Tag: Mike Fainzilber

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A toxic relationship by Mike Fainzilber

love hurts
the semen
and the venom

by Mike Fainzilber

Blue ringed octopi are small (they can fit in the palm of your hand), beautiful and extremely deadly – a venomous bite from the octopus nestled in your hand can kill you. Female octopi are larger than the males and will readily devour their smaller male partners during mating. The male solves this problem by biting into the female’s aorta,  injecting a large dose of venom that paralyzes the female for long enough for the male to complete mating and escape (1, 2).

A previously published SciKu by Debbie Lee describes application of a similar principle in insect biocontrol (3).

Further reading

(1) ‘Blue-lined octopus Hapalochlaena fasciata males envenomate females to facilitate copulation’, 2025, Chung, W., et al., Current Biology, available: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(25)00057-0

(2) ‘These octopuses inject their lovers with one of the world’s deadliest toxins’, 2025, Wilcox, C., ScienceAdviser, available: https://www.science.org/content/article/these-octopuses-inject-their-lovers-one-world-s-deadliest-toxins

(3) ‘Toxic Male’, 2025, Lee, D., The Sciku Project, available: https://thescikuproject.com/2025/02/27/toxic-male/

Author bio:

Mike Fainzilber’s day job is a biologist. He began writing haiku and senryu during the pandemic, and this side effect of COVID-19 has not worn off yet. Editors in his two spheres of activity have been known to suggest that he should best restrict his efforts to the other sphere. Find out more about Mike’s research via his lab’s website and connect with him on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/mfainzilber.bsky.social .

Read more sciku by Mike here.

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…no time to dream by Mike Fainzilber

basic training
the sleepless nights
of a dolphin mother

by Mike Fainzilber

This haiku deals with unique modes of sleep and sleep deprivation and relates to a study that showed that newborn dolphins and their mothers do not sleep at all for the first month of the newborn’s life.

The newborns require constant support and vigilance during this period, otherwise they may sink in the water and drown, hence no sleep at all for the dolphin mother! Human mothers with offspring in basic training in the military can probably relate to this…

This haiku is the second in a pair of poems on unique modes of sleep and sleep deprivation, the first being inspired by nesting penguins: ‘To sleep…’

Further reading:

‘Continuous activity in cetaceans after birth’, 2005, Lyamin, O., Pryaslova, J., Lance, V. & Siegel, J., Nature, available: https://doi.org/10.1038/4351177a

‘Newborn dolphins go a month without sleep’, 2005, Coghlan, A., New Scientist, available: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7606-newborn-dolphins-go-a-month-without-sleep/

Author bio:

Mike Fainzilber’s day job is a biologist. He began writing haiku and senryu during the pandemic, and this side effect of COVID-19 has not worn off yet. Editors in his two spheres of activity have been known to suggest that he should best restrict his efforts to the other sphere. Find out more about Mike’s research via his lab’s website and connect with him on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/mfainzilber.bsky.social .

Read more sciku by Mike here.

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To sleep… by Mike Fainzilber

micro-napping
the penguin
and the soldier

by Mike Fainzilber

This haiku deals with unique modes of sleep and sleep deprivation and relates to a study on nesting penguins in the wild, where the authors used remote monitoring techniques to determine sleep patterns. They found that wild chinstrap penguins sleep over 10,000 times a day, for an average of 4 seconds each time – totaling ~11 hours sleep per 24. This is an extreme case of microsleeps, interspersed by brief awake periods, and may help the penguins to guard their eggs during breeding season in the penguin colony. The parallels with the fitful short sleeps of a human soldier are highlighted in the haiku.

This haiku is the first in a pair of poems on unique modes of sleep and sleep deprivation, the second being inspired by dolphin mothers: ‘…no time to dream’.

Further reading:

‘Nesting chinstrap penguins accrue large quantities of sleep through seconds-long microsleeps’, 2023, Libourel, P-A., et al., Science, available: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adh0771

‘Penguins snatch seconds-long microsleeps’, 2023, Harding, C.D. & Vyazovskiy, V.V., Science, available: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adl2398

Author bio:

Mike Fainzilber’s day job is a biologist. He began writing haiku and senryu during the pandemic, and this side effect of COVID-19 has not worn off yet. Editors in his two spheres of activity have been known to suggest that he should best restrict his efforts to the other sphere. Find out more about Mike’s research via his lab’s website and connect with him on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/mfainzilber.bsky.social .

Read more sciku by Mike here.

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The Blood and the Run by Mike Fainzilber

flying dracula
bleeding to run
running to bleed

by Mike Fainzilber

This is a haiku about the stuff of nightmares – vampire bats. As we know, vampire bats feed on blood, and blood is low in carbohydrates and lipids that are the typical fuel for activities that require high energy. Flight is highly costly in energy, so how can it be fueled by blood alone? Certain blood-sucking insects can fuel their flight by direct metabolism of amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) in their blood meals, but this metabolic specialization was known only in very few insect species.

A team of biologists traveled from the University of Toronto to Belize to find out if vampire bats can do the same. The researchers took advantage of the fact that vampire bats are exceptionally good runners, and they use this to approach their prey along the ground. Bats were fed cow blood with labeled amino acids and the researchers then placed them on treadmills, monitoring tracer release in the bat’s breath as they ran on the treadmill.

The experiments clearly showed that vampire bats use amino acids as their main fuel source while running. Since running is a major hunting mode for this species, they literally bleed prey to run, and run to bleed…

Further reading:

‘Vampire bats rapidly fuel running with essential or non-essential amino acids from a blood meal’, 2024, Rossi, G.S. & Welch, K.C., Biology Letters, available: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0453

‘How blood-sucking vampire bats get their energy’, 2024, The Economist, available: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/11/06/how-blood-sucking-vampire-bats-get-their-energy

Author bio:

Mike Fainzilber’s day job is a biologist. He began writing haiku and senryu during the pandemic, and this side effect of COVID-19 has not worn off yet. Editors in his two spheres of activity have been known to suggest that he should best restrict his efforts to the other sphere. Find out more about Mike’s research via his lab’s website and connect with him on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/mfainzilber.bsky.social

Read more sciku by Mike here.

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In the Deep by Mike Fainzilber

darkness in the deep
splitting the ocean
for a breath of fresh air

by Mike Fainzilber

This is a haiku about oxygen production without photosynthesis, in the deep darkness of the ocean floor. A team of geoscientists discovered locations on the deep seabed of the Pacific Ocean where oxygen levels increased over time in the completely dark environment, in contrast to the dogma that oxygen production in nature must be by light-fueled photosynthesis.

The seafloor in these locations were covered with polymetallic nodules, and lab analyses of such nodules revealed them as a source of oxygen production, and also showed that they have high surface electricity (voltage). The researchers suggest that seawater electrolysis (literally splitting seawater with electricity) by the nodules can generate oxygen on the seafloor. This oxygen may be critical to sustain life in the deepest darkest region of the ocean.

Further reading:

‘Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor‘, 2024, Sweetman, A.K., et al., Nature Geoscience. Available: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01480-8

‘Mystery oxygen source discovered on the sea floor — bewildering scientists‘, 2024, Castelvecchi, D., Nature. Available: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02393-7

Author bio:

Mike Fainzilber’s day job is a biologist. He began writing haiku and senryu during the pandemic, and this side effect of COVID-19 has not worn off yet. Editors in his two spheres of activity have been known to suggest that he should best restrict his efforts to the other sphere. Find out more about Mike’s research via his lab’s website and connect with him on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/mfainzilber.bsky.social .

Read more sciku by Mike here.

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Jellyfish by Mike Fainzilber

fifteen elephants
carefully balanced
on columns of fat

by Mike Fainzilber

Believe it or not, this is a haiku about jellyfish – specifically deep-sea jellyfish that live at depths where the water pressure is equivalent to that that would be applied by 15 African elephants piled up on the palm of the reader’s hand. When such jellyfish are brought to the water surface they literally vanish, melting into their surroundings.

Recent research has now shown that this is because the lipids (fat molecules) that make up the membranes of deep-sea jellyfish are specially adapted to form cylindrical structures (required for functional membranes) under extreme pressure. When pressures are reduced, these lipids change shape, causing membranes to curve and disrupt.

These findings are important for our understanding of how life is possible in the deep oceans and perhaps other high-pressure environments. Indeed, the researchers were able to take advantage of the new insights to engineer bacteria for survival under extreme pressures.

Further reading:

‘Homeocurvature adaptation of phospholipids to pressure in deep-sea invertebrates’, 2024, Winnikoff, J.R., et al., Science. Available: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adm7607

‘How jellyfish survive pressures that would crush you into oblivion’, 2024, Cummings, S., Science. Available: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zdvphja

Author bio:

Mike Fainzilber’s day job is a biologist. He began writing haiku and senryu during the pandemic, and this side effect of COVID-19 has not worn off yet. Editors in his two spheres of activity have been known to suggest that he should best restrict his efforts to the other sphere. Find out more about Mike’s research via his lab’s website and connect with him on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/mfainzilber.bsky.social .

Read more sciku by Mike here.

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The deepest shade by Mike Fainzilber

the deepest shade of cold
an ambush
for the light

by Mike Fainzilber

The James Webb Space Telescope takes images of the furthest (hence oldest) and faintest objects in the universe using infrared light. In order to do this without being blinded by infrared radiation from heat emitters (including its’ own components) it has detectors that must be hyper-cooled to temperatures of less than 7 degrees Kelvins (which is approximately -266 C or -447 F).

Further reading:

‘James Webb Space Telescope’, nasa.gov, available: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb

Author bio:

Mike Fainzilber’s day job is a biologist. He began writing haiku and senryu during the pandemic, and this side effect of COVID-19 has not worn off yet. Editors in his two spheres of activity have been known to suggest that he should best restrict his efforts to the other sphere. Find out more about Mike’s research via his lab’s website and connect with him on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/mfainzilber.bsky.social .

Read more sciku by Mike here.