merely a pigment of the imagination – part 1

European Starling
(Wikipedia)

I recently was asked to design some birds for a mural here in Shreveport to be painted by the public. I got to pick which birds, and made my list of Passerines that are local, attractive, colorful, recognizable, and easily translatable to paint-by-numbers. I was zooming through the designs, recommending Pantones with excitement until I crashed into a little brick wall called the European Starling.

People are attracted to bright colors. Butterflies, beetles, amphibians, and of course birds bear colors that span from Roy to G. Biv. You and I are sadly not as colorful (though current trends on Pinterest are trying their hardest to change that – somebody stop the madness).  We're all pretty much shades of brown and blacks, and when lined up on a spectrum, really don't show that much variation from one person to the next.

So melanin-y. (Wikipedia)

We’re colored primarily via pigments called melanins. Our two primary types of melanins are eumelanin (blacks and browns) and pheomelanin (reddish browns). The infinite combinations of quantities of eumelanins and pheomaelanins comprise the spectrum of human coloration, spanning from skin to hair to eye color and characterize mammalian coloration. Birds also utilize melanins, as is finely exemplified by the Red-tailed Hawk to the right.

Reds, oranges, and yellows also are results of pigments. Carotenoids are the family of pigments that give animals these beautiful fire colors and, as a rule, cannot be manufactured by animals’ cells. Instead, they have to acquire them from the environment via diet. Cue back to the amazing story about Cedar Waxwing’s tail tips turning orange due to the consumption of both yellow and red honeysuckle berries, and flamingos being pink dependent on their consumption of crustaceans in their shallow wading pools.

Though not as common, another coloration mechanism exists in birds. Pigments called porphyrins are identifiable by their fluorescence when exposed to ultraviolet light. Unlike melanins or carotenoids, which are lipids (fats), porphyrins are modified amino acids and can reflect back greens, brilliant reds, pinks and even browns when exposed to white light. In fact, I noticed a few years back when working with a Barred Owl that it had a soft pink tinge to the underside of its wings. After some research, I discovered that that pink tinge was due to the presence of porphyrins in owl plumage. Had I shown a UV light on that owl, it would have lit up like a Christmas tree (read the paper here).

So what about blues? Where do they come from? And why couldn’t I draw that European Starling? These questions lead us into a whole different box of cookies called structural coloration – a mechanism of producing color without a pigment. Blue, and the colors of an iridescent surface like a European Starling, do not exist as physical entities within feathers. No molecule or "thing" exists within feathers that is actually blue-colored or iridescent-colored. In fact, one might say such colors are merely pigments of the imagination...

Hold your bated breath. Part two on structural coloration headed your way.

TEASER. (Wikipedia)

wham bam thank you ma'am

Summer of 2008 was one of my best yet. It was filled with early morning fishing trips, catching my first bass on a fly rod, southern home cooking and mowing the lawn using my dad’s 360 degree riding lawn mower. I can still smell that summer when I think about it – including a prominent olfactory memory of Calamine anti-itch lotion.

As the summer came to a close, my dad and I decided to plan a father-daughter hiking trip before I headed back to college. We started training by walking the neighborhood with our packs and slowly adding gallons of water each week to increase the weight. At the time, I thought he was trying to get in shape to keep up with me. Now, I see it was him who was worried about my then 95-lb little body trying to carry a whole pack for three days; and he was right to worry – it took me a few weeks to build up the stamina. Once August rolled around, we were ready and headed up to a wilderness area in Arkansas with only our packs in the bed of the truck.


We spent most of the first day hiking down, and took our first break at a stream. I sat on a log wearing a gray shirt tee shirt and my trusty khaki shorts. Once we rested up we began hiking up. And up. And up. We took another break and I sat down another log to chug some water. We repeated this several times until light started to get dim, we found an area to set up camp. I ate dinner, also sitting on a log in my khaki shorts, and then we turned in.

The bugs were deafening that night. I don’t think either one of us got any sleep. You’d think it would be silent in the middle of a wilderness area at night, but not in Arkansas and not in the middle of the summer. I remember asking myself, as I tossed in my tiny hot tent that night, if I should be worried about any of the bugs.

The next day was more of the same, until about halfway through the day I began to hurt… and itch. And burn. My under-butt region and the tops of my thighs began to itch past the limits of what I thought was humanly possible. A quick trip behind a tree and a peek at my behind revealed to me that my butt had turned red. So red that the individual bites were indiscernible until closer inspection. Chiggers – how had I not thought to beware the chiggers in my little khaki shorts?

Redbugs, or chiggers as we call them in the South, are not actually bugs. They’re arachnids, like spiders and scorpions and belong to the genus Trombicula. They’re a type of mite barely big enough to see with the naked eye when they’re adults and are cute little vegetarians that eat plants. But the babies, well, let me tell you about the babies.

Larval redbugs feed on skin. They like to find tight, protected spots like YOUR PANTIES or fat folds to burrow into your skin and secrete enzymes that start to digest it. And then they slurp it up. The slurping and chewing causes extreme irritation and itching to their hosts. They’ll stay attached for up to five days, and then drop off of your body like you never meant anything to them at all. They don’t even take you out for breakfast the next morning – wham bam thank you ma’am.

Upon returning home from our hiking trip, I counted 110 chigger bites on my butt and upper thighs, and an additional 70 or so elsewhere. I’m sure I was not my usual frickin delightful self for those few days as I lamented wearing my loose-fitting shorts and sitting on so many chigger-infested logs like a dope. I had to take Tylenol PM to sleep at night for a week.

Despite their panty fetishes, chiggers really are pretty non-invasive parasites. They don’t suck blood and don’t enter your body past your superficial layer of skin. Parasites can get so much worse than little baby redbugs munching on some skin cells. Still, if you're not a southerner and find yourself in our neck of the woods during the summer, take precautions. No one deserves to be used like that.

tiny lab monkeys but without the guilt

The husband of a dear friend (hi MK and Andy!) recently challenged me to incorporate a fruit fly into an illustration. Obviously, I made a hipster fruit fly logo because that’s what everyone has been missing in their lives. A few folks asked me what the G, T, C, and A meant in the illustration – so, here it is.

Drosophila melanogaster is a species of fruit fly that has been used as a model organism in labs for about a hundred years, like tiny lab monkeys but without the guilt. In 1909, an entomologist named Charles Woodworth suggested they be used to study genetics, kind of like Gregor Mendel used pea plants. Woodworth’s idea was brilliant.

Drosophila are sexually dimorphic, meaning it’s easy to tell males from females by appearance. This is useful when it comes time to mate them. Secondly, they have only four chromosomes, which are easily observed during times of genetic activity. They have several discreet physical traits that are genetically determined, like eye color, wing shape, bristles, and body color. They breed quickly and a lot- allowing people to observe multiple generations in a reasonable amount of time. Lastly, they’re easy and cheap to maintain. They’re frickin fruit flies.

For decades people have been studying these guys. They’ve given us insight into how basic genetics, beyond the white or red pea plant blooms, operate in a system founded on DNA. In 2000, we completed sequencing the entire genome of Drosophila melanogaster- that is, the sequence of 139,500,000 G’s, C’s, T’s, and A’s that make a fruit fly a fruit fly.

Not only can you look up every single nitrogenous base (G, C, T, or A) present in a red-eyed, black-bodied, curly-winged, bristleless fruit fly, you can look up where those genes reside, what sequences control them, and what bits of DNA don’t do anything.

One might ask what good it does to have such an intimate genetic knowledge of a fruit fly, and one might be totally justified in asking that question. The answer is this: 75% of known human genes that cause disease are present in the fruit fly’s genome. About 50% of their coding DNA also codes in us. By studying the fruit fly’s genome, we’re studying how things like diabetes and cancer work. And that’s important.

So if you haven’t hugged a fruit fly today… don’t. They smell weird. But do tell it thank you for its service to science.

daily doses of tiny dinosaurs

Since I took a furry dependent into my care, I’ve made it a daily habit to come home at lunch. It’s not always easy to find the 45 minutes to an hour in my workday, and I usually feel stressed and rushed as I shovel food in my face while simultaneously running around with Rosy in the backyard. But today, I decided to just sit beneath the tree and “smell the roses,” as they say.

Today was clear and beautiful and cool: the kind of cool that is replaced by the warm sun rays in the most pleasant of ways. As I sat with eyes closed, I could hear Rosy’s little nose sniffing around, the faint sounds of Youree Drive traffic, and birds. I love listening for the birds.

One block over, I heard a large flock of Cedar Waxwings. Behind me, a handful of robins making fools of themselves. In my front yard, the usual suspect, Mr. Blue Jay, doing a pretty good impression of the Red-Tailed Hawk I heard perched not too far away. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Barred Owl that lulled me to sleep last night from the pecan tree in my backyard. As visually inspiring as our avian cousins are, they deserve equal admiration for their vocalizations.

I think I love birds because they are just so ridiculous. Consider the metabolic energy that is required to produce their elaborate colors, patterns, and feather structures with the primary selective pressure being to look sexy. And then their elaborate songs! They have two voice boxes that are capable of producing sounds at the same time (thanks to a structure called a syrinx- not unlike your larynx). So basically they can sing twice… at once. And would you believe it, the primary selective pressure for this is to sound sexy. Not to mention their incredible visual capabilities that exceed our own in almost every way -- they see more of the world than we ever will. Migratory birds gaze at the night sky as little nestlings, learning the stars by which they navigate their migrations. Corvids like crows and jays can solve problems that baby humans can’t.

So here we have these furby-sized dinosaurs that are pimped out and more perceptive than many vertebrates their size. But they’re not these elusive, exotic creatures that must be sought out in the farthest reaches of the wilderness to be observed. They’re accessible; they live in the trees around our houses and serve as our personal alarm clocks each morning. They de-stress us as we sit beneath pecan trees on our lunch breaks and often raise their babies under the trusty shelters of our porches. They’ve adapted to urban settings like New York City yet still thrive in nature. These daily doses of tiny dinosaurs are part of our human experience and among the most relatable connections we have to nature in increasingly non-natural settings.

Show some love to some birds this weekend. Many are migrating right now and are weary. Be hospitable and provide them a meal. Give them a place to take a bath with fresh water. Put a cat indoors. It’s the least we can do for the tiny dinosaurs.

Bird doodles

you go, little burs

It’s a miracle I haven’t written a post about dogs yet- if you’re friends with me on Facebook, you’ve probably noticed I’ve developed a borderline obnoxious obsession with my newly adopted puppy. Don’t you worry; I’ve got some in the works. This one only features the cutest dog in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD.

Rosy (synonyms or nicknames: Rosalind, Roseballs, Lady Rose, Roseface, or Rosepot) has some of the sweetest paws you’ll ever squeeze. So when I see her suddenly limping on our walks, it always causes me momentary distress. As we’ve found out, my neighborhood is populated with those little burs that get stuck on your socks and shoes, or in this case, paws. They’re the seeds of Soliva sessilis, a leafy green weed that commonly invades people’s lawns. Though Rosy and I try to avoid them on our walks, she still manages to catch a few each time. To her credit, she’s a champ and patiently holds still as I locate them and pluck them from her feet.

Fig. A. Thanks Disney.

We take for granted our two legs and locomotive powers as human animals. They help significantly in our reproductive challenge of genetic diversity. Proven time and time again, diverse genes, when sexually combined, produce more fit offspring. Should genetic diversity be lacking in a reproductive pool, you get inbreeding and decreased fitness (Figure A).

This model is so important that almost any sexually reproductive species you consider has evolved adaptations to accommodate it. Be it the wings of male drone ants that carry them to unrelated queens in  different nests or the roaming behaviors observed in male primates (playas, I’m looking at you), Animalia likes lots of genes to choose from when it comes to swapping DNA.

Plants are no different, though they do have the immobility issue to overcome. When it’s likely that a plant’s nearest neighbors are its siblings, it needs a way to get its DNA package over to a plant that is not as closely related. Basically, plants must depend on their environment to do the traveling for them. That environment includes gravity, wind, water, precipitation, bugs, and animals like you and your adorable dog.

For them, it’s a matter of life vs. evolutionary death. They depend on us to get their DNA over to a plant other than their immediate family (who can blame them!?) I prefer they not involve Rosy’s paws in their sexy quests, but I also wish I didn’t have to pluck that weird hair from my forehead every few weeks. Nature deals the cards and we make the best of it.

Actually, the Soliva sessilis burs, though annoyances, are in a way a nice addition to our walks. In a neighborhood where people cut their lawns and trim their bushes so no animals can find refuge, plant non-native flowers, immediately reach for a shovel upon the discovery of a harmless snake and allow their outdoor cats to stalk and kill birds, I secretly root for the little weed. In a humanized, unnatural setting, the little guys are doing what it takes to further the fitness of their species.

You go, little burs.

mirabilis jalapa got moxy

I currently rent a little 2-bedroom house in Shreveport, Louisiana. Built in the forties, it features an old phone booth in the hallway, a foldout ironing board in the kitchen wall, and those pretty clear crystal-looking doorknobs. I really am fond of the place, but whenever people ask where I live, I always preface with “I don’t live in the greatest area…”

And I don’t. But my immediate neighbors are all good folks who keep tidy lawns and look out for each other. So when I moved in, I decided to make the place mine as much as I could and enjoy being a young working gal who comes own to a nice little home every day. I started with the backyard.

The backyard was overgrown, so I cut it to a luscious 3 inches and weed-eated the perimeter to rid it of the leggy weeds. It took a whole Saturday, but by the end of it, the yard was clean and manicured. And it’s stayed that way until about a month ago.

As life and work in general picked up in September, I let the yard fall behind (getting a new puppy might have had something to do with that…). I recently noticed that those weeds I spent so long cutting had grown back, but looked more like bushes. On closer examination, I realized that I had attempted to murder one of my all-time favorite plants. Luckily, it’s a determined plant with moxy and heart, God love it.

 4 o'clock at my mom's house

Four o’clocks (Mirabilis jalapa) are blooming bushes with pretty green heart-shaped leaves.  Their flowers open in the late afternoon (hence the name) and stay open all night. Come dawn, they close up again. Although this is pretty cool, it’s not the coolest thing about four o’clocks.

Their color, or rather, how they inherit their color, may be the neatest thing about this plant. They come in three different colors- yellow, pink, and white. But a single flower on a whole bush can show multiple colors- and in unique patterns.

Four o'clock color inheritance clearly does not follow the traditional dominant-recessive model that good ole’ Gregor laid out. For instance, the dominant recessive model would dictate that if a red cow (red being dominant) made babies with a blue cow, there would be a 75% chance of having red babies and 25% chance of having blue babies. But all the babies would be either red or blue. But what if some of the babies were purple? What if they were striped blue and red? That would be incomplete dominance.

Spunky 4 o'clock at my house

Four o’clocks exhibit incomplete dominance. A *completely yellow flower cross pollinated with a completely pink/red flower yields an orange-flowered plant. The more generations there are, the more complicated the genetics get – think Punnett squares that are 16 x 16. You start getting multi-colored flowers, and in different patterns. They are really very lovely.

The 4 o’clocks in my mom’s yard are both yellow and pink. The feisty ones in my current backyard are all pink. I’m thinking about going to my mom’s house and grabbing some of the multicolored ones and matchmaking them with the yellow ones at my house.

What do you think would happen?

*homozygous

like a fat kid at the doughnut case

The past two weeks have kicked my butt. I’ll just say that they have involved falling in love with and giving away the best kitten in the world, stressful challenges at work, being sick (twice), being hit in a very scary car accident, friends moving away, and numerous other challenges and confrontations that, when added together, will just get a gal down.

Yesterday, I had the good, unexpected laugh that I’ve needed. You see, two weeks ago, I bought basil and mint plants at the farmers market and placed them in my kitchen window. I haven’t been overly attentive to them, instead glancing at them quickly each morning as I grab some breakfast and rush out of my house. I’ve noticed that the mint plant seems to be growing in height, not so much sprouting leaves. But finding a sunnier spot for it hasn’t been at the top of my priority list.

So yesterday, I came home and sloughed into my kitchen for a glass of water to find my mint plant with all of its leaves plastered to the window like a fat kid looking in doughnut case at the grocery store. I can’t tell you exactly why I found this to be so hilarious, but I definitely stood in my kitchen laughing by myself like a maniac for a solid minute.

It occurred to me that Minty (that’s what I’m calling it now- I’m having kitten withdrawals don’t you judge me) was doing some pretty neat things in my window sill. First off, it’s not growing the big leaves I’d like to put in my iced tea. Instead, it’s become lanky and growing stem length. This is a behavior (that’s right, plants behave) it has evolved to find sunlight when it’s not getting enough. Also, it’s moving its leaves to maximize the sunlight that it can find. Minty is being very proactive for Minty’s well being. I’m proud.

This begs the question- how does a plant A.) “know” wtf is going on around it B.) “act” on those conditions? Where are the sensing organs to tell it it’s not getting enough sun? How does the info from those sensors translate into movements and actions? Do plants have plant nerves?

Answer: plants do stuff via plant hormones.

Giberellins are the class of hormones responsible for stem elongation. Right now, they’re coursing through the vascular system of Minty, only affecting cells and tissues that they’re supposed to activate. Giberellins are flowing through the puny leaves just like they are the stems, but only causing growth in stems. This is just how human hormones work too.

Giberellin organic structure.

Once I find a sunnier home for my plants, they’ll signal to lower the production of gibberellins and to up the production of cytokinins, which will cause leaf growth. Which means I will be enjoying some iced tea very soon.

So next time you walk past a plant, you may want to offer it some chocolates and tell it it’s pretty. You never know what kind of hormonal swings our plant cousins are enduring.

  

opah!

You probably saw on your news website of choice last week the discovery of the first “warm-blooded” fish- the opah.

First off, let’s get rid of that term, as we did in big gurl hongry. It’s really not very descriptive, nor is “cold-blooded.” The terms we’re looking for are endothermic and exothermic.

Every animal has a temperature at which it can most optimally do its thang. Ours is 98.6-ish. If it gets too far above that, things start going wrong. If it drops too far below that, things start going wrong.

I can be slow on the
uptake sometimes.

Same thing goes for animals across the phyla- endothermic and exothermic alike. Jellyfish dislike getting too cold just as much as Jack Nicholson.

The real difference in “warm-blooded” and “cold-blooded” animals is the source from which their heat comes. Endothermic animals generate their own heat from inside, while exothermic animals obtain heat from outside their bodies, from the environment. Exo and endo; it’s almost like they planned that.

When I was first learning about all this thermoregulation business, and I heard the sentence “endothermic animals generate their own heat from inside,” an image of tiny campfires throughout my body flashed in my head. But obviously this isn’t right. Really, the heat is a collective result of our cellular metabolisms. Every single living cell in your body is constantly ticking: taking in nutrients, transforming them into proteins and building… well, you. The by-product of all this chemical work is excess energy in the form of heat. So in a way, each cell is acting as a microscopic chemically-powered campfire, putting off tiny amounts of heat that when added up together collectively, keep your tissues at about 98.6.

One advantage of being endothermic is adaptability. Since we make our own heat, we don’t have to depend on one specific environment to maintain it for us. Wanna take a trip to Antarctica? Bundle up and bring some food and you’re good to go. Bring an exotherm to see Santa and no matter how many Northfaces you put him in or flies you feed him, he’s going to freeze to death.

The opah- very pretty!

Another advantage of being endothermic is energy levels. Yes, we have to eat more (some reptiles can go years without eating! I can go about 1.5 hours before I get cranky), but we can not only perform rapid motions, but sustain thems. A frog may be able to quickly hop away, but only for short bursts. When you look at predator species in the endorthermic clades Mammalia and Aves, you’ll see animals that can hunt intensely and for long periods of time before their tissues tire, since their energy reserve is internal. We make darn good hunters because of our thermoregulation systems.

Combine these two advantages, and you’ve got a strong case for while the opah has evolved endothermy. Here you’ve got this predator with morphology fit for cold ocean depths, but with a metabolism that allows it to function in colder waters while simultaneously having the energy capacity of warm water dwellers. And in those colder waters, where it is almost certainly the only endotherm in its food chain, its high energy levels give it the ability to quickly chase down those slow-moving exotherm prey species and eat their asses. It’s kicking butt down there.

No doubt about it- it has evolved away from exothermy. This is the first known fish to be an endotherm. Ever. It’s a big deal.

Let’s welcome our ray-finned, bony friend to the club, and wish him many metabolism-sustaining meals to come. Opah!

i just can't

There was a bit of a scene in my house last week. Let me set the stage for you.

I’ve had a very long day. Up at 4:30 AM, done with work at 8:00 PM. I’m exhausted and finishing my lentil quinoa bowl from Panera. All I can think about is taking a quick shower and lying down to go to sleep.

So I go into my bathroom, turn on the shower, strip my clothes, and start fishing out bobby pins from my hair. And then I see it.

Within about half a second, I’m out of the bathroom and hiding behind my doorframe, screaming, peering back into the bathroom at a huge cockroach perched on my shower curtain.

Now before you assume that I’m a sissy girl who hates bugs, let me clarify that I regularly scoop up spiders, crickets, and other arthropod friends and take them outside to set them free. But when it comes to cockroaches, I simply cannot. I JUST CAN’T.

They’re big, so they feel very invasive. They scurry. They climb up walls. They twitch their long creepy antennas. They’re dirty. They make sounds when they walk. Their presence in my personal space disturbs me to my very core- even more than people who hashtag their babies. And that’s a lot.

The only roach I will ever be REMOTELY okay with,
Hal from Wall-E.

After screaming a bad word at the roach for a while, I left the room to collect myself. Was I being unreasonable? Well, clearly, yes. But was I being cruel in my wanting to kill this cockroach? Should I try to capture it and take it outside like I do my arachnid friends? Was he just as scared of me as I was of him?

A recent paper claimed to prove that roaches have personalities. Basically, they microchipped the little bastards and dropped a bunch of them into a brightly lit arena with shelters here and there. Roaches are naturally averse to light, and will seek dark places to dwell. The folks running this study used the microchips to track the movements of these roaches, and found that some lingered in the light longer than others, suggesting that they are “braver” than those that sought darkness immediately, who were interpreted as being “more timid.”

Another interpretation, or perhaps just a more continued explanation, of these results is that these foraging/shelter-seeking behaviors have evolved to be varied in the species because it is advantageous. Since roaches are social and live in colonies, it would make sense for these behaviors to be varied. Perhaps the roaches who ran for darkness first were trying to signal to the others what to do. Or perhaps the ones who explored in the light were more likely to find an escape from the arena altogether, or even a new food source for everyone.

I touched on the evolution of personalities in my post Myer-Briggs Voodoo Magic. I don’t think it’s too much of a jump to say that social animals that live in groups have mostly evolved to have a variety of exploration behaviors, simply because it improves survival chances of the group.

Am I prepared to say that cockroaches have personalities? Oh hell no. But then again, what exactly is a personality? Maybe, by classical definition, cockroaches do have personalities. Are they as complex as ours? Or as dogs? Absolutely not.

It begs an interesting question- where do we draw the line on which animals think and feel, and those we deem as unthinking and unfeeling? Would you easily kill a dog? No. But would you easily kill a lizard, or a starfish, or a shrimp, or a ladybug?

As an interesting side note, I read some research recently on invertebrate pain. Evidence suggests that insects do not feel it, but crustaceans like crabs most certainly do, and even seem to remember and fear the cause of that pain. Does that change how you feel about killing arthropods?

As for my roommate, I did not kill him. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. I swatted at him with a shoe, screamed, and ran. Then he climbed onto the ceiling. So then I went and sat on my couch and cried for five minutes, until I gathered the courage to spray him with Lysol until he scurried behind the toilet. After that, I shut the bathroom door and crawled into fetal position in my bed and tried to manage my roach anxiety. I had roach nightmares all night.

I spent this past Sunday spraying my house with bug spray and sanitizing every single surface I could find. And now I have a can of Raid in every single room, ready to bring death to any of the “brave” roaches that dare show their ugly little faces in my house.

Now here's a picture of my super cute dog to get rid of the heeby jeebies.

ruminations on cubicle primates

My life has changed dramatically the past six months. I moved back to Louisiana, moved into my own house, landed a cool (though relatively stress-inducing) job. I recognized a need to balance and find release from the 9-5, so I made the decision to get healthy. As part of this resolution, I aim to eat like a grown up and work out.

So, I joined a gym. I go regularly to a class called “Skinny Jeans,” where a mean lady makes me do things that make me unable to breathe. On other days, I go run on the treadmill or do the bike for a while. Because I am apparently incapable of remembering headphones, I usually wind up people watching while I do this.

I see big people, little people, short people, tall people, young people, old people, meat heads, normal folks, girls in full makeup, girls with no makeup- you name it. Some of them are peacocking, some of them are trying their hardest to go unnoticed. All kinds of people come to the gym.

As I’m watching all these people, it always occurs to me how strange the whole situation is. Here we have people- these super complicated, cognitive animals- draping their bodies in specific types of clothing and moving about in repetitive motions and engaging parts on these big machines, all of their own free will. The fact that these bipedal animals take time out of their day to make these movements in these specific clothes at this specific place at this specific time, in a specific order, is to me, utterly fascinating.

There is no immediate food reward as there is for a dog once it shakes your hand or rolls over. There is no immediate social reward (you may get checked out but you don’t become alpha dog for benching 100 pounds bro). So then, why do we do it?

We do it because we, as a species, have evolved away from a natural state. We used to have to chase down our meals, club them to death, and tear them apart with rudimentary tools. Then we developed agriculture, and went to working the land with our hands. That was hard work. This kind of manual labor was part of daily life for people up until just a couple generations ago.

Now, thanks to the Industrial Revolution and globalization, we drive to the store to buy our food. We sit all day on our pelvises that are in no way meant to be sat on for 8+ hours a day. Our metabolisms burn to fuel our eyes as they strain on computer screens instead of powering large skeletal muscles. Our circulatory systems are slow and degrading, never pumping blood with any speed or force as we sit still in our cubicles answering phones and making spreadsheets.

I read an article the other day about a local chimpanzee sanctuary that is dealing with obesity in their chimps, since the chimps are captive and do not have to hunt for their own food. It’s a similar situation. But you won’t catch a chimpanzee doing a Skinny Jeans class for the betterment of health and balance in its life.

It’s not a happy state of affairs for us captive primates in cubicles and sanctuaries, folks. As I jog on the treadmill, I am comforted by one silver lining in the whole “our species is doomed and everything is ruined” scenario.

All these people at the gym are there because they have the ability to comprehend long-term investment. They know that they won’t look any better or be in noticeably better shape when they leave the gym that night. But they do know that if they keep at it, they will look, feel, and be healthier over time. They don’t need a treat after rolling over- not tonight, at least.

And this means that we’re smart. We’re smart enough to figure out what our bodies need for balance and optimum health, and we’re smart enough to appreciate long-term investment. Chimps aren’t there yet, but we are.

At some point, we cubicle primates are going to have to use those smarts to figure out a better balance. How can we accomplish all the amazing things we do while sitting at a desk but not compromise our health?

Some folks say that in time, we may see selection for more adept thumbs for texting, or more resilient eyes for screen reading. But I’m not ready to jump on that train quite yet. Let’s take a poll of how emotionally fulfilled those able-thumbed bug-eyed mutants are in the future. Meanwhile, I’ll stick to Skinny Jeans.

the little titmouse that could

I’ve had some big life changes happening recently. I made the hard decision to leave Alaska to move back home to Shreveport. I got an awesome new job working in science education.  I feel like I have a sense of family again. I’ve reconnected with old friends and made some new ones- one of which is a mouse of the tit variety...

Tufted Titmouse

You see, I moved back in with my mom. I’m lucky to have a soft place to land until I get my own apartment next month, but there’s a reason you get shoved out of the nest at 18. It has been good to spend time with my mom though. And a little unexpected friend has been hanging around the house.

When I first got home, I would hear this knocking sound a few times a day that echoed throughout the house. I could not believe it when I found the source of this perpetual racket- a little Tufted Titmouse was perching on the windows, peeking in, and pecking them with its beak. It would beat on one window for a few seconds, then flutter to the next and repeat.

And it has not stopped. As I type this, I’m watching him do it.

Tufted Titmice are songbirds. They’re known for their melodic call that sounds like someone singing “peter-peter-peter.” They’re small, generally bluish-gray with blush-colored contour feathers under their wings. They have big black beady eyes that dot their pointy little heads, which are crested. You’ve seen plenty of crested-headed birds before; think Blue Jays, cardinals, waxwings, etc.

Crests on songbirds function mainly in display. They are more prominent on the males, and serve as signal of fitness. Other birds have even fancier crests, like cockatiels. Evolutionary biologists have good evidence that suggests they were present on the dinosaur ancestors of birds. A T-Rex with a plume of feathers on its head? Yes please.

So why is my new friend being such a creeper? I really don’t know. Maybe he’s a person that’s been magically turned into a bird and is trying to get my attention for help. Maybe he can see inside and is curious. It’s more likely, however, that he sees his reflection and is trying to pick a fight with himself (I find that endlessly hilarious). At any rate, I admire his tenacity- he certainly does not give up.

As I start this new chapter of my life, I’ll take notes from this little titmouse that could. Don’t give up, keep trying your hardest, and always pick a fight with your reflection.

Ya know, for the entertainment factor.

have a creepy crawly halloween

In observance of this spooky holiday, we’re going to talk about something truly terrifying. Something that can make your skin crawl… something that goes bump in the night (albeit a tiny bump)… something that will try to suck the blood right out of you.

If you haven’t guessed, I’m talking about ticks. Those blood-sucking, privacy- stealing, creepy crawling arachnids.

I may be a little tick-sensitive at the present time. I just arrived back in Louisiana a few weeks ago and have already had red bug bites and one tick. Red bugs are one thing; they itch like crazy but you really don’t have to treat the bites. But when you find a tick on you, you have to physically remove it. Here you are, minding your own business, only to find out this little invertebrate has been on your person for several days, burrowing into your skin, and feeding on your blood. It was on you when you were going about your day like a clueless dope. You feel violated.

This bite looks to be a case of Lyme disease
transmission. But also, just kill me know.
(newhealthguide.org)

And now, NOW you have to remove it with tweezers. You can’t just say, “hey, Miss Tick, I know you’re just trying to make a living, but I’m going to need you to please move elsewhere. What’s that? You’re happy to leave? Okay, thank you! Take care!” No no. You have to carefully tweeze it off, being careful not to smoosh it. And if you’re like me, you will of course accidentally smoosh it and not get the whole thing out.  And then you’ll feel disgusting and like a disease-ridden reject. And so goes life.

Obviously ticks cause me, among other people, a little anxiety. But like all living creatures, they are pretty cool in some ways. For one, they are not insects. They are arachnids- more closely related to spiders and scorpions than they are “bugs.”

Because they are so tiny, we often assume they do not have complex behaviors: that they wander their environment aimlessly until they find a host and dig in. But that is not so. They have a pretty cool system for food searching that is a classic reference case in ethology (animal behavior).

You see, animal behaviors are based off of releasers. A releaser occurs, then a behavior results.  For instance, a lizard flashing its red dewlap would be the releaser for female arousal. An animal running away quickly would be a releaser for a grizzly bear to pursue it. A Lord of the Rings marathon would be a releaser for Claire sitting in front of the TV watching it.

The presence of carbon dioxide and heat is a releaser for tick “questing” behavior. They sit perched like tiny gargoyles on the edge of leaves, waiting for a passerby. Once they sense increased levels of CO2 or heat in their immediate environment, they grip onto the source with their legs. This would make sense, since mammals breathe out CO2 and put off a fair amount of body heat.

In fact, biologists that research ticks use this knowledge to their advantage. They will put white sheets down on the ground and spray CO2 canisters around the underbrush. The ticks fall off onto the white sheets like little drunk idiots.

How many millions of years did it take for this releaser/behavior to be selected for? A million? Maybe less. I would think there would be a strong advantage for ticks that exhibited this behavior.

At any rate, hold your breath when walking through the forest. Wear clothes that insulate your heat.

And if you find that impractical, then invest in some tweezers and Xanex.

drink some water and go home

My high school calculus teacher was fabulous. Fabulous because of her cute outfits and fun sense of humor, but mostly because of her incredible gift for teaching math. Mrs. Weiss made custom notes, homework, quizzes, and tests that set us up for success. She taught us the ideas behind calculus, not just how to solve calculus problems. She taught us the why. By the end of the year, I could see functions and graphs forming in my head after just glancing at numbers or problems. Don’t tell my mom, but my trick in college was to do integration problems in my head at the bar. When I couldn’t integrate anymore, it was time to drink some water and go home.

On the very first day of class, Mrs. Weiss told us “calculus is the study of how things change.” That didn’t sink in immediately, but I understood it over time. And last night, as I struggled to find my keys in the dark, it popped into my head again.

Here in Alaska, summer is sadly at an end. Fall is in full swing, and the day lengths are changing. I got home last night a few minutes after 9:00, as I usually do, and for the first time since summer had to use a flashlight to find my key. It’s that dark now. How does something so gradual and metered sneak up on you all at once? It seems like such a noticeable change all of the sudden. (In my earlier blog post shut up you stupid little birds, I touched on how the whole season changy, day length changy thing works and how it’s exaggerated at extreme latitudes.)

As I turned the key to my dark apartment, a graph popped into my head. An infinite sine curve. The graph of how the day length changes must be a beautiful, perfect sine curve.

In calculus, the derivative of a function is the rate at which something changes at any given point along that graph. If we want to know at which time during the year the changes in day length are greatest from one day to the next, we look at the derivative.

On our graph to the right, the path of the graph levels out to almost not changing at all around the solstices (June 21 and Dec 21). This means the derivative is 0 or very close to it right around the solstices, and that the sun may only set or rise a matter of seconds later or earlier than it did the previous day.

The derivative is greatest on September 23 and March 20 (the equinoxes). You can visually see here that the graph is taking a steep nose dive/climb.  Here in Haines, there may be more than five minute or so difference in how much daylight we get from day to day around the equinoxes.

So maybe I’m not crazy for thinking the days seem to be getting really short all the sudden. The autumnal equinox is in a matter of days, and the change is especially noticeable because we’re losing daylight at a faster rate than we have been all year. The graph is plunging.

It’s worth noting that yet another function can be tied into this little story. Depending on what latitude you live in, you see this day length change at varying magnitudes. At the poles, 24 hour light/night is experienced, which would mean the peaks of the graph are higher and the valleys are lower. It also means the derivatives are greater. Conversely, at the equator, they experience 12 hour days and 12 hour nights year round, so there are no peaks and no valleys. Their graph is completely flat.

So what is the derivative of the graph for the folks that live on the equator where there is no change in day length?

If you can’t tell me, you need to drink some water and go home.

an elegant tango

Throwback in high school.
Tiny little arms.

My whole life I’ve been skinny. Like, get called into the counselor’s office because they think you have an eating disorder skinny. Like, strangers think it’s acceptable to say “eat a sandwich!” instead of “nice to meet you” skinny. Like, eat two Big Macs and large fries and still lose 5 pounds skinny.

I’ve been steadily putting on weight since high school, about 3 pounds per year. I rarely weigh myself and instead focused on taking in as many calories as I could to climb my way out of the “underweight” section on that chart at the doctor’s office. “One day I’ll fill out and be able to sit on hardwood floors,” I told myself.

So you can imagine my surprise when I stepped on the scale a few weeks ago and saw that I’ve gained 15 pounds in about 6 months. I mean, I’ve kind of been noticing some more padding in my belly area as the rest of me has stayed thin. I’ve been kind of proud of my hard-earned fat. But when my sister saw a photo of me and asked if I was “prego,” it dawned on me that I need to regulate how and where I continue to gain my weight.

Men and women are shaped differently, in large part due to fat distribution. Classically, in art and otherwise, women considered to be most beautiful are those with little waists and bigger hips. Science set out to quantify this, and found there is in fact a golden ratio to tell you how hot you are (as if the rest of the world and media didn’t already assume that role).

The results are in and turns out that men find women with waists that are 70% the circumference of their hips to be most attractive. It is thought that this ratio signifies the most fertile women that are best built for carrying and delivering a baby. Makes plenty of sense, right?

Consider evolutionary signals, as discussed in my earlier post stop it, your bib is turning me on. An itty bitty waist and a round thing in your face may often actually signal a fertile woman, but not always. Think of how many women today struggle with infertility, many of them proportioned according to the 70% rule. So is the 70% rule an honest signal of fitness? Has modern medicine and birthing protocols tampered with the honesty of this signal?

You like this, don't you?

There’s a whole field called evolutionary aesthetics, which basically looks into inherited traits that have an effect on the psychological perception other members of a species have of an individual. Why are our lips red? Why do we hate the sight of poop? Why do babies show preference to circles over squares? Why do our brains tend towards things colored with vivid blues and greens?

Since evolutionary aesthetics deals with psychological perceptions throughout the development of a species, over hundreds of thousands of years, it must take into account the changing social environments that affect those psychological perceptions. You see, the perceptions of these traits are not static. For instance, it has been found that men show more preference for larger women when they are hungry. Come back after lunch break, and those same men show subtle preference for smaller women. Should the world fall apart and sink into famine, Vogue will be out of business. Larger women with more resource acquisition abilities will be the hot new things.

I love the elegant tango that happens between natural selection and psychological perception. It’s created the human shape we have now. And the human body may be one of the most inspiring forms, with all of its of curves and colors and lines and fluidity, that our species has recognized yet.

Even if there’s a little bit of it hanging over my jeans right now. The gentle sag of fat over one’s Abercrombie skinny jeans can be inspiring, right?

Oh my god I’m going running right now.