I make abstract artwork inspired by diatoms, microbial life, and also ancient stories! This is so great to see again, I'm so excited to have the Brain Scoop back.
Fortunately Im in a pretty good mental health state right now, But a few years ago I wasnt, and I really found Emily on The Brain Scoop a real solid source of... not motivation, but reminding me that enthusiasm does exist, even if you dont feel it right now. I feel like listening to James talk about his discovery's through a microscope would be quite an effective balm for apathy. I think the lad might be a little bit passionate about his critters, and why wouldnt you be? especially someone who, in the right mindset will happily spend hours on the end of a telescope, camera, radio transceiver, because there are for sure some interesting things if you look hard enough. Love It. Thank you Emily! when my budget allows for Patreons again, Your on the top of the list.
That frozen pee illustration showed up on Objectivity just a couple of weeks ago. Brady Haran's cameraman was given The White Gloves of Destiny and pulled that card! What a coinkydink.
while i was watching i was like... oh man i wish i had a microscope and i... I COULD?! it's wild to think we've come so far that the world of tiny organisms is just a single impulsive internet purchase away. i love you tardigrade!!
You can buy microscope sets from Journey to the Microcosmos (the other channel they mention that James shoots footage for), complete with slides, filters, and everything to record the footage with your phone.
I would Love to see some cross over or collab with you and Baumgartner Restoration. Every time Julian said "Rabbit skin glue" I missed you... unintentional rhyme 😂
@@thebrainscoopAs someone who hasn't seen all of these videos, I'm enjoying them! .... but I also just upped my Patreon tier to give you a bigger budget just in case 😂
I just need to tell you: Emily, you’re so badass! I love to be educated by your videos and even though I don’t work in a biology related field (I’m a musician lol), I have learned so much with you throughout the years. Thank you for this wonderful content!
I started following this channel when I was in high-school and it was integral to my love of science. Now Im in grad school getting my PhD and am so glad this channel is back!
I was wondering if Tardigrades has genders, so I googled it... and they do, males and females. But they don't need a partner to reproduce, they can reproduce entirely on their own. My question is, if organisms can reproduce without the need of a partner, why bother having gender pairs? What is the eveolutionary benefit of this? Or is google lying to me, which wouldn't be the first time, lol.
Sexual reproduction has the benefit of increased genetic diversity, which can help a species develop new features, improve its ability to survive different conditions, etc. Being able to reproduce asexually can be good because hey no need to find a partner, but it doesn't create the same kinds of recombinations that sexual reproduction can.
To add to what the other comments have said, sexual reproduction also allows the re-arrangement of chromosomes. During meiosis, chromosome pairs merge and swap sections with each other. This is important because otherwise all the different allele variations of genes on each chromosome would be permanently tied to each other. For example, let's say we look at a plant's chromosome 3. On one of the two copies of that chromosome, there's a gene allele that gives better drought resistance but on that same chromosome, there's a gene allele that makes it more disease-prone. On the other copy of the chromosome, both alleles are the 'normal' ones so there's no drought resistance but also no disease weakness. You randomly get a single copy of each chromosome from each parent. If there were no meiosis the offspring plant would either get drought resistance paired with disease sensitivity or just the 'normal' chromosome 3 and there would be no way of just getting the good mutation without also getting the bad one. Meiotic recombination swaps chunks of the same chromosomes with each other so there's a small possibility that the offspring can get a re-arranged chromosome 3 that has the drought resistance allele but no disease sensitivity allele. Basically, it massively increases the amount of genetic diversity possible and allows for good and bad mutations to be separated from each other. This is on top of the process of getting half your DNA from one organism and half from the other one. All of these things are done to maximize the remixing and diversity of an organism's genes to maximize survival potential. Some creatures that live in areas where there are few mating opportunities or on hostile environments sometimes do both sexual and asexual reproduction as a way to cope with those conditions. However, if the species becomes dependent on asexual reproduction, it's often on the fast track to extinction because of the loss of genetic diversity.
Happy new year to you as well!! You hurt the Loch Ness Tardigrade you big meanie!! You should send the poor thing to me I will give thing a loving and safe home....actually don't. If my cat gets a hold of it, it won't be long for this world. My 1 eyed manatee stuffie will attest to that.
I think Diatom art would be great in my daughter's nursery. Colorful, geometric, and a great learning opportunity when she is older. I am enjoying every minute with her and am looking forward to the day when she is ready to use our family microscope.
We need more professionals and semi-professional amateurs and plain old amateurs studying microscopic life. Like the ocean, we know so little. The gaps are even larger for fungi in understudy ecosystems, likely tens of thousands of undiscovered species in those environments. They study soil fungi by just separating DNA out of the "dirt" and using Expert Systems/AI and CRISPR to sort out the different species, most completely unknown.
Awesome episode. Microscopes are absolutely amazing inventions. I got a little hand held one like you showed when I was a child. I spent so much time with that thing outside. I still have it and now I want to break it out again. ❤❤❤
Okay, so... Do things that small have brains? Does a water bear have a brain? If not, how do they move around? What is powering or driving their movement and need to eat and reproduce?
This is coming from a place of genuine curiosity and puzzlement. Why did you officially relaunch Brain Scoop before you had any new content for Brain Scoop? On a personal level, this period of reruns is feeling really weird to me and like Brain Scoop isn’t actually back. The longer this period goes on the more it begins to feel like the Brain Scoop relaunch is *only* a way to re-post content from your other projects under the more recognizable Brain Scoop “brand”. I’m not saying the re-posts are bad, because obviously this will expose more people to this content, but *only* having other-project re-posts since the relaunch just feels weird and kind of disingenuous to the concept of a relaunch. I don’t mean this in a down-putting manner. I’m just putting my emotions/thoughts out there in an, I hope, constructive way. You totally could have just been excited to announce Brain Scoop was back and are rushedly working on new things, and are trying to get the algorithm prepped with regular uploads - oh how we hate the almighty algorithm game.
