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These fish are shooting out of a 'cannon' to keep their population alive. (Yes, really.)

Salmon have interesting migration and reproduction habits.

They're born upstream in rivers, in gravel beds. They spend most of their developmental years in those rivers, but by adulthood, the fish swim downstream, making their way to the ocean.

While swimming in the Atlantic or Pacific, these adult salmon eat and swim until its time to spawn.

Image via Thinkstock.

At that point, the fish head back to the rivers (often the river from which they came) and swim upstream until they reach the gravel bed, start the next generation of salmon, and die.

Ecologically, this return to the river is important — the deceased fish brings vital nutrients from the ocean back upstream, and in most other cases, those nutrients wouldn't ever find their way there.

Unfortunately, humans have a tendency to get in the way: We build dams, holding back rivers and blocking the path of the spawning fish.

We've come up with some workarounds, the most common being fish ladders, which run alongside dams, allowing fish to swim upstream (Wikipedia's explanation has a lot of great pictures).

But those ladders are expensive and often take a long time to build.

Researchers are looking for other solutions ... such as shooting fish out of a cannon.


Image via Whooshh Innovations.

OK, it's not really a cannon — it's more akin to a pneumatic tube, to be fair. But “salmon cannon" sounds much better, right?

The cannon was created by “Whooshh Innovations," a Washington-based company dedicated to using such methods of transportation in various new contexts.

Transporting fish above dams seemed like a good use, so they built a set of prototypes. Here'a video of the cannon in action — the GIF above comes from it.

As seen in the video, the fish (the cannon isn't limited to salmon) enter the tube single-file and, during their trip, are in an air environment, but no matter, within a few seconds, they're returned to the water.

In most of the examples shown, the fish are loaded into the tube by a worker, although in many cases that's not required. In situations where it is, that still may be OK — in addition to fish ladders, another conventional solutions to the fish migration problem is called “carry-run-toss" (it's shown at 2:05 in the video), and that's a lot more labor intensive.

The carry-run-toss method literally involves a person ... running up a flight of stairs and ramps and tossing the fish into the water at the top of the dam. This is a real job.

(If you can't watch the video, the carry-run-toss method literally involves a person taking the fish from a tank, running up a flight of stairs and ramps, and tossing the fish into the water at the top of the dam. This is a real job.)

The salmon cannon can transport fish up to 250 feet (with a 100 foot incline) at speeds approaching 22 miles per hour — that's about an eight-second trip for the fish.

Mental Floss reports that the tubes can transport 40 fish per minute, which is apparently a lot.

It is still highly experimental, but it has promise: Officials are already testing it out in hopes that it works.

Dan Lewis runs the popular daily newsletter Now I Know ("Learn Something New Every Day, By Email"). To subscribe to his daily email, click here.

Family

Korean mom has a perfect response to the teacher who called her son's lunches 'disgusting'

Good for her for standing up for her child's culture.

via Roman Harak/Flickr

A Korean mother and her son

A recently posted story on Reddit shows a mother confidently standing up for her family after being bullied by a teacher for her culture. Reddit user Flowergardens0 posted the story to the AITA forum, where people ask whether they are wrong in a specific situation.

Over 5,600 people commented on the story, and an overwhelming majority thought the mother was right. Here’s what went down:

“I (34F) have a (5M) son who attends preschool. A few hours after I picked him up from school today, I got a phone call from his teacher,” Flowergardens0 wrote. “She made absolutely no effort to sound kind when she, in an extremely rude and annoyed tone, told me to stop packing my son such ‘disgusting and inappropriate’ lunches."

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Ring doorbell video captures the phenomenon of what it's like to be the default parent

Millions of us know what it's like to be the "default parent."

Toniann Marchese/TikTok

Ring doorbell video captures what it's like to be the default parent.

Kids, man. I'm not sure of the scientific way audacity is distributed, but kids have a lot of it and somehow make it cute. That audacity overload is especially interesting when you're the default parent—you know, the parent kids go to for literally everything as if there's not another fully capable adult in the house. Chances are if your children haven't sought you out while you were taking a shower so you could open up a pack of fruit snacks, then you're not the default parental unit.

One parent captured exactly what it's like to be the default parent and shared it to TikTok, where the video has over 4 million views. Toniann Marchese went on a quick grocery run and *gasp* did not inform her children. Don't you fret, they're modern kids who know how to use modern means to get much-needed answers when mom is nowhere to be found. They went outside and rang the doorbell.

Back when we were children, this would've done nothing but make the dogs bark, but for Marchese's kids, who are 3 and 6 years old, it's as good as a phone call.

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Woman was mocked online for calling an $80 purse a 'luxury item.' Her response went viral.

"I'm so grateful that my dad was able to get me one. He worked so hard for that money.”

@zohtaco/TikTok

Zoe Gabriel, showing off her new purse from Charles & Keith

Insults of any kind are painful, but jabs towards someone’s financial status are their own breed.

In January 2023, Singapore-based Zoe Gabriel was on the receiving end of this particular flavor of mockery when she posted a TikTok about a purse from local retail brand Charles & Keith—a gift bought for her by her father.

In her excitement, the 17-year-old called the bag, which costs around $80, a “luxury” item as she unwrapped it. Her excitement was sadly cut short by some of the negative comments she received.

One comment seemed to stand out above the rest and prompted Gabriel to post an emotional response video.

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'American Idol' contestant has perfect response to Katy Perry's 'mom-shaming' joke

The 25-year-old used the moment to stand up for moms everywhere.

@sarabethliebe/TikTok

"Keep loving your babies."

You might recall us singing the praises of Sara Beth, the exuberant young mom with major vocal chops dubbed the “Accidental American Idol.”

During Sara Beth’s initial audition for the show, judge Katy Perry made a joke that rubbed many viewers the wrong way.

Before Sara Beth even began to sing, the 25-year-old revealed that she had three children, which prompted Katy Perry to dramatically stand up from her seat and feign shock. When Sara Beth, all smiles, said, “If Katy lays on the table, I think I’m going to pass out,” Perry retorted, “Honey, you’ve been laying on the table too much.”

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These incredible acoustic cameras can actually see sound

Here's how they work.

via Steve Mould/YouTube

YouTube creator Steve Mould shows us what echo looks like through an acoustic camera.

It’s bizarre to think about seeing sound, but nowadays we can do just that. If you haven’t seen an acoustic camera before, that’s because they’re mainly used for industrial purposes, but they’ve been available commercially from gfai tech since 2001.

YouTuber Steve Mould, who has a science channel with over 2.1 million subscribers, took the complicated concept of the acoustic camera and made it easy to understand in his latest video, “Acoustic cameras can SEE sound.”

In the video, Mould explains how an acoustic camera is much like your smartphone's video recorder. But it also creates visual representations of sound emanating from where it’s generated within the video.

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Dad gives his young daughter a 'spa day' while mom and sister are out and people are gushing

"This healed a part of me. Thank you for doing this with your daughter."

Mason Smith/Instagram

Mason Smith pampered his baby girl during her "spa day."

Raising kids is no small feat. Just the basic logistics of caring for a human being from their helpless newborn stage to the full-fledged adult stage is a lot, much less doing the countless other things that will actually help that human thrive.

Parents who go above and beyond to create a nurturing environment and build strong core memories with their kids are inspiring examples for us all, and one dad's spa day with his daughter has people positively gushing.

Mason Smith (@thedadsocial) shared a video of a special spa day he gave his young daughter when her mom and older sister were having their own pampered outing. "Mom and sister went to the salon so I couldn't have her feeling left out," he wrote.

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