The Friends of Charles Darwin

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BBC: Orangutans use 'charades' to talk

No they don't.

This sort of anthropomorphising in popular science news stories really irritates me—especially when, as in this case, the anthropomorphising is being done by the scientist involved:

"When the keeper gave the orangutan the really nice food, understandably, that was the end of it," explained Professor Byrne [an evolutionary psychologist]. "But when the keeper pretended to fail to understand the original gesture and gave the wrong food, the orangutans stopped using the gestures they had used before and started using some different gestures," he explained. "And when the keeper half understood and gave the orangutan part of the treat, the orangutans started to repeat the same gestures that they had used, but they would repeat them even more enthusiastically."

Professor Byrne likened it to a game of charades. He said: "Part of the skill is to do the miming and the gesturing in the cleverest way - but also you are paying attention to what your team is guessing, and you tailor what you do next to what they are doing." Effectively, the orangutans were able to take into account the states of knowledge, ignorance and partial knowledge of the keeper and react, said Professor Byrne.

Setting aside the fact that the orangutans' behaviour is nothing like a game of charades, can anyone explain how this tells us anything about what is going on inside the minds of these great apes? In what way does their behaviour differ significantly from that of a dog that is being teased with a treat? If the dog begs in some way and you ignore it, it tries something else; if you give it some of the treat, it begs some more, getting more excited if you pretend to ignore it; if you then give it the remainder of the treat, it soon realises and stops begging.

I am pretty sceptical of evolutionary psychology as a whole. This sort of experiment simply bolsters my scepticism.

I've just finished reading Janet Browne's book Charles Darwin's Origin of Species: a biography. Apart from a couple of howlers with dates, it is a thoroughly good read. One passage I particularly enjoyed:

Darwin called this shorter book [Origin of Species] 'one long argument'. And what an argument it was. Few scientific texts have been so closely woven, so packed with factual information and studded with richly inventive metaphor. Darwin's literary technique has long been noted for its resemblance to Great Expectations or Middlemarch in the complexity of its interlacing themes and his ability to handle so many continuous threads at the same time. Hardly daring to hope that he might initiate a transformation in scientific thought, he nevertheless rose magnificently to the occasion. His voice was in turn dazzling, persuasive, friendly, humble and dark. His imagination soared beyond the confines of his house and garden, beyond his debilitating illnesses and the fragile health of his children. At his most determined, he questioned everything his contemporaries believed about living nature, calling forth a picture of origins completely shorn of the Garden of Eden and dispensing with the image of a heavenly clockmaker patiently constructing living beings to occupy the earth below. He abandoned what John Herschel devoutly called the 'mystery of mysteries' and replaced Paley's vision of perfect adaptation with imperfection and chance. Animals and plants should not be regarded as the product of a special design or special creation. 'I am fully convinced that species are not immutable,' he stated in the opening pages.

I think that summarises Darwin's masterpiece rather well.

The next time some idiot tries to tell you that Origin of Species is not very well written, why not refer them to the above passage?

Better late than never, I suppose: The Red Notebook finally has a blogroll, complete with RSS/XML links. A cut-down version is also available in the sidebar.

Charles Darwin carried out numerous experiments to investigate ways in which seeds might be dispersed. Ever since I first read about them, these experiments have held a particular fascination for me, not least because some of them were pretty bizarre. Darwin floated dead pigeons in water for days on end, then tried to get the seeds in their crops to germinate; he fed seeds to fish to see if they might survive passage through a heron; he examined the mud on the feet of freshly shot ducks for seeds. His experiments were, on the whole, successful, showing that there were many unusual ways in which seeds might be dispersed.

Now we have another dispersal mechanism:

New Scientist: Plant invaders enjoy life in the fast lane

Motorists are not the only ones to benefit from high-speed roads. Life in the fast lane also helps plant seeds travel far from home. So say Moritz von der Lippe and Ingo Kowarik of the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, who have shown that traffic may account for up to half of seed dispersal near motorways…

Among their samples, von der Lippe and Kowarik found seeds from 39 problematic invasive species that are damaging biodiversity in some parts of the world. "Many countries, including the US, spray roadsides with herbicides," says von der Lippe.

I'm not at all surprised by these results. I have often observed how oil seed rape plants appear for many miles on either side of oil seed rape fields on the central reservation of motorways. It seems like an obvious way in which seeds might be dispersed—but all credit to von der Lippe and Kowarik for testing the obvious: that's what good science is all about, and Darwin would have loved it.

Motorways aren't the first transport routes to help spread invasive plant species. The spread of ragwort throughout the UK in the Nineteenth Century has been attributed to the growth of railways in the 1840s. On an international scale, air- and sea-travel has wreaked havoc spreading invasive species throughout the world.

Invasive species are a serious problem, but I disagree with the idea of spraying roadsides with herbicides to combat them. The UK's rail and motorway networks provide vital corridors and green livingspaces for British wildlife. Destroying them would do untold damage to our native flora and fauna.

Charles Darwin to Frederick Watkins, 18-Aug-1832:

At Buenos Ayres, a shot came whistling over our heads; it is a noise I had never before heard, but I found I had an instinctive knowledge of what it meant. The other day we landed our men here [Montevideo] & took possession at the request of the inhabitants of the central fort. We Philosophers do not bargain for this sort of work and I hope there will be no more.

Charles Darwin's Beagle Diary describes the eventful day of 5th August, 1832 in more detail.

(via The Beagle Project Blog)

I've just finished reading HMS Beagle: Survey Ship Extraordinary by Karl Heinz Marquardt. It really is one for the nerdy Darwin completist, but magnificent nevertheless.

I had hoped the book might settle a question that I have wondered about for a number of years: did HMS Beagle have a figurehead? Sadly, Marquardt is unable to answer the question categorically:

The question of the figurehead is another unresolved matter. One school of thought asserts that the utilitarian character of those small brigs, without real embellishment anywhere, warrants only a scroll whilst the other suggests a carved figurehead. Both opinions have their merits and can be documented with surviving models of the 18-gun Cruizer class brig. While C Martens' watercolours and pencil drawings are too sketchy to get a clear indication of a figurehead, the O Stanley watercolour of HMS Beagle in Sydney Harbour and P G King's longitudinal sketch suggest an animal, probably a dog.

It's strange that Marquardt doesn't go on to point out that, if the suggested figurehead were indeed a dog, it would almost certainly be a beagle. Although I'm probably reading far too much into this omission, it makes me suspect that Marquardt really might think the feature shown in the pictures looks like a dog, and that he isn't simply wishfully (and wistfully) imagining a dog, based on the ship's name. If so, the fact that the ship's name was Beagle would seem to corroborate Marquardt's guess at a dog—and lend support to those who say the ship would have had a figurehead!

But that's probably just wishful (and wistful) thinking on my behalf.

OK, so this amateur video footage isn't exactly Planet Earth quality, but what an absolutely amazing sequence of events. I guarantee your jaw will drop:

(via BBC News)

Note: The following duplicates an item I have just published on my other website. But as it describes a fun, scientific experiment involving physics and biology, I thought it also belonged in the Red Notebook.

This week, I finally managed to carry out a little experiment I've been planning for some time. The delay was because I needed access to a military jet-fighter.

You must have noticed how, when a jet-fighter flies past, the noise it makes appears to come from behind the aircraft. When I was a kid, I mistakenly believed that this was because the jet was flying faster than the speed of sound. The real reason is that the light arriving at your eyes from the jet is travelling at approximately 300,000,000 metres per second, whereas the sound arriving at your ears from the jet is travelling at around 330 metres per second—roughly a million times slower. This means that the light arrives at your eyes pretty much instantaneously, whereas the sound arrives at your ears slightly later, depending on the distance of the jet. By the time the sound arrives, the jet has moved several fusilage lengths further along its flightpath, meaning that you are seeing the jet where it is now, but you are hearing the jet where it was a short while ago.

We are able to judge the direction from which a sound is coming because we have two ears. When the sound is coming from the right, say, it arrives at our right ear a split second before it arrives at our left. It is also, thanks to the inverse-square law of acoustic waves, and to the fact that our ears point in opposite directions, louder in our right ear than our left. Our brains use these differences and other subtle cues to calculate the direction of the sound. Amazing, or what?

I finally got to perform my experiment on Monday evening. I was in the garden watering my tomatoes when I spotted a jet-fighter travelling down the valley towards me, low and fast. Its flightpath would take it about 100 metres in front of where I was standing. So I dropped the watering can and hurried to a location on the patio with a better view.

As the jet flew past, the sound appeared to be coming from a few plane-lengths behind the aircraft. Then I took out my other piece of vital experimental apparatus—my right index finger—and inserted it firmly into my right ear. As if by magic, the sound from the jet suddenly appeared to be coming directly from the aircraft. Unable to detect the direction of the sound with data from only one ear, my brain quite sensibly deduced that it must be coming from the plane.

For the remaining few seconds that the jet was in view, I repeatedly removed from and inserted into my ear my index finger, causing the direction of the sound to move repeatedly back and forth.

Give it a go some time. You don't really need a jet-fighter; any noisy, fast-moving aircraft will do.

BBC: Stargazers enjoy meteor spectacle

Thousands of people in the northern hemisphere have witnessed a spectacular light show of shooting stars, known as the Perseid meteor shower.

Meteor showers were once seen as heavenly portents, interpreted in one way or another by people who didn't know what the hell they were talking about. Thanks to science, we now know that the annual Perseid shower occurs when Earth passes through the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet, causing tiny particles of dust to burn up in our planet's atmosphere.

Keats moaned that Newton had destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by describing how it worked. Keats could not have been more wrong. Isn't the real explanation of the Perseid shower so much more poetic than any mumbo-jumbo about starry messages from non-existant deities? Knowing its true cause only added to my sense of wonder as I stood barefoot on my lawn last night, gawping at the light show emanating from just to the left of Cassiopeia.

My friend Hitchin (FCD) and his missus Soo (FCD) are on an eight-week world tour with their three children. Soo is blogging their exploits. Here's what they saw in New Zealand earlier today:

Sperm whale

I am consumed with jealousy.

Various bloggers have answered James Randerson's call to nominate their top five dead scientists.

For what it's worth, here are my nominations:

1. Darwin
2. Newton
3. Einstein
4. Galileo
5. Maxwell

You know you're talking about true giants when you only have to give one name.

I was also sorely tempted to shortlist one of the following:

• Hooke
• Faraday
• Aristotle
• Feynman
• Planck
• Lyell
• Dalton
• Bacon
• Lavoisier
• Priestley
• Pliny (the Elder)

I try to keep comments about religion and other mumbo-jumbo out of the Red Notebook, so why don't I direct you to the latest post on my other weblog instead? I am rather pleased with the title: Shambhala lies: Dawkins tries mumbo-jumbo.

An Irish letterbox

Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

Charles Darwin
Descent of Man, 1871

And, in Ireland, some letterboxes still bear the indelible stamp (no pun intended) of their British origin.

I was in Ireland last weekend for a family reunion. My partner Jen's family, that is. While I was there, I finally remembered to take a photograph of one of their old letterboxes. This one bore the indelible stamp E VII R (Edward VII Rex): a vestige from the early Twentieth Century, when Britain, in the form of Queen Victoria's son, still ruled over Ireland.

It must irritate many proud Irish republicans that symbols of British rule remain on such prominent public display. But cast iron letterboxes don't come cheap, and they're pretty useful things. It was probably too much trouble to replace them just for the sake of getting rid of a British king's monogram. Instead, the Irish very sensibly painted their pillarboxes green and got on with far more important matters, such as rebuilding their country.

If the Irish were starting their postal service from scratch, none of their letterboxes would bear any such imperial anomalies. The fact that they do tells us something about the country's history. They tell us that things were different in the past; things have changed.

Similarly, the fact that organisms bear anomalies, such leg bones in whales, appendices in humans, and junk DNA in just about any living creature you care to mention, tells us something about the species' histories. It tells us that species weren't designed from scratch. It provides vital evidence that things were different in the past; things have changed; species have evolved.

Long live long-lived anomalies!