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W von Papineäu
at Wed Sep 17 18:50:24 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by W von Papineäu ]
GLOBE AND MAIL (Toronto, Ontario) 15 September 03 Snakes in space
Halifax (CP): A space scientist wants students to help him round up snakes for an experiment to find out what the limbless reptiles do in the absence of gravity.
"This is going to be a fun project," said Richard Wassersug, an anatomy and neurobiology professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
Mr. Wassersug has already sent several experiments into space on NASA's shuttles, but this unique project will involve a plane that belongs to the National Research Council.
The aircraft, called a Falcon, will fly in a parabolic arc producing weightlessness while the snakes are onboard.
"They get 20 or 30 seconds of weightlessness for every arc," he explained.
The Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13 used parabolic flights to film zero-gravity scenes, said Nicole Buckley, a scientist with the Canadian Space Agency.
"It's the vomit comet," Ms. Buckley said.
Mr. Wassersug has already examined what some snakes do when the earth's pull disappears.
"Compared to all the other animals I've looked at, they've had the weirdest reaction," he said.
"So what I've suggested to the students . . . is that we look at a variety of other snake-like animals."
When he describes snake behaviour in zero-gravity as weird, Mr. Wassersug isn't kidding.
In previous experiments, one type of snake went, well, snaky as it floated in free fall.
"Its head went by a loop of its body and it attacked itself," he said.
Mr. Wassersug has a simple theory to explain this behaviour.
On parabolic flights, people often don't know where their own limbs are because they're used to the weight of gravity pulling on the joints telling them what way is down.
"One can easily imagine how a snake might, on losing the pressure of the ground, not recognize part of its own body as itself," he said.
"That's a hypothesis and we want to test it with a bunch more animals."
As many as six students will help round up snakes from various sources and set up video cameras to capture their reactions to zero-gravity.
Ms. Buckley said the experiment will undergo an animal review to ensure placing the snakes in zero-gravity isn't cruel.
"It's not the greatest thing that's happened to the snake, but it's certainly by no stretch of the imagination the worst thing," she said.
Snakes in space
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 ON Press: Snakes in space - W von Papineäu, Wed Sep 17 18:50:24 2003
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