What I Did On My Summer Science Vacation

Miriam Goldstein — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:46:20 -0400

My little corner of the DoubleX universe has been silent for the past month. In the tradition of caddish sailors everywhere, I left without even saying goodbye. It's not that I don't care about you, it's just that preparing to lead a scientific cruise to the middle of the North Pacific takes a lot of time and concentration! And then we didn't have Internet at sea! I still love you, DoubleX readers, I swear!

I've been off exploring the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, better known these days as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The North Pacific Gyre is a natural rotation of the ocean formed by the trade winds and the jet streams. It acts like a big, slow whirlpool, turning clockwise and trapping floating material in the middle. This is the doldrums, so it's not often visited by sailors or even cargo ships. (They tend to go north where the circumference of the globe is smaller.)

The SEAPLEX expedition, led by yours truly, spent three weeks at sea deploying oceanographic instruments to catch and measure marine life and associated plastic. We were really in the middle of nowhere, floating between California and Hawaii 1,000 miles from land. In 20 days, we only saw two ships. (You can see our cruise track on Google Maps.)

Though we didn't find a giant floating garbage dump or a vast garbage island, we did find a lot of plastic bits. Little plastic pieces smaller than a fingernail came up in every single one of our surface net tows for over 1,700 miles. We also found lots of bottles, buckets, and unidentifiable bits inhabited by crabs and barnacles. For more on the SEAPLEX cruise, check out our expedition blog and website.

I'm back in the lab now and getting ready to spend months in the lab sorting through my samples. I've got hundreds of jars of plastic and animals that I collected while at sea, and I now have to go through them all to understand how much plastic we found, and what animals it was associated with. But fear not, gentle readers, the Oyster's Garter will remain my go-to place for a refreshing blogging break. Will you take me back?

Photograph via Scripps_Oceanography's Flickr.

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Don't Want No Short Short Man

Miriam Goldstein — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:45:30 -0400

The modern equivalent of blaming Eve for the fall of mankind may be blaming Stone Age societies for today's gender relations. Sharon Begley has a nice summary of this attitude in her recent Newsweek story on evolutionary psychology:

Men who were promiscuous back then were more evolutionarily fit, the researchers reasoned, since men who spread their seed widely left more descendants. By similar logic, evolutionary psychologists argued, women who were monogamous were fitter; by being choosy about their mates and picking only those with good genes, they could have healthier children. Men attracted to young, curvaceous babes were fitter because such women were the most fertile; mating with dumpy, barren hags is not a good way to grow a big family tree.

So if all of this is true, it should be true for all humankind. It should especially be true in modern hunting and gathering societies. Unfortunately, as Begley details in her article, the evidence rarely bears out the these theories. (I am aware that not all evolutionary psychologist are obsessed with cavemen sex, but here I have chosen sensationalism over dry talk of spandrels. Sorry.)

One of the strongest trends in modern mating is women's preference for taller males. In post-industrial cultures, there are far fewer women married to men that are shorter than them than would be expected by statistical chance. Are women hard-wired to think that taller men would kill way more giraffes than shorter men, thus providing a luxurious Stone Age lifestyle? How better to test this than to look at a society that actually hunts giraffes?

The Hadza of Tanzania are among the few hunter-gatherer people left on earth. Despite threats from agriculturalists, diminishing game, and an Emirati land grab, the Hadza have maintained their traditional lifestyle. To see if actual hunter-gatherers had height preferences in their mates, Rebecca Sear and Frank W. Marlowe examined mate selection in the Hadza. They also wanted to see if the Hadza married people that had similar physical characteristics to themselves—for example, did tall, thin Hadza marry other tall, thin Hadza?

The Hadza proved to be far less judgemental about height than the Western press. There was no evidence of height preference: About as many women were married to shorter men as would have been expected by random chance. There was also no correlation between the couples' height, weight, BMI, or percent body fat. Sear and Marlowe concluded that "mating is random with respect to size in this population."

Why don't the Hadza care about height? Sear and Marlowe speculated that since the Hadza live in small, homogenous communities, they could make decisions based on the entire health history of a potential partner, obviating the need for height as a proxy of health. Or height might actually be a disadvantage in a food-limited society, since large people require more food. Though this study doesn't explain why Westerners value male height so highly, it does illustrate the peril of assuming that human preferences are set in Stone Age stone.

Photograph of a tall couple by David De Lossy/Photodisc/Getty Images.

Sex Among the Spineless

Miriam Goldstein — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:45:39 -0400

Samantha Henig just reported on the Museum of Sex exhibit on the Sex Lives of Animals. I like gay giraffes and well-endowed lady hyenas as much as the next person (OK, probably more), but the list struck me as shockingly mammal-biased. Vertebrates—and that includes non-fuzzy critters like fish—comprise a mere 5 percent of the world's species. The spineless have kinky sex, too! Here's a list of a few of my personal favorites:

- As I wrote on the original Oyster's Garter blog, barnacles have the most impressive penises in the sea. A barnacle’s penis can be 8 times longer than the barnacle’s entire body. Barnacles are well-endowed because they’re cemented in place—in order to advance the species, they need to, um, “visit” their neighbors. (That’s also why barnacles are simultaneous hermaphrodites that both give and receive the glorious gift of crustacean life. Separate sexes wouldn’t work, since the only neighbor in reach could be the same sex.)

- Marine flatworms, also simultaneous hermaphrodites, fence with razor-sharp penises. Since they lack a female orifice, sex occurs when the loser gets stabbed right through their body wall. The technical term? Hypodermic impregnation. Some spiders do it too. Ow.

- From horrifying spiked beetle penises to earwig penises that occasionally snap right off in the midst of sex, insects have all kinds of bizarre sexual practices. But you don't have to take my word for it—check out Season 1 of Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno series, where she dramatizes doin' it as all kinds of bug.

Wired Magazine's 10 Inane Misunderstandings of Evolution

Miriam Goldstein — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:00:00 -0400

Sometimes reading science media makes me hate being a scientist. In response to poor media coverage of the squid strandings in San Diego, I spent all of last week muttering "Humboldt squid are not giant squid! I mean, they're large, but giant squid are a totally different species! No, colossal squid are ALSO a different species!" It makes me feel anal and no fun.

This Wired piece on the 10 Worst Evolutionary Designs also made me want to smash some test tubes. It's a stunningly inane list of animal adaptations that the author thinks are weird, uncontaminated by even the most basic knowledge of evolution. For example, No. 1:

Sea mammal blowhole. Any animal that spends appreciable time in the ocean should be able to extract oxygen from water via gills. Enlarging the lungs and moving a nostril to the back of the head is a poor work-around.

I know this is supposed to be funny, but I find it so sad. It isn't cool enough that a cow-like mammal has evolved into a denizen of the open sea? It isn't neat that dolphins have evolved amazing echolocation, and that humpback whales use their air-breathing abilities to hunt? (Not to mention that only cetaceans—whales and dolphins—have blowholes. Other sea mammals, like seals and manatees, just stick their noses in the air.)

Evolution is all about using the tools at hand, and if something works it's good enough. Whales can't evolve gills out of nothing, but they can move their nostril to the back of their head and be successful. Kangaroos can't suddenly evolve a placenta, but being a marsupial works fine.

This is what makes the study of evolution so fascinating. There's a vast array of adaptations that have all evolved from a finite set of tools. Criticizing an adaptation as being "bad" without even a trivial attempt to understand where it came from and why it might be so ignores the most interesting aspects of evolution. And that is far worse than the Wired list's No. 8, having your sluggy sweetie gnaw off your penis. (Ok, maybe not.)

Presented By:

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:00:00 -0400

Squid and Squidability

Miriam Goldstein — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:22:02 -0400

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a dead famous author lacking possession of a good copyright, must be in want of some supernatural horror. Yesterday, Quirk Books announced the sequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. My first reaction was a giant squeal—Austen and oceanic beasts together at last! But my second reaction was considerably less enthusiastic.

In Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, the unfortunate Colonel Brandon has been transformed into a "hideous man-monster." Judging from the cover, his beard of tentacles resembles Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean. Upon seeing his tentacled visage, I realized that Quirk Books has fallen prey to a dread literary trope. Why must horrors from the deep always have tentacles?

Sea monsters were not always be-tentacled. Sure, the kraken lurked about, but there were sea serpents and sea monks and pleisosaurs. Even HP Lovecraft, the 19th century author most associated with horrors from the deep, did not limit his madness-inducing creatures to tentacles—the minions of the evil squid-god Cthulhu get turned into fish-people with bug eyes and gills, with nary a tentacle in sight. But bringing romance into the picture seems to evoke the Japanese tradition of naughty roving tentacles and reduce sea monster diversity.

There are plenty of horrific appendages in the sea, just waiting to be appropriated by a sufficiently creative author. There are giant teeth and giant claws and animals that barf out their intestines when pissed off. There are crustaceans with clubs the speed of a 22-caliber bullet and worms that have genitalia that grow eyes and swim away. There's even a snail that shoots poisonous darts. It's time to expand your marine vocabulary, people!

For ever so much more about the softer side of sea monsters, see Dr. Balan U.S. Nubilus' disquisition titled "A Brief Essay on the Sad Lack of Imagination in Invertebrate Oriented Erotica with Brief Notes on the Lascivious Nature of Both the Lophotrochozoa and Ecdysozoa, or, Getting Beyond 'Hur hur! That Squid Tentacle Looks like Penis!'" It is text-only but NSFW unless you work in an oceanic adult store.

Real-life tentacles are the very opposite of romantic, anyway. Most squid have serrated teeth lining their suckers that are meant to grab and tear. If Marianne smooched Colonel Brandon's tentacled beard, he could accidentally rip her face off. That's not the way to a lady's heart. It would be much easier to emulate predatory snails and simply drill right through the chest.

Men Are From Space, Women Are From the Local Drugstore

Miriam Goldstein — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:37:07 -0400

Last week, the Pew Research Center, in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), released a survey comparing how scientists and the general public view science. Lots of juicy nuggets were picked up in news stories—the difference between the public's opinion of scientists and scientists' opinion of the public, clashes on hot-button issues such as global warming, and the public's view of the preeminance of American science.

But no one reported on the gap in science literacy between men and women. To measure general science knowledge, non-scientists were given a 12-question survey on basic science. (If you want to take the quiz yourself before reading further, go here.) Questions included "textbook" basic science facts (Is an electron bigger than an atom?) and "contemporary" science news questions (Scientists believe what gas causes global temperatures to rise?).

Overall, men answered 8.1 questions correctly, while women lagged at 7.4. Even when accounting for age and education (people 30-49 and people with the most education did best), men got more questions right than women. The biggest differences were on questions about lasers and Mars, those tropes of babes-in-space-bikinis sci-fi novels. Only 37 percent of women knew that lasers do not work by focusing sound, compared to 57 percent of men. And just over half of women (54 percent) knew that water had been recently discovered on Mars, compared to 69 percent of men.

The three questions in which women did better than men related to health. Women knew that aspirin prevents heart attacks (94 percent to men's 89 percent), that stem cells could develop into many kinds of cells (54 percent to men's 51 percent) and that antibiotics do not kill viruses (59 percent to men's 49 percent).

Before I speculate on the reasons behind our delicate ladybrains containing less science, I want to note that the report did not provide obvious (at least, I couldn't find them) measures of statistical significance. For example, if the standard error is plus or minus 2 percentage points, there might be no actual difference between men's or women's understanding of stem cells. However, a difference of 20 percentage points, as in the laser question, is certainly significant.

So why did women do worse than men in all but the health questions? Do men follow the science and technology news, supplementing Popular Mechanics with contemplation of laser-wielding Martians? Is Dr. Mom, that stalwart of TV pharmaceutical ads, a real life phenomenon? Or is the stereotype that women are the caretakers of their family's health but just don't care about hard science self-fulfilling?

I am totally in love with science and lasers so frankly I have no idea. Double X readers, you are smart and well-read people who are not necessarily into science. What do you think?

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

Miriam Goldstein — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:59:11 -0400

As the Senate starts debating the climate-change bill, the pseudoscientific nonsense coming out of Exxon-funded think tanks will no doubt increase. The latest denialist rant, a memo allegedly suppressed by the EPA, sounded plausible to non-scientists but was easily demolished by actual climate scientists. It's tempting to follow Paul Krugman and shout "Traitorous fiends!" instead of getting into annoying technical arguments over prevalence of sun spots and historical concentrations of carbon dioxide. Nonetheless, debunking the climate change denialist talking points is important, particuarly in the aftermath of the narrow margin on the climate legislation in the House.

Recently, the popular denialist blog Watts Up With That gleefully announced that global temperature for June was exactly average, showing neither warming nor cooling. The author, Anthony Watt, said that "...this should give some pause to those who are rational thinkers. For those that see only dogma, I expect this will be greeted with jeers." Oh noes! Does one month of data utterly demolish the idea of global warming?

Of course not. In the short term, no change of temperature or even cooling is completely consistent with long-term warming. A shiny new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters and described in the excellent blog Climate Shifts, explains why periods of cooling don't contradict an overal global warming trend. Essentially, there's going to be little up and down squiggles overlying an overall increase in temperature. Even if we're in a cool-temperature trending squiggle for a decade, the larger upward trend towards higher temperatures remains.

It can take specialized knowledge to figure out why pseudoscientific climate arguments are wrong. So in case you end up arguing with your cranky uncle at the next family barbecue, here's my favorite resources on global climate change.

- Skeptical Science has a list of every denialist argument, along with debunkings from peer-reviewed science. And it has a cute little thermomenter showing which is the most popular!

- Grist Magazine has a list of arguments organized by Stages of Denial, Scientific Topics, Types of Argument, and Levels of Sophistication.

-Real Climate is written by working climate scientists and tends to be more technical. Go here for the real deal on the data, or if you want to stun your friends and co-workers with statements like "But in any case, the trend in from 2003 to 2008 in the Levitus data (the Domingues et al data does not extend past 2003), is still positive but with an uncertainty (both in the trend calculation and systematically) that makes it impossible to state whether there has been a significant change." They also have a handy list of responses to common denialist arguments.

Little Furniture Shop of Horrors

Miriam Goldstein — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:49:27 -0400

James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau are worried about your appliances gently rusting to death in the event of a human apocalypse. So they've made household items that can sustain themselves by catching and eat pests. According to New Scientist,

The pests are lured in and digested by an internal microbial fuel cell. This exploits the way microbes generate free electrons and hydrogen ions when oxidising chemicals for energy. Electronics can be powered by directing the electrons around an external circuit before reuniting them with the ions.

There's a fly-paper covered alarm clock, a mouse-trapping coffee table, and even a Venus fly-trap-like lamp. My favorite, though, is the fly-stealing robot. Designed to lure spiders into building their webs between its pegs and then to steal their flies, it serves no purpose whatsoever except as strange wall-mounted performance art. (I leave it up to my colleage Nick to decide whether a fly-eating wall hanging is in good taste—or just tastes good.)

In an interview with New Scientist, Auger said, "If the system fails, the grid goes down and all humans die, these robots could go on living so long as the flies don't go with us." But the critical question is this: if furniture eats flesh but isn't itself alive, does it count as a zombie? Because I want to see Sean of the Dead remade with ravenous coffee tables and bloodthirsty lamps.

Why You Should Be Afraid For Sharks

Miriam Goldstein — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:09:42 -0400

Sharks have a serious public relations problem. It's understandable—it's hard for people to feel bad for an animal that ate an adorable surfer girl's arm. But sharks are in serious trouble. To paraphrase Alan Moore, people shouldn't be afraid of sharks. Sharks should be afraid of people.

A new report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), released last week, found that more than 30 percent of sharks and rays are threatened with extinction. An additional 24 percent of species were classified as Near Threatened. These are not sharks that were lining up to eat you—of the 350 shark species, only 10 are considered dangerous to people. (Seriously, people, the most dangerous part of your visit to the beach is the car ride there! Compare 10 shark deaths per year in the entire world to 40,000 auto deaths each year in the U.S. alone.) But the declining species are sharks that are strange and beautiful and important to the ocean's health.

Sharks are slow to grow and reproduce, and their decline is primarily due to rampant and wasteful overfishing. The most well-known practice is shark finning, where the valuable fins are removed and the rest of the animal thrown back to rot. Though shark finning is illegal in many locations, poaching is rampant, particularly in isolated, poor areas such as the Galapagos. The lesser-known cause of sharks' decline is as bycatch in other fisheries. Millions of sharks are unintentionally killed every year in the tuna and swordfish fisheries, alongside turtle and seabirds and other unwanted fish.

People are indoctrinated into fearing sharks in childhood. Even the quasi-friendly-sharks in Finding Nemo aren't nice sharks after all. But like all top predators, sharks are critical to maintaining the stability and health of their ecosystems. Without sharks, Nemo and all his buddies would be homeless, their coral reef demolished through a series of food chain breakdowns. To help sharks, consider buying fish that are caught with minimal bycatch. And never, never let your children see Jaws.

Photograph of a Caribbean reef shark by Tom Brakefield/Stockbyte/Getty Images.

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Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:09:42 -0400

A "Novel" Take on the Climate Change Report

Miriam Goldstein — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:44:38 -0400

Last week, the United States Global Research program released a report on the potential impacts of climate change in the United States. Based on a year and a half of work and a consensus from 13 federal agencies, the 198-page report makes the doom, gloom, and destruction that await us available to all. Still, who reads 198-page government reports? Well, I do.

So in an attempt to bring some amusement to a dark situation, I’ve summarized the main points of the climate change report using five different literary (ok, quasi-literary) styles. Each vignette is set in the year 2100 under the “higher emissions scenario,” which is a conservative estimate that presumes some kind of international reduction in emissions.

However, our current climate change trajectory is much, much worse than any of the scenarios considered in the report. We’re emitting so much carbon that we’re exceeding climate scientists’ worst nightmares. But I’ve never been a horror fan, so I’ve stuck with the more optimistic predictions here.

Genre: Noir

Climate change prediction: The U.S. will be seven degrees hotter.

The moment she walked into my office, the temperature got two degrees hotter. She smoked like a coal-fired power plant and had a carbon footprint that went all the way to 850 molecules of CO2 for every million molecules of atmosphere. That was more than double the carbon in the atmosphere now, and more carbon than I really wanted to handle. This dame was hot—and I mean seven degrees of global temperature increase hot. And she wasn’t even the worse-case scenario. Even her smart cousin, who stabilized climate change at a mere four degrees of global temperature rise, looked like she could kill some penguins before breakfast and wash them down with torrential flooding. I poured myself a shot of ice water. I was going to need it.

Genre: “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Climate change prediction: Flooding in the northern US, drought in the southern US

It was a dark and stormy night in the Northern U.S., not so dark as it had been from all the fossil-fuel-lit streetlights, but still pretty dark. Rain threw itself violently against the huddled houses—considerably more rain than there had been when Bulwer-Lytton wrote about the very first dark and stormy night, since warm air holds more water and since the air was a lot warmer than it had been 100 years ago. The night in the southern U.S., particularly the Southwest, was still dark, but considerably less stormy due to more droughts and dramatically decreased snow pack.

Genre: Haiku

Climate change prediction: Three to four foot sea level rise

The ocean creeps up
And floods the New York subway.
Three to four foot rise.
South Florida floods!
Don’t retire to West Palm.
You’ll need gills to golf.

Genre: Romance
Climate change prediction: Increased wildfires and insect infestations, mismatches between animals’ life cycles and their food sources

Flynt McKraken’s powerful arms glistened with sweat as he uncoiled his long, thick fire hose. It was dry and hot, like it always was these days. Warmer winters meant more tree-eating beetles and less rain, so every bit of summer lightening or power line sparking could lead to vast wildfires. But it wasn’t just the fire that made McKraken sweat. Katarina was out there, passionately looking for her precious butterflies. The plants the butterflies ate bloomed too early now, before the butterflies had a chance to emerge from their cocoons, and now they were all but extinct. So raven-haired Katarina had wandered far into the back country, and now she was trapped. At the thought of losing her, not even the intense heat of the wildfire warmed the cold ashes in McKraken’s turgid heart.

Genre: New Yorker short story
Climate change prediction: Increased heat leads to worse air quality in cities from ozone and higher pollen loads, insect-borne diseases increase

They sat at the kitchen table, silent except for the gentle susurrations of her asthma. Now that the number of days hotter than 90 degrees in Chicago had quadrupled, she wheezed all the time. He remembered a day, long in the past, where they had had a picnic without worrying about pollen or West Nile virus. They had sat together on a blanket, eating brie and arugula, laughing at the little dogs in coats. He hated her wheezing. The microwave beeped.

What is an Oil Rig Doing in the Penguin Habitat?

Miriam Goldstein — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:25:10 -0400

I live in San Diego, so I visit our famous zoo a couple times a year. My favorite part is a lush, leafy canyon lined with tigers and tropical birds and tapirs. It's a little piece of the Asian forests on which it's based, an idyll untouched by the downtown skyline or nearby highway. Sure, the path is lined by earnest plaques about poaching and logging and the dire peril of endangered species, but I'm there for a pleasant afternoon stroll and I've never read them.

That's the fate of most earnest attempts to educate zoo-goers about environmental peril. Nobody (except perhaps attendees of environmental film festivals) wants to pay $50 to be depressed and guilt-ridden. But the Vienna Zoo has a different vision. As covered by the landscape architecture blog Pruned, the Vienna Zoo has inserted the nasty side of the human world right into the animals' enclosures.

Instead of evoking a pure natural habitat, human impacts are clearly visible. Penguins frolic around an oil derrick, fish swarm around barrel of toxic waste, and alligators slither over tractor tires and beat-up metal signs. My favorite is a bit of railroad track bisecting a herd of peacefully grazing bison, which neatly summarizes the much of the unfortunate environmental history of the American West.

The artists who designed the trashing of the Zoo, Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf, say in their artists' statement:

The viewer is forced to reconsider traditional modes of animal presentation and simultaneously to question the authenticity of concepts which are restaging 'natural' environments while they are increasingly endangered.

Their work follows a great deal of academic research on the political motivations behind zoos and parks. To choose a few of my favorite examples, Donna Haraway's work on the the primate dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History examined how colonialism and gender politics was written into taxidermy. Susan G. Davis questioned whether Sea World's corporate entertainment and faux emotion constituted actual environmental activism. And William Cronon argues that even our "pristine" national parks were only made possible by the displacement and slaughter of the Native Americans who had once lived there.

That's why I love Steinbrener and Dempf's exhibit in the Vienna Zoo. It's shocking but humorous, and doesn't require people to read depressing little signs or lengthy essays stuffed with postmodern jargon. With just a few well-placed bits of trash, the Vienna Zoo artists manage to say "Hey guys! The whole idea of natural wilderness is a human construction! Also, stop being polluting meanies." And it bursts the myth, so lovingly propagated by TV nature specials, that there's pristine nature somewhere out there. There isn't, but unpristine nature is still worth having around, oil rigs and railroad tracks and all.

Thanks to AMC for the Pruned link!

Photograph of penguins at the Vienna Zoo by Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images

The Scariest Animal You'll Find in Pastel Hotel Art

Miriam Goldstein — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:44:34 -0400

It roams the ocean floor, always ravenous, always ready to kill. When it finds its prey, it pulls it apart with hideous strength and then eats it while the prey is still alive. What is this fearsome beast? Is it a shark? A kraken? The Loch Ness Monster? Nope. It's a starfish. The most common starfish species on both the East and West coasts, beloved by millions of beach-going children, are actually mighty predators.

Starfish aren't actually fish—starfish are invertebrates with no skeleton and no central nervous system. (For that reason many people prefer to call them "sea stars," but I'll just stick with starfish here.) Like sea cucumbers and sea urchins, sea stars are echinoderms, invertebrates with spiny bodies and little suction cups called "tube feet."

In starfish, tube feet line their underside, acting like tiny legs that glide the starfish slowly over the ocean floor. The tube feet also act like tongues, licking the bottom to sense where something tasty might be hiding. Since starfish don't move very quickly, they have to eat animals that can't get away. (No need to hide the children—people are way out of a starfishes' league.) Starfish are especially fond of shellfish, though they certainly don't balk at a bit of cannibalism. They aren't fast, but they're very, very strong.

When a starfish finds, say, a nice plump mussel, it crawls on top of it and uses its tube feet to pull the mussel slowly apart. Starfish mouths are located on their underside, in the middle where all the legs join. They don't have jaws, but they do have acidic stomachs. So once the delicious soft bits of the mussel are exposed, the starfish vomits out its stomach, slaps it on the mussel, and digests away while the mussel is still alive. Full digestion takes hours to days. When the starfish is done, it sucks its stomach back in and glides off in search of its next victim.

If you're still not convinced that pretty symmetrical starfish are the Godzillas of the sea, check out this time-lapse video (starfish at 1:30) of desperate brittle stars and clams fleeing from a sunflower star. Or this video of a normally sedate abalone sprinting across the rocks. Though I would never cast aspersions on Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants, I do think that beachside hotel art would be greatly improved by a little ecological correctness. Any volunteers to paint some starfish-induced violence in pastel?

Photograph of a starfish by John Foxx/Stockbyte/Getty Creative Images.

Wile E. Coyote & Roadrunner are Total BFFs

Miriam Goldstein — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:00:05 -0400

On Sunday, NPR reported that more than 2,000 coyotes were living in Chicago, many inside the city's highly developed downtown Loop. That's not unusual. Since the elimination of wolves and the advent of suburbs teeming with tasty prey, coyotes have made their homes in cities from Los Angeles to Boston. According to the NPR story, urban coyotes are actually faring better than their rural counterparts, free from hunting and able to dine upon a bounty of rats and goose eggs. Though it seems counterintuitive for people with visions of roadrunner-chasing Wile E. Coyote, urban coyotes actually protect city-dwelling birds.

The Coyote of Native American folklore is a raunchy, greedy trickster with a detachable penis, but regular, non-mythical coyotes are a bit more pedestrian. They're a lot smaller than you'd think from their fearsome howling—they weigh about 30 pounds and come up to your knee. They're also not dangerous to people. In recorded North American history, there's only been one coyote fatality.

But coyotes do have a mighty appetite for domestic cats. They've have been observed nibbling their way from feral cat colony to feral cat colony, and are responsible for the fact that any wandering pet cat in my San Diego neighborhood will not be seen again. I dote upon my two kitties, so it seems cruel to rejoice in the killing of other cats. But however adorable, domestic cats wreak ecological havoc. The average pet cat kills over 100 small animals every year, a blow that already-declining bird populations can ill afford.

When cat-munching coyotes appear, wild birds thrive. A 1999 study in suburban San Diego found that unlike other predators, cats were disproportionately preying on rarer native species such as California quail rather than common non-native urban species such as rats. Areas with coyotes had significantly more native bird species than areas without coyotes. The coyotes killed some cats and caused worried pet owners to keep the rest inside, allowing the birds to raise their babies free from decapitation.

Cities and suburbs have a lot of fields and shrubs and little clumps of trees, which ecologists call "edge habitat." Animals that can take advantage of these habitats, such as white-tailed deer and raccoons, live fat and happy right alongside people. But with the rise of that old trickster coyote, a top predator is back in town. Coyotes won't be able to balance urban ecosystems all by themselves, but as in the Native American stories, life is more interesting when they're around.

Sexing Up Scientists

Miriam Goldstein — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:58:09 -0400

Scientists are not famed for their looks or fashion sense. Personally, I love this about science. I work that "get out of performing femininity free!" card for all it's worth, slouching about in science-themed t-shirts and ratty sneakers as often as I can. But if I want to get in on this next phase of science marketing, apparently I'm going to have to trade the "Evolution Kills" t-shirt for something more befitting a rock star. There's a movement afoot to sex up science and scientists, and it's got big advertising dollars behind it.

This month's GQ has a four-page spread on the "Rock Stars of Science." Sponsored by the philanthropic arm of clothing company Geoffrey Beene, the promotion advocates for increased biomedical research funding by showing famous-in-scienceland scientists rocking out with slightly has-been rock stars. A rather aged Joe Perry gets down with sunglasses-clad geneticist Francis Collins. Josh Groban is in a "genius sandwich" between Alzheimer researchers Jeffrey Cummings and Dale Schenk. Though anyone who has been to a scientific meeting knows that the middle-aged white guys in ties can dominate the dance floor (especially after happy hour), will this campaign make people think that biomedical research is glamourous? The GQ spread did feature some of the nation's most renowned scientists, but I think the science-is-sexy quotient would have been increased if they had included a few younger, female, and/or non-white scientists. Particularly since (as Chris Mooney points out in his Science Progess column), so many of us have fabulous science-themed tattoos.

Another advertisement featuring scientists ups the glamor quotient in the service of high-end retail. Discover Magazine's Science Not Fiction blog found astronausts Sally Ride, Buzz Aldrin, and Jim Lovell in a Louis Vuitton handbag ad. The "Icare" handbag is presumably meant to invoke Icarus, which is unfortunate both because it sounds like an Apple accessory and because Icarus plummeted precipitously from the heavens. Nonetheless, it's amazing that Louis Vuitton thinks that grey-haired astronauts are glamorous enough to sell a $1500 handbag, and I'm all for these genuine national heroes getting in on a little celebrity-sponsorship money.

But scientists don't need big companies to look good. In popular science competititon all over the world, regular non-glammed-up scientists are bringing red-hot science to the masses. Europeans have FameLab, an American Idol-style show in which scientists compete to see who can give the best popular talk. International FameLab concluded this week, with Serbian molecular biologist Mirko Djordjevic triumphing by explaining sexual selection with the Bloodhound Gang song "The Bad Touch." Though I cry a thousand tears for lack of a FameLab competition in the United States, American scientists can achieve minor fame (and zero fortune) through the traveling science talk/rock show combo Nerd Nite and the American Association for Advancement of Science's Science Dance Contest.

It's great to see scientists as being a bit glamorous, but I would hate for science communication to revolve too much around whether one can fit into a size 2 lab coat. Trading content for sexiness can be a slippery slope - just ask some TV new anchors. But since most people still see scientists as white guys with test tubes, I think scientists can do a lot more rocking out before worrying that we're too sexy for our labs.

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Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:58:09 -0400

Why You Don't Want to Do It With a Duck

Miriam Goldstein — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:58:51 -0400

Last month, Pat Robertson fretted that hate-crime legislation would lead to the protection of people who "like to have sex with ducks." His remark resulted in a delightful Robertson-mocking pro-duck-sex song released last week by musical group Garfunkel and Oates. Robertson doesn't have to worry too much about human-on-duck sex - it's clearly illegal since quacking doesn't qualify as consent. But ducks are no innocent victims. Rather, their giant members and coercive sexual practices make them the perfect posterbird for heterosexual sex gone awry.

Most birds forgo genitalia for a single all-purpose opening called the cloaca. Waterfowl are the well-endowed exception. The Argentinian lake duck is the most impressive—one individual had a phallus as long as its entire body— but most ducks, geese, and swans have some kind of phallus. Female ducks have equally elaborate reproductive tracts, called oviducts, with spirals and twists and dead ends. (Incidentally, while male duck phalluses have been studied for years, no one noticed the ladies' oviducts until 2007, when researcher Dr. Patricia Brennan figured "Obviously you can’t have something like that without some place to put it in. You need a garage to park the car.”)

Ducks with teeny weenies do live the nuclear family dream (at least for a season), with a daddy duck, a mommy duck, and some adorable little ducklings. But amongst the webfooted Ron Jeremys, phallus and oviduct size is related to sexual violence. Female ducks in large-phallused species choose a mate for the season, but other males will still try to forcibly copulate with her. Since several males can assault a single female, duck sex can be an alarming sight.

Though a duck female may not be able to avoid her attackers, researchers suggest that complicated internal anatomy prevents unwanted fertilization. In other words, if the female duck isn't into it, the bends and twists in her oviduct make it hard for the male to get his phallus position. Considering only 2 percent to 5 percent of ducklings are conceived during forced matings, most of that sperm probably ends up in one of the oviduct's dead ends.

If larger phalluses mean greater fertilization, male and female ducks could be locked into a competition, with males evolving larger and larger phalluses as females evolve twistier and turnier oviducts. Between the giant phalluses and the violence, anyone who wants to have sex with ducks is going to have to really commit to that lifestyle. Somehow, I don't think Pat Robertson has too much to worry about.

Image of male Argentine Lake Duck by K. McCracken/Nature.

They Eat Wilderness Scouts, Don't They?

Miriam Goldstein — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:10:48 -0400

[Spoilers for Up ahead.]

Seeking scientific accuracy in Hollywood is a fool's game. I've frothed at the terrible biology of Bee Movie and gnashed at the poor oceanography of Transformers and muttered at the unfortunate physics of Star Wars. So I wasn't expecting much from Pixar's latest offering, Up, what with the house floating along on helium balloons. But I was pleasantly surprised. The biology of Up is reasonably accurate—though Kevin the bird might harbor a dark secret.

In Up, our heroes float to Paradise Falls, in South America. This spectacular landscape of flat mesas and giant falls is based off Venezuela's Canaima National Park, home to Angel Falls, the world's tallest waterfall. The mesas, called tepui, are ancient rocks inhabited by unique plant communities found nowhere else. Since a barren tepui is a hard place to make a living, many of the plants have turned to meat—they capture insects with sticky bulbs or with water traps. According to Bay Area Science, these excellent plants do get little cameos throughout the movie, but the other inhabitants of Pixar's Paradise Falls are glimpsed only as skeletons on display.

But what about Kevin? Kevin is a large, colorful ostrich-like bird pursued by the bad guy because she's a living fossil that will prove that Paradise Falls is indeed a "Lost World." While there are flightless birds in South America today, they aren't colorful and they don't live on the tepui. The most Kevin-like is probably the rhea, a gentle ostrich-like herbivore that grows up to six feet tall and 70 pounds. Rhea roam the low-lying plains of Brazil and Argentina, but are kept as livestock and pets all over the world. Anything that wanders around a Scottish suburb is probably not exotic enough to drive the plot of an entire feature film. That's why I think Kevin may have been something far more mysterious and dangerous—an ancient terror bird.

The terror birds (also known as phorusrhacids) were carnivorous flightless birds that ate their way through South America until their extinction 2.5 million years ago. The largest terror bird stood 10 feet tall, weighed 1,000 pounds, and used its giant razor-sharp claws to feed its babies meat, not chocolate. A self-respecting terror bird would have had no fear of talking dogs—it could have could have swallowed them whole and kung-fu-chopped their bones for the marrow. Discovering a living terror bird, though likely fatal, would certainly propel the discoverer to fame and fortune.

If Kevin was a terror bird, why would she spare the lives of Up's heroes? Perhaps her species evolved to vegetarianism over the last 2.5 million years, turning to a life of pacificism and quiet contemplation. Maybe she was saving them in order to eat them later. Or maybe she was entirely satisfied with being fed chocolate. Nonetheless, if I were a Pixar character, I wouldn't turn my back on Kevin. They don't award the "fleeing from extinct mega-predator" Wilderness Scout badge posthumously.

Subtracting the Math Gender Gap

Miriam Goldstein — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:32:24 -0400

Poor women. While normal intelligence can co-exist with ovaries, our delicate lady-brains can't contain genius-level intelligence. Men and women might have the same average intelligence, but men have more variation, and thus more idiots AND genuises. At least that's what former Harvard President and current Obama advisor Larry Summers implied in 2005 when he said that biological differences might explain the lack of female mathematics professors.

If Summers was right and biological differences are to blame, there should be fewer math-genius girls the whole world over. However, a new study that looked at worldwide data found that countries with greater gender equity had just as many girls as boys in the top 1 percent of mathematics. An article in NewsDaily presents the take of the researchers, Janet Hyde and Janet Mertz:

"Analysis of data from 15-year-old students participating in the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment likewise indicated that as many, if not more girls than boys scored above the 99th percentile in Iceland, Thailand, and the United Kingdom," Mertz and Hyde [the study's authors] wrote.

Several different international tests show the same pattern, including the International Math Olympics, Mertz said.

So why is there a gender gap in the United States? It just might have something to do with the discouraging message that a person in possession of breasts is biologically incapable of doing that ever-so-manly math. As Mertz said,

"If girls don't have equal educational opportunities or if they know if they learn the material there won't be jobs available to them, why bother, they seek something else."

Every Sperm is Sacred

Miriam Goldstein — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:43:29 -0400

Don't you hate it when you accidentally have sex with your sister? This happens to Indian meal moths, a common kitchen pest that feeds on grains and cereals. Being moths, they don't really care about the moral issues, but offspring of an incestuous moth union are likely to be infertile. And since the moths have only a week get busy before heading off to the Great Pantry in the Sky, they can't afford too many reproductive dead ends.

But new research, published in this month's Animal Behavior, shows that male moths can stop worrying about fruitlessly spending their sperm on their sisters. Male Indian meal moths are tantric masters. If they're getting down with an unrelated lady friend, they give her ejaculate chock-filled with the very finest of sperm. But if they met their sweetie in the next cocoon over, they only release half as many sperm. That way, the moth isn't wasting energy on a whole Flowers in the Attic scene and can save his sperm for a less related lady.

While many female insects have a built-in morning-after pill that allows them to discard sperm they don't like, it was thought that male insects just had to thrust and think of England. But apparently even male moths yearn for control over the ultimate fate of their gametes. After all, when a single sperm can make the difference between being a grandpa moth or evolutionary roadkill, every sperm is indeed sacred.

Photograph of mating Indian Meal Moths by Richardus / Wikipedia.

Replacing Pesticides with Fear

Miriam Goldstein — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:28:13 -0400

It's tough to be a fuzzy little mammal. Death can come from the sky or beneath the earth or behind the next tree, so their lives are governed by constant, quivering fear. Prey species live in a dangerous neighborhood, and they must always be alert to their surroundings. That's why a Middle Eastern plan to control pest populations with predatory birds is brilliant. Instead of pouring toxins on their crops to kill rodents, they are installing nest boxes for day-hunting kestrels and night-hunting barn owls to provide around-the-clock mouse munching.

While the kestrels and owls certainly do kill rodents directly, their very presence means that pest populations are reduced before they even lift a claw. Without predators around, the mice and insects stuff themselves all day long without fear. But once the prey know that they could get chomped at any moment, fear changes their behavior completely. They hide more, eat less, and have fewer babies. Even if they can get enough food, the incredible stress of being ready to flee at any moment reduces their lifespan. Past studies have shown that grasshoppers are so afraid of wolf spiders that they will starve to death in hiding rather than seeking food near the spider. And rabbit babies born to parents who are afraid of lynxes are less healthy than rabbit babies born to parents in lynx-free environments.

Fear can also change entire ecosystems. When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, the fat, lazy elk were forced to run away instead of spending their days lounging by the river. Once the elk stopped overgrazing, willow trees were able to regrow near the water, creating bird habitat. Now that the willows have regrown, beavers might come back and dam up parts of the river, making homes for fish and wading birds. The wolves are killing relatively few elk, but the behavior of the entire population has changed.

I hope more farmers put out owl and raptor nest boxes—I'd much rather have my veggies taste of fear than of pesticides. And while bringing top predators like wolves and mountain lions back into densely populated areas is probably impractical, I think the fear that would induce might have other benefits. Can't you envision the popularity of the "How To Lose Ten Pounds By Hiding From Ravenous Beasts" diet?

Photograph of mouse by John Foxx/Getty Images.

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Tue, 26 May 2009 14:28:13 -0400

A Good Man Is Easy to Find if You Keep Him in Your Intestine

Miriam Goldstein — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:28:55 -0400

Ever had the feeling that your male is getting restless? Think he's not ready to settle down with you and have 10,000 larvae and a white-picket mud burrow? If you've got a hard time finding a man, a dwarf male might be right for you. Dwarf males have evolved to be tiny semi-parasites, forgoing feeding and swimming for a life of providing you with sperm-on-demand. Since dwarfism makes a good man easy to find (there he is, stuck to your shell or living in your gut!), it's perfect for gals on the go. Here are three easy ways to keep your dwarf male with you for ever and ever:

Attach him to your hip. The deep sea anglerfish (as seen in that hallmark of marine biology, Finding Nemo) keeps six or seven males by her side—literally. Anglerfish spend their lives in the pitch-black water, luring prey to their doom with a little light dangling off their foreheads. When a male encounters a female, he bites into her side with his giant scraggly teeth and hangs on for the rest of his life. Eventually, his organs degenerate and his blood supply fuses with that of the female, leaving him to function as simply a scrotum. Sure, a scrotum might not be so good for conversation or long walks on the beach, but he's not going anywhere.

Choose a live-inside boyfriend. In the whale-bone eating worm Osedax, dwarf males inhabit the female's intestine. In this case, sex is determined by the environment—if a larva lands on a nice fresh whale skeleton, it turns into a female. But if a larva gets ingested by a female, it turns into a male and spends its life inside her gut with up to 100 harem-mates. As long as you don't get indigestion, he'll never leave you.

Make him give up a big something. If he won't permanently attach, there are still ways to make it hard for him to go anywhere. Amongst the free-living triangle spiders, the male body size has shrunk, but the female anatomy remains the same. In order to please their ladies, male triangle spiders have to drag around enormous, disproportionate male organs called "palps." Upon reaching adulthood, a male breaks off one of his two palps in order to be able to walk. The remaining palp is for you—and if you aren't pleased you can always tear it off and eat him.

When Kvetching Kills

Miriam Goldstein — Tue, 19 May 2009 10:30:18 -0400

Whining is universal. From the frantic peeping of baby birds to the whimpering of a kid deprived of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs in the supermarket checkout line, young critters know how to get their parents to feed them. Crying or squeaking or mewing tells the baby's caretaker that they have needs that must be met NOW!!! But in the case of the European earwig, begging is a fatal miscalculation. Whiny earwig babies don't get sent to their earwiggy rooms—they get starved to death by their mothers.

European earwigs, easily recognized by the giant pinchers adorning their buttocks, are a common garden pest that eats other insects, plants, and fruit. Despite their crawly appearance, female earwigs are good mommies, taking care of their 50-100 babies by feeding them regurgitated glop. Baby earwigs, called "nymphs," don't make sounds, but they do signal their hunger with chemical signals.

To figure out how the mother earwig responds to her offsprings' hunger, researchers ground up well-fed nymphs and poorly-fed nymphs, extracted the oils from their bodies with solvent, and dosed intact earwig nests with eau de baby. They found that nymphs treated with the happy-baby smell got fed, while nymphs treated with the sad-baby smell were ignored. Mother earwigs concentrated their efforts on the least needy babies, while the nymphs that smelled like whining were left to starve.

Despite its cruelty, this makes evolutionary sense for animals with lots of babies that aren't expected to live to adulthood. Why spend your time feeding whimpering weaklings when you could prepare your very best offspring to be all they can be? Unfortunately for people stuck on airplanes with whining Homo sapiens offspring, evolution dictates that species that invest a lot in a single baby have to take better care of it. Still, don't you think the "Tale of the Begging Earwig" would make a great bedtime story?

Image by Menchi/Wikimedia

Their Chirpin' Cheatin' Hearts

Miriam Goldstein — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:56:50 -0400

The hoary old evolutionary explanation for gender differences is that males are slutty and females are choosy. Males sleep around in order to fertilize as many eggs as possible, while females guard their virtue until Prince Charming comes along. But with the advent of genetic techniques (and in my opinion, female biologists), scientists have found that nature overflows with wanton females. Figuring out evolutionary reasons for looseness in ladies is harder—since each egg can only be fertilized once, having lots of sex won't necessarily lead to more babies. A study on a European songbird, published in last month's Current Biology, reveals one possible reason for female infidelity—bastard chicks are bigger and stronger than their legit half-siblings.

The delighfully named blue tit (scientific name: Cyanistes caeruleus) is a common European songbird with a common songbird lifestyle—they mate for a season, the male defends his territory with song, and the female lays and incubates the eggs. But over 40 percent of the female blue tits are getting around all over blue tit town, cuckolding their mates right and left. When researchers examined the fate of chicks sired in and out of wedlock, they found that the illegitimate chicks were healthier because they were laid and hatched sooner, therefore getting more food and attention than the later-born chicks. If chicks born of cheating hatch earlier, survive better, and live to pass on mama's ways, no wonder female blue tits can't keep it in the nest.

The bastard advantage in blue tits is yet another demonstration that the natural world does not conform to conservative talking points. In fact, all that finger-shaking on premarital sex hurting women's ability to bond with future partners was based on research on the prairie vole. Thought to be a paragon of monogamy, those naughty, bad rodents were caught cheating on their partners-for-life last year. The free-flying blue tit lifestyle is no more unusual than living in a harem or inside your sweetie's intestine—it's monogamy that's hard to find.

Photograph of Blue Tit by Luc Viatour/Wikipedia

The Dark Secrets That Dolphins Don't Want You to Know

Miriam Goldstein — Wed, 13 May 2009 11:30:23 -0400

It never fails. Every single cocktail party, as soon as someone finds out that I'm a graduate student studying marine biology, they ask, "So, do you get to play with dolphins?" Since my heart is as black and cold as the oceanic abyss, I usually take this opportunity to disillusion yet another poor soul of their childhood fantasy of Mystical Dolphin Love.

Dolphins are not gentle or psychic. If they could talk they would not impart eco-wisdom or deep spiritual truth. Dolphins are violent predators with a predilection for baby killing and rape. I feel it's my duty to warn you, despite the risk of insulting creatures made of hundreds of pounds of muscle and rows of sharp teeth. Throw out your rainbow dolphin painting, and check out dolphins' low-down dirty secrets:

--Dolphin sex can be violent and coercive. Gangs of two or three male bottlenose dolphins isolate a single female from the pod and forcibly mate with her, sometimes for weeks at a time. To keep her in line, they make aggressive noises, threatening movements, and even smack her around with their tails. And if she tries to swim away, they chase her down. Horny dolphins have also been known to target human swimmers—Demi Moore is rumored to have had a close encounter of the finny kind.

--Dolphins kill harbor porpoise babies. In Scotland, scientists found baby harbor porpoises washed up with horrific internal injuries. They thought the porpoises might have been killed by weapons tests until they found the toothmarks. Later, dolphins were caught on film pulping the baby porpoises—the dolphins even used their ecolocation to aim their blow at the porpoises' vital organs.

--Dolphins kill their own babies. Baby dolphins have washed up alongside the dead porpoises, and some scientists think that all the porpoise-slaughter was just practice for some old-fashioned infanticide. For other mammals like lions, killing the babies makes the females immediately ready for the next pregnancy, and maybe that's the case with dolphins, too.

The scariest part is dolphins can wreak havoc day and night without sleeping. A recent study found that dolphins could stay awake for five days straight with no loss of mental acuity. The dolphins didn't even need to make up sleep at the end of the study, though the scientists sure did.

If the dolphins ever evolve thumbs, we're in trouble. It will be like a slasher-film remake of Douglas Adams' So Long And Thanks for All The Fish. If I wash up with pulped innards and dolphin tooth marks, you'll know why. After all, you never hear about the people the dolphins push out to sea.