I woke up this morning wanting to know whether insects have hearts. I’m a bit of a freak, aren’t I? Do other people wake up wanting to know stuff, or do they just want a cup of tea and a wee? Yes, but not necessarily in that order I guess.
I annoy my husband tremendously because I go from sound asleep to wide awake, itching to get up and engage with knowledge, faster than a Ferrari can drive to our village Tesco. I hate Tesco, but that’s a whole other blog.
Thank heavens for Google then. No sooner had I dried off after my shower, and while my poor husband was still lying in bed with a book and a cup of tea and the dogs for company, I had managed to uncover a wealth of fascinating facts that I never knew before.
My heart’s this big!
Insects DO have hearts! Who knew? In fact, they sometimes have more than one. Apparently, some insects have an open circulatory system meaning that their blood is just sloshing around in their little bodies and not contained in blood vessels, which is where we and other vertebrates cunningly keep ours. The heart in an insect can often be a simple and long muscular tube that runs the length of the body. Those insects that do have several hearts locate the extra ones in bits that their major heart cannot reach (Heineken hearts anybody?), so for example, wings and antennae and that sort of critterly thing. Ewww.
So that led me to look at other heart facts. Well, you know how it is, Google, cup of tea, Sunday morning …. I couldn’t resist.
See the pretty girl in that mirror there? Who can that attractive girl be?
The animal with the largest heart proportionally is the Humming Bird. Its heart is 2% of the mass of its body. Wow! It needs to have a large heart so that it can beat as fast as it does and to keep the oxygen pumping so that it can flap its wings between 12 and 80 times per second. I can’t do anything 12 times per second. *jealous* It also has the fastest metabolism of any creature. So they are stunningly beautiful, slim and can eat what they want! Little bastards!
Several creatures with more than one heart include *gulps* the octopus, which has three hearts for the same reason that an insect needs more than one heart, so that the blood can reach the tentacles. I have a real aversion to octopi I’m afraid. They make my back go to jelly. Argh! Furry ones are cute, cartoon ones are sweet; the real thing though… *turns green and groans*
Just beautiful!
Earthworms seem to either have five hearts or five pairs of hearts. Google wasn’t clear on this and I couldn’t be bothered to delve much deeper than that so I apologise for my poor research! These hearts are spread out through the segments.
The land animal with the largest heart is the giraffe. That has to be the case doesn’t it? Giraffes are just so ridiculously gorgeous. They have really huge soft brown eyes and fabulous eyelashes. They eat leaves and don’t kill things. It makes sense that they have big hearts.
The animal with the slowest heart beat appears to be the crocodile that has a resting bpm of 1 at a temperature of 10 degrees Celsius (which, trust me on this, is the coldest a crocodile ever wants to be).
A Whale Tale
The animal with the biggest heart is, of course, the Blue Whale. While its heart is only 0.5% of its total mass, it still manages to be the size of a Volkswagen Beetle anyway, and can weigh anything from 600kg to a ton, which is what you would expect from a creature that is 108 ft. in length and weighs around 180 tonnes. The Blue Whale’s heart has a rate of 12-20 bpm, and while in 1911 it is estimated that Blue Whales numbered 250,000 or so, since then they have been hunted virtually to extinction. A 2002 study showed there were only 12,000 Blue Whales maximum but that number seems to have grown again to current estimates of approximately 25,000 or a tenth of their population a century ago. Japan, Norway and Iceland still hunt them and approximately 20 are killed every day.
Whale Tale of Woe
So, it’s easy to figure out which animal has the coldest heart isn’t it? That would be the human.
This is a question that has been puzzling me this week. If there is a more repressed nation than the Americans I don’t know which it is. Their attitude to sex is a real puzzle to me. I don’t think they’ve moved on that much since the days when Hollywood insisted you had to have one foot on the floor if you were filming a bedroom scene. Doris Day was always filmed in pyjamas and even Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City only had sex with her bra on. Where’s the fun in that? What’s the point of sex if you have your bra on?
The earth might move if you get nekkid
I’m not suggesting I was desperate to see Sarah Jessica Parker’s boobs by any means. I just hate the false representation on an entirely normal act. The show screams SEX from every pore and orifice and yet gets all coy when anyone tries to get down and dirty.
I mention this because I have been completely perturbed this week when some of the writing I did for a US client, who shall remain nameless to spare their blushes (and boy they must have died of embarrassment) returned some writing to me for being too racy. The brief was to write an article about ‘scoring a date’ (their words) for an interview and link in with Valentine’s Day and lovers. In my proposal I sent some suggestions through and was really thrilled to be hired. Great job! A company I have a lot of respect for. Perfect. I love getting creative. Here’s a little clip of what I wrote.
The whole point of sending a covering letter with a resume is that it entices the hiring manager to look you up and down and appraise your attributes. The cover letter is the working-world version of the love letter. It needs to be easy on the eye so that your employer-to-be can register interest in the bumps and swells of your experience and the curves your career has taken. Their eye should be drawn inwards, to your resume, to further explore what you have to offer.
It stands out and gets the point across I think, about what the point of a covering letter actually is. That’s what they wanted, right? Wrong. Unfortunately I sent something through that was not even remotely to their taste. Oops. The article came back to me sanitised beyond my comprehension. The sort of bland, generic, well-written writing that causes nary a ripple of interest.
It was changed to this
Like a dating profile, your resume is a place to list your recent job experience, your likes or dislikes, or even certifications that make you enticing to a potential employer. It must be accurate, well-written, and organized. A cover letter is your opportunity to break free from the traditional resume; it is your opportunity to talk about why you are a great fit for a particular company, and to discuss your best attributes.
Keep it clean!
A pair of washed out grey knickers I feel. But what was interesting was that I instantly felt like a complete failure. Here was something I had loved putting together, I’d really crafted the words lovingly (passionately?) and they were being binned. So when I had recovered from my initial sense of being both gob smacked and disappointed I felt guilty for letting the client down and for misinterpreting the brief. To her credit, the woman that was dealing with me was lovely and quite generous but still… I guess I have to chalk this one up to experience. *hangs my head in shame*
I think maybe we British do this kind of smutty innuendo really well. I’m not a great Carry On fan and I absolutely loathed Benny Hill but we do sex better. It’s out in the open. We like a snigger and a chortle at double entendres. Maybe it’s us. Maybe we’re the crazy ones. We don’t take it seriously. It’s fun.
Anyway. *sigh* You’ll be pleased to know, dear reader, that my other writing work has gone well this week. I haven’t stopped! I haven’t made any money either, but I have had some really interesting gigs on. Besides the one above that I rally loved doing, I wrote an article on de-stressing, something I can’t seem do for toffee. My husband asked me this morning how long it had been since I had actually relaxed and we worked out it was 18 months ago when we spent three weeks camping in my beloved Devon. But I know the theory of how to de-stress, so that’s what I wrote about.
Ride Free
I’ve also written some tattoo articles which I loved doing the research for. I don’t have any tattoos myself. I don’t think they’d look great on my pale skin, but I very much enjoyed finding out about the meaning and symbolism of prison tattoos, biker tattoos and in memoriam tattoos. Great stuff.
Why would you NOT stop for this man? Guaranteed entertainment on tap!
Finally this week I wrote an article for a travel website which you can see here http://www.excitingworldtravels.com/thumbs-up-for-hitchhiking/ Again I really enjoyed writing this and I’m hoping to do some more writing for this website because I love travelling and I love writing so what could be better? This one is about hitchhiking. Given that we hardly do any in the UK, I was amazed how prevalent it is elsewhere, especially in Europe.
This is me keeping warm
Sadly it won’t go out with my by-line. Most of the writing I do is ghost writing. I wrote a short horror story that went to its new owner on Monday. It was probably the best short story I’ve ever written but I had to wave goodbye! *sob* It will be in my heart, and my nightmares probably, forever!
Hopefully I will be able to sell my own stuff with my own name on soon. Keep reading!
I woke up this morning wanting to know whether insects have hearts. I’m a bit of a freak, aren’t I? Do other people wake up wanting to know stuff, or do they just want a cup of tea and a wee? Yes, but not necessarily in that order I guess.
thewritersbarn 