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.
It’s time for the annual all-American rite of gluttony: Nathan’s Fourth of July hot-dog eating contest, the Super Bowl of the bizarre sport of competitive eating. The goal of this competition, held on Long Island, New York, is to down as many hot dogs as possible within the ten-minute time limit. Experienced contestants separate the dog from the bun, gobble the former, and then squash the bun into a lump to eliminate bulk, ingesting it with a gulp of water.
And this year Joey “Jaws” Chestnut set a world record: 69 hot dogs in ten minutes. That’s one hot dog every 8.7 seconds. And it beat his previous record (set in 2012) by exactly one dog. He might have done even better had his long-time rival, Takeru Kobayashi, the small Japanese guy with the big stomach, been present. But Kobayashi didn’t attend.
Here’s the usual heartwarmer to end the week. And I can’t refrain from saying this: religion and prayer aren’t going to fix a duck’s amputated foot. (Remember “Why won ‘t God heal amputees?“) But science can—and did!
Last November a male duck named Buttercup was born (in a high-school biology lab!) with a deformed and backward-pointing foot. He was transferred to the Feathered Angels Waterfowl Sanctuary in Tennesee, whose employees decided to help him. The foot was was amputated, and then the kindly people at the Sanctuary went into action.
After Buttercup had his foot amputated in February, Garey — a software engineer by trade — started looking into options for a replacement limb. Sure, Buttercup could have a peg leg; but what if Garey could replace the entire foot?
After shopping around for a service, he found 3D printing company NovaCopy, which agreed to donate its services to helping Buttercup walk again. Together, using photos of the left foot of Buttercup’s sister Minnie, they designed a brand new left foot for Buttercup.
The computer design:
Because the foot needs to be flexible, the usual plastics used in 3D printing aren’t viable. Instead, NovaCopy printed a mould, which will be used to cast a silicone foot for the lucky duck, creating several iterations of the design to come up with the perfect one. It will be attached to his foot via a silicone sheath.
“This version will have a stretchy silicone sock instead of the finger trap, which will roll up on his leg, be inserted into the foot and then have a fastener in the bottom,” Garey said. “If you saw Dolphin Tail, this material is similar to the WintersGel that they used.” WintersGel is a prosthetic liner that grips the amputated limb.
The replica of Minnie’s foot that will be used to create a prosthetic for Buttercup. (Credit: Feathered Angels Waterfowl Sanctuary)
Of course Buttercup has his own Facebook page, which you can follow as the prosthesis is attached. The final fitting should be within two weeks.
Now maybe some of you are thinking, “Why all this fuss about a prosthetic foot for a duck? Why not just eat it?” But I believe that ducks enjoy their lives, and can experience suffering and happiness. And I can’t help but believe that if this duck had a choice, it would want a new foot. As an evolutionary biologist I see no qualitative distinction between the suffering of humans and animals—humans can just express it more emotively. And so I find it heartwarming that people are volunteering time and resources to improve the life of a single waterfowl.
The duck in the movie below might be Buttercup, though I’m not sure. It does, however, have an injured left foot:
Here’s a heartwarming story sent by alert reader Iggy to end the week on a happy note.
The photo blog of NBC News has the story and photos of a Candadian man, Kevan Yeats, and his cat Momo, who were overtaken in Yeats’s truck when a river in Alberta overflowed. The truck went down, and both had to swim for their lives. The photos are quite dramatic:
Look at that moggie swim!
They made it.
And so this tail has a happy ending.
Have a good weekend (I’ll be here all weekend, folks!).
First, did you know that goshawks (Accipiter gentilis; the Northern Goshawk) can fly through extremely small spaces? This bird wasn’t trained to do it; they fly through dense woods and have to negotiate quickly on the wing.
(For an earlier post on goshawks hunting, go here.)
And this fascinating fact, which will make you a hit at cocktail parties, came from the University of London’s John R. Hutchinson, a big name in vertebrate anatomy and biomechanics:
You’ll want to see the proof, of course (that semicircular, whitish-blue bulge in the hole is the back of the eye):
[EDIT FROM MATTHEW COBB: I sent John’s tweet to Jerry and I was so amazed I chatted about it with various colleagues this morning. Amazement all round. Then someone asked: ‘how do they hear?’ This led to a lot of googling and thinking – ‘hey, what about the ear drum?’ And the answer is (it appears) – this is a picture of a dead owl that has had its ear drum removed/sectioned so you can see into its eye socket. Which is still pretty cool, just not as cool as we all thought. My excuse? I know about maggots and that’s about it. John didn’t realise that we would all misinterpret the picture (which he didn’t take). IF ANYONE KNOWS ANY BETTER PLEASE WRITE IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!]
Hutchinson has pinned a gazillion great animal/anatomy picks at his Pinterest site, Mucho Morphology. Here are two as lagniappe, but go over and see for yourself:
A leucistic (not albino) echidna, from All Albino Animals (some of them aren’t true albinos, but show leucism):
Repinned from Animals by Remi Kalisz Originally pinned by Judy Shelton onto Albino Anomilies
The eye of a giant Humboldt squid:
Originally pinned by Volker Heupel onto nature
EDIT from Matthew Cobb:
Given that the d*g has no bone to the back of its eyesocket (as you can see in this skull), I asked John Hutchinson on Twitter whether you could do the same trick with a d*g as he did with an owl. He replied as follows:
No, it’s not a car but a sleek black cat. This video, from NBC News, tells the story of a moggie who found its way home over a distance of eight miles after the family was relocated in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
Now I read this kind of story frequently—frequently enough that I think there must be something true about animal homing. While I know a bit about the homing of pigeons, I’m ignorant of dogs and cats. Have there been any scientific studies about how pets find their way home?
But did Porsche really find his way home? If I were a reporter, I would have asked the owners one question: “Did Porsche have a collar and tag when he was lost?” (And don’t forget that he didn’t seem to have missed many meals!)
Oh, and if you have any stories about your pet doing this, feel free to add them.
Like everyone else, I once had a Rubik’s cube (the world’s best-selling toy, 350 million of them had been sold by 2009), but I am simply puzzle-illiterate, and gave it up quickly. This video puts me to shame.
Via Vibe, we have this amazing video of Stanford student Ravi Fernandez (dubbed “Sir Ravi” by his worshipful friends) solving one Rubik’s cube while juggling three of them. See if you can watch him move the squares while the cube is in his hand.
It’s no wonder I couldn’t solve it. As Wikipedia notes:
The original (3×3×3) Rubik’s Cube has eight corners and twelve edges. There are 8! (40,320) ways to arrange the corner cubes. Seven can be oriented independently, and the orientation of the eighth depends on the preceding seven, giving 37 (2,187) possibilities. There are 12!/2 (239,500,800) ways to arrange the edges, since an even permutation of the corners implies an even permutation of the edges as well. (When arrangements of centres are also permitted, as described below, the rule is that the combined arrangement of corners, edges, and centres must be an even permutation.) Eleven edges can be flipped independently, with the flip of the twelfth depending on the preceding ones, giving 211 (2,048) possibilities.
which is approximately forty-three quintillion.
The puzzle is often advertised as having only “billions” of positions, as the larger numbers are unfamiliar to many. To put this into perspective, if one had as many standard sized Rubik’s Cubes as there are permutations, one could cover the Earth’s surface 275 times.
As lagniappe, here’s another remarkable juggler: Daniel Menendez, who plays the piano while juggling (there are more recent clips of him on YouTube, too). Be sure to watch it to the end to see the Grand Finale. And don’t forget to tip the waitress!
