Sea Lions v. The Blob

The waters off the coast of Alaska are supposed to be cold, especially in winter. Yet, in the autumn of 2013, they cooled far less than they normally would. A great mass of warm water, 2,000 km (1,250 miles) across and around 100 metres (330 feet) deep, remained trapped in the North Pacific. Nicknamed 'The Blob', this was caused by the weather patterns over the region remaining stuck in a high-pressure mode, preventing the warm water from dissipating with the winds as it should do. With temperatures stuck at up to 4°C (7°F) warmer than normal, the high pressure did not dissipate for eight months.

When it did, tropical winds pushed the warm water up against the American coast, from southern Alaska to southern Mexico, where it basically sat until El Niño kicked off in 2015... and that kept things unusually warm for another year. Inland, this disrupted weather systems leading, among other things, to frequent thunderstorms that sparked what was (at the time) the worst wildfire season in California's history.

A Side Order of Flies

Most species of bat eat insects, whether caught on the wing or plucked from leaves or other surfaces. But this is by no means true of all species, with the second most common diet - perhaps representing around a quarter of known species - being one based on fruit. Indeed, fruit-eating had evolved more than once among bats, with the giant fruit bats of the Old World not being especially close relatives of the much smaller ones found in the Americas.

While a great many herbivorous and omnivorous mammals include fruit as part of their diet, one estimate is that only around 10% of mammalian species rely on it as their primary source of food - most of them bats or primates. While that's not exactly a tiny proportion, given the number of mammalian herbivores in general, it isn't a huge one either. This, it has been suggested, is because, while fruit are great as a source of calories, they tend not to be high in protein, and a healthy animal needs a supply of both.

In the case of humans, eating plenty of fruit is well known to be a good thing, but trying to eat nothing but fruit for any extended period of time is likely to be a problem. Not only are you likely to suffer from lack of protein in your diet, but you will also suffer deficiencies in certain minerals and vitamins. That one of the main vitamins you would be short of is vitamin D, which promotes calcium absorption in the gut, is a particular problem, bearing in mind that there isn't much calcium in fruit to start with. For this reason, fruit-only diets can be a real problem for children, who need that calcium to grow their bones.