Category Archives: Sciency stuff

Science things that are cool, interesting, and/or scary

André the seal gets fishing permit, whales wait patiently

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Opening up our thinking

A while back in Scotland, a wee seal named André was awarded a fishing permit by the Loch Lomond Angling Improvement Association.  Fortified with his new permit and passport sized picture, André was now legally allowed to fish to his stomach’s content until October 31st, 2003.  The Association’s reason for its generous donation?  “André has been committing a poaching offense by eating all our salmon. He has already cost us thousands of pounds in fish and through loss of permit sales, so the least we could do until he is caught is to make it legal.”

Too funny.

In a letter to his newest member, Mr Brady, the Association Chair at the time, wrote: “We have decided to issue you with a fishing permit for the season. This will allow you to fish in Loch Lomond and the River Leven. Last year some of your friends (two otters) moved into the River Endrick, so you may wish to visit them and (unfortunately for us) share a salmon or two with them.”

What’s particularly interesting about this one though, is that eleven years later The Economist, stalwart economic orator that it is, has taken the unusual step to publish a proposal by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  The proposal?  That whales and dolphins, based on their degree of intelligence and self-awareness, are “persons” too and as such should be accorded these rights.

According to the proponents, this idea – that is, what we call a person – does not necessarily need to be human.  Instead, in philosophy, a “person is a being with special characteristics who deserves special treatment as a result of those characteristics.” Based on this premise, cetaceans do indeed count as “persons” and therefore have moral rights as appropriate to their species.

Although the proponents have cautiously and understandably left some wiggle room here, i.e. “as appropriate to their species”, it’s interesting – and perhaps testament to our moral development – that these conversations are occurring at the level of AAAS and being picked up by The Economist, no less.

P.S. A couple of tongue-in-cheek commentators on the Economist article thought that perhaps the whales would take offence to being called people.  Still others indicated that perhaps immigration might become an interesting issue.. i.e. “the Grey Whale crosses from Mexico into US waters early each year without any documentation. Then the entire population spends months eating American molluscs and having sex in American waters until returning to Mexico (again without bothering to get their passports stamped) where each winter the next generation of illegal immigrants is born. If we recognize whales as equal to people we may have to (at last) develop an immigration policy that treats Mexicans (and others from the South) as human beings!”

Canada and the Arctic Grail

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Sheesh how far do I have to go to get ice around here

In 2007, a chap by the name of McKenzie Funk published a nice piece in Harper’s, “The Coming Fight for the Melting North”.  It’s a gorgeous piece of writing on what’s happening in the Arctic given the melting ice and the subsequent opening up of transportation routes and resources (you need a subscription to see the article, but summaries can be viewed here, here, and here).

Basically Funk does a bang up job describing the intricacies of the maneuvering for territory occurring up in the Arctic.  It’s a pretty huge deal given the commercial, military, and resource value of that area (i.e. the U.S.G.S. estimates the area holds up to 25% of the world’s undiscovered oil, and whoever controls the shipping up there is going to be set).

This means that who owns what and whose territory ends where is of increasing interest. How much interest?  Well, with its expanded holdings the United States could potentially grow by 4.1 million square miles to become the world’s largest country (and acquire $1.3 trillion worth of resources to boot).  That’s… quite a bit.

Funk goes on to say that with the Arctic ice melting, “experts foresee numerous conflicts between the five nations whose borders meet there. Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the United States all have borders along the Arctic, and all of them have already begun research into what swathes of territory their continental shelves entitle them to claim“.  As you can imagine this has made Canada a little nervous, as suddenly its continuing entitlement to its northern coastline and waters has become somewhat more nebulous.

Although it’s tricky to predict how this will all play out and there’s been renewed interest in collaboration of late, two things stand out a bit:

  1. Despite the continuing debate about whether climate change is real, there is a very real jockeying for position predicated on melting ice floes; and,
  2. Given what’s at stake in an increasingly constrained world, if push comes to shove there’s likely going to be a lot of shoving.

Pandas: Available in black, white, and shades of grey

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Low cal diet: A curious taste for bamboo

BlogTO recently posted about the two cute pandas coming to the Toronto zoo on a five-year loan (“Wouldn’t it be better if the pandas just stayed home?“). The gist of that post was: (1) why spend all that money on pandas when there are so many other native species that could use the funding; (2) some feel the zoo is overly optimistic about how much revenue the pandas will bring in given their ~$1 million/yr price tag (never mind the $200K price tag for imported bamboo!) and (3) to recognize international goodwill between China and other countries via live bear currency seems a little strange (a.k.a. the bizarre emergence of panda diplomacy).

In this complicated world, it seems like the more one looks into something, the less black and white it is – unlike our furry subject, ironically.  Consider a few brief aspects (to do with pandas, less so with international diplomacy):

  • So few:  At one point the panda came very close to extinction and the species is still one of the rarest on the planet. I had no idea that there are only an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 pandas left in the wild, and about 240 to 333 in zoos (estimates vary depending on source).  That’s not a lot of pandas is it?
  • Two day window: Despite the huge difficulty in mating pandas in captivity as well as in the wild (the female is only in estrous for two days a year), zoos have been successful in increasing the population of captive pandas from 150 to 333.
  • Panda “loans” can help:  Loans of giant pandas between China and other countries — panda diplomacy — costs hosting countries up to $1M U.S.D. a year.  In some cases a portion of these loan fees are directed to conservation efforts for the giant panda and its habitat.
  • Who decides?  Some conservationists have controversially expressed that the giant panda is too expensive to save and that funds would be better spent on protecting “less expensive” animals and their habitat.   Giant pandas are considered unlikely to thrive in the wild due to habitat decline and their proclivity for massive amounts of low-calorie bamboo. Arguments for concentrating on our own backyard (i.e. own local species and habitat) are convincing.
  • Someone’s got to lead the charge:  Yet, others argue that the panda is a keystone species – and, as a flagship icon of wildlife conservation – does enormous amounts for the protection of habitat and other less known species that similarly depend on this habitat, as well as the conservation movement in general.

And there’s a lot more where that came from. It’s a complicated world out there, and it’s sure not getting any simpler.  However, there is one aspect in which many agree, and that is that the future chances of these animals flourishing in the wild is slim (for example, in the wild breeding pandas need about 30km2 of land to support them – but most populations are now isolated in narrow 1.2km-wide fragments).  This means that regardless of how well we succeed at captive breeding, without immediate broader scale and significant habitat protection, the only place we’re going to be seeing some of these animals in the future is behind bars – and that goes for a lot more species than just pandas.

At this pace of development, many of our global brethren are purring, whirring, walking, and running full-tilt into an animated parody of Sabre-Tooth Tiger and Woolly Mammoth exhibits…. and no matter what side of the exhibit you’re on there’s something terribly sad about that.

Ant Pompeii

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You’ve likely already heard of the giant ant super-city found in Brazil.  If not, it’s pretty incredible looking and fantastically huge – check out this DailyMail link to see images of the structure.  This eerie and highly alien city includes agricultural gardens, highways, waste disposal areas, and organized ventilation shafts –  all distributed in a labyrinthine order of pods and stalks.

Leafcutter ants, the original colony, are food cultivators par excellence – you can see them beavering away in the short clip above (sorry about my unsteady hand – mucho coffee that morning). Basically they’re collecting leaves that are brought back to the colony and cultivated to grow fungus in the garden areas.

Sounds a little like organized agriculture to me.

To see the final structure, scientists poured ten tonnes of concrete into the ant city which then solidified.  Although the colony was apparently abandoned, one has to wonder what the ants think about their very own Pompeii for posterity.

Toxoplasmo: Zombies Among Us

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I wonder what these little guys are plotting..

So there’s this pretty funky parasite that some researchers think gets into our brains and subtly manipulates our personality to engage in self-destructive behaviour (see articles in The Atlantic, The Guardian, and another similar example in Scientific American).

Apparently this parasite – Toxoplasmo gondii – might be subtly working on the connections in our brains to change our responses to situations, and possibly be contributing to car crashes, promiscuous behaviour, and certain mental disorders.

In rats for example, the parasite actually compels rats to go play with cats!

Makes one wonder…