Dissonant Notes


If someone said that you looked pale or pasty, it was usually meant to indicate that they were worried about your state of health. If it was your mom, then perhaps it was good news and meant a day off school. But it seems that the same observation applies to Gallic pigeons in Paris parks. Jacquin et al (1,2) have published a study showing that paler pigeons have a weaker immune system and are more prone to pigeon parasites.

Melanin seems to be the key to pigeon prosperity. There is apparently a genetic link between melanin production and the strength of their immune systems. More melanin means darker feathers and healthier birds.

Being French and in Paris parks, the inevitable questions arise about the romantic consequences. Well pigeon moms have taught their daughters not to participate in parades in Paris parks with pale pasty pigeon potential paramours.

On an entirely different matter, there is news of the protest at the Bronx Zoo. This was a one-snake protest by an Egyptian Cobra. She went on the slither for several days. Whilst she was on the Downlow, there was a Tweet or two from her, but they proved to be fictitious. Nevertheless there were hundreds of thousands of followers eager for news.

A week later, she is no longer on the Downlow but is back inside doing time. The “Found” Tweet went chirping round the Tweetisphere on Friday.



1. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600048X.2010.05120.x/abstract
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9442000/9442210.stm

Goodpasture Island Spring



Spring has brought a warm sunny morning to the ponds. The lone cormorant is being forced to share its log with a plethora of the local turtle tykes. The weather, which is ideal for wing drying, is also good for warming. Hence, the aggregates of turtles on logs, and car salesmen on steps, are all hauled out to bask in the morning sun. 


Thirty minutes later and the cormorant has yielded to manifest destiny and her log is covered with 10 turtles. The two-bird log has fewer, but it is also the preferred spot for Mr. Big, who is at least three times the size of any of his minions.


The catkins on the willows are almost mature and the buds on the maples have burst. Cherry blossom is past its best now due to the wind and rain as spring struggled to be reborn this year. The plum is looking good, though and maybe will last a while. More and more of the Oregon grape is in blossom and the dandelions are rushing to join the coming flurry of golden yellow.


Geese and ducks have settled their territorial arguments for the moment as they are getting into the planning mode for egg delivery. The herons have settled into their heronry and are winging backwards and forwards to the ponds to feed. They start off looking like storks until they fold their neck into that characteristic rudder which improves their aerodynamic design with the center of lift back inside their wing chord. The ospreys are not in residence so far and their old nest has got an unkempt look. Grass has started to grow on the twigs and any debris from last year.  Maybe they have joined the rich and famous at a more upmarket location and are even now, building their version of an osprey MacMansion.


Whether Man or Mouse


When left to our own devices, with no job demanding our attention or irate supervisors working themselves into a lather at our timekeeping, we have a tendency to burn the candle late into the night, chasing one pleasure or another or sometimes even both. Then in the morning, we luxuriate with the drapes closed as the sun smiles and starts to fade. Food finally calls us from our torpor and the cycle starts over.

It maybe that as one of our very early ancestors was a mouse-like mammal, we share with our current crop of highly developed rodentia a tendency towards nocturnal behavior – at least in our teenage years.

Yesterday’s crop of scientific publications came up with a study by Hut et al from the U of Groningen (1) in which they treated a group of mice like the typical workingman. No free handouts for them in this brave new existence. They had to work for a living. To earn their food, they had to get on their treadmills and get the turns in. So many turns per pellet was demanded. As they got efficient, their turn rate requirement was increased in line with the standard Harvard MBA training. Of course, they had to clock in early in the morning and the shop was shut in the late afternoon. The mice soon got used to the early shift and got to their treadmills on time, before breakfast.

Were they turned into model workers? No. As soon as they were given a vacation with plenty of food handouts, what did they do but revert to their bad old ways, sleeping the day away and cavorting in the mouse fleshpots all night in their mouse version of Las Vegas. How long before your next trip to Vegas? Too long maybe?


1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0017527

A Numbers Game


What is the numerical competence of monkeys? This is a matter that we must all wonder about from time to time. As I miscount the change that I’m proffering when purchasing a non-fat latte with one raw sugar, and not forgetting the cinnamon sprinkle, I sometimes wish that I had a numerically competent one handy, when feeling embarrassed as I get the extra coins back. One would prove even more useful when there are several of us trying to work out shares of a lunch bill.

Some primates, such as Lowland Gorillas have been shown to perform well at low levels, as would be appropriate to the species. Along with cats, dogs, chicks and mosquitofish as it turns out. However, Schmitt and Fischer of U of Göttingen have given a bunch of baboons and macaques their final term papers and have published the results yesterday (1).

If offered a choice of plates with different numbers of peanuts, or in other experiments, raisins, there was a little ambivalence, and their eagerness to eat overcame their abstract reasoning abilities. The baboons soon tired of peanuts and had to be tempted just with raisins. The real tests came when black pebbles were substituted for raisins. One raisin per pebble was given on their choice.

The results? The two types of monkeys did very well in working out if there were more pebbles in one dish that the other. They did care if there was only one pebble difference but cared a lot more if there was two or more different. With scores of 84%, they received a B+ grade. They did not like to be short changed any more than the rest of us.
  

1 . Schmitt V., & Fischer J., Nat. Commun. 2:257 doi: 10.1038/ncomms1262 (2011).

Sweet Success


Honey has found utility as a wound dressing for hundreds of years, but fell out of favor as modern medicine became sophisticated. It made a brief return during the First World War but modern antibiotics put it into the alternative therapy camp. However, it is now having a resurgence of interest. An FDA approved honey dressing was approved in 2007.

The favored source of honey for putting on burns and open wounds is from New Zealand and Australia. In a paper published yesterday, by Dr. Carter and her Colleagues from U of Sydney (1) surveyed a wide range of floral sources for activity and confirmed that the Tea Tree nectar (Leptospermum species) was the best source, (that’s Jelly bush honey in Australia or Manuka honey in New Zealand).

All honey works though, fresh samples are best – so cozy up to your nearest beekeeper. Best not to take a knife and spread on the wound though. Spread it on the dressing first. The honey sucks the liquid up, and fresh honey has hydrogen peroxide from enzymatic activity that makes bacteria curl up their toes. But the best, the Tea tree stuff, has the phytochemical content that slay the bacterial dragons.

It is ironic that the honey bee is having a hard time in many countries. Colony losses coming out of the winter can be as high as 70%. Why? Well we work them vey hard, but they also have to cope with viruses and mites as well as lots of chemical cocktails and are not allowed any sick time let alone vacations.

1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018229

Exploding Black Holes


For some years now we have had fun reading about black holes. Those things in the firmament, which suck everything in if you get too close, rather like a huge whale guzzling plankton or the taxman with your wallet. More recently we learn that every good galaxy needs one to dance around, and we see beautiful pictures of plumes of radiation being ejected from either end of the axis around which it is spinning.

The fun part is that we can’t see the hole itself as even light is held captive. Hawking predicted that black holes would slowly evaporate through loss of thermal radiation. That would seem to be okay as they have immense mass and I’m in no hurry for the Milky Way to take off in all directions after our black hole evaporates, instead of quietly spinning around it as it does now.

Things are not so well organized out there, though. Visser and his colleagues (1) from Victoria U in New Zealand and in Italy and Spain have been doing a lot of calculations that show that black holes come to a bad end, by exploding far more often than any of us imagined. This makes space a much scarier place than we thought, as you could come face to face with a huge explosion where you had just thought that there was nothing there. The SciFi writers should be hitting the keys as we speak.


1. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/science/news/article.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=10714191

Getting Over It


Aggressive conflict is something that we, and most other species on the planet, know something about. Some much more than others of course, and such conflict usually entails risks of injury and costs in terms of energy at the very least. Mammals and primates in particular show signs of post conflict distress and in groups where valuable cooperative relationships exist, the costs of the conflict can be high.

We all know the solution don’t we? We try to teach it to our children. Reconciliation is the next best thing to no aggressive conflict to begin with. Ignoring the human primate species as a possible outlier, most primates will get over it and rebuild relationships if there was an existing value to those relationships.

Birds on the other hand don’t just get over it. They can hold grudges and pass that grudge along to their friends, as is the case with crows for example. It is interesting to read the new paper by Fraser and Bugnyar (1) of U of Vienna on a study with a group of adolescent ravens.

Before they get round to serious dating, ravens hang around in gangs and the gang culture is strong. Rules and relationships in gangs are important. Of course, with any gang of young hooligans, squabbles and fights will break out from time to time. But then it is important not to lose the valuable advantages of being in the gang, so reconciliation will follow and the relationships repaired if they are judged to be of sufficient value. Ravens can be more pragmatic than people at times. Perhaps we should sit close to those we’ve been squabbling with and do a bit of cooperative preening now and again.



1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018118