cab67
cab67's JournalUseless Natural History Trivia
I've made some comments in recent posts that included factoids some people seemed to find interesting. I'm a systematist, so most of the superfluous facts in my head are about biodiversity - but here's more natural history trivia you'd only need if you're on Jeopardy someday -
- There are two kinds of sloth - the two-toed sloth and three-toed sloth. Both are arboreal. But each evolved into a tree sloth independently from a separate ground sloth ancestor.
- The stinger of an ant, bee, or wasp is the same as the ovipositor in other insects. This is the structure females use to lay eggs. This is why male ants, bees, and wasps cannot sting you.
- The jackrabbit is a hare. There's a difference between a rabbit and a hare.
- Likewise, the fur seal is a kind of sea lion. There's a difference.
- Lungfish are more closely related to us than they are to other bony fish. And crocodiles are more closely related to birds than they are to lizards or turtles.
- Many marsupial groups have evolved to resemble placentals - wombats look like woodchucks, Tasmanian devils look like wolverines, sugar gliders resemble flying squirrels and flying lemurs (which neither fly nor are lemurs), marsupial moles look a lot like our moles, and so on. But no marsupial has ever evolved hooves, and no marsupial has ever evolved flippers. This is, at least partly, because they're born at a much earlier developmental stage than placentals, but require a grasping hand to crawl from the birth canal through mom's fur to reach the pouch. You can't grasp things with a flipper or a hoof.
- There's a giant vampire bat in the fossil record. Its name - I'm not kidding - is Desmotis draculae, and it's from Cuba. It was about 30 percent larger than a modern vampire bat, but modern vampire bats have wingspans of something like 8 inches, so this wasn't something that would carry you off to its castle. (There are birds in the fossil record with wingspans approaching 20 feet, but the largest bats in the fossil record are no bigger than the largest flying foxes and fruit bats of today.)
Maybe more next week? Let me know if there's interest.
It's the stupidity, stupid.
That should be the soundbite.
In 1992, it was "it's the economy, stupid." It's the economy now, too, but it's so much more. It's the grotesque incompetence. Every aspect of this administration screams it. His prosecutors can't get indictments and are regularly tossed out for not being legally appointed. His Secretary of HHS is a national joke - and not a very funny one, because the issues are so serious. He started a war he can't justify, and it's not going very well. He hasn't fooled anyone that this war, and the one in Venezuela, and his pushiness over Greenland, and his other stupid acts aren't efforts to distract us from the Epstein files and the crimes of ICE.
And the economy is going down the toilet, too.
I think incompetence is the one thing everyone sees. Even some conservatives are seeing it. It's becoming impossible to pretend the dementia patient in the White House knows what he's doing, and those who try are getting laughed at.
I think we're finally reaching the tipping point I keep saying might come one day - the one predicted by evolutionary biology. Runaway selection. If something is very attractive to the opposite sex, it tends to evolve very rapidly, even to the point of being deleterious to the one bearing it. Peacock tail feathers are an example. It's going to be tough for many Republicans to win their primaries without Trump's base, but just as tough to win the general election with them.
I won't make predictions, but it certainly seems that way to me.
So I did a thing (new fossil crocodile that ate our ancestors) -
I'm involved with this, sorta kinda:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/a-massive-pliocene-crocodile-may-have-hunted-lucy-and-other-early-hominins-3-million-years-ago-48801
Quick rundown - Hadar is a set of paleontological/paleoanthropological sites in the Afar region of Northeastern Ethiopia dating to between 3.0 and 3.5 million years ago. That's where Lucy is from - the female Australopithecus afarensis specimen discovered in 1974 that caused a real sensation. She was the most completely-known early human relative known at the time, and her remains are still central to our understanding of human origins.
I don't actually care about any of that. I don't do mammals. But the crocodile from the site turns out to be a new species, and the new publication names and describes it. Its name, Crocodylus lucivenator, basically means "hunter of Lucy."
It preserves a weird combination of character states that made it difficult to assess. At the moment, it's best viewed as part of an extinct radiation of crocodiles unrelated to the modern Nile crocodile that flourished in East Africa between 7.2 and 0.5 million years ago. But it also shares similarities with modern crocodiles, in particular those currently found in the Western Hemisphere (e.g. American Crocodile, Cuban crocodile, and so on).
To the casual observer, C. lucivenator would be neither more nor less exciting than any modern crocodile. But it was the largest predator in Lucy's ecosystem, and to the connoisseur of crocodile evolution, it tells an interesting story.
And by "involved with this, sorta kinda," I mean I'm the lead author. I know I shouldn't brag, but I don't get to very often these days.
useless trivia.
I'm updating my lecture for tomorrow, which covers primate evolution and human origins.
There's a group of mammals in Southeast Asia that might or might not be related to primates called Dermoptera. They're commonly known as "flying lemurs," in spite of neither being lemurs nor capable of actually flying. (They're also sometimes called colugos, and they do sorta kinda look like the love child between a lemur and a flying squirrel or sugar glider).
Anyway - one of the oldest such animals in the fossil record has a genus name that literally means "skin beast."
Consider your life enriched. Maybe you'll win a few bucks on Jeopardy someday. You're welcome.
reminder from college instructor to parents -
Spring Break is coming up, and I’m compelled to remind people who have kids in college – don’t assume we’ll make an exception for your kid.
This is something I've said here in the past. I'm going to say it again anyway.
Exams are sometimes scheduled right before a break. Those of us who instruct these students are thus met with requests to take an exam early (or late, after the break) so they can leave for break early. And when the instructor appears reluctant, the student sometimes responds with “but mom and/or dad already bought the airline ticket.”
This isn’t really so much of a problem for me right now. I’m teaching fairly small classes (a graduate seminar and an upper-level class with about 30 students), and so far, the only requests I’ve gotten are legitimate. But for some of my friends, this is causing real problems.
There are students we’re required to accommodate. They might have some sort of learning issue monitored by the institution and allowed extra time, a quiet space, or something like that. Increasingly, scheduling these makeups is on the instructor.
Then there are students with very legitimate reasons to miss a day. They might be bridesmaids in a wedding scheduled months ago. They might have a court date, military obligation, or job interview. Their work schedule might have changed on short notice. Their car might have broken down, or they might have missed the bus. If anything is online, they may have problems with their internet connection. They might be sick, or they’re caring for someone who is. A loved one might have died. They might be leaving for a required field trip in another class. They might be involved with a travelling sports team, either as a member of the team or a member of the marching band.
We help these students, but it’s not always easy. When all is said and done, more than 10 percent of a class might require rescheduling. I’ve seen it as high as 20. I’ve got friends who teach classes with upwards of 500 students. That means finding alternative exam times for 50 or more of them. Each of these students has a busy schedule – other classes, jobs, extracurricular commitments, and whatever other situations life is throwing at them. And the instructor has a busy schedule, too. We might have to find a space for the student to take an exam. We have to make sure we and/or our teaching assistants are available. And we have to make sure scheduled makeups aren’t forgotten or that exams turned in separately from the rest of class aren’t misplaced.
This is why – and although I suspect readers here get it, the problem seems to keep happening – I say we accommodate need. Not convenience.
Leaving early for a spring break vacation is not a need. It’s a convenience.
Please – before you start helping your kid schedule spring break travel, make sure you know what their academic obligations are. Is there an exam on the day they want to leave? Maybe tell them to leave after the exam.
I know instructors who will quite literally tell their students to re-book a flight if their non-essential travel conflicts with an exam. That, or accept a zero on the exam. Not sure I’d be that hard-ass, but I can understand the motivation. Costs money to reschedule? Maybe you should have thought about that before assuming we’d make an exception.
Like I said – I assume most of you get this. But maybe pass it along? Because way too many parents don’t.
CNN is currently covering the premiere of Melania at the Kennedy Center.
um........why?
A deep hope -
- that when the masked coward who committed murder in Minneapolis last week is arrested, the first thing the arresting officers do is pull his mask off.
If ICE isn't willing to identify the masked coward who shot that woman in Minneapolis...
...then all ICE agents in Minneapolis should be treated as suspects. The white ones, anyway. They match the description, and any one of them could have been the shooter. Arrest them on suspicion of murder or manslaughter.
(I say "the white ones" because based on photos, the agent involved was white. Not calling for racial profiling at all here.)
I suspect the agent who pulled the trigger has been moved out of Minneapolis, but as long as we don't know that, treat any ICE agent matching the description as a suspect.
diagnosis via video - why I'm taking it seriously in this particular case.
We've all seen commentaries, written or video, by psychologists, psychiatrists, and other medical professionals explaining that Old Colostomy's obvious decline is caused either by Alzheimer's disease or frontotemporal dementia. All sort of evidence is lined up - his frequent confabulation, his declining sense of decorum (which was never substantial to begin with), bruising on his hands, his posture, and so on.
It's often said that psychiatric diagnoses based on anything other than direct evaluation of the subject in person are guesswork and shouldn't carry much weight. And for the most part, I agree entirely with that.
In fact, there's an ongoing real-life example of how uninformed diagnoses can cause harm - the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). This is a system run by HHS to monitor adverse reactions from vaccines. Or at least, that's the intent. In reality, it's worthless. Reactions can be reported by anyone. This means a lot of them are from parents convinced that a vaccine gave their child autism. But beyond the reports by people without medical training, and the reports that are obviously fake (e.g. there are several reports of penises growing out of people's foreheads following vaccination), the person reporting the reaction need not be someone working with or related to the person with the alleged reaction. It could be a "concerned" neighbor who thinks the kid down the block was harmed by a vaccine. Did this person ever really interact with the child? No, but they saw a change in the child's behavior, and that must have been because of a vaccine.
Some have compared the practice to what happened during the Terri Schiavo case, in which videos of a young woman in a vegetative state were used by politicians and commentators (nearly all on the political right) to argue that she might not be in a deep vegetative state after all, that she might improve, and that her feeding tube shouldn't be removed. The videos had been edited to make it look as though the young woman was interacting with people and objects in ways someone in a permanent vegetative state would not be able to do. It was a disgusting display of partisan misuse of media to promote an agenda.
So I don't have much use for psychiatric diagnoses based on video evidence.
But in the case of the current president, I'm more inclined to take them seriously. Why?
Two reasons - first, it's not just a handful of medical experts speaking up. A lot of them are. And we're not necessarily talking about internists and OB-GYN's - these are people specifically trained in psychiatry or clinical psychology with extensive experience on the subject of dementia.
But the second, which I regard as more important, is the sheer volume of the evidence. With Terri Schiavo, we had a modest amount of video, and it had been cleverly edited. With the Orange One, we have years' worth of video, much of it shot live and not edited, going back to when he first became a public figure in the 1980's. It's not just that we're seeing a plainly obvious decline; we're seeing very specific changes in his behavior, and these symptoms show up repeatedly.
I'm not a psychologist myself. My wife is, and I might have absorbed some knowledge of the subject osmotically from her, and I saw what my mom and uncle went through with my grandfather, but neither of these renders me qualified to make any kind of diagnosis. But when so many experts are converging on one or a few diagnoses based on impartial evidence anyone can see, my willingness to accept the claims grows.
None of the claims made in the media are conclusive. They can't be - these people have never examined the president in person, nor have they given any of the tests used to generate a diagnosis. (They might have been done and not released to the public; if so, that would be a Watergate- or Iran-Contra-level scandal.) But they're not on par with someone down the street thinking I must have been compromised by a vaccine because was once seen tripping on my front lawn.
My thoughts, anyway.
The president need not be a trained herpetologist.
I do, however, ask that the president not just make shit up as he goes.
Yesterday, he told a story about a doctor who'd been bitten by a viper in Peru.
Among his claims - "28,000 people die of snakebite every year in Peru." The actual number is closer to 10.
He also mentioned mambas - black and brown. There's no such snake as a "brown" mamba; there are black and green mambas. And unless something went wrong at a zoo, no one in Peru has been killed by a mamba - mambas are native to Africa and do not occur in South America. They're also not vipers, either - they're elapids related to cobras and coral snakes.
The doctor in question was evidently bitten by a fer-de-lance a while back. Fer-de-lances actually are true vipers, though I don't know if the bite happened in Peru.
Important point? Probably not. But it shows how he just makes things up as he goes, and that's not good for any head of state.
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Useless personal anecdote added on edit: Last year, I encountered a close relative of mambas near Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia - a coastal taipan.
Coastal taipans are among the most venomous snakes in the world. But in fact, the snake was a tiny juvenile (maybe 18 inches long; they reach 8 feet), and although taipan venom is nasty, their fangs aren't very large - meaning it probably wouldn't have gotten through my jeans had it bitten me, much less my boots. And the snake knew I was there long before I saw it and was already clearing out.
But I'd forgotten of a lesson learned long ago - that it's ok to relate such stories to one's spouse, provided one doesn't provide all of the details. I told my wife that the taipan I saw wasn't a threat. But I stupidly added, "Besides - this was a coastal taipan. The coastal taipan isn't the most venomous snake in the world. That would be the inland taipan."
The first time I learned that was when I told my (now ex) spouse about the Mozambique cobra I encountered in a coffee plantation in Tanzania. Saying I saw the snake was fine. Adding that I was out of spitting range went too far. I thought that would have been good information, but reminding her that cobras can spit was more alarming than it should have been.
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