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The universe is decaying much faster than thought. This is shown by calculations of scientists on the so-called Hawking radiation. They calculate that the last stellar remnants take about 10^78 years (a 1 with 78 zeros) to perish. That is much shorter than the previously postulated 10^1100 years (a 1 with 1100 zeros).

Massive ripples in the very fabric of space and time wash over Earth constantly, although you'd never notice. An astrophysicist is trying a new search for these gravitational waves.

Massive ripples in the very fabric of space and time wash over Earth constantly, although you'd never notice. An astrophysicist is trying a new search for these gravitational waves.

ChatGPT responses matched or outperformed epileptologists' responses related to the regions where epileptogenic zones are commonly located. Yet epileptologists provided more accurate responses for the regions rarely affected.

How might floating solar energy projects impact wild birds and vice versa? A paper outlines key considerations for a growing floating solar industry.

Getting a probe to the Icy Giant planets takes some time - a journey to Uranus could take as long as 13 years, even with a gravity assist from Jupiter. However, several ideas are in the works to speed up that process, especially given the increased interest in sending a probe their way. One of those ideas is to use an aerocapture system to slow a probe down once it reaches its intended target. A new paper from Andrew Gomez-Delrio and their co-authors at NASA's Langley Research Center describes how a proposed Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) mission could utilize the same aerocapture technology that Curiosity used to dramatically improve both the speed and payload capacity of the mission.

I was just reading Richard Dawkins’s engrossing essay on sex, gender, and wokeness, and something struck me—a notion that’s not original since it occurred to Rebecca Tuvel when she wrote her infamous essay for Hypatia, a feminist philosophy journal, on “transracialism” Tuvel’s essay pointed out the philosophical and moral parallels between declaring you’re a member of your non-natal “race” (again, I prefer “ancestry”) and declaring that you’re of  your non-natal sex.  Yet Tuvel’s philosophical analysis of this issue, an analysis which I applauded, got her in hot water. As Wikipedia notes:

 

The feminist philosophy journal Hypatia became involved in a dispute in April 2017 that led to the online shaming of one of its authors, Rebecca Tuvel, an assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis.  The journal had published a peer-reviewed article by Tuvel in which she compared the situation of Caitlyn Jenner, a trans woman, to that of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who identifies as black. When the article was criticized on social media, scholars associated with Hypatia joined in the criticism and urged the journal to retract it.  The controversy exposed a rift within the journal’s editorial team and more broadly within feminism and academic philosophy.

In the article—”In Defense of Transracialism”, published in Hypatia‘s spring 2017 issue on 25 April—Tuvel argued that “since we should accept transgender individuals’ decisions to change sexes, we should also accept transracial individuals’ decisions to change races”.  After a small group on Facebook and Twitter criticized the article and attacked Tuvel, an open letter began circulating, naming one of Hypatia‘s editorial board as its point of contact and urging the journal to retract the article. The article’s publication had sent a message, the letter said, that “white cis scholars may engage in speculative discussion of these themes” without engaging “theorists whose lives are most directly affected by transphobia and racism”.

On 1 May the journal posted an apology on its Facebook page on behalf of “a majority” of Hypatia‘s associate editors. By the following day the open letter had 830 signatories, including scholars associated with Hypatia and two members of Tuvel’s dissertation committee. Hypatia‘s editor-in-chief, Sally Scholz, and its board of directors stood by the article.  When Scholz resigned in July 2017, the board suspended the associate editors’ authority to appoint the next editor, in response to which eight associate editors resigned.  The directors set up a task force to restructure the journal’s governance.  In February 2018 the directors themselves were replaced.

And of course Rachel Dolezal was also demonized when she was outed as having been born white although claiming she was black. She was fired as president of the local NAACP, and, as Wikipedia notes, “dismissed from her position as an instructor in Africana studies at Eastern Washington University and was removed from her post as chair of the Police Ombudsman Commission in Spokane over ‘a pattern of misconduct'”. All for saying she was black when she was born white. I do believe Dolezal assumed her black identity honestly. It didn’t seem to be a ruse, and, indeed, why would she fake being a member of an oppressed minority unless she really believed it. It surely wasn’t a trick or a ruse.

Richard has been writing about this disparity/hypocrisy for years, most notably in his website post, “Race is a spectrum. Sex is pretty damn binary.”  The title is of course correct, but pointing it out on Twitter cost Richard the 1996 Humanist of the Year Award from the American Humanist Association. And that was for simply raising the question of any relevant difference between being “transracial” or “transsexual”. The AHA acted shamefully in that case, and I’ve washed my hands of it.

Indeed, since race is more spectrum-ish than is sex, it would seem to be MORE JUSTIFIABLE to say you’re a member of a non-natal race than of a non-natal sex.  After all, people like Barack Obama are of mixed ancestry, and can claim whatever they want with biological justification (in his case, white or black).  But if he felt more Asian, why couldn’t he claim he was Asian? After all, race, like sex, is supposed to be a social construct.

This came back to me when I considered the case of Kat Grant and her essay for the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), which I documented here. That fracas resulted in my published response being taken down, with the consequence that I resigned from the FFRF along with Richard and Steve Pinker.  And the FFRF declared that it dissolved the honorary board of which we were all members (though, curiously, it’s still on the web). Grant’s essay, “What is a woman?” implicitly accepted sex as a social construct and ended this way (bolding is mine):

All of this is to say that there is an answer to the question “what is a woman,” that luckily does not involve plucking a chicken from its feathers. A woman is whoever she says she is.

Yes, a woman is whoever she says she is. Clearly, sex is a social construct here, and you can be whatever sex you want, regardless of your natal gamete-producing system.  Grant was widely applauded by many on the gender-extremist side, while my response was taken down by the FFRF for being hurtful and offensive (you can still read it here, here or here).

 

This fracas, which I call “The KerFFRFle,” has reminded me of the seeming hypocrisy of regarding both sex and race as social constructs, but allowing you to declare whatever sex you feel you are, but not allowing you to declare whatever race you feel you are. Transracialism would seem especially laudatory because one would think it would be a bold move to declare you’re of an oppressed minority group. (Again, I prefer “ancestry” or “population” to “race” for reasons I’ve explained many times.)

I am not taking a stand on these issues here, but merely trying, as did Richard, to understand the difference.  And so I ask readers?

Why is it okay (indeed, applauded) to be transsexual but not transracial?

 

Plummeting temperatures forced some human populations to adapt to the new conditions thousands of years ago, but the changes they made varied widely

Please send in your wildlife photos as I need MOAR! Thx!

Today we have a text-and-photo essay by Athayde Tonhasca Júnior, emphasizing two of his favorite themes: history and pollination.   Athayde’s words are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Help yourself, but don’t overdo it

Throughout the history of the Roman Empire, women had hardly any employment opportunities. Locusta was an exception. This immigrant from Gaul was celebrated for her knowledge and technical skills: Agrippina, Emperor Claudius’ wife, and Agrippina’s son, Nero the unhinged, were among her clients. Nero even hired Locusta as his advisor and as a tutor for young apprentices who could absorb her expertise in an occupation in high demand in the Empire. Locusta was a professional poisoner.

From emperors to slaves, affluent merchants to muleteers, poisoning was a convenient and effective way to dispose of a difficult spouse, secure an inheritance, settle scores with an enemy or encourage an aging relative to free up some space at home; the practice was common enough that praegustator (food taster) guilds arose among slaves and freedmen (Kaufman, 1932). Women were particularly skilled at the craft, partially as self-defence in a violent and radically male-controlled society.

Locusta testing poison on a slave, by Joseph-Noël Sylvestre (1847–1926) © Bridgeman Art Library, Wikimedia Commons:

CHT219368 Locusta Testing Poison on a Slave, c.1870-80 (oil on canvas) by Sylvestre, Joseph-Noel (1847-1926); Private Collection;  (other info used by Agrippina to poison her husband the emperor Claudius in 54 AD; used by Nero to poison Britannicus and his mother Agrippina; adviser to Nero on poisons;); Archives Charmet; French, it is possible that some works by this artist may be protected by third party rights in some territories.possible copyright restrictions apply, consult national copyright laws

Locusta had an arsenal of poisonous plants at her disposal such as deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) and hemlock (Conium maculatum) (Cilliers & Retief, 2000). But none of these handy tools were as reliable as aconite, aka monkshood or wolfsbane (Aconitum napellus), which the poet Ovid called ‘the mother-in-law’s poison’. Like all the 250 species in its genus, aconite is loaded with aconitine and related alkaloids that cause all sorts of neurological and cardiovascular disorders. Besides being a favourite of ne’er-do-wells and sorcerers for centuries, the plant has been on herbalists’ shelves as a local anaesthetic, tonic for the heart and for other pharmacological uses. These applications are benign but exceedingly risky, as 1 g of aconite biomass may despatch a patient to the underworld: this plant is about 100 times more lethal than strychnine.

A deceptively sweet-looking aconite. But the root of the plant’s name reveals its danger: akonitos (without dust), short for ‘without the dust of the arena’, implies biting the dust without a struggle © Llez, Wikimedia Commons:

Gardeners attracted to aconite’s violet-blue flowers may resent the plant’s mean streak, but for the plant, poisoned people are collateral damage. The alkaloids stuffing the plant to the gills are a defensive weapon against leaf munchers, root borers, seed predators and other enemies. Chemicals such as aconitine are known as secondary metabolites: they are energetically expensive to produce and have no role in plants’ day-to-day physiological processes such as photosynthesis, respiration or growth. Yet, they are vital for survival and reproductive success by repelling or killing herbivores that target the plant. But this form of chemical warfare has a drawback: secondary metabolites may leak into nectar and pollen, putting flower visitors at risk. In the case of aconite, nectar has low levels of alkaloids, but pollen is loaded with them. Understandably, aconite pollinators – mostly bumble bees – avoid the powdery stuff, so as not to end up dead. Such reluctance is not good for plant reproduction, but aconite has a cunning plan.

All Aconitum spp. flowers are hermaphrodite and dichogamous, that is, their male and female reproductive organs mature at different times. The male phase, i.e., the period when only the male bits are mature, occurs first and lasts for 5 to 6 days; the female phase, when the male organs wither and the female ones are receptive to pollen, lasts 1-2 days. This setting nudges visitors to explore male-phase flowers first and for longer, then hopefully transport pollen to a female-phase flower. To overcome bees’ unwillingness to play along, male-phase flowers produce more scents and over four times more nectar than the female-phase ones. This nutritional bribe persuades bumble bees to drop by for a sip of nectar, which is relatively harmless, and leave the toxic pollen alone. But even if not purposedly gathering pollen, a bee is unlikely to depart from a flower without some attached to its body. That’s all the aconite needs: the few pollen grains stuck to a bee are more than sufficient to assure pollination when the bee then takes nectar from a female-phase flower (Jacquemart et al., 2019).

Help yourself to a drink, but don’t take pollen away. Or else © Franz van Duns, Wikimedia Commons:

It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate aconite’s endeavours. Like most flowering plants, it needs insects to transfer its pollen and get fertilised. To attract them, it offers rewards in the form of protein (pollen) and sugars (nectar). But the plant can’t give these goodies away willy-nilly because they are metabolically expensive. Aconite prevents the excessive harvesting of pollen by spiking it with a toxic alkaloid, but promotes the involuntary taking of some pollen grains by selectively stocking male-phase flowers with better nectar.

The aconite story is not an isolated case. Many plants regulate pollen consumption with toxins, while hermaphrodite species are often gender biased regarding nectar volume and quality (Carlson & Harms, 2006), which affect the number and duration of pollinator visits, and the number of flowers visited (Parachnowitsch et al., 2019). Natural selection doesn’t manifest itself much more gloriously than through the intricate arrangements between toxic plants and their pollinators.

The pollen stuck to this bumble bee’s corbiculae (pollen baskets) will end up as food for baby bees; from the plants’ perspective, it’s a loss of resources. Judiciously dabbing it with poison could have prevented that © Tony Wills, Wikimedia Commons:

My last post was about floating nuclear power plants. By coincidence I then ran across a news item about floating solar installations. This is also a potentially useful idea, and is already being implemented and increasing. It is estimated that in 2022 total installed floating solar was at 13 gigawatts capacity (growing from only 3 GW in 2020). The growth rate is estimated to be 34% per year.

“Floatovoltaics”, as they are apparently called, are grid-scale solar installations on floating platforms. They are typically installed on artificial bodies of water, such as reservoirs and irrigations ponds. Such installations can have two main advantages. They can reduce evaporation which helps preserve the reservoirs. They also are a source of clean energy without having to use cropland or other land.

Land use can be a major limiting factor of solar power, depending on how it is installed. Here is an interesting comparison of the various energy sources and their land use. The greatest land use per energy produced is hydroelectric (33 m^2 / MWh). The best is nuclear, at 0.3 (that’s two orders of magnitude better). Rooftop solar is among the best at 1.2, while solar photovoltaic installed on land is among the worst at 19. This is exactly why I am a big advocate of rooftop solar, even though this is more expensive up front than grid-scale installations. Right now in the US rooftop solar produces about 1.5% of electricity, but the total potential capacity is about 45%. More realistically (excluding the least optimal locations), shooting for 20-30% of energy production from rooftop solar is a reasonable goal. If this is paired with home battery backup, this makes solar power even better.

Floating solar installations have the potential of having the best of both worlds – less land use than land-based solar, and better economics and rooftop solar. If the installation is serving double-duty as an evaporation-prevention strategy, this is even better. This also can potentially dovetail nicely with closed loop pumped hydro. This is a promising grid-level energy storage solution, in that it can store massive amounts of energy for long periods of time, enough to shift energy production to demand seasonally. The main source of energy loss with pumped hydro is evaporation, which can be mitigated by anti-evaporation strategies, which could include floating solar. Potentially you could have a large floating solar installation on top of a reservoir used for closed-loop pumped hydro, which stores the energy produced by the solar installation.

But of course no energy source is without its environmental impact. For floating solar one significant concern is the impact on water birds (where there are bodies of water, even artificial ones, there are water birds). This is an issue because water bird populations are already in decline. Unfortunately, right now we have very little data. We need to see how the installations effect water birds, and how those bird would affect the installations. The linked research is mainly laying out the questions we need to ask. I doubt this will become a deal-killer for floating solar. Mainly it’s good to know how to do this with minimal impact on wildlife.

This is true of energy production in general, and perhaps especially renewable energy as we plan to dramatically increase renewable energy installations. There has already been a big conversation around wind turbines and birds. Yes, wind turbines do kill birds. Even off shore wind turbines kill birds. In the US it is estimated that between 150k and 700k birds are killed annually by wind turbine. However, this is a round-off error to the 1-3 billion birds killed by domestic cats annually. It is also estimated that over 1 billion birds die annually by flying into windows. We can save far more bird lives by keeping domestic cats indoors, controlling feral cat population, and using bird-safe windows on big buildings than all the birds killed by renewable energy. But sure, we can also deploy wind turbines in locations designed to minimize the impact on wild life (birds and bats mostly). We should not put them in corridors used for bird migration or feeding, for example.

The same goes for floating solar – there are likely ways to deploy floating solar to minimize the impact on water birds and their ecosystems. The impact will never be zero, and we have to keep things in perspective, but taking reasonable measures to minimize the negative environmental impact of our energy production is a good idea.

We also have to keep in mind that all of the negative environmental impacts of renewable energy (and nuclear power, for that matter – any low carbon energy source), is dwarfed by the environmental impact of burning fossil fuel. Fossil fuel plants kill an estimated 14.5 million birds in the US annually – about a 500-1000 times as many as wind and solar combined. And this is direct causes of death from impact with infrastructure and pollution. This doesn’t even count global warming. Once we factor that in, any environmental impact comparison is very likely to favor just about anything except fossil fuel.

Likely we will have a lot more floating solar installations in our future, and this is also likely a good thing.

 

The post Floating Solar Farms first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Dyson spheres, a type of huge megastructure designed to capture the energy output of a star, would be a sign of an alien civilisation – if we can find one before they disappear

Chinese researchers have a new method to extract uranium from seawater twice as cheaply as previous technologies. Their success comes as China needs uranium to fuel its unprecedented nuclear expansion

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "make America healthy again" is basically Lysenko 2.0. It's come to the NIH and is destroying the crown jewel of US biomedical research with ideology and cronyism.

The post Lysenkoism 2.0 and the dismantling of the NIH first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

It’s Sunday, and so we continue John Avise‘s weekly series, this one on dragonflies and damselflies of North America. John’s IDs and captions are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

Dragonflies in North America, Part 4

This week I continue a series of posts on Dragonflies and Damselflies (taxonomic Order Odonata) that I’ve photographed in North America.  I’m going down my list of species in alphabetical order by common name.  Also shown is the state where I took each photo.

Mexican Amberwing, Perithemis intensa, young male (California):

Neon Skimmer, Libellula croceipennis, male (California):

Neon Skimmer, male, side view (California):

Neon Skimmer, female (California):

Red Rock Skimmer, Paltothemis lineatipes, male (California):

Red Saddlebags, Tramea onusta, male (California):

Red Saddlebags, another male (California):

Red-tailed Pennant, Brachymesia furcata, male (California):

Regal Darner, Coryphaeschna ingens (Florida):

Roseate Skimmer, female (Florida):

Roseate Skimmer, male, sideview (Florida):

Saffron-winged Meadowhawk, Sympetrum costiferum (Wisconsin):

Saffron-winged Meadowhawk, female (Wisconsin):

One year ago, our star erupted with almost apocalyptic force—unleashing the most violent solar assault in two decades. Dubbed the Gannon storm, it wasn't just another solar flare. Multiple coronal mass ejections collided and merged into a single devastating megastorm that slammed into Earth's protective shield. As our magnetosphere buckled the night skies exploded with spectacular auroral displays. The event even reached Mars with images from Curiosity sprinkled with streaks from charged particles.

Mars once flowed with water—then 3 billion years ago, it mysteriously disappeared. Where did these ancient Martian seas go? Did the Red Planet's collapsing magnetosphere allow solar winds to strip away its water into space or did the water sink into the Martian regolith, hiding from our view?NASA’s InSight mission may have cracked the case. Seismic waves from meteorite impacts revealed water layer lurking 5.4-8 kilometres below the surface.

ESA's Plato Mission just hit a major milestone: 24 of 26 high-tech cameras have now been mounted and will soon be ready to hunt. This isn't your average telescope; it’s a planet-spotting powerhouse designed to catch distant worlds passing in front of their stars. The clever camera arrangement creates a cosmic wide-angle lens, scanning a massive 5% of the entire sky in one go. No other planet-hunter comes close to this field of view.

This will be a quick trifecta as I’m on Duck Duty. First, from Street Art Utopia, three memorials to homeless cats. Click on the headline to read:

Text from site is indented, and photos without credits are uncredited on the site. Two of the photos come from Pinterest.

Homeless cats monument in Braunschweig, Germany:

“Katzenstele” in downtown Braunschweig, German by sculptor Siegfried Neuenhausen, a former professor at the Braunschweig University of Art. The cat monument has been drawing attention to stray cats in Braunschweig since 1981. It stands as a symbol of appreciating all the kitties in town who don’t have a loving roof over their heads.

From Pinterest:

From Pinterest:

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Smithsonian Magazine recounts evidence for the earliest known pet cats to arrive in the U.S. In fact, they were likely working cats on ships rather than “pets” as we think of them, but at least we know they were heading to the U.S., even if they didn’t arrive there. Thus the headline below (click to read) could be doubly misleading:

An excerpt (the original paper is cited below, and it appears that the cats ate more than just rodents!):

. . . . a new study is offering even more insight into the history of these four-legged felines. Researchers have discovered the remains of two house cats in a 466-year-old Spanish shipwreck near Florida, which are likely the earliest known cats in the United States. They describe their findings in a new paper published in the journal American Antiquity.

The remains were found among the wreckage of the Emanuel Point II, a Spanish ship that sank in September 1559 near what is now Pensacola, Florida. The vessel was one of 11 ships that had sailed north from Mexico during an expedition under the command of Tristán de Luna y Arellano.

The conquistador’s fleet was anchored near the Spanish settlement of Santa María de Ochuse when a hurricane swept through, causing six of the vessels to sink and another to be driven inland. Between 1992 and 2016, researchers discovered three of the expedition’s shipwrecks.

Divers have successfully recovered several artifacts from the ships, including fragments of jars that likely contained olive oil, wine or water. Additionally, they’ve discovered the remains of several critters, including cockroaches, rats and at least two domestic cats.

For the new study, scientists took a closer look at the feline remains, which belonged to one adult and one juvenile cat.

Though the cats may have been stowaways, they were likely brought onboard intentionally to help keep rodents at bay. Along the way, they probably also became chummy with the sailors.

Their friendliness with the crew seems to have paid off: Tests suggest the adult cat was mainly eating fish and meats like pork, poultry and beef. Although it may have hunted the occasional rat or mouse, a “significant proportion” of the cat’s diet came from other sources, the researchers write in the paper.

The sailors may have fed the cats because they were so effective at controlling pests that there were none left for them to eat. Or they may have tossed the cats lots of food scraps “out of affection,” the researchers write. Sailors often considered cats to be lucky—especially those with extra toes.

“Their primary role may have been as commensal ratters and mousers that kept the onboard rodent population in check,” the researchers write. “This does not, however, preclude the possibility that these cats were well-liked and cared for by the sailors.”

. . . The first cats to travel to the Americas may have sailed on Christopher Columbus’ ships, though the animals are not mentioned in the voyages’ records. Archaeologists have discovered cat remains in present-day Haiti, where Columbus landed in 1492. But since the explorer never set foot on the mainland of North America, the first cats likely arrived via other expeditions—like the one led by Luna y Arellano.

Ah! We don’t think these cats arrived in North America. Whence the headline?

Click below to read the original paper:

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This paper, from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (click below or find the pdf here) shows a convergence between the skull shapes of some cats and dog breeds, a convergence that in some cases is so profound that you might classify some skulls of domestic dogs and cats as being morphologically closer to each other than either is to its ancestor (the grey wolf and the Egyptian wildcat, respectively). Of course if you looked at the rest of the skeleton you’d know whether you were dealing with a cat or a d*g.

 

Some of the science. First, the wild condition:

Skull Shape Diversity in Domestic Cats and Dogs. As with dogs (PV = 0.013), domestic cats are extremely variable, ranging from highly dolichocephalic (long muzzles and narrow skulls) breeds like Siamese and Oriental Shorthairs to greatly brachycephalic (short faces and wide, rounded skulls) breeds like Persians and Burmese (PV = 0.01). Domestic cat and dog diversification are similar in a macroevolutionary context in that both are substantially more variable than their wild ancestors, wildcats (F. silvestris) (PV = 0.002, P < 0.0001, Table 1) and wolves (C. lupus) (PV = 0.002, P < 0.0001, Table 1); Figs. 1 and 2 and Table 1). Dogs are more variable than domestic cats (P < 0.043, Table 1); this result, however, does not parallel the ancestral condition as wolves are no more variable than wildcats (P < 0.66, Fig. 1 and Table 1).

and the convergence (my bolding):

Multilevel Skull Shape Convergence in Domestic Cats and Dogs. Despite their greatly different evolutionary origins, extremely brachycephalic dogs and cats have evolved to be remarkably similar in skull shape (Figs. 1, 2, and 4 and SI Appendix, Fig. S3). Brachycephalic cats like Persians have evolved short, broad skulls with an upward-angled palate that closely resembles the brachycephalic skulls of dog breeds like Pugs and Shih Tzus (Figs. 1, 2, and 4 and SI Appendix, Fig. S3). Strikingly, some Persians are more brachycephalic than any of the dogs, as indicated by their extreme position on PC1 (Fig. 2). Indeed, in some flat-faced Persians, the nasal bones are entirely absent (14, 15). Extremely brachycephalic cats and dogs are substantially closer to each other in morphological space (Procrustes shape distance: 0.13) than either group is to their respective ancestors, or than their ancestors are to each other (Procrustes shape distance from extremely brachycephalic cats to wildcats: 0.20; extremely brachycephalic dogs to wolves: 0.29; wildcats to wolves: 0.23; Table 2 and Dataset S1). A resampling procedure comprising 10,000 rounds confirmed a significant difference in the Procrustes distances. Specifically, the Procrustes distance of 0.13 between extremely brachycephalic cats and dogs is significantly smaller (P < 0.0001, Table 2 and Dataset S1) than the distance (0.20) between extremely brachycephalic cats and wild cats. Moreover, it is also significantly smaller than the distance between extremely brachycephalic dogs and wolves (P < 0.0001, Table 2 and Dataset S1), as well as the distance between wildcats and wolves (P < 0.0001, Table 2 and Dataset S1). In other words, selection for brachycephaly has eliminated much of the ancestral difference in skull shape between cats and dogs. Here’s one figure from the paper, showing that pugs and Persians (B and F; “brachycephalic”) are more similar to each other than either is to its ancestor: ‘ (From the paper) Evolutionary convergence of head shape in brachycephalic domestic dogs and cats, as illustrated by photographs and CT scans of canids (A–D) and felids (E–H). Although wolves (A and C) and wildcats (E and G) have very different skull shapes, some of their domestic descendants like Pugs (B and D) and Persians (F and H) have convergently evolved similar skull shapes (D and H) as a result of selection for similar phenotypes.

Not only that, but this convergence appears to have evolved multiple times independently within both groups, so, for example, dogs became brachycephalic several times, as did cats.

The lesson: was already learned by Darwin: “Breeders,” he wrote in On the Origin of the Species, “habitually speak of an animal’s organization as something quite plastic, which they can model almost as they please.” That’s because every character seems to have tons of variation to select on. In this way Darwin’s studies of animal breeding informed his theory of evolution by natural selection, for he realized that what is true in domestic animals must also be true in wild ones. That’s why The Origin begins with a chapter on the domestication of and selection on animals like pigeons.

The PNAS paper ends with this warning, though the “companion animals” bit is a bit grating on me (I’m old and have no problem with “pets”):

Implications for the Health of Companion Animals.

The extent of convergence between brachycephalic cats and dogs is seen in an additional, unfortunate, phenotypic aspect. Brachycephalic cat and dog breeds have predispositions to many health disorders, some shared between species. As a result of these afflictions, pressure is mounting to ban the breeding of extreme brachycephalic individuals. We can hope such measures succeed for the welfare of our household companions, even if it has the effect of reversing this remarkable case of convergent evolution. No pugs or Persians, please!

 

h/t: Barry,

 

Quickie with Bob: Fusion Rockets; News Items: Falling Space Debris, What Makes People Flourish, Pig Heart Xenografts, Chiropractic Stroke, Breathable Algae Drug Delivery; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Faster Than Light Expansion, Autism Self-Diagnosis; Science or Fiction

After a huge amount of kerfuffle, we now have Esther and her six ducklings on the pond.  First, Esther and Mordecai foraging pre-reproduction, with the drake dabbling:

I was previously unable to show Esther’s nest nest as, for the first time in our experience, a hen nested on the ground, digging a shallow depression and laying what I thought were eleven eggs (actually, there were eight). She laid the last egg and began sitting on them on April 10. They hatched 26 days later, on May 6 (the median is about 28 days). But they don’t go to the water until the day after hatcing. It seems a lot longer than fo days! I sat by the pond all day on Water Day, and on their first full day of life (the 7th), and half a day yesterday (to protect them when the dreaded Plant Cages of Death were fixed).  One baby was found dead by the nest, and we lost one of the seven that went into the pond on the first night. But now we’re stable, I hope, at six.

Esther nested: on the ground under a tree. I became aware of it when a student named Will emailed me with this map (click to enlarge).

Here’s the site of her ground nest, under this tree (anybody know the species?)

Where she dug her nest,  It’s a good site for a ground-nesting duck, protected and hidden, but unfortunately right by a sidewalk where tons of people walk.  We immediately wanted this area to be protected.

The good people at facilities put a fence around the tree within a day. I was very grateful. The fence went around the tree except for a gap on the far side where she could walk out, though she could also swim out or fly in.

Facilities, smartly, did not put a sign on the fence lest people get curious and stick their heads in. Esther had to remain undisturbed for the nearly month of incubation.

The nest site (Esther is sitting where I’ve circled.

She would take a break from nesting for anywhere between 10 minutes to half an hour on about two of every three days. Every 15 minutes or so I looked out my window, which overlooks the pond, to see if she was in the pond, and if she was I’d run down and feed her. She was ravenous (incubating uses up considerable metabolic energy:  the temperature under her belly, where the eggs lie, is about 100° F), and she also needed a bath and a preen from sitting in the dirt. When she was off the nest, I snuck a picture of her eggs. I thought there were eleven, but I see only eight, which accounts, with the death of one outside the nest and the disappearance of another, with our present six ducklings.

This is not a great nest, and I suspect Esther is a first- or second-year hen, somewhat inexperienced. The nest should be lined with feathers she plucked from her breast, which we’ve seen in all other nests, but there are none here. The thing on the left by the cement is not an egg but a rock.

It was only when she was on the nest that I discovered how cryptic the coloration of mallard hens are. They in fact almost exactly match the color of the ground when it’s dappled with sunlight. Nobody ever noticed her after the fence was up unless I had to tell someone who was sticking their head into the fence.,  Here’s how cryptic she was sitting on her eggs. You can barely make out the white in her feathers.  This is all, of course, an adaptation to hide from predators or randy drakes.

A reveal:

She’s a bit more obvious here. She moved around, adjusting and turning the eggs so they were evenly incubated. I think they get a quarter-turn per day.

 

Mordecai rested patiently nearby for the whole month. He was elated at the rare times Esther came off the nest, and was by her side immediately. I couldn’t help anthropomorphize the situation, thinking he must be lonely, and wondering whether he knew what was to come. (Evolution is cleverer than you are!)

This is hatch day: May 6, 2025, the day they began coming out of the egg. This video was filmed by an undergrad, and my thanks to her.  You can see one wet duckling head underneath her; this individual must have hatched not long ago. There’s also a drier one, which hatched earlier. You can hear the undergrad say “Oh my God, oh my God”, her reaction to the fantastic end of the incubation process.  Remember that mallards are ground-nesters in nature, and she was behaving “normally.” But because all of our other ducks have incubated on safer window ledges, so we were tense for the whole months.

All day the next day, May 7, I sat on a bench near the next, protecting the fence around mother and babies from any disturbances and waiting till I knew they would hit the water. This photo was taken within a minute of their doing so. They know instinctively what to do when they enter the pond: follow the mother and SWIM. Yes, there are seven babies, and, sadly, one disappeared the first night. I couldn’t find a body despite searching the pond and the surrounding area for an hour. I think a predator got it.

Now that I can show the details of the incubation, I can put up more videos and photos of the family (Mordecai is still here, driving off intruding drakes). Stay tuned.