A Visit To The Spa


How do you relax if you are a large shark, or a ray, after a busy week rushing about the ocean on one fishy quest after another? A visit to a spa, nicely located on a seamont, for a nose to tail spruce up should fit the bill and get rid of all those pesky, wormy, hitch hikers that have been freeloading all week. Early morning is the time to go for the best work out. Most of the staff are blue streaked cleaner Wrasse. Their enthusiasm is higher first thing in the morning.

Protocol is important at the seamont spas. Some client fish stand on their heads or their tails and Caribbean reef sharks have been observed to lay on their sides in a rather languid manner to indicate that they are ready for service.

Thresher sharks have a problem though, as they have to continue to swim to breath. The spa behavior of these has been reported on by Oliver et al (1) this week. These sharks swim slowly in small circles with their tail fin lowered, each waiting for her wrasse-ment. The staff generally avoid the nose end. A careless yawn by the client could turn into a bad day for an employee in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The ectoparasites have their favorite hideouts around fins and pelvis and the cleaning staff are diligent at tidying up these areas. Any dead skin is also nibbled off for no extra charge. The satisfied client, relaxed and rejuvenated, then sets off on another busy round of duties.



1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0014755

Don't I Know You from Somewhere?


Learning about group dynamics is always interesting, especially for the small groups like those that we interact with daily. A key prerequisite is that we have to know who is in our ‘gang’ and who isn’t, so learning to “never forget a face” is an early occupation.  Schell et al in Animal Cognition (1) looked at the ability of Barbary macaques to pick out bad guys from mug shots. My first unworthy thought from my snobbish primate stance was that one macaque looks very much like another. Not correct of course. A well brought up macaque can tell the good, the bad and the ugly at a glance.

The youngsters in the troops being interrogated were not very discriminating though, but they did like looking at the pictures. Their prejudices increase with age and their moms and dads got much more interested in looking at pictures of strangers than their snaps of their friends. Know your enemy has clearly been well understood by the time they reach their majority.

The authors report on a rather touching piece of work carried out by Hoesch fifty years ago with baboons, or one in particular, who had been trained to look after a herd of goats. This chappie could recognize the individual goats. However, he was paricularly adept as a goatherd because he could recognize the bleat of a separated kid and return it to its mother. That would be way above my paygrade, and suggests that maybe our industry barons should rethink their push towards robotics as there are a lot of potential workers out there who would be happy to work for peanuts.



1. http://www.springerlink.com/content/40485378447740j7/fulltext.pdf

Listen To Your Mom, Girl


We know that elephants work cooperatively and gossip about this and that in undertones that we can’t quite catch. There may be just the touch of democracy in the group but only a touch. African elephant groups are matrilineal and what mom says goes, especially if she is older and has been around the block a few times. This, of course, is a good thing as we were all told when we were little (and maybe not so little), and the savannah predators make this essential. Lions do eat elephants. Little ones, they couldn’t manage a whole one, and apparently male lions are particularly dangerous, so the family gets behind Big Momma in a tight group with bigger sisters at the front when a lion come knocking.

Studying this response in the field, McComb et al (1) crept up on unsuspecting family groups and played lion roars through their boom boxes. Recordings of multiple lions roaring got immediate solidarity with a tight bunch and Big Momma getting ready to tan their hides for making such a racket. More interesting though, were the results from single lion roars.

Young moms were much more casual about getting ready to sort the neighbor out if the roar was from a single lion. Big Momma though knew better, and would gather her family in. If the roar was from a male lion, things were taken more seriously by all, although one lion roar sounds much like another to me. Those big elephant ears aren’t just for cooling the blood, but get it pretty hot if the sound waves aren’t to their liking.

The general conclusion was that older meant wiser. And when listening to opportunist predators, Big Momma knows best what’s good for you. You’d better listen and not go and see what that pretty guy out there is shouting about .



1. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/03/10/rspb.2011.0168.full?sid=1df894c6-2099-402b-a309-bfc71095c064

Idus Martii


Well, yesterday was the Ides of March. Which, of course, we all remember from Shakespeare and The Simpsons as turning into a bad day for Julius Caesar after he got to the theater. However bad as the day was for Julius, and it was a really bad one, it was also a bad day for the Roman Republic as it marked the shift to an Imperialist state in 44BC. 

I started to wonder about the analogous situation with the technological world as I read the reports from SXSW, or for those techy tortoises like me South By South West. The report by Oliver Burkeman (1) was perhaps the most apposite. The proposal is that the internet, as one of many tools that we pick up and use at will is defunct in that role. But it has now morphed into an indistinguishable or integral part of our daily existence. It's no longer something to pick up or put down on a whim. 

My thumbs are already twitching at the contemplation of the gamefication of my daily activities. What apps should I download first? Should it be Instagr.am so I can share my photos straight away with all my social media friends? After all, I can use crowd-sourcing advice as to which new sweater to buy and not have the burden of making that decision without focus group support. Or should it be SCVGR first and then as soon as I go into a café or store, my phone gives me some quiz questions or challenges to answer so that I can win discounts and coupons. Retail therapy will reach heights unknown, unimagined even, by the digitally challenged being lefty behind.

Going back to school is beginning to look attractive, if we can no longer fail but just take our online quizzes again and again, repeating this or that level over until we have collected enough spoils to get to the next level with its new set of challenges. A trip to hospital to take part in a multiplayer game though is a little more intimidating, although I recall that crowd sourcing diagnostics has been tried using a high school class, with good results too. The next step is obvious – leave my life-management decisions for my iPad to discuss with the phones of my cyber-friends while I tend to the whims of my avatar on Second Life. One bite of the apple was sufficient, if I understand Genesis correctly.



1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/15/sxsw-2011-internet-online

Turning Turtle



The Western Pond Turtles in the ponds have shrugged off the semi-dormancy of winter and ventured out from their hibernacula under a few inches of soil and mulch close to the waters edge. They have come out in force to take over the two-bird log and bask in the weak sunshine, far enough apart though to avoid wasting energy on turtle-town squabbles.

Their menu at the moment is rather dull with only algae and plant roots available. Soon however, more exciting items will be on offer such as tadpoles and insect larvae. With warming weather and good al fresco meals coming up, they will soon be making out and worrying about building nests. These are not minor temporary affairs. The young turtles call them home for a year. In fact there will be no place like home when next winter’s icy blasts lash the reeds and turn the surface to sheets of ice.

π - Day


There was definitely a momentary thrill of excitement as the radio gently woke me this morning to the news that it was Pie Day. Lemon-meringue or chocolate-satin started to fight for supremacy as sleep receded. But I’d heard wrong, it was Pi Day as then the geeks came abruptly to the fore with the explanation that it was March, 14th, that is 3,14 in the curious American rendition of dates. Then questioning set in, as carrying this forward would give 3,142011, which won’t square the circle. However the solution is clear – we have to cut our celebratory pies today at 26.5 seconds after 1:59 to get us to 3,14159265 and then apologize to our mathematical friends (if we have any left) that we can’t be more precise, but it will do for engineering work.

Moving forward with engineering news, we have Terrafugia in Massachusetts soon to be delivering its roadable plane called the Transition. We will then be able to drive from our homes to a nice stretch of road, unfold our wings and fly up and away to the length of freeway next the strip mall of our choice, land and fold our wings tidily away to drive in and park. At around $200k, it’s a must have for the dedicated light aircraft fliers amongst us. If the weather turns nasty, they can land and drive the rest of the way. However, you won’t be able to do the one thing we all wish for and that is, when we are sitting in that stationary traffic jam, just open your wings and fly away, free as a bird. Next year, perhaps?

Bird Brain

As we go about our daily business, we like our day to be predictable with no nasty surprises, but at the same time, no surprises quickly translates into boredom. The younger we are the quicker that happens. Captivity exacerbates this and we give our contained pets toys to brighten up their day. It is even possible to purchase a football game for your goldfish (although it should be called noseball). Fairhurst and team at U of Sakatchewan, published a study last week on how changing the toys can vary stress levels (1).


               Clark's Nutcracker
                                   photo US Fish & Wildlife

 The focus group were a small flock of Clark’s Nutcrackers and their stress levels were measured by the amounts of Corticosterone in their feathers. They are not used to being confined and normally go wandering around over large distances gathering pine seeds and burying little caches in the ground, so being shut up in a cage with nothing to do would not be their first choice. All were unpaid draftees, I must add.

When given toys such as bells and mirrors, their stress increased until these new and threatening objects were found harmless. Long-term exposure to the toy entertainment brought their stress down and it went back up again when their toys were taken away. If the toys were taken away after the victims had only had a short time to play, they relaxed, which reminds me of my piano lessons as a kid where my stress level went up until I was allowed to give it up. But once I have got used to a toy “you will have to prize it from my cold dead fingers” to quote Chuck Heston.


1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0017663