The Week Junior - UK (2022-06-11)

10

Animals and the environment

Scientists in the US have discovered

that the sounds around a coral reef can

reveal its overall health. The team

recorded the underwater sounds from

reefs over several months, then used

computers to identify pattens within

them. Unhealthy reefs tended to

produce different sounds because they

get overwhelmed with seaweeds that

release small bubbles of air that make

high-pitched pops.

Dolphins on a reef

in the Red Sea.

Are dolphins using medicine?

J

ust like humans, dolphins can suffer from skin

irritations and disease – a problem that seems to

be getting worse as oceans get warmer. Fortunately,

they’ve found their own way of treating them

and new research suggests it could

amount to a form of medicine.

Angela Ziltener of Switzerland’s

University of Zurich leads a team

studying a group of 360 bottlenose

dolphins that live in the Red Sea

off the east coast of Egypt. The

team noticed that dolphins would

often queue up to rub themselves

on various corals. This could have

just been a way of soothing irritated skin

but Ziltener began to wonder if there was more to it.

The dolphins seemed to prefer certain coral species

and to single out specific corals for rubbing particular

parts of their body. The animals also

rubbed in ways that encouraged the

coral polyps (the small tentacled

animals that live inside the

protective skeleton) to produce

a slimy protective liquid

called mucus. Some dolphins

even held their mouths open

near the polyps, apparently to

swallow the mucus.

Dr Gertrud Morlock, a chemist

from Justus Liebig University at

Giessen in Germany, looked at mucus from the

dolphins’ favourite corals and found at least 17

chemicals called metabolites, which can affect other

living things. “Such metabolites are helpful if you

have an infection,” she explained to The Guardian

newspaper. “If the dolphins have a skin infection,

these could have something like a healing property.”

So are the dolphins using the coral as medicine?

Certainly these smart animals are known to make use

of their environment but other dolphin specialists say

more questions need to be answered. For instance,

whether dolphins that rub against the coral actually

have fewer skin diseases and better health, and

whether medicinal mucus explains why the dolphins

prefer to rub on some corals but not others.

Coral clicks show reef health

Healthy reefs are

crowded with life.

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Foxglove spires at their finest

The beautiful pink, purple and white

spires of foxgloves are a familiar

summer sight across the UK. They flourish at the

edges of woods, in hedgerows and on

rugged heathlands, as well as in

gardens. Flower spires up to

two metres tall – each packed

with dozens of tube-shaped

flowers – rise from a rosette of

oval, hairy leaves at the base.

Bees are guided to their nectar and pollen by dark

spots on each flower’s lower lip but humans are

wise to keep a respectful distance; both the

flowers and the leaves contain toxic

chemicals that can be deadly if

consumed. Doctors, however,

have used small, precise doses

of these chemicals in medicines

for centuries, especially to treat

heart problems.

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Spectacular
spires.
The Week Junior • 11 June 2022
A bottlenose dolphin.
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