Cockney mammoths, sky triangles, and a flea face-off

Hello, friends!

And to my UK-based friends, welcome to another long weekend! Hope you have some excellent things planned and take the opportunity to have all the ice cream while it bakes out there. Coming up:

🍍 how much it cost to grow a pineapple in England in 1764

⚓ what a tattooed tardigrade looks like

🦘 whether a cat flea or dog flea would win in a long jump competition…

…and the best lecture title this newsletter has seen yet. See if you can spot it.

Let’s go!

read all about it

Weight loss drugs may change people’s tastes for their favourite foods: “Siobhan… who has been taking Wegovy since 2021… says she still finds fatty foods such as French fries appealing—but her favourite food, panang curry, has become too bitter. ‘I’ve been eating that curry for 20 years,’ Siobhan says. ‘It just didn’t taste right any more.’” (Scientific American)

Ronan the sea lion may be better than you at keeping a beat: “Not only had she improved her ability to bob her head in sync with beats, but she is even better than most humans at doing so,” writes Gennaro Tomma. “There was no human that was better than Ronan on every measure of precision and consistency,” scientist Dr Peter Cook said. (New York Times – gift link)

How the pineapple went from luxury item to fruit salad filler: “In 1764, at the peak of pineapple mania in England, it is estimated that the average cost to cultivate a pineapple – taking into account the construction of the pinery [e.g. a hothouse], the import of pineapple plants from the Caribbean, and the gardening labour for three or four years – was approximately £80. This translates to about £12,000, or $16,000, today.” (Works in Progress)

📷 Tardigrade gets tiny tattoo: “Researchers used a technique called ice lithography, harnessing an electron beam to etch the pattern into a layer of ice coating the tardigrade.” (Nature)

that time – 201 years ago – when…

…we found a mammoth skeleton in Ilford.

Sometimes huge discoveries are made close to (your correspondent’s) home. Back in 1824, a mammoth skeleton, about 4.5 metres in height, was discovered in the clay-rich earth of Ilford, now part of east London.

“Mr John Gibson, of Stratford, has been diligently exerting himself in collecting and preserving as much as possible of this skeleton,” reads the Domestic Occurrences section of The Gentleman’s Magazine from the same year.

Another mammoth from the same area was unearthed in 1864, after its discovery by workers digging for clay to make bricks. Find its skull on display in the Natural History Museum’s Mammals Gallery, and a replica at Redbridge Central Library.

what’s happening next week?

Your agenda for Monday 5 – Sunday 11 May. All times are BST.

🔭 in a sky near you: Look south for the spring triangle, marked out by the stars Arcturus, in the constellation Boötes; Spica, in Virgo; and Regulus, in Leo. Find the Moon on Monday for your starting point – it’ll be right next to Regulus about 10pm.

Obligatory note here for those who prefer their spring triangles a bit more equilateral: swap Regulus for Denebola, a dimmer star also in Leo (pictured), part of the way between Arcturus and Regulus.

👀 closer to Earth: If green spaces near you are letting it all hang out for No Mow May, expect to see buttercups. Despite the deliciousness their name implies, animals don’t really like to eat them, so a wet meadow over time will fill with buttercups, according to Every Day Nature.

online talks and events

🛄 Linnaeus’ Lapland journey diary, online event by the Linnean Society, Tuesday 6 May, 15.00, free

⛽ If we don’t sustainably engineer fuels, then our children will be next, hybrid event by UCL, Tuesday 6 May, 17.30, free

⚠️ Unmasking the illegal wildlife trade, hybrid event by the Natural History Museum, Tuesday 6 May, 18.30, from £5

🌏 A hole in the ozone layer, hybrid event by the Royal Geographical Society, Tuesday 6 May, 19.00, free

🤒 Do computers get sick? How humans and computers fight viruses, hybrid event by Gresham College, Wednesday 7 May, 18.00, free

🧠 Thinking and doing, hybrid event by Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, Thursday 8 May, 12.00, free

🐟 Forgotten fossils and hidden treasures: the early evolution of ray-finned fishes, and From worms to stars: uncovering the early evolution of echinoderms, hybrid event by the Palaeontographical Society, Thursday 8 May, 13.30, free

💥 A brief history of lithium: from the big bang to giant gigafactories, hybrid event by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, Thursday 8 May, 18.00, free

📈 The power of data: ethics, politics, and the public interest, hybrid event by LSE, Thursday 8 May, 18.30, free

💉 Ozempic Nation, hybrid event by the British Library, Friday 9 May, 19.00, from £6.50

🤔 The uncertain science of certainty, hybrid event by Conway Hall, Sunday 11 May, 15.00, from £7

we finally know…

…that dog fleas tend to jump higher than cat fleas.

Source: A comparison of jump performances of the dog flea, Ctenocephalides canis (Curtis, 1826) and the cat flea, Ctenocephalides felis felis (Bouché, 1835) (Image source)

we need answers

Last week I asked:

The answer is… hacking.

In 1903, physicist John Ambrose Fleming was preparing to demonstrate Guglielmo Marconi’s long-distance wireless communication system at the Royal Institution in London, when a magician called Nevil Maskelyne took over the frequency.

Maskelyne was stationed at a nearby music hall, from where he also sent the repeated message ‘rats’.

Marconi, poised to send a presumably less inflammatory message from 300 miles away, had hoped the demo would show that information could be securely sent over long distances.

until next week…

What quantity can be measured by the ‘light-foot’?

Answer comes next week. See you then! x