Chez PLJ

Yesterday at the dog park a little girl (I’m guessing around 6-7) watched Photon go through her tricks repertoire. Eager to come up with something informative about the dog to share, she finally said “Your doggie’s the same colour as your hair.” All I could come up with as a riposte was a rather spluttered “Yes. She is.”

Our officially grey doggie

Ideally this would be “Pedigree for Stoverly’s Speed of Light, HIC” (to sound even more grandiose), but we never bothered to register her, so she’s just plain old Photon!

Chart from Stoverly Aussies

A baby bonobo, happy to see you.

I dedicate this short post to Tamiko and Sev, and their dad, who are all in various aspects of the biz. Probably knew this years ago from being so much closer to the research. And a hat tip to pal Erik for this.

Recently on Boing-Boing, Maggie Koerth-Baker reported on the AAAS conference in Chicago, where biology prof Kenneth Miller gave a talk on evolution, with a really neat little tidbit.

Traditionally, there’s been a little confusion about our nearest relatives, chimpanzees, because genetically we have 46 chromosomes and they have 48. And really, shouldn’t your genetics be pretty close to your cousins? Turns out over the past 20 years, research has shown they are. There’s just been a little bit of efficiency in the splicing. Very cool.

Now that we’re really feeling close to family, I’ll leave you with the pictures above and below, of our bonobo cousins. Bonobos are a pacifistic offshoot of the chimp line. Unlike the aggressive, hairy chimp, bonobos are have a lot less hair, are structured more like humans, and resolve their differences in a friendlier way. A much friendlier way. Yes, even between those of the same gender. All the time.

An adult female bonobo, happy to see you.

I like juxtaposition. Recently, Britain’s The Guardian had an article on the past and present fun of environmental intervention in Australia, including the cane toad.

Photo by Jiggs Images’, under the Creative Commons

The toads were intentionally introduced to Oz in 1935 to fight a beetle that had been accidentally introduced, and have since become the poster child for man’s meddling in the environment. While it isn’t especially interested in the beetles, it will eat anything smaller than it, kill anything bigger that messes with it, and try to mate with anything around its size. Even if it’s a sneaker. (For more on this whole muck-up, check out the fun documentary Cane Toads: An Unnatural History right here on the net.

Apparently Australia keeps trying to eradicate invaders biologically, only to have it screw up. Rabbits are a big problem as well: in the past they’ve introduced foxes (didn’t work) and myxomatosis (worked until the rabbits developed genetic immunity!)

Photo by Brian Robert Marshall under this Creative Commons License.

The Guardian article quotes Professor Ian Lowe:

“The delusion that you can have effective biological control still seems very strong in Australia. People talk about managing environmental systems as if it’s no more complex than managing a jam factory. We should have learned from the cane toad that the cure is often worse than the disease,” he said.

So into this mix I throw my favourite web April Fools joke from this year:
Apparently Qualcomm reports it has developed a new form of mobile WiFi network system—in flocks of pigeons! But to protect the pigeons from attack, they genetically combined them with wolves. Which they admit, could become a problem…but they’ve got a solution. And it’s very Australia-like.

Qualcomm’s Wireless Convergence web page

Love the incorporated movie too. Those engineering drawings weren’t quite what I expected…

(Title stolen from Quirks and Quarks radio segment) Can animals (other than humans) move to a beat? Do those dancing dogs (1) (2) really feel the rhythm? As far as the dogs are concerned, probably not (and not without a ton of training). However two recent studies suggest that parrots and some other birds can. One bird, Snowball the cockatoo, can demonstrably shift his dancing rhythm as the tempo changes:

Dancing Snowball

Bird really Shaking his Tail Feather

The researchers theorize that the only animals other than people who can dance to a rhythm are animals with brain systems capable of vocal learning. One group, at Harvard University, searched thousands of YouTube videos (nice work if you can get it!) for dancing animals and found that only birds who could imitate sound seemed to have any rhythm at all. A few elephants show rhythm as well, and apparently elephants also have vocal mimicry ability. The researchers are interested to find out whether dolphins (with their high level of vocal mimicry skills) also possess rhythm.

So another “human-only” ability (after tool-making) may be about to fall to the wayside…