January 24, 2016 at 02:58AM

Today I Learned: 1) Chickadees are pretty crazy little metabolic machines. I mean, I knew that songbirds tend to be super-energetic and eat a lot to survive, but today I learned a few numbers to put it in perspective. To give you an idea of what a chickadee has to do to survive the winter, chickadees eat seeds to put on a visible layer of fat *every day* amounting to about 10% of their body weight, just about all of which is burned overnight to stay alive. 2) Apparently I should be reading the Galactic Center books by Gregory Benford. Can anybody confirm or deny? Also, I'm quite sure I've heard of Benford before in some other context -- where might I have seen him? 3) Bowhead whales are thought to live to be over 200 years old. How, you might ask, could we possibly know this? It's not like anyone's been tracking individual whales for 200 years, and they don't have anything like tree rings that you can tell age from. Turns out we know (or at least very strongly suspect) the longevity of bowhead whales because a specimen was found recently with a 200-year-old crossbow bolt stuck deep in its muscles.