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.
JAC: In lieu of our usual dollop of living creatures in “Readers’ wildlife photographs,” I’ll post this contribution by Matthew.
by Matthew Cobb
Eleonora’s falcon (Falco eleonorae) is a kind of hobby with a wingspan of about 1 meter which breeds on Mediterranean islands and overwinters in Madagascar. It’s a rather fine-looking bird, as this photo by Jürgen Dietrich from Wikipedia shows:
Outside of the breeding season, Eleonora’s falcon mainly eats insects, but when there are babies about they will take larger prey, including other birds. A short paper has just been published in Alauda, the journal of the Société d’Etudes Ornithologiques de France, which reveals that in one population of this species, predation can take on quite a gruesome aspect.
As reported on Morrocanbirds and another of other sites (I haven’t been able to read the original article), the discovery is part of a long-term study of a population of this falcon off the Moroccan Atlantic coast by Moroccan scientists. According to the article, the birds will sometimes catch their prey and then, rather than feeding it to their chicks straight away, they store them, alive, sometimes having removed the flight feathers of the poor victim.
The Morrocanbirds piece includes two grim photos by Abdeljebbar Qninba of doomed birds, the first of a chiffchaff sans tail and wing feathers, the second of a common whitethroat peering from its prison:
Many birds in temperate regions will stash the bodies of their prey for later consumption. In the case of the shrike or butcher bird, this can become quite macabre, with bodies impaled on spikes. Eleanor’s falcon appears to have taken the process a step further – in the heat the Moroccan coast, any stashed body would rapidly dry out. By disabling and imprisoning the prey for a while (it is not clear what is the maximum duration – at least a matter of days), their food will stay fresh for longer…
Here’s a picture of an adult brooding a pair of eggs, from here. It looks pretty cross.
Of course, this is no different from the behaviour of many hymenoptera, which paralyse their prey (generally caterpillars, but in some cases spiders), lay eggs inside them or next to them and then wall them up in a hole or a pot, where the victim is slowly eaten alive by the maggots…
To paraphrase Miranda from The Tempest, and with only a touch of irony:
Oh, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous nature is!
O brave new world that has such creatures in ‘t!
Reference: Qninba, A., Benhoussa, A. Radi, M., El Idrissi, A., Bousadik, H., Badaoui B. & El Agbani, M.A. 2015. Mode de prédation très particulier du Faucon d’Éléonore Falco eleonorae sur l’Archipel d’Essaouira (Maroc Atlantique). Alauda 83(2): 149-150.
I’m pleased to feature some paleontology today from reader John Scanlon. In case you didn’t know, stromatolites are layered accretions of microorganisms, usually cyanobacteria (“blue-green algae”), and they represent some of the oldest fossils on earth: about 3.5 billion years old—only about a billion years after the Earth was formed. But these accretions are still formed today by living bacteria, and exist in a few spots on the planet that have extremely salty water, including Australia, Brazil, and Mexico.
Shark Bay, Australia, which John mentions below, is one of these places, and I’ll put a photo of living stromatolites below his photos. His notes:
My phone generally doesn’t do justice to actual fauna, but might do for some nice palaeobiology on a recent working trip in the Hamersley Range (Pilbara, Western Australia). The area’s well known for its banded ironstone formations (BIF; formed as the dissolved iron in the oceans rusted out, keeping the level of toxic oxygen low for a while), but also has extensive basalt flows (also dikes and sills) and outcropping granite/greenstone basement, ranging from Archaean into Proterozoic. The tectonic stability of the area is shown by the fact that most of the stratified rocks are still nearly horizontal , though there are also some very attractively folded BIFs around the edges.
The attached photos show something I haven’t often seen in the Pilbara: really well preserved stromatolites (in the Carawine Dolomite). They have the same range of sizes and shapes as the ones forming today in Hamelin Pool at Shark Bay, not very far away. The stromatolitic carbonates formed in shallow parts of the basin at the same time as the BIFs were accumulating in the deeper areas. The vertical and horizontal jointing and differential etching of the rock make them outstandingly clear examples, and also full of crevices so I had good reason to spend time looking at the rock while searching for animals. In one pic, wave ripples on a horizontal surface have been polished by Euro (JAC: waleroos, a marsupial: Macropus robustus) using the overhang as a sleeping shelter.
Ref: Rasmussen et al. (2005, doi: 10.1130/G21616.1) date these rocks to about 2.63 Ga. [JAC: 2.6 billion years old!]
The remnants of ancient life:
Wave ripples polished by sleeping wallaroos!:
Here are some living stromatolites being formed today in Shark Bay, Western Australia (picture from Wikipedia). They look just like their fossil forebears.
Here’s a cross-section of a living stromatolite, showing its similarity to the ancient ones (source here):
It’s Friday, and the week slinks to an end with chilly weather in Chicago. And there must be a drought in Poland, for Hili remarks on the cherry trees:
Hili: This doesn’t bode well.
A: What doesn’t bode well?
Hili: Leaves falling from trees in August.
In Polish:
Hili: To nie wróży dobrze?
Ja: Co nie wróży dobrze?
Hili: Liście spadające z drzew w sierpniu.
And nearby, tabby Leon faces the Intelligent Cat’s Dilemma:
Leon: I have a serious problem: to read or to sleep?
Here’s a little bit of illustrated theology to round out the day, the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith, not deeds. You can read more about sole fidehere (but alas there aren’t many funny pictures on the page).
Should I have called this post: “You won’t believe these animals that look like ants!”?
I won’t reiterate the many reasons why I love mimics, and why every evolutionary biologist (or even admirer of nature) should, too. Just go over to photographer/entomologist Alex Wild‘s lovely “ant mimic” page to see the diversity of taxa that have evolved to mimic pismires. Here are a few of the mimics; now guess the group to which the mimic belongs. Put your guess below. (No prize this time. .)
These are copyrighted and are reproduced with permission; please do not reproduce further without asking Alex here.
1.
2.
3.
4,
5.
6. Some of these are real ants; others are not. What are the non-ants?
Go see several others at Alex’s site. This is what we in the trade call “convergent evolution,” but of course the selective pressures to evolve resemblance to an ant can be very diverse.
Okay, if that indeed true, it’s one of the worst examples of Coddling Our Students I’ve seen. The photo and Russell’s link goes to a piece by Johnny McNulty on SomeLife, who in turn apparently got it (and the photos) from a post originally put on reddit:
Here’s the offensive lunchbox (click on photo to go to the original page):
So a girl (neither her and the school are identified) went to school with that lunchbox, and reportedly came home with this letter (note: the fact that both parents are addressed by first name raises a bit of doubt in my mind):
Yes, that’s certainly a violent lunchbox—NOT!
The Mary Sue explains why the school is dead wrong about Wonder Woman:
But this lunchbox has a picture of Wonder Woman’s face on one side, and on the other a full-body picture of her flying while extolling her beauty and wisdom. Two very non-violent qualities. What’s more, she’s holding her Lasso of Truth, which she never uses as a weapon.
However, even more nonsensical is their blanket ban on “violent characters” who “solve problems using violence,” when anyone who’s ever actually picked up a comic book knows that most superheroes 1) turn to violence as a last resort, and usually in self-defense, or when the lives of others are in danger, 2) don’t want to kill anyone, and 3) often have other skills that make them so “super” and are worth looking up to (Batman’s power of deduction, Superman’s belief in humanity, Wonder Woman’s love of peace).
It’s sad to me that, whenever children are concerned, rather than actually engaging with the material – or with the children themselves – when determining what’s best for them or not, adults in positions of power too often take the easy way out, creating blanket bans rather than respecting children enough to deal in ideas and provide them with context.
I guess Superman and Batman are out, too. Stay tuned for the continuing story of the bowdlerization of American schools, and the dumbing down of both students and faculty.
I’ve posted from time to time about the growing incursion of religion into American sports: especially football. And it’s often an illegal incursion, for in public universities and high schools, it’s a violation of the First Amendment—the one mandating separation of church and state—for a coach to enforce religion on his/her players, or to act in an official capacity to advance a religion.
And, as shown by the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) in a new report, “Pray to Play,” that’s exactly what many public universities are doing. Most of the offending schools are, of course, in the South, where the Venn diagram of religion and sports has substantial overlap, especially for football. Not only do coaches conduct prayer sessions with athletes, but universities regularly violate the law by hiring chaplains for their football teams and giving the “chaplains”, their families, and their wives substantial benefits (including free season tickets and travel), all funded by the taxpayers.
The FFRF’s document is long (35 pages) but fascinating—and absolutely damning. It has extensive documentation, and paints a dire picture of how respected major universities regularly flout the law, permitting coaches to impose their faith (always Christianity) on the players. In fact, some coaches view their main job as bringing players to Jesus, with football itself a secondary aim. Further, although only 44% of players are Christians (and thus the proselytizing is divisive for teams), 100% of all chaplains sussed out by the FFRF are Christians. The FFRF also found several examples of non-Christian athletes (both Muslims and nonbelievers) who felt excluded or offended by the endless prayers and pressure to go to church. Such participation isn’t really optional, because coaches determine not only who gets to play, but how recruiters for professional football interact with their students. This pressure forces students to conform.
The pdf of the FFRF report is here, the two-page executive summary is here, and the press release is here. Kudos to FFRF lawyers and law clerks Andrew Seidel, Patrick Elliott, Neal Fitzgerald, and Chris Line, who worked a year on this report. Before I put up a list of their conclusions, let me add two things.
The FFRF requested records from 18 public universities about the involvement of religion in football (these are mostly southern schools, but include the Universities of Washington, Wisconsin, Illinois, as well as Oregon State). They got almost no response despite the fact that universities MUST respond. Auburn is still holding on to the FFRF’s $500 check to pay for getting records, but hasn’t provided any. That’s reprehensible.
Second, the FFRF’s proposal is also constructive: it gives, at the end, a one-page “model policy” (p. 23 of the full report) that sets out Constitutional guidelines to public universities on how to deal with religion in sports. (Private universities, of course, are exempt from First Amendment requirements about not putting religion into sports.)
Here are the main points lifted from the report:
Research for this report was conducted over the past year and included inspecting hundreds of pages of university records. The report examines:
1. The unique position student athletes occupy and their susceptibility to religious coercion by coaches and chaplains.
2. The extensive public financing of these chaplaincies, including direct payments to chaplains, paying for the chaplain and his family to travel, and using the university’s influence and resources to fundraise for the chaplains’ religious organizations.
3. Schools portraying chaplains as legitimate, official members of the coaching staff.
4. The use of religion and chaplains in recruiting players, often to skirt NCAA rules.
5. The recent history of chaplaincies, most of which can be traced to Bobby Bowden, Tommy Tuberville, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
6. The true purpose and actual effect of the chaplaincies, which is to promote the coach’s personal religion and to convert athletes to that religion.
7. The legal problems these issues raise for universities.
8. A model policy for public universities to adopt and a discussion of the misconception at the heart of this issue: that religion, and specifically Christianity, is required to be a complete or good human being.
Below are a few blatant examples of church-state violations taken from the full report.
First, we have a Clemson player being baptized in his uniform, surrounded by the team, on the 50-yard line of the school’s football field! (Clemson is a public university in Clemson, South Carolina, and its team is called the “Tigers”). The FFRF notes:
Clemson University went so far as turning its football field into a baptismal font. Former Tiger DeAndre Hopkins was baptized on the 50-yard line of the Clemson practice field, in football pads, surrounded by teammates and coaches, by local pastor Perry Noble. Noble also baptized Sammy Watkins at his church, NewSpring [sic] Church, the church head coach Dabo Swinney attends. Incidentally, Noble believes that “[w]e’ve bought into the lie that there’s a line between the secular and the spiritual. Jesus is Lord of ALL. And that means ALL.”
Jeff Scott, a university (and therefore a state) employee, is a co-offensive coordinator for the team’s wide receivers; and he tweeted this:
The FFRF report shows, as noted above, that many of these chaplains (all Christians) are paid with taxpayers’ money, and get to travel with the team and get free lodgings, food, seasons tickets, and sideline passes, also on the public dime. Their wives and children often get these paid perks, too! The amount subsidized by citizens runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Below are two videos that Andrew Seidel sent me showing the (unconstitutional) chaplain of the University of South Carolina’s (USC’s) football team (the “Gamecocks”) engaging in illegal activity—using his official state position to advance religion. Seidel’s notes:
Gamecock Football team Chaplain Adrian Despres is joined by Gamecock football players Marcus Lattimore, Nick Jones, Dylan Thompson, and Brandon Davis, as they share their personal testimonies of Faith at the First Baptist Church of Spartanburg, SC. What an inspiring and fun-filled evening of worship, testimony, and evangelism.
Two things I’ll briefly point out.
(1) He gave a series of sermons to the team called “The Christian Man Laws” to teach them “to stop being sissies for Christ.”
Here’s the video:
(2) He claims to have debated the “top evolutionists” in the country. I think it was actually a couple of high school teachers, but haven’t been able to confirm anything.
I haven’t confirmed those debates, either, so I suspect Chaplain Despres is lying. At the very least, he’s certainly NOT debated the “top evolutionists” in the country, for I’d know about that, and Googling reveals no debates at all. I, however, hereby offer to debate Chaplain Despres about evolution, violating my policy not to do it! Here’s the video, with the creationism coming right at the start, and Despres spews all the familiar creationist tropes. How embarrassing this must be to the more rational people at USC!
Now I wonder if the Department of Biological Sciences at USC knows that their official football chaplain is preaching creationism at church, and probably also to his players as well. Perhaps I’ll let them know.
