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.
Terry Townshend is a birder who lives and works in Beijing and, on his site Birding Beijing, documents the avifauna around China’s capital. But alert reader Ben W. told me that Terry had also come across a very rare felid, Pallas’s Cat (Ocotolobus manul, also known as the “manul”), on a trip to China’s Qinghai Province near the Tibetan Plateau.
Manuls are threatened despite their wide range (below), and rarely seen in the wild. But if you’ve ever seen one, as I did in the Sacramento Zoo, you’ll never forget it. They are a strong contender for the World’s Cutest Animal (see here), and are certainly the world’s most adorable wild felid.
Terry documents the encounter in a post called Pallas’s Cat, which you mustn’t miss. He and his partner, Marie Ng, came across two Pallas’s Cat kittens cavorting outside their den, and watched them for 40 minutes. Eventually the mother showed up with dinner (a pika), and they all repaired to the den to dine.
Terry documented his encounter, distilling the video into five minutes of highlights that show the kittens and Mom returning with noms (a kitten grabs the pika). It’s absolutely spectacular footage, and you can see it the video here. It’s a must for all ailurophiles. Be sure to put it on full screen, don’t miss the close-ups near the end, and maybe leave a note of appreciation on Terry’s site.
Here’s a photo of a manul kitten taken by Marie Ng, reproduced with permission:
Their range (from Wikipedia). They are cold-climate animals, accounting for their long fur, huge paws, and short ears.
Reader Luke Hunter is an Australia biologist, author of Wild Cats of the World (a great book for the ailurophile), and president of Panthera, described as “a New York-based conservation nonprofit [Hunter] helped to create in 2006, which is dedicated to the range-wide conservation of the world’s wild cat species.” Luke and others (including Matthew Cobb) alerted me to a new project in which anybody having a familiarity with wild cats can help scientists identify the animals seen in camera-trap photos.
I’m recruiting volunteer citizen scientists to help us ID thousands of camera-trap photos from our leopard survey work across southern Africa- your audience might enjoy it, as it’s great fun and hugely popular (we had around 100,000 responses in the first 12 hours of it being launched). If you think it’s something you could pass on, the link is here.
I asked for more information, including what would happen if we misidentified animals, and Luke responded:
Yes please take a look at CamCat if you can: you don’t need to be a specialist, there are various aids to help and the system works by assigning an ID once a certain number of the same choice is made in succession. Depending on that consistency, a photo gets kicked back into the system with the bar raised for accepting the ID and/or flagged for a human to view. It’s pretty cool.
Be sure to register, though you don’t have to, to get access to discussion boards, or even credit for your work.
Just a tip: when you see the pictures (there are 52 today), you click on the list to the right to identify the animal you think it is, like this:
Here are the animals you’ll be asked to identify (notice that they include “vehicles” and “nothing”.
When you click on one, several photos come up (click on the dots to see various views) to help you make sure you’re right (or close):
After you look at a photo of the animal you think it is, you get asked two questions:
After answering them and pressing “identify”, you press the green “DONE” button that comes up, and the next photo appears.
Here’s the reason they’re doing this, and that page also shows what the cameras look like:
Camera CATalogue is part of an effort to monitor big cats at a large enough scale to assist wildlife management and conservation. At multiple sites across the globe, Panthera’s scientists set up a suite of motion-activated camera-trap stations. Each station comprises two cameras, enabling us to photograph both flanks of an animal as it walks past the cameras. We can then distinguish individually identifiable species (e.g., leopard, cheetah, jaguar) by the unique spot patterns on their coats, and use statistical models (known as capture-recapture models) to assess how often an individual is photographed.
Combined with information on where individuals were photographed, these data generate a robust estimate of wild cat populations for each study site. By conducting camera-trapping surveys every year, we can track trends to gauge whether populations have increased, decreased, or remained stable.
Camera traps cannot differentiate between wild cats and other animals, so as you can imagine, this means our camera-traps generate a huge amount of photographs. This is why we need the assistance of citizen scientists like you to help identify and classify all the images we collect so we can better understand—and protect—wild cats across the globe.
Today’s a day to display singleton photos and others that are sent in a few at a time. The indented bits are the readers’ commentaries:
Reader Cliff Moser sends a picture of a fearsome caterpillar. But it’s really quite a common one:
I’ve attached a single photo of one of 4 large tomato hornworms [Manduca quinquemaculata] found and dispatched from my Berkeley, California garden. I’m hoping to find one with parasitic braconid wasp cocoons and will send if and when I spot one.the photo has a little forced perspective, making it appear more mothra-like than it actually was.
These giants eventually undergo metamorphosis, turning into the beautiful five-spotted hawkmoth (picture from What’s That Bug?):
Reader Tim Anderson in Oz sends us a bird famous for its camouflage:
This is a mature tawny frogmouth (Podargus strigoides) resting in a backyard tree in suburban Brisbane, Queensland. This individual regularly spends the entire day more or less stationary until dusk, when it flies off to begin its night’s hunting. It is completely oblivious to the humans beetling about nearby, only occasionally swivelling its head to peer at us. It is about 40cm from beak to tail tip. Frogmouths are fairly common, even in urban areas, and are closely related to nightjars, but in this case was rather easy to spot.
From Stephen Barnard in Idaho:
Western Toad (Anaxyrus boreas). I think this is the only amphibian photo I’ve sent you.
Doris Fromage sent an email headed “Vulture sinuses this time!”
My dear husband just got a new camera! We live on a hill, and our avocado orchard spreads out down the hillside below us. Various large carnivorous birds/raptors tend to soar around our property, often virtually at eye level or even below. Here is a turkey vulture! Cathartes aura is its interesting name, which means “cleansing breeze” in Latin, which I find hilarious given that they are carrion scavengers. What I like best about this picture is that we can see straight through the nares to blue sky on the other side, thus clearing up any lingering questions about the structure of a turkey buzzard’s nostrils!
JAC: I’ve added a close-up of the head lest you have any doubts:
And a “spot the ___” from reader Michelle Pearce:
Too easy? Fork-tailed drongo, banana beak (hornbill), and mongoose in Kruger National Park.
And reader Randy Schenck in Iowa is nice to his animals. These photos were sent in May:
We are into the nesting time for birds so they need more feeding now. Many might think they only need to feed in winter but not so. To determine if you have Baltimore Orioles (Icterus galbula) around the area just cut an orange in half and hang it on a feeder. It is like magic to the Oriole. I will look for nests later as the female Oriole builds a very interesting nest.
We have many rose-breasted grosbeaks (Pheucticus ludovicianus) around and again, if you feed the birds you will soon find out how many are in your area.
It’s August 14 (I’ve double checked), and tomorrow I start heading home. Today is Independence Day in Pakistan, when that country was declared an Official National following the partition by the British in 1947. Also on this day, in 1975, The Rocky Horror Picture Show opened in London. After 41 years, it’s now the longest-running movie in cinema history. I have never seen it.
And it’s a happy birthday to French actor Emmanuelle Béart (♥), who becomes 52 today, once again proving how old I am. Finally, on this day in 2004 the Polish writer (later an American citizen) Czesław Miłosz died; he was a Nobel Laureate in literature. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Cyrus are sad about the state of the world:
Hili: Did you read the news?
Cyrus: Yes, I did.
Hili: Me too.
In Polish:
Hili: Czytałeś wiadomości?
Cyrus: Czytałem.
Hili: Ja też.
In Wloclawek, we’ve given Leon several of the Japanese “cat’s snacks” provided by Hiroko. Like Hili, he loves them, proving that Japanese and Polish cats have similar tastes.
Leon: Hmmm. Jerry knows perfectly how to make a cat happy.
It’s worth looking back at Leon when he was a kitten, two years ago yesterday. This was one of his first monologues, and he was already grouchy:
Leon: Don’t call me “my little one.” I’m already 9 weeks old!
Finally, courtesy of reader Robin, is one of my namesake cats, Jerry, who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He’s said to be lovable but klutzy, and one time rolled off the kitchen counter into an open dishwasher (he was neither hurt nor washed):
The Wall Street Journalreports that Arianna Huffington is leaving her odious website in about a year. Having never gotten anything but tsouris from it (and, I suppose, a lot of posts on this site), it can’t happen too soon for me, and I’m hoping that, as the most popular Regressive Leftist news aggregator, it will disappear:
Huffington Post’s practice of not paying many of its contributors—arguing that they were benefiting from exposure to the site’s large number of visitors—brought criticism. In 2011, the National Writers Union and the News Guild called for a boycott of the site.
Despite regularly drawing more than 100 million unique visitors a month, the site has failed to consistently turn a profit.
Arianna’s moving on to Bigger Things, like Life Improvement: a company devoted to “health and wellness” (is there a difference?). But I’ll shamefully admit that I still look at the site almost daily. It’s been a source of great merriment, and of course copious fodder for this site.
Here’s what I read at HuffPo:
1.) The religion section, so I can see the ludicrous lengths the site goes to osculate faith, like this (all screenshots have links if you must read the stuff):
I also look forward to the daily pro-hijab post (on Arianna’s orders, there’s always one).
2.) The travel section. I’m always hoping to find good information on where to go, but I’ve almost never found any. Instead, there’s stuff like this:
Well, the BBQ and fried chicken are good, but . . .
3.) The food section. Here I’ve derived occasional benefits from learning about new restaurants (usually through links), but the site has gone downhill since Arianna decided that it should deal largely with how to use leftover food. I went over there today, and here’s what I learned (again, screenshots have links):
They don’t know how to use apostrophes:
That you can stuff cucumbers with things and make “sushi”, and it’s a “genius idea”:
And finally, that we had better get used to a fork/chopstick combination called “chorks”. Or else!!
Pious Muslims and hyper-Orthodox Jews share one tendency: various sects of each faith see men as hand grenades of of lust, ready to undergo a seminal explosion should they see an uncovered ankle, rosy mouth, or stray wisp of hair. Women are to be covered to retain their “modesty,” which means to avoid inciting the ubiquitous and uncontrollable concupiscence of the male.
Devout Muslim men can’t shake hands with women; neither can hyper-Orthodox Jews. In neither group can men dance with women, for that could incite lust. Many Muslim women can’t go out without a guardian, while hyper-orthodox Jews won’t sit next to women on planes. (There are of course exceptions.)
But in one way the Muslims are savvier than the hyper-Orthodox Jews. As we see in this video in which Oprah Winfrey experiences a Sabbath in a Hasidic Jewish home, the Jewish women, like hijabi Muslims, cover their hair. And they do it for the same reasons—for modesty!
But what do the Jews do? They cut their hair short and then cover their hair with—more hair! Wigs! Wigs undoubtedly made from the hair of other women! Not only that, but many of them, like this one, are attractive wigs! Even Oprah notices that.
Now tell me, if you’re covering your hair for modesty, and to avoid attracting men who aren’t your husband, why on earth would you cover your hair with an attractive wig that could attract even more men?
Such is the silliness of faith, and its tendency, since the days of Eve, to cast women as temptresses. In the case of Hasidic Jews, it’s a big FAIL.
The Israeli athletes can’t catch a break at the Olympics: they weren’t let onto the bus by the Lebanese team, a Saudi judoka (judo competitor) forfeited her match rather than have to compete with an Israeli (the Saudis claim she was injured), and now, according to Sports Illustrated and many other sources, an Egyptian judoka refused to shake hands with his Israeli opponent after being defeated:
[Ori} Sasson defeated [Islam El] Shehaby in the Round of 32 in the over-100 kilogram division. Sasson approached Shehaby with his hand extended after the match, by Shehaby backed away, refusing to acknowledge his opponent.
Here’s a short video; there’s a better one, which I can’t embed, here.
Egyptian judo fighter Islam El Shehaby was loudly booed at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics after his first-round loss to Israel’s fifth-ranked Or Sasson, when El Shehaby refused to shake Sasson’s hand, in a major breach of judo etiquette.
Sasson defeated El Shehaby with two throws for an automatic victory, with about a minute and a half remaining in the bout.
Afterwards, El Shehaby lay flat on his back for a moment before standing to take his place before Sasson, in front of the referee. When Sasson extended his hand, El Shehaby backed away, shaking his head.
The referee then called El Shehaby back to the mat and obliged to him bow. El Shehaby gave a quick nod of his head.
El Shehaby refused to comment afterward.
Here’s a longer but low quality film of the winning throw (and the handshake refusal):
Finally, the Star reports that the Egyptian had been under both national and social media pressure to not fight the Israeli, but his government insisted otherwise:
El Shahaby had come under pressure from Islamist-leaning and nationalist voices in Egypt to withdraw entirely from the fight.
On Thursday, Mataz Matar, a TV host in Al-Sharq Islamist-leaning network urged el-Shehaby to withdraw.
“My son watch out, don’t be fooled, or fool yourself thinking you will play with the Israeli athlete to defeat him and make Egypt happy,” he said, adding “Egypt will cry; Egypt will be sad and you will be seen as a traitor and a normalizer in the eyes of your people.”
Hisham Hatab, head of the Egyptian Olympic Committee, was quoted by the daily al-Masry al-Youm as saying there will be no withdrawals, adding “Islam will play the match without troubles.”
Sadly, there were troubles. Now I suppose one could impute the Egyptian’s bad behavior to simply poor sportsmanship: the behavior of a sore loser. But given his history, and the fact that it’s Israel, you’d be a dupe to believe that. Nevertheless, I see the Regressive Crowd finding some reason why what the Egyptian did was okay, just as some (one on this website) claimed that the Lebanese wouldn’t let the Israelis on the bus because there was simply no room.
The only saving grace is that at least the crowd booed even though the Israeli was dissed.
*******
Now here’s a genuine sore loser. Hope Solo, who has a problem controlling her temper, and sometimes her words, behaved poorly after the U.S. Women’s soccer team (she’s the goalie) lost to the Swedish team in the Olympics in penalty kicks. The U.S team now goes home without a medal. As the Guardian reports:
Hope Solo has had an interesting Olympics to put it mildly. Before the Games had even started she had alienated many people in the host country by posing with anti-mosquito gear, a reference to the problems Brazil is experiencing with the Zika virus.
On Friday, she really stepped things up. As the US faced a penalty that would see them crash out of the tournament to Sweden in shoot-out, Solo claimed she needed to change her gloves. That forced Lisa Dahlkvist to wait a few minutes to take her spot-kick, an uncomfortably long time at such a crucial moment. The Swede scored anyway and the defending champions were out.
Solo did not take kindly to the defeat. “I thought we played a courageous game. I thought we had many opportunities on goal,” she said. “I think we showed a lot of heart. We came back from a goal down, I’m very proud of this team. And I also think we played a bunch of cowards. The best team did not win today, I strongly, firmly believe that.”
The glove-changing gambit is of course something done to unsettle the opponent—something that Solo did against Germany in last year’s World Cup final. It may have worked then, but not now, and it’s bogus.
Below is the full quote given by Solo when Sports Illustrated soccer writer Grant Wahl asked her, in a post-game press conference, what she thought of the game. The statement in parentheses is his query about why she called the Swedish team “a bunch of cowards”:
Full Hope Solo quote on Sweden after US was eliminated from the Olympics today. pic.twitter.com/UZVCAeur6m
You can see Wahl’s thoughts on the game on the Sports Illustrated site, and here’s a news report featuring a former U.S. gold medalist.
The fact remains, however, that the U.S. lost. And the women’s soccer team, whose great success is held up as a role model for young women in sports, is diminished by someone whose behavior besmirches the whole team. As always, living well is the best revenge, as expressed by the Swedish coach:
There was widespread criticism of Solo on social media following her comments.She later admitted on Twitter that “losing sucks. I’m really bad at it.”
The Sweden coach, Pia Sundhage, led the US to gold and the 2008 and 2012 Olympics and was dismissive of Solo’s outburst. “I don’t give a crap,” she told reporters after the game. “I’m going to Rio, she’s going home.”’
What makes Solo’s kvetching doubly irritating is that the Swedish coach, Pia Sundhage, who dictated the winning strategy, was in fact the Amercan women’s coach (and of course Solo’s coach) at the 2012 Olympics, and knew that the Swedes would need to play a defensive game. Solo was, in effect, accusing her own coach, who had helped her so much, of being a coward.
Solo, a terrific goalkeeper with a pile of successes and records, needs to work on her losing behavior. Sweden played a smart, tactical game, and Solo called them “cowards” for doing what they needed to do to beat the U.S.
