Not Always a Good Bet


Now we have officially moved into winter we are watching the weather forecasts to see how the snowfall is doing in the mountains. Our skis, snowboards and snowshoes are ready so that we can play in the powder.

Many of us are timid and stick to well-worn trails and bunny slopes, but there is a percentage that craves more excitement and a passion for the adrenaline rush of taking risky choices. Those of us who are eminently sensible are happy to pay hard earned cash to watch the antics.

The question that pops up in the minds of enquiring evolutionary anthropologists is what is the benefit (evolutionwise – cashwise it’s clear from the size of the audience) and do other great ape species indulge in the same game. That was the question asked by Haun, Nawroth and Call (1). They took chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and gorillas and got them to play a choice game in which they could win bits of banana. A far cry from steep ski slopes but easier to organize.

There was a safe option of always getting a small piece, but they could make another choice that gave them a one in four chance of a big piece. The candidates had a tendency to go for the risky option unless the size of the safe option became a worthwhile size. Well, nobody likes to get shortchanged and I wouldn’t want to say “tough luck” to an irritated gorilla.

In summary, our great ape friends were more likely to take the risky option than us humans. All good casino candidates, I guess. The biggest gamblers were the Orangutans and Chimpanzees. Gorillas were more conservative, but our Bonobo friends were the most risk averse.

It is interesting that Bonobos tend to be rather better behaved in general and maybe they are just being more polite and leaving the bigger portion for someone else.

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0028801


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Paper Power


Have you been bombarded with catalogues this Holiday Season as the online and mail shopping has hit record highs? It’s clearly good news for the Post Office if they capture some of the product delivery business as well as delivering the catalogues.

Recycling is another problem and it’s not as easy with glossy paper as the clays and inks are difficult to remove. The contents of your crosscut shredder are even more problematical as many facilities can’t handle the confetti-like pieces so they end up in landfill.

A new solution may be rushing towards us from Sony according to a BBC report (1). They have devised a bio-digester power plant, which was on show last week in a miniaturized form. The system is based on enzymes from the class cellulase, which chop up the cellulose chains making up the paper into the individual glucose building blocks.

Lots of species live on cellulose and have to produce the enzymes to break it down. Fungi, termites and cows are all examples of cellulose users. Once the glucose is produced, they use it for energy, and Sony have put together a system for enzymic oxidation of the glucose to produce electrical energy.

The reported byproducts aren’t too unpleasant. The main one is gluconolactone  (for the foodies amongst us, that is E575), which  hydrolyses to gluconic acid when in water (good for pickling).

I can envisage a brave new world where we power our computers from old catalogues and shredded correspondence from the political arena, and then strain the liquid byproduct into jars to pickle our cabbage and cucumbers prior to tossing the solid waste onto the compost pile to grow more cabbages. We may need to add a solar cell or two to fill in for the one or two weeks a year when our mail boxes aren’t filled.
  1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16288107


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Digitally Enhanced Surfers


The latest reported study to contemplate our digit ratios seems to have taken place while enjoying the sun soaked Cornish beaches. To be specific, Newquay in 2009 (it takes a long time to drag oneself away to write the paper and then get the knowledgeable peer-reviewers to leave off waxing their boards and get to work.)

Kilduff, Cook, and Manning have been down on the beach with their rulers to check on the entrants to the 2009 Men’s 5-Star Professional World Qualifying Series surfing  competition (1).  I spotted a reference to this gem in the Annals of Improbable Research (2).

In summary, the 46 competitors were graded by three coaches for ability and the results compared with right and left hand ratios of digit number 2 to digit number 4. Their actual placement in the competition was thrown into the mix as a final check (on the coaches judgment, presumably).

It seems that to be good at surfing you need to have a low 2D:4D value on your right hand. The left hand ratio doesn’t work out, so you’d best keep that hand out of sight.

Of course, this is all down to your Mom as your digit ratio is a function of your prenatal testosterone and estrogen levels. More testosterone means lower digit ratio, more estrogen, conversely, means a higher ratio. Nowhere did I see any mention if the surfers were all right handed.

Similar results have been found for other sports, but for now if your digit ratio on your right hand is less than 0.994, get that wax out and get your board down to the beach; we’ll be cheering you on.

  1. L.P. Kilduff, C.J. Cook,& J.T. Manning, J. Strength Cond. Res., 25, 3175, (2011)
  2. http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume17/v17i6/AIR_17-6-Improbable-Medical-Review.pdf


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Allies Of Convenience?


It’s nice to see neighbors getting along especially, when they are species that usually fight. Most birds are pretty unforgiving when it comes to seeing birds of prey and will often mob them until they move on to some other territory. When nests are around, this is understandable, but Italy, as always is a land of surprises.

On the Gela Plain lesser kestrels are nesting in a colony in a cereal producing area which has lots of small mammals for them to eat. Colony nesting has some distinct advantages when it comes to babysitting as neighbors can be neighborly and take turns in keeping watch.

The unexpected findings by Camobello, Sarà, and Hare, which are published in the current issue of Ecological Behavior, show that there is a mixed colony of kestrels and jackdaws living happily and sharing the watch duty (1,2). Not, we should note, quite equally. The jackdaws got the job of doing most of the alarm calling to protect the nests.

So though both have a reduction in labor, the jackdaws are the junior partners. Perhaps that’s appropriate for noisier birds. We await developments as to how the relationship develops. The lesser kestrel numbers are pretty low (about 20,000 currently) so things may change if their numbers grow, but for now they are good neighbors.

  1. http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/12/02/beheco.arr207.abstract
  2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16249006 

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Adding To Our Ad Resistance


With just a few more days for shopping and delivery of goodies for our or our kids Christmas stockings, the ad season is in full swing. Any firm who has your e-mail address is probably bombarding you with information of special offers. Of course, adults like you or me are entirely resistant to such blandishments and only buy things that are essential to our plan, don’t we? But what about our kids? Have we built up their resistance?

By the time our kids are 5 years old we are supposed the have taught them to be Advertising Literate. Haven’t done this yet? Well best make a start with Brett Berk’s Ad Literacy 101 today (1). New Year’s may be to late; your wallet may have become anorexic.

But note that like any course, just taking 101 is not sufficient. Rozendaal et al in the current issue of Media Psychology explain that we need to go much further to help our kids resist the compelling adverts that they are exposed to (2). They point out that our children’s cognitive development isn’t yet at a sufficient stage to act as a defense against the blandishment of the ad agencies.

Two further trainings are required. The first is Ad Literacy Performance mentoring so that our kids actually know what to do with the Ad Literacy information. The second is termed Attitudinal Ad Literacy which means that we have to instill a somewhat cynical attitude so that our kids will, with the minimum of will power, raise their defenses and become somewhat immune until cooler heads prevail – like when they get to 21 and have their own paycheck.

This seems to set out the curriculum for our preschoolers in these days of little or no supervision over exposure levels.

  1. http://www.babble.com/kid/kid-school-learning/advertising-to-kids-media-effects-on-children/index.aspx
  2. E. Rozendaal et al, Media Psychology, 14, 333, (2011).


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