Word: cleaners
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Scientists often warn against anthropomorphism - the attribution of human characteristics to animals or even nonliving things. But it's hard to resist the charm of Labroides dimidiatus, a species of fish otherwise known as the bluestreak cleaner wrasse. These colorful little critters make their living in coral reefs by setting up cleaning stations where larger fish - often predators that might otherwise gobble them up - can stop by to have their skin cleaned. The wrasses busy themselves like car-wash attendants fussing around a sports car, nibbling off parasites, dead tissue and other blemishes and nourishing themselves in the process...
Since the discovery of the fish's behavior in the 1950s, cleaner wrasses have provided biologists with a delightful example of cooperation in nature. But now an international team of scientists has observed another unusual trait in the fish, one that may shed light on higher social animals, including humans. The wrasses, it appears, know how to punish one another...
...turns out that - surprise! - cleaner wrasses don't actually like to munch on dead flesh and parasites. They much prefer the slimy mucus that coats healthy fish skin, which is rich in carbohydrates. So in nature, the wrasses occasionally cheat and take a nip of their client's body. When they work alone, the wrasses strike a balance between cleaning and cheating so as not to lose their client's business. But wrasses also work in pairs. In these situations, explains Redouan Bshary of the Université de Neuchâtel in Switzerland - one of the authors...
...biggest and most polluting ships contribute about half the carbon emitted by the industry as a whole, so any solution to the emissions problem could be implemented much more easily than, say, changing the 800 million or so passenger cars in the world. "Ships could be retrofitted to be cleaner and more efficient quickly," says Bradford. (See the world's most polluted places...
...John, inspired by the way his father had built an earthquake-resistant hotel in Tokyo, invented Lincoln Logs. And many great toys are accidents or improvisations, a serenade by kids whose first drum set is a wooden spoon and a tin pot. Play-Doh was invented as a wallpaper cleaner. In 1943 a Navy engineer trying to smooth the sailing of battleships found that a torsion spring would "walk" when knocked over. If you stretched all the Slinkys sold since then end to end, I'm told, they would circle the earth more than 125 times...