eyeball breathing, dental formulae, dangerous inventions
lemurs, tongues, car seats, leaded gasoline, short story recs
Your eyeball ‘breathes’ oxygen directly from the air itself. The cornea has to be transparent to let the light in, after all, so it has no blood vessels - can’t have all that colorful blood getting in the way!
Lemurs have two tongues! the bottom one is called the sublingua, it doesn’t have taste buds, and we think they use it to clean out debris caught in their toothcomb
the toothcomb is kinda what it sounds like- a group of extra-long teeth with fine spaces between them that can be used to comb the fur. or to gouge tree bark. or even perhaps to help with sniffs! all prosimians have ‘em, except the aye-aye
and speaking of the toothcomb, flying lemurs (colugos!) have these extra serrated? multi-tined tooth combs! (it’s a convergent evolution thing)
okay we gotta get a bit sidetracked here bc dental formula wat.
“The number of teeth of each type is written as a dental formula for one side of the mouth… with the upper and lower teeth shown on separate rows. The number of teeth in a mouth is twice that listed, as there are two sides. In each set, incisors (I) are indicated first, canines (C) second, premolars (P) third, and finally molars (M), giving I:C:P:M. So for example, the formula 2.1.2.3 for upper teeth indicates 2 incisors, 1 canine, 2 premolars, and 3 molars on one side of the upper mouth.”
there’s a wonderful huge list of examples, but here we are (or at least, 77-80% of us), along with our friend the aye-aye
Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline (to solve engine knocking) (the dangers of lead poisoning were well known already) and freon (as a refrigerant) (tbf he didn’t know about the whole ozone layer thing).
Midgley “had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history” - environmental historian J. R. McNeill
was engine knocking even that dangerous? I mean, sometimes, clearly. and scary for sure. but I honestly don’t know?
all the lead seems to do is slow down the thermal reaction so the heat doesn’t cause pre-spark combustion. I think. I don’t really get cars, they’re less intuitive than bugs.
Midgley possessed “an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny” - Bill Bryson
and in the end, he really had the most perfect poetic death:
“Midgley contracted polio in 1940 and was left disabled; in 1944, he was found strangled to death by a device he devised to allow him to get out of bed unassisted. It is often reported that he had been accidentally killed by his own invention, but his death was declared by the coroner to be a suicide.”
car seats prevent more lives than they save
this is definitely my new favorite fact (life lesson: make time to catch up with old friends, you might learn something)
short stories I recently read and enjoyed
Eager Readers in Your Area! by Alexander Wales (via)
The Mother by Lydia Davis (this whole story is just one perfect exquisite little paragraph)
perfect sentences
“All of the Zoomers that work for me are bisexual, and all of them have long covid” - Sean McElwee
“At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable” - Melville, Bartleby
“How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.” - Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night