Archive for category Nature

Squids out of water seeking escape from vicious double-jawed eels

Two science reports on squids caught my eye today. On the one hand, the New York Times informed me that “When an Eel Climbs a Ramp to Eat Squid From a Clamp, That’s a Moray”. It’s not so funny for the squid who get sucked down off of dry land by creatures with two jaws—an outer one to seize their prey and an inner one that leaps forward to drag it deeper. That’s really creepy. If you have a strong stomach, check out this video by Rita S. Mehta, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She and her colleague report all the gory experimental details in this month’s Journal of Experimental Biology.

The second bit of news about squids—this one from Complex—seems a bit cheerier: NASA Launches Dozens of Baby Squid Into Space for Experiment. Learn more about this mission by University of Florida researcher Jamie Foster here. Check out the video of the cute little baby squids. Far out!

PS: Heads up: Squids can fly, as detailed in this January 2021 TED-Ed video:

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Experiment airs dirty laundry

This headline by BBC Science Focus Magazine caught my eye the other day: “Scientists are burying 2,000 pairs of underpants in Switzerland.” What in the world?

Further research revealed that this is a ‘thing’ for those who love their mother earth: Bury your briefs (provided they be 100 percent cotton). Then dig them up later and inspect their holiness, that is, degradation due to desirable microorganisms in your earth.

“The more active microorganisms live in the soil, the faster and the more holistically the underpants will be eaten up.”

  – Swiss research institute Agroscope

The BBC reports that volunteers will each receive two pairs of pants, along with tea bags as a control. One will be dug up after a month, the other after two months and both analyzed for holes. My observations:

  • It is good that the scientists leave nothing to chance by not allowing helpers to bury their personal underwear. (Yuk!)
  • This is a great example of a paired tea test (inside statistical joke).

Some farmers in southern Minnesota buried their undies a few years ago and discovered them to be completely disintegrated after only a couple of months—nothing left but the elastic bands. That is not surprising given the incredible fertility of land down there. As you can see in this report by MPR News, the remnants serve well for scaring off crows. However, I question the organizers’ judgement for naming this experiment “Soil Your Undies.” That is just gross.

For a more scientific approach to this methodology for assessing the quality of your soil, see this 2015 report from a research technician at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture. However, though attention getting, using actual underwear versus cotton swatches may not be the best idea for quantitative measurements and decency—though the elastic bands can be very handy as I learned the hard way as a child with mischievous friends who liked to inflict wedgies.

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Groundhog Day: Looking forward to spring and the arrival of robins

Puxatawney Phil saw his shadow this morning, thus forecasting 6 more weeks of winter. Most people in the USA took this as a bad sign that spring will not come early—the prediction when Phil does not see his shadow. However, we hardy Minnesotans do not mind 6 more weeks of winter whatsoever.

A sure sign of spring comes with the sighting of the first robin in my yard—typically later than Phil’s more pessimistic forecast. I looked for statistics on the annual migration of robins from the USA National Phenology Network but, though this bird is their most frequently observed animal with over 190,000 records, nothing came up readily on dates of first sightings in my region of the country.

In any case, I will be very happy if the robins do beat the 6-week forecast for spring as they did in 1996 per this report—arriving in Minneapolis on March 12th of that year. Until then, I can only enjoy this lovely video of American robins produced by Lesley the Bird Nerd who grew up north in Ontario—the next stop in the bird’s spring migration after Minnesota.

What got me thinking so early in the year about robins was a report in the Royal Society last week on “The limits of egg recognition: testing acceptance thresholds of American robins in response to decreasingly egg-shaped objects in the nest”. Check out the bizarre fakes—robin-egg blue, of course—pictured here . Evidently it’s not the shape that matters, for example, a pointy eight-sided egg stayed in the nest, but, rather, the size. Those that looked big enough to be put in by a cowbird, a parasitic species, got tossed out. The robins also rejected eggs that were too thin.

“They seem to be quite hesitant about rejecting eggs when the variable that we changed was not natural,” Dr. Hauber said, referring to the angular, pointed eggs. “Robins don’t know what to do with it, because they’ve never evolved to respond to it.”

Quote reported by New York Times in their interview of lead-author Mark Hauber, a professor of animal behavior at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

I am tempted to dig up the collection of Dungeons and Dragons dice left behind by my two sons after they moved out and put them out in the bird house this spring to see what happens. Just joking—I like robins too much to do anything so inhospitable. It is very weird, though, that they are so bird brained about egg shapes.

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Killer reveals contents of International Shark Attack File

I will bet the caught your attention. It did mine but for reasons more benign than indicated by my sensational blog title: The report comes from an outdoors columnist for Florida’s Treasure Coast Newspapers named Ed Killer. He passed along the latest statistics on shark attacks released Monday by the Florida Museum on Natural History. It turns out that “interactions” with these dreaded aquatic carnivores decreased by nearly 10% to 129 worldwide in 2020. Unfortunately, deaths increased to 13, up by 2 from 2019, including the first ever in Maine. Australia led the world for shark fatalities and came in second to the USA for bites.

“When a surfer gets bit in New Smyrna Beach [Florida], it’s often by a blacktip and requires some stitches to recover from. But when a surfer gets bit in Australia, it’s by a 2000-pound 15-foot-long great white shark. A nibble from a white shark can take off a leg.”

– Gavin Naylor, Director, Florida Program for Shark Research*

All this talk about sharks makes me feel a lot better being homebound in Minnesota for the time being. In 1975 my wife and I moved to California just in time for the premier of Jaws at the local drive-in movie theater. I suffered twitchy-legged nightmares for some time afterwards imagining a great white shark lurking at the foot of my bed. Watching this Danish advertisement provides an antidote my now-revived shark fears.

*See details on the data science behind their The International Shark Attack File (ISAF), and a fascinating animated graphic showing attacks by location worldwide over 50 years, here.

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Genius dog challenges boggle the mind

Due to the social distancing necessitated by the current pandemic, dogs have become more valuable than ever for their devoted companionship. I have enjoyed owning a number of dogs throughout my life—observing a remarkable range in their intelligence, even within the same breeds. However, I doubt that even the smartest of my canines ever came close to six genius dogs now competing for this world championship in Budapest. They qualified by knowing the names of at least 10 objects. The winner, to be crowned later this month, will need to identify 12 toys with only a week of training.

This feat of memory and recognition seemed impressive by my meager experience with dogs (and limited talent for training them). However, it turns out that a Border Collie named Chaser, who passed away a year ago, knew over 1000 nouns. Incredible! In 2018, he and his owner and trainer, John Pilley, were put to a randomized test (with a surprising twist!) for PBS Nova by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Watch the 6-minute video: You will be amazed.

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Humans cannot wolf down hot dogs as fast as a wolf, scientist calculates

Here at the heart of summer in middle America, hot dogs reign supreme (or at least as co-rulers with hamburgers and brats). Their tubular geometry facilitates ingestion with minimal obstacles as attested by Joey Chestnut—winner again of the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest on this year’s Independence day. His new record of 75 consumed in 10 minutes probably approaches the theoretical maximum, according to a statistical study by a veterinarian and human biomechanics researcher.

The author, Professor James Smoliga from High Point University in North Carolina, worked out 83 as the number of hot dogs being humanly possible to eat in such a short time. My hunch is that Chestnut and his fellow competitors will be working-out all year to demolish this ‘Smoliga’ bar.

For all the scientific details see the July 15 Royal Society publication of Modelling the maximal active consumption rate and its plasticity in humans—perspectives from hot dog eating competitions.

“These contests provide each individual with an unlimited, ready-to-consume food supply. Thus, participants can focus all of their efforts on maximizing consumption, rather than investing energy into foraging, chasing prey or competing with others for access to a dwindling supply.”

Dr. James Smoliga speaking on the advantages of human hot-dog eaters at a staged event such as the 2020 Nathans Famous event (check out the wacky hats worn by the spectators—gotta love that mustard!)

Even a glutton for statistics gets choked up by the feast of analysis provided by Smoliga, but I did find the comparison between species very tasty, especially the bit about grizzly bears being on par with humans for active consumption rate (ACR). However, having owned a number of big dogs and seen them demolish entire platters of barbecued meats left within reach, I was not surprised that, per Smoliga’s calculations, a grey wolf can eat meaty foods at more than double the rate of a person.

I suggest putting Smoliga’s speculations to the test at next year’s event: Pit the winner against a wolf and a grizzly for the interspecies champion of hot dog eating.

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Beware of birds making stick bombs in your backyard

One advantage of being home-bound during this COVID-19 pandemic is spending more time watching the birds. I especially like the cardinals who flock to my feeder in a variety of plumage being male, female or juvenile. However, the finches are fun to see as well, particularly the yellow ones. The other day a blue jay came by to provide a bit of blue for the color mix.

While greatly appreciating birds, I failed to recognize their superior engineering skills until reading this New York Times article about avian nest construction. They report how researchers at University of Akron used a ‘smushing’ chamber to measure how bird-homes bounce back after being compressed.

“We hypothesize that a bird nest might effectively be a disordered stick bomb, with just enough stored energy to keep it rigid.”

Hunter King, experimental soft-matter physicist, University of Akron*

I now feel a lot smarter saying “smushing”, it being a scientific term used by world-class physicists. However, I’m more interested in the stick-bomb bit. This is explained best by Popular Mechanics in their report (stemming from the same scientific study by Hunter et al) on Why the Humble Bird Nest Is an Engineering Marvel.

As a fun project to while away the time indoors, build your own stick bombs using popsicle or jumbo sticks such as those available here.

The stick bomb illustrated in this video by Brain Coach Don offers a great deal of excitement, but I do not recommend it for building bird nests—ha ha.  The difference is them making ones that are disordered and thus nonexplosive.

*(Mechanics of randomly packed filaments—The “bird nest” as meta-material, Journal of Applied Physics 127, 050902 (2020))

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Experiment provides fetching evidence about wolf puppies

Swedish zoologists reported this month in iScience that Intrinsic Ball Retrieving in Wolf Puppies Suggests Standing Ancestral Variation for Human-Directed Play Behavior. This counteracted widely-held beliefs that wolves do not socialize with humans. It may suggest that ancestors of dogs were primed for domestication.

Given the small sample size—only 13 wolves—I am not so sure. But I always feel better after encountering puppies like Flea pictured in Gizmodo’s engaging report on the Swedish study. I look forward to more rigorous research on wolf puppies and hope to be picked as a tennis-ball tosser.

“When I saw the first wolf puppy retrieving the ball, I literally got goosebumps.”

Christina Hansen Wheat, a co-author of the study and a researcher from Stockholm University.

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Hurricane forecasters getting in the zone with their cone




Owning a home in Florida, I keep a close eye on the National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecasts throughout the June-through-November season. I see that Florence is now predicted to make landfall around mid-day tomorrow just south of Wilmington, North Carolina—the gateway to the aptly named Cape Fear. Even though that’s less than 24 hours away, it’s still subject to a broad zone of uncertainty–on the order of 100’s of miles. However, it’s very impressive that the NHC forecast made 48 hours ago remains right on. According to a Wall Street Journal report yesterday their 5-day conical projections have improved by more than 100 nautical miles (115 land miles) in radius over the past decade. That’s even more impressive.

However, WSJ advises we’d best remain very leery of the NHC’s spaghetti plots (an alternative to the cone), because they include very simple forecasts along with those that are state-of-the-art. This can be very disconcerting as I discovered when Irma came along a year ago to graze my place along the west coast of Florida. You can see in this Business Insider report on Irma that, only 3 days beforehand, this hurricane’s predicted landfalls ranged from Louisiana to Massachusetts. The article says that NHC suggests that people not focus on the specific tracks. That seems obvious to me based on the ridiculously high variance. I’d like to see these tracks vary by thickness according to the sophistication of the models—the thinner the weaker.

In any case, let’s hope that Florence fizzles out, after all.

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Creatures (other than cats) with innate sense of direction and purpose




I am continually amazed by creatures great and small who know just where to go and what to do. For example, who would have thought that a dog could apply calculus to find the optimal angle at which to jump into a lake and fetch a tennis ball. See the proof here from a mathematics professor who worked it out after observing his Welsh Corgi “Elvis”.

Naturally ants do very well going about their business, as we’ve all observed when they get into our homes.  I was alarmed to hear recently that these industrial insects apply an algorithm for building bridges over any gaps that hinder their travel.  See how they do it in this 2/26/18 blog by Quanta Magazine.  Things are getting a bit too ‘swarm’ for my comfort when entire institutes such as this one do nothing but model collective behavior.  To what ends will this knowledge be applied?  I foresee it being used by the military to program hordes of diabolical drones.  But, perhaps, it will mainly be for more peaceful pursuits, such as managing traffic on par with ants, who according to this report, never get into a jam.

But just counteract the notion that creatures might be a lot smarter than we think, either individually, like Elvis, or collectively, such as ants, there’s this cat who showed a lack of capability in its calculations of distance.

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