The World's Fair

(You know what the feather is, but do you know what that thing on the right is? - answer is below the fold)

Recently I gave a bit of an unusual talk to welcome UBC's new Dean of Science (Dr. Simon Peacock). And since I'm not on the up and up with his specialty, plate tectonics, I thought it would be more fun to take advantage of his surname and build an entire talk around the peacock itself (hence my familiarity with the peacock's latin label).

In the end, I was able to structure the talk around three statements:

1. Via PUBMED, there are 33 peer-reviewed scientific articles on Pavo cristatus or the Indian Peafowl. (The learning science for intellectual curiosity's sake item - or science is cool angle)

2. Habitats of indigenous populations of Pavo cristatus are under threat due to global warming. (The learning science for social justice, and environmental stewardship's sake item - or science is important)

and 3. Data from a 2004 US National Poll suggests that 45% of Americans are literate in matters of Pavo cristatus development and phylogeny. (The learning science for cultural and societal reasons item - or seriously dude, you gotta know your sciences or else silly things like creationism will run even more amok).

Anyway, for statement 1, there were actually many interesting research papers out there, which included a variety of vet related studies (this parasite that virus). But the ones that were especially interesting ranged from those that looked at Pavo cristatus feather extract (or PCF extract - another reason to be a scientist: make up goofy acronyms), to the birds retinal photoreceptors, to mate selection genetics, as well as a landmark paper whereby the peacock was actually the first non-human organism to have its hypervariable minisatellite DNA characterized.

For statement 2, it's pretty much a no brainer, although technically, since the last assessment by the World Conservation Union in 2004 (for the peacock anyway), the species has been evaluated as one of "Least Concern." This basically means "so far so good." The above graphic is actually one of my favourites for this particular talk, because it was just beautiful how close the image of the eye of the peacock feather was to an electrostatic map of methane, a greenhouse gas. And like the Nike swoop shown before, I used this to show the dichotomy of things that everyone knows of, and things that everyone should really pay more attention to.
As strange as statement 3 sounds, it actually holds firm, because of a Gallup poll conducted in 2004, where 45% of Americans polled agreed with the following statement:

"God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."

So that means if you take into account the above line of scripture from the Bible, then folks really do think they know about the development and phylogeny of the Peacock - basically they came about on day five.

Anyway, there you go - a break from the turkey and chance to say Happy Thanksgiving to my American counterparts. I wonder if peacock is a dish somewhere on this planet?