Is evolutionary psychology worthless?

December 10, 2012 • 6:47 am

There’s been a lot of kerfuffle on the intertubes about the value of evolutionary psychology, the field that studies the evolutionary roots of human thought, language, and behavior. I want to weigh in here with my answer to the question posed in the title, and my answer is, “Certainly not!”

Now I am known as a critic of evolutionary psychology, and I have been quite critical. For example, I’ve published two scathing critiques (one with Andrew Berry) of Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer’s unfounded theories of the adaptive significance of rape (see references below). I have gone after the popular distortions of evolutionary psychology that appear in the press or books (e.g., my comments on David Brooks’s New Yorker article “Social animal”—an article subsequently turned into a dreadful book). And I have criticized some evolutionary psychologists for failing to police the speculative excesses of their colleagues.  But I’ve never maintained that the entire field is worthless, nor do I think that now. In fact, there’s some good stuff in it, and it’s getting better.

I have seen evolutionary psychology begin to mature with its criticisms and disclaimers of its more radical exponents (e.g., Satoshi Kanazawa), and its increasing concentration on evidence and testability rather than just storytelling.  Although I don’t keep up with it as much as I once did, I do teach some of it in my introductory evolution class.  I have to admit, though, that as the field has evolved, I’ve become less critical of it as a whole.  That is, I think, as it should be!

My position has always been that good evolutionary psychology should meet the evidentiary standards of papers on the evolutionary significance of behavior in other animals—standards that are, say, met by papers in the journal Animal Behaviour. Good evolutionary psychology should be able to make either predictions or what I call “retrodictions”—i.e., hypotheses that make sense of previously unexplained or puzzling data.  (Darwin made many “retrodictions” in The Origin.) Granted, we can’t go back to the African savanna and witness the evolutionary forces that produce a new trait (hell, we can’t even do that for most traits arising today!), but we can construct reasonable hypotheses about how our behaviors arose and then test them.  Or, if tests aren’t possible now, we can make intriguing suggestions that future researchers may find a way to test, as Einstein did with his theory of general relativity. That is not “storytelling,” but the limning of hypotheses that could lead to understanding. “Storytelling” is the endeavor that purports to explain something in a way that can’t be tested, or is satisfied to tell a story without finding ways to test it.

As for those writers who do a good job presenting evolutionary psychology in popular works, I’d suggest both Frans de Waal and Steve Pinker.  I know these men, and, believe me, they are no Kanzawas.

And as for academic, as opposed to popular, evolutionary psychology: before you dismiss it whole hog, do me the favor of reading this 2010 paper in American Psychologist by Jaime C. Confer et al. (download free at link; reference below). It’s an evenhanded exposition of the state of modern evolutionary psychology, how it works, what kinds of standards it uses, responses to some common criticisms (e.g., “we don’t know the genes involved”), and, for the critics, examples of  evo-psych hypotheses that have been falsified. (One example of a falsified theory is the old “kin selection” argument for the prevalence of homosexuality: the idea that homosexuals, though not reproducing themselves, stayed home and perpetuated their genes by taking care of their relatives.)

If you can read the Confer et al. paper and still dismiss the entire field as worthless, or as a mere attempt to justify scientists’ social prejudices, then I’d suggest your opinions are based more on ideology than judicious scientific inquiry.

Here are a few fields in which I think interesting and worthwhile evolutionary psychology is being done:

  • Incest avoidance, especially in those societies that haven’t made a connection between incest and birth defects.  Also, the proximate cues for avoiding incest, as in the failure of children raised in a kibbutz to marry.
  • Humans’ innate fear of harmful creatures or features, as in spiders and heights, and the lack of innate fears of more modern dangers.
  • The variance in offspring number between males and females in various societies, and the differential “pickiness” of males and females when choosing mates
  • The evolution of concealed ovulation in humans as opposed to other primates.
  • The use of odors and immune-system matching (i.e., MHC genes) as cues for mates.
  • The cause of sexual dimorphisms (e.g., size differences between males and females).
  • The cause of physical and physiological differences between human ethnic groups (was it sexual selection, drift, or something else?)
  • Gene-culture coevolution, as in the evolution of lactose tolerance.
  • The evolution or morality using comparative studies with other primates.
  • The evolution of language (see The Language Instinct by Pinker).
  • Parent-offspring conflict, and cases in which kin are favored over nonkin
  • Why we like food that is bad for us (e.g. fats and sweets), and why we feel disgust at certain foods or odors

Now in many of these areas we’ll never get definitive answers, but that’s characteristic of many areas of evolutionary biology, for ours is a historical science. Why, for instance, did feathers evolve on dinosaurs? Probably not for flight, for the evolution of feathers preceded that of flight, but they could they have arisen via sexual selection, species recognition, or insulation—or all of the above. We might be able to make observations that support some of these ideas more than others, but we’ll never have the absolute truth—only answers with greater or lesser probabilities. But science is not about absolute truth; it’s about the best possible explanation we can think of in light of existing evidence. And many areas of evolutionary psychology do support some explanations more strongly than others. Read the Confer et al. paper to learn more.

Anyway, those who dismiss evolutionary psychology on the grounds that it’s mere “storytelling” are not aware of how the field operates these days. And, if they are to be consistent, they must also dismiss any studies of the evolutionary basis of animal behavior. Yes, there’s some dirty bathwater in evolutionary psychology, but there’s also a baby in there!

_________________

Confer, J. C., J. A. Easton, D. S. Fleischman, C. D. Goetz, D. M. G. Lewis, C. Perilloux, and D. M. Buss. 2010. Evolutionary psychology: controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations. American Psychologist 65:110-126.

Coyne, J. A. 2000. Of Vice and Men: The Fairy Tales of Evolutionary Psychology (Revew of A Natural History of Rape by R. Thornhill and C. T. Palmer). The New Republic 222(14):27-34.

Coyne, J., and A. Berry. 2000. Rape as an adaptation: a review of The Natural History of Rape, by Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer. Nature 404:121-122.

Messi breaks the record!

December 9, 2012 • 4:11 pm

Well, Lionel Messi broke the record for most football (i.e, soccer) goals in a calendar year—a record of 85 goals held for four decades by Gerd Muller. Today Messi scored two goals, his 85th and 86th, in a Barcelona’s victory of 2-0 over Real Betis. And the season isn’t finished yet!

Watch this video of the record goal quickly, because La Liga will ensure that it’s removed within hours. It’s a lovely goal, too:

(I’ll try to post replacements when they go inactive.)

And if you want to know why some (like my friend Seamus Malin) consider Messi the greatest player of all time, here’s a perspective from ESPN FC United:

Rather than beginning yet another debate about Lionel Messi’s place in the footballing pantheon, let’s review what it takes to break a record like this.

Setting aside his innate and abundant skill, the Argentine is blessed with a supporting cast — arguably, the greatest club team of all time, or at least firmly in the top three — that only elevates him higher. The likes of Xavi and Andres Iniesta constantly tee him up around the box, or Alexis Sanchez and David Villa create room for him to exploit. With such legends to lean on, Messi profits greatly from opponents constantly forced to pick their poison on defense; covering one menace simply helps another, though the frequency with which Little Flea plays executioner is astounding by any measure.

The greater soccer culture in which he works is also tailor-made for a man like Messi, a breezy, dynamic and indefatigable runner equally sublime with the ball at either foot. La Liga’s gentler, more technical disposition welcomes and helps foment his skills in a way that the hacky, schizophrenic Premier League or controlled aggression of Serie A never could.

He’s also been supremely fortunate with regard to overall health. While Arsenal’s starting XI suffers ankle sprains and MCL tears while trapped in REM sleep, Messi’s longevity enables him to rack up more minutes and, thus, more chances to locate pay dirt. Since the start of the 2006-07 season he’s missed just 28 games due to injuries, playing in an astounding 382 over that span. Simply looking at that log might snap Djibril Cisse’s leg for a third time.

Even the list of injuries — broken bone in left foot, thigh muscle strain, torn thigh muscle, sprained right ankle ligaments, bruised right knee — is a log that any professional soccer player would covet given the brutal unpredictability of the game. A stud caught in damp grass can ruin a career. Messi, meanwhile, seemingly walks on water.

All that said, Messi is also a man capable of transcending the very traps designed to knock him over. Rarely does he crumple under a tackle (except for Wednesday’s knee knock that left the soccer world breathless and concerned); seldom does he cower or submit to the grinding dirge that can sometimes be modern soccer. Teams can park buses or subject him to reducers for 90 minutes, but rarely does it totally neuter his influence.

Rather, he’s always smiling, always creating. Never does the yoke of being so loved or intensely pressured to lead Barcelona wear him to a sulky nub. Where Ronaldo is abused endlessly (and unfairly) for not taking the occasional hardship or unfair decision in stride, Messi simply continues about his job, a shape-shifting genius with a permanent smile. Instead, the language of goals is his currency. Tap-ins, toe pokes, artful chips and rocketed drives. Volleys, the occasional header, a cheeky flick.

h/t: James

The stuff that theologians believe!

December 9, 2012 • 1:24 pm

Yes, it’s John Haught again: we haven’t seen him for a while, but I’ve been forced to read a chapter of his in yet another book on science and theology (there have been more than 10,000 books published since 1975 whose topic is “science and religion”).  In this chapter (reference below), Haught shows how biological evolution is a truly wonderful gift to theology because it advances our understanding of creation and redemption, eschatology, revelation, and grace.

I call this the “theological sausage grinder,” wherein the crafty neurons of theologians transform scientific necessities into theological virtues.  Here’s how Dr. Haught shows why evolution helps us understand revelation so much better. Get a load of this Sophisticated Theology™ (my emphasis on the most hilarious part):

Evolution also helps theology understand more fully what is implied in the idea of revelation.  Indeed, as Catholic theologian Karl Rahner has argued, reflection on the notion of revelation already anticipates an evolving cosmos.  Revelation is not fundamentally the communication of propositional information. Rather, revelation is at root the communication of God’s own being or selfhood to the world.  In simpler terms, the logical structure of revelation is that the infinite seeks to give itself away unreservedly to the finite world.  But the fullness of a divine infinity cannot be received instantaneously by a finite cosmos.  Such a reception could only take place incrementally or gradually.  A finite world could “adapt” to an infinite source of love only by a process of ongoing self-opening and self-transcendence, the external manifestation of which would appear to science as cosmic and biological evolution.  “Evolution” is the name we give to the empirically available aspects of the world’s self-transcendence as it exposes itself to the divine infinity. The inner substance of what we refer to as the “epic of evolution,” therefore, is the story of God’s self-communication to the world and the world’s response.

Remember, the guy gets paid to crank out stuff like this. How can any thinking human being engage in such shallow and devious rationalization? Is there any other theologian who would defend this? More important, why is this considered important stuff (Haught is, after all, an internationally recognized authority on the topic of science and religion)?

Or maybe Haught doesn’t really believe what he writes. It’s hard to think that an intelligent person could.

________

Quote is from pp. 86-87 in Haught, J. 2004. Neo-Darwinism in theological perspective. Pp. 77-90 in Miller, J. B. (ed). The Epic of Evolution: Science and Religion in Dialogue. Pearson/Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. (Remember that this is the proceedings of a Templeton-funded conference under the aegis of the American Association for the Advancement of Science).

Does science refute God? A debate

December 9, 2012 • 11:06 am

Last Wednesday there was an Intelligence² debate on the topic, “Does science refute God?” The video is now on YouTube (below), and features Lawrence Krauss and Michael Shermer on the ‘yes’ side versus Dinesh D’Souza and Ian Hutchinson (an MIT physicist whom we’ve encountered before) on the ‘no’ side. The moderator, who did a good job, was John Donovan of ABC News.

(BTW, I’ve since read Hutchinson’s new anti-scientism book, Monopolizing Knowledge: A Scientist Religion-Denying, Reason-Destroying Scientism, and, as the title suggests, it’s pretty dreadful. Dreadful for the usual reasons: Hutchinson says that many areas beyond science have an ability to produce knowledge, but gives, throughout the book, not a single example of such knowledge.)

At any rate, the two-hour debate is interesting, though, I think, not as compelling as the Intelligence² debate about religion between Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens on one hand and Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop Onaiyekan on the other, or the debate about the afterlife with Hitchens and Harris versus Rabbis David Wolpe and Bradley Artson Shavit.  Now those were debates! (Links are here and here).

Nevertheless, I think this is worth watching if you have the time, if for no other reason than to see how resistant the religious are to evidence, even though they admit the probative value of evidence.  For example, at 1:17:00 an audience member asks both sides what it would take to change their minds about God. Both Shermer and Krauss have answers (even though Shermer took the opposite stand in Mexico City, saying that the concept of God is incoherent and therefore not subject to empirical inquiry), but Davies says that nothing would change his mind and D’Souza doesn’t answer. That’s always a great question for the religious.

Oh, and I swear that at 1:14:42 it is actress Andie McDowell (who doesn’t identify herself) who asks a dumb question about how science can explain the creation of an orchid and whether they might be able to create an orchid themselves. She sits scowling petulantly as Krauss and Shermer answer. It is her, right?

Anyway, judging by the pre- and post-debate polling of the audience, the anti-accommodationism side won. Yay for us!

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Sir Patrick Moore, BBC astronomy presenter, dies aged 89

December 9, 2012 • 7:21 am

by Matthew Cobb

Sir Patrick Moore, the presenter of one of the longest-running British TV shows, The Sky At Night, has died aged 89. As its name indicates, The Sky At Night is a programme about astronomy, and Moore’s indefatigable enthusiasm and knowledge inspired generations of astronomers, both amateur and professional. Amazingly, Moore had been presenting the programme with his astonishing cut-glass accent for over half a century!

The Daily Telegraph says:

“Sir Patrick reckoned that he was the only person to have met the first man to fly, Orville Wright, the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, and the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong. He outlived them all.”

In a mail to Jerry, reader Pyers rightly summed up Moore’s influence:

To be honest, with the possible exception of David Attenborough, I can think of nobody who was instrumental in getting kids (of all ages) interested in science. Just to demonstrate the esteem he was held him, he was knighted and given one of the rarest of rare accolades: an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society.

Any WEIT readers who want to tell us how they were inspired by Moore, or have any striking memories, please post them below.

The BBC website has a series of glowing quotes from the great and the good:

Queen guitarist Brian May, who published a book on astronomy written with Sir Patrick, described him as a “dear friend, and a kind of father figure to me”.

He said: “Patrick will be mourned by the many to whom he was a caring uncle, and by all who loved the delightful wit and clarity of his writings, or enjoyed his fearlessly eccentric persona in public life.

“Patrick is irreplaceable. There will never be another Patrick Moore. But we were lucky enough to get one.”

British space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock said she was first inspired to “look at the night sky” through Sir Patrick.

“Through his regular monthly programmes he was telling us what to look for and what was out there and that was a real inspiration.

“Why [The Sky At Night] was so successful is because of his passion. He branched an amazing era, he was broadcasting before we actually went into space and so he saw a change in our understanding of the universe and he took us all the way through that, right up to today.”

Television presenter and physicist Professor Brian Cox posted a message on Twitter saying: “Very sad news about Sir Patrick. Helped inspire my love of astronomy. I will miss him!”

Space scientist Dr David Whitehouse said Sir Patrick was “the monthly source of information for youngsters interested in astronomy”.

“We relied on Patrick to tell us about the moon landings, the probe to the planets, the developments in astronomy, before the internet age.”

And Dr Marek Kakula, public astronomer at Royal Observatory in Greenwich, described him as a “very charming and hospitable man”.

“When you came to his home he would always make sure you had enough to eat and drink. He was full of really entertaining and amusing stories.

“There are many many professional astronomers like me who can actually date their interest in astronomy to watching Patrick on TV, so his impact on the world of professional astronomy as well as amateur is hard to overstate.”

Here’s Moore looking back over some of the best things they have covered on the last 50 years of the programme.

Here he is in 1987, giving us advice on how to buy a telescope:

And here’s an extract from a BBC4 documentary about the programme:

Oy vey! Freeman Dyson pronounces individual selection to be “fashionable dogma”

December 9, 2012 • 7:11 am

I don’t have a particular animus about scientists in one field weighing in on another, but they must have some degree of expertise to do so!  Here’s an example of someone making a pronouncement that they’re clearly unqualified to make.

Sadly, it’s the famous physicist Freeman Dyson, known mainly for his work on quantum electrodynamics but also in many other areas, including topology. He’s also religious, describing himself as a “nondenominational Christian), and won the Templeton Prize in 2000.

Now, near the end of his career (Dyson is 89), he’s decided, like E. O. Wilson, that “individual selection” (natural selection changing populations by the differential reproduction of individuals) is a nonstarter compared to “group selection” (the evolutionary transformation of species by the differential reproduction and survival of entire populations).

Dyson works at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and in its online publication he’s published a piece called “The Prisoner’s Dilemma,” The name refers to a tactical game in which two prisoners maneuver, without mutual contact, to get the best deal for themselves. Under some conditions this game, when played repeatedly by the same two individuals, leads to the “evolution” of cooperative strategies.  From that evolutionists have concluded that cooperation could evolve along those lines: when individuals know each other and interact repeatedly, their best strategy can be “tit for tat,” i.e., start off by being nice to the other person and then keep being nice until he turns uncooperative.  This might explain the evolution of cooperation in small bands of humans, the conditions under which our ancestors lived during most of their evolution.

Dyson’s own work shows that this answer is not so simple, and in his models the game doesn’t necessarily produce cooperation. That result is controversial, and since I don’t really understand the controversy I’ll shut up about that. What I want to mention is that Dyson, while describing this result, gets in some licks against individual selection:

I am interested in a bigger question, the relative importance of individual selection and group selection in the evolution of cooperation. Individual selection is caused by the death of individuals who make bad choices. Group selection is caused by the extinction of tribes or species that make bad choices. The fashionable dogma among biologists says that individual selection is the driving force of evolution and group selection is negligible. Richard Dawkins is especially vehement in his denial of group selection. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a model of evolution by individual selection only. That is why believers in the fashionable dogma take the model seriously.

Not really; it’s a model of behavior, not evolution.  To make it a model of evolution, you have to have a model of how genes cause behavior, and behaviors like these are undoubtedly caused not by single genes, but evolve by the fixation of several to many genes. Evolutionists have been interested in the “iterated prisoner’s dilemma” simply because under some circumstances it produces a “stable evolutionary strategy” of cooperation, showing that at least cooperative behavior could be adaptive. But that’s a long way from showing that the strategy could evolve from genetic precursors.

Now that may have been done already (this isn’t my field), but I am confident (based on nothing more than my gut feeling) that in a small group of individuals that can recognize each other and have memories and sophisticated thinking, one could evolve a strategy of cooperation very easily, and “altruistic” behaviors where you sacrifice some short-term advantage for the long-term advantage of cooperation.

At any rate, here’s Dyson’s two arguments against individual selection in general:

I do not believe the fashionable dogma. Here is my argument to show that group selection is important. Imagine Alice and Bob to be two dodoes on the island of Mauritius before the arrival of human predators. Alice has superior individual fitness and has produced many grandchildren. Bob is individually unfit and unfertile. Then the predators arrive with their guns and massacre the progeny indiscriminately. The fitness of Alice and Bob is reduced to zero because their species made a bad choice long ago, putting on weight and forgetting how to fly. I do not take the Prisoner’s Dilemma seriously as a model of evolution of cooperation, because I consider it likely that groups lacking cooperation are like dodoes, losing the battle for survival collectively rather than individually.

What a bizarre example? How often is an entire population extirpated? And what could those dodos have done, via cooperation or “altruism”, to prevent their massacre?  What we need are tons of examples of animals whose populations go extinct because they’re not as cooperative as other populations.  Of course one can make up such ludicrous scenarios, but are they realistic? Not this one! For one thing, it doesn’t have anything to do with cooperation, or, indeed, the evolution of any trait except flightlessness.  We don’t need such wildly speculative and unrealistic scenarios; we need data.  And don’t forget the formidable theoretical arguments against group selection: once cooperation evolves via differential reproduction of groups (while being disadvantageous to individuals), it’s unstable, and a mutant “uncooperative” individual will begin to spread its genes.  Also, groups turn over far less often than individuals, so the process is inefficient and unlikely.

Finally, as Steve Pinker has noted, sometimes populations succeed because they’re not “altruistic”: in warfare, it might be the most vicious groups, those least likely to coddle their own weak or sickly and most likely to slaughter others, who succeed. The Spartans may have been like this: cooperative as a group in killing others, but not so nice to each other.

Dyson continues:

Another reason why I believe in group selection is that I have vivid memories of childhood in England. For a child in England, there are two special days in the year, Christmas and Guy Fawkes. Christmas is the festival of love and forgiveness. Guy Fawkes is the festival of hate and punishment. Guy Fawkes was the notorious traitor who tried to blow up the King and Parliament with gunpowder in 1605. He was gruesomely tortured before he was burnt. Children celebrate his demise with big bonfires and fireworks. They look forward to Guy Fawkes more than to Christmas. Christmas is boring but Guy Fawkes is fun. Humans are born with genes that reward us with intense pleasure when we punish traitors. Punishing traitors is the group’s way of enforcing cooperation. We evolved cooperation by evolving a congenital delight in punishing sinners. The Prisoner’s Dilemma did not have much to do with it.

That’s just insane.  Yes, of course we want “traitors” punished—not just political ones but those who betray us, our family, and our social norms.  And I think some of that feeling—if not most of it—comes from evolution. But how does that implicate group rather than individual selection? After all, research shows that people are much more likely to want retribution against “traitors” who harm them or their families rather than those who harm society at large. That result is consonant with the evolution of retribution by individual selection (I count kin selection here), but not with group selection.  Who would you feel more animus toward: someone who robs you or your children, or someone who robs an anonymous person in Peoria? The former, of course!  If that feeling of “treason” evolved by group selection, there should be no difference in how you feel.

And pray tell us, Dr. Dyson, how can group selection rather than the “fashionable dogma” of individual selection explain things like mimicry, the blowholes of whales, or the fleetness of cheetahs.  Did some populations of proto-whales go extinct because their blowholes weren’t high enough on their foreheads, so they all drowned?

I don’t like imputing this kind of mush-brained thinking to age: after all, plenty of old people are still sharp as a tack, and the Argument from Age is an ad hominem. Rather, I think Dyson has simply overreached himself here, in the same way he overreaches when he pronounces on God.  At any rate, he needs a good chat with Richard Dawkins.

h/t: Callum

Riding the leviathan: how the blue whales noms

December 9, 2012 • 6:19 am

I‘ve posted videos before on the “barrel roll” of  blue whales feeding on krill and on preliminary data collected by the workers mentioned below; but now there’s finally a published paper and stunning new video that documents how the world’s largest animal feeds on some of the world’s smallest (krill are tiny shrimplike crustaceans). Let me reprise the behavior first; it’s shown at the first part of this not-so-good video. The whale rolls over, opens its mouth, and engulfs a patch of krill.

Jeremy Goldbogen, a graduate student at the University of British Columbia, works on feeding in blue whales.  In the video below, and the paper referenced below, he and his colleagues attached cameras to the backs of blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus, supposedly the largest creature that ever lived at 200 tons—the weight equivalent of about 150 Volkswagen Beetles), and followed their feeding behavior. The video, presented on National Public Radio’s Science Friday, is stunning:

In the paper, published in Biology Letters (free download here), Goldbogen and colleagues describe how (with the help of simulations), the 360° barrel rolls that the whales do when nomming serve two purposes: to orient the whales so they can get a good look at the prey patch from all angles (their eyes are, of course, on the side), and to enable them “to engulf the densest portion of the prey patch.” I’m not sure how the inversion does this, but the video at top suggests that the upside-down position enables them to “scoop up” the water more effectively.

According to Goldbogen et al., a single judiciously executed barrel roll by a dense patch of krill can provide the whale with enough food for an entire day!

The authors also mention three other cases of animals doing rolling maneuvers. I was familiar with the “death” roll of the alligator, in which the reptile spins around and around in the water with prey in its mouth, probably breaking its neck, ripping off a limb, or battering it to death.

Here’s a video of a crocodile doing the death roll, automatically, after it grabs a trainer’s arm [WARNING: don’t watch if you don’t want to see a human get bitten and his arm mangled]. I’m using the video because it shows the behavior so clearly, and how automatic it is.

The two other cases quoted by Goldbogen et al. involve “remora removal in spinner dolphins and “air-righting in geckos.”  Here’s “air-righting” in geckos, but how could they forget that cats do it, too!?

The video below shows the dolphins spinning as they jump out of the water; one appears to go around three or four times! I’m not sure whether this is for removing the annoying remoras, but it’s new to me:

h/t: Kurt

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Goldbogen, J. A., Calambokidis, J., Friedlaender, A. S., Francis, J., DeRuiter, S. L., Stimpert, A. K., Falcone, E., Southall, B. L. 2013. Underwater acrobatics by the world’s largest predator: 360° rolling maneuvers by lunge feeding blue whales. Biology Letters 9, published online: doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2012.0986.