Fantastic Bacteria and Where to Find Them!

There are awesome animals in the world. There’s the big famous ones like elephants and eagles, and there’s the really weird ones nobody really hears about like the Mexican Mole Lizard or the Emerald Cockroach Wasp (and if you don’t know about them, look them up, they’re awesome!). But they are pretty hard to find; not just being elusive in their habitats, but in having limited habitats. Even animals like kangaroos that are quite prolific in their own habitat only cover a small percentage of the planet! There are loads of them, and they’re big enough to spot from a distance, but I won’t be seeing any in the wild unless I take a long journey. Bacteria, on the other hand, are everywhere! And you get some really awesome ones of them too, especially ones nobody ever hears about. They aren’t as big as kangaroos [citation needed] but if you know how to find them you can see some fantastic ones!

Video: Trip to the zoo! Mini documentary, sort of

I love animals. All of them. Every single one. And because of this, I've always absolutely adored going to the zoo! I know some zoos get a bad rep but I find the best ones are those that are more animal focused than visitor focused; looking after the animals is the only goal, both at a 'personal' level within the zoo and in the wider global population via breeding programs and stuff like that. There's a small zoo near Aberystwyth that takes in rescued animals, and it's one of my favourite places to go!

They have a huge range of animals from marmosets to lions, all sorts of fun talks and feeds, and it's just a lovely little zoo. (Link to their website!) A few weeks ago I took a trip there with some friends, and took my camera. Here's the resulting video:

I tried to say interesting animal facts so it's not just pictures of cute animals, but there are plenty of those if that's what you're after! A baby marmoset, emu chicks, coati pups and a joey still in the pouch all feature! Lots of awesome fully grown animals too though.

The music on the bits where either the audio was weird or I wasn't really saying anything seems to be slightly out of sync with what I wanted it to be doing, but it's not bad!

I hope you enjoy it! I've got a few more fun day-trip videos that need editing, and I'm nearly ready to start doing science videos, so if you like what I'm doing feel free to subscribe!

Chilling on the beach; Student life Aber style

I went down to the beach yesterday evening, had fish and chips and just sat there with friends until after sunset. For me, this sums up all the best parts of being at University here in Aberystwyth; good friends, beautiful scenery, and a hugely relaxed yet fun atmosphere! Here's a bunch of photos I took:

The last one's looking out the window through some scaffolding that's up at the moment, but it was too good a view to not capture!

Friendly fungi: trip to the Penderyn distillery (and brewery)

I'm late posting this (and it'll be short) as I've been out today: we took my dad to a whisky distillery as another birthday treat! They had a brewery on site so the microbiologist in me was excited!

Breweries use yeast (saccharomyces cerevisiae) to create the alcohol. They do this by feeding them a sugar source, in this case barley grist, and taking away all the oxygen. This makes the yeast stop using the oxygen for respiration so in order to still get energy it ferments the sugars to ethanol, which gives the drinks their alcohol levels. Ethanol does eventually kill the yeast if there's too much of it, which is why you can't get much higher than fifteen or so percent without distilling it!
We saw that process too, with the big fractionation columns, then got to try some of the end product (and even some of the raw 92% stuff!) Which was delicious!
It was a fantastic day, and for me was great to see some friendly microbes being put to good use! Thanks, Penderyn!

Chill-out weekend; rockpooling!

I've been really ill for way too long now, but I'm coming out of it! (Fingers crossed) I'm still taking it easy though. Yesterday was really nice out, if a little hazy, so we went for a walk along the beach. The tide was still quite far out so a lot of the rocky reefs were exposed, full of little rock-pools. It was slippery underfoot, with high risk of dipping a foot into the freezing sea (or falling and hitting jagged rocks I guess) but it was worth it; I spotted a spot of pinkish-cream among the black rocks and dark seaweed. I made my way over to it, knelt down to get a closer look and saw that it was a limpet detached from its rock, with the fleshy part facing upwards. It was dead, but the whole Lion King-style circle of life thing was happening right before me; two black spiralled shells (either sea-snails or some sort of whelk, or so I thought) were moving in to feed on the limpet's body. I thought this was cool, so stayed to watch. But to my surprise, little legs emerged from one of the shells, followed by clawed arms and two tiny eye-stalks! It was a little Hermit Crab!

The dead limpet (blue) and the hermit crab (purple). I couldn't tell if the shell on the dead limpet was another crab or just a sea snail. There were other hermit crabs nearby though so I'm thinking a crab.

I was really excited by this development, so I called the others over to have a look (and lend me a phone to take pictures!). The water was freezing but I scooped him up to have a closer look for a second or two. As I expected, he went full-defensive mode and retreated inside his borrowed shell, waving his cute little claws menacingly at me through the opening. I didn't want to disturb him too much though so I popped him back down right where I got him from. He spent thirty seconds or so peering up at me suspiciously, but when he was satisfied that I wouldn't pick him up again he went straight back to chomping limpet.

"Put me down, mammal! I've got a busy day ahead!"

The tide was slowly making its way towards us so we went back up onto the promenade, but it was great to see nature happening right on my doorstep! I love how pretty much anywhere you look in the world, you will find little ecosystems full of fascinating organisms!

The Night Sky on the Epynt

I'm visiting my folks for the weekend, and took advantage of the weirdly non-cloudy weather tonight to drive off into the middle of Wales to a scenic overlook on the edge of The Epynt, a massive MoD training place (we mere civvies are allowed on the footpaths and roads around the edge) with no streetlights anywhere. It was really dark, and kind of a spooky drive with sheep-eyes reflecting the headlights from the bushes and the odd band of soldiers on exercise or whatever looming out of the darkness, but good grief it was more than worth it. There was no moon, only a few distant lights on in various farmhouses, and the smallest amount of cloud cover Wales has ever seen. Conditions were absolutely perfect for stargazing.

For Valentine's day I was given a really cool little book giving a month-by-month guide to the stars and planets and stuff. The only problem was, the visibility was so good that it was hard to see the regular constellations among all the little background-stars normally invisible behind all the light pollution! We could make out a whole load of different ones though, Leo, Orion, Canis Major, the Pleiades, and The big shiny Jupiter! (To name but a few! Seriously, there were all the stars, it was breathtaking)

My girlfriend said "I thought I'd seen the stars before. I hadn't!" I don't think it could be said more perfectly.

Go see it, find some remote dark spot, wrap up warm (warmer than I  did, I still can't really feel my feet) and sit out there soaking it all in. All we did was drive for a bit then stand by the car looking at the sky, but it was definitely one of the best things I've ever done. I'll definitely be doing it again soon!

No, I don't have a picture, my camera wasn't charged and my phone wouldn't have come close to doing it justice. I don't think any picture can. Go see it. Go on. Off you go.

Field Trip: Red Kite feeding site

I went out to the local Red Kite feeding station today. As you can see, there were hundreds of them! Red Kites are some of my favourite birds, it's always great to see them flying overhead. From a distance it's hard to tell them apart from other birds of prey like Buzzards, but if you look at their tails then you'll see a lovely forked tail on a Kite. They were once almost hunted to extinction in the UK but programs like the one I went to today have helped them recover, to the point that now they are a pretty common site in Wales (and elsewhere in the UK too). They're normally pretty solitary animals, characteristically of a raptor, but the daily feeds at Bwlch Nant Yr Arian bring unusually large flocks together. I've been a few times before but today's was by far the largest group I've seen yet; it was really impressive!

They're being fed raw meat, supplied by local butchers. Red Kites are happy eating carrion so are often seen flying over roads looking for roadkill. Crows, too, feed on dead meat and it is quite common to see a few crows trying to chase a Kite out of their territory. Today though, the crows were outnumbered by far! They can still be heard pretty clearly in the video (the loud cawing) but the piercing cry of the Kites can be heard too.

I always find it fascinating how they rarely seem to flap their wings while circling; they use thermal currents, and rises of air created by the mountains to stay flying without using any real effort. They circle above the feeding area, waiting for someone to be brave enough to swoop down to get some meat. They're big, powerful and (here) in large numbers but they're still very timid. Once one of them moves to get food they all follow suit, taking advantage of the classic 'safety in numbers' strategy often seen throughout the natural world.