Life Sciences
gregladen | March 7, 2009I recently posted about the work by Pagel and colleagues regarding ancient lexicons. That work, recently revived in the press for whatever reasons such things happen, is the same project reported a while back in Nature. And, as I recall, I read that paper and promised to blog about it but did not get to it. Yet.
So here we go.
The tail does not wag the dog
The primary finding of the Pagel et al. study is this: When comparing lexicons from different languages, meanings that shared a common word in an ancestral language change over time more slowly if the word in question is used more…
oracknows | March 6, 2009I have two brief observations to make before I launch into my latest bit of insolence. First off, it figures that, whenever I go away to a meeting, there's simply an embarrassment of blogging riches. People have been sending me stuff to which, even if I were at home and having a slow week, I could probably never get. Good stuff. Interesting stuff. Unfortunately, I'm now forced either to try to blog about them when I finally get home, which might as well be months later in blog-time, or let them go by uncommented upon, which hurts Orac's mighty ego. Oh, well. My next observation is that I feel…
jstemwedel | March 5, 2009I'm not a regular reader of the Huffington Post, but I received a pointer to an article there that strikes me as worthy of comment.
The article, Why I Take Animal-Tested Drugs, was written by Simon Chaitowitz, the former Communications director for the animal rights group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
From the title, you might expect a defense of animal-tested drugs, or at least a coherent explanation for why the author is taking them. However, what the article actually offers is condemnation of the use of animals in biomedical research, and even a claim that animal-tested…
clock | March 5, 2009Lemurs: Secret Social Drama Among Humanity's Distant Cousins:
The guys were all stressed out. There were new infants in the community, and the guys knew from experience that that's when invaders were likely to come and kill the babies, particularly the male infants.
Birds Move North With Climate Change:
For the first time, researchers have documented a shift in breeding ranges for northerly species in North America. The study parallels findings in Europe.
Tropical Lizards Can't Take The Heat Of Climate Warming:
From geckos and iguanas to Gila monsters and Komodo dragons, lizards are among the…
ksharpe | March 4, 2009Originally posted by Grrlscientist
On February 27, 2009, at 12:53 PM
I love art, birds and travel, and because Africa has such a huge variety of exotic wildlife that I've only ever seen in zoos and aviaries, it is high on my list of places to visit. Recently, David G. Derrick, Jr., the author of a new book that combines art and African wildlife into an unusual diary format, asked if I would like to read and review his new book, African Diaries: Sketches & Observations (self-published, 2008).
This slim paperback is an unusual travel diary because it is comprised of more than 140 of hand-…
sheril | March 4, 2009Guest post by Brian Hare, Evolutionary Anthropologist at Duke University
Last month, a 200 pound male chimpanzee named Travis mauled a woman outside the home where he has been living with his owner Sandra Herold. Charla Nash was nearly killed by Travis and now has life changing wounds to her face while Travis was stabbed by his owner with a butcher knife and shot dead by the police.
Was this incidence preventable or just a freak accident? Should chimpanzees and other primates be kept as pets? What is the effect of the primate pet trade not only on the welfare of these "pets" but on their…
edyong | March 4, 2009Earlier this year, I wrote about how the human obsession with size is reshaping the bodies of other species at an incredible pace. Unlike natural predators that cull the sick, weak and unfit, human fishermen prize the biggest catches and throw the smallest ones back in.
As a result, fish and other species harvested by humans are shrinking, often within a few generations, and are becoming sexually mature at an earlier stage. These changes are bad news for populations as a whole, for smaller individuals often have lower odds of survival and produce fewer offspring.
But David Conover from…
tetrapodzoology | March 4, 2009
Not only am I now unable to edit my blogroll (a very minor thing, but one that bugs me nonetheless), I am also incapable of understanding how ResearchBlogging is supposed to work. I registered, but cannot get my posts to appear there, so am going to give up. Oh well, it's not like it matters I suppose (hmm, or does it?). Am currently busy with the books, and am also (with co-authors) putting the finishing touches to some very neat papers... on which all will be revealed in due time. Anyway, to business, and to the last of those rorqual articles. Please see part I and part II first. The…
bushwells | March 3, 2009A friend in another galaxy far away, when presented with photos of another friend's wide-eyed infant, remarked that the cute (and she truly is) baby made her icy heart melt.
In today's New York Times, Natalie Angier discusses primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's forthcoming book Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Hrdy posits that our capability of cooperating with others, our ability to empathize, and our attempts to see another's perspective likely arose from the selective pressures of being part of a cooperatively breeding social group.
Also noted is the…
laelaps | March 3, 2009I had initially intended to write this post to coincide with my birthday last week but my research unexpectedly set me on the trail of Saartje Baartman. Below is the essay I had originally set out to write;
What to do about Charles Lyell? In September of 1859 he had announced to the scientists assembled at the annual British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting that , contrary to previous belief, "it [was] probable that man was old enough to have coexisted, at least, with the Siberian mammoth." He also knew that the arrival of Charles Darwin's abstract on evolution by natural…
laelaps | March 2, 2009[Last night New Brunswick was buried under several inches of snow, shutting down the university and giving me the day off. I have been using my free time to get some reading done and work on a few projects but I did not want to neglect this blog. Here are the first several pages of the chapter on human evolution from Life's Splendid Riddle, the book in-progress I have so often mentioned here. I still do not have an agent and am unsure whether this book will ever make it to shelves, but I could not resist sharing this sample with you. Enjoy.]
Not long after the earth had been given form, when…
evolvingthoughts | March 1, 2009William Smellie wrote The Philosophy of Natural History in 1791, and it remained in print for over a century. It's a lovely and explicit expression of the Great Chain of Being view that all things grade insensibly from simple to perfect, and all classifications are arbitrary. This was effectively the last time in which someone could argue that from within natural history itself. I transcribe the whole chapter below the fold (it's a great way to engage the text in detail):
From Smellie, William. 1791. The philosophy of natural history. Philadelphia: Robert Campbell, pp463-469.
CHAPTER XXII.
Of…
tetrapodzoology | March 1, 2009
Sorry, nothing new: time again for something from Tet Zoo ver 1...
Late in the 1920s, plans to replace the old whale hall of the British Museum (Natural History) were fulfilled. Thanks to the new, steel-girdled hall, the Blue whale skeleton - by now kept in storage for 42 years due to lack of space - could finally be put on display [adjacent image, © NHM]. This skeleton belonged to a 25 m animal that had stranded at Wexford Bay, SE Ireland, in 1891. It - as in, the skeleton alone - weighs over 10 tons. But some people at the museum wanted more, and in 1937 taxidermist Percy Stammwitz (1881-…
evolvingthoughts | March 1, 2009Actually, this one is better called "Darwin was a racist", but as the text concerned is from the same source as those claims, I thought it might be easier to evaluate a single claim and generalise from that.
Our gospel for today is chapters V and VI of The Descent of Man, published in 1871.
If you read Darwin sloppily, or to find evidence that he really was a Very Bad Man for rhetorical - usually religious - purposes, you soon come across this statement. In fact, you can find paraphrases of it in literally hundreds of creationist documents and sites. Here is the offending passage, from…
grrlscientist | March 1, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
edyong | February 28, 2009Conspiracy theories, TV thrillers and airport novels are full of the idea that the world is secretly run by a hidden society. We have come up with many names for this shadowy cabal of puppet-masters - the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and more. But a better name would be 'parasites'.
Every animal and plant is afflicted by parasites. The vast majority are simple, degenerate creatures, small in size and limited in intelligence. They affect our health and development, and even our behaviour and culture. And by pulling the strings of key species, parasites can change the face of entire habitats.In…
tetrapodzoology | February 28, 2009
Dave Hone - who's had more than his fair share of mentions here at Tet Zoo over the past several days - accompanied me on a visit to Marwell Zoo yesterday. We had a great time, but unfortunately got all too little paper-writing done :) (after all, this is what scientists normally do when they meet up). There's always something new to see, or experience, at the zoo. The Frill-necked lizards Chlamydosaurus kingii were brand-new, for example: it was in fact only their second day on exhibit. And I've never heard a Snow leopard Panthera uncia roar before. It didn't sound like any other big cat…
jrosenhouse | February 27, 2009Writing at Christian Today Tony Campolo has unleashed a stunningly stupid barrage of attacks against Charles Darwin.
Campolo is a bit of a celebrity among the evangelical left. He can thump his Bible with the best of them, but also defends progressive political positions. That he is usually a rare voice of political moderation in an ocean of evangelical narrow-mindedness makes this essay especially disappointing. We consider his essay in full.
Campolo begins:
Many supporters of the principle of separation of church and state say that the Intelligent Design Theory of creation ought not…
cwilcox | February 27, 2009Heart the size of a Mini Cooper.Mouth big enough to hold 100 people.Longer than a basketball court.Weighing as much as 25 large elephants.It is the largest creature ever to inhabit the earth.But we know precious little about it.That's right, folks! Yours truly (and a few other awesome bloggers) have been given the opportunity to screen National Geographic Channelâs new TV program “Kingdom of the Blue Whale,” which premieres Sunday, March 8, at 8 p.m. ET/PT, thanks to a very kind and wonderful Digital Consultant, Minjae Ormes.
Instead of posting repetitive reviews, Daniel Brown at…
laelaps | February 27, 2009
The "Hottentot Venus", drawn from a wax cast made in Paris. From The Human Race.
On December 31, 1816 Saartje Baartman died in Paris. She had been ill for three days, perhaps stricken with smallpox, before she and her unborn child expired. Better known as the "Hottentot Venus", Baartman was a celebrity in Europe known for being the antithesis of the European concept of beauty. She was a dark-skinned member of the Khoikhoi tribe of South Africa* with buttocks so large that they mesmerized Europeans. She was treated as a sideshow attraction, marveled at by scholars and the public alike.
*[I…