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.
As of a few minutes ago, I got this for the all-time traffic here:
Given that we’re averaging about 20,000 views per day, this will pass 20 million some time today—assuming the regular readers will still check in despite my being on the road.
I never expected so many people would check in, and I’m grateful (I won’t say “humbled,” because that’s what the faithful say). But thanks to all the readers who come here regularly, and for forming a community that I’m quite proud of. The commentary is informed and without rancor, readers cover every area of expertise possible, and we’ve managed to avoid the drama that infests other websites. And special thanks to Drs. Matthew Cobb and Greg Mayer, who often contribute posts and their own special knowledge of biology.
To celebrate, I’ll do my best to hold some bats today and put up pictures when I return to Chicago tomorrow.
Bats are usually some shade of brown, gray, or black, but some are all white, some have facial masks, and some even have yellow spots. But the most distinctively patterned bat I’ve ever seen is the one making the rounds on the interwebs this week, Niumbaha superba, the skunk bat.
Niumbaha superba (DeeAnn Reeder).
It also has large white markings on the throat and flanks (more pix here). I just made up the name “skunk bat”, but you can see why I did. @WorldofZoology likened it to a badger, but since it’s native to central Africa, it’s probably best called the ratel bat (the ratel being a black and white African and southwest Asian carnivore).
The occasion of this striking bat making the rounds is that DeeAnn Reeder of Bucknell University and her colleagues have described a new genus to accommodate it. The species was described in 1939, but had been placed in the genus Glauconycteris. Reeder and her colleagues got a new specimen from South Sudan, and based on data from this specimen and 3 others (the species is known from only five specimens), concluded it should be placed in a new genus. The diagnosis is on the basis of the pattern and various skull characters, including larger size.
Skulls of Niumbaha and two species of Glauconycteris.
There are other strikingly patterned bats; here are several proboscis bats, Rhynchonycteris naso, photographed north of Fortuna, Costa Rica, by a colleague last year. It’s hard to judge size, but I think these are Greater White-lined Bats,Saccopteryx bilineatus; any chiropterologists out there, please weigh in with your opinion. (Corrected ID provided by alert reader Batdan.)
Proboscis bats, Rhynchnycteris naso, north of Fortuna, Costa Rica, 3.i.2012.
Reeder, D, K.M. Helgen, M. Vodzak, D. Lunde, and I. Ejotre. 2013. A new genus for a rare African vespertilionid bat: insights from South Sudan. ZooKeys 285: 89-115. (pdf) (I should add that the word “insights” here is totally unnecessary, and should never have gotten past the editors, and “from South Sudan” is misleading, as the species occurs west to the Ivory Coast.)
I’m at Oakland University today and tomorrow, so posting will be light, though Greg has promised a guest post on bats.
Speaking of chiropterans, tomorrow I’ll be visiting a bat facility that has a bunch of vampire bats (and 15 other species) and a special ways of feeding them blood. The researchers get cow blood from a slaughterhouse, remove the antibiotics in that blood (cows are given prophylactic antibiotics in the U.S.), and serve the purified blood in a continuous stream to the bats. No worries—I’ll take pictures!
In the meantime, here’s more feline LOLziness from Gary Larson. Remember these?
Here’s a comment, from one reader named “A,” on and old thread about Adam and Eve. I’m putting it here for your delectation. I get tons of these comments on old threads, and most of them I trash, but sometimes I think I should let a believer through:
Christianity is not religion, at least to anyone who lives in its true form. It is not a set of rules saying we have to be perfect. It is the idea that though we all try to be perfect, Christ was the only morally perfect human because he was God and man, and he died for the sin of every imperfect human being. So we don’t need to be a Christian to be moral, but we do need Christ to be saved.
Also, where in the bible does it say “God created two anatomically modern humans named Adam and Eve” ?? Who’s to say that if they did exist they were from genus homo? And really, unless you lived at the dawn of time there’s really no way to know for sure.
I love the idea that “true” Christianity isn’t a religion even though Jesus was divine and is the only route to salvation. What’s not religious about that?
And if Adam and Eve weren’t the progenitors of modern humanity, which they clearly were in Genesis (and real humans as well), why do so many Evangelical Christians have their knickers in a twist trying to rationalize Genesis with the palpable fact that humanity did not descend from only two ancestors?
It is of course the nest that is giant, not the wasps. But it’s still pretty impressive. In San Sebastián de La Gomera, the port capital of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, police broke into an empty house following complaints from neighbours. Inside they found a wasps’ nest that was allegedly over 7 metres long (it doesn’t actually look that big, but maybe it does back into the room and the photographer – understandably – didn’t want to get that close):
Experts have examined the nest … and say the common type of wasp found in gardens would never normally build a nest of this size. They believe it must be an invasive species of wasp which had migrated from Africa.The Canary Islands are less than 100 kilometres from Morocco by water.
Ah, those experts. Looks like a large paper wasp to me. But I know only about maggots (I think that’s the way Jerry would like that sentence, though it reads oddly, and would be better as the ungrammatical ‘I only know about maggots’)
Now what are the police going to do? My guess is it will be bad news for the wasps.
Sunday – Life, the Universe, & EverythingFirst Church Somerville UCC, 89 College Avenue, just north of Davis Square. First Church Somerville UCC is a church made up of many inquiring minds, a critical mass of professional scientists, and all kinds of spiritual seekers. This Sunday we will be exploring what kinds of conversation, common ground, or integration might exist between science and religion, faith and reason. What can our spirituality learn from science and can science be enlightened by faith? All are welcome here! First Church Somerville UCC Cost: Free
You can bet that there won’t be anyone saying that there can’t be a productive “conversation” between science and faith!
*****’
April 21, 10:00am – 11:00am
Science and Spirituality Sunday
Faith Responds to Climate Change. First Church Somerville UCC, 89 College Avenue, just north of Davis Square First Church Somerville. UCC is a church made up of many inquiring minds, a critical mass of professional scientists, and all kinds of spiritual seekers. This Sunday we’ll be exploring in worship how faith might or must respond to the science of climate change and the reality of global warming. All are welcome here! First Church Somerville UCC. Cost: Free
*****
The Passion of the Cosmos: Scientists on Evolution, Cosmology, and Religion: Open Forum
Sunday, April 21
2:00pm-3:45pm
The Monastery of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, 980 Memorial Dr., Cambridge
Science, religion, and more! Noted scientists of faith will share their experience of religious practice and scientific discipline. Share your own experiences, ask questions, pose challenges, or simply, come, watch, listen, and learn.
Panelists include:
John Durant, Ph.D. | Director of MIT Museum and Adjunct Professor in the MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society
Ian Hutchinson, Ph.D. | MIT Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering
David K.Urion, M.D. | Head of the Behavioral Neurology Program at Boston Children’s Hospital; Associate Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical
Jennifer Wiseman, Ph.D. | Astronomer; Director of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) for the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Note how the title echoes Mel Gibson’s odious film, ‘The Passion of the Christ”, and that this event is held at a monastery.
Wiseman is head of the DoSER program (Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, sponsored by Templeton; Hutchinson is a Christian physicist who is part of the Templeton-funded “Test of Faith” project and has decried scientism; and David K. Urion’s books include Having a God Day, And One was a Doctor, and One was a Priest, and Compassion as a Subversive Activity: Illness, Community, and the Gospel of Mark.
As always, my question is this: “What the hell are these events doing in a science festival?” My first guess, of course, was that some of the money came from the Templeton Foundation, but the list of sponsors doesn’t show that. Rather, many sponsors are reputable, including MIT, Harvard, and the National Science Foundation. (I wonder whether any public money, such as that dispensed by the NSF, funded these religious events.)
At any rate, it still mystifies me that it’s almost obligatory for science festivals to have events that emphasize the harmony between science and religion. I see no need for that. Would the festival be less popular without these three events? I doubt it.
And given that most scientists aren’t religious, especially the accomplished ones, if we must hear the pro-accommodationist side, do we ever get to hear the other? I’m not holding my breath.
My own view, though, is that we needn’t hear either side of the science-and-religion debates at these events. Let the organizers stick to science. These are science festivals, not science-and-religion festivals.
What’s next—attempts to reconcile science and astrology?
This Gallup poll is about ten months old, but I don’t think I’ve posted it before, and I like to update the statistics since the same poll is given every year. The question, too, is always the same (see below) and deals specifically with human evolution. Here are the overall data:
Gallup’s summary is this:
Gallup has asked Americans to choose among these three explanations for the origin and development of human beings 11 times since 1982. Although the percentages choosing each view have varied from survey to survey, the 46% who today choose the creationist explanation is virtually the same as the 45% average over that period — and very similar to the 44% who chose that explanation in 1982. The 32% who choose the “theistic evolution” view that humans evolved under God’s guidance is slightly below the 30-year average of 37%, while the 15% choosing the secular evolution view is slightly higher (12%).
The bad news is that young-earth creationists still comprise nearly half of Americans, while 2/3 of the remainder accept a form of theistic evolution (and “God’s guiding” probably means, to most of them, a direct intervention of God in creating humans rather than a deistic view that God set up the physical conditions, and maybe the Ur-organism, and then it run. Fewer than one in six Americans accept evolution as scientists do: a materialistic, unguided process with no supernatural intervention. The unguided evolution stats are up a bit over the past 30 years—nearly 50%—but it’s still a fraction of what it should be in an enlightened country.
Here are the data broken down by church attendance. The tend is clear, as always: the more you go to church, the more likely you are to be a creationist and less likely to believe in naturalistic evolution. Curiously, theistic evolution is found more frequently among those who go to church less often:
No surprise here: Republicans are far more likely to be young-earth creationists, and less likely to be naturalistic evolutionists, than are Democrats. Nearly 60% of Republicans are young-earth creationists with respect to humans (remember, the question is how humans came to be). I think it’s fair to conclude that most Republicans are deluded when it comes to science. They should not be trusted to run our country.
And, as usual, the more educated you are, the less likely you are to be a creationist and the more likely you are to be a naturalistic evolutionist (or a theistic evolutionist!):
Here’s the Gallup conclusion, carefully hedged:
Despite the many changes that have taken place in American society and culture over the past 30 years, including new discoveries in biological and social science, there has been virtually no sustained change in Americans’ views of the origin of the human species since 1982. The 46% of Americans who today believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years is little changed from the 44% who believed this 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question.
More broadly, some 78% of Americans today believe that God had a hand in the development of humans in some way, just slightly less than the percentage who felt this way 30 years ago.
All in all, there is no evidence in this trend of a substantial movement toward a secular viewpoint on human origins.
Most Americans are not scientists, of course, and cannot be expected to understand all of the latest evidence and competing viewpoints on the development of the human species. Still, it would be hard to dispute that most scientists who study humans agree that the species evolved over millions of years, and that relatively few scientists believe that humans began in their current form only 10,000 years ago without the benefit of evolution. Thus, almost half of Americans today hold a belief, at least as measured by this question wording, that is at odds with the preponderance of the scientific literature.
The summary of the statistics is fine, but the implication that Americans can’t understand human evolution is ludicrous. True, maybe many Americans can’t understand the “latest evidence and competing viewpoints” on human evolution, but really, they can see and understand clearly the evidence that humans did evolve from arboreal small-brained, big-teethed primates. The evidence is in my book, for crying out loud, and isn’t hard to grasp!
Further the “competing viewpoints” idea, while formally true (we’re not yet sure, except for Neanderthals, Denisovans, and the latest fossils, which species are on the direct line to modern Homo sapiens, and which are side branches that became extinct), has the sinister implication that there’s dissent about whether humans evolved at all. They should add as well that “relatively few scientists believe that God guided the evolution of humans.”
The summary is somewhat of a sop to evolution-deniers, unworthy of a respectable poll.
Over the week, several friends have asked me, “Jerry, what do you think North Korea is going to do?” My response is usually, “How the bloody hell do I know? I’m no political expert!” But then I prognosticate anyway, for I’m fascinated with North Korea and have tried to learn as much as I can about it. That’s pretty much limited to reading the news, reading excellent memoirs of escapees like The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Choi-hwan Kang, who lived in the prison camps for many years—a fascinating book, and watching videos of people’s visits to North Korea. Those videos are depressingly similar since all visitors and film crews must go on virtually identical state-monitored tours, and aren’t allowed to wander freely.
It’s a terrible state—the worst dictatorship in the world—and the citizens are best described as “starved prisoners.” Brainwashed from birth, forbidden to access the internet or news from other countries, many must surely swallow the propaganda forced down their throats daily. They’re all conditioned to think that they are indeed a blessed people, that Kim Jong Un is a god, and that other countries, particularly the U.S., is constantly plotting to nuke them. The state is in many respects a theocracy, with its three leaders seen as gods. Indeed, Kim il-Sung, who died in 1994, is still considered the country’s “eternal president,” and there are many miracle stories attending his birth, like birds singing his praises.
Here’s a view of the Koreas from space, courtesy of reader Alex (comment #1 below). As he says, “It’s difficult to take a country seriously when it can’t keep its lights on.” The border between North and South Korea is clearly delineated, and the dot of light near the west coast is Pyongyang. This is the most graphic demonstration of how impoverished North Korea really is:
So what is going to happen? The North Koreans, unlike many Muslims, don’t want to die in glorious combat. They know that, although they can inflict grievous damage on South Korea (the north has the fifth largest army in the world, after China, the U.S., South Korea, and India, and Seoul is very close to the DMZ), they would surely be annihiliated in any serious conflict. Kim Jong Un and his fellow leaders want to live. Ergo, they won’t do anything that would clearly initiate a war.
The problem is that the North may not know how far they can go without provoking one. The last time they acted, sinking a South Korean navy ship in 2010 and killing 46 sailors, there was little reprisal from the South or the U.S. They may count on that happening again. Their periodic saber-rattling has two goals: to show the world that they won’t go gentle into that good night, and to extort goods and food from the U.S., China, and South Korea.
But it won’t take much to set off a conflict now, with the South Koreans increasingly nervous. I’m counting on the fact that South Korea won’t engage in unilateral action without U.S. approval, and heartened by observing that China is beginning to distance itself from Pyongyang.
In my email news bulletin today, CNN reports the imminent launch of missiles (non-nuclear) by North Korea:
A senior Pentagon official says there is intelligence information indicating North Korea could be planning “multiple missile launches” in the coming days.
The official did not have specifics on the numbers of missiles and launchers spotted by U.S. satellite imagery, but said the two intermediate-range mobile missiles North Korea has placed along its eastern coastline may have been feints to distract attention from the multiple launches that may be coming.
This is a tactic the North Koreans have used in the past, the official said.
So here’s my prediction:
1. If they do fire those missiles, they will fizzle out and land in the ocean, as usual
2. If missiles aren’t fired, or fired with no effect, the West will have no response, but nor will they (or China) give North Korea any goodies to stop further action.
3. Everything will go back to normal, with North Korea continuing to act aggressively but slowly ratcheting down its rhetoric.
4. The North Koreans will re-open the factory near the border, as they need the cash and can’t afford to sever relations with everyone.
I hope I’m right, but there’s a lot of wiggle room for miscalculation here, mainly on the side of the North. Nobody else is spoiling for war as avidly as they.
The best documentary on North Korea I’ve found (and they’re all a bit lacking since open filming is illegal) is “Welcome to North Korea,” which isn’t bad. It’s 53 minutes long, and well worth watching:
Directed by: Peter Tetteroo, Raymond Feddema PLOT DESCRIPTION The winner of the 2001 International Emmy award for Best Documentary, Welcome to North Korea is a grotesquely surreal look at the all-too-real conditions in modern-day North Korea. Dutch filmmaker Peter Tetteroo and his associate Raymond Feddema spent a week in and around the North Korean capital of Pyongyang — ample time to produce this outstanding film. Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs; from http://www.archive.org.
Let’s hear your predictions about what will happen in the Koreas over the next two months. Will there be any armed conflict?
