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.
For some reason I’m mad at much of the world today (it could be because Leftists are posting nude statues of Donald Trump all over Facebook, mocking his genitalia, not realizing how they’d feel if Republicans did the same thing with nude statues of Hillary Clinton). This is the kind of discourse that has so polarized America. Can we maybe pay more attention to ideas and not use as an excuse “Trump brought it on himself?” We’re better than that.
So if I’m a bit irascible, well, you’ve been warned. Anyway, today is Friday, so others might be in a better mood. And today is World Humanitarian Day, commemorating those brave souls who lost their lives helping others. The day marks August 19, 2003 (was it really 13 years ago?), when the UN’s Special Representative to Iraq, noted humanitarian Sérgio Vieira de Mello, as well as 21 other employees, were killed in the car bombing of the UN Headquarters in Baghdad. Also on this day, in 1944, the liberation of Paris began with attacks by the French Resistance. (Be sure to read Matthew Cobb’s wonderful book on this: Eleven Days in August: the Liberation of Paris in 1944. Matthew has a second career as a historian, and won a French knighthood for this.) The insurrection was hard fought, and ended when the Germans surrendered on August 25.
Today is the birthday of both Ginger Baker (1939) and Bill Clinton (1946; he turns 70 today). Blaise Pascal died on this day in 1662 (I wonder if he won his wager?), as did Linus Pauling in 1994. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, there’s a very complicated Hili dialogue. I’ll let Malgorzata explain it below:
A: What are you doing? Eating off the Constitution?
Hili: It’s better to eat off the Constitution than to peck on it.
In Polish:
Ja: Co ty robisz? Jesz z Konstytucji?
Hili: Lepiej jeść z Konstytucji niż ją dziobać.
Explanation by Malgorzata: “The current Polish government is undermining the Constitution using every trick they can think of. They want to change Constitution but for now they do not have the required 2/3 majority to do it, so they do it by curtailing the constitutional rights of other authorities. This is done by passing acts of parliament for which a simple majority is enough. Hili doesn’t approve.”
Leon and his staff are in southern Poland again, finishing up the purchase of their wooden house that will be moved to near Dobrzyn. But they’re also doing some hiking, using a rented cottage as a base:
Leon: I’m getting back the peace of my soul in this cottage.
Finally, relevant comics courtesy of readers Barry and jsp (who sent me that awesome cat tee-shirt I posted yesterday):
And from Jeffrey Weston’s strip Ape, Not Monkey (nicknamed “The Science vs Religion Comic Strip”; how did I miss this???). The strip is definitely worth bookmarking.
Several readers called my attention to this video on Facebook, but reader Michael D. found it on YouTube and sent a link to some information about it. Most people who sent it know that I had a pet skunk when I was a grad student and postdoc. His name was Pinkus (after my father’s fraternity brother Irving Pinkus), he was descented, and I got him as a tiny skunk kitten, smaller than those shown here. Here’s the information from Laughing Squid about the video:
While riding along a path in Parc de la Pointe Taillon near Saguenay, Quebec last summer, bicyclist Francois Arsenault encountered an adorable family of skunks waddling towards him. Rather than panic and run, Arsenault very wisely decided to stay very still and let the little Mephitidic family sniff him out. Once satisfied the human was no threat, the skunks went on their merry little way.
Now if you know anything about striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis), you’ll know that they’re peaceful animals who deploy their artillery only under extreme duress. They also can’t see very well, so you shouldn’t startle them. But this biker, contrary to everyone’s “OMG”s on Facebook, wasn’t in any danger if he sat quietly and let the skunks sniff him. Note the sounds they make when checking him out. By and large, though, skunks are pretty silent animals.
I’ve actually sought out encounters with wild skunks because I love them. They get a bad rap: they’re cute—in fact beautiful—they’re aposematic, and they help humans by eating garden pests. Years ago I was camping on an island off the Florida panhandle, and was told that the campground was full of skunks, and that campers should beware. That, of course, was a huge draw for me, and I bought a bunch of roasted peanuts to feed them. Sure enough, when I was eating at the picnic table at the campground, some skunks came around looking for a handout. (You’re not supposed to feed them, of course, but I was a SKUNK MAN.)
I pulled out my jar of nuts and began feeding them. More came, and soon I was literally awash in wild adult skunks. There must have been twenty or more. They took the nuts directly from my hands. Had I been bitten, I suppose I would have gone for a rabies shot, but I wasn’t. At night I buried peanuts an inch or so in the sandy soil all around my tent. And, as I hoped, throughout the night skunks came by the tent, snuffling, digging, and nomming. It was great. Some of them had a musty smell that I could detect inside the tent, but again, not a single one sprayed.
Two years ago, a skunk was feeding in my friend’s backyard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I walked behind it quietly watching it sniff and dig. (I kept my distance and made no noise.)
If you see a skunk, sit quietly, watch it, and don’t startle it. They are one of the few aposematic (“warningly colored”) mammals, and have few predators save raptors. who can strike before the spray. (I’m told that a struck skunk will still spray, but perhaps the birds can avoid it.) Skunks forage noisily (no need to hide!), and are pretty fearless. I wouldn’t get another one as a pet, for I think they need to be wild and not descented for the pet trade, but my love for this gentle creature has persisted. This biker was very lucky to have such an encounter.
I’ve mentioned in previous posts how I periodically engage in turtle or frog and toad “rescues”, taking animals that had fallen into human made traps, such as window wells and stairwells, and releasing them, sometimes after feeding them for a while in captivity to fatten them up prior to release. A couple of days ago I decided to stop and check a stairwell on my campus, the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, where I’ve previously found toads and a turtle, and sure enough I found a young American toad (Bufo americanus), about 30 mm in snout-vent length, hunkered down in some leaf litter at the bottom of the stairs. I took the little fellow’s picture with a lady bug, the type of beetle made famous by Jerry’s academic grandfather Theodosius Dobzhansky.
American Toad with ladybug in stairwell, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Somers, Wisconsin, 16 August 2016.
The beetle of course was not trapped, and could just fly away when it wanted to. I checked the same stairwell again the next day. It had rained in the general area the previous night, which might encourage toads to be moving about– and thus fall down the stairs– but I wasn’t sure if it had rained on campus. There were two more American toads. These were smaller, about 18 mm snout-vent length. (A penny is about 19 mm in diameter.) These two were hopping about— they had just fallen in, and were in good shape. The toad from the previous day, although it looked good, may have been stuck in the stairwell for some days during a generally dry period, and was not active, but rather hiding in the leaf litter.
American Toads from stairwell, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Somers, Wisconsin, 17 August 2016.
Here’s the stairwell, on the northern side of the Communication Arts building, in which the toads (and last year a painted turtle) got trapped. This year’s larger toad was under the leaves on the far right. Once they go down a step, they cannot climb back up, and they get ratcheted to the bottom.
Stairwell at UW-Parkside, NE corner of Comm Arts extension, 16 August, 2016.
I released these toads immediately after photographing them in Greenquist Woods, shown in the photo below, approximately under the large basswood leaves visible at the right. You can see how the ground slopes down to the left– just behind that screen of bushes is Greenquist Pond, which is where the toads breed, and the painted turtles live.
Greenquist Woods, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Somers, Wisconsin, 16 August 2016.
Here’s Greenquist Pond looking north, with Greenquist Woods to the north and east, a lawn area (not well seen) behind bushes to the west, with a sidewalk and lawn edging to the south (from where the photo was taken).
Greenquist Pond, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Somers, Wisconsin, 16 August 2016.
The smaller toads were recent transformlets from tadpoles this season. The 30 mm toad was a bit puzzling. Either it’s a transformlet from earlier this year which has grown quite a bit, or it’s a one year old from last year’s brood. It seems too small, based on my experience of toad growth in captivity, to be a year old, yet it seems odd to have in just one breeding season such a wide size range in the season’s transformlets (18 to 30 mm). I’ve not quite worked out the breeding phenology of the toads– perhaps I should figure this out.
After releasing the 30 mm toad in the woods the first day, I stopped at the Pond with the colleague who accompanied me, and there we found many small frogs that jumped in the water. At the size of those we saw, you need to get a good look at them to tell bull frogs (Rana catesbeiana) from Green frogs (Rana clamitans)– both species occur in the Pond. They all were diving quickly in the water, and we had no binoculars to get a close look at those that surfaced in the water, but one large individual sat still and let me approach. It was a large adult male green frog: a green frog, because the dorsolateral ridge extends from the eye over the ear and along the side toward the groin (in bull frogs, the ridge curls round the ear); and a male, because the ear is larger in diameter than the eye.
Large male Green Frog in Greenquist Pond, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Somers, Wisconsin, 16 August 2016.
The Canadian ex-Muslim Eiynah, also known as “Nice Mangos” —it’s telling that many ex-Muslims, but not ex-Jews or ex-Catholics, must hide their identity—drew my attention to an article in Time Magazine with this tw**t:
If this was a "show the power of xtianity" article, we'd all cringe. Religion…stop glorifying it cuz minority pic.twitter.com/cy3G7lbnM5
And Eiynah’s right with her claim that similar displays by Christians would be cringe-worthy. In fact, we don’t even have to speculate about it: we already have an example in the form of “Tebowing.” Tim Tebow, a former quarterback for the Denver Broncos, used to drop to his knees on the field after a victory, genuflecting and thanking the nonexistent god he loved so fervently. Here’s one of his poses. He did this so often that it became a meme, and a subject of national debate.
And indeed, a lot of people liked Tebow’s behavior, for there are always those who prize public displays of Christianity. Indeed, at the University of Florida, Tebow used to wear Biblical verses on the black pigment that quarterbacks often wear under their eyes (supposedly to stop sun glare). You can look up this verse for yourself.
Credit Chris Graythen/Getty Images
But, as the New York Times recounts, there was plenty of criticism of this excessive religiosity as well, with Tebow being seen by some as a “religious nut job.” There’s even a a website that mocks his gesture, showing people Tebowing all over the globe. So yes, there’s not universal approbation for public displays of Christianity on the athletic field.
But there is for Islam. We’ve already seen the huge outpouring of enthusiasm for Ibtihaj Muhammad, the American who fenced in the Olympics wearing a hijab. Even Hillary Clinton tweeted about that, even though there was nothing courageous or heroic about Muhammad’s act, and in the end she turned out to be a pretty nasty exponent of anti-Semitism. There’s nothing to celebrate about an athlete from the U.S. wearing religious garb during the Olympics, particularly a garment that is a symbol of oppression: of a religion that views women as temptresses who can incite men’s uncontrollable lust by showing a wisp of hair. Yes, women have the right, or should, to wear hijabs everywhere, and some even claim to do it by “choice”—although what does that mean when there’s often severe social pressure by family and peers to conform? But let’s not deem the wearing of headscarves to be “heroic”. What would be “heroic” would be a woman in Iran or Saudi Arabia—where wearing the head-shackle is mandatory—to take it off in public.
But of course the Western media, even on the Left, have bought into Islamic exceptionalism: what would be cringe-worthy or mocked if it were done by Christians or Jews is seen as wonderful when done by Muslims. This is done out of fear—fear of two sorts. Fear that one could be attacked physically for criticizing or not sufficiently deferring to a religion whose adherents have made “I’m offended” their trademark, and fear that one will be called a bigot for not sufficiently osculating the Oppressed. It all stinks, for it’s all about celebrating the inimical effects of religion on human behavior.
But according to the latest venue to osculate Islam, Time magazine, the religion is all positive. Have a look at this headline below (click the screenshot to go to the site)
My first temptation is to say one could write a counter-headline: “20 beheadings and 5 gays thrown off buildings show the negative power of Islam.” But, that aside, I bet that Time hasn’t used examples from the Olympics to show the positive power of Christianity or Judaism! Nope, it’s Islam that must be coddled and its “positive power” extolled at all costs.
Time gives three examples, and maybe the first one does show a salubrious influence of the faith on one athlete, Mo Farah, who won the men’s 10,000-meter dash. I quote from Time:
After he crossed the finish line, Farah fell on the track again—this time to pray. He bowed his head before a stadium of adoring spectators. That performance was just as dramatic as racing past Kenya’s Paul Kipngetich Tanui to win this third gold medal.
Farah’s prayer can help counter the damaging stereotypes of Muslims held by many around the world. For Farah, and scores of Muslim athletes, faith is not incidental, but central to their excellence in sport. “I normally pray before a race,” Farah said. “I read du’aa [Islamic prayers or invocations] think about how hard I’ve worked and just go for it.”
First of all, it’s not a stereotype of Muslims, at least one I’m familiar with, that their faith is “incidental”. We all know that it’s one of the faiths most closely bound up with politics and social lives. As far as Farah’s performance is concerned, maybe his faith had something to do with it, but we don’t know for sure. He feels it does, but that’s not even evidence for a placebo effect. All Time can really say is that Mo Farah prays before he races, and he won.
What about athletes who don’t pray before they race, because they’re atheists, and they win too? Would you say that shows the “positive power of atheism”? Does Michael Phelps’s stupendous performance in the Olympics show “the amazing power of cupping”?Why wouldn’t Time write that? What about an athlete who wins wearing his lucky shoes? Would Time say “Olympic athlete shows positive power of lucky shoes”?
Britain’s Mo Farah celebrates winning the Men’s 10,000m during the athletics event at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 13, 2016. Photo: Frank Fife, Getty AFP Images.
Time‘s example number 2 is a hijab-wearing weightlifter from Egypt:
Donning all black with a red headscarf, the colors of her nation, the diminutive [Sara] Ahmed lifted a combined weight of 255kg (562lbs) to claim the bronze medal in the 69kg weight class. The feat, given her nationality and ethnicity, was unprecedented. Ahmed became an instant icon in her native Egypt, becoming the first female medalist in the nation’s 104-year history in Olympics’ competition and the first Arab woman to win an Olympic medal in weightlifting.
As she bowed her head to receive her medal, Ahmed represented world-class power, strength and Muslim womanhood, disrupting tropes that have enabled headscarf bans in France and trite oppression narratives in America and elsewhere.
Time doesn’t report anything that Ahmed said about her faith. She just wore a hijab when lifting. How does that show the positive power of Islam? We see here Time’s virtue signaling: “See, we’re not racists because we love those who wear hijabs!” And, of course, Time doesn’t point out how in places like Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, women are deliberately weakened by the state—on religious grounds.
The last example is Ibtihaj Muhammad:
Ibtihaj Muhammad was a star in the Muslim American community long before she stepped onto the global scene. But her story was about far more than being “the first U.S. Olympian to wear a hijab during competition.” She championed a cause long-ignored by non-Muslims and Muslims alike: the distinct experience of African American Muslims and the distinct perils often created by intersecting racism and Islamophobia.
The other cause she champions, which Time didn’t mention, is to promulgate lies about Israel on her social media site (they were pointed out to her, but she refused to retract them). But that means nothing alongside the fact that she wore a hijab and is considered “oppressed”. (I don’t find much evidence for that.) Yes, kudos to her for her persistence, but in the end, she became a fencer because no other sport was open to a woman who refused to remove her hijab. Had she doffed that symbol, she could have played any sport she wanted. The hijab limits women, even when they wear it “by choice”.
For some reason—and it may just be my advancing curmudgeonhood—I’ve gotten peeved at the proliferation of anti-Trump posts on my Facebook feed. As I’ve said repeatedly, I despise what Trump stands for and consider the man not only unqualified to be President, but deeply egocentric, ignorant about governance, and even unbalanced. If you don’t believe that, read the New Yorker article (free) about Tony Schwartz, the guy who ghost-wrote Trump’s bestseller The Art of the Deal. After spending weeks with Trump, Schwartz discovered what an egomaniac he is, how short Trump’s attention span is, and concludes that there’s no way any sane person should vote for the man. I agree.
Still, the endless proliferation of Trump mockery on social media seems to be overkill, especially now that his chances are waning. (I’ve made five bets that Trump will lose, including with Julia Galef and reader Lou Jost; I call those “sucker bets.”) And sometimes the Trump-bashing sounds like virtue signaling. (In the video below, Rubin is tired of the acrimony, too: see his statement from 6:40-7:38). So on every anti-Triump post by a Facebook “friend” who knows me, I’ve commented by posting a photo of a kitten. As I’ve said repeatedly, I will be voting for Hillary Clinton, but I’m not happy about it. And I’ve explained why. I cannot believe that in a country of nearly 320 million people, we can’t find a Democrat to get behind with enthusiasm.
Here’s a new video by Dave Rubin—an incipient curmudgeon whom I greatly admire—about who he’s supporting for President. He agrees with me about both Hillary and Trump—that is, they’re both problematic candidates, and the fact that they are the best we can do in the U.S. bespeaks a deeply flawed electoral system.
The video works up to Rubin’s announcement of whom he’ll be supporting as President. I won’t give you a spoiler, but you can hear the answer at 9:48. I doubt that many readers will agree, but listen to the whole 14-minute video and weigh in below.
As for the “throwing his voting away” accusation, Rubin deals with it at 11:00. But his answer doesn’t really make sense: his “support” is apparently something he intends to convey to pollsters—to get his candidate into a national debate (a creditable aim). But he doesn’t explain who, once his candidate fails, as will happen, Rubin will actually vote for. He says he’ll decide that later. Ten to one it won’t be Trump!
After I wrote most of this post, I discovered that reader Heather Hastie put up the same video, and gives her take on Rubin’s message in a post at Heather’s Homilies.
Yes, thanks to alert reader Rodger, I discovered that the Yahoo SCIENCE FEED sends horoscopes to the readers. Here’s a headline; click on the screenshot to see the “change”. (Hint: it’s not about a change in the brightness at night.)
What’s the change in store. I quote from Yahoo:
When darkness descends and you look to the night sky tonight, what you’ll be seeing is a very special full moon. Not only will the moon be in the realm of Aquarius, but it will soon be depicting a lunar eclipse on the night of August 18th.
So, what exactly does this mean for us sisters of the moon?
Well, to put it simply: There are going to be some changes heading our way. As you look forward to many new beginnings and possibly unexpected endings, it’s important that you fall back on what makes you unique. There may be a side to you others don’t often see, but now is the perfect time to use this part of yourself as you work to embrace all the newness in your life.
This particular full moon – which is also called the “Sturgeon Moon” – can also bring about a bit of chaos, especially since it’s in conjunction with the lunar eclipse. With this in mind, we should all see this Aquarius moon as a signal that it’s time to begin a self-care ritual.
While aiming to embrace your unique traits, you should also set aside time to take care of yourself in ways you normally wouldn’t. Sign up for a class that will allow your artistic side to shine, go to bed earlier, treat yourself to a manicure and pedicure, or maybe even schedule some time to volunteer at a local organization. Ultimately, with change on the horizon, it’s important that you batten down the hatches by establishing some inner peace and love.
Screw that! And indeed, judging from the comments, the readers were pretty ticked off.
Now I know there are some petulant readers out there that are gonna ask this, “Hey, Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus), how come you’re okay with cupping at the Olympics but not with horoscopes?” If you read that earlier post, you’d see the difference. For one thing, I said at the time that while athletes are welcome to participate in woo if it has a placebo effect, it’s the responsibility of the press to point out that cupping has no known medical benefits beyond a placebo; and they should also point out the dangers of cupping (yes, there are some).
While there are few dangers of horoscopes (except for those credulous souls who believe them and act on them), it is the responsibility of Yahoo Science News to point out that there is no evidence that astrology “works” in the sense of connecting personality with the configuration of stars and planets. In fact, double-blind testing shows that it doesn’t work (if you want the article, ask me). It’s the responsibility of any site, especially one that says it’s a science site, to note this, and to add (if they must publish astrology, and they should do so on the “entertainment” site) that “this information is for fun only; do not expect it to be accurate.”
Speaking of accuracy, here’s the picture of the “lunar eclipse” at the head of the article. See any problem with this?
Right before I left for Poland, a kind reader told me he (I believe it was a man) had sent me a gift that would arrive when I was gone. It arrived yesterday, and is a swell cat tee-shirt (Hili should be wearing this). The photo is below, but, sadly, I lost the email announcing the gift. So, if you sent this, email me so I can tender my thanks!
Reader John Harshman is an avid birder; he gives us today our daily bustards. John’s notes, as are all readers’, are indented. Bustard puns are welcome in the comments (I almost called this post “Lousy Botswanan bustards” but decided to keep my dignity).
Here are some pictures from Botswana, a selection of bustards. We saw five species, but unfortunately didn’t get a picture of the black-bellied bustard (Lissotis melanogaster). Here, from top to bottom, are northern black korhaan (Afrotis afraoides), kori bustard (Ardeotis kori), Denham’s bustard (Neotis denhami), and red-crested korhaan (Lophotis ruficrista).
northern black korhaan
Bustards are all long-legged ground birds of grasslands and savannahs. Traditionally, they belong to the order Gruiformes, which is unfortunately a wastebasket group, and their actual closest relatives may be cuckoos and/or turacos. The kori bustard is said to be the largest (by weight) flying bird in Africa. [JAC: Weighing up to 19 kg., they’ve also been described as the heaviest flying bird in the world.]
Red-crested korhaans seldom display the red crest, and I never saw it. They do however have a fancy display flight, which I saw, and a loud call, which I heard often. Description from here: “The male starts vocalizing on the ground with an ascending piping call. All of a sudden and as the call reaches a crescendo it then flies vertically up into the sky. On reaching a certain height the korhaan merely folds its wings, and plummets back down towards terra firma, body seemingly prone – almost as if having been shot in mid-air. Shortly before hitting the ground, it opens its wings for a soft, elegant landing.”
Okay, before we proceed you’re gonna want to see that. I can’t find the whole display on one video, but I’ll show one video with the mating call, and the other the “dive-bombing” display.
The call begins with some beak-clacking and then loud vocalization (the first 50 seconds is the call, then Liaan Lategan explains the vocalization; it’s worth listening to both bits):
Back to John’s photos:
kori bustardDenham’s bustardred-crested korhaan
I forgot to add earlier that reader Christopher Moss wants this bird identified. I don’t know from birds, but I’m sure someone will have the answer within 15 minutes:
Sadly, each year we get some casualties that come as a result of have lots of glass and being set amongst trees. This morning a loud thump disturbed my breakfast egg and I found this character on the front deck. Rapid resps, head looked off, beak open. Didn’t look well at all, but on being picked up I could see the neck wasn’t broken, so I placed him or her in a safe spot. The bird keeled forwards into the crash position shown above, but his beak soon closed, respirations slowed and he sat up. After twenty minutes he flew off, but still was a bit stunned as he flew again into the window before making it off into the trees.
This is a bird I see often here in NS [JAC: I assume he means Nova Scotia] in the summer, usually in undergrowth and bushes, and I always thought it was a pine warbler, but closer inspection shows it cannot be according to my bird books (I am no expert in birding at all). Olive green above, and a lighter green on the flanks fading to a cream belly. The two things I had never appreciated before were the two black bars on the head and the heavily speckled breast that can just be glimpsed below. I’m sure it’s a warbler or a vireo, but might be unlike the typical photos one finds if female of immature.
