Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Well, I’ve got some animal stories for you this week and some health stories and some animal AND health stories.  I hope you enjoy (and learn from) them.

THE NOSE KNOWS AND THE CHIN SEES
Something that’s always fascinated me (and I’ve addressed it several times in this column) is the many ways to ‘see’ things.  I even wrote an award winning poem about robots and satellites that show us our world and the universe in energy wavelengths that human eyes can’t detect.  And now we have another story about an unusual animal that ‘sees’ with its chin.

The elephantnose fish lives in very muddy lakes and rivers in Central Africa.  Scientists have known for years that these fish produce weak electrical fields that allow them to search for prey in complete darkness. In its natural habitat, the cigar-sized and shaped fish hovers a few feet off the bottom and swings its trunk-like chin just like a treasure hunter with a metal detector. And this is exactly what the fish is doing, except it isn’t looking for metal, it’s looking for dinner.

Elephantnose fish. (Credit: Copyright A.G. von der Emde)

Not only does the trunk (or chin) detect electric current through 500 electric sensors, the fish has a flashlight built into its tail.  Mutated muscle cells produce regular electric pulses of a few volts and the elephantnose fish turns the ‘flashlight’ on and off about 80 times a second.  This builds up a complex electrical field that the fish then uses to detect distortions in the field (read dinner).

Not only can the elephantnose fish find dinner, it can tell if it’s dead or alive.  It can detect an object’s ability to store electrical charges.  Dead animals or plants don’t store electrical charges and this amazing fish can also tell what the detected object is made from and how far away it is.  Pretty impressive feats from a little fish!

TICK, TICK, TICK Having spent a large part of the weekend removing an enormous number of ticks from my dog, this next story really captured my attention.  Apparently there’s a small bird that not only grooms members of the opposite sex in courtship rituals, but protects their sweetie from ticks as well. Crested auklets are small black and gray seabirds that nest in huge colonies on remote island cliffs in Alaska and Siberia.  They have bright orange bills, white facial plumes and a showy feather crest protruding from their foreheads.  But they aren’t just another pretty face, they have complex mating rituals as well.

A female and male crested auklet, left, engage in mating rituals on St. Lawrence Island in June of 2007.  During courtship, females and males intertwine necks, an embrace that helps to distribute the citrus scent in their feathers. (Credit: Hector Douglas/University of Alaska Fairbanks)

The birds mutually rub each other with a citrus-like scent that’s secreted from oil glands on their backs during courtship.  They seem to be having fun, but that scent has a more practical purpose.  The oil contains aldehydes, which repel ticks.

Ticks exposed to the oil moved more slowly and some seemed to be paralyzed.  Some auklets emit more of the scent than others and these birds may gain an advantage by anointing with mates that have more of the tick-repelling scent.

Birds can’t clean their own heads and necks, which leaves them vulnerable to ticks in those areas.  When crested auklets perform their mating rituals, they spread these chemical defenses over these hard-to-reach places, helping protect them against ticks.

Now. . . .if I can only find a crested auklet for my dog!!

WARFARE IN AMBER And speaking of chemical defenses and chemical warfare; scientists have recently discovered evidence of chemical warfare that’s over 100 million years old.  (And you thought Chemical Ali was hot news!) A new study by researchers at Oregon State University has identified a soldier beetle, preserved almost perfectly in amber, which was in the process of using chemical repellents to fight off an attacker when an oozing flow of sap preserved the struggle for eternity. The discovery is the earliest fossil record of a chemical defense response, scientists say, and indicates that this type of protective mechanism -- now common in the insect world and among other animal species -- has been around for more than 100 million years.  It's a sophisticated form of defense that clearly was in good working order while dinosaurs still roamed the Earth.

Trapped in amber. (Credit: Image courtesy of Oregon State University)

The beetle was a small insect, about one-quarter inch long, which may have been in the process of becoming lunch for a giant roach or some other larger insect that apparently was 2-3 inches long, judging by the length of an antenna from the other insect also found in the specimen.  The other insect either escaped the sap or was preserved in a different piece of amber, in these samples of Burmese amber that came from the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar.

This particular insect species is now extinct, but soldier beetles still exist, and they still use this same type of chemical defense mechanism.  And the fact that it’s been around for 100 million years of evolution is evidence that it works pretty well.

Amber is the jewel of the fossil record, and provides a unique method to preserve animals.  It begins life as viscous sap from certain kinds of trees and it can trap small animals or other materials, act as a natural embalming agent, and eventually can turn into a semi-precious stone that displays these ancient life forms in nearly perfect, three-dimensional form. 

We learn a lot from insects that are preserved in amber.  After all, insects were here long time before humans and they’ll still be here long after we’re gone.

CURE THE KILLER
And now, moving from animals to human health, let’s once again consider that most dangerous of all animals: the mosquito.  One of the things that scientists have been working on for years, unfortunately without success is a vaccination against malaria.  But some researchers at Rensselaer University have recently asked themselves a very important question.  What if you completely bypass humans and devise a method of keeping the mosquito from developing malaria?  Then you’ve stopped the disease at its source.

The Renseelaer Team has found that humans and the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite share the same complex carbohydrate, heparan sulfate.  In both humans and mosquitoes, heparan sulfate is a receptor for the malaria parasite, binding to the parasite and giving it quick and easy transport through the body.

If scientists can discover a method to stop heparan sulfate from binding to the parasite in mosquitoes, you don’t just be treat the disease, you stop its spread completely.  So the key to stopping malaria in its tracks may not be to keep humans from getting it.  We need to cure the mosquitoes!

SWEETS MAY NOT BE SO SWEET AFTER ALL Malaria is an old scourge, but there’s a fairly new one that’s killing far too many of us.  Diabetes.  And scientists may have just discovered the main cause of the epidemic.  That soda in your hand. Researchers have found new evidence that soft drinks sweetened with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) may contribute to the development of diabetes, particularly in children.  In a laboratory study of commonly consumed carbonated soft drinks, scientists found that drinks containing high-fructose corn syrup had extremely high levels of compounds called reactive carbonyls.  These compounds have been shown by other researchers to trigger the cell and tissue damage that causes diabetes. Not only is high fructose corn syrup found in soft drinks, it’s also in many other foods like baked goods, and condiments.  It is has become the sweetener of choice for many food manufacturers because it is cheaper, sweeter and easier to blend into beverages than table sugar.

Poison? (Credit: American Chemical Society)

Not surprisingly, there is a huge resistance in the food industry to this research (did you notice the word “cheaper” in the preceding paragraph?) and it will probably fall on your heads to check your food for high fructose corn syrup.  Of course, if you don’t have diabetes or there are no diabetics in your family, you probably don’t have to bother.  And of course, that applies to most of you reading this, right?  Have a look at that can of King Car or Coke and see what it says.  Will you be surprised?