{"id":336,"date":"2003-02-11T03:28:05","date_gmt":"2003-02-11T03:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=336"},"modified":"2011-05-01T18:35:17","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T23:35:17","slug":"supersensitive-sharks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=336","title":{"rendered":"supersensitive sharks"},"content":{"rendered":"

As if it’s not scary enough that sharks can smell a drop of blood in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, or that they can sense the electric field given off by a hidden prey’s heartbeat; it seems they can also detect temperature changes of a thousandth of a degree Celsius in seawater, according to a study reported in the Jan. 30 Nature.<\/em> Sharks have gel-filled canals that connect skin pores to electrosensory organs called ampullae of Lorenzini. Brandon R. Brown, a physicist at the University of San Francisco, analyzed samples of this clear, protein-based gel that were taken from black-tip and white sharks. He found that temperature changes as small as .001 degree in the gel would induce a voltage large enough for the animal to detect. Brown thinks sharks evolved such a sensitive thermometer to help them locate thermal fronts in the ocean, areas where cold and warm water mix, and where many of their quarry feed. <\/span><\/p>\n

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the <\/em>Boston Globe’s Health\/Science section on 2\/11\/2003.<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As if it’s not scary enough that sharks can smell a drop of blood in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, or that they can sense the electric field given off by a hidden prey’s heartbeat; it seems they can also detect … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boston-globe-3","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=336"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1239,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions\/1239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}