Science News Roundup: Stuff that caught my eye this week
Massive solar flares, a dog who adopted some ducklings, and a dinosaur mystery soon to be solved
“Why does Texas have more tornadoes?”
Tornadoes can happen anywhere, not just in the flat plains of Texas and the Midwest east of the Rockies. But Texas gets a lot of them because cold dry air from Canada often collides with warm wet air from the Gulf over Texas.
“Do ants take baths?”
One fine summer evening, we were debating whether or not the youngest, stickiest member of our family should take a bath. My daughter, clearly looking for models from the animal kingdom to support her argument that a slight coating of sand and dried ice cream is not immediately fatal to those lucky enough to wear it, asked, “Do ants take baths?”
“Why are caterpillars so mushy?”
While we were doing the caterpillar-tickling experiment this week, the question of how to tickle the caterpillars had to be dealt with early on. I ruled out using our fingers on grounds of caterpillars being too mushy. That of course led to questions about why caterpillars are so mushy.
“Are caterpillars ticklish?” Part 2: The Testing
If you’re just joining us, yesterday my five-year-old ask me if caterpillars were ticklish. Today is the day we find out.
“Are caterpillars ticklish?”
When my five-year-old asked her father, who was a Harvard researcher at the time, if caterpillars were ticklish, he laughed for about 5 minutes. What does being ticklish mean for a caterpillar anyway? Can caterpillars laugh? And if they do, how can we hear them? It’s the perfect setup for a Caterpickles experiment.
CATERPICKLES 