A new organ discovered in baleen whales

May 24, 2012 • 4:59 am

Baleen whales have been hunted and ripped apart for hundreds of years, especially their mouths, where the baleen (extensions of the oral mucosa) was once used as stays in women’s corsets and in making buggy whips.  So it’s really surprising that only now have scientists discovered that there is a unique organ in their mouths that helps them feed.  This organ, described in a new paper in Nature by Nicholas Pyensen and five other authors (reference below), is found in rorqual whales, a subset of baleen whales that include blue whales, humpback whales, minke whales, and fin whales.

Baleen whales, which include the largest living animals on Earth, have a unique form of feeding: “lunge-feeding,” in which they suddenly ingest a  huge mouthful of water and then expel it, leaving the edible contents sticking to the sieve that is formed by the baleen. They then lick off the prey. The process is described in a nicely written editorial in the same issue of Nature, “A whale of a story“:

Rorqual whales capture much of their food by an extraordinary procedure known as lunge feeding. When a rorqual comes across a dense patch of prey, it accelerates through the water and open its mouth. As it does so, its mouth fills with water, suspended within which are the tiny animals that the whale wants. The amount of water that flows into the whale can more than double the creature’s weight, and to accommodate it, blubbery pleats under the lower jaw expand, just as an accordion grows as it fills with air. The once sleek and streamlined whale now has the shape of a bloated tadpole. And it has a lot of water in its mouth.

To squeeze the water out again, the whale closes its jaws and pushes the water out through plates of keratin filters, which trap the food. In this way, rorqual whales can gulp and graze for hours, repeatedly slowing down then lunging through the water.

I was stunned that they take in an amount of water equal to their weight: these are the most massive creatures on Earth!

Now I’ve posted on baleen whales several times before, including discussions of transitional forms and vestigial tooth buds, and I also posted the following video of the lunge-feeding of a blue whale, which I reproduce again so you can see this amazing behavior (watch the first 10 seconds only):

So what did the authors find? Examining hunted specimens of fin and minke whales (both rorquals), they discovered a strange organ in the middle of the lower jaw (actually, the lower jaw consists of two bones that aren’t connected, allowing them to open their mouths even wider. Here’s a diagram of where that organ is (it’s the bit labeled “so” in the upper part of the diagram below; click to enlarge).  There are also “vibrissae” (“vib”), or whiskerlike protrusions that probably aid in detecting prey.

Here are the keratin “bristles” on the baleen plates that filter out the prey (largely krill, or small crustaceans); the whales literally comb the prey out of the water:

The sensory organ is a unique feature in these animals. It’s a fibrous capsule, about 40 cm (16 inches) across, filled with a gel-like substance that contains connective tissue with nerves and nerve terminals, as well as “mechanoreceptors” (nerve receptors that sense changes in position or deformation) embedded in that tissue. Here’s a picture of the organ from the paper:

Mandibular symphysis in sagittal section, showing bony and soft tissue around the sensory organ (so) and papillae (pa) within it. raf, relictual alveolar foramen.

The authors suggest that, based on its position, its anatomy, and its possession of nerves that run to the brain, this organ provides sensory input to the brain when the whale is opening and twisting its jaws during bouts of lunge-feeding.  In other words, it helps coordinate the critical feeding movement and makes sure it’s done correctly. The authors suggest this scenario for how lunge-feeding works. It’s in scientific jargon but not too hard to follow:

We propose a three-step lunge-feeding model to explain the organ’s role during a lunge: (1) using vibrissae present on the external surface of the chin, rorquals register prey fields of sufficient density; (2) the jaws disengage and rotate6, thereby compressing and shearing the organ; and (3) the oropharyngeal cavity reaches full expansion, with drag forces acting on the inside of the mouth transmitted to the organ through the YSF8 (Fig. 2). According to dynamic modelling studies, rorquals must actively control the rate of mouth openingand throat-pouch expansion to effectively maximize volume captured; we propose that the sensory organ has a key role in coordinating this movement.

It’s surprising that given the history of whaling, nobody either noticed or took an interest in the organ before.  How it evolved, and what its precursor was, are mysteries that remained to be solved. It just goes to show that many of these mysteries have been right under our noses for a long time. What’s important is to notice them, get curious, and ask the right questions.

______

Peyensen, N.D., J. A. Goldbogen, A. W. Vogel, G. Szathmary, R. L. Drake and R. E. Shadwick. 2012. Discovery of a sensory organ that coordinates lunge feeding in rorqual whales. Nature 485: 498–501; doi:10.1038/nature11135

Mencken week, day 6

May 24, 2012 • 3:30 am

Some of Mencken’s best journalism was his reportage for the Baltimore Evening Sun on the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in Dayton, Tennessee. Mencken didn’t even pretend to be objective. This excerpt, about dueling speeches between prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan and defense attorney Dudley Fields Malone, was published on July 7, 1925.

Malone was put up to follow and dispose of Bryan, and he achieved the business magnificently. I doubt that any louder speech has ever been heard in a court of law since the days of Gog and Magog. It roared out of the open windows like the sound of artillery practice, and alarmed the moonshiners and catamounts on distant peaks. Trains thundering by on the nearby railroad sounded faint and far away and when, toward the end, a table covered with standing and gaping journalists gave way with a crash, the noise seemed, by contrast, to be no more than a pizzicato chord upon a viola da gamba. The yokels outside stuffed their Bibles into the loud-speaker horns and yielded themselves joyously to the impact of the original. In brief, Malone was in good voice. It was a great day for Ireland. And for the defense. For Malone not only out-yelled Bryan, he also plainly out-generaled and out-argued him. His speech, indeed, was one of the best presentations of the case against the fundamentalist rubbish that I have ever heard.

It was simple in structure, it was clear in reasoning, and at its high points it was overwhelmingly eloquent. It was not long, but it covered the whole ground and it let off many a gaudy skyrocket, and so it conquered even the fundamentalists. At its end they gave it a tremendous cheer — a cheer at least four times as hearty as that given to Bryan. For these rustics delight in speechifying, and know when it is good. The devil’s logic cannot fetch them, but they are not above taking a voluptuous pleasure in his lascivious phrases.

The whole speech was addressed to Bryan, and he sat through it in his usual posture, with his palm-leaf fan flapping energetically and his hard, cruel mouth shut tight. The old boy grows more and more pathetic. He has aged greatly during the past few years and begins to look elderly and enfeebled. All that remains of his old fire is now in his black eyes. They glitter like dark gems, and in their glitter there is immense and yet futile malignancy. That is all that is left of the Peerless Leader of thirty years ago. Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the coca-cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor half-wits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards. His own speech was a grotesque performance and downright touching in its imbecility. Its climax came when he launched into a furious denunciation of the doctrine that man is a mammal. It seemed a sheer impossibility that any literate man should stand up in public and discharge any such nonsense. Yet the poor old fellow did it. Darrow stared incredulous. Malone sat with his mouth wide open.

You can find all of Mencken’s reports on the trial here.

Clarence Darow (l) and William Jennings Bryan at Dayton. It was hot, ergo Bryan’s fan. The judge also allowed the lawyers to remove their coats.

Eclipse teaser

May 23, 2012 • 1:08 pm

I’m in communication with the group of WEIT readers who convened at the Grand Canyon on Sunday to view, paint, and photograph the annular eclipse. And I’m told that there are some really nice pictures and artwork to come.  As a teaser, here are are two of our friends at work, Ben Goren with his camera on the left, and Kelly Houle with her painting setup at right. Notice that these are serious artists!  I’ll put up the final products, I hope, in a few days.

h/t: daveau for the photo, posted with permission of the principals

Government money goes to fund creationism (and athletes)

May 23, 2012 • 10:25 am

Yesterday’s New York Times contains a long and disturbing piece by Stephanie Saul, “Public money finds back door to private schools,” detailing how residents of several U.S. states can get tax credits for donating money to funds enabling poverty-stricken kids in dysfunctional public schools to attend private ones.  The tax-free money is funneled to students through private organizations.

That in itself isn’t so bad, but what is bad is how the money is used:

  • It’s used by well-off people to donate money for scholarships for their own children, some of whom are already in private schools
  • It’s used by people to solicit money from their friends and relatives to support the solicitor’s kids, some of whom are already in private schools
  • Most of the private schools for which scholarships are given are religious schools, particularly in the South. And, of course, those religious schools are advertising big time to get students into their brainwashing tanks.
  • Up to 20% of the scholarship money can go to the coordinating organization itself rather than the students
  • Donors can actually make money by filing both federal charitable deductions and state tax credits. In other words, they make money on the scheme.
  • It’s used by private schools to beef up their athletic programs. In Georgia, for example, athletic scholarships are banned in public schools, but this program allows organizations to give the donated scholarship money to student athletes. This is clearly being done, as the article shows.
  • And to my mind the worst part: the money sends kids to schools where biology classes teach creationism instead of evolution. Here’s what the NYT says:

Many religiously affiliated schools across the country are known for turning out well-educated students and teaching core subjects without a sectarian bias. But some schools financed by the tax-credit programs teach a fundamentalist dogma holding that the world was literally created in six days. Some of the schools use textbooks produced by Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Book, a Christian publisher in Pensacola, Fla.

The books became an issue in 2005 when the University of California system said it would not honor some credits of students who attended schools that use them.

In an ensuing lawsuit filed against the university by Christian schools, Donald Kennedy, a biologist who is a former president of Stanford, said in court papers that the science texts made statements that were “flatly wrong” and “plainly contrary to the scientific facts” when hewing to creationist theory. The case was ultimately decided in favor of the university.

“It’s a Christian curriculum, and some parts of it are controversial,” said Jon East, vice president for policy at Step Up For Students, the organization that runs the Florida scholarship program. The books are also used in some schools in Georgia and Pennsylvania.

An A Beka high school science text concluded that “much variety within the human race has developed from the eight people who left the Ark.” Another text, used in sixth grade, makes repeated references to Noah and the flood, which it calls the reason for both the world’s petroleum reserves and the development of fossils.

History and economics texts are also infused with fundamentalist theology and an unabashedly conservative viewpoint. The Great Depression, one says, was exaggerated to move the country toward socialism, and it described “The Grapes of Wrath” as propaganda.

Frances Paterson, a professor at Valdosta State University in Georgia who has studied the books, said they “frequently resemble partisan, political literature more than they do the traditional textbooks used in public schools.”

And look at this nifty piece of rationalizing:

Mr. Arnold, the headmaster of the Covenant Christian Academy in Cumming, Ga., confirmed that his school used those texts but said they were part of a larger curriculum.

“You have to keep in mind that the curriculum goes beyond the textbook,” Mr. Arnold said. “Not only do we teach the students that creation is the way the world was created and that God is in control and he made all things, we also teach them what the false theories of the world are, such as the Big Bang theory and Darwinism. We teach those as fallacies.”

Yep, they teach evolution, but as a fallacy. What a pack of lying morons.

At any rate, while this would seem to violate the Constitutional wall between church and state (people get government tax deductions for sending people to religious schools), it’s hard to test because the money chain goes entirely through private hands:

“The difficulty of getting at this thing from a constitutional point of view is that there are private dollars coming from a private individual and going to a private foundation. It drives the N.E.A. completely off the wall because they can’t say this is government funding,” Mr. Franks said, referring to the National Education Association. [Franks is an Arizona Republican and former state lawmaker.]

. . . As predicted, tax credits have thus far withstood legal challenges, most recently when the Supreme Court upheld Arizona’s program last year. It had been challenged on the grounds that it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits government endorsement of religion.

Only the partisan and malevolent Bushie Supreme Court could make a ruling like that.  I only hope a Kitzmiller v. Dover case doesn’t come up before them.  And it will be a long time before the conservative members start dying off.

Mencken Week, day 5

May 23, 2012 • 8:00 am

This is from p. 333 of Minority Report: H. L. Mencken’s Notebooks:

Religion, of course, does make some men better, and perhaps even many men. There can be no doubt of it. But making them better by filling their poor heads with grotesque nonsense is an irrational and wasteful process, and the harm it does greatly outweighs the good. If men could be made better—or even only happier—by teaching them that two and two make five there would be plenty of fools to advocate that method, but it would remain anti-social nonetheless. If the theologians could only agree on their doctrines their unanimity might have some evidential value, just as the agreement of all politicians that the first duty of the citizen is to obey them and admire them has some evidential value. It may not be true, but it is at least undisputed by all save a small fraction of heretics, which is certainly something. Fortunately for common sense, the theologians are never able to agree. Even within the sects, and under the more rigid discipline, there is constant wrangling, as, for example, between the Jesuits and the Dominicans. Thus the cocksureness of one outfit is cancelled out by the ribald denial of all the rest, and rational men are able to consign the whole gang to statistics and the Devil.

In a day or two I’ll put up some of Mencken’s famous reportage from the Scopes Trial in 1925. It’s among the most amusing stuff he wrote.

People of Cyprus: rise up against Noah’s Ark in your biology textbooks!

May 23, 2012 • 4:59 am

The government of Cyprus is putting Noah’s Ark in school biology textbooks (granted, it’s not explicitly presented as a fact), and they’re also completely leaving out evolution.  This information was sent to me by Marc Srour, a research associate at the Enalia Physis Environmental Research Center, who has posted a piece on Cyprus Freethinkers: “Open letter concerning Noah’s Ark in biology textbooks”

Srour also posted a description of this duplicitous and offensive practice on the website Teaching Biology,

The Ministry of Education of Cyprus has issued new biology textbooks for schoolchildren [JAC: Marc says these are for 12- and 13-year olds], and one of the pages there is devoted to retelling the story of Noah’s Ark, placing him as the saviour of Earth’s biodiversity. The offending page and my letter to the Ministry are below. Please, if you care at all about this issue, share the letter (or this whole post), sign the petition linked at the end, and spread the word around. A clean copy of the letter without my lengthy introduction can be found at Cyprus Freethinkers.

You can sign the petition here; it’s in Greek but I think Google translator or the Chrome translate will enable you to verify its content.  And anyone can sign it.  Strike a blow for good biology everywhere.  And here’s the relevant page of the textbook:

Marc’s translation of the above:

Bubble 1:
According to the Book of Genesis from the Old Testament (2: 15, 19-20), God:
a) asked Adam to cultivate and protect the Garden of Eden, and
b) brought to him every living entity, so he can name them.
Think of why Adam’s action in naming all the organisms was an important prerequisite allowing him to cultivate and protect the garden.

Bubble 2:
Noah continued Adam’s work, preserving all the living organisms that would be endangered by the waters of the cataclysm.
Therefore, in modern terms, Noah protected the biodiversity of our planet.
Think of what you can do today to protect the living organisms of our planet.

I asked Marc if he could find any mention of evolution in the textbook, and he said this:

Not at all. I didn’t spot any mention of evolution in any section, not in the introduction and not in the most relevant section about classification and taxonomy (where Noah’s Ark is). The other sections are organismal biology (no mention of evolution, just information on organs, tissues, cells), human reproduction, photosynthesis, and trophic relationships. It’s simply not in the curriculum for this age.

Why is this happening? As you might guess, Cyprus is one of the Western world’s most religious nations.  In a list of European countries ranked by religiosity, Cyrus is second highest (after Malta), with 90% of the inhabitants agreeing with the statement “I believe there is a God,” 7% asserting “I believe there is some sort of spirit or life force,” and only 2% saying that “I don’t believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force” (data from a 2005 Eurobarometer poll).  78% of Cypriots are member of the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus.  And as I’ve stressed here repeatedly, the more religious a country is, the less likely it is to accept evolution. Only faitheists, liberal religious folks, and present or former members of the National Center for Science Education would deny that there’s a real connection between the two factors.

Here’s how Cyprus ranks in accepting evolution (statistics published by Miller et al. in 2006):

They’re third from the bottom: only the U.S. (shame on us!) and Turkey are lower. (Turkish citizens answer the three religion questions given above at 95%, 2%, and 1%.  Many Cypriots are of Turkish origin, of course.)

Make way for ducklings!

May 23, 2012 • 3:13 am

When I walk to work each morning, I take a minute to inspect the newest crop of ducklings at Botany Pond, the manmade (and beautiful) pond outside my building.  I count them to make sure that none have disappeared the previous day (sadly, that happens).  This morning I filmed the mother and a few of her offspring; they’ve now learned to come to the edge of the pond for feeding when a human approaches.

You can hear me greet them at the beginning of the video; I have a habit of greeting birds and squirrels in the morning.