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August 10 2011
The Amazing Technicolor Dream Ant
A scientist in Mysore, India has figured out how to color-code his backyard ants. Mohamed Babu’s wife noticed that the ants’ abdomens turned white after drinking milk, so it was only a short step to filling the ants with more vibrant colors. The insects were picky, preferring yellow and green sugar water over blue and red. The experiment goes to show that for ants, at least, those extra calories really do go right to the ass.
Via the Daily Mail. Thanks Trendbeheer.
August 06 2011
Birdfeeders spit Blackcaps in two species
Until now, most people have likely regarded bird-feeders as merely a pleasant addition to their gardens. But scientists have now discovered that bird-feeders in the UK are actually having a serious long term impact on bird life – they’ve found that the feeders have brought about the first evolutionary step in the creation of a brand new species.
Historically, European Blackcap birds migrate to Spain to spend their winters, where they feed on fruit and berries. While in the past the part of the population that accidentally flew to the UK had a hard time surviving, since the rise of bird–feeders in the UK things changed.
The food supplied by animal-loving Brits, along with the luxury of not flying over the Alps, have made Britain an increasingly popular holiday destination for wintering blackcaps. And that has set them down the path towards becoming two separate species, Gregor Rolshausen from the University of Freiborg and colleagues write in the journal Current Biology.
Even though all of these birds spend most of the year in each others’ company, they are actually two populations separated by barriers of time that prevent genes from flowing from one group to another. The Spanish migrants are genetically more distinct from the British ones than they are to individuals from more distant parts of Germany, some 800km away. The differences between the two groups are large enough that with a bit of DNA sequencing, individuals can be assigned to the right group with an accuracy of 85% – they have arisen over merely 30 generations.
Rolshausen and colleagues think that the crucial cause of the split was caused by humans giving food to wintering birds, which gave an advantage to any individuals with mutations that sent them in an unorthodox direction. Previously such birds would have simply died, but with humans around, they (and the genes they carried) survived.
Their bodies have even changed. The British migrants have rounder wings. In general, European blackcaps with shorter migration routes tend to have rounder wings – they are more maneuverable and less suited to long distances. They also have narrower and longer beaks, for they are generalists that mostly eat seeds and fat from garden feeders. Birds that arrive in Spain eat fruit and those with broader bills can eat larger fruit.
Their colors are also slightly different. British migrants have browner backs and beaks, while the Spanish migrants are more gray. Researchers suggest that these changing hues could provide the birds with a way of recognizing, and sticking to, their closer relatives.
This is one of the few studies to show that human activities – the provision of food to wintering birds – are powerful enough to set up reproductive barriers among animals that live in the same place. It also shows that these first few steps of speciation can happen with extraordinary pace, in just 50 years or so. The development of the blackcaps show the speed with which evolution can operate.
Time will tell whether the blackcaps will actually split into two different species. All the conditions are right, but human activities may change the playing field once again, so that the birds experience entirely new sets of evolutionary pressures.
Paper: Current Biology. Sources: BBC, Scienceblogs. Related: The Hermaphrodite Effect, Nocturnal Life of Diurnal Birds, Wild Birds illegally immigrate into city Zoo. Thanks Lucas Brouwers.
August 04 2011
Evolution of the Chicken
From Dinosaur to primitive bird to supermarket discount. Although chickens thrive as a species – in the sense that billions of them roam the earth bio-industry – we doubt if the decision of the chicken-species to involve itself in a co-evolutionary relation with people, was a wise one. Lesson learned: always be very concise on what or who you get into a co-evolutionary relationship with. Chickens have limited abilities in this regard, but people should do better.
Via NRC charity Awards. Thanks René Pare.
July 31 2011
YouTube preserves unmediated Nature
Click here to view the embedded video.
On Youtube, there’s a whole sub-genera of safari videos that show, in gruesome detail, what exactly it means to live and die in Old Nature. The above film is a particularly stomach-churning example, depicting African hunting dogs that eviscerate and devour a kudu while the antelope is still very much alive. It’s the sort of material that winds up on the editing floor during the production of a typical nature documentary. Wildlife films sanitize the predator-prey relationship. Death occurs off-screen; if it is shown, it’s bloodless and quick. Amateur nature videos remove a layer of artistic interpretation between the audience and “authentic” nature. Without a sound track or a narrator contextualizing the hunt, death becomes neither triumphant nor tragic. It doesn’t impart any moral lessons. In nature, as in YouTube, death just happens.
Amateur videos like “Survival of the Fittest” compete for page views, and so still maintain the entertainment edict of traditional wildlife filmmaking. Web cams trained on nesting birds or savannah waterholes offer an even more immediate experience. They’re instantaneous, unedited, and usually unrecorded. In other words, wildlife web cams are the next best thing to being there. It used to be that professionally produced films, articles, and books were the main means for city-dwellers and office-workers to experience any wildlife more threatening than a pigeon. Advanced digital technologies have helped to restore some ‘truth in advertising’ to the workings of wild ecosystems. In some sense, YouTube and other websites have become unintentional parks that uphold the conservation of unmediated nature.
July 30 2011
Cultural Cow Mappings
Food has been the base of survival since ancient times. However cultural definition of food is different all over the world. Cows are a good example. It seems different cultures all have their own view upon a same type of species.
The cows’ meat division knows a lot of difference between cultures. Where as in India cows are holy creatures, the division of western and Asian cuts seems to give a different view upon parts of meat in general. Perhaps even some insight into the cultures’ related food types and food culture?
What for western countries contains the best pieces of meat, the back end of the cow is non kosher food for Jews and perhaps non Halal for Muslims. Now there is a nice opportunity to connect cultures through cows, west to east, front for back.
July 29 2011
Transgenic Jell-O, more human than ever!
The American Chemical Society has announced a new method of producing gelatin that sounds like good news for cannibals and the canni-curious. Researchers are able to create human-derived gelatin by inserting human genes for gelatin production into a strain of yeast. This new method would produce hypoallergenic, standard-sized molecules, two traits especially important for medical applications. Since the traditional method of producing gelatin from animal sources can very from batch to batch, provoke immune responses, and potentially carry diseases like Mad Cow, human gelatin is a step up in quality. We’ll admit that the human-yeast hybrid doesn’t really fall under any definition of actual cannibalism. But with the advent of lab-grown meat, there’s now less to stand in the way of adventurous eaters who want to create a real-life version of HuFu.
Via Discover Magazine. Image via Death and Taxes.
July 27 2011
Typing Out Evolution
From the exhibit “What Machines Dream Of” in Berlin comes Life Writer, a work by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau. As the participant types, letters are projected on a scroll of paper. After pushing the return bar, the letters are transformed into animated, typographic creatures that bob and skitter across the paper. The ravenous insects then proceed to gobble up the words as fast as they’re typed. When the paper is scrolled, the creatures reproduce, birthing offspring that looks slightly different from the parent. An algorithm determines the shape and behavior of the organisms, and controls how they evolve with each generation.
Sommer and Mignonneau use an obsolete technology to bring up very current questions about the autonomy of technological systems, and what ‘life’ means when humans can create convincing facsimiles of it. “What Machines Dream Of” is on display until August 28. It’s free, fun, and full of next natural goodness.
July 23 2011
What Robots dream of…
Click here to view the embedded video.
You may think it’s a cliché, but deep down inside robots want to be birds and fly high in the sky. Hooray for the good people of Festo, that demonstrate at TED how they turn the dream into a reality.
July 14 2011
Meet the New Meat
Click here to view the embedded video.
What do you think of lab-grown meat? “Yuck” might be your first reaction. One day, however, it could become the environmentally friendly alternative for breeding cows and pigs for meat consumption. Professor Mark Post argues in his talk at TEDxBrainport that it is relatively simple to take stem cells from an animal and grow them to produce new muscle tissue. Simply add sugar, proteins and fat and get it into shape with a bit of exercise to created edible meat. The only problem then is to find a new role for our livestock…
July 09 2011
Who will Question Bio-Engineering?
Click here to view the embedded video.
Bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe presents a parade of recent bio-engineering experiments, from glowing monkeys, to genetically boosted salmon, to cyborg insects. He asks: isn’t it time to set some ground rules? Sure. Bring it on Paul!
Now regular readers of this website already know most of the lustrous & monstrous examples, yet throughout the talk you feel a certain suspense: you-are-now-listing-to-a-real-bioethicist-who-any-minute-now-is-going-to-lay-out-some-crystal-clear-ground-rules-for-bio-engineering. Unfortunately Paul constrains himself to a call for rules, but doesn’t deliver them himself. Who will?
Thanks anyway Ewelina Szymanska.
July 05 2011
Animal-free Meat could put a hold on Global Warming
Growing meat in the lab, rather than slaughtering animals, could become a viable alternative for people who want to cut the environmental impact of their food consumption, but cannot bear a vegetarian lifestyle.
According to scientists from Oxford University and Amsterdam University, lab-grown meat could help feed the world, while reducing the impact on the environment. It would generate only a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with conventional livestock production.
The procedure of growing meat without an animal would require between 7% and 45% less energy than the same volume of conventionally produced meat such as pork, beef, or lamb. The meat labs would use only 1% of the land and 4% of the water associated with conventional meat and Greenhouse gases would be reduced by up to 96% in comparison to raising animals.
The scientists predict that if more resources are directed towards their research, the first lab-grown burger could be available in five years. It is their plan to start with mincemeat, while hoping to be able to produce steaks in ten years time.
Aside from its predicted environmental benefits, lab-grown meat should also provide cheap nutrition and help improve animal welfare. As millions of people in rapidly emerging economies such as China and India are rising from poverty and become able to afford more meat in their diets.
From a consumer perspective, one of the biggest questions open is what the lab-grown meat should look like. Hamburger, comical chicken leg, dinosaur nugget, raptor in a wrapper or design steak. Arguably, lab-grown meat needs to gain an artificial authenticity to become appreciated by consumers as a desirable alternative, rather than an inferior derivative of animal-grown meat.
The research team based their calculations on a process using the bacterium Cyanobacteria hydrolysate as a nutrient and energy source for growing muscle cells.
The anti-meat organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is already funding research into the technique.
Via Guardian, Image Ton Meijdam.
June 29 2011
Monkey See, Monkey Buy
Yale researchers and advertising executives have created the first ad campaign aimed at animals. The targets in question are a group of captive capuchin monkeys with a taste for sugary foods. The experiment introduces two ‘brands’ of jello treats to the monkeys, identical in every way except for color. The goal is see whether billboard advertisements placed around the cage can persuade the monkeys to prefer Color A over Color B.
The posters are the distillation of pretty much everything us humans find appealing in advertisements: sex and power. Previous experiments have showed that the monkeys will ‘pay’ for images of sexy female bottoms and high-ranking males, so the two ads depict the product in association with a female monkey’s exposed genitals and with the troop’s alpha male.
We can only hope that the experiment proves a success. We already know that monkeys understand a currency-based economy, and that crows can be trained to find coins to use in peanut vending machines. Once we’ve inducted other big-brained species into the human economy, advertisers will find unlimited environments where they can induce an artificial need in a natural audience. Maybe we can persuade dolphins to patrol off-shore oil rigs in exchange for cetacean porn, or teach elephants to willingly work on banana plantations, instead of rampaging through them.
Via New Scientist. Image via Monkey Brandz
June 26 2011
CopyCat
Artist Andrew Chase creates kinetic sculptures of animals. He has studied these animals intensively. After his analysis he created copies of these animals in metal with mechanics to mimic the movements of these animals. You can see the cheetah in action. He also created an elephant and giraffe out of mechanical metal parts. A fascinating way of copying old nature – suit for yourself if there is some deeper meaning – in waste metals.
June 25 2011
Pixelated Nature
What happens if your childhood experience of your environment has been solely through video games? According to artist Shawn Smith, “pixels became a sort of map from which to experience”. Hence he introduces old nature into next nature by transforming its imagery into 8-bit sculptures using hundreds of tiny wooden blocks.
In an interview with Wired Smith says “I have been around the depiction of objects and nature on screens all my life and I found myself wondering what these things look like in three dimensions.” Peculiar image of the week.
June 23 2011
Blue, Belgian and Beefy
The Belgian Blue is a unique cattle breed that was developed quite accidentally in the late 1800s. An chance mutation lead the cattle to develop ‘double muscling,’ which occurs when the body does not produce sufficient myostatin to regulate the growth of muscles. These body-builder animals typically have 40% more muscle mass than the typical cow or bull. Double muscling is an extremely rare occurrence. Outside of carefully selected breeds like the Belgian Blue or the Texel sheep, it has occurred only a handful of other times in animals like dogs and humans.
Animal rights activists contend that the breed is inherently cruel. Calves are usually delivered by cesarean section, as they are too large to be born naturally. Due to its massive size, the breed suffers from heart and joint problems, and can have difficulty even moving around. Both Denmark and Sweden have both attempted to ban Belgian Blues on grounds of cruelty. From turkeys that can only reproduce via artificial insemination and bulldogs that must be born by c-section, we’ve created a catalogue of organisms that could never survive outside of the human environment. Think of it as triumph of co-dependence.
June 21 2011
The monsters we deserve
Click here to view the embedded video.
Recently, a video clip has been circulating the web that purportedly shows a rabbit born earless due to the radiation at Fukushima. BoingBoing has a convincing take-down of the claims of the video: earless rabbits are a fairly common mutation, mother rabbits sometimes chew off their ears of their young due to stress, and no one even knows where the video was filmed.
More interesting than the video is the fact that we want to it to be real. Radioactivity should have immediate, visible consequences. Bodily harm should be made manifest, and any disturbances in the natural order need to be seen to be believed. After the nuclear bomb explodes, we all head to the ocean to watch Godzilla pop out of the waves.
The earless rabbit is an example of the pathetic fallacy, a form of personification that attributes human sentiment, morality, or motives to random natural occurrences. Nature, is this case, holds a mirror up to human actions. The rain cries with you, the sun shines when you smile. While the bunny is cute, other monsters of technology are usually bloodthirsty, unpredictable and nearly indestructible. In popular culture, technological evil is the root cause of organic, living evil. The bunny only one member of a long list of creatures that popular culture has attributed not just to nuclear contamination, but to scientific hubris and general moral decline. With the exception of space aliens and life forms on exoplanets, it’s hard to think of any recent boogey-animal or monster that’s not at least partly anthropocentric in origin.
Ancient mythologies are full of monstrous animals that are purely ‘old’ nature, evolved from primordial ooze or made by the hands of gods. Dragons, griffons, and sea serpents more or less occupied the same cultural space as lions, wolves, and (only recently) dinosaurs. They’re all big, frightening things that want to eat us, and while they might be sent as divine punishment, their existence is not the direct result of human actions.
The dearth of ‘natural’ modern monsters may reflect the fact that it’s become difficult to conceive of a wilderness that’s not already subject to human control. Human technologies are responsible for global warming, toxic rivers, plastic oceans, radiation and deforestation. It’s only logical that scientific ‘progress’ be blamed for our cultural monsters as well. Human nature, not wild nature, has become the most powerful source of living nightmares.
Popular narratives reflect fears of human folly by creating pseudo-scientific origin stories for monsters, whether purely fictional or partially based in fact. Frankenstein’s monster arose from electricity and galvanism, Godzilla, Mothra and their other kaiju brethren from nuclear radioactivity. ‘Dren’ is the movie Splice is a moral punishment for scientific hubris and uncontrolled sexuality. Even the Balrog in the Lord of the Rings is awoken by industrially-minded dwarves recklessly mining too deep in the earth. On the real-life end of the spectrum, the Montauk Monster, a decomposed raccoon, was originally assumed to be an escaped mutant from Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
We have to invent fake nature when the real version doesn’t measure up to our fears. Mutations induced by radiation and pollution are clearly real, but they are never as spectacular as hysteria and movies lead us to believe. The only reliable information about animal mutations in Chernobyl indicates subtle effects such as decreased brain volume and crooked feathers in birds. Transgenic organisms have yet to rise up from the lab and overthrow human society, and stripping natural resources has yet to summon vengeful organisms from the bowels of the earth.
When it comes to nature, we don’t always get what we deserve. Instead of monsters, we get their absence: the disappearance of megafauna from tigers to elephant birds. Technology doesn’t create monsters so much as it makes them go extinct.
June 19 2011
Entoforms
Artist Dolf Veenvliet (Macouno) is creating future fossil trilobites that have yet to exist. Using generative computer models, his Entoforms are not the result of millions of years of evolving biological DNA. Instead, the system uses plain text as an input for generating the creatures, creating a wide variety that rivals the diversity we see in Old Nature’s fossile records.
In the video below, Dolf talks about his project and invites us to join him in exploring this new world of creatures that are born through modern 3D printing manufacturing technologies.
June 17 2011
Evolutionary Janitors
We normally think of polluted water as the source of disease, not the cure for it. The Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, affectionately known as the Super Fun Superfund, is one of the most polluted bodies of water in America. Most of the water is too low in oxygen to support plant or animal life. Worse still is the toxic mud at the bottom of the canal, rich in lead, dioxins, and mercury from decades of unchecked dumping from heavy industry.
The canal might run with poison, but it hasn’t stopped enterprising New Yorkers, human and microbe alike, from making a living at the location. Humans built a party space, but the microorganisms got something better- potent new compounds that make them immune to the Gowanus’s toxic soup. The bacteria and protozoans excrete antibiotic-like substances that may be a source of new drugs for humans. Although the news is old, the lesson is timeless: Evolution will find a way (apologies to Jurassic Park).
As much as New Yorkers like to boast of their exceptionalism, these hardy Brooklyn organisms are likely not unique. Thanks to the wonders of natural selection, it’s conceivable that any body of water that has been polluted for long enough will harbor extremophiles that have adapted to local conditions. If evolution solves problems that science and medicine currently cannot, we may stand to indirectly profit from our environmental mistakes.
The Gowanus microbes echo more recent news about other microorganisms that vacuum up pollutants in the ocean. In the Sargasso sea, bacteria are eating plastic debris, while hungry microbes in the Gulf Coast broke down much of the oil spilled in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Oil and plastic are both composed of energy-rich organic compounds. Where there’s unused energy, there’s a strong incentive for something to evolve to eat it. This could be great news for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and baby albatrosses. It could also be a terrible development for creatures that eat the microbes and their accumulated toxins, or for other oceanic microbes that are out-competed by the newcomers.
While there’s no doubt that nature can clean up after us, there’s no way to predict precisely how it will happen, and what the effect will be for the rest of environment. Evolution is not a cleaner that restores your home to its pristine state. It’s a rogue remodeler that might leave you wondering if you have wrong address.
June 10 2011
A bacteria of a different color
Click here to view the embedded video.
In 2009, undergraduates at the University of Cambridge worked with scientists and artists to engineer E. coli into E. chromi, a new type of bacteria that secretes a range of colorful pigments. The genetic ‘BioBricks’ responsible for color can be combined with other custom DNA sequences to achieve various useful effects. For instance, E. chromi could color feces blue in the presence of an intestinal disease, or turn red in response to arsenic in groundwater.
In future scenarios, the altered bacteria give rise to a new profession of chromonauts who search the earth for new organic pigments. The Orange Liberation Front, an imaginary Dutch terrorist organization, might even demand an end to patents on orange-generating genes. The above video, which won the Bio:Fiction prize for documentaries, is a fun look into some plausible (and less so) applications for a new piece of biotech. The technology used for E. chromi bacteria may open new areas for information decoration on a living canvas. Maybe transgenic humans will someday flush blue when they’re feeling down, or cover up an actual yellow belly when they’re being cowardly. I feel less enthusiastic, however, about rainbow-hued poop that marks every stomach bug.
June 09 2011
Take your transgenic kids to the CPNH
The Center for PostNatural History doesn’t house the dinosaurs or dioramas of your run-of-the-mill natural history museum. Instead, it’s the first museum dedicated exclusively to the study and preservation of ‘postnatural’ life: genetically modified organisms, lab animals, and cloned livestock. While the CPNH has been organizing traveling exhibits since 2008, its permanent exhibition space is due to open in Pittsburgh in the fall of 2011. While there have been several art shows centered on bioart and transgenic life, the Center may be the most science-minded endeavor to tackle the fuzzy boundaries between nature and culture.
Natural history museums have traditionally defined nature as strictly separate from human culture. Human activity is usually framed in the context of how it affects a pristine habitat. Poachers, polluters, and developers topple nature from its edenic state, while environmentalists and researchers attempt to restore it to its pre-human glory. The only ‘correct’ humans are the native peoples who preexisted the incursion of industrialized societies. It can be a relief to wander through the halls of tyrannosaurs and think ‘At least us bipedal jerks didn’t play a role in their extinction.’
The CPNH, in contrast, recognizes that nature is deeply cross-contaminated with human culture. A pet store GloFish is just as worthy of preservation as a zebrafish plucked from a Himalayan stream. Monsanto determines the distribution of plants as much as local temperature and water availability. The Center’s past exhibits include Transgenic Mosquitoes of Southern Florida and Transgenic Organisms of New York State. These not only place GM critters in an ecological and historical context, but are also pretty funny send-ups of traditional natural history exhibits. If Next Nature ever takes a safari to Pennsylvania, we’ll be sure to show up at CPNH and bring home a big of transgenic souvenirs. We can only hope that one day we’ll see the equivalent of the Akeley Hall of African Mammals for postnatural organisms.
Below, the Center’s introductory video:
Click here to view the embedded video.
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