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.
This cartoon, called “Blame,” appeared in the Chattanooga (Tennessee) Times Free Press. At first you might think that it’s trying to exculpate faith, but I doubt it. See the artist’s biography, and then some of his cartoons. If I’m right, and this is a criticism of both faiths, then it’s amazing it got published—especially in the American South.
h/t: Mark
I’m sure all of us have wondered about the kind of surgery performed on the genitals of transsexuals who wish to undergo a full physical transition. How do they turn a penis into a vagina, and vice versa, while retaining sexual and urinary functions? I know I wondered about that after I wrote yesterday’s piece on the kind of sexual-reassignment surgery forced on Iranian gays who wish to keep their sexual orientation while preserving their lives.
For the penis-to-vagina transition, I came across a piece on the Cosmopolitan website that has an explanation, accompanied by a very enlightening animation from the European Society of Urology. Here’s some explanation:
A new video uploaded by the European Society of Urology shows a detailed example of how male-to-female gender reassignment surgery works and yes, it’s far more complex than simply removing the penis.
The animation shows a surgeon opening up the scrotum, removing the testicles, and removing the head of the penis (hello, nerve endings) to create a clitoris. The shaft and the scrotum are then used to create the labia and vaginal canal that will allow a lot of patients to have a perfectly healthy and great sex life.
Obviously, these are only the surgical changes and additional hormone therapy is necessary for a variety of other changes in the body, but watching a little animated hand transform one biological gender to another is truly fascinating.
On his own website, which bears an overly self-deprecating title, Ed Suominen discusses and criticizes the tenets of Islam—as he did the tenets of his own former faith, Laestadianism.
Don’t be put off by the title of his piece,”Why I am an Islamophobe“, for it’s actually a very reasonable and throughtful discussion. But I don’t think the title does it any favors, for “phobia” implies unreasonable fear, and Ed argues that his fear is reasonable. The Merriam-Webster online Dictionary defines “phobia” as “an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation,” and Ed argues that his fear is perfectly justified by Islamic scripture and history.
On the other hand, it’s a provocative title, the word “Islamophobia” has been flung around misleadingly as a synonym for “racist” or “Muslim-hater,” and it does call attention to the article. I just hope people can get beyond the title and read the piece, which I highly recommend as civil, educational, and copiously referenced. Towards the end of the piece, after Ed has dissected the Qur’an and the nature of Islam, he explains his position. I’ve left the footnotes in to show the documentation:
In his recently published dialogue with Maajid Nawaz, Sam Harris recalled how the Islamic State had “been burning prisoners alive in cages and decapitating people by the dozen and gleefully posting videos attesting to the enormity of their sadism online.” These atrocities, he observed, “represent what they unabashedly stand for.” 19 Yet, when “one asks what the motivations of Islamists and jihadists actually are, one encounters a tsunami of liberal delusion.” 20
Nawaz acknowledges many of the difficulties Harris raises throughout their discussion, and laments “regressive leftists” (his words) who “have a poverty of expectation for minority groups, believing them to be homogeneous and inherently opposed to human rights values.” 21 Regarding the Islamic State, he notes that more “violence does not necessarily equate with greater religious conviction. Each group is deeply convinced of its approach to achieving Islamism in society, and both face much danger in pursuit of that goal.” Not only do “they differ in methodology,” but they also very much despise each other.” Islamic State, for example, “would kill members of the Muslim Brotherhood” in Egypt.22
His efforts to salvage something separate and worthwhile from “Islamism” are commendable, but knowing that various Islam-inspired groups hate each other as well as everybody else doesn’t make me feel much better about Islam itself. My “Islamophobia,” a term I accept for myself despite its pejorative intentions, is a very reasonable aversion to Islam. It is not a phobic (i.e., irrational) fear at all, but an entirely sensible response to something very dangerous.23 Frankly, I wouldn’t want either the Islamic State or the Muslim Brotherhood anywhere nearby.
Ed’s exegesis of the Quran differs from that of the very few who read the text as metaphorical, which is a). hard to do since the book speaks very plainly about the horrors of hell and the punishment of unbelievers, and b). not the usual practice of Muslims, the vast majority of whom read the Qur’an as the literal words of Allah. The editors of The Study Qur’an, a book I wrote about recently, have gamely tried to show that the Quran’s calls for violence, and its demonization of nonbelievers and apostates, should be understood in light of the historical context, and shouldn’t be appropriated by modern Muslims. I haven’t read The Study Qur’an, but I have read the Qur’an, and I find such an interpretation dicey—though well motivated—given the pervasiveness of violence and hatred in the book.
I’ll close with another recommendation to read Ed’s piece, which is longer than most blog posts, and add one other excerpt—Ed’s gloss on Ibn Warraq’s book Why I Am Not a Muslim:
“Western Islamic apologists and modernizing Muslims continue to look for democratic principles in Islam and Islamic history,” says Warraq, noting many reasons why their search will be in vain. Perhaps most glaring is the legal inferiority of women, whose testimony in court is worth half that of a man, whose movements are strictly restricted, and who are prohibited from marrying non-Muslims. Non-Muslims of either sex who live in Muslim countries suffer their own form of subjugation, while atheists and apostates from Islam can expect only death. (Warraq notes Islam’s hypocrisy in welcoming converts who move in the other direction.)
by Greg Mayer
Australia is a zoogeographer’s dream world—it’s the most spectacularly distinctive place on Earth, and we know why. Around 250 million years ago, most of the world’s continental plates amalgamated into a single super-continent—Pangaea. During the Mesozoic (the “Age of Reptiles”), Pangaea began breaking up, with many of today’s southern continents (South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and India) pulling away to form the somewhat smaller super-continent of Gondwanaland.
The continental breakup continued, with the various parts of Gondwana separating from one another (hence the traditional rallying cry of irredentist geologists, “Reunite Gondwanaland!”). Africa, India, and, most recently, South America eventually bumped into the northern continental masses, making for interesting geology, and—of the greatest importance for zoogeography—allowing large land animals to move between the major land masses. Such animals are not, in general, susceptible to “occasional means of transport”, as Darwin called them, that allow birds, bats, and smaller animals to traverse greater or lesser expanses of the sea, and thus large land animals require a dryshod path to disperse.
But, unlike those other Gondwanan remnants, Australia has not—yet, anyway—bumped into the northern land masses, and thus has undergone a long and and continuing period of splendiferous isolation, during which time many unique endemic forms have arisen, and radiated into the great variety of ecological niches occupied by different lineages in the rest of the world. Most famous of these are the Australian marsupials, which have undergone a continental-scale adaptive radiation, which Jerry highlighted in chapter 4 of WEIT.
This radiation has brought marsupials into most of the ecological niches inhabited by placental mammals in the rest of the world—predators, herbivores, gnawers, burrowers, insectivores, gliders, etc. Two things are evident in the radiation of Australian marsupials. First, that convergence can lead to remarkable similarity when distantly related lineages adapt to similar environments—Jerry highlights this in the figure above; but, second, that sometimes forms inhabiting the same ecological niches can be quite different.
We can see both of these by thinking about which animals are the big, dominant, mammalian carnivores and herbivores. Everywhere on Earth but Australia, these animals are cats, dogs, cattle, and deer (taking cattle in the sense of the family Bovidae, including antelope, goats, etc.). In Australia, the dominant carnivores are the thylacine (or Tasmanian wolf or tiger), native cats (hence, placental cats in the post title, to make clear who I meant), and devils. The skull of the thylacine is remarkably wolf-like, showing a close convergence in shape and dentition to the placental wolf. Native cats have the name, but are less similar to cats; and devils are pretty much sui generis. The dominant big herbivores in Australia are kangaroos: instead of plains full of buffalo and antelope, Australia is full of kangaroos. Although they eat similar types of plants, the modes of locomotion are startlingly distinct, showing that close convergence is not inevitable. (There were some more ungulate-like marsupials in the past, but they are now extinct.)
All this was brought to mind by a new article in BMC Evolutionary Biology by Katrin Koch and colleagues on the placental cats of Australia. For some millennia now, in addition to Darwin’s occasional means of transport, another factor has allowed animals to cross the seas—human transport. And for thousands of years, man has broken Australia’s tens of millions of years of isolation by bringing in a diversity of placental mammals. Most famous is the dingo, the feral descendants of dogs brought from southeast Asia about 4,500 years ago. Since European settlement, the number of mammalian imports—both wild and domestic—has increased dramatically.
In a careful review of historical records (which includes this memorable sentence in his methods section: “Incidentally, I discovered that indexers of books rarely index ‘cat’.”), Ian Abbott (2002) showed that, despite the potential for cats to have been brought to Australia earlier by Aborigines, Malay trepangers (sea cucumber fishermen—it’s great that there’s a word for that!), or shipwrecks, the first cats seem to have been brought in by the earliest European settlers in the late 18th century. The map below shows places where cats were presumed to have been introduced (arrows) and dated records of cat appearance (dots):
Koch and colleagues looked at microsatellite and mitochondrial DNA—both rapidly evolving parts of the genome, and thus good for studying infraspecific phylogeny—in over 200 feral cats from Western Australia and a number of islands round Australia, including the outlying territories of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands (an island group where cat control is an issue, due to their depredations on wildlife: Algar et al., 2003) and Christmas Island.
What they found was that the cats of mainland Western Australia, and the big island of Tasmania, were all genetically fairly similar (the red areas in the figure), while the smaller islands were more distinct genetically, including an island very close to the mainland (Dirk Hartog Island, DHI–green), as well as the two outlying islands of Cocos (yellow) and Christmas (blue). Curiously, two smaller islands off southeastern Australia grouped with Christmas. Small island populations can diverge due to random genetic effects (founder effect and genetic drift), historic phenomena (founded from different sources), and selective differences (distinct environments on islands). But it’s hard to tease these apart from these data alone.
This paper has made a minor splash in the media (see Jerry’s mention here about NY Times coverage), with most places proclaiming that it shows that Australian cats came from Europe as opposed to southeast Asia. Now, the paper does show that of the 63 mitochondrial haplotypes that they found, 25 are also present in Europe (the European data are from a paper by another group). But to distinguish sources of colonization, you need to have samples from all the potential sources, find out if the source populations have any diagnostic or characteristic alleles or mutations, and then see if these are found in the colonized (i.e., Australian) populations. But Koch et al. had only three non-Australian cats—apparently one from Sulawesi, and two from Borneo. (Curiously, they refer to these as “Malaysian”, and also use that term for 17th century Malay trepangers. But Malaysia is a 20th century political construct, and Sulawesi is in Indonesia, not Malaysia, so Malay would be a better term that covers the cultural/linguistic/geographic region.)
The three Malay cats group with Australian mainland cats. But on such a slim basis, we can make no conclusions about the relative importance of the two potential source areas. While concluding their data “indicate a mainly European origin of feral cats in Australia”, the authors do allow that, “However, caution is needed in inferring the involvement of Asian cats in the history of cat colonization in Australia due to the small number of Asian samples.” We can, in fact, be sure that a significant, if not the greatest, part of Australian cat ancestry is European, but that is because of the historical researches of Abbott (2002). The genetic work of Koch et al. lays a basis for further studies of genetic variation in Australian cats and their relation to cats from other regions, but it does not, on its own, really speak to the latter question.
Abbott, I. 2002. Origin and spread of the cat, Felis catus, on mainland Australia, with a discussion of the magnitude of its early impact on native fauna. Wildlife Research 29:51-74. abstract
Algar, D., G. J. Angus, R.I. Brazell, C. Gilbert and D.J. Tonkin. 2003. Feral cats in paradise: focus on Cocos. Atoll Research Bulletin 505. (Actually published in 2004.) pdf
K. Koch, K., D. Algar, J. B. Searle, M. Pfenninger and K. Schwenk. 2015. A voyage to Terra Australis: human-mediated dispersal of cats. BMC Evolutionary Biology 15 (262), 10 pp. pdf
The photos are running lower, now, so please send me your good photos. (Please cull them: nothing out of focus or with animals off in the distance!)
Today we have some Galápagos photos sent by reader Gregory Zolnerowich;
Attached are some photos I took last August while on San Cristobal Island in the Galapagos. I’m not sure which finch that is, but it certainly wasn’t shy. [JAC: ID?]
I believe there are 2 species of frigate birds on that island, I’m not sure which one these are. [JAC: the species are the Great Frigatebird and the Magnificent Frigatebird; does anybody know which this is?]
Lava gulls (Leucophaeus fuliginosus)are endangered but certainly not shy, they would get quite close to people. [JAC: This species is endemic to the archipelago and is considered the rarest gull in the world.]
There are several species of lizard collectively called “lava lizards“. [JAC: if this was on San Cristobal, it was probably Microlophus bivittatus.]
People share the beaches with sea lions.
Randy Schenck, a pair of mated swans [Cygnus sp.] from Iowa:
And more swans, eking out a precarious living in Oz, sent by reader Marella. These are black swans, Cygnus atratrus:
Here is a picture taken by my husband a couple of days ago on the edge of the Yarra river which runs through the city of Melbourne, Australia. The nest is within a short walk of the main CBD [Central Business District], so this swan is pretty brave. The orange bollard is due to some government agency, probably the city council, putting up a protective barrier to stop people interfering with the nest. I hope the foxes don’t get the cygnets, but so far so good.
A morning laugh (and a real article) sent by Matthew, who found it on Twi**er. Be sure to read the whole short article:
Some of the news can still raise a smile… pic.twitter.com/oHmq7gvdJJ
— Joe McGann (@JosephMcGann) December 3, 2015
It’s Friday, and the weather in Chicago is still unseasonably warm, with a predicted high of 55°F (13°C) today. My brain is still on the fritz (it’s not yet 5 a.m.), so I predict a dearth of substantial and thoughtful writing today by yours truly. Perhaps I’ll resort to clickbait! On this day in 1936, Edward VIII abdicated the throne of England for love, a choice that I would have made, too—but not for Wallis Simpson, who by all accounts was an unpleasant person. It was, of course, the Church of England that forced this decision. And, on this day in 1964, the great Sam Cooke, writer and singer of perhaps the greatest soul song of all time) died at age 33, shot to death by the manager of a motel in Los Angeles. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is fishing for compliments (and perhaps noms):
Hili: What’s in the navel of the world?
A: A cat.
Hili: That’s right, but which one?
Hili: Co jest w pępku świata?Ja: Kot.
Hili: To by się zgadzało, ale który?
And Mr. Leon is back with us. Is he a budding entomologist?
Leon: A fly?!!!
The plea is from your host, Professor Ceiling Cat Emeritus. Matthew called to my attention a post written on the Times Higher Education (THE) blog by Matthew Reisz—a post that apparently was published earlier and has just been republished. Called “Torrents of bile: publish and be damned,” Reisz’s piece decries the invective heaped on people by Internet commenters, anonymous or not. Reisz is especially exercised by a post I wrote about him five years ago, criticizing his accommodationism in another of his THE pieces. I stand by my own piece, which is think is pretty civil, but Reisz says that some of the comments below it were rude, and I have to agree with him. Here’s some of what he says:
. . . the other day, when I was searching for something else, I happened to come across a post on the Why Evolution is True website, where I was subjected to some pretty startling abuse.
I was accused of “promoting a science-faith lovefest”, being “pretty much biased against atheists”, and producing “totally juvenile”, “massively tedious…bilge”, fit only for being “put in the recycling bin or better still in the cat litter tray”. I was called “an asshole” and a “so-called journalist” who managed not only to “miss the target when he shot his arrow” but to send it in “the wrong direction”, where it “came around and shot him square in the ass”.
One contributor to the thread wondered whether I was “really so blind or stupid” or just “a manipulative prick”. Another (don’t tell my boss) was “shocked at such an appalling article being in the Times Higher Ed”. A third – best of all – suggested I was “lying for Jesus”.
None of this was very pleasant to read, although it is pretty trivial compared with the kind of garbage women and minority groups have to put up with all the time. But what is really weird is just how distant it seems from what I actually wrote. Amid what strike me as a few valid criticisms and a few more I am happy to reflect on, torrents of bile were directed at me for minor irrelevancies, things I hadn’t said (and don’t believe) or comments I had quoted from others. Far from being “biased against atheists”, I am – for what it’s worth – a pretty convinced atheist myself. And although I am sceptical about whether science and religion are engaged in a battle to the death, that hardly means I want to “promote a lovefest”.
Some of these comments were more offensive than others, but calling Reisz an “asshole” and a “manipulative prick” is simply out of bounds here. What I’m asking for now is this: is when commenting on a piece by someone who’s not a known charlatan, miscreant, or historical jerk (i.e., not people like Deepak Chopra or Ken Ham), readers should try to ratchet down the name-calling and deal with the arguments at hand. In other words, try to be civil and battle over ideas.
The Roolz (read them again) specify that we’re not to abuse other commenters or call them names. I’d like to add that we should extend similar courtesy to people who write articles with which I or the readers disagree. I know this is a fine line, because I myself sometimes give in to the urge to characterize people as idiots or mushbrains. And sometimes, as in the case of Chopra et al., it’s appropriate. But have a look at Reisz’s post and see if you wouldn’t feel bad if those names were hurled at you. All in all, he handled it pretty well, and I’ll apologize on his website for the name-calling.
Thanks,
—The Management
As a digestif, reader Taskin informs me that the squirrels are very fat in Ottawa this winter, and the CBC has published a piece about their avoirdupois (be sure to go through the pix at the top), showing some tw**ts produced by readers. They also ask for Canadians to send pictures of fat squirrels to cbcnewsottawa@cbc.ca. One specimen:
https://twitter.com/kdtemp/status/674931074347229184
Be sure to feed the squirrels this winter, as they don’t hibernate and need food. I’ve just got a big bag of sunflower seeds.