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How can fish see in the water? – Dottie, 7, South Dakota

Dear Dottie,

When I was a kitten, I learned to swim by diving for coins in the pool. It wasn’t easy seeing the coins underwater. It was blurry down there.

I talked about how fish see with my friend Nora Hickey. She’s a fish veterinarian at Washington State University.

She told me that fish eyes don’t work the same way mammal eyes do—even though we have the same eye parts.

Your cornea is the clear, squishy tissue right at the front of your eye. It’s in front of the colored ring in your eye—called the iris. There’s a dark dot in the center … » More …

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Why do owls stay up at night? – Zelezina, 8 ½, Maryland

Dear Zelezina,

I love how humans use figures of speech about animals to describe their behavior. An early bird is someone who likes to get up early. A night owl is someone who loves to be awake late at night—like an owl.

I talked about why owls stay up all night with my friend Dr. Marcie Logsdon. She’s a wildlife veterinarian at Washington State University.

She told me that for many owls, the dark is a good time to catch a meal.

“Owls are just taking advantage of a time when they can excel at finding prey because there are a lot of other things that are active at night, too—like rodents,” Logsdon said.

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Dr. Universe: Why do we have to blink? - Michael and Virgil, 3 and 5, in Sioux Falls, SD

Dear Michael and Virgil, If you’ve ever had a staring contest with a friend, you may have felt your eyes start to get tired and dry. Eventually, you just had to blink. Blinking helps our eyes stay healthy, and my friend Dr. Karen Janout, a clinical assistant professor at Washington State University, told me all about it. She said that with each blink, your eyelids help spread tears over the surface of your eyes—and you actually do this a lot. Humans blink an average of 15 to 20 times a minute, which adds up to somewhere around 5.2 to 7.1 million blinks a year. Read More ...