Category: Nature

Lovely little story in The Guardian today about the fact that scientists have discovered that male mice sing songs. The songs are at an ultrasonic pitch, so aren’t normally heard by humans. The scientists slowed down the songs electronically to bring them into our range of hearing. I learned a new word too: murine.

Yesterday we went for a ride through the Bergherbos – the woods that lie between Beek, Stokkum, ‘s-Heerenberg, Zeddam and Braamt in the province of Gelderland in The Netherlands. We were lucky enough to be invited to ride in an open carriage drawn by two black horses. Wonderful weather, wonderful day. Some photos that attempt to capture the sense of it are below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The owner of the riding school that we visited yesterday breeds both Labradors and Jack Russell terriers. Here’s a shot of one of the Jack Russells.

 

(Ed and Chris – this one’s for you!)

 

 

Yesterday, we rode through woods in a horse-driven carriage. More on that later. One of the reasons for doing it was because the trees are showing their Autumn colours.

 

Carl Zimmer, over at the Loom, points out that there are two main theories as to why the leaves turn red and yellow in Autumn. I had always thought that it was simply a side-effect of the trees preparing for Winter, but it turns out there is another theory that has been proposed to account for it. And now there’s some new theorising that seems to tie together both of the competing theories. Go and read Zimmer’s piece for more info.

As part of the process of selling our house, the buyers have commissioned a technical report on the construction and state of the house. So yesterday they turned up with a building engineer in tow whose task it was to examine it from top to bottom.

 

This being Gouda, our house is built on piles, and the way it is constructed means that there is a hollow space underneath the house – totally inaccessible, apart from via a hatch in the garage floor. As part of the inspection, the building engineer raised the hatch and peered down into the pool of water that collects under every house built in this way. He suddenly called us over to take a look. I peered down and saw at first what I thought was a silhouette of two crayfish painted on the concrete base under the water. Just as I was thinking why would anyone bother to paint crayfish on the floor, I suddenly realised that one of the crayfish was moving…

 

Yep, we have freshwater crayfish living under our house. Dunno how they got there, or what they live on, but they seem happy enough. So the next time I need to make Sauce Nantua, I’ll know where to go to get my fresh crayfish…

 

 

Fascinating story in New Scientist this week about research that seems to show that elephants are one of the few other species besides our own that pay homage to their dead.

Here’s a fascinating perceptual illusion: Dr. Angry and Mr. Smiles (scroll down on the linked page). Perhaps even more terrifying is the illusion that follows: Thatcher/Blair. Art imitates Life?

I’ve noticed before how biologists seem to adore some of the most bizarre examples of Mother Nature’s work, so I particularly like this quote from Dan Nilsson on the Box Jellyfish: "These are fantastic creatures with 24 eyes, four parallel brains and 60 arseholes".

 

Indeed.

Back in May, I revealed my plan for getting a Wollemi Pine, since my better half won’t countenance having its close relative – the Monkey Puzzle Tree – anywhere near any garden of his.

 

Alas, the plan has come to a screeching halt – and simple economics is to blame. The Guardian reports today on an auction of Wollemi Pines that has just been held in Sydney and the prices are way beyond what I can justify to myself (and more importantly, to my dear husband). There were 292 saplings that came up for auction, and it raised a total of £487,000. One batch of saplings went for a cool £4,200 per tree.

 

Oh well, back to the conifers, I suppose.

There’s a fascinating film that has been made, documenting the 17 year life-cycle of cicadas. It’s called Return of the 17-Year Cicadas. Go and watch it here.

 

Clearly made by people who love the cicadas – "In 2004, the residents of Bloomington, Indiana had the good fortune to be visited by one of the largest and most spectacular biological events on earth, the return of the 17-year periodical cicadas know(n) as Brood X." I’m not sure that the phrase "good fortune" is quite what I would have used – particularly when looking at the nymphs swarming over the ground, or the adults in their final frenzied mating flight. And Enya warbling on the soundtrack while trillions of the little buggers scurry about just didn’t resonate with me. Give me fluffy kittens, every time.

 

Nonetheless, it’s a terrific little film about an interesting example of evolution. If you like it, and you want more, then check out Microcosmos – a full feature-length film on the lives of insects.

 

(hat tip to PZ Myers over at Pharyngula)

I’m not the only one who thought that we had stumbled into Monty Python territory on hearing the news that a parrot had died of bird flu in the UK. CuriousHamster over at A Big Stick and a Small Carrot also made the connection. And he quite rightly points out the note of hysteria that seems to have got sounded on stories about bird flu. There’s a difference between being informed and panicking unnecessarily. The UK press and media seem to have concluded there’s more money to be made in stoking the fires of panic.

…he said, doing his best Sam Gamgee impersonation. For the last week we’ve been taking a short holiday in the province of Gelderland in The Netherlands. Getting to know the countryside that should, if all goes well on the house buying and selling front, become our home in about six months time.

 

There are some pleasant places in the future neighbourhood, such as a couple of woods within walking distance of the house…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Martin is already thinking about the dog he’s going to get to accompany him on long walks… He didn’t pass up the opportunity to examine labrador puppies. All together now: aawww!

 

 

Interesting new research reported on in this week’s New Scientist over how pterosaurs may have been able to fly.

Do you have people in your life who are difficult to buy presents for? Are you completely bereft of ideas of what to get them for their next birthday/anniversary/bar mitzvah?

 

Well, here’s a suggestion – a coffee stirrer; although you’ll probably have to think of another use for the walrus baculum.

We were visiting a friend this week, and she pointed out this mushroom growing outside her house. It’s Amanita muscaria – Fly Agaric – a highly poisonous mushroom. The toxins in it attack the central nervous system producing intoxication, hallucination and a euphoria similar to drunkenness. The poison will stay in the system for several months, even though the symptoms generally only last 12 hours.

 

…but I can’t help returning to the topic of Avian Flu again. Thanks to PZ Meyers over at Pharyngula, I refer you to some excellent posts on the matter by Tara Smith. Start with this one. Sweet dreams…

…She’s quite a gal. Always full of surprises. Like this one. Gay giant squid?

This week’s New Scientist carries an item about evidence being found to back up mariners’ tales of the sea glowing bluish-white at night. While I’ve never seen this phenomenon myself, I have seen something similar.

 

It was probably about 35 years ago. I was travelling on the night boat leaving Douglas for Liverpool. As the boat slipped out from the harbour into Douglas Bay, suddenly the waves and the wash around the boat erupted into a bright greenish-white glow. The glow persisted in the wash behind the boat for several hundred yards. This went on for about ten minutes until the boat got well out to sea. It was clearly some kind of bio-luminescence, but whether it was from plankton, algae or bacteria, I never found out. Whatever the scientific explanation, it remains a magical memory to this day.

Scott, over at the Adventures – The Next Chapter blog, draws my attention to the Inhabitat  web site, which I hadn’t seen before. It looks interesting, although I have reservations about the preponderance of items that seem to gush on and on about some artsy-fartsy precious piece of design faddery. However, that is balanced by items such as the one that caught Scott’s attention – a piece on whether we are reaching the "tipping point" of Global Warming.

 

As Scott says, living below sea level does rather concentrate the mind. In our search for a new house, I’ve taken to checking the Geo-Loket Hoogtemeter (the link is on this page). It’s a handy-dandy tool for folks living in The Netherlands – just enter in your postcode, and you are told how high above sea level (or below for half of the country) you are. In the Netherlands, sea level is known as NAP (Normaal Amsterdamse Peil). I note that the house we are currently interested in sits at 19.3 metres above NAP. I know it’s not much, but every little counts, in my opinion… 

There was an article in the Guardian earlier this week on the Anthropic Principle. This says something along the lines that any valid theory of the universe must be consistent with the fact that we, as a carbon-based life form, exist at this particular place and time.

 

Personally, I just take it as a truism that if the fundamental constants of the universe were different, then we wouldn’t be here, so the fact that we are here is simply a result of the particular values of the fundamental constants. But then I read the readers’ letters in the Guardian today, where apparently some people believe that the Anthropic Principle is evidence for the existence of a god doing the tweaking of the values – the so-called Fine-Tuned Universe. I just don’t see the connection between the two. In fact, it seems to me that the Anthropic Principle actually undermines the proposition for Intelligent Design (which basically boils down to GodDidIt). Certainly, I see no evidence for it.