From a Chicago Sun-Times article on the beluga whales heading to the Shedd Aquarium:

"The shipment comes on the heels of a Shedd announcement last week that one of the Marineland belugas — Peekachu, a 23-year-old female — had died. Shedd has not released a cause of death, but staff there said last week that Peekachu had not been consistently eating a full diet since her arrival and that there were concerns she was dehydrated."

How does an animal immersed in water become dehydrated?

How does that compare with other organs? How does that compare with how much other animals devote to their brain?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/FnUBgjD1GxxE94L39

It looks so interesting and I have no idea how to find information about it. I'm so curious as to what it could look like down there as well as what kind of sea creatures live there and so much more

(I don't know if this is chemistry or biology? 🤔)

Had a long look at some Doom, Raid, Mortein, Dyroach, Eliminator, and all those spray cans in the shop yesterday.

Does it genuinely matter which one you use? If it's going to kill a cockroach, won't it in any case kill a beetle, spider or those flying spider things? Maybe an ant specific one might not help for big cockroaches... but also, it can?

What is specifically going to kill a flying insect like mosquitoes or flies, but not... beetles and cockroaches, and vice versa.

Out in our farmlands and such, those pesticides will be better controlled and more insect specific. But does it really matter for us mere home dwellers which can we use?

This is something I (40s) did as a kid with friends at sleepovers. I have always been curious about this! What is the mechanism?

So take away the extremes of height, hot, cold, etc and go for a typical northern hemisphere forest, there's so many trees all roughly similar height and vying for the same energy source (sunlight). Why hasn't one universal efficient shape evolved? It's not like they need plumage to impress each other, and the variations between beech, oak, maple, horse chestnut etc. is quite noticeable! (Thanks in advance)

Would not be surprised if global-warming/climate-change is partially to blame, thats saddening…

My only question is, we couldn’t have stopped that?? There was no warning that could have been issued??? Living in a dangerous climate, are these things not constantly being supervised by scientists & climatologists??

I just dont understand how we harness the technolgy to put a man on the moon yet conversely we cant stop or predict a grusome natural disaster??? Am I missing something??

I was visiting a swiss glacier. Next to all the beautiful ice structures and amazing visibility through the ice, these airbubbles caught my eye.

The visible structures, in my head, only happen in a fraction of a second and then the bubble collapses but here it is all trapped in ice and frozen in place.

I was thinking about it for a long time but I can't get a satisfying answer to how something like this actually happens.

I posted it here, so you can see, what I'm talking about:

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1w0ixut/burst_airbubble_trapped_in_glacier_ice/

Do they not deplete soil nutrients as aggressively as crops? Or do they achieve crop rotation through a natural process that isn't apparent to a layman?

"Animal culture can be defined as the ability of non-human animals to learn and transmit behaviors through processes of social or cultural learning."

Imagine two raccoon mothers each with four kits. One lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The other lives in New York city, New York, USA.

Raccoons are social creatures who have demonstrated observational learning in lab settings, so its fair to infer they do it in the wild (in this case, "wild.") as well.

So each raccoon mother has learned from other raccoons where to shelter, get food, water, where specific threats are and everything else to survive in their respective cities.

One year, their locations are switched.

No doubt the mothers would survive, but wouldn't they be at a severe disadvantage because the social knowledge they have relied on doesn't apply? They would have to lean on instinct more, wouldn't they?

If that's the case, could they, and many other animals, have what we consider culture?

Not asking if this has been studied, but is this plausible?

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So what is thought to have caused the big bang?

Bong hits question.

Hi there I wanna ask a simple question that how hairs appeared on living beings

We all Evolved from fish like creature and they do have a traced of hairs and evolution doesn't create thing out of thin air like our teeth are morphed from scales

So I want to ask that how hairs appeared on evolutionary line ?

Farm animals are often mating with other animals not of their species on the farm. It just got me thinking why it doesn't get results? Seems to me crazy hybrid mixes running around would be right up the alley of evolutuon, and yet it is prevented/restricted??

I've seen a lot of people discount tilted planets with 90° rotation as being inhospitable for life, but to me that seems strange since I've seen people entertain the idea of life on slow-rotating planets being possible. Why would it be different? After all, 90° rotation would be *more* able to distribute heat evenly than a slowe rotating planet, right? There would be a longer "spring"/"fall) where a given piece of land can stay in the twighlight zone for longer, right?

From what I know, the biggest issue with a 90° planet would be glaciers formig on the "winter" side and reflecting sunlight during the summer and decreasing the total world temperature, but surely this would depend on distance from the sun right?

I’ve been thinking about this mostly as a means to mitigate climate collapse impacts because at this point — with where we’re headed what would be worse? I wanna add I’m not a scientist and I’m sure others have already considered this hypothesis. So call me an idiot if it doesn’t work. I studied theater for writing and acting.

Anyway I was thinking about how a soda can may explode when it’s shaken and the pressure from the gas becomes so strong that once you open the can it explodes.

Hence the stupid thoughts on how to apply this to volcanoes because as I said I’m not a scientist by any stretch. However, what if we fracked nearby a volcano to cause an earthquake while putting a lid inside the caldera?

Yes it could make the volcanic eruption worse but it could also push more sulfur into the atmosphere to cool the planet.

This could help us for a few years until we get people who will act to fight climate collapse directly. I’m not saying it would work. It’s an hypothesis at best. Thoughts?

By the way I understand the problems this could cause but considering the damage the El Niño that’s coming will cause and the current crop death we’re already experiencing due to global temperature rise what do we have to lose?

Wasps have been a predator for other insects. It would be fascinating to know if there are really other insects or predators for wasps, either accidental or deliberate predators

So like 300 million years ago Insects grew real big because they had 30% oxygen instead of modern 21%. Since Oxygen Poisoning doesn’t happen till like 50%, would it be possible to lock a human or other modern animal in high oxygen chambers to get a bigger version of them after they grow up or would it take them many generations to adapt.

I know that a hormone induces certain change in a cell, but how does it do it physically?

I know about the generation of messengers and other compounds and what-not but like how a does a hormone bind or break bond in this particular cell and nothing else? Do hormones even break or join chemical bonds?

I am having a tough time phrasing my question, but how does a hormone work in terms of chemicals and physics?

I've been reading about mitochondrial DNA and the mitochondrial Eve and now I got very confused. I have a background in molecular biology, so I'm familiar with terms, but the concept of using mutations in mtDNA still confuses me. When we say that two populations differ in mutation at a certain position, does that mean that all mitochondria in that cell/individual have that mutation? Because if I'm not mistaken, each mitochondrion has several (up to a dozen) mtDNA molecules, and there are hundreds of mitochondria in an egg cell. Shouldn't out of those hundreds or thousands molecules different mutations be dispersed across mitochondria? Since I assume those mutations are silent point mutations (no effect on phenotype or organel/cell survival, shouldn't all of us have a big mixture of various mutations? How can we then make a consensus sequence to compare? Especially considering we are testing somatic cells which could have extra mutations from that generation? Am I just overinflating the rate of mutation in mtDNA?

i know a lot of scientist will say zero . But if zero how was the first one carrier obtain?

Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science

Do you have a question within these topics you weren't sure was worth submitting? Is something a bit too speculative for a typical /r/AskScience post? No question is too big or small for AAW. In this thread you can ask any science-related question! Things like: "What would happen if...", "How will the future...", "If all the rules for 'X' were different...", "Why does my...".

Asking Questions:

Please post your question as a top-level response to this, and our team of panellists will be here to answer and discuss your questions. The other topic areas will appear in future Ask Anything Wednesdays, so if you have other questions not covered by this weeks theme please either hold on to it until those topics come around, or go and post over in our sister subreddit /r/AskScienceDiscussion , where every day is Ask Anything Wednesday! Off-theme questions in this post will be removed to try and keep the thread a manageable size for both our readers and panellists.

Answering Questions:

Please only answer a posted question if you are an expert in the field. The full guidelines for posting responses in AskScience can be found here. In short, this is a moderated subreddit, and responses which do not meet our quality guidelines will be removed. Remember, peer reviewed sources are always appreciated, and anecdotes are absolutely not appropriate. In general if your answer begins with 'I think', or 'I've heard', then it's not suitable for /r/AskScience.

If you would like to become a member of the AskScience panel, please refer to the information provided here.

Past AskAnythingWednesday posts can be found here. Ask away!