Matilda's Lab Newsletter #78
This week we recruit assassins. We get Chiral, we have mind reading chimps, skateboarders with extra senses, music that heals, happy sleep and why it's good to lie to yourself.
What we’ve been up to
I appear to have stumbled into this year with a complete lack of direction. I’ve lost all bearings on whether I should be writing blog content, recording songs, making merch or just drawing for the sake of it (on top of my other professional and household duties). I feel like I’m flailing between projects with no form of purpose. I must admit, it’s a bit tiresome. Thankfully, I have a family who can stop me from entirely stalling. Sometimes, you just need a nice walk with some dogs to get you reset. Even if Edison is the world’s hardest dog to photograph!
The other animal action that we’ve had has been going on in the fish tank. We’ve not added any new fish to the tank for a long time, and now our remaining ones were looking a little bit lonely. So we got them some new friends, some neon rainbow fish. I’ve never had these before, so it will be interesting to see how they get on.
Cat loves our shrimp. She says that she’d be happy to have a tank with nothing but shrimp in. We’re not doing that. We lost some shrimp when some of our plants died off, but now we’ve got one making a great recovery, it was time for some golden shrimp to join the party.
There were some other additions to our tank, which were not so welcome. Pest snails. I don’t know where they came from, probably when we got the most recent batch of plants. They’d been lurking in the background for a while, but recently their numbers seem to have rocketed. So, I recruited some assassins.
I’ve never has assassin snails before, mainly because we’ve had nice snails before that we didn’t want to die. However, since they all took care of dying, all by themselves, there was no longer any reason to hold back. When we bought the snails, we were told not expect to see results too soon. In reality, the following morning, many of the pests had gone. Within days, there were scarcely any left.
New Blog content
It’s been over a year and a half since I last did one, so it’s high time that I did a new Matilda’s Lab cartoon.
And I added the world’s fastest fish (the black marlin) to the map of life.
I’m not sharing any music this week. I’ve decided not to release a track in February. I’ve now had a proper introduction to my recording software, so my next project is to rework the previous recordings; make them sound even better, and then put them all together into an album.
Stay tuned.
From the Archive
Since I’ve featured dogs in this newsletter, let’s combine them with a flashback to lockdown.
And we had one of the lamest excuses for naming an insect:
Science News
Young children are capable of seeing sounds and feeling noises. Most of us, not all, lose this ability early on. But experienced skateboarders seem able to feel the sounds generated by their riding, which gives them important information about the surfaces that they are riding on.
Do ever get the feeling that animals at the zoo are judging you. Well, the chimps may well do so. It appears that chimpanzees are able to spot ignorance in humans.
Sleep on it, you’ll feel better in the morning. This now has scientific backing. Stress hormones fall after we wake, meaning that we do generally feel better in the mornings, even if you aren’t a morning person.
Stress hormones aside, sleep will also do you good, as we now know that sleep helps to strengthen memories linked to joyful and happy experiences.
Calories don’t count on holiday. A new study has revealed that people who lie to themselves, and cheat when they are only accountable to themselves, are generally more positive about their situation and think better of themselves. Looking up the solutions to those tricky crossword clues is actually a form of self-care (not that anyone who does it need any more of an excuse).
Music soothes even the savage beast, but only the right music. Music is shown to relieve pain, but not any old music. What works is specific to the individual and must match their own personal rhythm (yes, we all have one).
Kicking back
…and for the live traffic update we go to a very pretty boy.
It took me a while to see this. It’s a bit meta. Meta-cat sounds like the best superhero.
You see duck, I see dinosaur; but until this week I hadn’t seen either, and now I can’t unsee it.
A little reminder about how remarkable your eyes really are.
Please feel free to get in contact with any questions, suggestions or comments either via Substack or at matildaslab@gmail.com.
Please share this with anyone who you think will appreciate it.
And remember to share with me any cool sciencey stuff that you find, to make sure that I can pack this newsletter with the best new science content each week.
Until next time, treat every day like a school day and find those lessons to learn.