Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Nine new ducklings: Amy the Library Duck’s entire brood. Believe me, we tried to get Amy and her brood to the nearest water (1.5 miles away), putting the ducklings in a padded but clear box so she could see them, and then walking towards the lake. She followed for less than half a block before flying away back to the nest. And she was not leading them on their own to the water. Nor would she let us get near her to catch her. (Catching adult mallards has always been impossible for Team Duck.)
After some futile attempts to catch the mother, who put on the first broken-wing display I’ve ever seen in a mallard, we gave up and took all nine (healthy and strong) babies to the rehab person. This always breaks my heart, but it’s better than letting all the ducklings die. We had three plans worked out but, as I suspected, we wound up, in the end, taking the ducklings to rehab—plan C.
Here’s our haul from this morning. (Please don’t ask me about alternative plans; we’ve thought of them all and had six people there dealing with the issue.)
BUT we are still tending a mother and her ten offspring on the plaza between two dorms, as the babies cannot escape until they can fly. (There’s a large fence.) Here are Maria and her babies, whom we tend three times a week. Note that these are older—probably at least two weeks old.
I’ll have a longer post about this in a few days—after I’ve recovered.
The Center for Inquiry has put the discussion that Luana and I had this week, along with Robyn Blumner moderating, on YouTube. (You can also see it at the SI site.) It was fun, but of course given the material we covered in our paper, there’s no way that we could do more than give a brief summary in an hour (45 minutes, really, with 15 minutes of questions at the end.) As usual, I haven’t watched it because I hate to see and her myself talking (not unusual, I think).
If you want to read our paper, “The Ideological Subversion of Biology,” it’ll be online forever, and you can find it here.
All nine ducklings rescued and taken to rehab. Sadly, we could not catch Amy, nor could we lure her to water by putting her ducklings in a visible plastic box. She went only half a block (distance was 1.5 miles) before flying away. After trying to catch her several times, and with the ducklings getting freaked out, we decided to put things to an end and take the ducklings to rehab. They will be at the facility today.
Here are two articles from Bored Panda and the Indianapolis Star about a cat rehab program for prisoners in Indiana. Click either screenshot to read. I’ve taken most of the text from the Star, and pictures from both sites. I’ve taken most of the text from the Star, and pictures from both sites.
From the Star:
Cats are unable to distinguish between street clothes and prison uniforms –– and that’s exactly what makes the relationship between the men at Pendleton Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison outside of Indianapolis, and the cats that live there, so special.
For six hours a day, seven days a week, a handful of men receive unqualified love from the more than 20 cats that live in the prison as part of the FORWARD program, or Felines and Offenders Rehabilitation with Affection, Reformation and Dedication. In exchange for care and a place to stay before being adopted, the cats at Pendleton offer inmates untampered, non-judgemental affection.
In 2015 in the state of Indiana, Animal Protection League started a wonderful program in Pendleton correctional facility called F.O.R.W.A.R.D.
In partnership with the Animal Protection League of Indiana, the program removes cats from a traditional shelter and places them in the prison’s “cat sanctuary,” a wide-open room with scratching posts, climbing structures and nooks to hide in.
The program houses them with incarcerated caregivers, who, incidentally, gain skills such as empathy, responsibility and self-esteem.
LaRussa, who is behind bars for conspiracy to commit robbery — which was botched and ended with accomplices murdering four people — has been involved in the program since 2017, when he fell for a 7-year-old cat named Clover. He and his wife have since adopted Clover, and she lives at home with LaRussa’s wife.
Every day, LaRussa and his peers start their morning by 7 a.m. They report to the cat sanctuary, where, like clockwork, the cats await them, dozens of tiny faces longing for the door to open.
The work, albeit behind prison walls, is a full-time job.
“I believe it’s changed me a lot,” LaRussa said. “I’ve grown, from even just the little time that I’ve been here until now. We’re all incarcerated. Whether you are selfish or not, you learn to care about something other than yourself. Now, it’s all about (the cats) and trying to help them in the best way possible.”
Tori Kypreos, the program supervisor at Pendleton, has watched inmates move through the program and evolve as a result.
“It teaches them responsibility,” Kypreos said. “It teaches them there are other things that are important than what they believe is important. The cats rely on them immensely, so just seeing that they’re dedicated to coming in every day to help and take care of these cats, to watch the cats grow, is very important.”
The cats and the inmates, both bound by prison walls and troubled pasts, mend each other day by day.
Duck suit!
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Firmoo is an outfit that sells cat-themed spectacles, at least in their Me-Meow collection. (“Purr-fect for your eyes”). Here are a few models you may want to consider (only women are shown wearing them). Click the screenshot below to go to the site.
Some examples:
They sell only frames, and they’re inexpensive, so have a look.
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From LoveMeow we have the story of a polydactylous kitten named Macaroni born with deformed legs as well as many extra toes (toes are not a burden), but don’t worry—he’ll be all right. Click on screenshot to read the story:
Jacqueline “DeAmor” Santiago, president of Friends for Life Rescue Network, was apprised of a tiny orange tabby with an abnormality in his front legs. With her experience working with special needs kittens, she immediately offered to help.
The kitten, Macaroni, was polydactyl and had contracted tendons which caused his front limbs to appear “twisted”. He came into Jacqueline’s care when he was four days old, giving him the best advantage.
Newborn kittens have “exponentially better” chances of correcting their twisted legs.
“This is often caused by either polydactylism (extra toes) or by a small mom with not enough room in the womb for the legs to stretch,” Jacqueline added. Macaroni has extra toes on each paw, adding to their size.
“Their legs get stuck in the same position during development and need to be stretched over the course of weeks to help them grow correctly.”
“This is often caused by either polydactylism (extra toes) or by a small mom with not enough room in the womb for the legs to stretch,” Jacqueline added. Macaroni has extra toes on each paw, adding to their size.
“Their legs get stuck in the same position during development and need to be stretched over the course of weeks to help them grow correctly.”
Jacqueline started physical therapy on Macaroni through massaging and stretching. The tiny ball of fur whose eyes hadn’t opened, took everything in stride.
He was a champion eater and so brave with every massage session and leg stretching exercise.
The tabby boy is getting more active and playful each day. He relishes the company of his foster mom and the resident cat, Wolfie. His personality is emerging.
“Mac is a big purr machine and loves to play already. He enjoys flailing his legs and trying to bite with his tiny teeth. He’s still ultra snuggly. We are hoping that once his paws are under him, he will start running around.”
In the weeks that follow, the sweet kitten will be able to put his legs to good use as he enters the boisterous kitten phase and navigates the world around him.
Here’s a video of a kitten in San Diego similar to Macaroni, with polydactyly and bent legs. (It was also missing an eye.) The improvement after treatment is astounding! Reader Marion said, “Here’s a video the San Diego Humane Society released of their treatment of a polydactyl kitten with bent legs. I imagine it will bring in a ton of money.”
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Lagniappe: Click below to see a video taken from a CatCam, worn around a cat’s neck. And put the sound on:
Today we have another photo-and-story piece from Athayde Tonhasca Júnior. His narrative is indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:
Flavour of the month
Many things can be ‘plain vanilla’, but vanilla is not one of them. This spice comprises a complex mixture of vanillin and other organic compounds that produce its distinctive flavour and aroma. The main source of vanilla, the flat-leaved vanilla orchid (Vanilla planifolia), is native to Central and South America but grown commercially in tropical areas around the world; Madagascar is by far the largest producer, followed by Indonesia.
Vanillin is found in the orchid’s ‘beans’ (botanically speaking, its fruits), and it’s not easy to get. The vanilla orchid grows as a vine that can extend for 20 to 50 metres, so it needs supporting structures to spread out. In its native range, the vanilla flower is pollinated by bees; elsewhere, it is hand-pollinated (you can watch how this is done). The operation has to be quick because a flower remains receptive for about 24 hours. If not pollinated, it wilts and falls to the ground. The beans take six to nine months to mature; when ready, they are hand-picked, dipped in hot water and dried for up to a month. So it’s not surprising that such a labour-intensive crop doesn’t come cheap: as spices go, only saffron costs more by unit of weight.
So how come your run-of-the-mill vanilla ice-cream or cake is not particularly dear? Because about 99% of all vanilla products (food, beverages, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals) are flavoured with synthetic vanillin, which can be obtained from wood pulp, clove oil, coal tar and other petrochemicals, and it’s about 20 times cheaper than natural vanilla. Chefs, bakers and food buffs debate the organoleptic differences between natural and synthetic vanilla. Whatever their verdict, the food industry is under growing pressure to reduce artificial flavours from their products, so production of natural vanilla remains strong and tends to increase.
The growing value of natural vanilla is promising to small farmers in Madagascar and other developing countries, but there are clouds on the horizon. Almost all natural vanilla comes from a single species cultivated as a monoculture in a few areas around the globe, and all plants are obtained by cloning (cuttings). These distribution and propagation patterns promote genetic uniformity, which is a risk to vanilla production. A simplified and impoverished genetic base makes the crop vulnerable to diseases and pests, which are similar threats to those hanging over the genetically homogeneous bananas available to European and American consumers.
One way to reduce these risks is in-situ conservation, that is, the protection of flat-leaved vanilla orchids in their places of origin. These areas are natural gene banks, potential sources of genetic material that could be incorporated into crops to help them adjust to new environmental stresses. And here, bees may have a lot to contribute.
In the wild, flat-leaved vanilla orchids grow in isolation deep inside mature forests, climbing from one tree to another. When plants reach a certain size, they produce only a handful of flowers. A pollinator needs special skills to locate a flower in the chaotic, crowded environment of a tropical jungle. This is a job for orchid or euglossine bees (tribe Euglossini). Females gather pollen and nectar like any ordinary bee, but males spend a great deal of their time collecting volatile compounds, primarily from orchids; they can fly for dozens of kilometres in pursuit of the right scent. Males store a variety of these chemicals, and the resulting aromatic bouquet advertises their prowess to females. Many orchids take advantage of this perfume obsession: they are especially adapted to transferring pollinia (pollen packets) to the bodies of visiting male orchid bees.
Orchid bees are the main, or possibly the only, pollinators of the flat-leaved vanilla orchid, although we have only sketchy details about specific species. These bees play another role in the orchid’s life, one that has been recognised only recently: as seed dispersers.
Seed dispersal is as important as pollination. By having its seeds spread out over large distances, a plant does not have to compete with its seedlings. Dispersed offspring also has a better chance of escaping predators, diseases or environmental misadventures that may befall the parent plant. Herbivores play a big part in dispersal: the seeds in the fruits they eat will end up in a steamy, fertilised pile somewhere. But mammals and birds are not tempted by most orchids because their fruits are not particularly nutritious. It makes no difference for most orchids; their seeds are easily uplifted and dispersed by the wind: for some species, 3 million seeds weigh as little as 1 g.
But things are different for Vanilla spp. and a few other orchid genera: they produce fleshy fruit whose seeds are protected by a hardened coat and not easily carried by the wind. These characteristics suggest zoochory (seed dispersal by animals), and indeed rodents and marsupials eat the fruits of flat-leaved vanilla orchids, later passing the seeds. Karremans et al. (2023) discovered that some male orchid bees and female stingless bees (tribe Meliponini) join the feast: they take seeds away when the fruits split open naturally. So the flat-leaved vanilla orchid is likely to be part of a select group of plants with mellitochorous seeds, i.e., dispersed by bees. Mellitochory is not common, but this could reflect our lack of knowledge more than rarity of the phenomenon. Most recorded cases involve seeds hitching a ride when stingless bees collect resin or other nest-building material. Later these seeds fall off or are chucked out of the bees’ nests, germinating on the ground.
To summarise: there’s a global craving for natural vanilla, which is extracted mostly from one species of orchid whose populations are vulnerable to genetic homogeneity. Protecting native orchid habitats would allow bees to give a hand by pollinating flowers and dispersing their seeds, thus helping safeguard commercial flat-leaved vanilla against future vicissitudes. This intricate tale is anything but plain vanilla.
Posting may be light today as there is a difficult duck rescue in the offing. I’m not sure how long it will take. Bear with me; I do my best.
Greetings on a fine CaturSaturday, July 8, 2023, cat shabbos and National Chocolate With Almonds Day (I think they mean National Chocolate-Covered Almonds Day).
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the July 8 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The U.S. is sending “cluster munition” to Ukraine as a stopgap measure, but it’s incurred the wrath of some Democrats since the weapons could hurt civilians. Here’s what they are (from Wikipedia):
A cluster munition is a form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon that releases or ejects smaller submunitions. Commonly, this is a cluster bomb that ejects explosive bomblets that are designed to kill personnel and destroy vehicles. Other cluster munitions are designed to destroy runways or electric power transmission lines, disperse chemical or biological weapons, or to scatter land mines. Some submunition-based weapons can disperse non-munitions, such as leaflets.
Because cluster bombs release many small bomblets over a wide area, they pose risks to civilians both during attacks and afterwards. Unexploded bomblets can kill or maim civilians and/or unintended targets long after a conflict has ended, and are costly to locate and remove. The so called failure rate ranges from 2 percent to 40 percent or more.
From the NYT:
The Biden administration, breaking with several of its closest allies, said on Friday that it would provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, despite concerns that the weapons could endanger civilians.
Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters at the White House that the administration would continue arming Ukraine as stockpiles of conventional artillery dwindle. He defended the use of the weapons by saying that Russia had been using them since the beginning of the war and Ukraine was running out of artillery rounds.
. . .President Biden and his advisers had reservations about supplying the weapons, which disperse tiny, deadly bomblets, to Ukrainian forces, particularly because they are especially dangerous to children, who pick up duds that initially failed to detonate, only to have them explode.
But Ukraine is burning through stockpiles of conventional artillery, and administration officials ultimately decided they had little choice amid fears that Russia would gain the upper hand if Ukrainian soldiers ran out.
Several allies of the United States that have moved to provide Kyiv with tanks, planes and artillery have drawn a line at providing cluster munitions. Germany and France are among over 100 nations that have signed a treaty prohibiting the weapons; the United States, Russia and Ukraine have not.
President Biden’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine has angered a wide swath of Democrats, who are accusing his administration of making a hypocritical decision that risked the moral standing of the United States.
The move answered a monthslong clamor from congressional Republicans to supply Kyiv with the weapons, but Mr. Biden’s political allies denounced it.
“A victory for Ukraine is an essential victory for democracies across the globe, but that victory cannot come at the expense of our American values and thus democracy itself,” Representative Chrissy Houlahan, Democrat of Pennsylvania and an Air Force veteran who co-chairs a bipartisan congressional caucus on unexploded ordinance and demining, said in a statement on Friday. “I challenge the notion that we should employ the same tactics Russia is using, blurring the lines of moral high ground.”
She and other Democrats argued that cluster munitions of the kind the administration plans to send to Ukraine pose indiscriminate harm to civilians long after they are used in combat.
The weapons “disperse hundreds of bomblets, which can travel far beyond military targets and injure, maim and kill civilians — often long after a conflict is over,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts. In a statement, he pointed out that several NATO members — though not the United States — are parties to an international treaty banning their use.
Republicans willing to speak about this all praised the decision. I’m not wild about it. It is, though a rare example of Presidential bipartisanship: a Democratic President, against the wishes of his own party, is making the GOP happy.
*Nellie Bowles has published her usual Friday news summary, always with a twist. This week’s is called “TGIF: Hocus SCOTUS“, and I’ll steal my usual three items (indented):
→ “Adversity score” is the new affirmative action: At University of California Davis School of Medicine, future doctors are chosen in part on how much “adversity” they faced.
By the end of all this, with all tests thrown out as problematic, all coursework thrown out as based on the written word (racist), and adversity as the only metric, we’ll just hand the most deserving a scalpel and let ’em at it. Your surgeon will be a truly good person who had a truly hard life, that I can say for sure.
→ Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway get trigger warnings: New printings of The Sun Also Rises and To the Lighthouse come with trigger warnings. The Woolf one reads as such (and Hemingway’s is apparently almost identical):
This book was published in 1927 and reflects the attitudes of its time. The publisher’s decision to present it as it was originally published is not intended as an endorsement of cultural representations or language contained herein.
It’s a small, sad plea from some defeated editors: Don’t cancel us, please. We’re not sure what in these books will be offensive, but no doubt something is. It was so long ago, you see. They didn’t know the light of truth would find us here, now; they were just modernists, yes, yes, just like your furniture. You love your furniture, right? It’s not too sexist, right?
→ Biological males really want to breastfeed: There is a movement for trans women (people born males) to pump themselves with a fresh set of hormones so that they can “chestfeed” an infant. The CDC supports it, and now it’s A Trend. Call me crazy, but I’d want to be sure it’s okay for the infant first, which we don’t really know. At a certain point, all these medical interventions to align a body closer and closer and closer to the other sex, to do exactly everything the other sex can do lest you face any of biology’s cruel limits, seems a little exhausting. You can have great tits and wear a dress and look amazing—but you really don’t want all the stuff of being a female. Like today I’m furious with everyone and on the verge of tears, which is a completely normal part of the month, but surely you don’t want this. I don’t even want this.
A perfect storm is hitting the New Zealand university sector. Social justice activism is aggravating the extreme financial difficulties that our universities are facing, only slightly eased by recently-announced Government funding relief.
. . .Gender and identity political activism is widespread internationally and in New Zealand. We could easily fill this article with examples.
Recently, for example, a senior New Zealand academic was warned that questioning a perceived fall in academic standards would lead to disciplinary action.
Academics who dare to express a rational view counter to the orthodoxy on gender diversity or the indigenisation of university culture are being silenced.
Failing to address matauranga Māori (Māori traditional knowledge) in grant applications, even in mathematics or physics, may jeopardise the chance of winning a grant.
. . .New Zealand universities appear to be competing to be led by the Treaty of Waitangi without a clear definition of what that means. The 1840 Treaty between Māori tribes and the Crown around the governance of the country is a short document that is silent on educational matters.
At the risk of being marginalised, academics are being pressured to support the adoption of Te Ao Māori (Māori language, and respect and acknowledgment of Māori customs and protocols) and embracing the Māori story and identity.
The Performance-Based Research Fund, which formerly rewarded research excellence and relevance, now focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusiveness and employs Māori co-chairs for 13 of the 14 research assessment panels.
Appointing co-chairs based on ethnicity will lead to a shift from a system of benchmarking research quality to a race-based system that is inherently biased in one direction.
Māori co-chairs can comment on non-Māori portfolios, but non-Māori panelists may not be prepared to challenge the expert assessment of Māori co-chairs on Māori portfolios, creating an accountability problem, disincentives, and side effects. For example, how can activity in matauranga Māori or community engagement be an international research activity?
But I’m not telling you anything I haven’t written about before. It’s just unusual for this to appear in a Kiwi magazine, and written by three Kiwis.
*Andrew Sullivan, once deeply smitten with Obama, fears that he’s no longer walking the walk:
Once in office, by and large, Obama walked that walk, with his usual unflappable equipoise. His refusal to become a more racially divisive figure disappointed the CRT-left, of course, prompting diatribes from Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornel West, among others. He seemed someone who could see where both the right and the left were coming from on race, and sought to synthesize, for the sake of all of us, with hope.
This is a passage well worth re-reading today:
For the African-American community, the path [toward a more perfect union] means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life.
But it also means binding our particular grievances — for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs — to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives — by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Where is that Obama today?
As our liberal elites embraced a wholesale repudiation of his vision, as they redefined America as a white supremacist country through and through, diagnosed every disadvantage of African-Americans as solely and entirely caused by “white supremacy,” and demanded crude race discrimination — “equity” — as the only cure … Obama said nothing. Views he once decried as “profoundly distorted” became his party’s core philosophy on race, and the first black president stayed mum.
He gives several quotes from Obama’s past, contrasting with more modern statements where Barack appears to give in to identity politics:
And at the 50th anniversary of the Selma marches in 2015, Obama rebuked the idea of “equity” — forcibly creating equality of outcomes for racial groups:
With effort, we can roll back poverty and the roadblocks to opportunity. Americans don’t accept a free ride for anybody, nor do we believe in equality of outcomes. But we do expect equal opportunity.
I miss that guy.
It’s hard to believe that a Democratic President today could say such a thing, much less a black Democratic President. Sullivan ends this way:
As for Obama? There was always a question of whether his moderation on race was out of conviction or opportunism. He’s a politician, not a saint, and some level of bullshit is necessary in politics to get anything done. He’s also a fully paid-up member of our liberal elite, and it’s been hard to go in any way against the current woke wave, without severe social (and maybe marital) consequences.
But way back when, I chose to believe in his good faith on race and the American experiment. I still do. But it’s getting harder.
12-year-old Palestinian Arab boy saved by doctors at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital after he was hit by a car while riding his bicycle.
The parents of 12-year-old Suleiman Hassan, a Palestinian Arab boy from the Jordan Valley, never imagined that the routine ride on his bicycle near his home would end so dramatically.
The boy, who, like every other day, went out on his bicycle to get some air, was involved in a traffic accident recently and was very seriously injured. Only the emergency surgery he underwent at Hadassah Ein Kerem saved his life, the medical center said in a press release.
After being struck by a car, Hassan was airlifted to the trauma unit at Hadassah Ein Kerem, when it was clear to rescue forces in the area that his life was in danger due to his critical injury and damage to the connection between his head and neck, the hospital explained.
Dr. Ohad Einav, a specialist from the orthopedic department at Hadassah Ein Kerem who operated on the child together with Dr. Ziv Asa, said, “The most significant and main injury suffered by the boy was a fracture in the connection between the head and neck, along with a tear of all the ligaments. Additionally, there was a superficial injury to the abdomen. Due to the serious injury, the head almost completely detached from the base of the neck.
“After a thorough examination of his condition, we decided to perform surgery during which we attached the head to the neck,” Dr. Einav said.
“We fought for the boy’s life, a large operating room team, including operating room nurses and anesthesiologists, followed by the intensive care and surgical department team.”
He further explained: “This is a rare and unusual case with a 50% chance of mortality. The procedure itself is very complicated and took several hours, while in the operating room we used new plates and fixations in the damaged area. It was precisely because of such cases that I chose to specialize in trauma.
. . . “Fortunately, the operation was a great success and we saved the boy’s life. He was discharged home with a cervical splint and, of course, under the dedicated medical care and monitoring of the hospital staff and myself.”
I think this is great, but do realize that things like this happen all the time in the so called “apartheid state.” Here’s a heartwarming photo, and I wish it meant that peace is in the offing:
(From the story). Dr. Ohad Einav and Dr. Ziv Asa together with Suleiman just before he was discharged. (Hadassah Spokesperson’s Office)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is enigmatic, but Malgorzata explains: “I suspect that you never studied The Poverty of Philosophy by Karl Marx. So the explanation for Hili’s words is that she noticed this title and liked it so much she decided to apply it to ants.”
A: What are you studying?
Hili: The poverty of ants’ philosophy.
In Polish:
Ja: Co tak studiujesz?
Hili: Nędzę filozofii mrówek.
And a picture of Szaron on the windowsill, aching to get inside:
In an irony beyond irony the despotic Iranian regime while murdering and raping hundreds of protesting Iranian women is also staging to a fashion show of ‘government approved’ women’s clothing, a travesty beyond travesty. Moreover, this farce exhibition is being supported by… pic.twitter.com/9ld8sXhedm
The family portrait left behind by Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke on the moon has become a significant artifact in space exploration history. The photograph, which Duke placed on the lunar surface during the mission, has remained untouched and undisturbed for over five decades.… pic.twitter.com/Pzupd5atjw
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) July 8, 2023
Tweets from Matthew. Did you ever think about this one? I don’t know of any blue mammals!
A book like this is also great to put in perspective how mammals are largely EXTREMELY conservative in coloration and general morphology… especially when compared to amphibians and reptiles (including birds) pic.twitter.com/KC9M7wJvAB
For the next 40 minutes waiting for the train I will be watching this cat in the Edinburgh sun flirting OUTRAGEOUSLY with all the passers by for scritchies pic.twitter.com/QBr1Qo0hcm
The ducklings are hatching under Amy, the library duck, and you can see them under the mother (heads pop out occasionally, and there are at least three) at the DuckCam link. Here is a photo showing one duckling’s head (circled). We have a plan to try to capture the ducklings and walk them, with Amy following, to the nearest water, which is about 1.5 miles away. That likely won’t work, but we will try. If it doesn’t work, I’ve already called the rehab lady and we can take the brood into rehab tomorrow.
It’s likely that the brood is eight or more; they may not have all hatched. But it’s likely that the Big Jump will happen tomorrow.
This is very stressful. I planned for a respite from duck-tending this year, but we are also feeding a mother and brood on a dorm plaza, which takes at least an hour three times a week.
Click on the photo to enlarge.
Posting will almost certainly be light tomorrow as I expect the ducklings will jump, though they may do so this afternoon.
On June 30 I reported on a PLOS One paper whose data showed that, in existing hunter-gatherer societies, women participated in hunting a lot more than most people (well, at least I) thought. (The original paper is here.) Here’s what I wrote, giving the authors’ conclusions (the authors’ words are doubly indented, my short bit singly indented).
The authors’ conclusions:
Here we investigated whether noted trends of non-gendered hunting labor known from the archaeological record continued into more recent, ethnographic periods. The descriptive sample described here is sufficient to warrant the conclusion that women in foraging societies across the world participate in hunting during more recent time periods, a finding that makes sense given women’s general morphology and physiology . The prevalence of data on women hunting directly opposes the common belief that women exclusively gather while men exclusively hunt, and further, that the implicit sexual division of labor of ‘hunter/gatherer’ is misapplied. Given that this bimodal paradigm has influenced the interpretation of archeological evidence, which includes the reluctance to distinguish projectile tools found within female burials as intended for hunting (or fighting) , this paper joins others in urging the necessity to reevaluate archeological evidence, to reassess ethnographic evidence, to question the dichotomous use of ‘hunting and gathering,’ and to deconstruct the general “man the hunter” narrative.
Of the 63 foraging societies with clear descriptions of hunting strategies, 79% of them demonstrated female hunting. The widespread presence of female hunting suggests that females play an instrumental role in hunting, further adding to the data that women contribute disproportionately to the total caloric intake of many foraging groups. Additionally, over 70% of hunting done by females is interpreted as intentional, meaning that females play an active and important role in hunting—and the teaching of hunting—even if they use different tools and employ different acquisition strategies. For example, among the Aka, women’s participation in net-hunting was required, whereas men’s participation was not.
It’s clear from these data that hunter-gatherer societies do not show a strict division of labor, though I’d like to see data on the frequency of hunts in which women participate, not just the frequency of societies in which women hunt. Men still do most of the hunting and most of the big-game hunting, but this shows only moderate rather than extensive division of labor.
These data got a lot of attention because the paper is supposed to have “busted the myth” that in hunter-gatherer societies, both now and among our ancestors, there was a strict division of labor: men did the hunting and women the gathering. While most anthropologists who weighed in said that nobody in the field really believed in such a strict division of labor, I’m sure that at least some laypeople did, and the data were valuable in dispelling such a myth.
I am keeping track of the reaction to the original paper, for here we have a case of science in flux: a “paradigm” of sex-specific labor appears to have been overturned (or at least eroded), and others will now analyze the data and weigh in. One thing that wasn’t clear from the original paper was this: given that women do participate in hunting in most modern hunter-gatherer societies, to what extent do they participate? Do they do half the hunting, or only a little hunting? I emphasize that any such division of labor has nothing to do with inferiority of one sex over another, but may be a byproduct of the differences in strength and speed of men versus women, characteristics that resulted from natural or sexual selection. But before we go speculating, we need the data.
At any rate, in a poorly titled paper in the Aporia Magazine (female hunting is NOT a “myth”, and the article below shows it isn’t), a somewhat pseudonymous author analyzed the data from 11 African societies (the limit of what could be presented in this short piece) and found that yes, women hunted in many societies—but never to the extent that men did.
Author “Alexander” is described this way:
Alexander is a grad student in behavioral and cognitive research. His research interests are in relationships and attraction. You can follow him on Twitter for interesting research threads and YouTube for evidence-based dating tips.
You can read the paper by clicking on the screenshot below.
Alexander notes the media attention to the PLOS One paper, but said that although the headlines may have gotten the results wrong, the real “big problems” with the paper are these:
The data do not show it is a “myth” that men are the predominant hunters across these cultures.
The data do not show that women hunt as often as men do.
The data do not show that women have always hunted as much as men.
So the “myth” isn’t that females don’t hunt, it is that they often hunt as much as do men. The title should have made that clear.
Here’s what Alexander said was done in the original paper: a simple binary coding with 0 for “no” (hunting, fishing, gathering) and 1 for “yes”.
Anderson et al. (2023) examined the existing ethnographic literature for documentation of women hunting. This was categorized as a binary variable. If there was any documentation of women hunting, it was recorded as a 1, a simple “yes.” This raises a problem. It does not quantify how much men and women participate in hunting. It didn’t matter if hunting was rare for women or if female hunting practices differed significantly from male hunting practices (e.g., trapping birds versus hunting elephants with spears)
Alexander looked at the 11 societies in Africa, consulting the original sources. He quotes from them; in some there appears to be a strict division of labor with no women hunting, in others women hunt with nets, but in others women do very little hunting. Alexander divides up the division of labor into four subjective categories, and then plots the category for each society (below):
Based on the description of the cultures in Anderson et al. (2023) and the research cited above, I coded cultures according to the following:
A clear sexual division of hunting labor: a binary yes/no.
The extent to which hunting was segregated overall: a scale of 1-4. A 1 indicates no segregation; men and women perform the same hunting tasks in mixed groups. A 4 indicates nearly total segregation.
Here are the results for the African societies used:
Here’s his conclusion:
100% of the societies had a sexual division of labor in hunting. Women may have participated with men in some hunting contexts, typically capturing small game with nets, but participated much less in large game hunting with weapons or by persistence. Even within these contexts, it was usually the case that the role of women during the communal hunt was different. For example, women flushed wild game into nets while men dispatched the game.
These are my subjective ratings based on the papers I read in Anderson et al. (2023) and the supporting literature I cited. You may disagree and assign some different ratings. The point is that there is substantial variation across cultures in sex-based hunting roles. Additionally, none of the societies truly have an absence of these roles.
Again, all you can do is look at the data he reproduces. His conclusion is that there is generally some division of labor, but there are no societies that rank 1 (“no segregation”) and four show “total segregation.”
Read this article along with my earlier post and Alexander’s post (especially the text he reproduces from original sources ) as well as the PLOS One paper. And remember that differences between sex roles, large or small, say nothing about ranking. Remember, too, that the idea that “women never hunt in hunter gatherer societies” is something that anthropologists rejected a long time ago. Alexander finishes with this reminder:
Why did the perception of “man the hunter” arise? It’s likely because we see many sex-segregated hunting practices, particularly in hunting large game with weapons. Additionally, when you think of hunting, the first thing that comes to mind may not be chasing birds into nets. You probably think of a man with a spear — usually a man, not a woman, with a spear.
Nonetheless, it’s important not to devalue the role of small game hunting and foraging. Ichikawa (2021) noted that small game net hunting produced an equal supply of food in tonnes but was also stable and not sporadic compared with hunting elephants. In agricultural societies, women are not merely sitting at home either. Farming labor is shared and women tend to produce as much food as men. Women work hard across cultures. They are not merely sitting in the cave waiting for you to return the mammoth meat.
For some people, that is not good enough. They are driven by a belief that the egalitarianism of hunter-gatherer societies means they have no sex-based roles or divisions. This is not only a belief but an ideological desire. They want to believe that hunter-gatherer egalitarianism means the sameness of the sexes. On that, I will leave you with what Lewis (2014) wrote about gender roles for one pygmy hunter-gatherer group related to those reviewed in this literature:
Mbendjele recognize, cultivate, and celebrate gender differences, but value them equally. To understand egalitarian societies, it is necessary to understand that individual variation and equality coexist, so to understand gender egalitarian societies, it is necessary to recognize that gender difference and equality coexist
[…] Mbendjele men and women spend most of their waking time apart; in the forest women gather and fish together with other women and children, men go looking for honey or hunting in smaller male‐only groups.
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