Amazing Link

I stumbled across this link on the internets. Go to it. It shows how big a blue whale is life-size. It's almost unfathomable to imagine how large these creatures really are in person. The size of the eye alone is staggering, and scrolling around the whale's body just gave me an incredible sense of awe. They truly are magnificent animals.

Then hit the X on the left to exit the image. A though provoking message pops up:

Think before you close this window.
This might be the last life size whale you will ever see.

WDCS international, you got my attention. Did they get yours?

(HT Oceanic Dreams)

It's a Darwinian Thing.

Well, that explains everything.

This Week's Sci-Fi Worthy Parasite: Leucochloridium paradoxum

Ah, the parasitic flatworms called trematodes. There's a lot of them, and many have very strange and impressive life cycles involving many specific hosts. Just about any of them is sci-fi worthy, but this one, in particular, is a real eye-catcher.

Meet Leucochloridium paradoxum, also known as the green-banded broodsac. Like similar flatworms, its lifecycle involves two hosts. The adults, found in the guts of birds, lay eggs which land on the ground in the bird's droppings. The unfortunate host to follow, a snail (Succinea or Oxyloma), then eats the eggs, which hatch in its digestive system into small cilliated larvae called miracidia. These use their cilla (fiber-like structures) to move from the snail's gut to its eyestalk, where they transform into the next larval form called cercariae which create a nice little home for themselves in long tubes called sporocysts.

It's these tubes that make these parasites so interesting. You see, the snails, on their own, aren't always the most tempting food for birds. They tend to hide a lot and are hard to see. But, seeing as the parasite needs to get into a bird's gut to continue its lifecycle, it isn't going to sit quietly and wait to get eaten. The tubes themselves mimic worms or caterpillars in appearance and movement, making them a tempting target for the parasite's adult hosts. On top of the visual attraction, the tubes serve another purpose - they blind the snail. So instead of avoiding open areas and sunlight, the snail wanders aimlessly into harms way.



After a bird falls for the well-lain trap, the cercariae inside the sporocyst transform again, this time into the adult flatworms which feed off the bird's food and have sex so they can produce more little eggs to infect more unlucky snails. The snail is left to die or get re-infected - whichever happens first.

Just be glad that we don't get infected by trematodes. Oh, wait... we do. I guess I'll have to tell you more about those ones next week...

Ok, this is pretty gross.

OK - I admit. I am terrified by don't like moths as it is. But this makes me creeped out by them even more than the sucking blood bit:


Source: DailyMail
What you're looking at was formerly known as a Honda. It's been attacked by (by my guess, hundreds of thousands of) spindle ermine moth larvae (adult on R). These voracious moths-to-be spin a silk web over their feeding areas to protect themselves from ants and wasps. Normally, a silk blanket like this would be on a tree or other plant-life where the caterpillars are feeding before they pupate, but this unlucky motorist from Rotterdam has learned the hard way that they don't just stick to trees, and will protect themselves no matter where they end up in the search for more food. The unfortunate owner likely got his car targeted because he left it there a little too long (such an infestation would have taken a few days) and the caterpillar's favorite tree - the spindle - is frequently used in parking lots and for lining motorways.

Getting caught in one of these guy's webs? Now that sounds like my personal nightmare. I'm cringing at the thought alone.

Size does matter!

When I interned at Florida Aquarium I had the pleasure of working with two screech owls. Sure, there were bigger, more impressive looking raptors that I could hold and show people, but those pint-sized versions were my favorite. It wasn't just that they were small (though that totally helped). It was that when you'd go to take them out of their cage to walk around with, they would puff up and try to act all big an menacing - which, frankly, just made them look like giant brown cotton balls.

What the birds were aiming to do was make themselves look bigger and more important. All kinds of animals have similar tricks to improve their size, which in turn reflects on their status. Whether it be to scare off rivals for their territory or impress the ladies, in the animal kingdom, size does matter. And humans, the hairless apes that we are, are no different.

It's long been known that size is associated with status. After all, we "look up" to people of power and authority. Taller people are more likely to be leaders, attract mates, be healthy, live long and be more intelligent. Just think of the quintessential ideal or model male and female - neither is anywhere near average height. Even where height seems less important, like in generally shorter cultures, overall size is still big. Sumo wrestlers, for example, are considered to be high status individuals, and the kings and upper class of Polynesian cultures flaunted their wealth with their waistlines. It's uncertain whether the bias exists because of some genetic link between size and admirable traits or if being tall or large is like colorful plumage in birds - attractive because it puts the person in danger or is energetically costly, thus impossible for unhealthy, unfit people to achieve. But what is certain is that bigger is better.

What's even more interesting is that perception of size is strongly linked to status. That's what a very interesting study, published in PLoS ONE, has shown experimentally. Not only did people think taller-looking people were higher status, they thought that those who displayed higher status traits were taller and heavier.

To probe the relationship between status and size, the researchers from Georgetown University and the NIH used a set of experiments which asked participants to guess the relative dominance, age, height and weight of actors in photos. The actors were manipulated into different poses, one which portrayed a high, authoritative status, one which portrayed a low, submissive status and one which was neutral. Poses were also either sitting or standing or in between. High status poses included lowered brows, open body postures, eye contact and outward-directed gestures like pointing, whereas the submissive poses had raised brows, averted eyes, closed postures and self-directed gestures like touching one's own body. Some of the photos were altered to make the actor look larger by making other objects in the photo smaller.

What they found was that, unanimously across the board, people that looked taller were perceived as more dominant. Even the same actor in the exact same pose, with simply a change in the background to make him look shorter, looked less dominant. But even more amazingly, the status implied by the posture an actor took, whether sitting or standing, affected how tall they appeared to the participants. Actors in authoritative status poses were judged to be on average an inch taller and 5 lbs heavier than when they were in submissive ones, whether sitting or standing.

Part of the effect, the researchers found, is due to silhouettes. When we're in certain poses, we look like we take up more space - literally. By analyzing the pixels in a 2d manner of different poses, the researchers found that we, in effect, are larger when we're in dominant positions. As the authors explain, "Although the targets' actual size did not vary across poses, in the sense that their actual height and weight were unchanged, the targets' apparent size in the two-dimensional plane visible to a perceiver varied significantly."

This is the first study which has shown that these status cues, like open or closed posture, directly impact perceived size. The authors speculate that like other animals, we, too, have evolved behaviors which change the appearance of our size as ways of gaining or losing status in a situation. These cues are picked up by low-level perceptual processes, not by higher order rational thought, but have a big impact on how we see a situation or judge a person. While we can't actually make ourselves taller or heavier, we can make ourselves appear to be so, and by doing so, affect how other perceive us. Though hopefully we're a bit more effective in our efforts than those little screech owls were - I definitely wasn't scared one bit by their tough guy acts.


Marsh, A., Yu, H., Schechter, J., & Blair, R. (2009). Larger than Life: Humans' Nonverbal Status Cues Alter Perceived Size PLoS ONE, 4 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005707

Like Taking Candy From A Baby

...err..well, not exactly. But it is a much easier way for a 45 ton sperm whale to get a quick bite to eat. This amazing footage of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) shaking cod fishing lines 108 m deep off the coast of Sitka, Alaska, is the first ever of sperm whales feeding - albeit not on its usual prey, the massive squids of the deep sea.

Most of the time, sperm whales dive to a staggering 900 to 2600 feet (that's up to half a mile or so deep) to catch their meals. At such depths, with no light and such a wide expanse, filming feeding is nigh impossible. But we do know that eating the massive, deep-sea squid is no piece of cake - scars on the heads of the whales tell tales of arduous battles between predator and prey. It's no wonder, then, that some sperm whales have found an easier route to food, thanks, begrudgingly I'm sure, to cod fishermen off Alaska. The long lines of black cod (Anoplopoma fimbria) just waiting to be plucked are a tempting target for a lazy but quick-witted sperm whale. This video captures this incredible feeding behavior, long thought to exist but never before shown.

But the video does much more than just show how sperm whales steal the fishermen's catch. It reveals fascinating details about sperm whale echolocation and bioacoustics.

What we do know about marine mammal sound production and function is most often from studies shallower species. The trouble is, sperm whales are unique when it comes to head anatomy. Unlike other odontocete species, they don't have a "melon" structure (in yellow). Instead, they have two triangular sacs, one atop the other. The lower sac, referred to as "junk", is filled with a very dense oil and is likely derived from the melon. But the upper sac is unlike any other melon. It's filled with a lighter, waxy substance called "spermaceti". While this strange two-sac complex seems to have functions in diving and fighting, it's also presumed to play a large role in sperm whale acoustics, as it replaces the melon found in other, similar whales.

Previously, recordings of sounds had been correlated to total body length that was estimated when the animal surfaced. From these data, scientists had come up with two different equations that estimate sperm whale body length from what is called the "inter-pulse interval" (IPI), or the time between clicks. But no studies were able to compare the size of the whale, its IPI and the size of its spermaceti organ and junk sac, as the sizes of these organs wasn't directly measured at the same time as the length and sounds. Other studies have tried to model how the spermaceti and junk organs relate to sound, finding equations which estimate their length based on the distance between an initial and a full sound of a click, presumed to relate to how the sound bounces off and around the two sacs.


The video, caught by scientists from Scripps and the University of Alaska, was used to examine the relationship between sperm whale's anatomy and the sound it produces in a paper published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Because the hungry thief was oriented perpendicularly to the camera as it contacted the longline and scientists knew how far away it was from the camera, they were able to estimate the total length of the whale as well as the size of its spermaceti organ. They wanted to compare the sizes with the sounds produced to see if they matched what scientists had previously predicted.

The real-time audio and video gave the scientists a unique opportunity to see if models of acoustic creation, made from examinations of dead whales and recorded sounds without direct video to compare to, were accurate. By comparing the actual sizes with the predicted sizes based on the sounds produced, the researchers were able to see how well the current model of sound production in sperm whales actually describes reality.

They found that when it comes to body length, the models which utilize sound to estimate length are spot on. The animal's body length was estimated to be between 13 and 16 meters by both sound models using two IPI choices, which fell well within range of the roughly 15 m estimate given by four anatomical models: two which utlize the snout, one using the distance from the blowhole to the eye and one based on the size of the teeth.

But the acoustic models were not nearly as accurate when it came to the sound-related organs, the spermaceti and the junk. By sound alone, the researchers estimated the spermaceti to be about 5.5 m long, but this number is a good 2.1 m longer than the visual estimate. The acoustics also estimated the junk to be close to 3.1 m long - which is odd, considering the 5.5 m estimate for the spermaceti. Biologically, that difference is too large - the two organs are always much more similar in length.

Combined, what these data mean is that while IPI can be used to determine a sperm whale's size, the assumption that the sound the animal produces can be used to determine the length of the spermaceti organ is off. This, in turn, means that the way in which we think sound travels and propagates from a sperm whale's head may be off as well, and that there's something going on that scientists are missing about how the sperm whale produces and receives sound. So a simple, neat behavioral video has opened the door to a much better understanding of sperm whale anatomy and acoustics.


Mathias, D., Thode, A., Straley, J., & Folkert, K. (2009). Relationship between sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) click structure and size derived from videocamera images of a depredating whale (sperm whale prey acquisition) The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125 (5) DOI: 10.1121/1.3097758

Oooo Prizes! Best Science Blog Post Of The Year, Anyone?

3 Quarks Daily, a fantastic blog which covers everything from science to art to politics, has annouced that it will start giving out "best of the year" awards for blog posts from around the internet. The Science category starts now, with nominations being accepted until June 1^st. There will then be public voting on the winners, narrowing the expansive list to 21, and then a panel of judges will further whittle them down from 21 to 6, with the top 3 winners picked by an expert and announced June 21^st. The 'Top Quark' gets $1000 - so it's definitely worth being entered in!

I know a lot of you are frequent sci-blog readers, so please go post the links to your favorite posts from the past year in the comments section of the announcement post to be considered for the awards. I'm thinking Ed Yong, Those Southern Fried Boys, Allie, and Daniel all probably have some great posts between last year on May 24^th and this May 24^th that deserve nomination.

Now, if, by chance, some of my loyal readers wanted to nominate some of *my* posts from the past year, below would be my suggestions, from newest to oldest. Seeing as this blog only started near the end of last year, ANY post of mine before Monday is in the time limit! So, if you love my posts, go ahead and nominate one of the following, one I forgot about, or skim through my posts on researchblogging.org, and pick your favorite(s!). After all, I am a starving grad student... that cash prize sounds like a year's worth of Ramen to me.

Good Choices:
The End Of The Age Of Man
A Marine Biologist's Story
Why The Media Sucks at Conservation - Even The Conservation Media
Sex v. Decongestants
Why I am NOT a Darwinist, but we should celebrate Darwin Day
A New Branch On The Tree Of Whale Evolution
Oestradiol Makes Women Hot And Hard To Keep
Why We Should Make A Fuss Over Broken Windows
Religion v. Science: The Fallacy of Intelligent Design
Having Some Fun With Evolution

Weekly Dose of Cute

These little tykes were only discovered last year. They're so cute, they made The International Institute for Species Exploration's Top 10 Newly Discovered Species for 2008.



Standing a whoppin' 1/2" tall, these little Satomi's Pygmy Seahorses, Hippocampus satomiae, are the smallest known species of seahorse (just edging under the previusly smallest Hippocampus denise by about 2 mm). With its tail stretched out straight, one of these seahorses would only measure about 1/2 the width of a penny. The previously unknown specimens were found off the coast of Indonesia and were named after the diver who collected them, Satomi Onishi. Like the other 35 species of seahorse, these pint-sized versions live in sheltered areas where they eat small fish, tiny shrimp, and plankton. The males carry the babies after mating, which, for such a small species, number less than 10 per brood and, when born, are roughly the size of a comma in this paragraph. Now those little guys - the baby pygmies - those have got to be unbelievably cute.

Not to be outdone by the fish, snakes found their way into the cute files with this ridiculously minature version of one (on R). Also in the Top 10, this new species, Leptotyphlops carlae or The Barbados Threadsnake, is the smallest snake species in the world. It grows to only about 4" long, and likely feeds on termites and ant larvae. Because it's so small, the threadsnake can only produce one egg at a time, and the baby that hatches is 1/2 the size of its mother. In other, larger species, many eggs are produced, and hatchlings are only 1/10 the size of mom. So for its size, these little momma snakes have one big baby!

These two just go to show that you don't have to be a baby to be adorable. Though, perhaps, you do have to be really, really small...

In Honor Of The Holiday

I'm sure most of you are aware that today is a truly special holiday. It's a day where we can honor those who have come before and done a great service to us - one single remembrance of those who have fallen before their time and the contributions they've made to us all.

Of course, I'm referring to Towel Day.

I presume you all have carried a towel with pride today. If you haven't, you are missing out. As the Hitchhiker's guide explains:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough

Some important info on this time-honored holiday:

On the 12th of October, a sixth book in the Hitchhiker's series is set to be released. And Another Thing..." is being written by Eoin Colfer, seeing as Douglas Adams is indisposed. Prior to his death, Adams said that he thought about continuing the series. "I might write a sixth book in the near future. Five is such a weird number to finish on."

And, for fans of Last Chance to Se (only the best book ever), Stephen Fry is picking up where Adams left off and revisiting the sites and animals from the book with Mark Carwardine. It's to be called "Another Chance To See." To learn more about production and how the travels are going at their website. I, for one, am ridiculously excited to see it! After all, that book contained that whole Kakapo sex explanation.

A World Of Change

Sometimes, it's truly incredible how much of an impact people can have on their environment. The International Coastal Cleanup, for example, was able to remove 6.8 million pounds of trash from the world's ocean and river ecosystems last year alone.

But most of the time, what we do is horrifying. Just look at "A World of Change," a collection of images of how our Earth has changed as viewed from space over the last ten years put together by the Earth Observatory for their 10^th anniversary.

Before I show you the visuals, let me give you some background. The Aral Sea was once the fourth largest inland sea in the world. As a saline body of water with an area of 68,000 km², it was full of life and vitality. Existing in an otherwise arid area, the Aral Sea was a place of plenty. The cities on its edge were busy fishing communities, employing 40,000 people and supplying 1/6^th of the USSR's fish. But all that began to change in the early 1960s, as Russian leaders decided they could use the water resource to produce more crops.

Over the next decades, the rivers which fed the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, were diverted over and over to irrigate the desert to the north so Soviets could grow rice, melons, cereals, and cotton. Their projects were successful - cotton production in the region doubled, and today, Uzbekistan is one of the world's largest exporters of cotton. But while the irrigation worked, it had big side effects. Without the incoming water from its major rivers, the Aral Sea began to dry up.

In the 60’s, the Aral's Sea level fell an average of 20 cm a year, a loss which had tripled by the 70’s. By the 80's, the sea level was falling 90 cm a year, and irrigation plans diverting water from the Aral's feeding rivers still continued.

The arrogance of the Soviet leaders was astounding. They knew that the lake was disappearing, and felt little to no need to address the issue. Some saw the lake's existence as a flaw of nature in the first place, and that its evaporation was inevitable. Others simply stayed quiet about their concerns. It wasn't until the late 1980s that public opinion and clear problems led to a cessation of irrigation projects.

But the years had already taken their toll on the Aral Sea. Between 1960 and 1998, the Aral Sea’s surface area shrank by 60% and its volume by 80% - the equivalent of draining both Lake Erie and Ontario. Since then it has lost even more, down to only 10% its original size. In turn, its salinity has increased 450%. It has dried up so much that the sea split into two separate seas, one to the north and one to the south, which were connected by a man-made channel until recently. The little remaining water has become toxic due to high levels of salinity and chemicals from agricultural runoff, causing illness and death in the people and creatures that once flourished. The former lake bed is now a vast desert whose edges are littered with beached boats and the ghost-like remains of a once prosperous fishing industry.

Anyhow, for their 10^th anniversary, the Earth Observatory put together "A World of Change," images of how our Earth has changed as viewed from space over the last ten years. Included is the change in the Aral Sea from 2000 to 2009 (the first image). But looking back even further shows the real change that has occurred (image 2 & 3, the black line=1960 extent). NASA captured the following images via satellite, and they show this horrible tragedy in frightening detail:




The Aral Sea, 2009 (more photos)

Now, efforts are being made to fix the damage, at least in parts of the Aral Sea, so that the fishing industry can be reborn, and the people who once lived off of it can again prosper. In a desperate effort to save whatever they could, Kazakhstan built a dam between the northern and southern Aral Seas in 2005. Its completion was a death sentence for the southern Aral Sea, as all of the water that still feeds the area now stays in the North. The dam has helped the northern sea a little, but even still there is little hope for a full recovery of the once-booming fishing economy. It's likely that what is done is done, and all that can be passed onward is a lesson for future generations about the impacts of our actions on the world around us.

HT EcoGeek

The End Of The Age Of Man?

No matter what our cultural influences might try to tell us, what makes a man a man isn't rippling abs, bulging biceps, or a rugged personality. It isn't an unbreakable emotional wall or a thick, wiry beard. None of these make Chuck Norris or any other classic "man's man" a real man. The only thing required to be a man, as far as people are concerned, is a Y chromosome.

Human beings, barring genetic anomalies, have 23 pairs of chromosomes in their genomes. One half of each pair comes from each parent. Twenty-two of these pairs of chromosomes are the same in all people. But the last set is different - they alone determine sex. You can have two possible combinations: XX and XY, and the Y is what makes a man male. It alone carries the genes for testes and sperm that separate the boys from the girls.

But the Y chromosome is behaving unlike any other chromosome in our bodies - it's shrinking. The X chromosome, Y's feminine partner, contains almost 1500 genes. It's believed that the Y chromosome, too, once contained around that many. But now, the lonely Y only contains 86 genes. It's lost almost 95% of its genetic material.

Why is the Y shrinking? The answer lies in how our cells replicate. When a cell divides, it has to make entire copies of its DNA to put into the new cell. But our cells aren't perfect - whenever they copy genes, they make a few mistakes. Some of these mistakes are caught by special enzymes which "check" the DNA, but not all of them. Those that make it past the initial checkpoints are usually fixed later by borrowing information from the partner chromosome. So if you have a flaw in a gene on your dad's copy of chromosome 18, the body replaces that gene with the corresponding one from your mom's copy of chromosome 18. But the Y chromosome has no exact partner - ever. The Xs get paired up to make girls in 50% of the population, giving the X chromosome time to repair its genes with the matching copy. But never, in healthy people, does the Y chromosome get another Y chromosome so it can fix mistakes. Over time, these mistakes accumulate, turning large portions of the DNA into junk, which is later removed - thus the chromosome slowly shrinks.

Possible trajectories for the degradation of the human Y chromosome
from 310 MYA (when mammals diverged from reptiles) up to the present
time (dashed vertical line), and prediction for extinction time.
(A) The rate of loss of active genes from the human Y assuming a
constant rate (blue), an exponential decline (green), a target size
that initially increases and then decreases (orange), or an exponential
decline slowed down in its final stages by positive selection (purple).
(B) A more realistic picture of the rate of gene loss from the human Y,
taking into consideration that at least three evolutionary blocks, the
ancient conserved layer 1, the older layer 2, and the Y added region
(YAR) were differentiated at different times, and each would have
presented an initially small target size for degradation.

By slowly, I mean that the Y chromosome has lost its genes over millions upon millions of years. At the rate it has lost them in the past, however, scientists estimate that it could disappear in 5 to 14 million years - which is very, very soon, geologically speaking.

But even this problem with matching doesn't explain the whole story. While the Y chromosome is shrinking in humans and other species which have the same sex determination, other animals which use a different but similar pattern don't have the same problem. In birds, males are the ones who are homogametic, or have two alike sex chromosomes: ZZ. The females, in turn are heterogametic: ZW. Based on the trouble with Y, you'd think that the W chromosome has shrunk over time, too. But it hasn't - not in all bird species. In the flightless birds, like ostriches and emus, the W is just as large and is very similar to the Z, while in others, like the chicken, the W is greatly reduced like the Y is in humans. The point is that even though it can't pair with a W to fix mistakes, the W chromosome in some birds is the same size as the Z chromosome, and shows no signs of degeneration. Why?

Some have said that the W doesn't shrink because both parents play equal, vital roles in raising the offspring. In humans, and many other mammals, this isn't the case - the man, while he might help out, isn't actually necessary for parenting. In many species, the man simply leaves the offspring to the mother. Thus men are only vital for one part of the reproductive process - mating. Because of this, fewer men are absolutely necessary for the continuation of the species. Most, then, are dispensable. Because of this strange selection pressure, the Y chromosome doesn't need to keep around its whole host of genes, just the few that allow it to be male. In other words, there's no real reason to invest a lot in the male chromosome when the men themselves are rather replaceable. But in birds, where the female is vital, the W has to stay in tact and fully functional.

Of course, behavior isn't the only possible explination. Others say that the reason the W hasn't degraded as much is because it's feminine. The W, thus, replicates and undergoes meiosis in the ovaries, whereas the Y does the same in the testes. The testes are a much harsher environment. Not only does a cell reproduce many more times to create the extremely high number of sperm (compared to the number of eggs), but the testes have a highly oxidative environment with few repair enzymes. In other words, there's a lot more chances for the DNA to make mistakes while replicating, and there are fewer of the usual ways to correct them. Because the W, in contrast, has to be copied much less and has the comfort of the ovary, it is less likely to end up with flaws in the first place.

What will happen if the Y chromosome disappears? No one's entirely sure. In truth, no one's sure that it can be lost entirely. Some believe that the important "male" genes will attach to the X chromosome or another chromosome, which has happened in some species of mole vole. These animals have either two X chromosome paired together or only one, unpaired X and still have two distinct sexes. In humans, this can happen, though rarely. It's known as XX male syndrome, where somehow a few of the Y's genes have attached to an X, rendering the person still "male" despite a lack of a Y chromosome. However, in this case, the X chromosomes tend to feminize the person as well, leading to small testes, sterility and effeminate characteristics. Others believe that another chromosome will attach to the Y, giving it more genes and allowing it to continue onward. Still others believe that it will never fully disappear, and will remain indefinitely as a husk of a chromosome containing only the one or two genes absolutely necessary for manhood.

Why is it so important to have men around? After all, plenty of species breed asexually or without sex distinctions. There are even species of lizard which are entirely female. Instead of mating with men and exchanging genetic material, they hump each other and simply clone themselves. The process of reproducing without fertilization in vertebrates is called parthenogenesis. It has been documented in some species of shark, too. But never, not once, has it been found in humans. Other than a rumor of some woman named Mary about 2,000 years ago, no one has ever had a virgin birth.

The truth is, we have sex for a reason - you know, other than the fun part of it. Sex allows people to mix their genes, giving their offspring a head start against disease, parasites, and changing environmental conditions. This variation is so beneficial, scientists argue, that it outweighs the costs that come along with sex. After all, to have sex, you have to find another member of your species. Not only that, but your genes take a hit in the next generation - only 1/2 of them move onward. And even more importantly, in sexual species, only one member can bear offspring, which slows the reproductive rate dramatically. Sex is the reason that, even in the friskiest animal species, reproductive rates are nowhere close to the asexual animals. All these potential negatives, though, are overwhelmingly outweighed by the ability to create genetic variety.

It's this genetic variety, as well as sex in general, that is facing extinction if the Y chromosome disappears. Even if human beings were to be suddenly able to undergo parthenogenesis, we would lose a vital component of our reproductive process. Without that variety, we'll be far more susceptible to the onslaught of disease and parasites which evolve far more rapidly than we do.

The Y chromosome isn't taking its losses lying down, however. Scientists have found that to protect its vital genes, the Y chromosome has evolved an entirely unique way of fixing mistakes - it swaps genes with itself. The vital genes on the Y chromosome are actually palindromes (where they read the same forwards as backwards). The first half is the gene itself - the second half is the gene's copy, but backwards. Thus if something goes wrong with the functional portion of the gene, it can be repaired using the backwards template.

Even still, men are quickly becoming a dying breed. In the second half of the 20th century, it has been estimated that the average sperm count has dropped a staggering 40%. While this figure is up for debate, scientists have found that, overall, men's semen quality is dropping. The most likely culprit is the recent rise of certain chemicals in our water. Some chemicals are so similar in structure to hormones that they can fool the body. These mimics, called pseudo-estrogens, can cause men to become more feminized. In animal species, males have been found with female tissues and a lack of testes. In humans, exposure to these chemicals has been shown to have a big impact on male traits, particularly when the person is exposed to them as a fetus in the womb. So, if it's not bad enough that the Ys are shrinking, the men, in general, are losing their manliness due to environmental effects.

Most scientists believe that a true loss of the Y, and thus men, would spell the end of our species. Unlike the infamous lesbian lizards, humans cannot breed asexually. There are several, vital genes, they argue, that have to come from the male. And clearly, our reproductive process is currently dependent upon men. Even if we did evolve a way around the lack of males, the loss of genetic diversity is likely to be devastating. We'll be at the mercy of fast-evolving parasites and viruses. But then again, who really knows? Even if the Y disappears, perhaps the next few million years will not spell the end of the age of humans, but solely the end of the age of man - with the age of woman just beginning.

**UPDATE: This post is up as a nominee for the 3 Quark's Daily Top Quark: Science! Go Vote For It Here!! (scroll down to the Os)

Oh Ida!

I'd be lying if I tried to claim that this whole "missing link," possible-primate-ancestor hasn't piqued my interest. So, since this blog is supposed to talk about anything and everything that does that, I would be failing you if I didn't at least briefly mention it. Even I can't completely avoid a media explosion.

Here's the thing: I'm not a paleontologist. For that matter, I'm not an expert on primate or human evolution. Sure, I might understand it a little better than the average Joe or (apparently) science journalist, but I have nowhere near the knowledge or skills to accurately condone or dissect a paper of this nature.

I can say that calling anything a "missing link" is simply ridiculous, and to do so reveals a clear lack of understanding of how evolution works. Evolution isn't a chain; it's more like a branching tree. First off, the odds of finding part of the branch which leads directly to us - not a smaller branch off of it - is highly unlikely. Even the best known fossils of human evolution are not necessarily ancestors so much as the other branches which came from them - Neanderthals are a great example. Take a look at the image on the right. What do you think the odds of finding a single fossil from one of those little bottlenecks instead of the large, bulbous areas is? The simple fact is that finding an example of a small subpopulation of a species that happened to lead to another is highly unlikely.

Explained another way: think of all the species of whale and dolphin that are out there. Now, imagine, that a particular population of killer whales -perhaps because they feed on marine mammals instead of fish - leads to some entirely new species, which lead to other species, that, millions of years from now, someone is trying to determine the origins of. What do you think the odds are that they a) find a fossilized killer whale of all the cetacean species that are out there and b) that it’s from the small group of killer whales that evolved into the new species? While any find gives us clues about the evolution and origins of an animal, it can't automatically be assumed to be a direct descendant, let alone a "missing link".

Of course, that doesn't mean a fully intact fossil, complete with a body outline and stomach contents, isn't an amazing and incredible find. It is. Period. Darwinius masillae, nicknamed "Ida", is a fantastic fossil. Not a "missing link", but a truly remarkable discovery none the less, which is sure to reveal much about how its species lived 47 million years ago.

And while I may not be the right person to teach you everything you need to know about this find, I am really, really good at reading what other people write, particularly those who are far more informed than I am on this topic. So, that said, if you want to learn more about this remarkable discovery, here are my suggestions.

1. First off, here's the paper itself. If you haven't already, I suggest reading it. It probably won't be entirely intelligible if you're not a paleontologist - that's ok. At least, having read it, you can approach the claims about the fossil with a better understanding of what is known about it.

2. After you read the paper, read something that explains it in layman's terms - like Greg Laden's excellent explination of the paper or this article by PZ Myers. It will help you digest, a bit anyhow, what was said. And if you're ambitious, A Blog Around The Clock has a very complete list of links to articles about Ida. You can go buck wild reading up on it.

3. As well as enjoying the sheer marvel of this fossil and the explinations of the find, be sure to read the critiques. Brian Switek has a great critique of this paper - the kind I'm not qualified to write. Carl Zimmer also tackles the media hype versus what was really found.

And perhaps, if by chance, some experts do read this blog, they can discuss this in the comments so that everyone else can benefit from their wisdom and insight :)

Ah, the lovely world of science news...

Thanks, PhD Comics, for reminding us how it works.

HT to SciCurious who posted the link on her twitter feed

Plankton Art

I'm always intrigued when artists use marine life for inspiration, but these are even better than most. The artists vision:

to investigate plankton for themselves, and relate their observations in a unique collection of work made in wood, silver and gold

The two artists, Louise Hibbert and Sarah Parker-Eaton, use nature for inspiration to create intriguing sculptures. Here's some from their Plankton series:


Now those are some nifty marine-inspired artworks. But the artists don't just recreate plankton - they also have been inspired by jellies and seed pods.

This Week's Sci-Fi Worthy Parasite: The Phorid Flies

Ah, there's nothing that makes a good horror movie or sci-fi flick like the living dead. So it's no wonder that this little fly makes it on my list of sci-fi-worthy parasites. It's claim to fame is that it eats the brains of ants while turning them into living zombies for a bit before decaptating the unfortunate insects and moving onward.

Yeah, they're pretty bad ass.

These flies, from the genus Pseudacteon, are small and resemble fruit flies. They are quite different, though, in life cycle and behavior. As adults, they've earned the name "scuttle fly" because they tend to run on a surface away from a potential threat instead of flying. But it's the larvae that are the little monsters responsible for headless ants worldwide.

The adult female uses a sharp egg-laying organ called an ovipositor to inject her eggs into an ant's body cavity. From there, the larvae hatch and make their way to the ant's brain. There, the happy parasite feeds on the ant's hemolymph (ant blood), muscle and nervous tissue (a.k.a. braaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnsssss). Eventually, the fly-to-be completely devours everything inside the ant's head. The ant, meanwhile, wanders around as if it still had its brains for around 2 weeks. Eventually, when the larva is ready to pupate, it releases an enzyme which decapitates the ant by dissolving the membrane which attaches its head to its body. The fly larvae pupates in the ant's disembodied head for about 2 more weeks, then emerges as a full-grown adult fly.

What's even better about these parasites, in my book anyhow, is that they've recently been targeted for use as biocontrol of fire ants in the southern USA. If you've ever been bitten by a fire ant, you know how absolutely retched the little buggers are. Bites hurt and itch like crazy, and the ants are almost impossible to erradicate by natural means. You can't flood them out - they build a raft on the corpses of the dead and merely float to the nearest above-water object, which they scurry up (FYI: if that object is you, it's one of the worst exeriences imaginable). They also cause a lot of damage every year because of their inexplicable attraction to electronics. Fire ants cost the Texans alone about $1 billion annually by damaging circuit breakers and other electrical equipment, according to Texas A&M.

Anyhow, scientists are introducing several species of these Phorid flies to serve as biocontrol of the fire ant populations. I sincerely hope they succeed. The more headless, zombie fire ants, the better, if you ask me.

Mother Nature couldn't let those wonderful wasps be the only ones that get to have the joy of turning creatures into zombies... Let's just hope that none of them figure out how to use us as hosts.

But if someone you know starts wandering around aimlessly and acting like his or her brains are being devoured slowly, you know what you have to do... to save humanity.

If this face doesn't melt your heart...

... then you have no heart.


check out more pics of this guy at ZooBorns
Clouded leopard cubs are simply too cute for words.

Weekly Dose of Cute

I was going to try and do something non-furry to continue to explore cuteness on other branches of the tree of life, but this little guy just made my heart melt and I couldn't, in good conscience, post anything else.



HT Zooborns
This adorable little cub is a Black Jaguar, born on April 14th in Peru. Jaguars, Panthera onca, are the third largest cat species and the only Panthera species found in the Americas. The black color is due to a dominant but rare allele, and black moms can have black or spotted babies. They live in Mexico and much of Central America, extending as far south as Argentina and as far north, possibly, as Texas and Arizona.

But as adorable as they are, it’s possible that the near future will see these beautiful cats go extinct. While currently listed as "near-threatened" on the IUCN Red List, jaguar populations are falling due to habitat loss and poaching. In the '60s, more than 15,000 jaguar skins were sold from the Brazilian Amazon annually, but CITES listing changes in the '70s dramatically reduced this activity. Still, in many areas, the cat's penchant for farm animals leads them to be shot on site by farmers and ranchers. While hunting is prohibited all together or limited to "problem animals" in most of their range, Bolivia still allows trophy hunting, and jaguars have no legal protection in Ecuador or Guyana, despite being their national animal.

Jaguars are special in that they're considered an "umbrella species" - one whose home range and habitat are so broad that protecting them automatically protects a number of other, more limited species. However, the US government decided in January that the jaguar recovery was unimportant, and decided to abandon it under the endangered species act. This is an unprecedented action by Bush, which many believe was solely for the purpose of allowing a controversial border fence to be built which happens to block the cat's typical crossing routes from Mexico.

So while this little guy is absolutely adorable, his kind faces mounting threats as their habitat is destroyed and cut into pieces by ridiculous fences and the ever-expanding human population. It's very possible that, in the next hundred years, the status will drop to endangered for these majestic animals.

Ok. One more cute Peruvian youngster, to cheer you up again:

c/o ylovebigcats.com

The Luckiest Plant Ever.

This is just frickin' neat: A 56-leaf clover. It was bred by farmer Shigeo Obara, who had previously held the Guiness World Record with an 18-leaf clover.
"I never dreamed of seeing this many leaves on a clover," Shigeo told the Associated Press. Shigeo had to decal the leaves as he counted them to avoid double-counting - wow.

Though, honestly, I'm not impressed - try counting all the leaves on a 3' mangrove sapling when its 95 degrees out with no shade. Now that is a lot of leaves to count. Right, Allie? :)

HT National Geographic

A bosom boost when you need it most?

Occasionally, I come across interesting new technologies that are just too...well, too something, not to post about them.

Take, for example, Lisca lingerie's newest model: The Smart Memory Bra. The special memory foam bra reshapes under the influence of heat to give a woman more cleavage when she gets warmer. The theory is, since attraction can cause a woman to rise her temperature a bit, that the bra will enhance her best assets when the time is right.

Of course, I'm not so sure I buy that. There are any number of reasons why a woman's body temp might rise, the least of which is interest in a man. I doubt I need extra clevage, for example, when the AC breaks in my building, or I'm chasing after my loose cat. For that matter, even if the product works as advertised, I'm not so sure I want my boobs looking bigger every time I see a cute guy - I like to advertise my affections only when I choose to do so consciously, thankyouverymuch.

Although, to be fair, I guess it would even the playing field between men and women a little bit. After all, you guys can't always hide your "interest" so easily as we women can.

Anyhow, if you're a more adventurous gal (or perhaps a little slutty), the bra will be available this summer in the UK for around $40. Enjoy. I'll be curious to see the sales figures. And let me know how it goes if you get one...