Afraid of Mice? Not Quite…
Photo credit: keithlawson
More animal research tidbits. You know that old story that elephants are afraid of mice? In the first century A.D., Pliny the Elder claimed that elephants hate mice “above all other creatures.” Later scientists speculated that mice might run up elephant’s trunk.
This does not happen. And elephants are not particularly afraid of mice, although they have poor eyesight (and also eyes a long way around from the ground) and can sometimes get started by anything that scuttles unexpectedly around their feet.
But there is a tiny animal that elephants are actually afraid of.
Bees.
Despite elephant’s thick skin, bee stings can still hurt. If bees are flying around, an elephant herd may form up into a protective circle with the calves inside to keep them safe from the fuzzy little flying menaces.
Read MorePoop Research
Dogs do it. They’re not sorry. And they would do it again if they could. (Thanks to Claudia Peters from Pixabay for the image!
It’s remarkable how often my research for nonfiction leads me into the realm of poop. A while back, there was the question of how the Apollo astronauts managed with no toilet. And of course, the fascinating shape of wombat poop. This week I’ve been delving into the age-old question of why dogs eat poop.
a) Because their ancestors did.
b) Because it’s there.
c) Because dogs are just, by nature, gross.
d) And other reasons that may be revealed if I find a publisher for this new project one day.
Read MoreThe Real Heroes
Jennings inoculating his first patient, eight-year-old James Phipps (who deserves a statue, too)
We put up statues to politicians and generals, but in a just world, people like Edward Jennings would have a statue on every corner. He created a true vaccine for smallpox, and the more I research pandemics, the more I understand how amazing his achievement was. This disease had been with us since ancient times and was capable of wiping out civilizations. Now? It’s gone. (Except for a few samples in laboratories which should be destroyed yesterday, if you ask me.)
Interestingly, he based his work on folk medicine practiced in Asia, where patients were immunized with pus taken from smallpox sores (it worked, though it was risky) and from the folk knowledge of farmers near his home, who insisted that, if they’d had cowpox, they were immune to smallpox (they were). So it was not just an individual epiphany, but an achievement built on observation and experimentation by countless others whose names science and history do not remember.
Read MoreWhy the Beak?
It looks like something out of a steampunk dystopian nightmare, but it’s real: this is the outfit of a Renaissance plague doctor. It consists of a long coat of waxed linen and a mask with glass eyeholes, all to keep the physician free from contagion.
But why must he look like a hooded bird of prey? Is he trying to frighten his patients to death before the plague can get them? Nope. The beak of the mask is actually stuffed with herbs and spices and, one source says, vinegar. Since bad smells or miasmas were supposed to spread the disease, it was hoped that good smells near your face would ward off illness.
I don’t know what breathing vinegar fumes would do to your lungs, but I suppose the outfit as a whole might actually have provided some protection, at least from the airborne bacteria that spread pneumonic plague. It probably didn’t do much about the fleas that spread bubonic plague, but then I don’t know what would have.
This is the kind of thing you discover when you are researching historical pandemics. I really love writing nonfiction.
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
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