Science questions for kids | Do animals suffer from memory disorders?

Linnea Kärki, 11

People and other animals suffer very similar afflictions. Probably, other animals also have memory disorders.

However, animals living in the wild do not usually experience senile dementia because they do not live long enough. On the other hand, the memory disease that strikes in youth brings the animal very quickly into the mouth of a predator.

Signs of aging have indeed been widely observed in nature. They were found in 175 animal species, when 334 species were studied. However, the cognitive symptoms, i.e. those related to the brain’s information processing, were not so severe that one could talk about dementia.

Memory disorders are common in aging domestic animals. For example, even more than a third of dogs and cats over 11 years old suffer from memory and learning disorders. Their brain image is very similar to that of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Memory disorders in domestic animals manifest as various behavioral changes, anxiety, confusion, and even aggression and forgetting learned skills. The diagnosis is often disturbed by other symptoms such as deafness, diabetes or osteoarthritis.

Jussi Viitala

nonfiction writer, biology researcher

What is the oldest thing in the world?

Noel Fernando, 12

Question is challenging because it can refer to a great many things.

The Earth and the entire universe consist of matter and energy, both of which have existed for more than 13 billion years since the universe’s Big Bang.

It is difficult to define the age of energy, because it does not disappear, but changes constantly. Matter consists of atoms from which hydrogen atoms were already created in the Big Bang.

For example, the hydrogen atom in a raindrop is as old as the universe, but the drop is perhaps only minutes old.

If the question refers to substances formed by atoms, such as planets, rocks, animals or, for example, raindrops, the oldest things are located in space.

It is known that the oldest material in our Solar System is found in meteorites. Meteorites were formed when the Solar System and Earth were born about 4,500 million years ago.

Tiny diamonds and other stardust crystals older than the Solar System have been preserved inside some meteorites!

On Earth, very old substances consisting of atoms are rare, because our planet is very alive. Its surface and life changes and renews itself all the time.

The oldest atomic substance on our planet has been found in Australia. A microscopically small zircon crystal has been preserved inside one of the stones, whose nucleus was born inside a volcano about 4,400 million years ago, when the earth was newborn and life did not even exist yet.

Arto Luttinen

Superintendent of Geology

Central Museum of Natural Sciences

Why are watches mostly round?

Edvin Koivisto, 5

Clocks the minute hand became popular at the end of the 17th century and the seconds hand in the middle of the 18th century. Even then, hands were generally attached to the central axis of watch mechanisms.

As the hands moved as the clock ticked, their tips drew a circle. It was easy to put times on that circle at regular intervals.

As technology developed and mechanisms became smaller, the design of watches began to focus more and more around the dial.

They started making a lot of other clocks other than large and angular clocks to put in cabinets and cases. The first pocket watches appeared already at the beginning of the 16th century.

Since then, the round dial has become such an established way of telling the time that many clocks do not have numbers at all, but the time can only be understood by the position of the hands. Although not all new watches have hands at all, they are often still round.

Round is a practical shape, the appearance of which we have become accustomed over time. A square watch can break more easily when it hits something, and a round one might be more comfortable to wear on the wrist, for example.

Rami Laitinen

Museum master and watchmaker

Finnish watch and jewelry museum Kruunu

How do pearl boats get rid of poop when their anus is inside the shell?

Veli-Pekka Lampinen, 8

Pearl boats look ancient in structure and essence, but their body functions very appropriately.

Things related to pooping have also been honed to work over hundreds of millions of years. Although the pearl boat’s anus is located quite deep under the protection of its hull and hull, it does not cause problems.

Beneath the hard shell, the pearl boat’s soft body is surrounded by a pouch-like mantle typical of octopuses, inside which there is a mantle cavity filled with seawater.

When Helmivene makes a pumping and rocking movement with its muscles, for example when swimming, seawater flows in the mantle cavity. Then the seawater rinses and oxidizes the gills located inside the cavity. The water exits through the exhalation pipe, i.e. the siphon, located under the head.

The pearl boat’s anus is right next to the gills, so it poops inside its mantle cavity.

However, the pearl boat is able to momentarily increase the flow of water with its muscles and effectively get the poo out through the siphon – so it’s like flushing the toilet. It can turn the cone-like end of the siphon quite skillfully in the direction it wants.

Markus Dernjatin

marine and environmental biologist

Send the question, the questioner’s full name and age to [email protected]. The column is edited by Touko Kauppinen and Juha Merimaa.