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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,

 

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.

This old strip of Jesus and Mo has new life; it came to Patreon members and I’ll put it up ’cause it’s relevant. It’s called “Twitter”. The caption was “A Friday Flashback today, from 2012.” That was when Joseph Ratzinger was Pope Benedict XVI. 

The new Pope is all over the national news, not just the Chicago news, and I’m surprised given the waning power of Catholicism, it’s still the top news every day on NBC and occupies a good deal of the NYT’s front pages. At any rate, it looks as if Pope Leo is going to focus on the “peace and love” message, and will also show a lot more consideration for the poor. But he won’t relent, I think, on key parts of Catholic dogma, though I don’t think he’ll say that homosexual acts that are unconfessed will doom one to hell.

Esther had seven babies yesterday, and I was there when they left the next (on the ground next to the pond) and plopped into the water. She is a great mom and took them on a tour of the pond before leading them up the ramp to dry out (there was one dead baby by the nest and no unhatched eggs). Everyone is in good shape, and I will explain soon why I couldn’t post on her nesting and incubating. (I do have pictures). In the meantime, for a couple of days I will be busy with what’s below, so do bear with me. I have a lot more photos and movies.

Click the photos to enlarge them.

This was taken moments after the babies entered the water for the first time:

After a tour of the pond, they learned to navigate the ramp and went ashore to dry off. Fortunately, it was sunny and warm yesterday. Today will be colder, so I’m a bit worried, but on Friday the highs move into the 70s and even the 80s.  Today feeding begins in earnest, though Esther has been well nourished throughout and a few babies even ate their tiny pellets.

Mordecai has been a great dad, driving off the drakes that keep going after Esther.  I am also able to chase them away, but like all bachelor males, they are relentless.  The fam:

By the way, we’ve run out of readers’ wildlife photos. I am sad.

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called church, came with a caption: “Yeah, that makes sense.”  Look at what Mo is reading in the newspaper!

This is about it for photos, folks, so please send in your wildlife photos (and remember, “wildlife” is construed broadly).

Today we have some plant photos by Rik Gern of Austin Texas. The subject is (my title) “Ten ways of looking at a plant.” Rik’s notes are indented and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

It appears that my current mission is to glorify the common weed, something that was never my intention, but just seemed to happen, probably because I’ve been too lazy to venture much beyond my own yard to take pictures.

The subject of this batch of photos is field madder (Sherardia arvensis). Apparently field madder is an introduced species, but that’s news to me; it just showed up in the yard without a formal introduction, or even so much as a howdy-do and made itself at home. No matter; it doesn’t bother anybody, and my yard is a melting pot, so immigrant species are welcome, especially the flowering kinds that attract bees or butterflies and contribute to the general well being.

The flowers on this plant are really tiny, but their bright pink color really makes them pop out against the green background. While in bloom the plant feels supple and strong, but once it’s out of season it turns brown and crumbles to the touch, so it’s not a great ground cover, but makes for a pretty seasonal visitor, as you can see.

I’ve never read or listened to Ezra Klein, who does podcasts and columns at the NYT and elsewhere, but the impression I got from others was that he was wickedly smart.  I don’t listen to podcasts, his main metier, so I didn’t know. I have to say, though, that I’m not that impressed by the views he expresses in this 1.5-hour interview (bottom) with Ross Douthat, also of the NYT.

Douthat has been pushing his new book, Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious, all over the place, including in the NYT and the Free Press . I’ve discussed some of his theses before on this site (see here), and, as you might imagine, I haven’t been a fan. Not only does he say that everyone has a longing for religion to fill their “god-shaped hole,” but he says that Roman Catholicism, which (not coincidentally) is his own religion, is the right faith—the way to a happy afterlife. And Douthat’s bought pretty much the whole Vatican hog, including the afterlife, Satan, assorted demons, purgatory, and angels. I was surprised to see that, released on Feb. 11, the book is only at Amazon position 2,825 this morning; I thought that—given his claim that Americans are longing for faith—his written lucubrations would be in the top 100 at least, since I’ve never seen a book promotion so relentless in the MSM.

But I digress. In the video below, Douthat and Klein, both eloquent and clearly smart people, make a great deal of the unevidenced: the things that science and “materialism” can’t explain and, therefore, constitute for both men evidence for either God or “something beyond materialism.” And I have to say that I was terrifically bored, but don’t let my reaction put you off.

Here are the YouTube notes by Klein with the timings of relevant parts.

I have no earthly idea how to describe this conversation. It’s about religion and belief – at this moment in our politics, and in our lives more generally.

My guest and I come from very different perspectives. Ross Douthat is a Catholic conservative, who wrote a book called “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.” I’m a … Californian. But I think everyone would enjoy this conversation — believers, skeptics and seekers alike. [JAC: I didn’t!]

Some questions touched on: Is the Trump administration Christian or pagan? How do Christian Trump supporters reconcile the cruelties of this administration with their faith? Can religious experiences be explained by misfiring neurons? Should organized religions embrace psychedelics? Can mystery provide more comfort than certainty?

And if you do enjoy this episode, be sure to check out Douthat’s new New York Times Opinion Audio show “Interesting Times,” available wherever you get your podcasts, and on YouTube.

The segments of the video (click to go to them):

0:00 Intro
1:11 Trump: man of destiny?
19:55 Political power, cruelty and Godliness
36:25 Religion and spirituality in the modern world
43:18 The mysteries of the universe…
49:31 Aliens! Fairies! (and some Catholic history)
58:25 Contending with uncertainty and evil
1:07:02 Psychedelic experiences
1:23:36 Official knowledge
1:36:02 Book recommendations

The NYT has a written transcript here (archived here). I did not read it exept to check the quotes, so my reactions below are based on listening.

I started listening 36 minutes in. after the politics were over, and Ceiling Cat help me, I made it to the end, but still required a stiff dose of Pepto-Bismol afterwards. But perhaps you want to listen to the politics, too.

So here’s the evidence that Douthat takes for the existence of the Christian (and Catholic) god. I’ll make no attempt to be cohesive here; I’ll just give my thoughts, Douthat’s and Klein’s assertions, and some quotes.

First, I was greatly disappointed to see Klein (who appears to be a slightly religious Jew susceptible to the “supernatural”) not pushing back on some of Douthat’s more extreme claims, including the existence of Jesus and an omnipotent loving God, of course, but also of angels and demons (he mentions the efficacy of exorcism), saints, life after death, and even trickster beings (“fairies”). Douthat’s primary evidence for God is the existence of people’s religious and spiritual experiences, which, he avers, have considerable overlap between different faiths. In other words, he bases the existence of his religion—and his being—on what people feel. To him that’s as strong, or even stronger, evidence than scientific evidence and materialism. But it’s nothing new. It’s popular now because it’s being pushed by the press as an “important” book.

In fact, Douthat and Klein both reject materialism, largely because it can’t explain these experiences and consciousness, as well as the existence of a world that, Douthat asserts, was “created with us in mind.” It makes me wonder why God created all those other lifeless planets. Is it for our amusement or wonder? And if there is life on some planets, was that also created by God, and did the aliens experience visitations by Jesus?

As Douthat says, “a new atheist materialism is incompatible with any kind of reasonable understanding of the world and its complexity, in its unruliness, in the experiences people have, in the things that it now increasingly requires you to believe”. . . and then mentions quant-mechanical entanglement and the many-worlds hypothesis as a speculations beyond materialism that makes his faith in God stronger. I don’t think a physicist would find these either non-materialistic or evidence for the divine. As in everything that both men espouse in this show, our failure to understand something gets figured into Douthat’s Bayesian statistic that raises the probability of God’s existence.

For Klein, the unexplainable experiences can be spiritual ones as well as religious ones. But Klein leaves no doubt that religious and spiritual explanations, as well as other phenomena that science doesn’t (yet) understand, are supernatural explanations, and “supernatural” means “nonmaterialistic.”

Douthat:

I mean the view that all of existence — life, the universe and everything — is finely reducible to matter in motion. That matter is primary and mind is secondary, rather than the other way around. I don’t mean materialism in terms of Madonna’s “Material Girl” or something like that — although the two can be connected.

He clearly thinks it’s the other way around (i.e. mind isn’t material), and firmly rejects the view—Klein seems to agree—that consciousness and the mind are nonmaterial phenomena that give Douthat evidence for God and Klein evidence for the supernatural. Douthat, it seems, is apparently unaware of the advances that science has made showing that consciousness is indeed a material phenomenon (for one thing, you can predictably remove it with anesthesia and then restore it).

Now to be fair, Klein, who apparently has tried drugs like ayahuasca, notes that predictable effects on the mind can also be effected by psychedelic substances, Douthat rejects this materialism, claiming that religious experiences are very different from psychedelic ones (having taken psychedelic drugs in the past, I have strong doubts about this, though I haven’t experienced Jesus). And, to further counteract this, Douthat argues that the religious experiences of all religions are pretty much the same.  As I recall from reading William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, this isn’t true, even for Western religion. I wonder, for example, if the religious experiences of a Buddhist monk living his whole life in a cave are the same as those of a Christian talking to Jesus. The only common factor is something beyond the worldly.

Giving a sop to other religions—though Douthat thinks that Roman Catholicism is the “right” one (and by that he clearly means you don’t go to heaven if you embrace the wrong one, don’t confess, don’t take communion, and the like)—he does say that all religions have a core set of “truths” that are pretty much the same. I doubt it.  Hard-core Muslims not only reject the divinity of Jesus or the necessity of believing in the tripartite God if you want to live in Paradise after death. And the morality of faiths is very different. If you’re an apostate Muslim, you should be killed, and you have to pray five times a day.  (I haven’t mentioned the cargo cults, which to me qualify as religions, too.)

Further evidence that Douthat adduces for God are the fact that the universe seems “fine tuned” for life (I won’t go into the many alternative explanations), and that a broken radio started playing spontaneously at Michael Shermer’s wedding with no materialistic explanation (I kid you not; read the transcript).

Now Douthat’s Achilles’s heel, which Klein mentions, is the existence of natural evil: childhood cancers, tsunamis, earthquakes, and the like—things that kill innocent people for no obvious reason. These don’t evince an omnipotent or omniscient God. Why do they happen?

Douthat says we don’t know:

I think there are issues in religion and questions in religion that hang over every tradition imperfectly resolved.

I’m not here to tell you I’ve resolved the problem of evil. The problem of evil is a real problem. It’s a real issue. Again, I think it’s an issue that’s there and acknowledged and wrestled with throughout the Old and New Testaments.

So, although he hasn’t resolved this HUGE problem, Douthat is confident that it’s part of God’s plan. (What an evil God it must be to give children leukemia!).  Yet I see no difference between his view one one hand and his denigration of science for having confidence  that materialism will someday resolve the problem of consciousness on the other.  After all, science is making progress on consciousnes, but has made no progress in understanding the existence of natural evil. And it never will, for all we have are smart people like Douthat, and a coterie of theologians, who get paid to simply ruminate on the problem but, in the end, can make no progress. How can your mind tell you why God permits natural evil? Through a revelation?

And I’d like to ask Douthat this: “If the Chcristian God says that we can get to heaven only by believing in him (and going “through Jesus”), why doesn’t God make his presence more clearly?  He could, you know, and then everyone would have the “right” religion!”  And here I don’t mean “religious experiences,” but a physical manifestation that could be documented to such an extent that it can’t be doubted. (I give an example of this scenario in Faith Verus Fact.) God surely wants everyone to go to heaven, for he’s a good God, so why didn’t he show up in first-century Palestine. What happens to all those Egyptians and Babylonians?

At the end, Klein asks Douthat to recommend three books for the audience. Here they are:

Stephen Barr, “Modern Physics and Ancient Faith”

After” by Bruce Greyson (about the afterlife)

“Mind and Cosmos” by Thomas Nagel

Of these I’ve read only Nagel’s book, which is teleological without being religious and somewhat confused. You can find several critiques of the books by Big Minds online.

There are two big problems with this discussion. The first is Douthat’s uncritical embrace of Roman Catholicism and all its doctrine. And the mask slips a bit when he says this:

I don’t know what your metaphysical perspectives were as a kid. But I certainly agree that I would personally find it more comforting to believe that death is a mystery than to be Richard Dawkins and believe that death is just the absolute end and never could be anything else.

I just think it’s, in fact, more probable than not that after you die, you will meet God, whatever God is, and be asked to account for your life and so on. And that’s not inherently comforting. It’s quite terrifying.

Well, what is comforting–or discomforting–need not be true.  But since neither Douthat nor Klein is a materialist, there is very little discussion about the evidence for Jesus, God, Satan, angels, demons, and so on. They are taken as a given, presumably evidenced through revelation or experience.

And that brings us to the second problem. Though Klein and Douthat are buddies, Klein does not push him hard on his views. It’s more a spiritual bro-fest than a discussion, which is perhaps why I found it so tedious. Douthat is making a name for himself even though he spouts the same old pieties (worse–he buys the whole Vatican hog)

Here are some quotes from a reader who called this to my attention.

Ezra Klein interviewing Ross Douthat. Klein hardly endears himself to rationality. But Douthat is talking about the reality of angels, demons, fairies, and that Christianity and Judaism being divinely founded – poor Buddhists left out… The NYTimes gives Douthat uncritical time. Shame on them for giving him prominence in the paper of record.

. . .Perhaps I am being harsh and insensitive to their friendship. But Klein’s failure to challenge RD’s belief in demons, angels, fairies, etc saddened me. Hence my “Klein hardly endears himself to rationality” comment.

If there is a religious revival going on, the juggernaut is being pushed by the mainstream media. I have no idea why save for the tiny flattening of the curve showing the proportion of “nones” over the last two years.

The NYT has always been anti-Israel, and I toy with calling it “antisemitic” because it always downplays antisemitism.  And it did it big time this week in an article called “A progressive and in a body made for the ‘manosphere.’ Read it by clicking below or find it archived here. 

This handsome, manly, handsome, and much-followed podcaster on Twitch and YouTube (4.5 million total), Hasan Piker turns out to have some nasty views on Israel. But of course the NYT downplays those views greatly.  Have a read; it’s short.

They add up, to me at least, to deem him an antisemite, as does NY Representative Ritchie Torres. Click to go to the thread.

The NYT article is mostly about how his wonderful physique, his diet, his workouts and his avid following, noting just this on  his views about the war:

Mr. Piker is similarly unfiltered with his viewpoints. Some can be extreme.

A vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, Mr. Piker has been labeled anti-American by people across the political spectrum for saying the country “deserved” the Sept. 11 attacks. His recent accusations that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza and his diatribes against the Zionist movement have led many supporters of Israel, including liberals like Representative Ritchie Torres of New York, to call Mr. Piker antisemitic.

“I find antisemitism to be completely unacceptable,” Mr. Piker said on a call in April. “I find the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism to be very dangerous,” he added.

It’s not a very explicit explanation (what foreign policy does he oppose?), and the conflation of antisemitism and antiZionism have turned them nearly into the same thing: hatred of Jews because most of them think that Israel is okay as a Jewish homeland.

The Free Press, however, took a deeper dive (click if you subscribe0:

Here are a few quotes from the FP (bolding is mine):

Because Piker records for up to 10 hours a day, and has done so for five years, it is hard to paint a comprehensive picture of his views. But even a cursory look at his work reveals a person who dismisses violence against Israelis, celebrates Islamist terrorists, and advocates for treating pro-Israel Americans as neo-Nazis.

“It doesn’t matter if rapes happened on October 7th,” Piker said while livestreaming on May 22, 2024. “It doesn’t change the dynamic for me.” Apparently, not even the most brutal, inhumane crimes committed during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel could justify the Israeli military response—which he repeatedly refers to as an “ethnic cleansing campaign.”

Just this week, he claimed on Twitch that “in a totally just world, regardless of your background, any kind of fucking Zionist tendency should be treated in the same way as being a fucking rabid neo-Nazi.” (The vast majority of Jews identify as Zionists.) He went on: “You shouldn’t even let someone be the fucking local dog catcher . . . if they have exhibited any sort of positive feelings about the state of Israel.”

At the same time, Piker implies that acts of violence committed by Islamists are justified. On November 29, 2023, he described the attacks of October 7 as “a retaliation for an ongoing apartheid.”

Piker doesn’t only justify terrorism. Sometimes, he glorifies it:

• On December 20, 2023, Piker played a Hamas propaganda video on his livestream for an audience of 25,000. In it, dramatic music plays as members of the terrorist group forge and demo guns. The title card reads: “We will continue Killing your Soldiers by our locally manufactured Snipers.” Piker reads it aloud, then says: “Wow, there’s a little message for the Americans out there as well!”
• In January 2024, Houthi pirates seized a commercial ship in the Red Sea, and took the crew hostage. Among the rebels was 19-year-old Rashid Al-Haddad, who went viral in the U.S. for posting videos of himself from the vessel. (Al-Haddad later denied affiliation with the Houthis.) Piker tracked down Al-Haddad via social media and interviewed him on his stream with the help of a translator. In the interview, Piker compared Al-Haddad to the pirate hero from a popular anime called One Piece.
• In a later stream on October 14, 2024, Piker likened Al-Haddad, who grew up in Yemen, to a victim of the Holocaust: “For most of his life, he has withstood genocide,” Piker said, before saying that speaking to Al-Haddad was like “talking to fucking Anne Frank, basically.” (Later, in a now-deleted tweet, Al-Haddad posted this image of a man impaled on a stake with the caption: “The execution that we will carry out on all Zionists.”)
• On September 28, 2024, Piker shared what he called a “music video,” which was actually a Houthi propaganda clip. In it, gun-toting Islamists sing a rallying cry to “defeat the masses of infidels.” They march over burning American and Israeli flags and wave banners emblazoned with the Houthi credo—which translates to “God is Great. Death to America! Death to Israel! Damn the Jews! Victory to Islam!”
  “When the beat drops, it’s like jihad drops in your heart,” Piker said to an audience of nearly 30,000. Of the Houthis, he said: “They’re very musical people.”

Piker himself is aware of his influence on young people. In November, he posted a news article about that rise in pro-Hamas sentiment among Jewish-American teenagers to his Discord server—with the comment: “i did this.”

There’s more, but I’ll give just one more bit of NYT censorship to show how they downplay Piker’s antisemitism. There was no reason for the NYT do do this save to avoid tarnishing Piker’s reputation:

But amid all the descriptions of Piker’s attractiveness—and all the photos that back it up—the Times let something small yet grimly revealing slip into its profile of the streamer. One of the images shows Piker’s monitor, during one of his livestreams. If you zoom in, you can see a comment from a Twitch user referring to an Israeli Defense Force soldier: “I’d phuck this idf btch to death and make his mother shove missles up her ass.”

The Times has since updated the photo with the comment cropped out of the picture.

Piker did not respond to a request for comment.

Apparently the NYT cannot trust readers to make their up their own minds, so they slant the news to make Piker look better than he is.  So it goes. Right now with what’s going on in the world, and with the huge influence that Piker has, it’s just like the NYT to concentrate on his manliness, muscles and handsomeness instead of his dislike of Jews anti-Zionism.

I’m a bit late to the party, but this news is not widely known. I don’t remember seeing it in the MSM, but here are two article about it in Science (first) and then Nature (second). Click each to read.

The National Scienc Foundation (NSF) is an important organization for funding non-medical science, and, as Wikipedia notes:

With an annual budget of about $9.9 billion (fiscal year 2023), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States’ colleges and universities.[4][5] In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing.

In contrast, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has a budget nearly three times as large, but their object is medical research. For some reason, Dick Lewontin (my Ph.D. advisor) managed to get the NIH to fund evolutionary genetics, and so I was supported by the NIH my entire career, with money easier to get, and had only one NSF grant.

Others have not been so lucky, as it’s been harder to get an NSF grant as the years go by, and the application process has gotten more and more convoluted, what with DEI and “outreach” requirements. Thank Ceiling Cat I retired before that was required.

At any rate, Trump is cutting NIH grants right and left, terminating those which seem to have emphasis on DEI, but the administration has also cut jobs at its Alexandria, Virginia headquarters.  All in all, given that the NSF is the main government supporter of basic non-medical science, including psychology anthropology and sociology, it’s been a pretty good organization with rigorous standards. Lately, however, it’s shown a penchant for wokeness, and that’s what brought the hammer down on the organization, The upshot, though, is that the administration appears to have used grant titles or key words to deep-six grants (see below), which isn’t exactly a fair way to do it.

On top of the director’s resignation and job cuts, this bodes poorly for research, much of which takes place in American universities.

Click to read the Science piece, which should be free. I’ll give a few excerpts (indented). And have a look at those cuts, which are DEEP

The director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced his resignation today, 16 months before his 6-year term ends, in a letter to staff obtained by Science.

“I believe that I have done all I can to advance the mission of the agency and feel that it is time to pass the baton to new leadership,” writes Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan, a computer scientist who was nominated to lead NSF by then-President Donald Trump in December 2019 and was confirmed by the Senate in August 2020. “I am deeply grateful to the presidents for the opportunity to serve our nation.”

Although Panchanathan didn’t give a reason for his sudden departure, orders from the White House to accept a 55% cut to the agency’s $9 billion budget next year and fire half its 1700-person staff may have been the final straws in a series of directives Panchanathan felt he could no longer obey.

“He was trying so hard to present the agency in a positive light,” says one knowledgeable source who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of their position. “But at the same time, Panch knew that he was alienating himself from the scientific community by being tone deaf to their growing concerns about the fate of the agency we all love.”

Now I’m not sure what that stuff about “alienation” means. Was he supposed to do something about the upcoming slash-and-burn approach of DOGE? As far as I can see, his resignation was the only honorable thing he could do, and it makes a loud statement.

On 14 April, staffers from billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) set up shop for the first time at NSF and triggered a series of events that appear to have culminated in Panchanathan’s resignation. Two days later, NSF announced it was halting any new awards for grants that had been recommended for funding by program officers and were in the final stages of approval by agency officials. And NSF said pending proposals that appeared to violate any of Trump’s executive orders—in particular those banning efforts to increase diversity in the scientific workforce, foster environmental justice, and study the spread of misinformation on social media sites—would be returned for “mitigation.”

On 18 April, NSF announced it was terminating what could be more than $1 billion in grants already awarded because they clashed with those directives and “were no longer priorities” for the agency.

You can see a database of the cancelled NSF grants here, and, at least from reading their titles, you’ll see what the Trumpets were aiming at.

As you can imagine, many of my colleagues are sweating blood, not sure that they’ll get their grants. And if you know if you’re in academia, grants are important in keeping your career going. Although the University of Chicago, almost uniquely, does NOT count grants funding as a criterion for promotion or tenure, unless you’re a theoretical physicist who needs just a pencil and paper, it would be hard to get any research don—and research IS a criterion for advancing academically—without outside money.

At any rate Panchanathan’s letter doesn’t mention the cuts or the administration, but reiterates the NSF’s accomplishments and then says this:

I believe that I have done all I can to advance the mission of the agency and feel that it is time for me to pass the baton to new leadership.

I don’t think it’ll be easy to find “new leadership.” That baton is red hot!

Here’s the announcement from Nature (click to read, excerpts are indented):

Staff members at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) were told on 30 April to “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice,” according to an email seen by Nature.

The policy prevents the NSF, one of the world’s biggest supporters of basic research, from awarding new research grants and from supplying allotted funds for existing grants, such as those that receive yearly increments of money. The email does not provide a reason for the freeze and says that it will last “until further notice”.

Earlier this week, NSF leadership also introduced a new policy directing staff members to screen grant proposals for “topics or activities that may not be in alignment with agency priorities”. Proposals judged not “in alignment” must be returned to the applicants by NSF employees. The policy has not been made public but was described in documents seen by Nature.

An NSF staff member says that although good science can still be funded, the policy has the potential to be “Orwellian overreach”. Another staff member says, “They are butchering the gold standard merit review process that was established at NSF over decades”. One program officer says they are resigning because of the policy. Nature spoke with five NSF staffers for this story, all on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

An NSF spokesperson declined Nature’s request for comment.

. . .Uncertainty is also being felt by scientists outside the agency. Colin Carlson, an expert in disease emergence at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, leads an initiative to predict viruses that pose pandemic threats. The project, which involves roughly 50 researchers across multiple universities, is funded by a $US12.5 million NSF grant. The project’s latest round of funding was approved, but Carlson worries about subsequent rounds, and the fate of other researchers. Unless it is lifted, the freeze “is going to destroy people’s labs,” Carlson says.

. . . Cuts to NSF spending this year could be a prelude to a dramatically reduced budget next year. Science previously reported that US President Donald Trump will request a $4 billion budget for the agency in fiscal year 2026, a 55% reduction from what Congress appropriated for 2025. Similarly, the proposed 2026 budget for the National Institutes of Health calls for a 44% cut to the agency’s $47 billion budget in 2025, according to documents leaked to the media. During Trump’s first term, Republicans in Congress rejected many of the president’s requested cuts to science funding, but it is not clear that they will do so again.

These huge cuts are not going to be limited to the “social justice and DEI” category; they have to overlap into basic science. And, as the article notes, this damages not just the expansion of knowledge but the well-being of the country as a whole. Lots of NSF research, even if “pure” research, has led to significant improvements of people’s well being. I don’t think that’s the reason the organization should exist, as pure knowledge by itself enriches humanity, but there’s no denying the salubrious side effects.

. . . . severe reductions to science funding could damage the economy, according to new research. A report by economists at American University in Washington DC estimates that a 50% reduction in federal science funding would reduce the US gross domestic product by approximately 7.6%. “This country’s status as the global leader in science and innovation is seemingly hanging by a thread at this point,” one NSF staffer says.

I’m very glad I’m retired and don’t have to depend on the grant system, but I feel bad for my colleagues who are living in uncertainty.

Today we have another photo-and-text essay from Athayde Tonhasca Júnior, featuring another introduced insect from Japan.  Athayde’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

AND. . .special kudos for Athayde, for he noted this:

If I’m correct, this will be my 100th contribution to WEIT. As we all make a fuss about 100 (is it because it marks the boiling point of water?), I thought it would be worth mentioning it. 

That’s a lot of education he’s given us over the years, so thank you, Athayde!

***********

Menacing tenants

In an apple orchard somewhere in the American state of Pennsylvania, an adult Japanese horn-faced bee (Osmia cornifrons) has just emerged from its nest and makes its way into the big wide world. The apple grower has high hopes for that bee; in fact, he bought many of them when they were still inside their cocoons. The Japanese horn-faced bee was introduced from Japan in the 1970s, and since then it has been widely used in the Eastern United States to improve the pollination of apples and other fruit trees such as peaches, pears and cherries.

A female Japanese horn-faced bee © Chelsey Ritner, Exotic Bee ID:

In their natural habitats, the Japanese horn-faced bee and similar species nest inside cavities such as hollowed reeds, tree holes and cracks in stones. Females use a range of materials, especially mud and pebbles, to build individual nest cells in which they lay an egg. When bees are done, they seal off the nest entrance with mud – so they are known as mason bees. Fruit growers offer bees nesting alternatives such as drilled blocks of wood or bunches of cardboard tubes tightly packed together.

Two types of mason bee nests used in orchards: cardboard tubes (a) and wood blocks (b) © Kline et al., 2023:

The future seemed promising for that Japanese horn-faced bee in Pennsylvania. But opportunists were on standby, ready to pounce when an unsuspecting bee leaves its nest. In the blink of an eye, a gang of hypopi (singular hypopus) jumps on the bee, holding on for dear life as their ride flies away.

Hypopi, also known as hypopodes, are a special nymphal stage found in some mites. In this case, the hairy-footed pollen mite (Chaetodactylus krombeini). Hypopi have no head or mouthparts, but are armed with special structures for hanging on; either powerful claws or a sucker plate to glue themselves to their host. These adaptations greatly facilitate phoresis, which is when an organism attaches itself to another for the purpose of transportation. Phoresis is typically found in small and poorly mobile organisms such as nematodes and mites. But curiously, the hypopus stage is usually facultative for mites; it occurs only when conditions deteriorate (food scarcity, overcrowding, dry climate, etc.), so that skedaddling increases the likelihood of survival.

A hypopus, the stage adapted for phoresis © Reynolds et al., 2014:

The departing bee has no chance of avoiding the lurking hitchhikers who react instantaneously to the slightest touch to their dorsal setae (bristles) or to air movement caused by a passing body. And the feats of some of these mites defy credulity; the tiny Histiostoma laboratorium (formally known as H. genetica), a scourge of vinegar fly (Drosophila melanogaster) laboratory colonies, lurches into the air to grab fruit flies flying above them (Hall, 1959. J. Kansas Entomological Society 32: 45-46). Some species that have hummingbirds as hosts rush to the birds’ nostrils at a rate of 12 body-lengths per second, which is a speed proportional to a cheetah’s (Colwell, 1985)

Hypopi attached to their host © D.E. Walter, Invasive Mite Identification, Colorado State University and USDA/APHIS/PPQ Center for Plant Health Science and Technology:

After being mobbed by hypopi, the bee carries on with its life. If it’s a female, she will mate and start a nest of her own. When her brood cells are ready, her unwanted companions come out of their lethargic state, jump off and resume their development, maturing and reproducing quickly, all the while feeding on the pollen and nectar gathered by the bee. When their numbers reach certain levels, they may feed on the bee’s eggs and larvae (details are sketchy). In a few months the mites may reach thousands and overrun the brood cell, leaving space for nothing else.

Hairy-footed pollen mites inside a mason bee nest cell © Pavel Klimov, Wikimedia Commons.

Such massive numbers of kleptoparasites (organisms that steal food from another one) spell serious trouble for Japanese horn-faced bees; their eggs and larvae die or develop poorly for lack of food or direct attack from mites. Some adult bees may not even have a chance to start a new family; they are so burdened by mites that they cannot fly. They fall to the ground and become easy pickings for ants and other predators.

A mason bee loaded with pollen mites © GeeBee60, Wikimedia Commons:

Several mason bee species are susceptible to the hairy-footed pollen mite, but managed Japanese horn-faced bees have been hit particularly hard, with losses reaching up to 50% of the population. It’s not difficult to understand why. The same way crowded slums make people more vulnerable to all sorts of diseases, jam-packed nests increase the chances of mites passing from one bee to another. And the hairy-footed pollen mite does not even depend on phoresis: adults can walk from one nest to another nearby, getting inside through holes in the sealing mud made by parasitic wasps. To make the situation worse, this mite can turn into a dormant stage that survives several years inside an empty nest, rousing back to activity as soon as new tenants arrive.

The effects of the hairy-footed pollen mite on the Japanese horn-faced bee are a reminder of the unintended consequences of well-intentioned actions. Bee houses or bee ‘hotels’ have been promoted as enhancers of wild bee populations, but there’s no indication of such effects. They do however increase the risk of pathogens and parasites: not only mites, but a range of fungi, parasitic flies and wasps bedevil mason bees (Groulx & Forrest, 2017).

A bee hotel: not such a great idea © Colin Smith, Wikimedia Commons:

American fruit growers do their best to keep mites under control by replacing the nesting tubes yearly, sterilising wood blocks, or removing and storing bee cocoons during the winter. If you have a bee house but don’t have the resources, time or inclination to do the same, you should follow Colin Purrington‘s advice: buy a garden gnome instead.

I’m having big-time computer problems today, so there may not be any more posts. Bear with me; I do my best. But at least I got this one up.

Today is Sunday, and therefore we have photos from John Avise of dragonflies and damselflies of North America. John’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Dragonflies in North America, Part 3 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. 

Eastern Pondhawk, Erythemis simplicicollis, male (Louisiana)

Eastern Pondhawk (Georgia), side view of male:

Eastern Pondhawk (female), Louisiana:

Eight spotted skimmer, Libellula forensic (British Columbia, Canada):

Flame skimmer, Libellula saturata, male (California):

Flame skimmer, female, California:

Flame skimmer (another female), California:

Four-spotted skimmer, Libellula quadrimaculata (British Columbia, Canada):

Great pondhawk, Erythemis vesiculosa, female, Florida:

Halloween Pennant, Celithemis eponina, female, Florida

Halloween Pennant, female, head-on, Florida:

Little Blue Dragonlet, Erythrodiplax miniscula, male, Florida:

Little Blue Drag0net, female, Florida:

Little Blue Dragonlet, tenneral female (Savannas, FL.:

 

I may have posted this before, but I’m sure that even if I did, some readers may have missed it. It’s Bert Jansch (1943-2011), playing a song from his first album, the former called “Running from Home” (written by Jansch) and the album simply called “Bert Jansch.” The album was recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder and released in 1965. Jansch got £100 for it.  I heard the album in high school and was greatly impressed, and in fact have never forgotten it. It has at least five world-class songs, including his most famous performance, “Angie“, a song written by Davey Graham. “Angie” has been covered several times, but no version is better than Jansch’s, not even Graham’s.

This is one of my five favorites on the album, “Running from Home,” here performed along with Finn Kalvik in 1973 (the original from the album is here).  The structure is just A-A-A-A. . . there is no chorus. And it’s three-finger picking (“Travis picking”) with Jansch alternating the top strings with his thumb.

Jansch’s songs can’t really be classified as folk, rock, or pop. They are sui generis. But one thing they all are is plaintive. 

Yesterday when I criticized Agustín Fuentes’s article in Natural History trying (and failing) to show that sex isn’t binary, I gave the magazine a break. After all, it hasn’t been nearly as bad as Scientific American, and I gave it a break because it published a gazillion essays by Steve Gould (yes, some of them were misguided, touting punctuated equilibrium, but they were all entertaining).

But now I’ve changed my mind, for I’ve learned that the editors actually published a justification in the magazine for publishing Fuentes’s piece. I guess they knew it would be controversial, and it is. It’s just flat wrong, but also misleading in a very annoying way: making points about variation within the sexes that have nothing to do with his thesis (and the title of his book from which the article was taken): “Sex is a Spectrum: Why the Nonbinary View is Problematic.”  His presentation shows that some (but not all) aspects of sexual behavior, sexual dimorphism, and so on are more continuous that the discontinuous existence of the sexes themselves. In all animals there are two reproductive systems, male and females, with exceptions ranging in proportion from 0.00005 to 0.00017.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, friends and comrades, is in all relevant respects a binary.

Fuentes, in other words, was attacking an argument that nobody had made, since we all realize there’s variation in sex-related traits, but his thesis was not about that. It’s about whether there is variation in the types of gametes in plants and animals (especially humans) that are the basis for defining sex (actually it’s really a “recognition” of a binary, not an a priori definition designed to impose a false binary on nature). And Fuentes uses many of the bogus tropes employed to “prove” that sex is nonbinary, even showing a photo of a bluehead wrasse, a fish that forms polygynous groups. When the alpha male dies, one female gets rid of her ovaries and develops testes, taking over the top job.  But there are still only two sexes!  I have to say that you have to be either ignorant or tendentious to use this animal as an argument against the sex binary, and Fuentes isn’t ignorant.

At any rate, the editors’ apologia–or rather “explanation”—is below. What burns my onions about this is their contention that “the science behind Fuentes’s thesis. . . is solid.”  The claim that “the number of mating types (often called “sexes”) has been variable over hundreds of millions of years, ranging from two and sometimes three in most animals, to as many as seven in single-celled animals. . ” is wholly misleading.  Well, Dear Editors, all animals and vascular plants have just two sexes (which ones have three?), though single-celled organisms, algae and fungi can have more “mating type”, which I’m okay with calling “sexes”if you want. But Fuentes and the editors, are defending the thesis that animals, including our own species, have nonbinary sex. This is not true.

Note as well that the editors have been taken in by the claim that the variability of “sexual behavior” and of “sexual activity” within and among species show that there is variability in the number of sexes beyond two.  This is a false argument, as anybody who knows biology and isn’t warped by ideology should know.

What bothers me most about this editorial is the editors’ sanctimonious claim that they are acting “in the public interest” by recognizing the “science” in this debate, but the bogus-ness of that science is all on Fuentes’s side. Shame on you, editors of Natural History? Have you actually followed this debate? How can it be that the Supreme Court of the UK has apprehended and resolved this debate better than do editors of a science magazine.

This is what happens when scientists’ work is distorted by their ideology, and by now I shouldn’t have to tell you what the distorting ideology is.

Here is the editors’ preface:

h/t: Robert

Our stalwart readers have come through with several batches of photos, so we’re good to go for about a week.

Today’s contribution comes from UC Davis math professor Abby Thompson, also a Hero of Intellectual Freedom. Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

In Northern California, April blew in the way March is supposed to, like a lion, with gusting winds and high surf.

The first set of creatures below have a lovely common name: by-the-wind sailors, and a mellifluous scientific name: Velella velella.   Each mini-sailboat is actually a colony of hydroids.     They’re blown willy-nilly across the surface of the sea, and when the winds and tides hit just right, they wash up onshore in incredible numbers.  The first picture is the beach so covered with them it looked like it had snowed.  The second is a closer-up picture of a cluster of them.  The third and fourth show first a single “boat” floating right-side up, with the sail sticking up perpendicular to the surface, and then a few upside down, showing the tentacles which usually hang underneath.  Velella velella are related to Portuguese men o’ war, but their tentacles don’t sting (much- at least not for humans).

Both Velella velella and Portuguese men o’ war have nudibranch predators, including Fiona pinnata and Glaucus atlanticus (blue dragon).  The spectacular blue dragon seems to be always blue, and Fiona pinnata can take on the beautiful blue of its prey. Glaucus atlanticus  concentrates the (painful) venom of the Portuguese man o’ war  and reportedly is excruciatingly painful to the touch.  Luckily the two really venomous species need warmer water than we have in Northern California.

Velella velella (by-the-wind sailor):

Epiactis prolifera (brooding anemone) This species broods its young on the outside of its column. The babies are the cream-colored flower-like things:

Epiactis prolifera again- in this one, the kids seem to have taken over the place, as kids are wont to do:

Nucella ostrina (Striped dogwinkle). These usually have boring grey and white strips, but every once in a while they’re this spectacular orange. Also I like the name “dogwinkle”:

Doto amyra (nudibranch):

Paradialychone ecaudata (another species of feather duster worm). These just appear as a fuzz on the bottom of the pools, until you look at them with some magnification:

Camera info:  Mostly Olympus TG-7 in microscope mode, pictures taken from above the water.

It looks like Natural History magazine has given an implicit endorsement—or at least a platform—to Princeton anthropology professor Agustín Fuentes.  We’ve met him before, and not under pleasant circumstances, as the man is wont to distort science and mislead his readers in the cause of progressive ideology. To see all the pieces I’ve written about him, go here (and especially these pieces here, here, and here.  And for critiques of Fuentes’s misguided accusations that Darwin was a racist who justified and promoted genocide, go here and here, and also see here for one I published in Science with a bunch of evolutionists. Some of these articles show Fuentes deliberately purveying misleading statements to buttress an ideological position. For that seems to be his modus operandi.

Now Fuentes has put his view that sex is not a binary into a new book, an excerpt of which was published in the latest Natural History, a magazine I always liked. This single bad article won’t change my mind about it (as the multiple bad articles in Scientific American did about that rag), but it makes me question the editors’ judgment. Do they know ANY biology? The reason I ask is that the excerpt is so tedious, dreadful, tendentious, misleading, and convoluted that it wouldn’t pass muster in a real scientific journal, and even a scientifically ignorant editor could see the problem with the arguments (and also correct the bad writing).

You can’t go to the article by clicking on the headline; and I don’t have a link, either. I was sent a pdf by a disaffected reader, and that’s what I’ll quote from. Perhaps you can find a copy if you dig around.

The overweening problem with this article is that it doesn’t show that the binary view is wrong, or that biological sex is really a spectrum. What Fuentes does (and he doesn’t really define biological sex) is to show that within the two constructs he takes to represent sex, there is a lot of variation in various traits.  Men don’t all behave in a way that differs from the way all women behave, development of sex is complicated, people of different sex have different “lived experiences” (yes, he says that), the structure of families vary among cultures, and so on.

But of course all of this variation, and the multidimensional definition of sex, neglects the big problem: is biological sex binary?  Yes it is: males have reproductive systems that evolved to produce small mobile gametes (sperm) and females have systems evolved to produce larger immobile gametes (eggs). There are only two types of gametes—no more. Biologists have arrived at this definition for two reasons: it’s universal in all animals and plants, and also because of its utility: the different investment in gametes usually leads to differential investment in offspring,  which explains not only sex differences in behavior, but sexual selection itself, which produces sexual dimorphism in appearance and sexual behavior. The exceptions to a strict binary defined (really “recognized”) this way range from about 1/5600 individuals to 1/20,000, and that’s as close to a binary you can get in biology.

What Fuentes does is throw a lot of sand in the reader’s eyes, showing variation within sexes and across cultures, hoping that at the end the reader will say, “Hey, maybe sex isn’t a binary after all.” But that variation does not touch the thesis he’s trying to depose. The man doesn’t know how to debate, so, like a true ideologue, he changes the ground of argumentation.

First (probably in the nonquoted parts of his book), he defines the sexes in an introductory note as “3Gfemales” and “3Gmales”, referring to “typical biological patterns of association between genetics-gonads-genitals in human bodies.” I presume he means that members of each have has the typical chromosomal constitutions of its type (e.g. XX in females) as well as gonads (that presumably means testes vs. ovaries) and genital morphology. Fuentes adds that “while useful as general categories, not all people fit into the 3G classifications.” So that is his definition, and of course since it involves more than gametes, will naturally be less binary than the biological definition. A male with a tiny penis, for example, perhaps because of a disorder of sex determination, would be called a biological male if he has testes, but is something else according to Fuentes. But Fuentes doesn’t say what such an individual is. How many sexes are there? An infinite number? And is that true of raccoons, Drosophila, and robins?

Okay, here comes the sand, so cover your eyes. I’ll have to use screenshots since I can’t copy and paste from this pdf:

Variation in sexual behavior:

But it is not “human sexuality” that is the binary, but the definition of sex.  Surely Fuentes recognizes that he is deviating from the main issue his book (and this article) is about: the binary nature of defined sex, as seen in every species of animal and plant. That doesn’t mean that sexuality and its expression is binary.  I’m not sure whether there’s a name for this kind of argumentation, but what he’s doing is clear.

He drags in variation in family structure, too:

Again, all this does is refute a binary of families, not of sexes. Why is it in there? What is the sweating professor trying to say?

Fuentes dwells at length on how sex is basically irrelevant in medicine because sexes show variation in their responses to drugs and get diseases at different rates, implying that the binary is all but useless for doctors. I read to my doctor several paragraphs of Fuentes’s screed, and I won’t give his reaction save to say that it was “not positive.” For example, can you even understand this?:

Stable? “Perceived instability”? What is he banging on about? He doesn’t say.

And females are too complicated to deal with in biology, medicine, and health? What is he talking about?  When a patient goes to see a doctor, it’s essential for the doctor to know the patient’s biological sex. Not only are some diseases specific to sexes (prostate cancer, ovarian or uterine cancer) as are some conditions (menopause), but a good doctor will realize that heart disease (and other diseases) can present differently in the sexes, and will investigate further based on that. Females with heart disease, for example, present more often with indigestion-like symptoms than do males. Now of course there are factors other than sex involved in treating a patient (do they drink, smoke, or eat too much?), but saying that sex is pretty much useless when treating patients is simply dumb. It can even be harmful (though he doesn’t say how):

Again, does any doctor pay attention only to sex? I don’t know of one. To be sure, Fuentes grudgingly admits that there are “two sets of reproductive physiologies” that are relevant to medicine, but minimizes the importance of sex. And to be sure, some diseases are recognized and treated identically in males and females, but to ignore biological sex as a doctor is sheer incompetence.

In another example, Fuentes notes that Ambien doesn’t work the way you’d predict in women if you just reduces the male dosage based on a smaller weight of females.  Why doesn’t this work? Because the drug clears from women “3G females” (did the doctors check all the “G”s?) more slowly than from “3G males.”   He uses this difference to attack the sex binary, by saying that we don’t understand why this average difference occurs, saying “asking about the actual physiological response, rather than assuming 3G males and 3G females are different kinds of humans, is a better approach.”

But again, this is irrelevant to the sex binary; it is about the mechanism of a difference between (Fuentes’s) biological sexes.  And, interestingly, one of the mechanisms he suggests is “attention should be focused on the varying levels of acting testosterone in attenuating the effectiveness of [Ambien].”

Testosterone! Well at least that has some connection with biological sex, no? Fuentes then tries to efface the difference in hormone levels by saying this:  “Testosterone is not characterizable as a male or female hormone, but rather by variation in circulating levels among humans, with 3G males usually having much higher levels than 3G males.”

In reality, we’ve long known that both testes and ovaries produce testosterone, but the distribution of salivary testosterone in the sexes is indeed variable in each sex, and there is hardly any overlap between the sexes: Since testosterone prompts the development of secondary sex traits, including behavior, it’s the binary nature of sex that produce an almost nonoverlapping distribution of hormones. But one should not imply, as Fuentes does, that variation of hormone levels in each sex means that the sexes themselves are non-binary.

(From paper): Figure 1. Shown is a depiction of the bimodal distribution of raw, baseline salivary testosterone values (in pg/mL) when including both men (N = 360) and women (N = 407). All saliva samples were collected and assayed by the present author using radioimmunoassay (Schultheiss and Stanton, 2009). The displayed testosterone data were aggregated from several past studies by the author, and for graphical purposes only, exclude eight male participants with testosterone levels between 150 and 230 pg/mL.

I don’t want to go on much longer, but I’ll add that Fuentes conflates sex and gender several times, and uses familiar tropes to dispel the binary, like the existence of hermaphroditic earthworms, which of course produce only two types of gametes, but in one body. He even shows a photo of a bluehead wrasse, which, like the clownfish (but in the other direction), changes sex in social groups (the head of a group of females is male, but if he dies a female changes sex and becomes the alpha-fish).  And like the clownfish, this doesn’t dispel the sex binary because again, there are only two forms, one producing sperm and one producing eggs. Nobody ever claimed that a biological female can gametically transform into a biological male or vice versa. As always, there are only two reproductive systems, classified by their type of gamete. Neither of these animals produces a third type of gamete.

At the end, Fuentes reprises his error of saying that variation within sexes dispels any notion of a sex binary, and even lapses into philosophisizing:

I love the “why and how humans are in the world.” It’s totally meaningless!  But wait! There’s more:

Of course there is intra- and inter-sex diversity in levels of hormones, behavior, sexual behavior, family structure, and so on.  But there is no diversity within a sex about the type of gamete it is set up to produce, either sperm or eggs (or both in the case of hermaphrodites, which Fuentes calls “intersex”).  And that IS a universal truth about being male or female, a truth that was recognized a long time before social justice ideology arose, and a reognition that had nothing to do with that ideology. Now it does, for even a dolt can see that Fuentes’s real aim to to dispel the binary definition of sex in any way he can, for he considers that definition to be harmful to people who don’t identify as either male or female. It isn’t. If the facts get in the way of ideology for people like Fuentes, they either ignore or misrepresent the facts. Here the entire article is a form of misrepresentation. ****************** At my own ending I’ll quote, with permission, part of the email that the reader who sent me this pdf wrote, just because I liked the email:

 

. . . last night, I was flabbergasted to read in the table of contents of the latest issue of Natural History, ‘Sex is a Spectrum: Why the binary view is problematic.”

That rumbling you just heard was SJG [Stephen Jay Gould] and his biologist forebears from this magazine spinning in their graves. Or so I infer.

OK, I am not a biologist and wouldn’t even try to play one on TV, and so wouldn’t claim the credentials or background to properly critique this. But I do have to wonder at the author’s writing in pretzel knots to avoid, for example, using the term “women” (preferred: “Humans with uteri” [p. 23]), or writing things I find hard to swallow (“the number of mating types (often called “sexes”) per kind of species…[is] two and sometimes three in most animals…”). I’d really like to know the animals that have three sexes (and what the third kind is called, and who it mates with).

h/t: Alex, Robert

Well, dear readers, this is the last of the photos I have to show you, and there are but two. If you have good photos, send them in–STAT!  Thanks.

From reader Christopher Moss, bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus). His captions are indented, and if you want to enlarge the photos, click on them.

Not terribly good, as they are cropped to the centre of the original, despite using a 750mm lens. I had noticed something black on the frozen pond, and when the eagle landed to investigate I realised something had died there. The crows were squawking a lot and I wondered if it was one of their number.

Oh! I just found 24 more photo from Richard Pieniakowski, so we have a couple of days’ worth (his captions).  I will just add the first two because they’re the same species as above.

Bald eagle perched in snowfall:

Bald eagle flying through snow:

This article from Skeptic Magazine notes how the calendar of the indigenous Māori people became a craze in New Zealand, taking over and regulating many human activities when there’s no evidence that the calendar is useful for those purposes. Click on the title to read; excerpts are indented:

The article begins by noting the unfair denigration that the Māori and their culture received after the British colonized the islands. That culture is is, says Bartholomew (an “Honorary Senior Lecturer in Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland,” and a prolific author), a rich culture that makes empirical claims, some of which can be verified by modern science. But Bartholomew’s thesis is that the indigenous (lunar) calendar, while having some minimal value in predicting regular events, is “not science.” That disparity was, of course, was the subject of the infamous 2021 Listener letter that got its Auckland University authors unfairly demonized, with some suffering professional consequences.

Māori knowledge often holds great spiritual significance and should be respected. Like all indigenous knowledge, it contains valuable wisdom obtained over millennia, and while it contains some ideas that can be tested and replicated, it is not the same as science.

. . . we should [not] discount the significance of indigenous knowledge—but these two systems of looking at the world operate in different domains. As much as indigenous knowledge deserves our respect, we should not become so enamoured with it that we give it the same weight as scientific knowledge.

And onto the Calendar Craze:

Infatuation with indigenous knowledge and the fear of criticising claims surrounding it has infiltrated many of the country’s key institutions, from the health and education systems to the mainstream media. The result has been a proliferation of pseudoscience. There is no better example of just how extreme the situation has become than the craze over the Māori Lunar Calendar. Its rise is a direct result of what can happen when political activism enters the scientific arena and affects policymaking. Interest in the Calendar began to gain traction in late 2017.

You can see how the calendar is constructed here, and the Skeptic article also gives a diagram.  The figure below from the article shows how its usage in the news, from the Dow Jones Factiva database, has changed since 2016. Mentions been decreasing over the last two years, but they’re still much, much more numerous than in 2016:

As the author notes, the calendar was useful to the Māori for tracking the seasons in a way that could help the locals schedule hunting, fishing, and planting.  But it’s gone far beyond that:

Two studies have shown a slight increase in fish catch using the Calendar. However, there is no support for the belief that lunar phases influence human health and behavior, plant growth, or the weather. Despite this, government ministries began providing online materials that feature an array of claims about the moon’s impact on human affairs. Fearful of causing offense by publicly criticizing Māori knowledge, the scientific position was usually nowhere to be found.

And so, as happens in New Zealand, the calendar took off as a way to schedule all kinds of things for which it wasn’t appropriate. The ways it’s been used are amazing:

Since [2017], many Kiwis have been led to believe that it can impact everything from horticulture to health to human behavior. The problem is that the science is lacking, but because of the ugly history of the mistreatment of the Māori people, public institutions are afraid to criticize or even take issue anything to do with Māori culture. Consider, for example, media coverage. Between 2020 and 2024, there were no less than 853 articles that mention “maramataka”—the Māori word for the Calendar which translates to “the turning of the moon.” After reading through each text, I was unable to identify a single skeptical article. Many openly gush about the wonders of the Calendar, and gave no hint that it has little scientific backing.

. . . Soon primary and secondary schools began holding workshops to familiarize staff with the Calendar and how to teach it. These materials were confusing for students and teachers alike because most were breathtakingly uncritical and there was an implication that it was all backed by science. Before long, teachers began consulting the maramataka to determine which days were best to conduct assessments, which days were optimal for sporting activities, and which days were aligned with “calmer activities at times of lower energy phases.” Others used it to predict days when problem students were more likely to misbehave.

As one primary teacher observed: “If it’s a low energy day, I might not test that week. We’ll do meditation, mirimiri (massage). I slowly build their learning up, and by the time of high energy days we know the kids will be energetic. You’re not fighting with the children, it’s a win-win, for both the children and myself. Your outcomes are better. The link between the Calendar and human behavior was even promoted by one of the country’s largest education unions.  Some teachers and government officials began scheduling meetings on days deemed less likely to trigger conflict, while some media outlets began publishing what were essentially horoscopes under the guise of ‘ancient Māori knowledge.

The Calendar also gained widespread popularity among the public as many Kiwis began using online apps and visiting the homepages of maramataka enthusiasts to guide their daily activities. In 2022, a Māori psychiatrist published a popular book on how to navigate the fluctuating energy levels of Hina—the moon goddess. In Wawata Moon Dreaming, Dr. Hinemoa Elder advises that during the Tamatea Kai-ariki phase people should: “Be wary of destructive energies,” while the Māwharu phase is said to be a time of “female sexual energy … and great sex.” Elder is one of many “maramataka whisperers” who have popped up across the country.

The calendar, while having these more or less frivolous uses, still demonstrates the unwarranted fealty that Kiwis, whether Māori or descendants of Europeans, pay to indigenous “ways of knowing,” for you can well suffer professionally if you push back on them. In fact, the author, who wrote a book on this topic, was discouraged from writing it because Māori claim that they have “control over their own data.” This is a common claim by indigenous people, whether in New Zealand or North America, but it makes their data totally unscientific—off limits to those who wish to analyze or replicate it.

Further, some uses are not so frivolous. The author notes that people have managed contraception using the calendar, and even used it to discontinue medication for bipolar disorder. Again, remember that there is no evidence that the calendar has any connection with human behavior, health, or well being.

Once again we see that indigenous “ways of knowing” may be useful in conveying a bit of observational knowledge useful to locals, but have now been appropriated to a state that is coequal to science. (The debate still continues in New Zealand about whether Mātauranga Māori, the sum of indigenous “ways of knowing” (and which also includes religion, ethics, superstition, legend, and other non-science stuff), should be taught in science classes. That is a very bad idea, and if really implemented would ruin science in New Zealand.  Adopting the lunar calendar as having epistemic value would be part of this degradation.

Bartholomew finishes this way, and I hope he doesn’t get fired for saying stuff like this—for these are firing words!

This is a reminder of just how extreme attempts to protect indigenous knowledge have become in New Zealand. It is a dangerous world where subjective truths are given equal standing with science under the guise of relativism, blurring the line between fact and fiction. It is a world where group identity and indigenous rights are often given priority over empirical evidence. The assertion that forms of “ancient knowledge” such as the Calendar, cannot be subjected to scientific scrutiny as it has protected cultural status, undermines the very foundations of scientific inquiry. The expectation that indigenous representatives must serve as gatekeepers who must give their consent before someone can engage in research on certain topics is troubling. The notion that only indigenous people can decide which topics are acceptable to research undermines intellectual freedom and stifles academic inquiry.

While indigenous knowledge deserves our respect, its uncritical introduction into New Zealand schools and health institutions is worrisome and should serve as a warning to other countries. When cultural beliefs are given parity with science, it jeopardizes public trust in scientific institutions and can foster misinformation, especially in areas such as public health, where the stakes are especially high.

Respect for indigenous people is not only fine, but is proper and moral. But it should not extend to giving scientific credibility to untested claims simply because they are part of “traditional knowledge.”

Yes, we’ve all heard that three white dire wolves are running around at some secret location, and we’ve heard about Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas-based firm that, it says, is going to fix the “colossal problem” of extinction. The main way they propose to do it—and the bit that’s gained all the attention—is to “de-extinct” animals by finding fossil DNA of extinct species, sequencing some bits that presumptively code for a few of their traits, and then, using CRISPR, put those bits into the fertilized eggs of a living species that’s a close living relative. That way you get a hybrid animal, which is by necessity genetically about 99.9% or more of the living species but with a few traits of the extinct species. Then–voilà–you can say you have “de-extincted” the species. The misleading hype involved in that verb is obvious.

For example, dire wolf genes were extracted from fossil specimens, and 15 of those bits were edited into 14 genes in the fertilized egg of a grey wolf (they actually put in 20 bits, but 5 of those involved mutations existing in dogs and wolves.  Since the grey wolf genome has 2.4 billion bases, you can see that only a tiny bit of dire wolf genome went into the wolf genome. The edited wolf egg was then transferred into surrogate dog mothers, and the mostly-grey-wolf hybrids were extracted by caesarian section (the dogs weren’t killed).  Voilà: they got three largish white wolves that they called dire wolves.  (The white color, by the way, did not come from the dire wolf DNA bnt from dog or coyote mutations. They edited whiteness into the hybrid because dire wolves were white when they featured, much larger, in the t.v. show Game of Thrones. We don’t know what color the dire wolves really were, but I doubt it was snow white. They did not live in snowy areas.)

The Big Project of Colossal, however, is the “de-extincting” of the woolly mammoth, a project I’ve discussed on this site before. (The dodo and thylacine are also on tap to be edited back to life.) Colossal promises that we’ll have faux mammoths—which paleobiologist and mammoth expert Tori Herridge denigrated as “elephants in a fur coat” because a few of the changes will involve hairiness—by 2028. Good luck with that!

There are many problems with the “de-extinction” scenarios that have nevertheless raked in $435 million for Colossal thanks to donors like Paris Hilton and Tiger Woods. And although other scientists like Tori and Adam Rutherford have described some of these problems, I decided to summarize them all in one place for American readers.  Thus my op-ed in today’s Boston Globe, which you can find here, though it may be paywalled. Clicking on the headline below, however will take you to a non-paywalled archived version of the text.

The article summarizes four major problems with “de-extinction”, which you can read in the article.  The Globe had a special piece of art made to illustrate my article, and I absolutely love it (see below, and notice the hook).  The illustration is the creation of Patric Sandri, a Swiss artist. Thanks to the artist and especially to my editor, who was perhaps the most amiable and easiest op-ed editor I’ve ever worked with.

Enjoy (unless you work for Colossal)!

Illustration by Patric Sandri for the Boston Globe

This paper in Science (click screenshot to read) describes a very unusual Hawaiian caterpillar (the larva of a moth): it is very rare, found only in a 15 km² area of Oahu, patrols spider webs on the ground for its prey, and then affixes the uneaten parts of insects to its body, so it looks really weird.  Its rarity in both number of individuals and habits (almost no caterpillars are carnivores) makes it imperative to save the small area of its habitat, which, to use non-metric measures, is about an area the size of a square 2.4 miles on a side.

 

You can also see a writeup of this weird insect in the Smithsonian, from which I’ve taken a few photos that come from Daniel Rubinoff, the study’s first author of the Science paper. Click below to go to the Smithsonian article:

The caterpillar has the ghoulish name of the “bone collector caterpillar”, and its species, not yet named, is in the genus Hyposmocoma, a genus endemic to Hawaii that has radiated into over 350 species on the archipelago.  Here’s the adult of this species, which is also rare because only 62 species of its caterpillar have ever been found. Photo is by Daniel Rubinoff, a Professor of Entomology at the University of Hawaii.

(From Smithsonian article) A museum specimen of an adult female bone collector moth that was reared in the Rubinoff lab Daniel Rubinoff

 

But the weirdest life stage is the larva or caterpillar, which spins a silken web around itself that it carries with it, affixing insect parts to the silk after it crawls around spider webs eating dead or trapped insects. Look at this (photo from the paper).  You can’t even see the caterpillar, as it’s covered with scavenged body parts.

This part of the Science paper tell you how it does this, and suggests a reason:

When decorating their silken portable cases, the caterpillars are particular. Body parts are carefully measured for size before the caterpillar weaves them into its collection. Each prospective new addition is rotated and probed with its mandibles several times, and parts that are too large are chewed down to a size that will fit its case. If denied access to arthropod body parts in captivity, the caterpillars do not accept other bits of detritus, suggesting that they recognize and exclusively use corpses in nature and that this decoration is important to their survival. Given the context, it is possible that the array of partially consumed body parts and shed spider skins covering the case forms effective camouflage from a spider landlord; the caterpillars have never been found predated by spiders or wrapped in spider silk. Bone collector caterpillars have been recorded from the webs of at least four different species of spider in three different families, none of which is native to Hawaii, so adaptability to non-native elements is likely crucial to their persistence.

So it seems to be camouflage, as spiders have not been reported to go after these things, even though they hang around webs for a long time (they do move from ground web to ground web).  But this is just a guess at this point. It could also be protecting the caterpillar from other predators as well.

Here’s a bone collector caterpillar in a spider web along with a spider and its eggs; I’ve circled the caterpillar, which, as the one above, is covered with insect body parts:

(From the paper): Fig. 2. Rotting wood log broken open to expose a bone collector caterpillar resting on a clump of webbing next to a non-native spitting spider (Scytodes sp.) with its egg sac. The web is partially obscured by termite and other wood-boring insect frass.

As I said, this genus has radiated widely, and the authors did a molecular phylogeny of the group, showing that it’s most closely related to the cigar caterpillar:

(From paper): Fig. 3. Molecular phylogeny of Hyposmocoma lineages based on 38 genes and 82,875 aligned base pairs. The phylogeny was molecularly calibrated using age estimates from Kawahara et al. (17); 95% highest posterior density confidence intervals for the molecular dating estimates for nodes are indicated with blue bars. Outgroups are cropped, and the full tree is shown in the supplementary materials. Different lineages are indicated by their larval case type (8), and exemplar cases are shown on the right. Bone collector and cigar case species are the only ones that are carnivorous. Current terrestrial areas of the Hawaiian Island chain are shown in dark green; shallows that were once above sea level are shown in gray. The islands are placed along the timescale according to age and geographic position.

Although the paper says this: “The bone collector species is the only one known of its kind, representing a monotypic lineage without a sister species. Although it is related to the other carnivorous lineage of Hyposmocoma, their ancestors diverged more than 5 million years ago.” But the phylogeny clearly shows a sister species, the cigar caterpillar, so I’m a bit puzzled, unless “cigar” represents itself a whole group of caterpillars, in which case the bone collector is the sister species to this group. 

Since Oahu is only 3-4 million years old, the bone collector’s ancestor must have evolved on another island and then the adult (probably) made its way to the younger island to continue its evolution there.

Just two more show-and-tells. First, from the Smithsonian article, a series of bone-collector caterpillars. Since they adorn themselves with whatever is suitable in a spider nest, each individual will look different from the others:

(From Smithsonian): These six bone collector caterpillar specimens adorned their cases with beetle wings, ant heads, fly wings and legs, spider legs and other insect body parts. Their cases—the gray material seen through the detritus—are made from caterpillar saliva and silk. Photo by Daniel Rubinoff

And here’s a video of a bone-collector caterpillar, again taken by Daniel Rubinoff. It’s not clear to me whether it’s eating another member of its species (they are cannibalistic) or is chewing up insect parts with which to adorn itself.  But you can get a glimpse of the caterpillar’s head.

Just think about how many bizarre creatures there are like this yet to be found. Another reason to save as much natural habitat as we can.

 

As I reported two weeks ago, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom voted unanimously to affirm that the term “woman” under the legal Equality Act refers only to biological women and not trans-identified men. That means that a biological male holding a gender reassignment certificate would not have the same legal status as a biological women.  I added this:

In all the stuff I was able to read this morning, I was unable to find the definition of a “biological woman”, save that it refers to one’s natal sex, though they don’t mention gametes. The ruling does refer to the binary nature of sex (see below). And the ruling implies as well that the word “man” can mean in law only a “biological man”

That would seem to settle things, at least as far as the Equality Act is concerned, and the ruling was celebrated by those who favor the existence of “women’s spaces,” including sports competition, locker rooms, and jails.

But some members of the British Medical Association (BMA), as reported by the Times of London and other venues, have taken issue with the Supreme Court’s decision, implying that rrans-identified men are also women.  The subgroup of the BMA that voted against the Supreme Court Decision was the group of “resident doctors,” previously known as “junior doctors,” and so represent younger physicians. Note that the BMA is a registered trade union and does not regulate doctors; that role is given to the General Medical Council.

Click below to see an archive of the Times report:

A précis:

Doctors at the British Medical Association have voted to condemn the Supreme Court ruling on biological sex as “scientifically illiterate” and “biologically nonsensical”.

The union’s wing of resident doctors — formerly known as junior doctors — passed a motion at a conference on Saturday criticising the ruling that a woman is defined by biological sex.

The doctors claimed that a binary divide between sex and gender “has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender-diverse people”.

The branch of the British Medical Association (BMA) — representing about 50,000 younger doctors — said it “condemns scientifically illiterate rulings from the Supreme Court, made without consulting relevant experts and stakeholders, that will cause real-world harm to the trans, non-binary and intersex communities in this country”.

The BMA’s stance is likely to raise concerns that the medical profession may seek to obstruct attempts at implementing new NHS guidance on trans patients, being drawn up after the Supreme Court ruling. It follows the union’s decision last summer to lobby against the Cass Review and to call for an end to the ban on puberty blockers for children identifying as transgender.

Lobbying against the Cass Review—a sensible report that banned the use of puberty blockers on individuals under 18 and dismantled the dysfunctional Tavistock Clinic that hustled gender-dysphoric children into “affirmative therapy”—shows where the ideology of this group lies. Although the Cass Review was widely applauded by doctors, these “resident doctors” are clearly infected with the mantra that anyone can claim to be any sex they want. As the yahoo! article below notes, “Last year, the BMA became the only medical organisation in the UK to reject the findings of the Cass Review into the provision of gender identity services for young people.”

And their ideology is clear:

The BMA motion, responding to the ruling, said: “This meeting condemns the Supreme Court ruling defining the term ‘woman’ with respect to the Equality Act as being based on ‘biological sex’, which they refer to as a person who was at birth of the female sex, as reductive, trans and intersex-exclusionary and biologically nonsensical.

“We recognise as doctors that sex and gender are complex and multifaceted aspects of the human condition and attempting to impose a rigid binary has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender diverse people.”

It added that the BMA is committed to “affirming the rights of transgender and non-binary individuals to live their lives with dignity, having their identity respected”.

Of course we all respect the rights of transgender individuals–as transgender individuals. But those rights clearly clashed with the rights of other groups, most notably biological women, and the court adjudicated that clash in its definition of “woman”. Nobody of good will wants “erasure” of trans people, but we have to recognize that the claim that “trans women are women” leads to a clash of rights whose solution was taken up by the UK Court.

Note the “sex and gender are complex” assertion often used by ideologues or the benighted to claim that sex is not binary. (Yes, there are a very, very few exceptions., as I mention below, but for all practical purposes biological sex is binary.)  And, of course, it is binary in nearly all transsexual individuals, who even recognize the binary by wanting to adopt the role of their non-natal sex.

A bit more:

Sex Matters, the campaign group, accused the doctors of being an “embarrassment to their profession” and said it is “terrifying” that people who have undergone years of medical training can claim there is “no basis” for biological sex.

Indeed; for the doctors are redefining sex (and gender) as some multifactorial, “multifaceted aspect of the human condition”.  Perhaps gender roles fit that definition, but the Supreme Court was defining sex, not gender, and stayed away from gender, which is not part of the Equality Act.  This clearly shows the ideological nature of the resident doctors’ efforts and their unwarranted conflation of sex and gender.  Sex is a biological issue; gender a social one, also mixed to some degree with biology.  Don’t these doctors know that? Yes, of course they do, but pretend otherwise. If they’re not pretending, they are witless and don’t deserve to be doctors.

Yahoo News! (click below) gives the text of the resident doctors’ resolution:

Here’s the text of the resolution:

“This meeting condemns the Supreme Court ruling defining the term ‘woman’ with respect to the Equality Act as being based on ‘biological sex’, which they refer to as a person who ‘was at birth of the female sex’, as reductive, trans and intersex-exclusionary and biologically nonsensical.

“We recognize as doctors that sex and gender are complex and multifaceted aspects of the human condition and attempting to impose a rigid binary has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender diverse people. As such this meeting:

“i: Reiterates the BMA’s position on affirming the rights of transgender and non-binary individuals to live their lives with dignity, having their identity respected.

“ii. Reminds the Supreme Court of the existence of intersex people and reaffirms their right to exist in the gender identity that matches their sense of self, regardless of whether this matches any identity assigned to them at birth.

“iii. Condemns scientifically illiterate rulings from the Supreme Court, made without consulting relevant experts and stakeholders, that will cause real-world harm to the trans, non-binary and intersex communities in this country.

“iv. Commits to strive for better access to necessary health services for trans, non-binary and gender-diverse people.”

The deeming of the Supreme Court’s ruling as “trans and intersex-exclusionary” is confusing.  Most trans people do indeed fit into the Court’s categorization of “man” or “woman.” The exception, the “true” intersex people, range in frequency from 1/5600 to 1/20,000, and so are very rare, making biological sex as binary as you can get. (In contrast, the frequency of people born with extra fingers or toes is about 1/2500 to 1/800, and yet we refer to humans as having “ten fingers and toes”.) It’s clear that this controversy is really not about the rare “true intersex” individuals, but about individuals who fit the biological definition of “man” or “woman” but identify otherwise—as either “nonbinary” or “transsexual”.

h/t: cesar, nick