The

Eclectic

Newsletter

Vol. 1, No. 5

Happy Thursday, everyone!

So far, January has started with a bang! There’s been lots of weather issues. I hope all of you are safe and well and unaffected.

Today, let’s talk about animals and trees.

Ancient Redwoods

Photo by Josh Carter on Unsplash

The magnificent redwood trees in California and the Pacific Northwest are some of the oldest trees in North America.

Their beauty and majesty inspire jaw-dropping awe the first time you see them in person (and maybe even the 100^th time).

But what happens when they are affected by wildfires?

We know that wildfires have scarred California over the last several years. But somehow, these mammoth trees have been able to withstand this onslaught.

Fortunately, redwood trees are naturally burn-resistant, partly because the tannic acids in the bark slow down flames. Their survival is helped by their photo-synthesis mechanisms (needles) being far off the ground. This probably accounts for how they have survived for millennia.

However, burn-resistant doesn’t mean inflammable.

In 2020, lightning struck in California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park north of Santa Cruz, causing a raging inferno that climbed the trees and scorched the needles.

A tree ecophysiologist (yeah, it’s a real thing!) from Northern Arizona University expected most of the trees to die.

Strangely enough, many of them lived anyway.

I have to quote here because there’s no better way to explain this: “The charred survivors, despite being defoliated, mobilized long-held energy reserves—sugars that had been made from sunlight decades earlier—and poured them into buds that had been lying dormant under the bark for centuries.”

Scientists have learned a lot about how these great trees have survived for so long despite damaging environmental issues.

Studies on the new growth showed that some stored sugars were photo-synthesized 21 years earlier!

Just one more reason to love trees!

Killer Whales Killing… Boats?!?

Researchers are really scratching their heads on this one.

Orcas have been attacking boats in the Mediterranean Sea. 500 times since 2020, in fact!

And no one seems to know why.

Back in November, the orcas struck a boat so many times during a 45-minute attack that eventually, the boat was so damaged it sunk.

The passengers and crew had been evacuated from the boat, so no one was hurt.

But marine scientists don’t know why. Some think it’s possible that the orcas like the feel of the propeller against their skin.

Others wonder if it’s some sort of revenge over previous encounters with boats. However, they are quick to point out that orcas in other waters that have had actual issues with boats have not turned to attacking them.

Where’s Mr. Spock when we need him?

What has an orange tongue? Why, an Iguana, of course!

Image credit: Huang et al., ZooKeys 2023 (CC BY 4.0)

Scientists found this lizard, initially thinking it was of a particular family.

With closer scrutiny, they discovered that they had found not only a new species but one with two additional subspecies.

Believing these lizards to be of the family of changeable lizards (with the chameleon effect), they realized they were much smaller and had… of all things… a bright orange tongue.

They have named this species Wang’s Garden Lizard. It was named in honor of  Prof. Yuezhao Wang, a former director of the Amphibian and Reptile Research Laboratory and Museum of Herpetology.

Did You Know?!?

The United States grew by a million square miles back in December.

It’s all underwater, but still…

The State Department announced the findings of a 20-year study of the continental shelf surrounding the United States, including the Mariana Islands.

The largest new area claimed is in the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea, consisting of rights to the seafloor, any resources from it, and who can lay pipelines across it or conduct research in the area.

It’s roughly the size of Texas!

Additional areas include the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and around the Mariana Islands.

Check out the map on this page.

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