When Do Fish Sleep? (23 page)
The paving of roadways hastened the time when horses, used to riding the range in the wild, were domesticated and forced to carry loads and pull heavy carts. These added burdens put strain on horses’ feet, so the Romans used straw pads as the first horseshoes.
Karen L. Glaske, executive secretary of the United Professional Horsemen’s Association, says that although evolution has bred out some of the toughness of horses’ feet, many can still live a barefoot life:
Shoes are not essential to a horse that is left to pasture or used only as an occasional trail mount. However, the stresses which horses’ feet endure when jumping, racing, showing, or driving make it necessary for the conscientious owner to shoe the animal. It is a protective measure.
Why
Are Tattoos Usually Blue (With an Occasional Touch of Red)?
Most tattoos are not blue. The pigment, made from carbon, is actually jet black. Since the pigment is lodged
underneath
the skin, tattoos appear blue because of the juxtaposition of black against the yellowish to brown skin of most Caucasians. Although red is the second most popular color, many other shades are readily available; in fact, most tattoo artists buy many different colorings, premade, from Du Pont.
We spoke to Spider Webb, perhaps the most famous tattooist in the United States and leader of the Tattoo Club of America, about the prevalence of black pigment in tattoos. Webb felt that most clients, once they decide to take the plunge, want to show off their tattoos: Black is by far the strongest and most visible color. Webb added that in the case of one client, albino guitarist Johnny Winter, a black tattoo does appear to be black and not blue.
Submitted by Venia Stanley of Albuquerque, New Mexico
Why
Is the Width of Standard Gauge Railroads Four Feet Eight-and-One-Half Inches?
When tramways were built in England to carry coal by cart or coach, the vehicles were built with wheels four feet eight-and-one-half inches apart. Legend has it that this was the same distance apart as Roman chariot wheels, but we doubt it for one important reason: There is a more logical explanation. Track gauges are determined by measuring from the
inside
of one rail to the
inside
of the other. However, the rails themselves occupied three-and-one-half inches of space. In other words, fifty-six-and-one-half inches was almost certainly derived by starting with a measurement of five feet and deducting the width of the rails themselves.
When steam railroads were later constructed in England, the tramway gauge was retained for the most part, and in 1840 Parliament made it official, decreeing four feet eight-and-one-half inches as the standard gauge in Great Britain.
If only the United States were as logical. The first railroad in America, in Massachusetts, featured locomotives from England, built for standard gauge tracks, so the U.S. started with the same track dimensions. But no one in the fledgling American rail industry seemed to consider that it might be nice to have an interlocking system of compatible railways.
As companies from different states started their own lines, anarchy ruled. The Mohawk & Hudson stretched the standard gauge only one half inch, but the Delaware & Hudson featured a six-foot behemoth. In the early and mid-nineteenth century, gauges ranged between a little more than three feet to more than six feet.
Faced with incompatible rolling stock, long delays were common, yet to be preferred to the numerous accidents that ensued when engineers tried to roll locomotives on gauges a few inches too wide at the usual breakneck speeds.
When Union Pacific was about to be built, Abraham Lincoln tried to fix five feet—then the most popular width in the South and California—as the standard gauge for the whole country. But the established railroads in the North and the East objected on financial grounds and managed to lobby to retain fifty-six-and-one-half inches as the standard.
According to railroad expert Alvin Harlow in “The Tangle of Gauges,”
In 1871 there were no fewer than twenty-three gages, ranging from 3 feet up to 6 feet on the railroads of the United States. Less than fifteen years later there were twenty-five; a considerable group of roads in Maine had been born only two feet wide, whilst a logging company in Oregon had built one that sprawled over 8 feet of ground.
The proliferation of gauges was caused not only by regional stubbornness but because no railroad company seemed willing to spring for the cost of converting its tracks. Finally, Illinois Central broke the logjam. In one wild, torchlit night, Illinois Central workers narrowed six hundred miles of track. Southern railroad companies, reluctant to adopt the Yankee standard, followed suit years later.
Even more difficult than relaying track was the task of refitting the rolling stock. Locomotives and cars were dragged into shops all along their routes. Harlow mentions that although the companies tried to return cars to their home lines for conversion, the logistics were a nightmare. Usually cars were converted wherever they were when the tracks were remodeled. Sufficient numbers of new workers had to be hired temporarily to have crews working twenty-four hours a day resetting locomotive truck wheels, removing the tires from truck wheels, and resetting them for the standard gauge.
A few gauges with oddball widths survived into the twentieth century, mostly in New England and the Pacific Northwest, but they were anomalies. The United States eventually rejected the “new and improved” and returned to the standard gauge of the English.
“Wouldn’t this configuration be easier for rinsing purposes?” asks our correspondent Pam Lebo. No doubt it would, but there are plenty of reasons why the plumbing industry is going to continue to make you and the makers of Woolite unhappy.
Now hard as it may be to believe, some people actually use the bathtub for bathing. These heathens would not appreciate having to sit on the drain (or for that matter, having the spigot clawing at their backs). John Laughton, of American Standard, raises another legitimate objection: A dripping faucet in Pam’s configuration would cause a stain on the whole length of the bathtub.
Your dream configuration would have other practical drawbacks. Peter J. Fetterer, of Kohler Company, explains why:
The bathtub drain is generally at the same location as the water supply because of the piping required for both. Drains and supplies run through buildings in plumbing chases, vertical spaces for pipes that move water from floor to floor. Drains are attached to vent pipes that run through the chases and vent to the outside of a structure. These chases use up living space and are kept to a minimum for economic reasons.
So must we resign ourselves to a lifetime of boring bathtubs? Not necessarily. Pam’s configuration might attract some who take only showers, but it will probably never be popular. However, American Standard has created a bathtub that presents interesting possibilities for extracurricular activities besides rinsing. Their avant garde bathtub places both the faucet and the drain halfway along the bath with, offers John Laughton, “a back slope at both ends so that two could bathe together in comfort and save water.” Save water. Sure, Mr. Laughton.
Submitted by Pam Lebo of Glen Burnie, Maryland
.
Do
Fish Sleep? If So, When Do Fish Sleep?
Our trusty
Webster’s New World Dictionary
defines sleep as “a natural, regularly recurring condition of rest for the body and mind, during which the
eyes are usually closed
and there is
little or no conscious thought or voluntary movement
.” Those strategically placed little weasel words we have italicized make it hard for us to give you a yes or no answer to this mystery. So as much as we want to present you with a tidy solution to our title Imponderable, we feel you deserve the hard truth.
Webster probably didn’t have fish in mind when he wrote this definition of “sleep.” First of all, except for elasmobranchs (fish with cartilaginous skeletons, such as sharks and rays), fish don’t have eyelids. So they can’t very well close them to sleep. No fish has opaque eyelids that block out vision, but some have a transparent membrane that protects their eyes from irritants.
Pelagic fish (who live in the open sea, as opposed to coasts), such as tuna, bluefish, and marlins,
never
stop swimming. Jane Fonda would be proud. Even coastal fish, who catch a wink or two, do not fall asleep in the same way humans do. Gerry Carr, director of Species Research for the International Game Fish Association, wrote us about some of the ingenious ways that fish try to catch a few winks, even if forty winks are an elusive dream:
Some reef fishes simply become inactive and hover around like they’re sleeping, but they are still acutely aware of danger approaching. Others, like some parrot fishes and wrasses, exude a mucus membrane at night that completely covers their body as though they’ve been placed in baggies. They wedge themselves into a crevice in the reef, bag themselves, and remain there, semicomatose, through the night. Their eyes remain open, but a scuba diver can approach them and, if careful, even pick them up at night, as I have done. A sudden flurry of movement, though, will send them scurrying. They are not totally unaware of danger.
In many ways, fish sleep the same way we plod through our everyday lives when we are awake. Our eyes are open but we choose, unconsciously, not to register in our brains most of the sensory data we see. A fish sleeping is in a state similar to the poor fish depicted watching the slide show in Kassie Schwan’s illustration. We stare at the screen with our eyes open, but our minds turn to mush. If a crazed assassin burst into the room, we could rouse ourselves to attention, but if someone asked us to describe what fabulous tourist attraction we were watching, we couldn’t say whether it was Stonehenge or the Blarney Stone.
If you accept that a fish’s blanking out is sleeping, then the answer to the second part of the mystery is that fish sleep at night, presumably because of the darkness. Anyone with an aquarium can see that fish can float effortlessly while sleeping. They exude grace—which is more than we can say for how most humans look when they are sleeping.
Submitted by Karole Rathouz of Mehlville, Missouri. Thanks also to Cindy and Sandor Keri of Woodstock, Georgia; and Heather Bowser of Tulsa, Oklahoma
.
Why
Do We Seem to Feel Worse at Night When We Have a Cold?
For the same reason that your feet swell up and hurt after a long day standing up. To quote Dr. Ernst Zander, of Winthrop Consumer Products:
Nasal obstruction, produced by a great variety of conditions, usually seems worse to a patient when he is lying down. This is because tissue fluids and blood tend to pool in the head more when he is recumbent than when he is standing.
Of course, one is generally more likely to feel tired and worn out at night. But the doctors who
Imponderables
consulted indicated that reclining for long periods of time will worsen symptoms—one reason why often we feel lousy despite the “luxury” of being able to lie in bed all day long when we are sick.
