ODDITIES IN NATURE

From Worldometer (new deaths yesterday):

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9     1093     4732        1185       246        82

July    22     1205     7128        1293      1120     572

Aug    12     1504     6556       1242       835       130

Sept     3      1094    5886          830     1083       174
            9      1208    6222        1136      1168        82

Oct      8        957    6420          730       967       160

          20        952     6169         662       714       164

          21      1225     6849         571       703         85

          27      1039     7023         530       519         45

Nov     4      1199      8192        276       511         74 

          11      1479    10178        564       550         60 

          12      1190      9659        926       521         65

          13      1297      9951        614       539         77

          14      1260      8823        727       449         53 

          16        740      7367        256       450        73

          17      1615     10502           676       472        118

Summary:  

• Oh my.  
• With 4% of the world population, yesterday the USA had 29% of all the new cases globally.  
• The blame mostly rests with President Donald Trump, and his followers.  Supposedly, masks are more effective than vaccines.
• The 95% effectiveness of Moderna's and Pfizer's vaccine compares with 97% for measles (with two dosages).  
• For 2019-20 the seasonal flu vaccine had an effectiveness of only 45%.  Also, 52% of adults took this shot.
• For COVID-19 herd immunity, if the vaccine is 100% effective, at least 70% of the population will need to have two injections.  Supposedly, there is herd immunity when 60%-70% of the "herd" become immune through vaccines or having been so infected.
• If you think you're having a bad day, imagine being Donald Trump,

My science topic today looks at the largest cells.  But first, what is a cell?

...in biology, the basic membrane-bound unit that contains the fundamental molecules of life and of which all living things are composed. A single cell is often a complete organism in itself, such as a bacterium or yeast. Other cells acquire specialized functions as they mature.

The topic of largest cell drew my interest when someone sent me this photo, saying it was one cell.  This is a cell of Valonia ventricosa, also known as a bubble algae or sailor's eyeballs.  It is found in the oceans throughout the world, and some have characterized it as the largest unicellular organism.

For humans, the largest is an ovum, while the smallest is a sperm cell.  However, a neuron can be a meter long.  On a mass basis, the largest cell is found in the female of the species, this egg cell.

But there are larger cells in nature:

• Caulerpa taxifolia:  killer algae native to Hawaii, which is ornamentally used in an aquarium, and considered to be one of the 100 worst invasive species.  Can grow up to around 9 feet long.

Yes, that's one cell.  But an egg has more mass:

An Ostrich egg is only 7 inches long, but can weigh up to 3.3 pounds.  So large, again, depends of whether you are considering weight or length.  A bee hummingbird egg only weighs 0.0009 ounce, but is much larger than a human egg.  A sauropod, Diplodocus, was 50 times larger than an ostrich, but apparently hatched a similar size egg.  However, another smaller sauropod, Hypselosaurus from France, had eggs that weighed up to 15.5 pounds.

The Diplodocus was only 110 feet long.  The titanosaur Argentinosaurus huinclulensis is suspected to have grown to 130 feet in length.  The fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex (40 feet tall and maybe 30,000 pounds--although the largest found so far "only" weighed in at 19,555 pounds) was heavier, certainly too compared to an ostrich (9 feet/300 pounds), where both are therapods.  But no TRex egg has yet been found.  The heaviest dinosaur is the sauropod Argentinosaurus (left) at up to 200,000 pounds.  However, while no egg has been seen, the speculation was maybe one liter in size, nowhere near the French Hypselosaurus' egg.  I was in Buenos Aires in 1998, but declined an opportunity to take a field trip to the excavation of the first Argentinosaurus found in the country...or anywhere else.

Changing subjects, here is one oddity that will surprise you:

Surely those clues gave a hint that the top shot is sand magnified a hundred-fold.  These photos were taken by Gary Greenberg of Haiku, Maui.

Mind you, in Hawaii we also have a green sand beach of mostly olivine crystals and various black sand beaches from lava.  Left near South Point on the Big Island, and below, Punaluu Beach near Naalehu and Pahala in Kau, where I once lived.

The above gives you pause because you are taught in school that sand mostly comes from natural quartz, crushed carbonates, or, if you believe this, the poop of the parrotfish:

The famous white-sand beaches of Hawaii, for example, actually come from the poop of parrotfish. The fish bite and scrape algae off of rocks and dead corals with their parrot-like beaks, grind up the inedible calcium-carbonate reef material (made mostly of coral skeletons) in their guts, and then excrete it as sand. At the same time that it helps to maintain a diverse coral-reef ecosystem, parrotfish can produce hundreds of pounds of white sand each year!

I guess in Hawaii this parrotfish must also consume various shellfish too.

Something else, a split lobster:

Every once in 50 million births, gynandromorphy occurs.  The blue is female and brownish male.  The term comes from gyn for woman, andros for man and morph meaning to form. Here is another in a cardinal.  Hermaphroditism is another condition where the animal spends part of a life as male, and another as a female, or both at the same time.  

Finally, have you heard of the Blue Java Banana?  It is also known as the Hawaiian Banana, although I've never seen it here.  Said to taste like ice cream.  While the standard yellowish outside when ripe, it's supposedly blue when not:

My favorite song #40 is La Marseillaise, the national anthem of France.  I was captivated by a scene in Casablanca, with Paul Henreid.  In 1945, Charles de Gaulle leading the singing.

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