Wolfe, pig, whale

Wolfe's "You can't go home again" came
millions of years too late, or too soon.
India's pig, her offspring whales
re-committing and committed to mother sea.

A little holiday monkey business

Pursuing my never-ending desire to bring important historical anniversaries to the attention of my dear readership, on this day before Thanksgiving I salute a very talented fellow primate: Nim Chimpsky. No, not the linguist and leftist political thinker Noam Chomsky, but the signing chimpanzee who was born on this date in 1973.

Although I'm sure Conservative pundits will avow a very close kinship between this particular pairing of man and chimp, Nim, who was named after Noam, mastered a series of hand signals and helped language scientists gain a better understanding of the communication skills of our evolutionary cousins.

There was some controversy at the time as to the study's conclusions, which held that Chimps are capable of mimicry and learning basic associations but not the grasping of deeper meanings that marks the language abilities of humans. I've been told that if an infinite number of them were to sit at an infinite number of typewriters, they would however be able to bang out the complete works of Shakespeare.

I wasn't able to find any video of Nim signing on YouTube, but as an indicator of the true usefulness of that site I did locate a clip from a chimp-based 1970s TV program that I watched as a kid ... "Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp." If this doesn't demonstrate the close relationship between humans and other primates to all those Evolution doubters, nothing will. It's certainly a vindication of Newton Minnow's vast wasteland prediction, and dig those cool threads.

Evolutionary trivia: Darwin started out a Creationist

Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History this week opens a temporary exhibit dedicated to the life of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution that will always be linked to him. Amazingly almost 150 years after he first formally published On The Origin of Species, religious zealots are still attacking his theory and promoting their Creationist doctrine that dates the Earth's genesis to the 6,000 years of Biblical accounting in defiance of all scientific evidence.

Among the details revealed in the traveling exhibit is the fascinating tidbit that Darwin boarded the Beagle as a Creationist, but his worldview was forever altered by his observations of flora and fauna on the ship's tour of South America. Maybe that should give us hope that the battle is not yet lost, and the majority of Americans will come to their senses once they get past their religious misleaders' empty rhetoric and examine the scientific record.

The Chicago Tribune has a good article summarizing the exhibit and what it depicts of Charles Darwin's life and work. Here is an excerpt (the linked article may require a log-in):

New Field exhibit takes on Darwin detractors
By William Mullen

... Darwin believed in creationism as he studied for the ministry in college, though he was more attracted to scientific pursuits, including geology and beetle collecting. Those interests won him his spot on the Beagle voyage months after he graduated in 1831.

As he filled notebooks with scientific observations while traveling the coasts of South America, Darwin's religious doubts grew.

Geological formations he saw showed the world to be millions and billions of years old, not thousands. Plant and animal specimens he collected, both living and fossilized, suggested species constantly adapting to changing environments. ...

Read the full article

A very un-natural history museum

For some who find that their story doesn't fit the facts, it's easiest to ignore those facts or even change them to fit the story (I think that's a bastardization of someone's quote, but I don't know whose). That's exactly what a group called "Answers in Genesis" has done with the Creation Museum that is set to open on Monday in Kentucky.

The phrase "junk science" is used a lot by conservatives to dismiss any theory that could cost big business their profits, but this new museum is the true definition of the term. Ignoring all known evidence, the curators of this fantasy land have concocted dioramas that depict humans frolicking with the dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs, we're told, were described in Genesis and co-existed with our earliest ancestors. Noah even brought pairs of the beasts onto his ark. That kind of compressed timeline, which runs counter to the fossil record, is a necessary evil when you view the Bible as an accurate historical document of the Earth's creation 6,000 years ago.

The exhibits described in yesterday's New York Times remind me of the kitschy 1970s Sid & Marty Krofft kids show Land of the Lost (see the picture above), where a modern day family is transported to a world filled with dinosaurs, furry little caveman-like creatures, and nasty reptilian villains called Sleestak.

Unfortunately, by abandoning the metaphorical and mythical qualities of the Bible in order to interpret it literally, these religious fanatics actually rob the stories of their power. In trying to convey their twisted take on history, all they're left with are the absurdities of a Saturday morning cartoon show.

Here are excerpts from the New York Times review of the museum, and a link to the full article:

Adam and Eve in the Land of the Dinosaurs
By Edward Rothstein

... Outside the museum scientists may assert that the universe is billions of years old, that fossils are the remains of animals living hundreds of millions of years ago, and that life's diversity is the result of evolution by natural selection. But inside the museum the Earth is barely 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were created on the sixth day, and Jesus is the savior who will one day repair the trauma of man's fall.

It is a measure of the museum's daring that dinosaurs and fossils — once considered major challenges to belief in the Bible's creation story — are here so central, appearing not as tests of faith, as one religious authority once surmised, but as creatures no different from the giraffes and cats that still walk the earth. Fossils, the museum teaches, are no older than Noah’s flood; in fact dinosaurs were on the ark. ...

Read the full article

Devolutionary American thinking

The May Wired has some revealing stats on American popular acceptance of evolutionary theory. For example, only 40% of Americans believe that humans evolved from earlier species. That puts the US behind 28 other countries in embracing evolution. We've seen the numbers before, but it's still pretty scary.

After 6 years of a President who puts "beliefs" ahead of facts, appeals to God to solve thorny policy problems, and openly consorts with extreme Christian fundamentalists, is it any wonder that the country has turned its collective back on scientific thought?

Part of it may be attributable to a public backlash against intellectualism. The Right Wing has carried out a very successful propaganda campaign to convince Americans to follow their guts rather than their brains. It's an act that Stephen Colbert's faux punditry pretty accurately lampoons, and when you're misleading folks for gain you certainly don't want them using their heads to question what's going on in the world.

Americans needs to wake up and realize that it's the religious right who want to make a monkey out of them. If they don't, they might just find themselves becoming the thing they most feared: a benighted theocracy.

Favorite Mammals Episode X: Planet of the apes

Episode X: Food for Thought is the last segment in the BBC's Life of Mammals (LoM) series, and in it the producers go ape. The focus is on the largest of the primates, the great apes, and their characteristic abilities to mimic behavior and to invent tools. Such talents make it easier to pass down knowledge through the generations and create "cultures."

Here are the main players in this final chapter:

Orangutans - In capitivity these large, tree-dwelling apes can learn to use our carpentry tools and LoM shows them playing with saws and hammers. In the wild they have a schematic knowlege of how to navigate the forest and can track the dates that various fruits ripen. They're usually loners in the wild, but that's the result of food scarcity rather than a lack of sociability (there are humans who can certainly relate). In Sumatra, for example, where the food is more plentiful, Orangutans live in groups and have shared intelligence -- fashioning tools to get at harder to reach food.

Chimpanzees - Said to be human's closest living relatives, LoM gives us a glimpse into the life of a Chimp colony in Uganda that is one of the largest known. The group interactions range from tranquil social grooming to the more violent repercussions of male rivalry. The males in the colony form organized hunts where bonds are created and alliances firmed up. The social relationships and politics within the community are complex and still not well understood, but they seem to mirror our own with a more primative brutality.

Humans - The series asks the question, What made our ancestors rise on two feet, stand upright, and walk? One theory postulates that it was a changing climate where trees became scarcer and primates had to walk or wade longer distances between them. There's also the possibility that early humans stood upright in order to pursue four-legged prey across these newly formed grasslands. In an amazing sequence, LoM follows members of an African tribe from the Kalahari desert who practice the ancient and mostly forgotten art of the "persistence hunt." Using their intelligence as a weapon, they track and pursue a Kudu for miles until the animal collapses from exhaustion. It's a chase that early humans embarked on knowing that on two-legs they could endure longer than their prey.

As the series draws to a close, it summarizes human development in order to reach conclusions about our future. The early human hunters eventually learned to domesticate animals and crops. They traded in their migratory life to settle down and create farms and cities. In these new societies, not everyone had to be involved in food production and some could devote themselves to the arts and sciences that reshaped the world. Mastery of the food supply allowed humans to thrive and spread to all corners of the earth. But as the human population has increased to over 6 billion, its in danger of over-reaching the limits of the earth's resources.

The series suggests that the only way to fix this situation is to control our population growth. Of course Nature has its own ways of checking populations, and that's a scenario that we should try to avoid. If we are to do so, we'll need to use our "big brains" to develop the sustainable technologies that can help us either more efficiently meet the needs of our growing population or expand to previously inhospitable climes -- such as the oceans or outer space.

Just like our great-ape relatives, we'll need to rely on our proven abilities to learn and innovate in order to succeed. We may even find ourselves evolving new abilities in order to adapt to the challenges ahead.

Favorite Mammals Episode IX: Big groups, big brains

Episode 9: The Social Climbers is the penultimate in the BCC's Life of Mammals series. It focuses on the brain power of monkeys and larger primates who have developed intellects that solve the problems of their environments by passing on "cultural" traditions, using tools, and navigating the difficulties of group dynamics.

The stars of the episode include:

Capuchins - These proto-typical monkeys are shown rummaging through the forest with characteristic curiousity. Their brains capture, process and communicate to others any valuable lessons learned on their various ventures. We see them put to use two particular generational discoveries: how to open closely closed-up clams and the benefits of anti-septic leaves that they rub on their bodies to heal and protect against bug bites.

Toque Macaques - From Sri Lanka, these monkeys have a complex society that's been carefully studied. It's a rigid class system that bestows great priveleges on the highly ranked, and to navigate through the political and sexual dynamics of the society requires a lot of strategizing. They're certainly not stupid, as Senator George Allen's "macaca" insult at a debate last year might have implied, but they are also not very democratic.

Baboons - These primates inhabit the grasslands that developed as the rain forest receded 10 million years ago. Residing in such open spaces makes them more vulnerable to predators, and to compensate for that they live in large groups. The group dynamics here reward males who develop friendships through social grooming and who take care of the group's females and young -- certainly a more admirable meritocracy than the macaques.

Gelada - These primates live on the highlands of Ethiopia and form the largest herds. They are also the only grazing primates -- scooting on their rear ends to pick grass with their fingers. Males conduct show battles (including the very attractive lip flip) to establish social dominance, and the winners lord it over "harems" of females. Since their hands are preoccupied with grass-picking, rather than grooming to form social bonds the Gelada "talk" to each other with vocal chatter that might give clues to how our own ancestors' first developed language.

One of the most interesting details noted in the show is that scientists have discovered a direct correlation between primate brain size and group size. Social complexity requires a more developed intellect, and the environmental conditions that drove primates out of the trees and into the plains may have been the key evolutionary moment that led to our own development of language and eventually consciousness.

Favorite Mammals Episode VIII: Swinging through the trees

I'm up to Episode 8 of the BBC documentary series Life of Mammals (LoM) and it's making its inevitable march toward describing those animals dearest to our hearts: humans. The progression means first going up into the trees with the primates, before descending back down to the terra firma of grasslands as our ancestors once did, at least according to the history that we happy US few who believe in evolution accept (more on that later).

"Life in the Trees" focuses on the myriad of monkeys and other mammals who have made a living feeding on the bounty of the forest canopy. What drove mammals of various kinds up into the trees? There is safety from predators in the branches, but there's also an extraodinary variety of food and it is that search for sustenance that models behavior and creates the impetus for physical adaptation.

The episode features non-primates of various kinds that have evolved traits to help them clamber up and down trees, or better yet jump and fly between them. From the rubbery pads of a Hyrax balancing on twigs in Kenya, to the strong forearms and sharp claws of a Sun Bear clasping trunks, getting up in the air to snack on fruits and leaves was the easier task. There are the more drastic modification of a skin membrane that helps a Flying Squirrel glide and a Fruit Bat fly between branches, and this overcomes the need to retreat back down so that life can be led exclusively above ground.

As for the primates, the show gives us excellent examples of tree huggers who use grasping thumbed hands and big-toed feet to move around the forests with amazing ease. Infra-red shots are used to capture the movements of two nocturnal animals: the Slender Loris of India and its African relative the Bush Baby. The Loris uses slow movements to sneak up on its prey in silence, and has the peculiar trait of urinating on its hands as it moves along. The Bush Baby uses the speed of incredible leaps to catch its targets unaware. Both have large forward pointing eyes to help judge distances.

The island of Madagascar, as some might know from the animated kids movie of the same name, is the home to an array of Lemurs. LoM focuses on the Sifaka and the way it moves about from tree to tree, pushing off from one trunk with its powerful back legs and then twisting its body in mid-air to get in position to land. More amusing is the way the Sifaka runs when it needs to travel on the ground. Unable to get the same push off as from a tree, it takes small hops with its hands in the air.

Finally LoM shows us Gibbons, which are the fastest flightless animal in the canopy. These small apes of Asia quickly swing from branch to branch aided by long arms and a ball joint in their wrists. Their effortless maneuvering reminded me of Spiderman's high-speed web-swinging in the movies. They might make good stunt doubles, or models for CGI.

I'll post about Episode 9 tomorrow, and there is a primacy of monkey business to come.

Favorite Mammals Episode VII: Adapting to the water

Episode 7 of the BBC's Life of Mammals series is titled "Return to the Water" and it is one of the most interesting segments to me because of the extreme adaptations that these animals have made in order to carve out a niche in watery environments.

The degree to which they've adapted varies, as does their lifestyles. The Desman, an insect eater that is mostly closely related to a shrew, has a "snorkel" similar to an elephant's trunk and webbed feet. It swims along river beds snatching up prey amidst the gravel and pebbles but spends equal amounts of time in and out of the water.

The Sea Otter spends all of its time in the water -- eating, sleeping and breeding there. Mostly closely related to the weasel, it has adapted to life in the water by developing thick insulating fur and feet that act as paddles. To stay in place and protect its territory while it sleeps, it wraps itself in kelp. And, in one of my favorite scenes from the series, we see how they've figured out an ingenious way to open their favorite food: oysters. They pick up a rock from the bottom of the sea, rest it on their stomach, and bang the oyster against it -- all the while floating casually on their backs.

Sea Lions and Seals have limbs that have evolved into flippers, bodies that are more streamlined for swimming, and layers of blubber for insulation. They are descended from an animal somewhere between a weasel and a bear, and breed and birth on the land/ice but spend the rest of their time at sea.

Manatees have lost even more of the typical mammal traits and spend all of their time under water in creek beds. They are thought to have a common ancestor with the elephant, and are large, slow moving grazers with limbs that are completely adapted to swimming.

The most incredibly evolved sea mammals are of course the great whales. It's hard to imagine, but scientists believe that they were originally a deer-like, land-based animal that returned to the sea. Over millions of years whales evolved the equipment they needed to lead a life in the water. There are vestigal leg bones still present in the Blue Whale, buried deep in the muscle, but most other traces of their past have disappeared. They are the largest animal ever to have existed on the earth, and that size is directly attributable to a life at sea, as no bones could have supported such bulk on land.

It makes you wonder what humans might evolve into if we were forced to live at sea ... maybe the concept of a mermaid isn't so farfetched.