Tonight's Fact...

Tonight's fact (for whatever my two weeks of a sort of routine are worth) has been suspended on account of a self-imposed poster work session. Robyn and I are working on the posters that we'll be presenting at the 33rd Annual Sea Turtle Symposium in two weeks. As evidenced by this post, attention is beginning to fray after three hours of arranging text and photos and fighting with dangling participles (the participle is still winning at the moment...). However, I have not fully given up hope of getting more actual productive work done on my poster and thus will sign off and go back to arguing with a sentence that doesn't want to be written. 

Robyn working on her poster in our office in the
biology department.

But one more bit of info, first. In other news, I taught my first lab today. I am TA-ing one of the general studies science labs. 18 students, one slightly distracted TA, and 2 hours later, I'm hoping I managed to teach them something about plants!

Getting ready to teach lab this afternoon.

Fact: Symphony for Whales and Orchestra

Fact: Alan Hovhaness was an American composer of Armenian descent (1911-2000). He was a composer during the contemporary period of classical music and is considered to be one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His works spanned suites, concertos, trios, film scores, choral music, symphonies, and more. One of his most unique works, in my opinion at least, is a piece entitled, "And God Created Great Whales." The piece is written for an orchestra with recorded whale songs. The effect is haunting and beautiful. Listen for parts where the instruments mimic the sound of the whale songs (for instance, the trombones at 5:30 and the strings at 7:35). Seeing as I'm something of an aspiring marine biologist plus a musician, what's not to love?

Part 1

Part 2

Fact: Apes with Dolls

Fact: Young chimps play with dolls the same way human children do. Researchers in the Ugandan Kibale National Park witnessed young chimps cradling sticks just the way little girls will care for a baby doll. The chimps appear to learn this from other young who play with sticks since adults were never seen to model the behavior for them. Usually, it was female young who were seen playing with sticks but occasionally males exhibited the behavior as well. However, the researchers noted that the young males were quite a bit less likely to mother the sticks than to fight each other with them. Why doesn't this surprise me?

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/67892/description/Female_chimps_play_with_dolls

Fact: DEET for Fish

Fact: the littlest sister recommended that I use some blog posts to write about fun facts I learn. She also promised she'd read them if I put them together so here we go! 

Fact: Parrot fish quite possibly have their own version of wearing bug spray or a mosquito net. During the night, Parrot fish envelope themselves in a cocoon made of mucus. For years, it had been supposed that this might serve as a deterrent to predators but experiments done in the last decade suggest that its primary purpose might be to keep biting parasites away. In fact, when researchers looked at the difference in parasite attacks between fish with and without their homemade sleeping bags, the difference was huge. While only 10% of fish with a cocoon were attacked, over 94% of those without the layer of mucus protection were. 

A Parrot fish photographed in the Philippines.
It was taken during a night dive, although you
can't see the cocoon in this photo.

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/65567/description/DEET_of_the_sea