Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Also written by Smokey Robinson (a musical genius!), but performed by the Temptations, “Since I Lost My Baby” comes about as close to perfection as a soul song can get: a classic fusion of music and lyrics. Released in 1965, I can’t believe it peaked at only #17 on the Billboard Rhythm and Blues singles chart. As with many great Motown songs, you’ll recognize it after the first few bars. The lead singer is, of course, David Ruffin.
The Temptations were famous for their choreography, which some of us tried fruitlessly to reproduce when in college. Sadly, I can’t find a live version of this song, but you can see their dancing on this rendition of their other classic, “My Girl.”
If you know this song, you’ll instantly recognize this note from Wikipedia:
Bass singer Melvin Franklin is also heard out front, singing “Oh, Yeah” after Ruffin’s first two lines on the first verse (this is repeated by the group on the last verse).
As we sang along to this on the radio, one of us would always sing that “Oh, Yeah” as low as we could.
And let’s not forget those famous studio musicians, called The Funk Brothers, who, never getting any glory, provided much of the backing for Motown songs, including this one. They contributed many of the musical innovations that made Motown songs unique. If you want to see a documentary about them, go buy the 2002 movie “Standing in the Shadowns of Motown“, a really nice DVD in which the ageing Funk Brothers play behind several singers, with two knock-out songs by Joan Osborne. It gets a 92 on Rotten Tomatoes, an amazing rating for a music movie. You can buy it for only $6.97 at Amazon.
The “Classic 5” lineup of The Temptations: David Ruffin (bottom left), Melvin Franklin (top left), Paul Williams (top right), Otis Williams (bottom right), and Eddie Kendricks (center) c. 1965.(From Wikipedia Commons)
A person named Don Flood conributes this bit of apologetics to one of my posts, “Catholics claim that lies are truer than truth“, which dealt with the inability to comport the results of genetics with the fiction that Adam and Eve were the literal ancestors of all humanity. Here goes (I’ve broken the comment into paragraphs to make it easier to read):
What biologists, such as Professor Coyne, fail to understand is that Adam & Eve, having been both specially created, had within their germ lines all the variation which we see among human beings today. In other words, all the offspring of Eve had distinct DNA, such that if a geneticist had tested them he/she would find that they were not even “related” to each other, even though they were born from the same parents.
This “genetic bootstrapping” on the part of the One and Triune God would have allowed Eve’s children to marry and have sex with each other, allowing them to have normal human offspring. As with the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ, Science cannot enter the realm of the supernatural, that is, actions performed by God which violate the Law of Conservation of Energy, which He established to give order to His Creation.
These events by God are what Catholic theology terms as being “miracles”: raising those who are in a state of clinical death back to normal life, restoration of an adult amputee’s amputated limb (such as occurred in the Miracle of Calanda), simultaneous apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to tens of thousands of individuals over hundreds of square miles (such as occurred with the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima), etc. Since Adam & Eve were both specially created, their bodies were not like ours. They were not conceived, but instead, were formed out of the “dust of the earth”, coming into existence possessing thought and speech. In many respects, their creation was like that of the angels, immaterial beings whom God simply willed into existence ex nihilo. As such, modern genetic theory and assumptions simply do not apply to Adam & Eve. We accept their existence as a matter of divine revelation which came to us through the One and Only Son of God, Jesus Christ, which He entrusted to His Church, the Holy Roman Catholic & Apostolic Church, outside of which no one at all will be saved.
What I find unusual about all this is the scientific acumen it gives to God: knowing that, in 2011, Heng Li and Richard Durban would assay human genetic variation, concluding that the population of our ancestors could not have been smaller than 1200 in the last several million years, God took the step of adding genetic variation to Adam and Eve, giving them lots of extra alleles at each locus (and I mean lots, for Flood argues that the children of Adam and Eve could not even be diagnosed as siblings by genetic testing). In fact, God would have had to give Adam and Eve hundreds of different genes at some loci, when the norm is two copies of each gene per person. Or maybe the extra copies were just inserted into the gonads? Since you want to comport science and the Bible, Mr. Flood, could you kindly tell us God’s mechanism for that? You do, after all, seem to have a remarkable handle on how God did things.
Flood, of course, suggests no way that those extra gene copies could reside in Adam and Eve without screwing up their development. But that’s okay—it was a miracle!
As for the fact that this allowed incest, I guess God isn’t really against brothers and sisters actually copulating with each other, but simply doesn’t like the genetic effects of inbreeding: the homozygosity of deleterious recessive genes that causes problems in the children of relatives.
If you think like this, then there is no point adducing evidence at all, for it can always be explained away by God’s miraculous intervention, making the world seem as if it evolved even though it didn’t. In other words, God is the Immaculate Trickster, arranging all of life—and geology—to deceive our senses. All those fossils in a good evolutionary order? Miracles! The existence of birdlike dinosaurs right before modern birds appear in the fossil record? God’s amusing intercession to fool paleobiologists!
It is so sad that someone is so committed to the literal truth of an ancient, cobbled-together collection of folktales that he simply makes up miracles to save his book. For such people there is no hope.
Oh, and about that amputated leg. The Miracle of Calanda was new to me, so I looked it up. There’s a decent account at Wikipedia, telling the story of a 17th-century Spanish man, Miguel Juan Pellicer, whose leg was supposedly amputated and then, one night while dreaming of the Virgin Mary, it came back again! There are testimonies, of course, but also this:
Author Brian Dunning has done extensive research and notes that “there is no documentation or witness accounts confirming his leg was ever gone.” He presents a non-miraculous explanation that Pelicer’s leg did not develop gangrene during the five days at the hospital at Valencia. He spent the next 50 days convalescing, during which he was unable to work. He turned to begging, and discovered that having a broken leg was a boon. After his leg had mended, he decided that if a broken leg helped, a missing leg would be better. Traveling to Zaragoza, he bound his right foreleg up behind his thigh and for two years played the part of an amputee beggar. Later, back at his parents home in Calanda, forced to sleep in a different bed, his ruse was discovered. The story of the miracle was a way to save face. Dunning notes “that no evidence exists that his leg was ever amputated — or that he was even treated at all — at the hospital in Zaragoza other than his own word. He named three doctors there, but for some reason there is no record of their having been interviewed by either the delegation or the trial.” That the hole in the cemetery of the hospital of Zaragoza in which the leg had been buried was found empty is consistent with the leg never having been amputated.
But even if Pelicer’s leg was restored by God, Flood has to explain why this happened only once, and why such miracles, despite the supplication of many more amputees, are not enacted in the modern world? Has God gone out of the limb-restoring business? Why, as a friend of Anatole France pointed out, are there no discarded wooden limbs at Lourdes?
“Crypsis,” as you should all know by now, is just a fancy scientific word for “camouflage.” Often cryptic animals will hide from predators by mimicking their background, but here’s a case in which one part of an animal mimics the other. Have a look first and see if you can figure out what’s going on.
(The photo, tweeted by Bug Girl, and posted on flickr by itchydogimages, John Horstman, is identified as a Long-Banded Silverline, Spindasis lohita, Lycaenidae. It was taken on February 23, 2013 in Simao, Yunnan, CN, using a Sony DSC-R1.)
This is a case of a “false head” in a butterfly. While the real head is inconspicuous, the posterior part of the wings bear a gaudy, attention-attracting false head, colored orange and replete with fake eyespots, fake antennae, and fake legs. Note as well that the wing patterns call attention to the fake head by converging on it.
One evolutionary explanation immediately comes to mind. Predators—and by this I mean birds—are operating on the old Chinese proverb, “To kill a dragon, first cut off its head.” Birds have either learned (or perhaps have an evolved propensity) to strike at insects by pecking at their anterior (front) section, which is far more likely to debilitate it than a peck at the rear, on the wings. By evolving a “false head”, an insect has a higher chance of surviving a bird strike since the bird pecks at the false head, allowing the butterfly to escape with minimal damage. In fact, I remember reading about studies in which on finds “false head” butterflies with the fake head are bitten far more often on the wings than str “regular” butterflies. Doug Taron at the Peggy Notebeart Nature Museum here in Chicago verifies this (and shows more false-headed butterflies):
In 1980, scientists from the Smithsonian attempted to demonstrate that predators could be fooled into attacking the wrong end of the butterfly. They collected hundreds of butterflies in Panama and Columbia, and divided them into groups based on the number of head-like features were present in their wing patterns. Consistent with the false head hypothesis, the greater the number of head-like features, the more likely wing damage due to predator attacks was to be directed to that part of the wings.
I also remember—though I can’t provide chapter and verse—that birds also automatically strike in front of what they perceive as the head, like a sniper leading a target with his rifle. This anticipates that the butterfly will take off when attacked, and that a strike directed right in front of the head will intercept it in mid-flight. This makes it even more likely that false-headed butterflies will escape predation, since the bird will be aiming behind the entire insect.
Finally, I recall that some of these butterflies actually land and then turn around 180º after landing, just in case a bird is watching them land. That will confuse the bird even more about which end is the head. I’ve found one paper in the 1982 volume of Journal of the Lepidopterist’s Society by Torben B. Larsen that substantiates this behavior in a Nigerian butterfly.
There are several species of butterfly with such patterns, which obviously are examples of convergent evolution. Here are two more:
This butterfly is striking enough that its non-scientific name is the “Common false head” (photo from TrekNature by MIKE WNR [drmw]); this is the butterfly documented to do a 180-degree turn after landing:
This week I decided to put up my favorite soul songs from the sixties (and perhaps a few from the succeeding decade). (Don’t ask me to define the genre: I know a soul song when I see it.) Let us hear no dissent about this endeavor, though, as always, I welcome dissent about my choices or nominations for your favorite soul song.
There will be one tune per day, and I’ll start with what is perhaps my favorite soul song of all time. As always, I favor live versions over recorded ones. (There’s a strong chance that, given my list of great soul music, this will last longer than a week.)
This has to be in the top five of anyone’s list: “Ooo Baby Baby,” recorded in 1965 by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles (It was written by Robinson and his co-Miracle Peter Moore.) A live version is below, and you can find the released Motown version here.
Wikipedia notes (I”m always chuffed at how silly the songs look when you simply describe their content):
A slow, remorseful number, “Ooo Baby Baby” features Miracles lead singer Smokey Robinson lamenting the fact that he cheated on his woman, and begging for her to overlook his mistakes and please forgive him. The song’s highly emotional feel is supported by the Miracles’ tight background harmonies, arranged by Miracles member and song co-author Pete Moore, and a lush orchestral arrangement that accents The Funk Brothersband’s instrumental track.
On the 2006 Motown DVD The Miracles’ Definitive Performances, Pete comments on the song’s creation: “In the songs that Smokey and I wrote together, Smokey and Berry kinda left the background vocals to me. And this song “I’m On The Outside (Looking In)”, which was one of The Imperials’ bigger hits…. When I heard that song,as far as the background (harmonies) were concerned and how (they were structured),I wanted to get the same kind of feeling with Smokey’s vocal.So I called Bobby, Ronnie, and Claudette over, and we did the backgrounds for it.I kinda had that particular song in mind…so I wanted to get the same kind of feeling with ‘Ooo Baby Baby’.”
The most famous cover was by Linda Ronstadt in 1978, also a big hit. Note how closely, though, she sticks to the original phrasing. It’s almost impossible to improve Motown songs by interpreting them in a radically different way.
Soul music (with disco in second place, though I’m not keen on the genre) is the best music to dance to of all time—and I did my share of hoofing.
This, taken yesterday, is from our anonymous reader who lives in a beautiful part of Idaho.
His explanation of the photo:
This is an HDR photograph — high dynamic range, a composite of three photos at different exposures. It would have been impossible otherwise. The full-resolution version of the original image is drop-dead stunning.
Click to enlarge (hint: if you enlarge it a lot, you’ll see the bald eagle nest in the treetops about 10% of the way in from the left border of the photo).
He sent a leaping deer (also taken yesterday) as lagniappe:
