Category: Nature

Two presentations on the history of humanity as a species. First, Spencer Wells talking about the Genographic Project, which looks at our shared DNA over millenia. It’s fascinating, and he presents the information well.

 

Second, here’s the history of human migration out of Africa presented interactively on the web site of the Bradshaw Foundation. Also very good, and draws upon the work of Stephen Oppenheimer.

…the one day that I don’t take my camera with me on my daily walk in the woods is the day when I am just 4 metres away from a pair of red squirrels chasing each other around a tree trunk. I stood and watched them for about a minute before they realised I was there and scarpered up into the tree.

 

I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with these rather poor shots of a squirrel from a couple of weeks ago. He was about 15 metres away, watching me from a perch high up in a tree.

 

 

 

 

Albert Heijn is a Dutch supermarket chain. We are customers. Carl Zimmer draws our attention to the content of one of Albert’s prepacked fresh cod. Oh dear.

A commonly-held view is that the human brain has evolved mechanisms that enable it to deal with language – and hence children demonstrate remarkable facilty for learning language at very young ages. But now comes a new proposal that states, in effect, that languages have adapted to the capabilities of the brain. It’s intriguing. More on this can be found over at the Babel’s Dawn blog, complete with a link to a 62 page draft of the paper laying out the proposal. Gulp.

From where I sit behind the computer, I can look out onto our front garden. It is often visited by green or spotted woodpeckers. Yesterday, there was a thump on the window – a juvenile green woodpecker had flown into it. It staggered about for a moment or two, and then flew off before I could grab the camera. Here’s a couple of shots of other woodpeckers investigating the pear tree in the garden.

 

 

 

 

 

Update: that juvenile woodpecker was obviously destined to be unlucky. This morning I found it dead by the side of the road. I’m pretty sure it would be the same individual, and it had probably flown into the path of a passing car…

Sorry for the intemperate headline, but while thinking about Stephen Fry’s response to sensitive souls who take offense at every little thing, it seemed to me to be aposite for Stephen Lenski’s reponse to Andrew Schlafly’s particularly stupid queries over Lenski’s research. As Lenski says,

Ridicule is the best weapon against these IDiots, I’m sure.

 

Update: Here’s the complete exchange between Schlafly and Lenski for your delectation.

We’re currently experiencing a spell of hot weather. That’s brought out the dragonflies to hunt over the ponds. This specimen of Libella depressa uses this iron rod by one of the ponds as its favourite perch.

 

 

And if to illustrate the point that I made in the last entry (that memes are not the sole province of humans), here’s Joshua Klein talking about the intelligence of crows. He uses examples of memetic behaviour to demonstrate it…

 

http://static.videoegg.com/ted2/flash/loader.swf 

Susan Blackmore’s talk at the year’s TED conference is now available online. As usual, thought-provoking, although, judging from the comments on the TED site, many people dismiss her ideas almost out of hand. She’s accused of anthropomorphising memes, whereas I don’t think she does at all. To me, the central idea is sound – evolution must occur when there are replicators and selection. The fact of understanding that the substrate on which this occurs is not always of a genetic basis is the clue to being able to see what she’s driving at.

 

Mind you, I think that her implied claim that we are the only species where memes occur is false. We may be the species that is a hyper-producer of memes, but I think that limited memes can be observed in many species. I am also not yet convinced that we are at the stage of temes – here heredity is not something that is common, and this is a necessary condition, it seems to me. Still, interesting talk.

 

http://static.videoegg.com/ted2/flash/loader.swf 

Carl Zimmer has another of his terrific (in all senses of the word) posts on parasitic wasps and their victims. This time it’s about Glyptapanteles glyptapanteles. Definitely worth reading and his piece conveys not only the stuff of nightmares, but also a wonderful illustration of the workings of nature and the struggle for survival. 

 

I’ve just got his latest book Microcosm and already, after only a few pages, I know it’s going to be good.

I’d heard of the phenomenon of the disappearing honeybee before, of course, but this article by Alison Benjamin in today’s Guardian pulls the story’s strands together in a compelling way. She paints a worrying picture. Apparently, the article is an extract from her book. Another one for the wishlist, then.

I don’t know whether you noticed that the hare, whose photo I posted a few days back, has been in the wars. Here’s a closer view of the same hare. Notice how the ears have large chunks bitten out of them?

 

 

 

As an alternative, here’s another hare who’s got all its ears intact…

 

 

 

There are plenty of hares around in these parts… And rabbits eating the flowers as well…

So, I’m sitting in front of the computer, as is my wont, reading something. From my position, I can also look out through the windows into the front garden. A hare appears, rummaging through the garden. That’s rather sweet, think I and fetch the camera. Click, go I, and get this shot (amongst others).

 

 

 

I then return the camera to the other room and resume reading.

 

Bugger me, but the tiny offspring of this hare suddenly makes an appearance and starts chasing its parent around the garden. Round and round they go, dashing back and forth like things possessed – what a photo opportunity!

 

I dash for the camera. But when I return to the spot, nothing is there, Just the lawn and the borders and the trees.

 

Damn. I shall never be a great photographer.

In today’s Guardian, Charlie Brooker has an existential column. With a more serious undertow than many of his overtly humorous columns, it’s equally worth your time to read it.

I do enjoy reading Ophelia Benson’s thoughts on this bizarre world in which we live. Her post "Chatting with Clerics" is a good example. Yup, Richard Harries, Gene Robinson and Desmond Tutu all have their hearts in the right place; but they do come out with the oddest statements now and then. The sort of thing that makes Ophelia and I go: "Pardon? Do you realise what you just said?"

I really don’t know why my fellow Brits are complaining – it’s that time of year when the farmers fertilise their fields. Around here, we’ve smelt nothing else for days. Get used to it, you bloody townies!

The video made for the launch of the Encyclopedia of Life has been nominated for a Webby Award. It’s a good piece.

While it’s rather a nice coincidence, it remains just that – a coincidence. Nice one, though.

If you suffer from prosopagnosia, then you are unable to recognise faces.  It turns out that there’s a specific part of the human brain that has evolved to do nothing else other than to recognise faces. Here’s an interesting web page that uses the analogy of recognising stones to point out some of the tricks that people with prosopagnosia have to use to compensate for their face-blindness. 

 

(hat tip to Rachel for the link)

This month’s National Geographic has a, erm, thought-provoking article on the minds of animals. We are not alone.