Current Events #3: Can’t touch this: Unusual venomous creatures

Did you know that a male platypus is venomous? The mammal has always been considered odd; it lays eggs and hunts prey by using its duckbill to sense electrical currents. It's poisonous attributes make the platypus even odder. But a platypus is not the only venomous creature in the world. Hooded pitohui and Komodo dragons are also venomous. The ironic fact is that these toxins might be used as pain-killers and disease fighters in the future! Animal venoms have been used as a blueprint for developing a number of new drugs, including those that treat heart disease and chronic pain. The reason why is because toxins are complicated.Toxins are so similar to good proteins that they cause serious problems by telling cells to do the wrong things in the wrong places at the wrong times. Scientists want to learn how toxins manage to accomplish this so they can turn it into a life-saver. After all, what can kill us can also save us — once we learn to control it.

I think that studying an animals toxins is a step in the right direction for making the world a better place. I feel this way because if we learn how to turn toxins into medicine, who knows how many cures scientists could create for illnesses!

 Also, if platypus venom is able to paralyze, then maybe as a medicine, it could do the opposite. Paralyzed people could be able to walk again! All in all, I don't think anything bad can come out of studying animal poisons.  
Sources
http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/005/cache/komodo-dragon_599_600x450.jpg

https://www.iacez.com/images/mr-networth/eureka-left.png

http://www.worldwildlife.org/gift-center/Images/large-species-photo/large-duck-billed-platypus-photo.jpg

Scientific Wedding (my water cycle xtranormal)

Baboons detect bogus words

 Can baboons read? Absolutely not. But can they differentiate real words from random letters that were put together? According to recent discoveries, yes! While the baboons didn't recognize what the words meant, they were able to pick out  phony words.To ascertain this, scientist use an experiment  involving six baboons.The baboons were trained with touch screen computers. If the primates touched a cross on the screen after seeing a real wordtouched a cross on the screen after seeing a real word, they got a treat. They would also receive a treat if they pressed an oval on the screen after seeing a bogus word.After more than a month of training, most of the baboons got very good at this. Three out of four times, the average baboon could correctly identify the word.The highest-scoring monkey identified 308 real words; the lowest-scoring monkey picked out 81. For a bunch of monkeys, they're not monkeying around!

I believe that this experiment was definitely good way to use our resources. It could help lead up to primates being able to read and write. Monkeys being able to read and write would be useful to our society because they would be able to express their feelings on a piece of paper. Therefore, they would be able to tell humans what they would like have to without humans having to guess. It might even lead us to see what goes on inside an animals mind! Sources:

http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/photos/sevcik/yellow-baboon--xxxpapio_cynocephalus_2.jpg

http://blog.sysomos.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/question-mark.jpg https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOJZ74QHsnBcYaAT9CIYhuxm5AGxAeAcpy0ppUUQPP2uXzk4563uFH0pw_sWrXcFAb2mJ6cEEp1c0BU7LavFG7JN0N0_Fb8aDI4hDWpPC3EMneLA3ZD4wYbdehejVYG595JPQVJ8nmhw/s1600/MonkeyingAroundHeader.png