Properly Screwed-Together Beetle

Papuan weevil

I don’t think you can call this biomimicry, since humans invented the screw sometime around the third century B.C., and this is the first we’ve heard that the Papuan weevil got there first.

So maybe it’s more like convergent evolution, two species arriving independently at the same solution.  In any case, I like the mechanical nature of the discovery.  I have vivid memories of watching Dr. Denton Cooley perform heart surgery, and being struck by how mechanical it seemed, with veins being 45′d together the way a carpenter 45′s a joint, and lines being threaded through blind spaces the way an electrician will run a wire with a fish tape.  So this further instance of the mechanistic way things get put together also pleases me.  Here’s the press release from this week’s Science:

Many innovations in modern mechanical engineering were taken directly from nature, like the ball-and-socket joint, which was first described as part of an organism’s anatomy before being adapted as a machine. The classic screw-and-nut system, however, was thought to be a uniquely human innovation. Now, researchers have found an example of this screw-and-nut system in the legs of a beetle known as the Papuan weevil, Trigonopterus oblongus. (Apparently, evolution beat us to the punch on that one as well.) In a Brevium, Thomas van de Kamp and colleagues describe this functional screw-and-nut system in the weevil’s coxa-trochanteral joints, one of the three major sets of joints in an insect’s leg.  Until now, these particular joints were considered to be hinges. But, according to the researchers, the tips of the insect’s coxae closely resemble nuts with well-defined inner threads that continue internally for 345 degrees and the corresp onding trochanters have perfectly compatible external threads that cover 410 degrees. They suggest that an advantage of this system may be that the weevil’s legs come to a stable resting position, which is ideal for life on twigs and foliage.

Half the weevil's leg joint with external screw thread

The other half has an internal screw thread

Financial Lessons from Nature: A Follow-Up.

For some reason, a lot of visitors to this site seem to be checking out my NPR commentary that aired on November 18, 2008, about lessons learned from the natural world for dealing with the financial crisis.  Here was my key piece of advice:

I saw forest fire ravage Yellowstone in 1988.  It looked like the end of the world then, too.   But when I went back a few years later, the blackened areas were flourishing with new growth.  The same thing happens when financial markets go up in flames.  Buck up your courage, buy some stock, and the grass can be green again for us, too.

So, to quote Sarah Palin, how’s that workin’  out for ya?

Next day the Dow-Jones Industrial Average closed at 7997.   If you had suddenly realized–Eureka!–that Mother Nature is the master investor and put all your money into an index fund that day, you would now be up better than 60 percent. (The Dow closed yesterday at 12,261.)

So did I follow my own advice?  A little.  I invested some of my retirement funds around then, and it has paid off.  Unfortunately, I have no clue what Mother Nature says about when to sell.

Why Shyness and Introversion are Normal

 

Pumpkinseed sunfish: Better shy or sunny? (Image by jeffcurrier.com)

In her New York Times article about our tendency to regard shyness and introversion as  diseases, to be treated with antidepressants, writer Susan Cain takes some examples form the natural world:

We even find “introverts” in the animal kingdom, where 15 percent to 20 percent of many species are watchful, slow-to-warm-up types who stick to the sidelines (sometimes called “sitters”) while the other 80 percent are “rovers” who sally forth without paying much attention to their surroundings. Sitters and rovers favor different survival strategies, which could be summed up as the sitter’s “Look before you leap” versus the rover’s inclination to “Just do it!” Each strategy reaps different rewards.

IN an illustrative experiment, David Sloan Wilson, a Binghamton evolutionary biologist, dropped metal traps into a pond of pumpkinseed sunfish. The “rover” fish couldn’t help but

Listening to Alvin the Chipmunk as if Your Life Depends on it

It probably isn’t too surprising that birds deciding where to  nest actually listen for the sound of their major predators, and avoid those areas.  But I am always interested in new examples of the ways one species eavesdrops on another.  And I am genuinely surprised that chipmunks eat birds (ALVIN, how could you!).  Finally, it seems curious that Texas Tech scientists would be doing field research in the Hudson River Valley, and publishing their results in a British journal.

How provincial of me:

Newswise — Ground-nesting birds face an uphill struggle to successfully rear their young, with many eggs and chicks falling prey to predators.

However, two researchers at Texas Tech University have found that some birds eavesdrop on their enemies, using this information to find safer spots to build their nests. The study – one of the first of its kind – was published this week in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology.

Ovenbirds (Seiurus aurocapilla) and veeries (Catharus fuscescens) both build their nests on the ground, running the risk of losing eggs or chicks to neighboring chipmunks that prey on

A Source of Great Images from Natural History

The Biodiversity Heritage Library has put a collection of natural history prints online. I’m a sucker for the old ones.  Check out their stuff on Flicker.

A citron breasted toucan from the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Great Natural History Reading

A while ago, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment came up with a list of twelve classic nature and environment books.  The ASLE is a professional organization of scholars, teachers, writers, and others focused on teaching literature from environmental perspectives.  I don’t agree with the list; it’s entirely American, heavily Western (Western desert, at that), and surprisingly feminine for a topic long dominated, for better or worse, by male writers.  The idea of an epic poem about “how male-dominated science, religion, and culture has [sic] conspired to subjugate women and nature” makes me want to go to sleep.  (I’d prefer, for instance, Travels in West Africa, in which author Mary Kingsley strode boldly across the White Man’s Grave.)

But people at the conference I’m attending have been talking about putting together a list of great natural history reading.  So here’s how ASLE approached the challenge, with teaching in mind (the descriptions are all theirs):

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (1949)  What can be said of Sand County Almanac?  It is simply one of the great works of nature literature and from it has sprung the environmental movement.  It was over 50 years ago that the book was first published, but his words and insights are as fresh as ever.  Another Review   Amazon.com: More Information or Purchase

Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams (1994)  Refuge is a very different kind of nature writing.  Williams visits to Utah’s Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge are counterpoised against a far more personal theme: the slow death of her mother from cancer. Amazon.com:  More Information or Purchase

Land of Little Rain by Mary Hunter Austin, 1903.  A series of poetic writings about the desert Southwestern desert, including observations about the flora, fauna, towns and Native American life.  Amazon.com: More Information or Purchase

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey (1968)  Edward Abbey is the undisputed the voice of the remote canyonland country of southern Utah and Northern Arizona.  No book describes this harsh landscape better and with more hard-nose poignancy than Desert Solitare. More Extensive Review | Amazon.com: More Information or Purchase

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, 1977   This is a beautifully written, though complex, stream-of-consciousness, novel about a young Indian who returns to his New Mexico home after being imprisoned by Japanese during World War II.   Deeply scarred by his war experiences, he seeks refuge on the reservation, but instead finds a world turned upside down with his father and best friend now dead.   Racked by hopeless and despair, he eventually find his way by embracing his people’s ancient ceremonies.  Amazon.com: More Information or Purchase

Walden by Henry David Thoreau (1862)  In 1845, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American essayist and transcendentalist, gave Henry David Thoreau the use of a piece of property that he owned along Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts.  On the Emerson property, Thoreau built a small cabin, planning to use it as a quiet place to finish work on a book that he was writing about a boat trip he and his brother had taken on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.  But he had something else in mind,

Too Hot for Museums to Handle: Rhino Horns

This report comes from  Rebecca Atkinson at Museums Journal:

Organised criminal gangs targeting museums as value of rhino horn soars

Museums have been urged to remove all rhino horn from display amid fears that burglars are targeting museums in search of this valuable material.

The warning came after a rhino head was stolen in a burglary at Haslemere Educational Museum, Surrey, at the end of May.

The commercial value of rhino horn has soared recently largely because the Chinese market uses it in traditional medicines as a cure for cancer. It is also highly prized in Yemen, where it is used for dagger handles.

Detective constable Dave Pellatt of Surrey Police, who is investigating the crime, said the museum is believed to have been deliberately targeted. “There have been similar thefts reported elsewhere in Europe where the animal heads have later been found minus the horns, which have been sold on to be used in alternative medicines,” he added.

Haslemere Museum has removed its remaining rhino heads from the premises following the theft, and its website states it will no longer store rhino material. The Horniman Museum in London has also removed all rhino horn from display until it can reassess its security arrangements.

Paolo Viscardi, the natural history curator at the Horniman Museum and a committee member at the Natural Science Collections Association (NatSCA), said there were rumours that some museums have raised the possibility of

Learning to Feel at Home

This week I’m at a conference at the North Cascades Institute, in northern Washington, about making natural history matter in the modern world.  The sponsoring organization is the Natural History Network, and I’ve been struck by a few of things I’ve heard people say today.

My favorite, from Tom Fleischner, who teaches environmental studies at Prescott College in Arizona:  “Natural history is the process of falling in love with the world.    That’s a very powerful thing.  So much of environmental work tends to be based on fear rather than love.”

We were talking about the ways we come to know the natural history of places, and Amanda Barney, a fisheries biologist from the University of Washingon, uttered this  thought:  “People learn more about where they go than where they’re from.”  I have a hunch that this sentence resonated with me because I have spent so much of my life traveling to write about remote places.  There was a time when I felt as if I could find my way from Galway to Dublin blind, almost by muscle memory.  But I didn’t recognize half the street names in my home town.  And though I can talk in detail about rhinos in southern  Africa or piranhas in Venezuela, I can’t identify all that many species in my own backyard.  In his journal, Henry David Thoreau once wrote:  “It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village; to make any progress between his door and his gate.” (Journal, 6 August 1851)

In the same vein,  Reed Noss of the University of Central Florida later said:  “You have to know your place–the flora, the fauna, the watershed, the history of where you live, so you feel at home.”

Carlos Martinez del Rio of the University of Wyoming  put roughly the same thought in more personal terms.  He uses isotopes to trace how an animal (himself included) has lived and he said:  “I am 85 percent Wyoming.  I’ve analyzed my hair, fingernails, and skin, and I come from the land that I love.”

One other thought:  It’s remarkable how much poetry comes up in the conversation of people who are scientists by profession.  It reminds me of the quote  from E.O. Wilson:  “The ideal scientist thinks like a poet but works like a bookkeeper.”   The setting here is amenable to poetry.  I went for a walk this morning by a still lake with forested mountains leaping sharply up from the opposite shore, and beyond them, taller mountains veined with snow, and with soft clouds wrapped like scarves around their peaks.

Happy Birthday, Gilbert White

White of Selborne

Today’s the birthday of the great British naturalist Gilbert White (1720-1795), also known as White of Selborne, for his great book, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne,  about the countryside around his home in the Hampshire village of Selborne.

I didn’t have room for him in my book The Species Seekers, because White was more an observer than a discoverer of species.

But in her delightful 1982 book The Heyday of Natural History, journalist Lynn Barber gives a lovely account of his achievements:

“He was the first person to differentiate between the three species of ‘willow wren’ (the willow warbler, wood warbler and chiff-chaff); the first to describe the British harvest mouse and its nest; the first to observe that swifts copulate on the wing, that earthworms are hermaphroditic, and that male and female chaffinches form separate flocks in winter.  He examined many birds’ crops and droppings to discover their diet; he noted that owls hoot in B flat and cuckoos mainly in D; he shouted at bees through a loud-hailer to test their sense of hearing.  He had a fine eye for ecological detail.  He described how men riding over close turf are often followed by parties of swallows which seize the small insects thrown up by the horses’ hooves; and how cattle, standing in a pond during hot weather, drop dung which nurtures insects ‘and so supply food for the fish, which could be poorly subsisted but for this contingency.’”

My friend Fred Strebeigh has also written well about White, in a 1988 profile for Audubon Magazine:

Most important, White, in his book of letters, sounded human.  Gone was the stuffiness of earlier naturalists.  [Robert] Plot, for example, began his chapter on the animals of Oxford with embroidered fustian …            White’s readers, then, must have read with astonishment Selborne‘s first encounter with bird or beast–a story.  For years, ravens had nested high in the jutting bulge of an ancient Selborne oak, the “Raven-tree.”  Generations of village youths had tried to reach the ravens’ aerie, but none could clamber round the lower skirt of the bulge.  “So the ravens built on,” wrote White, “nest upon nest, in perfect security.”  Then came the day when the oak was sold, for twenty pounds, to build a bridge near London.

The saw was applied to the butt, the wedges were inserted to the opening, the woods echoed to the heavy blows of the beetle or mallet, the tree nodded to its fall; but still the [raven] dam sat on.  At last, when it gave way, the bird was flung from her nest; and, though her parental affection deserved a better fate, was whipped down by the twigs, which brought her dead to the ground.

            Here was the dawn of something new:  natural history that watched closely and spoke with a human voice. 

An Engrossing and Intriguing Read

A nice review for The Species Seekers just came in from the British magazine Real Travel.  With apologies for the illegible pdf, what it says is that the book is “an engrossing and intriguing read that’s sure to pique the interest of many a budding naturalist or historian in equal measure.”