I've Read A Few Things Recently On How People Categorize Everything ( By Colors, Forms, Animal Kingdoms...)

The process of imagination

Morphological differences between thorns, spines, and prickles

Hello! Why did penguins evolve to have black feathers if they live in icy (mostly white?) locations? I understand them having a white tummy because when swimming they could be more difficult to identify by a predator swimming below them? Thanks!

Love your blog!

Hello! So, here's what I learned at uni:

the widely-accepted reason penguins have black feathers is the same reason they have white tummies, but backwards. When swimming, they are more difficult to identify by a predator swimming above them! You can see similar countershading in sharks and dolphins, and also on land animals like mountain goats and lizards. Overall, it helps to make animals less obvious when viewing from the side, because it reduces the obviousness of their shadow.

As to why penguins have black feathers in icy, mostly white, locations (on LAND), you need to consider why it would be good to be white in an icy, white location in the first place!

Mostly, it would provide camouflage, which would protect from land predators! However, penguins don't really have any significant land predators in Antarctica. There are no polar bears, or big snakes, or even foxes or coyotes in Antarctica, so the penguin won't benefit from being camouflaged on land. Basically, there's no "selective pressure" for them to be all white!

some penguin chicks, however, do have to worry about a few predators, so they have a little more camouflage than the adult penguins:

What's more, there are likely advantages to black feathers in a cold environment like Antarctica! For example, in the sun, dark feathers absorb more thermal energy, helping to warm the penguin and maintain their body heat.

There may also be some stuff with black feathers being more resistant to wear/ friction drag in the water, but that's entering the realm of ongoing research, which I won't get into here.

Let me know if there's anything that needs clarifying!

(some citations if anyone wants further reading:)

Bonser, R. H. (1995). Melanin and the abrasion resistance of feathers. The Condor, 97(2), 590-591.

Ksepka, D. T. (2016). The penguin's palette--more than black and white: this stereotypically tuxedo-clad bird shows that evolution certainly can accessorize. American Scientist, 104(1), 36-44.

Rowland, H. M. (2009). From Abbott Thayer to the present day: what have we learned about the function of countershading?. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1516), 519-527.

Zagrai, A., & Hassanalian, M. (2020, July). Penguin coloration affects skin friction drag. In 2020 Gulf Southwest Section Conference.

Marcus Aurelius Please Stop Owning Me From The Year Of Our Lord 170 CE challenge

In many ways, scientific analyses of consciousness suffer from the same limitations and constraints as cosmological theories: right right at the outset, certain manipulations and observations cannot be carried out.

About a month ago I was presenting at the annual conference of the Dutch Physical Society Fysica 2021. Now, I got the June issue of their magazine, in which they look back at the highlights of the conference. I was in a good company indeed!

In the Young’s Speakers Contest I ended up closely second with 34% of the votes from the 700 people listening to the story of my research. (The winner got 38%.)

Although I did not win the contest, I was presenting at the same stage with two Nobel Prize winners in Physics and got a brilliant response from the audience. This meeting will for sure stay in my memory and the magazine page goes directly on a display in my home office. I am immensly proud of myself and take this achievement as a great motivation to keep doing what I love — high quality research.

Recording of the whole virtual meeting via the link below. If you are curious about my work, jump to the presentation at 01.37.19 – Adela Melcrova: ‘No pores: The unexpected physics of a new antibiotic’. https://www.fysica.nl/

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

lowkey sad that the studyblr tag went from being a functional tag where people shared notes and planners and talked about their studies to being lumped in with other aesthetic tags so all the top posts are just pictures of book piles cribbed off of pinterest

like i wanna see what YOU'RE reading, not what someone somewhere was reading at some point in the past and i wanna hear your thoughts about it!!

the academia aesthetic tags want what we have

anyway if ur a studyblr lemme know i want to follow u ❤️