The Urban Pantheist

On tumblr, where I spend an increasing amount of my online time, I keep seeing a post about Gouldian finch chicks. It claims that these birds have phosphorescent spots on the sides of their bills to help guide the parents to the baby's food hole. We have, and breed, Gouldian finches where I work, and I'd never heard of this. Surely if we had baby birds with glow in the dark spots on their faces someone would have mentioned it to me.

So when I was at Bird's World recently, I told the keepers there about this ridiculous tumblr post. "Yes," they said in chorus, "you can see it right now if you want."


So a coworker pulled down a nest box, opened it up, and let me see the glow.


The effect is even more striking when the chicks' mouths are open, but you get the idea. However, a quick side trip to wikipedia quashes our fantasies of a bioluminescent bird:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouldian_finch
"Very young birds, like many other species of Australian cavity-nesting finches, have a variety of odd features in and around their mouths including a "palate marked in the fashion of a domino" and several "prominent rounded tubercles" with an "opalescent lustre" at the back of the gape. These tubercles are commonly (and incorrectly) described as phosphorescent in spite of much scientific evidence to the contrary.[4] It is believed that these tubercles simply reflect light and are not luminescent.[4] Scientists have hypothesized that this domino-like palate and striking tubercles may facilitate feeding within the dark confines of a nest cavity, although no experiments have been conducted to support this idea."

footnote [4] is: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2421636?sid=21105707320511&uid=4&uid=2

So, @TweetsOfOld just posted this link. The highlighted news story, from a 1906 Kentucky newspaper, reads in its entirety: "A four-year-old boy was playing in front of his parents hut at Varallo, Italy, when an eagle suddenly swooped down and carried him off. The eagle was seen to alight on the summit of a high mountain some miles away with his burden safely in his beak. No trace of boy or eagle has been discovered since, although fully 100 mountanineers (sic) spent three weeks continuously searching on the mountains."

This story was either made up completely by the newspaper, a la the Weekly World News, or was spun by the grieving but guilty parents of a child whose death was caused by negligence or malice. The tiniest four year old could not be lifted by the most powerful of european eagles (the golden, again), and eagles don't carry large prey animals with their relatively weak mouths.

Once I asked an ornithologist, "besides mute swans, what flying birds could possibly kill a human being?" She thought for a moment and said "a harpy eagle could kill a small human." Harpy eagles prey on monkeys and sloths, so a four year old is in the right size range for that. They don't pluck the animals from the trees and fly away with them to eat them in their aerie like a roc, however. (oh, wait, yes they do.)

The eagle snatches child video was all too reminiscent of the eagle snatches dog urban legend--another clue to it's doubtfulness.

I don't want to come off as smug--I was totally taken by the eagle video at first. The student filmmakers did a good job of shaking the camera in horror, animating a plausible-appearing grab by the bird, and so on. What this really makes me think about is how valuable it is to actually experience something first hand. Technology can make anything look real--you can synthesize a virtual dragon, dinosaur, faerie, troll, god, alien, or trip to the sun. Why should a child who can watch a perfect artificial dragon bother going to a zoo (for example) to see an anteater or (perish forbid) out into the wilderness to see a moose?

Doing research at work, I came across the FAQ section of the American Mosquito Control Association. I found this paragraph to be especially enlightening. Bold emphasis mine.


What attracts mosquitoes to me?

Why some people seem to be more attractive than others to mosquitoes is the subject of much repellent (and attractant for traps) research being conducted nationwide. Carbon dioxide is the most universally recognized mosquito attractant and draws mosquitoes from up to 35 meters. When female mosquitoes sense carbon dioxide they usually adopt a zigzagging flight path within the plume to locate its source. Once in the general vicinity of a potential host, other cues predominate, including body odors (sweat, lactic acid, etc.) and heat. Odors produced by skin microflora also play a part in inducing the mosquito to land. Over 350 compounds have been isolated from odors produced by human skin. Either singly or in combination, many of these compounds may be attractants - and many may be repellents. As you can see, the situation is complicated and will require many years of testing before it can be sorted out. Visual stimuli, such as movement, also factor into host-seeking. What can be safely stated, though, is that ingestion of garlic, vitamin B12 and other systemics has been proven in controlled laboratory studies to have no impact on mosquito biting. Conversely, eating bananas did not attract mosquitoes as the myth suggests, but wearing perfumes does. People drinking beer have been shown to be more attractive to mosquitoes. Limburger cheese has also been found to be attractive. Scientists have theorized that this may explain the attractancy some mosquitoes find for human feet.

Despite this, I will not stop eating massive amounts of garlic or drinking copious volumes of beer.

I know there are a lot of people out there who aren't sure about vaccinations, especially for kids. I always wondered where the idea that they cause autism came from. From a fraudulent study, as it turns out.

I think this one had so much traction because people like to distrust doctors.

Thanks to drhoz for the link.

I'm no longer a member of wtf_nature  (I found the community attitude to be irritatingly adolescent), but I bet someone there has posted about the Calyptra moth.  Assuming this wikipedia entry is true and not some kind of hallowe'en season hoax, this is a very interesting animal that I can't believe I just learned about.  Lepitopterans are almost unique among orders of insects for not inspiring disgust or anxiety in the general public.  No one much minds if a butterfly lands on them, unlike, say, a flying cockroach.  Moths are mostly beneath the notice of most people, unless their larvae are eating an apple or an expensive wool suit. 

But then there is Calyptra (apparently), a group of moths that mostly pierce fruit with their drinkng-straw mouthparts to draw out nectar and juice.  Except for a few species which have mouthparts strong and sharp enough to pierce the skin of mammals, in order to drink blood.  These vampire moths don't seem to habitually feed on humans (the wikipedia article says "After human skin has been penetrated it tends to turn red and be sore for the following two to three hours. Despite the wound being more severe than that of a mosquito it is thought that there is no health risk and the moths need not be avoided."    Sure they don't!  Why would you want to avoid a blood sucking moth?

Anyway, if this is all true, I don't know why Calyptra moths aren't known by chldren around the world.  Why don't they have their own "vampire moth" show on Animal Planet?



Are you kidding me?  Of course, the reason I'm posting this is that I know several entomologists read my journal, which is just about the best thing in the world.

EDIT: Apparently I needed to look no further than the unread National Geographics on my table to verify the story.

It's obvious why those of us who own pit bull type dogs get angry about efforts to ban our dogs. But why should anyone else care? Sure, if you own another breed of dog that's sometimes singled out for negative attention you should be wary, too. Once they ban pit bulls, it will be that much easier to ban Rottweilers, Doberman Pinschers, German shepherd dogs, huskies and malamutes, chow chows, shar-peis, akitas, mastiffs, bulldogs, ad infinitum. But what about those people who own only small dog breeds, or those people who don't own, or even like dogs? Why should they care about dog breed bans, or breed-specific legislation?

Because, as has become all too familiar in recent years, fear and misinformation are being used to take away your freedom. Fear is used by the media as much as sex in order to get our attention. And your attention is more valuable than ever to the media. It means ad revenue. The media doesn't care what you think or believe, or how much freedom you have, it justs wants your attention, so that it can sell more ads.

Misinformation is a great way of spreading and amplifying fears. It can be as simple as emphasizing a fact in a story, or even better, omitting a fact. It can be an outright mistruth, since there are no consequences for the media outlet that redacts their misstatement in a subsequent issue, hidden on the bottom of page three. And it can be as easy as choosing words for impact, instead of literal meaning. In that spirit, I am going to henceforth refer to the media's use of misinformation, omissions, and mistruths, as 'lies.'

The people who wish to ban certain breeds of dogs, or otherwise restrict ownership of them, use media stories to back up their position. They repeat the lies, which, since they are written by a professional news outlet, are taken to be facts. They back up their media-inflamed assertions with studies cobbled together from 'data' mined from media stories. They use the news media as if they were scientific journals, reinforcing their fears with misinformation deliberately concocted to reinforce their fears. Lawmakers react to emotional pleas from a fearful public, which drowns out the reason and knowledge of the veterinary community, animal behaviorists, and dog experts.

Today I read a news story that used several well-worn tactics for spreading fear through misinformation. I'll go through it, point by point. Remember, even if you don't like dogs, or if you hate pit bulls, or your idiot neighbor who owns pit bulls, what I'm talking about here is LIES used to TAKE AWAY your FREEDOM.

The headline reads 'Baby boy attacked by family pit bull.' Whoa. Am I really going to defend this dog, this monster that turned on its own family, that ATTACKED a BABY? Well, no, I don't even know this dog. But I will point out facts in the story that don't quite mesh with this alarming headline. For starters, reading the body of the story, we find that the baby does not belong to the family that owns the dog. The baby came with visiting relatives--so technically, everyone involved is family, but the dog doesn't know that. Again, I 'm not excusing the dog from attacking, I'm saying the dog did not know it was attacking 'family.' We can't accuse the dog of betrayal, as the headline suggests.

More importantly, we have facts about the circumstances of the 'attack,' which are often omitted in this kind of story. It turns out that the baby approached the dog while it was eating. Again, this is a terrible thing, a baby was bitten by a dog, but any idiot knows you don't approach a strange dog while it's eating. A DOG OF ANY BREED, toy poodle, golden retriever, your loveable mutt, is more likely to bite if it's approached while eating than any other time. The use of the word attack, in this context, is misleading. If I slap your hand away when you reach to steal something off my plate, am I attacking you?

Pretend for a minute that some other kind of dog snapped at a strange kid who was approaching it while it was eating. Is that really news? If a cairn terrier (Toto from The Wizard of Oz) bit a member of the family who owned it so bad that it required a trip to the hospital, and made the family question whether or not they should keep the dog, would that be something worthy of a television news crew? My mother's cairn terrier did just that, and broke my father's finger--if he was a baby on the floor, it would have been facial injuries, like what happened with the pit bull in this news story. Where were the reporters?

It's only news because you can get people to pay attention to the words PIT BULL, no matter what actually happened. If a pit bull gets loose from a fenced in yard and chases a child, and the child is not injured, the headline will read 'PIT BULL ATTACKS, CHASES CHILD.' If a pit bull injures another dog, it's a MAULING. My mother's cairn terrier was torn to shreds by my neighbor's German shepherd when it got loose from its kennel. Somehow that didn't make the news either, even though she made a miraculous recovery that the news outlets would have loved. If a pit bull attacks a domestic animal, like a horse, goat, or cat, it makes the news. Again, my mother's cairn terrier got ahold of my pet hamster and killed it; dogs are predatory animals that attack and kill other animals every day--it's not news. Unless the dog attacking the domestic animal is a pit bull, then it can be added to the scary mythology of the monster dog.

Overstatements, lies, misstatements, facts out of context, and more lies, all engineered to make you scared. I'm not saying there aren't dangerous pit bulls out there owned by irresponsible people--they are one of the most popular breeds in the country, it's the law of averages that some jerks will mistreat their dogs, chain them up in yards, let them run without leashes, and refuse to get them spayed and neutered. I won't stand up for criminals, but I also ask that those of us who keep our dogs correctly not be made into criminals because of the dog breed we choose. It's not fair, it's not right, and it's a violation of our freedom.

You should care about pit bull bans because the same kind of fear tactics could be used to take away your freedom in another sphere of life. You would be forgiven if you thought that the number of dog attacks was spiraling out of control--it sure sounds that way. In fact, despite the increasing population of people and dogs in the United States, attacks per capita have been going down steadily for decades. There isn't an epidemic of pit bull attacks, there's an epidemic of reporting of pit bull attacks, real and imaginary. But since it fits the story, the scary story that there is this one breed of dog unlike all the others, that's popular with inner city people and trailer park people and drug dealers, and that they are on the rampage, attacking and killing the people that own them and innocent strangers too. LIES. I'm tired of mincing words about it. LIES TOLD TO YOU to make you scared, and to make you needlessly scared of my dogs, so that you join the herd of panicked sheep taking away our freedoms. Stop believing lies.

Thanks to macabre_grrl for pointing me to this post at hip_domestics. It's a post about an inexpensive house fly control method that is apparently widespread among restaurants with outdoor seating, farmers markets, and the like. But I had never heard of it.

The method is to fill a clear plastic bag with water and hang it up where you would like to keep flies from. This particular post included a detail which set my bs detector off like a klaxon. There is a shiny new penny in the bag with the water. Why? Because, according to the restauranteurs who hung the thing up, "flies have compound eyes and see the penny's reflection as a honeycomb beehive. Flies don't want to be near them and stay away from dining guests."

Nuh-uh. While it is true that flies have compound eyes, their nervous systems are able to gather the information from those eyes into images that help them navigate their environment, avoid predators, etc. If they saw a single penny as a beehive, they would also see a single predatory wasp as an overwhelming swarm! Every pile of dog doo would be a mile wide buffet! To belabor the point, I'll draw attention to the fact that we have two eyes, and we don't mistake every single thing for a double thing. (Despite what you might have learned in a Monty Python skit about mountain climbers.)

Back to the bag of water. Why should flies be repelled by it? According to the staff at The Straight Dope, the bag acts as a crude magnifier, "in which the movements of people in the area are reflected. Even if the fly is too far from the action to see it directly, it can see a shifting of light and dark in the water bag, which it interprets as nearby movement, and it will fly away from the bag."

Maybe. I don't totally buy it, but I haven't tested it. Fortunately, someone suggested it on the Mythbusters forum, so maybe those guys will try it out. Keep in mind that for this to work in the way that the Straight Dope guy said it does, that there have to be people around, their images dancing around in the plastic bag in a way that menaces them (in a way that the people themselves don't, for some reason.) Other message boards discussing this folk pest control method say that it works, but like most visual repellents (shiny balloons, fake owls) the effectiveness drops off once the pests acclimatize to the stimulus.

Wait, so what about the penny? According to one message board comment, the penny is there to prevent algae from growing in the water, which (according to the comment) would only work if it was a penny minted before 1982, back when they were still made of copper.

I suspect that the biggest benefit of folk remedies, whether they're for health, pest control, or attracting good spirits, is the fact that they make the person feel involved. "I did something to make it better: I put a penny in a bag of water, I rubbed the wart with a penny, and then I put the penny in my shoe." It's very human to want to feel like your actions are meaningful. And like most folk remedies, a bag of water at least won't make it worse.

I know you're all quite web-savvy, and I don't have to tell you about Bible Bars, but are you aware of the breakthrough science of intestinal ozonation? Clicking that link will also remind you that oxygen is obtained by breathing, and that you can't get more by drinking a liquid with oxygen dissolved in it. And thank goodness for that, or else we would get higher carbon dioxide levels from drinking soda pop and everyone would die every time they drank a can of coke.

But House of David is also selling Bible Bread, which is advertised only as "unleavened" and "tasty," and they don't inply that it gives you superpowers, so I'm tempted to try it. Not that I don't want superpowers, but I if a company suggests to me that their product will give me superpowers, who knows what other weird lies they may be telling? Jesus, there could be scale insect excrement in there (scroll down about 2/3 of the page to find what Exodus 16:14 has to do with scale insect excrement)

But royal jelly gives the queen bee her superpowers, right?. But if it worked, why wouldn't it catch on, and then everybody would have superpowers? That would be cool! And all it takes is some bug barf! But it doesn't.

But I have no right to beat on these people and their bizarre taste for insect cack, and their belief that they are better than everyone else. After all, every culture on earth eats some nasty crap that no one else would touch (want some haggis? sheep's eye? cheese? roasted cockroach? scrapple? bird's nest soup? uncooked fish?) and thinks they are better than everyone else (exhibit A: all of human history). To be honest, I have mixed feelings. I covet their whole grain snacks, but I distrust their belief in magic pills and ingested oxygen. But no one is holding a gun to my head and making me buy these things, or look at their website. Besides, if they were, I wouldn't be afraid--because I have superpowers. I got them from fermented grains.