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zooillogix | April 17, 2007Researchers in Mexico have documented wild spider monkeys rubbing themselves with fragrant, chewed up leaves. Though the exact purpose of this behavior is yet to be proven, it appears as if the scents "may play a role int he context of social communication, possibly for signaling of social status or to increase sexual attractiveness," according to an article in the online journal, Primates.
My name's Marcel...Sagitarius.
Laura Hernandez-Salazar of Veracruz University in Mexico and colleagues witnessed "20 episodes of self-anointing, that is, the application of scent-bearing material onto the…
pharyngula | April 17, 2007Here's what the various ScienceBloggers are saying about Virginia Tech.
I'm not personally enthused about turning the whole ugly episode into a rallying cry for whatever cause you favor right now, but I do side with Dunford: of course this is a time you should express your positions. This is a good time, when events have made the concerns more immediate and when people are looking for answers. It's not a good time to act on those positions, because emotions overwhelm sense, but they are also good indicators of what is important to people.
For instance, if you see this as an excuse to cage all…
tqa | April 17, 2007
(I'm not totally sure that he's right, either.)
Yesterday, after looking at the first few posts that discussed things like gun control following the VT shootings, Chad put up a post that semi-politely suggested that this might be a really good time for people to sit down and shut up. I thought he was wrong, and semi-politely said so. Chad didn't like that response, and not so politely told me what I can do with it. His post is worth a read.
He makes some good points there. I don't think he's right about a lot of them, but I'm not sure that he's wrong, either. Right now, I'm not really in…
petnoyer | April 17, 2007Does all this talk about migrations and megavertebrates make you hungry? Do you feel like you must eat food, but you don't want to break away from all the excitement? Teleport yourself to the world's first all glass undersea restaurant at the Hilton Maldives.
Press release below.
The Maldives | 15 April marks the day that the first ever all-glass undersea restaurant in the world opens its doors for business at the Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa. Ithaa* will sit five meters below the waves of the Indian Ocean, surrounded by a vibrant coral reef and encased in clear acrylic offering diners…
pharyngula | April 17, 2007I knew this one would come slithering out quickly: Ken Ham.
Anyone heard from Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell lately? I wonder if their handlers heard the news and rushed to slap a gag on them.
petnoyer | April 17, 2007
Story by Sara Maxwell and Patrick Robinson, University of California-Santa Cruz
Imagine it. The sun is shining. You're snoozing on a sandy beach. You're a Californian - at least for now. You gave birth to a little girl just a few short weeks ago, but already hunger is gnawing at your stomach - it's almost time to abandon your pup for the cold waters of the North Pacific. Año Nuevo, near Santa Cruz CA, may have good surf, but there's no food to be found here - at least not for you.
You make a break for the water. You've been on land for 35 days without a bite to eat. In fact, you've lost…
jlynch | April 16, 2007I don't really have much to add to what people are saying about the terrible tragedy in Virginia. Suffice it to say, that any of us involved in education felt the sheer mindless unexplainable stupidity of it. As I stood in-front of my class of 150 (mostly) soon-to-be graduating seniors at 3pm yesterday, I found myself looking at the exits and wondering what would happen if a gunman entered.
A number of years ago here at ASU there was a discussion about allowing firearms on campus. A proffered solution was to arm professors.
Thirteen years in this country, and I still don't understand why…
cmcclain | April 16, 2007Well son/daughter, their decomposing carcasses bloat up, sink to the deep, dark ocean floor, where other animals rip away their flesh and consume their bones*.
It may be a whole week of about vertebrates but I had to balance it out with a whale's tale of death and decomposition in which at the end invertebrates eventually consume a whale.
*You may not actually want to tell your children this as it might initiate nightmares.
As discussed before, deep-sea systems (except for vents and seeps) are reliant upon food raining down from the surface. At the small end of the spectrum is marine…
tqa | April 16, 2007
One of my favorite teaching tools has always been the "compare and contrast" assignment. If you've gone through enough school to be able to read this post, you know what I'm talking about. Take two books, or essays, or sets of facts, compare them to each other, and talk about what's the same, what's different, and what the similarities and differences mean. It's a great assignment, because it forces you to not only examine a set of facts, but to look at them in the context of other data.
Today, I found myself doing a compare and contrast between an old Presidential address and some recent…
tqa | April 16, 2007
Today, in Virginia, there was a massive tragedy. Dozens of promising lives have come to an abrupt and unnecessary end. Dozens - hundreds - more lives have been changed forever. All of this has happened because of a single person and his weapons.
There are those in this country who believe that we need to do more to keep weapons out of the wrong hands. Some have chosen to speak up now. There are those in this country who believe that we must be careful not to allow our emotions, after an event like this, to lead us to restrict the basic rights of Americans. Some have chosen to speak up now…
tqa | April 16, 2007
Rob Knop just wrote an article arguing against new gun control laws. He did this hours after someone went nuts at Virginia Tech and shot a whole lot of people. He did so in the full knowledge that many people would find this to be an incredibly insensitive time to make such an argument. He was right that it is an insensitive time to make the argument, and he was also right in his belief that it is at times like this that it is most important to make such arguments.
Rob's basic point is that we - both as people and as a society - tend to react to tragedies like this by demanding that the…
tqa | April 16, 2007
I'm back after taking (unforgivably, I know) another full weekend off from blogging, and as always there's quite a bit to catch up on. In the news since the weekend, we've got some interesting new research on sleep problems related to PTSD, a truly superb Bill Maher piece on "elitism," Rob Knop on gun control, the White House attempt to redefine "partisan" to exclude themselves, and a brief lesson on the problems that can arise -particularly in the bathroom- when water is too closely associated with electricity.
Count fewer sheep:
Anyone who has ever had - or lived with someone who has…
zooillogix | April 16, 2007Crab spider preparing for take off, Misumenoides formosipes
Humans have known for quite a while that some spiders engage in a kind of flying called "ballooning." To balloon, spiders release a parachute-like web into the air (with themselves attached) and allow the wind to pick them up and deposit them in greener pastures. What humans did not know until very recently, however, is that these spiders actually check the weather before taking flight.
Biologists and mathematicians with Rothamsted Research in England first calculated the ideal flying conditions for spiders, finding cloudy fall and…
grrlscientist | April 16, 2007Another edition of the Carnival of the Godless is now available for your reading pleasure. This one is a big one, with lots of thought put into it by the host. This is the 64th edition of this publication.
jjacquet | April 16, 2007
The month to maim marine mammal legislation...
A symposium at the United Nations in New York last Friday opened discussions about whether the Japanese should resume whaling of humpback whales that travel off the coast of Australia. Daniel Pauly was at the meeting and refuted the Japanese argument that humpbacks have been pushing minke whales (currently hunted) to poorer feeding grounds. Pauly also dismissed the Japanese argument that whales are the cause for fish collapses. The Japanese case to resume whaling was later dropped.
Also last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service leaked an…
petnoyer | April 16, 2007 Story by Bryan Wallace, Duke University.
UW photo by Ed Standora.
Life in the deep sea is as far removed from a source of atmospheric oxygen as there is on Earth, but a select few animals do not let their need to breathe air limit the depths of their exploration. (No, I'm not referring to intrepid deep-sea human researchers.) These extraordinary critters frequently venture into the hostile conditions of the deep-sea, despite being vitally tied to air the above the ocean's surface.
When you hear about deep-diving, air-breathing animals, you might first think of colossal sperm whales plunging…
thescian | April 15, 2007National Study on Child Abuse here (200 pages report). I haven't read it fully. A few things I noted: My home state Tamilnadu was not part of the survey - of the southern states, Andhra and Kerala are. The summary shown below is a slap in the face of any society that lets such atrocities happen to its children.
I read a related post via reddit that got me thinking.
Take a predominantly patriarchal society - like all other societies of , well, almost all times; let this society wither time and space like no other over a few thousand years; let social cohesion be defined by fluid but loosely…
grrlscientist | April 15, 2007Edition 4.1 of the blog carnival, Oekologie is now available for your reading pleasure. I have a bunch of submissions that were accepted and listed by this blog carnival that you might be interested to read.
petnoyer | April 14, 2007
The writers at Deep Sea News are big fans of all things invertebrate. We bend over backwards trying to convince people that deep-sea worms, isopods, anemones, and squid are the coolest animals anywhere on Earth. We stick up our noses at charismatic megafauna like sea turtles and whales, thinking "What could possibly be so interesting about air breathing animals with bilateral symmetry?"
We recognize that "normal people" like the vertebrates, especially the marine megavertebrates. People identify with seals, penguins, and sea lions in ways that invertebrate biologists will never understand…