Shrinking Animals, Japanese Baby Bust, Oops on Jupiter's Great Red Spot
Plus: What Happens if Kids Swallow Toothpaste Every Day?
Welcome back to the Aha! Science weekly newsletter, celebrating science by revealing amazing discoveries and images from our world and beyond and exploring life’s most intriguing, strange and unexpected questions. These featured articles include “friend links” to Aha! stories on Medium so you can read them even if you’re not a Medium member.
Why are Animals Shrinking Worldwide?
Shrinking gray whales are but one example of downsizing by animals all over the planet — from fish to birds, mountain goats to Galápagos iguanas — as the animal kingdom adapts to pressures of a warmer climate, habitat reductions, dwindling food supplies, and other stressors. Some causes of the shocking shape shifts—including several of 20% or more—remain mysterious, and the potential outcomes unpredictable. But the overall signs are not good.
Each year, a couple hundred gray whales congregate in shallow waters off the US Pacific Northwest coast to feed. Over the years, scientists have documented an alarming change in the majestic beasts. Adult males born in 2020 will be nearly 5–½ feet shorter (1.65 meters) when fully grown compared to those born 20 years earlier — a 13% size reduction from their past average of around 40 feet.
—Robert Roy Britt
What Happens if Kids Swallow Toothpaste Every Day?
You might think the answer is straightforward, but there are a lot of ingredients in toothpaste. This scientist, whose toddler son swallows a lot of the stuff, sinks his teeth into the research to find out how much toothpaste an adult or a child would have to swallow—at once or over time—to be a health concern.
The most commonly used detergent is sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), which is commonly used in lots of household cleaners. Studies show that in rats, it takes about 1200 mg per kg of body weight to pose an acute risk of death. Going back to our hypothetical 8-year-old, they’d be in potentially lethal trouble at 20 grams of SLS (or about four large grapes’ worth).
—Sam Westreich, PhD
The Japanese Baby Shortage
Japan is spending billions to encourage people to have more babies, trying to avert a societal calamity that experts say many countries could face, if current trends don’t reverse. You might think fewer people would be good for all, but…
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida views the rest of this decade as "the last chance" to reverse the trend of falling birth rates, or the country faces a worrying precipice, beyond which lies severe economic shrinkage, the extinction of hundreds of towns causing areas to go desolate, and the collapse of businesses due to mass retirements and workforce shortage.
—Richard Gordon
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is Not the Spot We Thought
Oops! Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, long thought to have been discovered by Cassini, is not the spot he spotted, new research concludes.
Giovanni Domenico Cassini was a great sketcher of the sky. The Italian-born French astronomer would peer through one of the crude telescopes of his time, and draw what he saw. Now, thanks in part to his illustrations, a longstanding assumption in astronomy has been overturned.
—Robert Roy Britt
In addition to this weekly newsletter, I also post cool science news briefs and amazing new images to the Aha! Science Substack site…
Newborn Planets and Orphaned Stars Revealed in New Images
Meet Loki: The Newfound Ornate Horned Dinosaur
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Cheers,
Rob