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.
Good morning, welcome to Friday. Jerry has made it safely to New Zealand and here in Ireland I am off work for the day because St Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland. Of course there were never any snakes in Ireland, so that was an excellent display of PR flim-flammery. Still, it’s an excuse to watch the parades, dance (céili), have a pint of Guinness or just not go to work; so I’ll take it. (Actually, I don’t like Guinness.)
And some more silliness:
Today is the birthday of Caroline Corr of the Irish group The Corrs so it’s a good enough reason to showcase one of their earlier hits Runaway.
Matthew sent me the following tw**t from Bryan D. Hughes, the rattlesnakeguy:
Here's a cool picture sent to us by Susan Harnage. It's a longnosed snake with a partial stripe – an error in the pattern. Pretty cool! pic.twitter.com/5Eakop7dcY
The tw**t doesn’t say where the picture was taken, but I’m guessing somewhere in the American southwest. It does say it’s a longnosed snake (Rhinocheilus lecontei), but it doesn’t look to be one to me. I’m pretty sure it’s a common kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula). [Added later: it is a longnosed– see comment below by rattlesnakeguy.]
The interest in this snake is that it’s banded fore and aft, but striped amidships, which is pretty unusual. The kingsnake is usually banded, but striped ones are known from southern California and Baja– this snake has both! Snakes with unusual and partial patterns are popular amongst herpetoculturalists, and I recall from grad school that one of my cohort working on snake development got stripey patterns from eggs incubated at the wrong temperature. Some quick checking revealed some definite evidence of low temperature incubation leading to striping in pythons (here and here), and some vaguer rumblings in the cornsnake forums, but I could not find any scientific papers on the subject. I did find some more reliable evidence that incubation temperature does not influence pattern in Australian eastern brown snakes.
Snake patterns are thought to have an influence on their detectability and catchability by visual predators; bands are often camouflagey, while stripes tend to make a predator (me!) grab behind the snake, as the longitudinal stripe obscures the forward motion of the snake, and the grab is mistimed.
. . . but only in LAX, which surely ranks up there with Heathrow as one of the world’s worst airports. Huge, sprawling, jammed with crawling traffic, and offering only very expensive food, it’s to be avoided at all costs—and I’ll do that the way back, as I fly through SFO. And there’s not even TSA PreCheck (which I purchased a while back) to move me through security faster. The only upside is that I didn’t get groped!
In an hour I’ll board Air New Zealand; they already said “Kia ora” to me (the Maori equivalent of “hello”) when I got my boarding pass, and I’m looking forward to flying that airline to Auckland. After I arrive there at 6:30 on the 17th, I have an 8-hour layover (OY!) until I catch a 2-hour flight to Queenstown in the afternoon.
It will be a long day, or two, or three. I don’t really know how many hours are involved in this journey; perhaps some kindly reader can calculate the number of hours that elapse between 11 a.m. on March 15 in Chicago and 4:30 p.m. on March 17 in Queenstown.
In the meantime, enjoy this video of keas—Nestor notabilis, an indigenous parrot found only in the forests and mountains of New Zealand’s south island—destroying a police car at Arthur’s Pass. It’s the world’s only alpine parrot, and I’ll surely see these destructive but endearing birds. Their beaks are capable of stripping chrome and rubber from cars, and that’s exactly what they do.
I didn’t realize that there are only 1,000-5,000 keas left, and they have been declared endangered. Populations are crashing as individuals are being eaten by non-native animals, poisoned by lead from human dwellings that they nom, and killed by sheep farmers (they have been known to rip open the backs of sheep and dine on the fat, meat and blood). For a long while people debated whether they really did attack sheep, but here’s the proof:
Finally, keas are among the smartest birds tested; they quickly learn to use tools in the lab even though they don’t do so in nature. Here’s an Attenborough video showing both their brains and their brawn:
When you’re reading this, I’ll be somewhere over the Pacific, I think. Today’s version is truncated, but two readers sent in owls, and I wanted to put them up, scheduling them in advance. The first two photos are from reader Don Bredes; his notes are indented:
This winter we’ve frequently spied a barred owl (Strix varia) nearby, perching sometimes in the spruces alongside our driveway and spooking the chickadees and red squirrels. This evening he came right to the deck and stuck around for about ten minutes.
And from Lee Beringsmith in California:
While working in an old garage on my ranch, I noticed some fresh bird droppings on the floor. Glancing up and expecting to see a few sparrows , was I ever surprised to see this magnificent barn owl (Tyto alba) staring down at me. Being just a few feet from such a beautiful creature was something I will treasure for a long time. I did manage to get a photo on my smartphone to remember the experience.
Good morning. Happy Day of the Book Smugglers (what a fantastic name) a day that commemorates smugglers transporting banned Lithuanian language books printed in the Latin alphabet into Lithuanian-speaking areas of the Russian Empire in the last years of the 19th century.
Jerry is on his way to Hobbit Land, or New Zealand as it is more formally known. I will keep you updated as news comes in, although Jerry will join us as often as wi-fi permits.
Another Hollywood notable with a birthday today is Alan Tudyk, recently of the Star Wars Episode the Something-eth fame; but always for me Wash in Firefly / Serenity. Nope, never going to forgive Fox for that one.
Over here in Ireland everyone is gearing up – or winding down – for the long weekend courtesy of Paddy’s Day tomorrow. We’re having uncharacteristically balmy weather right now, but there is still a 50/50 chance of our Traditional Rain in time for the parade. Festivities here are quite different to those in the USA – you could fit the entire population of Ireland into New York and still have half the city left over. I’ll post some pictures tomorrow to show what an Irish St Patrick’s Day looks like.
In Dobrzyń Andrzej is teasing Hili a little, but she is buying into it.
A: Humans were created in the image of a cat…
Hili: But something went wrong.
In Polish
Ja: Ludzie zostali stworzeni na obraz i podobieństwo kota…
Hili: Ale coś poszło nie tak.
Taskin sent us some beautiful Gus photos as a bonus. Someone is unconcerned about the weather, international politics and Trump’s unreleased Tax Returns. Be like Gus just for today.
In the absence of being able to write anything substantive, I proffer you this tweet with a little piglet (is that redundant?). Be sure to watch the short video. Dick King-Smith is a well known author of children’s books.
That new word is “woke,” and the Urban Dictionary defines it with some accuracy (and snark):
In other words, it denotes a state of ideological purity that agrees with the speaker’s views. It’s equivalent to calling yourself a “bright.”
For a more long-winded and arrogant explanation of the word, head over to Raven Cras’s piece at Blavity, “What does it mean to be woke?” At first I thought it was a joke, but I don’t think so. It starts like this:
The phenomenon of being woke is a cultural push to challenge problematic norms, systemic injustices and the overall status quo through complete awareness. Being woke refers to a person being aware of the theoretical ins and outs of the world they inhabit. Becoming woke, or staying woke, is the acknowledgment that everything we’ve been taught is a lie (kind of/mostly). Woke(ness) provides us with a basic understanding of the why and how come aspect of societies’ social and systemic functions. The phrase itself is an encouragement for people to wake up and question dogmatic social norms.
. . . the piece goes downhill from there.
Feel free to comment on the neologisms you most dislike; that’s always a lively and curmudgeonly discussion!
