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.
Reader Pete Moulton used to supply us with some of the best wildlife photos here, but then he went AWOL. After I saw some great photos he posted on Facebook, I begged him to let us have some of them, and he kindly obliged. Here’s a new batch from Pete with his captions:
Here are some recent wildlife photographs. These are from Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico during the last week of November. Bosque is widely known for its large wintering numbers of white geese (Snow Chen caerulescens and Ross’ C. rossii) and Sandhill Cranes Grus canadensis, so I guess we’d better have some of those.
First, a crane flying into the sunrise in search of some breakfast [JAC: I think this is a sandhill crane, Grus canadensis, but I don’t know from birds]:
Next, a white goose, one of many, as you can see. There are so many geese on the refuge, and they’re so gregarious, that isolating subjects ranges from tricky to impossible. This one’s an adult Ross’ Goose [Chen rossii], most likely a gander, given the size and extent of bluish caruncles on its bill:
And a Common Raven,Corvus corax, just to show that geese and cranes aren’t the only attractions. I’m fond of the Corvidae, largely because of their high intelligence, which is clearly indicated by the look on this guy’s face:
An adult white-striped White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis), a bird that’s doubtless very familiar to you, but one that’s very scarce in Arizona. They’re surprisingly common along the Rio Grande in New Mexico.
And finally for this batch, a m*mm*l, which was the high point of the trip for me, a Long-tailed Weasel, Mustela frenata:
This drawing, published today by Australian cartoonist David Pope, was reproduced by Mathieu Sol in a comment on the post below, but deserves to be above the fold. Here it is:
If they determine the killers were Muslim extremists, let us then hear the “moderate” Muslims throughout the world decry this brutality. And Ben Affleck: are these murders the fault of Western colonialism, or religious extremism per se?
According to many papers, including the New York Times, masked gunmen have attacked the offices of “Charlie Hebdo,” a French satirical newspaper, killing 12 and wounding five more. The paper had been previously attacked for publishing cartoons (as did a Danish paper) mocking Muhammad. It doesn’t take much to inspire murder among Muslim thug terrorists: look what the paper was firebombed for three years ago:
The newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, has been attacked in the past for satirizing Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Its offices were firebombed in 2011 after publishing a cartoon of the prophet on its cover promising “100 lashes if you don’t die laughing!”
The latest attack is likely the work of Muslim terrorists as well: the Torygraph gives a video of the attack and reports
“In the footage filmed by a man taking refuge on a nearby rooftop, the men can be heard shouting ‘Allahu Akbar” (God is great) between rounds of heavy arms fire. . .”
What is bizarre and cowardly about the journalists reporting this horrible episode is that, in its original report, the Telegraph apparently pixillated the cartoon of Muhammad that may have brought on these murders. Or so says a tw**t from James Bloodworth, which shows a photo that now seems to have been removed form the Telegraph site). (Note below that the BBC has also censored the “offending” issue.) Here’s the Telegraph’s earlier pixillation:
This is a cowardly capitulation to the murderers. Now is not the time to fulminate about the timorousness of the press or the successes of extreme Islamists in suppressing sarcasm and criticism, but pixillating that image is reprehensible. Yes, publishing such things may inspire terrorism, but we cannot be cowed by thugs from expressing our distaste for and criticism of the dictates of religion.
UPDATES: Reader Alberto wrote a criticism of Muslim-cartoon censorship, “We are many but they are legion” on his website The Functional Art and reproduces some of their anti-religious cartoons, though not the one at issue (the paper doesn’t discriminate against religions):
Alberto also notes that the BBC News, to its shame, has also censored the cover at issue. Here’s their picture:
Professor Ceiling Cat, however, will reproduce the entire cover. They can come at me if they want:
Come at me, bros!
What craven cowardliness on the part of you British journalists. Afraid of Muslim wrath, are you?
Finally, from Salman Rushdie, who had his own well-known troubles with censorship and threats:
Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.
If any of you have websites or use Twi**er, please publish or tw**t the original and entire Charlie Hebdo Muhammad cartoon, which you can take from this post. The more often it’s reproduced, the better. If you do, weigh in below with the link.
After 42 hours without sleep, Professor Ceiling Cat crashed at 8 pm last night and woke up at the ungodly late hour of 6:30. Believe me, I needed the sleep! It’s back to work, and normal writing on this site should begin tomorrow. Many, many thanks to Matthew, Greg, and especially Grania, who held down the site, posted a lot to keep it going, and moderated the comments.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a dilemma, for she knows that “freedom” equals cold weather, and has not yet found the Door to Summer:
Hili: I escaped from freedom and now I’m longing for it.
A: So you can go back.
Hili Maybe later.
In Polish:
Hili: Uciekłam od wolności i teraz do niej tęsknię.
Ja: To możesz do niej wrócić.
Hili: Może później.
I have returned to Chicago to find it bloody cold and covered with snow. And to think it was a warm 21° C in Dehli the day I left. But while I don’t rejoice at the snow, panda Bao Bao, a sixteen-month old at the National Zoo, had a high old time playing in it. Check out this one-minute video and then tell me that animals don’t have fun, and fun in a way that isn’t just practicing for adult skills.
By Thursday the regular program will have resumed.
Here are four nice carved cats in the Louvre, a photo tw**ted by Sarah Scott (h/t Matthew Cobb):
I’ve been to the Louvre many times, and looked at their extensive Egyptian collection which includes many cat mummies, but never saw this piece. For photos of Egyptian cats art, go here and here, and see here for more on the mummies. Here’s one mummified cat from Wikipedia:
This one appears to have been removed from its wrapping, for most cat mummies look like the photo below, and Akhet Egyptology notes:
X-rays show that the cats were often killed by having their necks broken. The bodies were then dried out using Natron salt, this process was similar to that used for human mummification. They were then elaborately wrapped with the forelegs lying down the front and the hind legs drawn up beside the pelvis.
I was fascinated to discover recently that of the thousands of cat mummies that have been examined (there were so many that many were once ground up for fertilizer), every one is a tabby. This shows that there was no selection on cats for unusual coat colors until more recent times, for the ancestral cat, Felis silvestris lybica—the African wildcat—also has a tabby cat. It may also imply that there was little selection on cats of any sort, and they may have been largely feral. Many feel (I among them) that cats in fact largely domesticated themselves, with the braver and more human-tolerant wildcats getting more food (they were either fed by humans or had a lower “flight distance” from nearby people when hunting rodents in their villages), and hence leaving more offspring. That’s natural selection for tameness based on genetic variation for behavioral traits. But it’s purely speculative, for the evolutionary origin of domestic cats is lost in the mists of time.
Anyone who’s spent any time speaking French in a Francophone country will have come across the social minefield that is the choice of which second person pronoun to use –’tu’ (singular) or ‘vous’ (plural) – when referring to a single person.
I lived in Paris for 18 years, and was initially worried about my inability to grasp the social subtleties, but then realised that my French friends were all having difficulties, too, and discussions about who one would tu-toie and who one would vous-voie would abound. Things are changing, and TV and radio presenters now regularly tu-toie each other, in a way that would have been impossible in 1984 when I first moved there.
If you still don’t get it, last year the LA Times produced this very useful infographic by William Alexander, author of a book I haven’t read, Flirting With French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Almost Broke My Heart. It pretty much sums up the situation, though it could do with ‘Are you a policeman talking to a potential criminal? Are they rich (VOUS)? Are they poor (TU)?’
Underlying all this is the use of tu/vous in often unstated power relations. This can take odd forms – in 1984, my lab head wanted to tu-toie me; I didn’t like him much so insisted on vous-voieing him as a way of keeping my distance.
And there’s the apocryphal story of French politician Jacques Chirac, who famously tu-toied everyone except his wife (see chart), talking to inscrutable French President François Mitterrand when Chirac became Prime Minister: ‘On peut se tu-toie maintenant?’ To which the sphinx-like Mitterrand responded: ‘Si vous voulez’.
Finally, my personal advice – if in the slightest doubt, use ‘Vous’. Better to be seen as a stuffy foreigner than to be over-familiar. But you shouldn’t worry – they’ll forgive you anything because you’re making the effort to speak French, and if you’re an anglophone you will have a delightful accent…
