The mystery of flatfish evolution: part of it now solved

June 23, 2024 • 10:15 am

Flatfish, in the order Pleuronectiformes, have long been an evolutionary puzzle, for all the fish in this order lie on the substrate—on their sides—with both eyes on one side of their  body, like the flounder below:

By Moondigger – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5

Phylogenetic analysis shows that flatfish evolved from “regular” fish, fish having one eye on each side and swimming vertically, that evolved over time to lie on their sides. The bizarre thing about this evolution is that it involved genetic changes so that “normal” fish had their eyes move over the top of their head so that both eyes look upwards.  Their skin changes color and texture, too, with the top half colored, as above, and the bottom half pale.

And all flatfish begin their development like “normal fish”, swimming vertically and having one eye on each side of the head. Then, as the fish gets older, one eye migrates over the top of the skull to the other side! (You can see that in the video below.)

When the eyes are both on one side, the flatfish tip onto their sides and spend the rest of their adult life lying on one side. (The side varies among species: some have 100% right-sided individuals, others 100% left-sided, and some species are random, with half of the individuals having the right eye move over (and lying on their right side), and the other half having the left eye move.

Living on the substrate like this, and often camouflaged as the flounder above, is an advantage for the fish, both protecting them from predators and, since they are predatory piscivores (fish eaters), hiding from their prey.

Here’s a video of the development of a young flatfish, showing the eye migration.  Since the ancestor had both eyes on one side, like the young flatfish, this is a case of “ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny”—that is, the development of a single living fish goes through a process mimicking the evolution of their adult ancestors.

But since the weird developmental pathway is presumably an adaptation that evolved by (presumably stepwise) natural selection, two big questions immediately arise:

  1. What were the intermediate evolutionary stages of eye migration?
  2. What were the evolutionary advantages of this migration, which presumably involved a gradual evolutionary movement of the eye from the side to the top of the head, and then over the head to the other side?  It’s hard to see how, for example, an eye that’s halfway around, so it’s close to the top of the skull but hasn’t moved to the other side, could leave more offspring, or survive better, than their ancestors. What would be the advantage of each small step of the migration?

It’s hard to envision a gradual Darwinian process that could produce this migration. As Carl Zimmer wrote in a new NYT article that summarizes recent flatfish findings (click below), Darwin’s critics used both questions about to cast doubt on his theory.  In response, some “saltationists”, who assumed that major evolutionary changes occurred in one huge step rather than a series of gradual steps, said that a single mutation moved the eye from one side to the other. (But that would not be advantageous unless the fish had already evolved to lie on its side!)

Click below to read the Zimmer piece in the NYT here (the drawing is animated), or find it archived here. 

 

As Carl reports, there was another weird finding that now seems doubtful: a 2001 paper by a group of Chinese researchers who, using DNA=based family trees, seemed to show that flatfish evolved twice.  You can see that paper in Nature Genetics by clicking on the headline below, or read the pdf here.  The discovery that flatfish seemed to be “polyphyletic”—with more than one evolutionarily independent origin—was deeply weird, because the hormone-induced eye migration, which is extraordinarily complex, would have had to evolve twice. It’s not impossible, but seemed unlikely. One of the doubters was evolutionist Matt Friedman, who got his Ph.D. here and is now a professor at the University of Michigan and director of its Museum of Paleontology.

A while back, when he was still at Chicago, Friedman published what I see as the most interesting of the three papers highlighted here. This one was in Nature, and you can read it by clicking below or seeing the pdf here

Note that this paper was a lot of work, and yet, unlike the others, Friedman was the sole author. I love to see single-person research efforts like this.  That aside, what Friedman found were two fossil evolutionary intermediates between adult “normal” fishes (the presumed ancestors of flatfish) and modern flatfishes, having both eyes on one side. Friedman reanalyzed a neglected species, Amphistium paradoxum, and a described a new fossil fish, Heteronectes chaneti, both from the lower Eocene, about 50 million years ago.

Amazingly, both species (the former randomly sided and the latter lying on its left side) showed an intermediate placement of the eyes in the adult fish. Both eyes were on the same side of a vertically-oriented fish, but one eye had migrated upwards toward the top of the skull, so that the fish could presumably see both to the side and also, perhaps, a bit above them.  Thus we have two evolutionary intermediates of the adult stage, likely showing that the eye movement did not occur in one big evolutionary leap.

Here’s a photo from the 2008 paper of the left and right sides of the H. chaneti skull, showing the eye sockets, which I’ve circled.  The asymmetry is obvious:

(from the paper): a, Heteronectes chaneti gen. et sp. nov., holotype, NHMW 1974.1639.25 (dextral morph); transfer preparation dusted with ammonium chloride and presented in right-lateral view. b, Counterpart, NHMW 1974.1639.24; transfer preparation dusted with ammonium chloride and presented in left-lateral view, showing migrated orbit.

And a reconstruction of the Amphistium species, showing both sides. The asymmetry is again clear, but the eyes of the adults are still on opposite sides of the head:

(From the paper): b, Reconstruction of Amphistium, showing sinistral (front) and dextral (back) individuals in the left lateral view (modified from ref. 20)

You’ve probably realized that this addresses question #1 above, showing that the movement was presumably gradual over evolutionary time, though we need more fossils to show that it was a continuous series of small steps. But at least the movement didn’t seem to involve one big leap.

But that leaves question #2, which I’ll address in a moment.

The reason Zimmer’s note came out now, though the papers above date from 2008 and 2021, is that a group of authors recently published another DNA based analysis in Nature Genetics showing that the Chinese group was probably wrong: flatfishes and their eye movements seem to have had a single evolutionary origin. (The Chinese group maintains that their “polyphyly” conclusion is still the best one.)

Click below to read, or find the pdf here.

 

Before returning to the Big Unsolved Question, I’ll show the phylogeny advanced in the 2001 paper (bottom), showing two origins of flattening and eye migration, and the newer analysis by Duarte-Ribiero et al.  at the top (Friedman is the third author), showing a single origin of flatfish (I’ve circled it).  This newer paper also singles out some genes that, showing signs of selection in their DNA sequence, may be involved in the evolutionary transformation, but I’ll leave that issue aside.  Green silhouettes are flatfish, black are nonflat fish.

(Part of it from paper): (From paper, and there’s more): a, FM tree estimated using LEA’s dataset with ASTRAL under an NHM (GHOST) of nucleotide substitution (see Supplementary Note 2 for details on time calibration). b, FP tree illustrates the phylogenetic hypothesis and divergence times proposed by LE

Now for the big mystery.  How could there possibly be an evolutionary advantage to each step of the eye movement? Presumably the adult either laid on its side or swam “normally”, and what would be the advantage of intermediate stages when the eye gradually moved up, across the top of the skull, and settling on the other side?  The movement is presumably advantageous only when the fish is already on its side, but then what would be the advantage of moving a few mm towards the top of the skull?

Well, perhaps the fish didn’t lie fully on its side. Here’s one clue in a quote from the 2008 paper:

Questions about the possible selective advantage of incomplete orbital transit arise from the discovery of stem flatfishes. Clues are given by living taxa, which often prop their bodies above the substrate by depressing their dorsal- and anal-fin rays. Similar behaviour might have permitted Amphistium and Heteronectes—both of which have long median-fin rays—the use of both eyes while on the sea floor. The unusual morphology and resting orientation of pleuronectiforms have been interpreted as adaptations for prey ambus, and it is clear that stem flatfishes, like morphologically primitive living forms, were piscivorous; one specimen of Amphistium (MCSNV V.D.91+92) contains the remains of a fish nearly half its own length.

So perhaps this happened: a normal ancestor, through behavioral evolution, adapted to hanging around the sea bottom, as they were less conspicuous and could get more prey.  But they’d have a more difficult time seeing upwards with eyes on both sides of the head. Movements of the eyes toward the top of the skull could be advantageous so long as they occurred in concert with behavioral changes (first perhaps learned, then evolved) involving propping themselves up with their fins. The advantage of tilting a bit would be that the fish might become a bit less conspicuous.

This whole scenario, as I proposed it (and I’m sure others have before in some form) presumes that the eye movement is either induced by or occurs in concert with changes in the fish’s behavior, which initially could have been learned and not coded in the genes. (Ernst Mayr once said something like “all major evolutionary changes begin with a change in behavior”). I don’t know how to test the hypothesis, as even finding more fossils with intermediate stages of eye migration will tell us little about the selective pressures involved. But for sure the movement involved natural selection rather than other evolutionary forces like genetic drift, for we have a big directional change involving many genes, genes that involve both morphology and behavior.

In short, I don’t know how it happened. But seeing that modern fishes can use their fins to prop themselves up on the sea floor may give us a clue. And other scenarios may be possible; readers can entertain themselves by finding alternative ways this change could have occurred by natural selection.

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 23, 2024 • 8:15 am

It’s Sunday, and that means we have a new batch of bird photos from John Avise. John’s notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Poland Birds, Part 2 

This week’s post shows several more of the birds that I photographed on an extended seminar trip to Poland in the spring of 2012.

Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius):

Lesser Spotted Eagle (Clanga pomarina):

Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata), an introduced species:

Middle Spotted Woodpecker (Leiopicus medius):

Mute Swan (Cygnus olor):

Northern Shrike (Lanius borealis):

Red-backed Shrike (Lanius collurio):

Short-toed Treecreeper (Certhia brachydactyla):

Song Thrush (Turdus philomelos):

Spotted Flycatcher (Muscicapa striata):

Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus):

White Stork (Ciconia ciconia):

White Wagtail (Motacilla alba):

White-winged Tern (Chlidonias leucopterus):

Willow Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus):

Common Woodpigeon (Columba palumbus):

Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella):

Sunday: Hili dialogue

June 23, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Sunday, June 23, 2024, and National Pecan Sandies Day, referring to one species of a “sandie“, a sugar cookie. Here’s a particularly good version of a cookie that’s usually dry: lemon pecan sandies with nuts on top:

torbakhopper, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Hydration Day, so don’t forget to carry around your bottle of water to suck on, International Widows’ Day, SAT Math Day (it’s coming back), National Detroit-Style Pizza Day (read about it here; it’s not worth considering unless you lack access to Chicago or New York pizzas), Pink Flamingo Day, Saint John’s Eve and the first day of the Midsummer celebrations (although this is not the real summer solstice), and United Nations Public Service Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 23 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT has a guest op-ed by Michael LaRosa, identified as “a former special assistant to President Biden and a former press secretary for Jill Biden.”  And LaRosa is worried that Trump could pick a certain running mate who could damage Biden in blue states like Pennsylvania (LaRosa’s home). Who is it?

There is one person on Donald Trump’s reported shortlist of running mates who has the ability to carve a Pennsylvania-shaped slice out of the so-called blue wall of Rust Belt states that Democratic presidential candidates typically need to win: Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

That sound you’re hearing is the collective explosion of heads from my friends in the Democratic Party, followed by admonitions that “Latinos do not vote as a monolith.” That’s true: Cuban, Venezuelan, Dominican and Mexican Americans, as well as Puerto Ricans, do not vote in unison.

But there is something Latino voters have in common: their Latin American roots and the pride that comes from casting a vote for someone who looks and talks like them. Mr. Rubio would break a significant cultural barrier as the first Latino on a national ticket. We’ve seen how that feeling of cultural and identity pride can marshal voters and transcend ideological and partisan preferences, and it should never be underestimated.

Seldom do running mates play an outsize role in our presidential contests, as most voters focus on the top of the ticket. But Mr. Rubio gives Mr. Trump something no other presidential candidate has offered — the chance for Latinos to vote for one of their own to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

. . . To understand just how much of a threat Mr. Rubio would pose to Democrats, let’s consider the conventional wisdom: Mr. Trump is likely to win back some Sun Belt states he lost in 2020, while Mr. Biden is holding his own in the Rust Belt. But if Mr. Biden loses Pennsylvania, it would almost certainly be curtains for his campaign.

. . . If even a fifth of Pennsylvania’s roughly 615,000 eligible Latino voters back Mr. Trump, they could easily swing the state to the red column. Most political strategists agree that the state will be won by a slender margin in November.

Now LaRosa concentrates on Pennsylvania, and I’m not sure what effect Rubio’s choice for VP would have on votes elsewhere.  I’m no pundit!  But I did hear on last night’s NBC News that Trump had narrowed his choice of VP down to three candidates—and one of them is Rubio.

*The Washington Post has a lame article about how this week’s Presidential-candidate debate might change the probabilities of Biden and Trump. DUUUH! But I do have a sense that this one is especially important, as voters will be looking for signs of senility in Biden and of insanity in Trump. They both need to be steady and hinged rather than unhinged (I don’t know if the latter is possible with Trump).  But here’s what scares me:

Recently, there has been some movement, in Biden’s direction. It has come since Trump was convicted of 34 felony charges in the New York trial involving hush money payments to an adult-film actress and the falsification of business records. The movement is incremental at best, leaving the two candidates still in a statistical dead heat nationally. The battleground states remain competitive, though Trump has had a narrow advantage in more of them than Biden this year.

An aggregation of national polls in June, compiled by The Post’s polling unit, currently shows Biden leading Trump in a two-way race by two-tenths of a percentage point. In March, just ahead of the president’s State of the Union address, Trump was leading by 1.2 percentage points. With third-party candidates included, the current poll average shows the two tied, compared with a Trump lead of six-tenths of a percentage point in May. Overall, a small change.

One closely watched polling average produced byFiveThirtyEight showed Biden leading Trump by two-tenths of a percentage point, 40.7 percent to 40.5 percent as of Friday. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was at 9.7 percent in this aggregation. On the day before his conviction in New York, Trump was leading in this average by 1.2 percentage points.

Another popular poll aggregator, RealClearPolitics, shows Trump leading by half a percentage point. Just ahead of Biden’s State of the Union, Trump’s lead was 2.3 percentage points; on the day before his conviction, his lead was 1.2 percentage points. With third-party candidates included, Trump leads by 1.3 percentage points. RealClearPolitics noted on Friday — perhaps as a reality check to remind people that 2024 is not 2020 — that at this time in 2020, its average of polls showed Biden leading Trump by 9.8percentage points.

Here’s an aggregate of the polls from yesterday afternoon’s FiveThirtyEight:

It’s a squeaker, and Biden’s 0.2% advantage doesn’t hearten me much. Not only do I have to worry about Trump being elected, but, even if he’s not, I have to worry about him pulling another “Stop the Steal” stunt with all that that entails.  Oy, my kishkes!

*From the WSJ, a title that discombobulated me a bit: “America is running out of options in the Gaza war.”  This implies that it’s our war, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that Biden’s strategy seems to be aimed at assuring not Israel’s victory, but Biden’s in November:

When war erupted in Gaza last year, the Biden administration hoped to keep the conflict short, stay closely aligned with Israel and stem the war’s spread to Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East.

Eight months later, achieving those goals is proving increasingly difficult for the White House, highlighting a political vulnerability for President Biden ahead of his face-to-face debate against the presumed Republican nominee, Donald Trump, on Thursday.

U.S.-led talks on a cease-fire to halt the war and free hostages held by Hamas have all but collapsed. Attacks by Hezbollah across Israel’s northern border have intensified, raising the Biden administration’s fears of a full-fledged conflict. And the White House and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have traded accusations over whether the U.S. has slowed arms deliveries.

The strains underscore Biden’s challenge of achieving a foreign-policy win ahead of the November U.S. presidential election, a win that would require agreement from warring parties operating under a very different timeline.

The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has shown little interest in concluding a swift cease-fire, and Netanyahu’s opposition to a Palestinian state has sidelined the Biden administration’s broader strategy for the region, including stabilizing a postwar Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at a cemetery in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. PHOTO: SHAUL GOLAN/PRESS POOL

Eventually the leaders will tire of war and favor a deal, but not as quickly as Biden hopes. “Their clocks are not synchronized with Biden’s,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They are much more in line with one another, and they are ticking much more slowly.”

I’ve written many times how I think Biden is misguided in trying to get a ceasefire, implementing a strategy that would keep Hamas in power while Israel has to release thousands of Palestinian terrorists from its jails to get back the hostages (of whom only 50 may still be alive) and their bodies.  Biden told Israel that invading Rafah was a “red line” that should not be crossed, but then changed his mind.  And Blinken is constantly shuttling to Israel trying to talk the War Cabinet (now just Netanyahu) into simply stopping the war, ensuring that Israel would lose.  This only makes sense in light of Biden’s strategy being aimed at, as the article above implies, ensuring his re-election. I consider manipulating somebody else’s war so you can stay in power unethical at best.  I do appreciate America remaining as Israel’s ally, and supplying it with the tools of war, but Biden’s public waffling about the war has confused me.

*The Free Press proclaims that “Astronomers may have found life beyond Earth.”  “May have found life”?  What’s the evidence for that?  Here it is:

A few months ago, the space telescope hoovered up several as-yet-unreleased images of K2-18b, an exoplanet—meaning a planet outside our solar system. K2-18b is 120 light-years from Earth and, importantly, resides in the habitable, or Goldilocks, zone around the star it orbits. Not too hot, not too cold, it may be just the right temperature for an Earth-like atmosphere that might—might—include life.

Until the 1990s, human beings didn’t know exoplanets existed. Now, we know there are 5,000-plus in our galaxy alone; in the wider universe, astronomers believe there may be as many as 40 billion in the habitable zone.

“There might be simple life all throughout the galaxy,” Jessie Christiansen, an astrophysicist at Caltech and chief scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, told me. She meant microbes, bacteria, single-celled organisms.

Alexei Filippenko, a UC Berkeley astronomer, told me in an email: “If there is life on K2-18b, it would demonstrate that life on Earth is not unique—a very important discovery.” He added: “Perhaps it would change the religious outlooks of some people, but not others. It depends on whether one subscribes to the belief that God made Earth unique in terms of life.”

Whether there is intelligent life is the big question, Jessie Christiansen said. That is, organisms with brains or brain-like structures.

Astronomers are now poring over the images from the James Webb Space Telescope, and in a few months we’ll know whether the molecule dimethyl sulfide is found in K2-18b’s atmosphere. If it is, the odds that there’s life on K2-18b will have jumped.

Well, I’d bet a lot that there is some other planet that has life on it in our Universe—there simply must be, unless you think God chose only Earth for life.  And dimethyl sulfide is a biogenic compound, found on Earth only when produced by plants, algae, or bacteria. Wikipedia repeats this claim, which isn’t new:

On September 12, 2023, NASA announced that their investigation into exoplanet K2-18b revealed the possible presence of dimethyl sulfide, noting “On Earth, this is only produced by life.”

The question is whether on other planets the molecule can be produced abiogenically—in the absence of life.  I’d guess no, but we’re far from knowing everything about other planets!

*I’ve always maintained that when it comes to writing about the war between Israel and Hamas, the NYT’s Tom Friedman is about the dumbest analyst out there. Now The Elder of Ziyon has a good takedown on the stupidity of Thomas Friedman (the title of the Elder’s piece is “How stupid is Thomas Friedman? (How wet is water?)”  Friedman’s statements are doubly indented below.

My estimation of Friedman keeps going even lower.

From his latest idiocy:

Yes, yes, I can hear the criticism from the war hawks right now: “Friedman, you would let Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, come out of his tunnel and declare victory?”
Yes, I would.In fact, I wish I could be at the news conference in Gaza when he does, so I could ask the first question:

“Mr. Sinwar, you claim this is a great victory for Hamas — a total Israeli withdrawal and a stable cease-fire. I just want to know: What existed on Oct. 6 between you and Israel, before your surprise attack? Oh, let me answer that: a total Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a stable cease-fire. If you don’t mind, I’d like to stick around for a few days to watch you explain to Gazans how you started an eight-month war — causing the destruction of roughly 70 percent of Gaza’s housing stock and leaving, by your count, some 37,000 Gazans dead, many of them women and children — so you could get Gaza back to exactly where it was on Oct. 6, in a cease-fire with Israel and no Israeli troops here. Another Hamas victory like this and Gaza will be permanently unlivable.”

I have a news flash for Tom Friedman: Gaza is not a democracy. Yahya Sinwar has never given a press conference in his life and he never will. He isn’t afraid of reporters’ questions because he would kill any reporter who manages to publicly ask him something that would make him look bad.

Every reporter in Gaza knows this, but somehow the great  award-winning Tom Friedman hasn’t quite grasped that

And to Israelis who would ask, “Friedman, are you crazy, you would let Sinwar run Gaza again?” my answer would again be — yes, for now.

And who, pray tell, would remove Sinwar sometime in the future?  I guess that’s a “day after” question that he doesn’t need to answer.

The only people who can defeat Hamas are the Palestinians of Gaza. They, too, need better leadership, and if they find it, we should help them rebuild. But until then, Israel would be crazy to want to stay in Gaza and be responsible for its reconstruction. That honor should go to Sinwar.

Moron. That “honor” goes to the UN and EU NGOs who are happy to pick up the pieces,  every time, and reward Hamas terror without doing a thing to effect change.

It goes on, giving more examples of Friedman’s ignorance about the war.  To think the man would approve of Sinwar running Gaza again! Yes, moron is not far wrong.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej have a conversation through the window:

Hili: Yes, that’s the right decision.
A: But you don’t know what I’m doing.
Hili: I can see it on your face.
In Polish:
Hili: Tak, to właściwa decyzja.
Ja: Przecież nie wiesz co ja robię.
Hili: Widzę po wyrazie twojej twarzy.

And a photo of the affectionate Szaron:

*******************

From Cat Memes; it’s the kitten’s birthday!

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

. . . and from Science Humor, which apparently reproduced a panel from Ellen Woodbury’s Pizzacake Comics (check out the Instagram site; it’s a good comic, and donate at this Patreon site)

Masih posted a retweet by J. K. Rowling of some good news from Iran:

From Luana. Here’s a sociological and moral dilemma; should parents be told if their kids come out as trans, uses different pronouns, or uses a different name in school? Senator Wiener says that it’s purely the kids’ responsibility when and to whom they “come out.”

. . . and another dilemma discussed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (I reported about the rape, committed in a northern suburb of Paris, the other day).  Should the ethnicity of the accused be revealed? Does it matter what age they are? Certainly the names of the accused should be revealed, and in this case that would reveal what Hirsi Ali suspects: the adolescents who raped the young girl were Muslim.

From my feed. It’s very sad and you may well tear up.

From Simon and retweeted by Larry the Cat. I hope that bloke took the cat home!

From the Auschwitz Memorial; one I retweeted:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb, on a work/holiday week off. Oy, I have to dig through old tweets he sent me! The first one was before my time, and I never rejoice when someone dies, but this is an exception:

Twins! Look at the white spots on the back of their ears, too.,

Caturday felid trifecta: the rambunctious ginger tomcat; Kitty Snows finds a home; the cat who saved Tom Nichols; and lagniappe

June 22, 2024 • 9:45 am

We have some essays as part of today’s trifecta, so I hope you’re not averse this morning to reading.

First, an article from the BBC about “adventurous” ginger tomcats. Now I’ve heard before about this association in moggies between coat color and adventurousness, but has it been scientifically tested? I don’t think so. Nevertheless, the article is good reading, as it shows cats doing un-catlike stuff.

As with all the headlines, click to read:

As you see, the evidence is scant:

The purring hospital helper. The railway station and supermarket regular. If there’s a cat hanging around a public space craving a stranger’s pat, the chances are it’s a ginger tom.

Owners often find themselves apologising to neighbours for feline acts of trespass or burglary.

Biologist and cat behaviour expert Roger Tabor, from Brightlingsea in Essex, says the “archetypal ‘big old ginger tom’ is the classic cat next door” and their behaviour could be down to the Vikings.

“The scientific consensus has been there are some breed temperament differences, such as lively Burmese or placid Persians, but not differences on colour,” he said.

“However, studies of owners’ perceptions tell a different story, with calico and grey cats being ‘aloof’ and the ginger cat being seen as ‘friendlier and more affectionate’.”

“To be a ginger cat, a female kitten has to inherit two copies of the ginger gene, but males only have to inherit one,” Mr Tabor explains.

“Measurements have also shown that generally male ginger toms are heavier than most cats of other colours. Male ginger cats tend to be both taller and broader than most other moggies – apart from the North American Maine Coon.”

So could their size and apparent fearlessness be the reasons behind this outgoing behaviour?

Who knows? But here are three ginger toms who are working cats. Photo credits in the photo:

Nala, the no-fuss stationmaster

Another ginger cat who seems to seek out human company – and in the busiest of places – is Nala, a cat who greets commuters daily at Stevenage railway station in Hertfordshire.

Named by his owner’s children after the lioness who befriended Simba in Disney classic, The Lion King, Nala is in fact, a tom.

Like Henry, Nala seems more than happy spending his days perched on top of ticket machines, seemingly unfazed as commuters stream past in a hurry.

Be sure to click the link to see more on Nala. Here’s another:

The busy bookworms

Three-legged ginger tom Jasper rose to fame in 2017 after his owner started taking him to work at the University of Cambridge’s Marshall Library of Economics.

Its “tea with Jasper” events proved incredibly popular with students who credited meeting the cat as helping reduce exam stress.

“Meet Jasper” events still take place at the library.

And not to be outdone, the University of East Anglia in Norwich has its own ginger bookworm, Sylvester.

Sylvester is often out and about in the campus grounds and buildings and this clever kitty regularly attends lectures or can be found asleep on the library information desk.

Like many of these sociable types, he also has his own Facebook group where students and staff proudly post photographs of their encounters with him.

. . . and one more:

Ernie, the artful burglar

Most owners have come to embrace their felines’ sense of fun, but one still getting to grips with it is Sydney Reid, owner of ginger puss Ernie, in Godmanchester in Cambridgeshire.

“Ernie is a total menace, we’ve had a pure white, a pure black, a tabby, a tuxedo – and Ernie – and he’s the only one to cause such problems within the neighbourhood – what is it about ginger cats?” she said.

Ms Reid said Ernie had become a bit of a chunky chap after “breaking and entering” other homes to steal food, for which she has apologised.

“We once had a neighbour knock on our door to let us know he’d taken an entire resting roast chicken off her kitchen side and out her kitchen window.”

There’s a dubious theory advanced, and of course it came from Scientific American:

“The perception that ginger toms are friendlier and more confident with people may make them less fearful of wandering around pavements and roads,” cat expert Mr Tabor said.

That outgoing nature could be one of the reasons ginger cats were apparently so popular with Vikings, he said.

“This was proposed by Neil B Todd almost 50 years ago in Scientific American, where he mapped the strong presence of the feline ginger gene on places that had Viking settlement in Europe and the UK.

“He believed the Vikings carried ginger cats from Turkey and around the Black Sea to Scandinavia and their settlements in Britain.

“York, once a Viking stronghold, still has a higher population of ginger cats than London.”

He added: “Vikings may just have liked the distinctive fur, but I would suggest that the perceived friendly, less-fearful nature of the ginger cat could be why it boldly strolled onto their boats.

Now cats almost certainly came to America with Europeans, but the Viking theory, especially for ginger toms, should be taken with many, many grains of salt.  Here’s another one, advancing a Viking-Maine Coon theory with somewhat more credibility, but I’m not sure how much credibility

The generally accepted hypothesis among breeders is the Maine Coon is descended from breeds brought overseas by English sea-farers or 11th-century Norsemen (the Vikings). The connection to the Norsemen is seen in the strong resemblance of the Maine Coon to the Norwegian Forest Cat, another breed that is said to have traveled with the Vikings.

Geigl’s [Eva-Maria Geigl,is an evolutionary geneticist at the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris] is the first large-scale study of ancient feline DNA – sequenced the DNA of 209 ancient feline specimens, which lived between 15,000 and the eighteenth century. The specimens were found in archeological sites in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Geigl released her findings last fall.

The study, reported in Popular Science Magazine and Science Alert, reveals cats likely experienced two waves of world-wide expansion.

When the team looked at mitochondrial DNA – genetic information passed from the mother only – they found wild cats from the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean shared a similar lineage, suggesting they spread through agricultural communities, attracted by the mice, which ate the grains produced by farmer

The second wave of expansion has been attributed to ancient sea-farers, who encouraged their presence aboard ship to keep the rodent population in check. Geigl cites cat remains found in a Viking site in northern Germany.

Now there is evidence that the Norse did come to America, as evidence by the L’Anse aux Meadows site in Newfoundland, dated about 1014, but we don’t know about the cats, and Geigl’s study has apparently not been published.

********************

From reader Debra, who, having sent the link notes:

“This is a real soap opera but the former feral cat is cared for. I’m glad to see the new D.C. law called the Animal Care and Control Omnibus Amendment Act. The animal has the status of a person. It doesn’t matter who has ownership of the animal but what is the best situation for the animal.”

Click to see the Washington Post article:

. . . . Over the next 2½ years, Kitty Snows got to know her neighbors, and they got to know her. She began to accepthand-fed treats and gentle pats on the head. She crashed college house parties near the George Washington University campus.She slipped into homes and napped on couches. The Foggy Bottom Association sold her likeness on T-shirts, mugs and trucker hats.In December 2022, she won the association’s Appreciation Award for “community service and the joy she brings to many who cross her path.”

And then, this February, Kitty Snows vanished.

Her caretakers batted around theories. A neighbor had recently spotted a red fox, which preys oncats. A black cat would face grim odds whilecrossing nearby K Street or Virginia Avenueon an ink-dark night — did Kitty Snows become too adventurous or insouciant? The city had recently experienced a rash of petnappings, though the scrappy feline did not have the pedigree or street value of, say, a French bulldog.

The neighbors mined social media for information. They posted “Missing Kitty Snows” signs. They set up a phone line for tips.

One citizen shared a possible lead by text message: “I watched the little black cat with the short tail enter into a cat trap and then the trap close.”

. . .Her absence was out of character, so the neighbors assembled an informal search party. While on a walk the early evening of Feb. 13, Denise says she ran into neighbor Tom Curtis, one of Kitty Snows’s many caretakers. She brought up the cat’s disappearance. Tom blithely responded that he had trapped Kitty Snows and, for her own health and safety, relocated her roughly 1,000 feet southwest to Watergate West. A resident was caring for her, 14 floors above the streetshe once ruled. Tom assured Denise that Kitty Snows was thrilled to trade her blue collar for a white one.

Denise was relieved. Kitty Snows was alive! But soon Denise’s head caught up with her heart, and she was struck by a realization.

This man has stolen our cat.

Now they think she’s in the Watergate apartments, home of the late Christopher Hitchens.  A cat matching her description lives there was treated by a vet for a nose infection due to allergies, and the vet said that it’s better that the cat remain indoors. As you’ll see in the story, the people of Foggy Bottom got a lawyer, and now there’s a big fight about who “owns” the cat. (I think it’s better off indoors.) It’s a long article, and I haven’t found it archived, but perhaps the link above will work for you. In the meantime, here’s a local news story about the elusive Kitty Snows:

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This is a beautiful Atlantic article by Tom Nichols, described by Wikipedia as “an American writer, academic specialist on international affairs, and retired professor at the U.S. Naval War College. His work deals with issues involving Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs.”

If you don’t subscribe to The Atlantic (click on screenshot below), you can find the article archived here.

An excerpt:

Almost 15 years ago, I was in bad shape. I was divorced, broke, drinking too much, and living in a dated walk-up next to a noisy bar. (It was only minutes from my young daughter, it had a nice view of the bay here in Newport, and I could afford it.) The local veterinary hospital was a few doors down; they always kept one or two adoptable animals in the window. One day, a gorgeous black cat, with a little white tuxedo patch and big gold-green eyes, showed up in a small cage. I stared at her for a while. She stared back patiently.

You know, of course, what happened. Nichols took the cat in and named it Carla:

I was still deeply depressed, but every night, Carla would come and flake out over my keyboard as I struggled to work. That’s enough of that,she seemed to say. And then we would go into the living room, where I would sit in a chair and Carla would sit on the armrest. (We’ve now both seen almost every episode of Law & Order.) Slowly, she added routine to my life, but mostly, we had lots of hours of doing nothing—the quiet time that can feel sort of desolate if you’re alone, but like healing if you have the right company.

Soon, I started to see daylight. I met a woman named Lynn. I laid off the booze. I got help of various kinds.

Lynn started to come to the apartment more often, but Carla gave her a full examination before bestowing approval: That cat was not going to let some newcomer waltz in and wreck the careful feline therapy she’d been providing. Finally, Carla climbed on the pillows one morning and curled up around Lynn’s head. Okay, she was saying. Lynn can stay.

And so Nichols also adopted a girlfriend.  And then things got even better:

. . . Lynn and I soon realized that this was no ordinary cat. I’ve had smart cats, and some who were lovable but not very bright. Carla was not a prodigy, but she had a unique presence that even strangers on social media could see when I posted clips or pictures. I can attribute this only to an emotional intelligence, the bond that some animals have with people that lets them suss out who’s who and how we might be feeling. If you were sad, or sick, she was there. If the human vibes were happy, you could hear her purr from a room away.

Eventually, Lynn and I bloomed from friendship into love. Slowly, I put my life back in order, and Carla clearly thought that me getting on my feet was mostly her doing. It wasn’t that simple, but I will say this: A man blessed with a concerned doctor, a dedicated counselor, a wise priest, a few good friends, and a great love in his life can overcome much. But a man with all of those and a marvelous cat can really cover a lot of distance.

I finally bought a house, and Lynn and I married. Just as she had done with the apartment, Carla inspected the new digs and said: I approve. Instantly, it was her house.

One night Carla jumped insistently on the bed, and, waking up Lynn, they smelled smoke and discovered there was a fire.  It consumed nearly a quarter of their home, but everybody, including Carla, survived.

. . . The fire marshal later told us that if Carla hadn’t bought us that extra time, the fire—which hadn’t immediately tripped the smoke alarms, because it was caught between the floor and ceiling—would have broken through and engulfed the house (and us). He told us that cats are usually casualties of house fires because they hide out of fear and can’t be found in time. Carla, however, alerted us and then waited for us to come get her.

They had many good years thereafter with Carla, but then, of course, the inevitable happened, for cats don’t live as long as people.

The next day, our vet confirmed that there was little more we could do for Carla without tormenting her. I held her on my shoulder one last time as they gave her the first shot. Lynn and I stroked her head and whispered to her during the second shot, and our tears soaked her fur. And then she was gone.

We haven’t yet gotten used to a house without Carla in it. Like many who’ve lost a pet, we both still think we see her out of the corner of our eye. I still automatically look into my daughter’s room to see if she’s there. We still expect her at dinner, and Lynn still waits for her to come and say: Time for bed, let’s go. Eventually, we’ll welcome new animals into our home, and I’m sure we will love them. But Carla was a little friend unlike any I’d ever had—and I doubt I will ever owe another cat the debt that I owe her.

Here’s a six-minute MSNBC television interview with Nichols about the cat. It pretty much tells the whole story if you want to skip the article, but the article has a lot of other stuff about Carla’s personality and presence:

That corner-of-your eye happened to me, too, after I had to euthanize my beloved but lymphoma stricken white cat, Teddy. I haven’t had another cat since.  Here we are:

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Lagniappe: I give the YouTube notes:

When Jessica Leatherman’s daughter went into first grade this year, she started riding the school bus. However, the girl has a special friend who makes sure she gets to school safely. It’s their family cat Craig.

h/t: Gravelinspector, Debra

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 22, 2024 • 8:15 am

Today, wildlife is construed as including geology, in particular, photos from reader Kevin Elskin of a cave formation in Arkansas. Kevin’s notes are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

I was born and raised in Arkansas, and happily so. The Ozark Mountains are a fascinating place. Historically, Osage tribes hunted the area, but they never really settled it. The mountains are hundreds of millions of years old, slowly weathering into oblivion. Maybe their most majestic days are behind them, but they still have secrets to share if you care to go looking.

Today I would like to share some photos of Blanchard Springs Caverns, owned and operated by the United Stated Forest Service. It is located in north central Arkansas, due north of Little Rock and maybe forty miles from Missouri as the crow flies. Basically, the middle of nowhere. It is near Mountain Home, Arkansas, a small town noted for its folk music.

The main tour of Blanchard Springs is the Dripstone Trail. Elevators take you just over 200 feet underground, where you enter a cavern up to six stories tall. It is a live cave, still in the process of creating formations.

The first photo I took tries to capture the enormousness of the cavern. If you look carefully you can see the trails and walking paths through the cavern.

The following photos are of various formations; as much as possible I tried to include walkways to give some evidence of perspective.

Here is the cleverly named ‘Battleship’ formation:

As you reach the end of the tour you come to the soda straw room. I did a poor job of capturing it, but essentially there are tubular stalactites, each hollow with a bit of water clinging to the end.

Lastly, you can take a short drive and see where Blanchard Spring Creek empties from the caves:

So come visit Arkansas. Yeah, you are going to see Confederate license plates and plenty of Trump 2024 signs. But you will also meet some nice, friendly people and see some charming and beautiful sights. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Saturday: Hili dialogue

June 22, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, June 22, 2024, cat shabbos (no turning on lights!) and National Onion Rings Day. I’d eat these instead of fries any day, but most places don’t give you very many rings in an order. This video will tell you where to get the best fast-food onion rings. (Spoiler: it’s Culver’s.)

It’s also National Chocolate Eclair Day, World Rainforest Day, Father’s Day in Guernsey, the Isle of Man, and Jersey, and Windrush Day in the UK (look it up).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*GLORY BE!  The Supreme Court has made another decision, but a sensible one—with an 8-1 vote.  Domestic abusers can be denied guns!

An 8-1 Supreme Court upheld a federal law that forbids domestic abusers from possessing guns, ruling Friday that the Second Amendment permits temporarily disarming people found to pose a threat to others.

The case was the first major test of the conservative majority’s new approach to gun rights, laid out in a 2022 opinion declaring that weapons regulations can pass muster only if they are analogous to those familiar to Americans of the founding era some 250 years ago. While some lower courts have since demanded strict analogues of 18th-century laws for modern regulations to survive constitutional scrutiny, Friday’s decision showed the justices willing to give more leeway for legislators to address gun violence today.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said that while gun laws must be consistent with historical examples, it was a mistake to conclude that weapons regulations must be “trapped in amber.” For centuries, he wrote, English and American law had permitted disarming people judged as threats to public safety.

“The Second Amendment permits more than just those regulations identical to ones that could be found in 1791,” Roberts wrote.

Only Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the 2022 opinion expanding Second Amendment protections, dissented. “Not a single historical regulation justifies the statute at issue,” he said.

. . . The ruling reverses a federal appeals court in New Orleans that invalidated a 1994 federal law denying firearms to people under domestic-violence restraining orders. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reasoned that such measures were unknown in the founding era.

Yep, Thomas is an originalist, so naturally he’s the sole dissenter. But I’m heartened with Roberts’s opinion that we don’t have to go all the way back to the Founding Times to adjudicate gun rights.  I think Roberts really wants the Court to be less policitized and more sensible, but people like Thomas and Alito won’t let that happen. (I heard last night on the news that Sotomayor noted that the chances of someone living with a domestic abuser having a gun, and being killed, is five times higher than if the abuser doesn’t have a gun.

*Once again I’ll steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s weeky news summary at The Free Press. This week’s column is called “TGIF: Cheap fakes.”

→ Hell yeah, Congress: The Senate just overwhelmingly approved new pro–nuclear power legislation on Tuesday, with a vote of 88–2. Who are the two? Just two senators who hate the idea of copious clean nuclear energy and want us to stay on dirty coal so that the Extinction Rebellion kids can keep protesting by gluing their hands to our commuter thoroughfares. Logical. Simple. Yes, the two holdouts are Senators Ed Markey, and—you guessed it—Bernie Sanders. But let’s focus on the bright side: our Senate just did something bipartisan, functional, and pro-progress. We love to see it.

The bill does a number of things, like streamlining the permit process, cutting costs for developers, and opening to new technology like small modular nuclear reactors. Meanwhile, protesting climate change or something, Just Stop Oil folks this week are spraying Stonehenge with orange powder. And honestly, it looks cool. Painting Stonehenge is not a bad idea. Especially if you want some angry Anglo-Saxon deity (oh my god it’s my dad! He wants to read Beowulf to you, and for you to get your elbows off the table!) to haunt you and your descendants.

And OMG:

→ Candace Owens comes out against World War II: Candace Owens, a star conservative commentator now building her own media company, argues that it was a mistake for the U.S. to enter World War II. When a journalist asks to confirm this, saying: “So, you think that America shouldn’t have gone into that second world war?” Candace replies: “Yeah, and that is a radical statement. People don’t know how to deal with that because we’ve all been so brainwashed by the school system to believe that ‘Look how great things are. . . . ’ This whole idea of international liberalism—now it’s not just about your problems, it’s about solving the world’s problems. Let’s make sure that in Pakistan there’s a trans flag waving. No.” So, England should have fallen to the Nazis. Because otherwise we get The Trans Flag. This is where the new right is at. They believe World War II was a mistake; the Nazis would have been fine controlling Europe, which is none of our business anyway; and when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor we should have said, “Thank you! Hawaii always seemed gay to us too! Men wearing necklaces made of flowers?!” Thanks for bravely saying what no one else will dare to, Candace.

Meanwhile, who’s Candace Owens’ new best friend, coming on the show to commiserate? None other than Briahna Joy Gray, the former press secretary for Bernie Sanders. It was inevitable they would find each other. All my favorites eventually do.

→ We must ban women from museums, out of respect: Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum has recently shelved some items away from public view in line with new policies that prioritize “cultural safety.” Hmm, what does that mean? Well, one such item is a mask made by the Igbo people of Nigeria that is not available for viewing in person or online and has been given the label must not be seen by women. I’m totally serious. See, the culture in which it was created forbade women from seeing it. It was used in male-only masquerade rituals. And that must be respected! Interesting. Well, there’s a lot of art made by devout Catholics for Catholic churches now in big museums. I don’t know if those artists would approve of, let’s say, gays on a fun date popping by to see that art after brunch. Should we hide it from the gays? I would argue most art in most museums was made by people who would be pretty pissed off by me looking at it, which is why I honor those cultures by never going to museums.

*After nine months, the University of Southern California (USC) dropped its inquiry into the nefarious behavior of a professor who called Hamas what they are: “murderers.”

In the weeks after Hamas attacked Israel in October, a confrontation between a Jewish USC professor and a group of pro-Palestinian students went viral and triggered a storm of controversy on campus.

Economics professor John Strauss told students — who were calling for a ceasefire and commemorating Palestinians slain in the war — “Hamas are murderers,” adding, “That’s all they are. Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are killed.”

Video of Strauss’ remarks spread rapidly online and led to a petition calling for the professor’s termination. More than 10 students also filed complaints against Strauss, accusing him of engaging in discrimination, harassment and fostering an unsafe environment.

This week, that long-running inquiry came to an end.

USC administrators informed Strauss on Tuesday that the case against him was closed, the complaints by students would be dismissed and that he will face no formal discipline, according to the professor and his attorney.

“I’m relieved,” Strauss said in a phone interview. “As far as I’m concerned, I’ve been fully exonerated and they’re not doing anything to punish me, and it’s over.”

His lawyer, Samantha Harris, said she was “frustrated that it took seven months to reach an obvious conclusion” that Strauss did not engage in harassment or discrimination.

“I’m nonetheless pleased that they reached the correct result,” Harris said.

Strauss meant HAMAS, not Palestinians, but this is free speech, not harassment.  Here’s the incident for which Strauss was put on administrative leave:

*Speaking of dropping charges, the Manhattan D.A. has decided to drop charges against 46 pro-Palestinian protestors arrested for criminal trespass after barricading themselves in an academic building.  (h/t Mayaan)

Dozens of pro-Palestinian student protesters arrested in April after occupying and barricading a building at Columbia University in New York City had all criminal charges against them dropped on Thursday, Manhattan prosecutors said at a court hearing.

The hearing at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse came seven weeks after Columbia administrators called in hundreds of armed and heavily armored police officers to the university’s campus in a high-profile law-enforcement response that was broadcast live on national news channels.

Police arrested 46 protesters who had barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall, and cleared a weeks-old tent encampment on a nearby Columbia lawn that has inspired similar pro-Palestinian protests at universities around the world. At least nine of the 46 protesters arrested sustained injuries beyond minor scrapes and bruises, according to medical records, photographs shared by protesters, and interviews.

All 46 protesters, who were arrested on the night of April 30 about 20 hours after taking over the academic building, were initially charged with trespass in the third degree, a misdemeanor.

Stephen Millan, a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, told the court on Thursday his office would not prosecute 30 protesters who were Columbia students at the time of the arrest, nor two who were Columbia employees, citing prosecutorial discretion and lack of evidence. A case against another student was dismissed earlier in the month.

What about the others?

Millan said protesters wore masks and covered surveillance cameras, and there was insufficient evidence to show that any individual defendant damaged property or injured anyone. No police officers were injured during the arrests, the prosecutor noted. None of the arrested students had any prior criminal history, and all were facing disciplinary proceedings, including suspensions and expulsions, by Columbia.

The district attorney’s office proposed the 13 accept an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, a provision in New York law that if accepted means the case against a defendant will be dropped and sealed in six months if they are not arrested for another offense in the interim.

All 13 rejected the offer through their lawyers, who are seeking to have those cases dismissed. The 13 are due to return to court on July 25, by which date prosecutors must decide if they are willing to proceed to a trial over the trespass charges. Another arrested protester accepted the offer earlier in June.
One other guy is going to get prosecuted because he “is charged with criminal mischief and arson for setting an Israeli flag alight prior to the takeover and for damaging a police surveillance camera in jail.”  If I were the 13 offered the adjournment-in-contemplation-of-dismissal deal, I’d take it.  But this is what I mean by lack of disciplinary action being taken against pro-Palestinian protestors: a judicial lassitude that only heartens protesters to further break the law. Time after time—and this has happened with those arrested for a sit-in at the University of Chicago—prosecutors drop charges.  Now I don’t know if the Chicago students will face university discipline, but I sure hope the Columbia students do. (Chances are they won’t.)

*Over at the Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan, for some reason, declares that he has a problem with IVF (in vitro fertilization). That surprised me, so I read on. . .

So why do I find myself balking at some aspects of in vitro fertilization, or IVF?

The subject is fresh again. Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled in February that IVF was illegal under a 1872 state law that allowed parents to sue over the wrongful death of a minor child. The Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution opposing IVF last week, after which the Senate Democrats tried and failed to advance a bill protecting IVF access. The Democrats are politically smart on this: IVF remains hugely popular — on right and left, and it’s a better wedge issue than even abortion. Last month, a Pew survey found 70 percent support for the view that having access to IVF is a good thing; and even 60 percent of pro-lifers support access to IVF. It is, after all, an attempt to bring new life into the world, rather than to destroy it. Last week, Gallup found that 82 percent support the morality of IVF.

So why has it always made me queasy? It is not because I believe, as the Catholic Church teaches, that every child must be conceived through the sexual intercourse of a married couple, and that anything else is a violation of God’s law:

.. .The Alabama ruling focuses on the critical fact that in order to maximize the chances of just one successful human baby, you need to create multiple embryos to beat the high odds of reproductive failure. And once you’ve succeeded in implanting one future baby, you are inevitably left with the “spare” embryos, which you can then choose to freeze for future use, or donate to someone else, or — in the delicate language deployed in most medical descriptions — “discard”.

Money quote from the decision:

The central question presented in these consolidated appeals, which involve the death of embryos kept in a cryogenic nursery, is whether the Act contains an unwritten exception to that rule for extrauterine children — that is, unborn children who are located outside of a biological uterus at the time they are killed. Under existing black-letter law, the answer to that question is no: the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.

The law banning abortion, in other words, also directly bans IVF for the exact same reasons. An embryo is an embryo; and all embryos are human persons, however they were conceived. I suppose you can bash the justices for this kind of judicial activism. But what choice did they have, given the law they were interpreting?

. . .A typical procedure might yield just one viable embryo from, say, 12 in vitro; or it might, in very rare cases, yield 12. But in almost every case, a handful of human embryos is left over.

And that’s the rub for me. In many cases, you’re creating new lives only to destroy them as waste. In many others, you don’t destroy them; you merely use them to beat the odds. They are quite simply a means to an end, violating a basic norm of inviolable human dignity. And these “means” are your own offspring. IVF literally requires a mother to play Sophie’s Choice several times over.

In the end, Sullivan considers IVF “wrong” because it involves the discarding of “future human beings.”  What he means is frozen embryos:  frozen, fertilized eggs that have grown in a Petri dish for about a week before they’re frozen.  They are not sentient, have no nervous system, and could become human beings only if they’re implanted in a woman. And because that won’t happen, Sullivan will deny all woman the right to have a child through IVF. He says the decision wasn’t easy for him, and I believe it. But would he make that decision if he weren’t a Catholic?

Of course I disagree with him, but if you think that a small ball of non-sentient cells has the same moral rights as a living human being, then you must believe in a soul; otherwise you’d find killing a fertilized redwood seed equivalent to cutting down a giant redwood. In other words, you’d have to labor under the delusions of religion. I, for one, would rather see a person be produced via IVF (and yes, with frozen embryos on the side) than have would-be and loving parents go childless.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are coming inside. . . well, at least Szaron appears to be:

A: Are you coming in or not?
Hili: We are considering it.
In Polish:
Ja: Wchodzicie, czy nie?
Hili: Rozważamy to.

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From Cat Memes:

From Things With Faces:

From The English Language Police (a great group for pedants):

From Masih: another woman dragged away by the Iranian morality police for not properly covering her hair. Can this regime persist forever?

From Pinkah: The Atlantic goes after Harvard’s dean Bobo, who wants to censor faculty (article archived here):

From Malgorzata, who says, “a very-difficult-to-watch short interview will one of the female hostages – exchanged a few months ago for murderers”:

It this kosher? I suppose it is if you’re half asleep.

From Barry. who says “That buffalo isn’t fooling around.” Indeed, but I hope the big cat survived.

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a girl gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. She was thirteen.

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb, still on hols.  In the first one, remember that Matthew is biased, but 100 pounds seems a bit chintzy!

Great magic!

Populations are genetically different, and meaningfully so

June 21, 2024 • 1:00 pm

This is just a preview for my half-hour talk at the CSICon meeting in Las Vegas this October, where I’ll talk about some of the distortions of biology created by ideology, distortions summarized in my Skeptical Inquirer paper coauthored with Luana Maroja.

Below is one slide I’m using to address the misguided claim (one made by the top editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association), that “Race and ethnicity are social constructs, without scientific or biological meaning.”

Now the definition of “race”, as we discuss in our paper, is slippery, so we prefer to use “ethnicity” or “geographic populations,” but the implication is the same (read the paper before you kvetch): the claim is that there are no meaningful genetic differences between geographically separated populations.

But if that were the case, then you couldn’t identify people’s ancestry from their genes. But we can: with good accuracy! If your genetic endowment said nothing about your ancestry, then companies like 23andMe would go out of business.  And the fact that this works shows that ethnicity, or ancestry, or geographic population, or “race,” if you want to use the term, are not simply made-up social constructs, but indeed have important and often near-diagnostic genetic differences.

One example is me. Here’s a slide I’m going to show at CSICon. It’s the 23andMe readout of my ancestry, with 97.2% of my genes coming roughly from the dark green area on the map. I’m 100% Jewish, and mostly Ashkenazi.

That matches with what I know of my ancestry, and so my genetic endowment is surely of biological significance. The data from my genome, as analyzed by 23andMe, tells me something about the history of the genes I carry. Apparently, I have not a single nucleotide that isn’t Jewish!

At any rate, come to the meeting. It features much bigger fish like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Cox, and for sure it will be a good time, as it’s going to be similar in spirit and content to James Randi’s Amazing Meetings, which were great.