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.
The photos of this North American bird (Megaceryle alcyon) are again by Stephen Barnard. Note that one has a fish (click to enlarge):
They seem to be chasing each other around, but don’t ask me why. Are they trying to steal each other’s fish?
UPDATE: I’m told that the TV station is called TVN, and that the program’s name in Polish is ‘Dzien dobry TVN. My interview will start at about 9:30.
________________
I am astounded that this is even happening, but what I’m told is a fairly large nationwide t.v. station will interview me tomorrow morning (Monday) at about 9:30 a.m. The show is called “Good Morning, Poland,” and the amazing thing is that they want to talk about—atheism!
Remember, this is a country where “insulting religious feelings” is a crime punishable by a fine and, in principle, jail. Right now, as I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s big news that a nonbelieving policeman has asked that a crucifix be removed from his office (crosses are everywhere!), and for that simple request he’s being prosecuted. He may be fined, lose his job, or even incarcerated, though I doubt he’ll see jail time.
Religious education–always by priests or nuns—is obligatory for two hours a week beginning in kindergarten (!) through high school—and although students can opt out, it’s done in a way that stigmatizes them. The religious instructors are chosen by the local bishop and they can neither be fired nor told what to teach. This forced indoctrination, and the blasphemy laws, are the two biggest things obstructing the secularization of Poland.
So atheism is pretty much a taboo subject in a country whose inhabitants are 95% Catholic, and a t.v. interview is good opportunity for me to spread the gospel (so to speak) in a way that I hope will be persuasive.
The t.v. folks have submitted a lists of questions that they might ask me, and suffice it to say that those questions are both straightforward and provocative.
I believe the interview will take place outdoors, in the lovely town square of Cracow, so if there are any Polish readers who watch t.v., let me know how it goes. I have no idea how it will be translated, but it will be broadcast live.
Well, it’s really not a dogfight, but a desperate aerial battle between predator and prey. We encountered the “hobby” (a falcon) earlier, and learned that it can capture swifts, dragonflies, and even bats on the wings. This video, highlighted in a comment by reader mesonparticle, was so cool that I decided to put it above the fold. It looks for all the world like a WWI dogfight, except the aerodynamic maneuvers are far more intricate. The YouTube notes say this:
This is the pursuit of a Common Swift (Apus apus) by the male of a nesting pair of falcons known as a Hobbies (Falco subbuteo). The pursuit lasted over three minutes, with the Swift managing to avoid all attempts at capture, until finally distracted by the arrival of the female Hobby. Within seconds of the male Hobby making the catch, the female claims the prize and returns to her chicks.
Bird Watching, where the video was posted, adds this:
This wonderful amateur footage show two Hobbies chasing a Swift. The Hobbies bank and stoop, accelerating into G-force turns, the wingbeats deep and elastic, the tail ruddering. Repeatedly, they swing under and up at the Swifts, attacking from beneath so that their target is silhouetted against the sky.
Watch the whole thing, as halfway through the video slows to half speed and other parts highlight the similarity between the morphology of two species of birds. Dramas like this are played out millions of times per day, but we rarely know about them.
Hili has taken more prey:
A: Hili, another murder in the cat’s paradise?
Hili: I am as the nature created me and you love me as I am.
In Polish:
A: Hili, kolejny mord w kocim raju?
Hili: Jaką mnie natura stworzyła, taką mnie masz.
I believe I’ve mentioned the Teen Exorcists before, but if you missed it, you’re missing some real LOLs. The sad thing, though, is that this isn’t meant to be a joke.
Meet the trio of Brynne Larson and sisters Tess and Savannah Scherkenback:
[They] are all-American girls from Arizona, who enjoy martial arts and horse riding. But something sets them apart from most teenagers – they perform public exorcisms and often appear on TV chat shows.
Eighteen-year-old Brynne met sisters Tess and Savannah about eight years ago at a karate class.
“We just really hit it off,” says Savannah, aged 21. “I don’t know what happens but somehow you bond when you’re punching one another and throwing knees. We were working out together, learning how to fight and how to defend ourselves and defend others.”
They are now karate black belts, but because of their particular Christian beliefs, they have also decided to do battle – they say – against evil spirits or demons. They believe that these demons can possess a human being and cause suffering, depression or addiction.
“A demon can’t just come into anybody whenever it chooses to – God doesn’t allow that,” says Brynne.
This two-part video from Vice Media, which I recommend viewing in its entirety (it’s about 26 minutes total) includes interviews with the trio, and follows them on a tour to the Ukraine where they proceed to drive Satan out of some troubled people. It will scare the hell out of you, but also entertain you with some of the more bizarre excrescences of faith.
The young women have been trained by Brynne’s father, the Reverend Bob Larson, who says he has performed more than 15,000 exorcisms. They have appeared alongside him in America and overseas, including the UK.
“Every single country has a specific kind of demon,” says Tess, 18, who loves music and reading.
They believe that the UK in particular is a hotbed for “witchcraft”, because of the popularity of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books.
“The spells and things that you’re reading in the Harry Potter books, those aren’t just something that are made up, those are actual spells. Those are things that came from witchcraft books,” says Tess.
The teens see themselves as “freedom fighters”. During an exorcism they brandish silver crosses and Bibles while confronting the so-called demon to make it return to hell.
Part 2:
Tess, Savannah and Brynne have all been home-schooled. In Brynne’s case it was because her father’s profession led the family to travel widely.
“With going [to] over 20 countries and stuff, I don’t really have time to go to school, but I’ll just sit at my desk and work on calculus or read all my books,” she says. “This is so much better than going to a stinky old school room.”
The Vice reporter, of course, takes them apart completely
h/t: Steve
Reader Stephen Barnard, occupier of Paradise in Idaho, called my attention to a new article in Science which, sadly, I don’t have time to read (I’m off to Cracow in an hour or so). But it reports that the nymphs of an “issus” (a genus of planthopper on the order Hemiptera, or “true bugs”) have gears on their legs: the first example of a cog-like mechanism in animals. I’ll give the abstract and then show a YouTube video that will tell you how the gears look and work.
Here’s the paper’s abstract:
Gears are found rarely in animals and have never been reported to intermesh and rotate functionally like mechanical gears. We now demonstrate functional gears in the ballistic jumping movements of the flightless planthopper insect Issus. The nymphs, but not adults, have a row of cuticular gear (cog) teeth around the curved medial surfaces of their two hindleg trochantera. The gear teeth on one trochanter engaged with and sequentially moved past those on the other trochanter during the preparatory cocking and the propulsive phases of jumping. Close registration between the gears ensured that both hindlegs moved at the same angular velocities to propel the body without yaw rotation. At the final molt to adulthood, this synchronization mechanism is jettisoned.
You can find the Science paper here (reference below, but article is behind a paywall). The video shows the entirely fortuitous way this phenomenon was discovered:
Here’s a figure from the paper, with its caption:
SciTechDaily notes:
The finding demonstrates that gear mechanisms previously thought to be solely man-made have an evolutionary precedent. Scientists say this is the “first observation of mechanical gearing in a biological structure”.
. . . The gears in the Issus hind-leg bear remarkable engineering resemblance to those found on every bicycle and inside every car gear-box. Each gear tooth has a rounded corner at the point it connects to the gear strip; a feature identical to man-made gears such as bike gears – essentially a shock-absorbing mechanism to stop teeth from shearing off.
The gear teeth on the opposing hind-legs lock together like those in a car gear-box, ensuring almost complete synchronicity in leg movement – the legs always move within 30 ‘microseconds’ of each other, with one microsecond equal to a millionth of a second.
. . . This is critical for the powerful jumps that are this insect’s primary mode of transport, as even miniscule discrepancies in synchronization between the velocities of its legs at the point of propulsion would result in “yaw rotation” – causing the Issus to spin hopelessly out of control.
“This precise synchronization would be impossible to achieve through a nervous system, as neural impulses would take far too long for the extraordinarily tight coordination required,” said lead author Professor Malcolm Burrows, from Cambridge’s Department of Zoology.
. . . “These gears are not designed; they are evolved – representing high speed and precision machinery evolved for synchronization in the animal world.”
Interestingly, the mechanistic gears are only found in the insect’s juvenile – or ‘nymph’ – stages, and are lost in the final transition to adulthood. These transitions, called ‘molts’, are when animals cast off rigid skin at key points in their development in order to grow.
The question then becomes why the nymphs have gears but adults do not. The authors give a speculative answer:
It’s not yet known why the issus loses their hind-leg gears on reaching adulthood. The scientists point out that a problem with any gear system is that if one tooth on the gear breaks, the effectiveness of the whole mechanism is damaged. While gear-teeth breakage in nymphs could be repaired in the next molt, any damage in adulthood remains permanent.
___________
Burrows, M. and G. Sutton. 2013. Interactive gears synchronize propulsive leg movements in a jumping insect. Science 341: 1254-1256 DOI: 10.1126/science.1240284
This is the seventh episode in the dolorous existence of Henri, the existentialist French cat: “The cat is sat.” Although I object to Henri’s choice of a mercenary existence, he’s still capable of turning out a good video.
Here Henri gets a cat-sitter while his owner is away, and doesn’t like it one bit.
****
Stalwart commenter Ben Goren sent a photo of his famous cat Baihu on a desert walk. The caption. If you’re a regular here, you’ll know that Baihu walks on a leash.
I took this less than an hour ago. It’s our first time to South Mountain, and only our third time driving somewhere to walk — the other two times were to Kiwanis Lake earlier this week.The roof of our home is theoretically visible somewhere in the upper left…though I’m sure it’s nothing more than a smudged pixel. You can just barely see the spot where we are from my living room.Baihu did great. He practically pulled me up to the top of the hill, with breaks every several yards to sniff something. On the way back down, he even caught a lizard!
There are actually two Hili dialogues today, an unprecedented event. In the first, Hili demonstrates her ability to climb trees. Can you see her in the leaves? (Hili actually fell from the tree and had to be caught by Andrzej. She hasn’t yet learned how to climb down backwards, as did her predecessor Pia.)
Hili: I’m here, if you are looking for me.A: You will fall down, those twigs cannot support you.
Hili: I know. You have to catch me in midair, because otherwise I could harm myself and you wouldn’t like it at all.
In Polish:
Hili: Tu jestem, gdybyś mnie szukał?
Ja: Spadniesz, te gałązki cię nie utrzymają.
Hili: Wiem, musisz mnie złapać, bo mogę sobie zrobić krzywdę i bardzo byś tego nie lubił.
****
There were no other cats on Hili’s turf when I was there save Fitness, a black cat (owned by Andrzej’s and Malgorzata’s lodger) who despises Hili and chases her. They are not allowed to be in the yard together. This orange cat is an interloper.
Hili: Hi, stranger. New in town?
