Airtime, teatime: highs/lows of jumping or eating

Fish like being in water, and there seems no reason for them to ever want to leave it. But some species enjoy a little airtime every now and then, momentarily breaching the water after a powerful burst of vertical swimming up to the surface. Some aquatic mammals do the same - dolphins and even some whales are famous for their jumping. Why do some water-borne species breach the surface, which species are the most athletic breachers, and what are the universal factors that limit the height they can obtain? Join us to learn more about jumping fish and cetaceans: discover the latent power of Britain’s biggest fish, the basking shark, and find out about the best pound for pound jumpers in the world – you may well have eaten one for dinner!

You may not be surprised to learn that eating a diet high in saturated fat for most of one’s life increases one’s risk of dementia in old age – what is bad for the heart is bad for the brain. However, rather more worrying is evidence that relationships between poor diet and poor cognitive abilities, especially memory and learning, can be seen in younger adults and even children, despite appearing otherwise healthy, and certainly not obviously malnourished. I will present and discuss some of these findings, and introduce an emerging idea that energy-dense diets high in fat and sugar may damage the very part of the brain that would normally help us regulate our appetites and resist overeating such foods – a potential diet-obesity-dementia vicious circle.