, it’s not what you see on the surface that’s important but what is underneath that counts.
in this case, what’s underneath is up to 165 feet of venomous tentacles. it’s like that thing they say about icebergs, where you only see the top 10% and the rest is an invisible ship-killing nightmare? it’s exactly like that.
except with poison tentacles.
the Man o’ War is basically a biological fishing trawler, trailing these stupidly long tentacles like a fine mesh net through the water. and when an innocent fish who probably has a family at home comes into contact with this “net”, specialized cells called Nematocysts are triggered to fire tiny poison harpoons into the victim, causing instant death or paralysis.
the tentacle then reels itself upward into the body of the Man o’ War like a fishing line, dragging its helpless victim upward to be digested.
so, uh, actually not like a fishing trawler then, not like a fishing trawler at all.
unless the fishing trawler was designed by Junji Ito.
though the Man o’ War may look like a jellyfish, it’s definitely not. in fact, it’s not even a single animal! it’s actually four separate organisms jammed into a venomous trenchcoat like three best friends trying to sneak into an R rated movie.
“how the fuck even”, I hear you say. and that’s a valid question! it’s not everyday that we discover that what we thought was a single animal is actually four smaller animals living communally to form a larger, more dangerous animal. it would be like discovering that opossums are actually comprised of 17 rats each.
no word on if they do a silly dance and tap their fingers together to fuse or what though.
in the Man o’ War’s case, these four individual kinds of “polyps” that comprise the complete final form are the air sac polyp (gets the gang around), the digestive polyp (converts murdered fish into energy for the whole gang), the reproductive polyp (makes small clones of each individual gang member), and the tentacle polyp (murders things indiscriminately for the sheer joy of it).
that’s right, the tentacles are a separate animal! you might be wondering if they sometimes come loose, wander off, and just sting people/animals randomly when they drift into populated areas. what a silly question!
yeah, happens all the time.
SHIT.
while rarely fatal, Man o’ Wars stings can seriously injure humans. this is a big problem in areas where Man o’ Wars are common, because storms and predators can knock the tentacles right the fuck off. the tentacles drift away, only to wash ashore and sting a hapless beachgoer weeks later. that’s right, rogue tentacles can still sting for days or weeks after separation! even if the Man ‘o War is beached! isn’t that neat! fuck!
the discovery of a beached Man o’ War usually closes the entire fucking beach, for this reason. would YOU want to go fuck around in the sand if it might be full of over a hundred feet of poison spaghetti too fine to notice with the naked eye?
if the answer is yes, I have great news about a bridge I’d like to sell you.
if all this information upset you, I’d like to offer my deepest condolences. but buckle up for one last upsetting fact, and here it is: Man o’ War are spreading.
usually restricted to warm waters, climate change has driven the Man o’ War as far north as Great Britain. that’s awful awful awful news for any country that touches the Atlantic ocean, which is lots of them.
luckily, we have dependable allies in this fight: sea turtles and the Mola Mola! (which I’ve written about before) unfortunately just about all we can do at this point is to cheer these awesome devil-balloon-munchers on from the safety of shore, while trying to invent a Man o’ War-proof barrier net.
for now, watch out for anything that looks like a floating plastic bag.
and for god’s sake, watch where you step.
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thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series here.
if you enjoy my work, maybe buy me a coffee or check out my Patreon to see extra content and support Weird Biology.
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IMAGE SOURCES
img1- National Geographic img2- The Garden of Eadon img3- Sean Nash img4- Enrico Villa img5- livescience.com img6-
diply.com
img7- Daily Mail img8- Sun Sentinel
it’s not everyday that we discover that what we thought was a single animal is actually four smaller animals living communally to form a larger, more dangerous animal
