Category Archives: Biology

The “Big Man”: Male linguistic deficit and female linguistic superiority

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It is hard for a person who thinks about, knows a little about, evolution to reconcile the seeming contradiction that females should be smarter than males, particularly in the language arts, knowing what we know about brain development in mammals. This is because, while there are great writers and speech makers among women, there are more men famous in these area. We can reasonably assume that the greater number of famous male authors and famous male speeches through Western history is due to bias imposed by the patriarchy. We know this because the numbers have shifted to something much more like equality in recent decades. But it is still hard to see how, if women are expected to be better than men on average in using words, that this supposed biological fact does not show itself somewhere, or somehow.

It is easier for a person who studies behavioral biology to get this. Colnsider Big Men in cultures that have formal Big Men. There are of course big men (small b, small m) in all soceities, in some way, but the role of a man as a Big Man is especially clear in societes that have a word for it, and a social and political position so defined. One of the great and classic ethnographic examples Ongka, a New Guinea big man from a tradition region, the star of a documentary called Ongka’s Big Moka. Ongka is a Big Man, a leader among men, seen as the Big Man for a large community which is in bellicose relationship with neighboring groups. In the documentary, Ongka devises an attack on his neighbors, in which he will attempt to defeat their Big Man. The attack requires the accumulation of a huge store of valuable goods, which includes Australian cash, a Land Rover, many bushels of Yams, and large numbers of rare forest bird feathers and domestic pigs. During the course of accumulating this wealth, Oka talks, and talks, talks. Ongka incessantly shows up ina aprt of the villafge, and talks about how he is the Big Man, and how he with the help of the villagers will defeat the neighboring Big Man1. Ongka shows up, gives his speech, and leaves with some pigs to add to his larder, and some yams, which will be used to feed the pigs. He may get a feather or two. And, over the months of time during which this happening, the polygenous Ongka adds a wife or two a well.

Eventually Ongka is ready to defeat his neighbor, and a ceremony is arranged. The two men face off. This is not a symmetrical battle, this is Ongka on the offense, and the man he is going after absorbs the attack, survives or loses, but has the option of attcking back at a later time. Ongka gives the biggest and baddest speech of them all, but the speech is not to ask for help, but to accompany what has been laid out. The feathers, pigs, yams, money, and Land Rover have all been arranged to look quite impressive. No marketing rep at Target could do a better job at making the goods look so good. This is the a largest Moka (that is what the ceremony is called) anyone can remember. Ongka’s Bit Moka has defeated his enemy, and Ongka tells him so in the last chapter of this round of his Big Man narrative.

This may look like a man being great at what men are great at, giving speeches that get him goods, mates, fame, and power. That would be the more naive or amateur evolutionary view of the thing. But if we add one level of theoretical sophistication to the model, we might see that this is actualy a man being good at what men are handicapped at. Linguistic skill is more easily come by in women than in men. Traditionally, remedial reading programs are frequented by boys, not girls. Typically, UN simultaneous translators are more often women than men. In many societies, women move at marriage between groups, and in places where language areas are small and heterogeneously mixed up, many young girls are expected to quickly learn, if not already have, high proficiency with a language that was not her birth language.2 In mammals, all males are females that have become masculinized to varying degrees in development, and in the brain, this masculinization can not be done by adding structure, function, or features, but only by literally wiping out brain tissue. It is thought that this process goes a bit farther in some boys, ultimately causing modest language related deficits. The details and degree to which this happens is not well understood, but it is generally agreed that it happens. Baby girls have better hearing discrimination of language phonemes than do boys. Average starting age for linguistic (verbal and reading) milestones are earlier for girls than boys. And so on.

So from a behavioral biological point of view, Ongka is handicapped, and is overcoming his handicap by being very very good at a behavior in which men tend to be limited relative to women. There is a great deal of theory and study surrounding the “handicap principle” (look up Zahavi’s Handicap Principle). If he can do that mentally, he must be an exceptional male, at the high end of the bell curve for the men in his society. No wonder he gets the extra yams.

I know I’ve been a little disdainful in this essay of amateur evolutionary thinkers. Let me be clear: I love amateur evolutionary thinkers. The non-specialists who take on evolutionary biology as an interest are in many areas more important, and their activities more impactful, than actual evolutionary biologists when it comes to preserving and sometimes even saving science from religiously or politically driven attacks. That is very much appreciated. The average actual biologist is a lab rat or a field drone, collecting data, running it through the peer review process, usually ignoring and maybe being unaware of the “war on science” carried out by the right win in congress, right wing parents in vulnerable school districts, and all those yahoos on the Internet. If it weren’t for the non-scientists who happen to love science, we would be doomed. But at the same time, people want to know the details, understand the nuances, and enjoy learning more things about the thing you know about already. So that’s what this is.

Here’s Ongka’s Big Moka:


  1. To be accurate and clear, I don’t actually know what Ongka is saying in these speeches, it is not clear in the documentary, but I’d like to find out.  ↩︎
  2. She and most others in her society probably already had familiarly with most or all of the languages spoken in the region, but it is only women that have to rely for their own social comfort or even safety to become proficient at their new family’s primary language and dialect.  ↩︎

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Is Human Behavior Genetic Or Learned?

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Imagine that there is a trait observed among people that seems to occur more frequently in some families and not others. One might suspect that the trait is inherited genetically. Imagine researchers looking for the genetic underpinning of this trait and at first, not finding it. What might you conclude? It could be reasonable to conclude that the genetic underpinning of the trait is elusive, perhaps complicated with multiple genes, or that there is a non-genetic component, also not yet identified, that makes finding the genetic component harder. Eventually, you might assume, the gene will be found. Continue reading Is Human Behavior Genetic Or Learned?


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A Mammoth’s Journey: New isotopic science

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In 2017, John McKay elucidated the history of modern science through the lens of the mammoth, or really, the mammoth hunters, in his book* Discovering the Mammoth: A Tale of Giants, Unicorns, Ivory, and the Birth of a New Science. The difference between what (mainly) European thinkers thought about the meaning of mammoth and other megafauna bones in the early days of discovery and what we knew a decade ago is not merely reflective of the accretion of knowledge and understanding of an observed science. It is much more dramatic than that. For example, a theory thought viable in the 189th century (IIRC, it has been a little while since I read McKay’s book) is that mammoths were still extant, and lived underground as fossorial animals, and could not survive contact with open air. Frozen mammoth carcasses would then represent mammoths that got too close to the surface, accidentally breathed, died, and were frozen in place, partly sticking out. Other early thinking on mammoth and other megafauna remains invoked unicorns and other mythical creatures. We have come a long way. Continue reading A Mammoth’s Journey: New isotopic science


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Read These Books and Be Smarter

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With Covid-19 limitations on so many activities, we are doing so much reading there is a threat that we will wear out all the books!

I have four items here that are deep, and intellectually engaging. A scholarly look at literature by one of the great living American authors, two addressing the history of science in Victorian England by two of the leading experts, and an engaging deep dive into the way the human brain comes to grip with mathematics and numbers in general.

13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley consists of 279 pages with narrow margins and small type providing 13 different views of novels as a phenomenon. This is the best modern dissection of the art I’ve seen. These rich and engaging pages are then followed by almost the same exact number of pages of commentary and (to a lesser extent) synopsis of 100 novels. If you ever want a list of the great novels over time, from which to chose new material to read, this list is excellent, but be warned: It is a fairly uniform sampling, and you know what that means.

An essential guide for writers and readers alike, here is Smiley’s great celebration of the novel. As she embarks on an exhilarating tour through one hundred titles—from classics such as the thousand-year-old Tale of Genji to recent fiction by Zadie Smith and Alice Munro—she explores the power of the form, looking at its history and variety, its cultural impact, and just how it works its magic. She invites us behind the scenes of novel-writing, sharing her own habits and spilling the secrets of her craft, and offering priceless advice to aspiring authors. Every page infects us anew with the passion for reading that is the governing spirit of this gift to book lovers everywhere.

If you don’t know Jane Smiley as an author (and academic) you should. One of my favorite novels of all time is by her: JANE SMILEY: MOO* (That is the Amazon link, but it is been around a long time, so look for a used copy. This version on Amazon is just under one thousand dollars. Must be some kind of mistake!)

A Brain for Numbers: The Biology of the Number Instinct (The MIT Press) by Andreas Nieder* “Nieder explores how the workings of the brain give rise to numerical competence, tracing flair for numbers to dedicated “number neurons” in the brain. Drawing on a range of methods including brain imaging techniques, behavioral experiments, and twin studies, he outlines a new, integrated understanding of the talent for numbers. Along the way, he compares the numerical capabilities of humans and animals, and discusses the benefits animals reap from such a capability. He shows how the neurobiological roots of the brain’s nonverbal quantification capacity are the evolutionary foundation of more elaborate numerical skills. He discusses how number signs and symbols are represented in the brain; calculation capability and the “neuromythology” of mathematical genius; the “start-up tools” for counting and developmental of dyscalculia (a number disorder analogous to the reading disorder dyslexia); and how the brain processes the abstract concept of zero.

This blog,for a while, was called “The X Blog” in celebration of “The X Club,” which was a thing of the Darwin-Huxley ilk. Turns out there is a book about The X Club, and this is it: The X Club: Power and Authority in Victorian Science by Ruth Barton. Those of you who know this blog, and my Facebook community, well know Ruth’s husband. Anyway, do not google “The X Club” in mixed company, but do read the book.

“In 1864, amid headline-grabbing heresy trials, members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science were asked to sign a declaration affirming that science and scripture were in agreement. Many criticized the new test of orthodoxy; nine decided that collaborative action was required. The X Club tells their story.*

These six ambitious professionals and three wealthy amateurs—J. D. Hooker, T. H. Huxley, John Tyndall, John Lubbock, William Spottiswoode, Edward Frankland, George Busk, T. A. Hirst, and Herbert Spencer—wanted to guide the development of science and public opinion on issues where science impinged on daily life, religious belief, and politics. They formed a private dining club, which they named the X Club, to discuss and further their plans. As Ruth Barton shows, they had a clear objective: they wanted to promote “scientific habits of mind,” which they sought to do through lectures, journalism, and science education. They devoted enormous effort to the expansion of science education, with real, but mixed, success.

?For twenty years, the X Club was the most powerful network in Victorian science—the men succeeded each other in the presidency of the Royal Society for a dozen years. Barton’s group biography traces the roots of their success and the lasting effects of their championing of science against those who attempted to limit or control it, along the way shedding light on the social organization of science, the interactions of science and the state, and the places of science and scientific men in elite culture in the Victorian era.”

And, in the spirit of inquiry, consider The Spirit of Inquiry: How one extraordinary society shaped modern science by Susannah Gibson*. “Cambridge is now world-famous as a centre of science, but it wasn’t always so. Before the nineteenth century, the sciences were of little importance in the University of Cambridge. But that began to change in 1819 when two young Cambridge fellows took a geological fieldtrip to the Isle of Wight. Adam Sedgwick and John Stevens Henslow spent their days there exploring, unearthing dazzling fossils, dreaming up elaborate theories about the formation of the earth, and bemoaning the lack of serious science in their ancient university. As they threw themselves into the exciting new science of geology – conjuring millions of years of history from the evidence they found in the island’s rocks – they also began to dream of a new scientific society for Cambridge. This society would bring together like-minded young men who wished to learn of the latest science from overseas, and would encourage original research in Cambridge. It would be, they wrote, a society “to keep alive the spirit of inquiry”.

Their vision was realised when they founded the Cambridge Philosophical Society later that same year. Its founders could not have imagined the impact the Cambridge Philosophical Society would have: it was responsible for the first publication of Charles Darwin’s scientific writings, and hosted some of the most heated debates about evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century; it saw the first announcement of x-ray diffraction by a young Lawrence Bragg – a technique that would revolutionise the physical, chemical and life sciences; it published the first paper by C.T.R. Wilson on his cloud chamber – a device that opened up a previously-unimaginable world of sub-atomic particles. 200 years on from the Society’s foundation, this book reflects on the achievements of Sedgwick, Henslow, their peers, and their successors. Susannah Gibson explains how Cambridge moved from what Sedgwick saw as a “death-like stagnation” (really little more than a provincial training school for Church of England clergy) to being a world-leader in the sciences. And she shows how science, once a peripheral activity undertaken for interest by a small number of wealthy gentlemen, has transformed into an enormously well-funded activity that can affect every aspect of our lives.”

That should cover you for the rest of the month.


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Widespread Rejection of a Covid-19 Stick is a Click-Baiting Falsehood

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A high percentage of people are going to get the Covid-19 vaccine that is available to them, because they are going to be choosing between two clearly labeled doors. One door says “Look like you believe science has something to offer.” The other doors says, “Maybe you die!”

I have the impression that people who have been taken in by anti-vax thinking, but only to some degree, who are not acolytes of that cult, get the stick when push comes to shove. They think about their health, their children, and they make the right choice. Certainly, it does not go the other way. Add this to the fact that a) the most refusing population out there is the US population, and in the US the refusal (as well as the acceptance, by the way) of the vaccine is almost entirely political, and we can guess that much of the “no, no” really means “ok, whatever.”

Yet another factor is the reporting. Whenever a poll has an undecided middle, or a weak “yes” or “no” element, it is possible to report the poll in a biased matter, even if the poll itself isn’t biased. This is clearly what happens when we see “X% say nope” without mentioning that a number equal to a third or fourth of that said “I don’t know, whatever.”

Here are some data for three polls that address this topic.

An April 2020 survey in seven European countries, with 7,662 respondents showed that 81.1% of the population were indifferent or willing to be vaccinated. (73.9 were explicitly willing.)

A Pew Research Center poll in mid September of Americans compared May and September. This September poll was taken at the height of cynicism about the Trump regime’s handling of Coronavirus, just before Trump himself got the virus. In this poll, 49% of all respondents said “no” (to some degree) to the vaccine (“I don’t know” was not a choice in this survey), with 56% of Republicans preferring to not be vaccinated, and 42% of Democrats preferring not.

The May survey showed those numbers at 27% for the whole survey, and 34% and 21% for Republicans vs. Democrats, respectively.

The September poll is probably the one most cited by those who prefer to be alarmed, but it actually underscores the likelihood that people will get the the shot at much higher numbers. A waft from 27% to 49% over four months indicates that the pollsters are not sampling what the questions indicate they are sampling. There is a huge amount of elasticity in what people say. Also, the fact that this survey had no room for “I don’t really have an opinion” forced people into a category. Given the high degree of politicization of the disease, which mainly consists of many Republicans preferring to appear to be reject science (in order to make lefty big city elite academics cringe) or Democrats rejecting a vaccine they see likely to be yet another Jared Kushner scam, the best numbers, among these, in my opinion are optimistic. In May, before the politicization occurred to a great degree, 72% of Americans said yes to the disease, but only 11% felt strongly about no. That conforms with the other surveys.

A survey reported in late October and published in Nature, across 19 countries, showed that 82% were indifferent or preferred the shot (61.4% were willing, the rest indifferent). Of those who seemed not to want the shot, only 9.8% felt strongly that way.

My friend, scientist Roderiko Kampen, recently suggesting, while agreeing that resistance to the vaccine will diminish over time, to “never underestimate human stupidity. Nothing is stable or ‘normal’ now, every single day some butterfly may flap the global hurricane. Humanity has thoroughly outlived its stay and is now beginning to meet that cool adversary – i.e. my great friend – called reality.” I agree. There will be pockets of resistance that will prove troublesome, and lives will be taken and illness spread because of resistance to science. But, ultimately, most people are going to get the shot, and at some point, schools are going require Covid-19 vaccination alongside the already required vaccinations in order to attend.

Look, people endlessly complain about TSA, and they complain more about TSA and the equivilant agencies around the world, the modern security systems at airports, even more than they complained about the totally fake ineffective security that was prevalent before 9/11, especially in the US. But they still get on the plane with a some sense of security. Covid-19 is worse than terrorism, by the numbers. We are having, in the US, a 9/11 level event every single day as I write this. The vaccine is the way out of this plague. People are going to get vaccinated. I would even go one step further. Anti-vax will always be with us. It is an industry, and anti-anti-vax is also an industry. But a movement (or, really, scam) designed to hamper the fight against this pandemic will get weaker, not stronger, over the next year.


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Superlative Beauty and Beautiful Superlatives in Nature: Books

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Superlative: The Biology of Extremes is almost as extreme, or shall we say, hopeful, in its marketing-cover claims as the animals discussed are outlandish. If the cure for cancer was going to be found in a shark, we would have already found it. But despite what the book promises on its cover, Matthew D. LaPlante’s book is a detailed, engaging, and informative look at ongoing and recent scientific research from the perspective of an experienced journalist.

There are three categories of science book authors: Scientists, who write the best ones most of the time, science-steeped (often trained-as-scientists) science writers, who can write some pretty good books, and journalists who delve into the science and sometimes write amazing books, other times write books that are good books but not necessarily good science books. Superlative: The Biology of Extremes is in the higher end of the last category. It is about the scientists, the teams, the work more than the cells and polymers.

Also, LaPlante has another set of credentials: He is deeply, severely, hated by Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck. Oh, also, the book is at present deeply on sale.

Animal Beauty: On the Evolution of Biological Aesthetics (The MIT Press) is sort of the opposite.

This is a series of essays by biologist Chrisiane Nusslein-Volhard, engagingly and skillfully illustrated by Suse Grutzmacher (and translated by Jonathan Howard) about the aesthetic sense talked about by Darwin, its evolution, distribution, function, meaning, across animals. The essays take a Tinbergian approach to explore most aspects of how thinks look or are looked at, how paterns, colors, and other features play ar ole in sexual selection, and how the underlying genetic connect to these important surface features, allowing us to understand the phylogeny of this physical-behavioral nexus. This is the scientist talking about the science. The book itself is also a bit unusual, as it is designed to fit comfortably in a pocket or purse. Take it to the dentist office or hair stylist! (When the Pandemic is over.)


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The Complete Scientific Guide to COVID-19

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… will be written in about three years from now. Meanwhile …

We labor under a number of falsehoods about how science works. Even scientists do. There are considerable differences among the panoply of scientific disciplines, and these are important enough that I would never trust the practitioners of one scientific discipline to, say, review research procedures or grant proposals from another discipline, by default.

These differences are even more significant outside of science itself. A common example is this one. A lay person evaluating peer reviewed research claims that a certain scientific conclusion can not be supported because there have been no double blind studies. That person may be unaware of the fact that almost no science uses double blind studies. This is a methodology used only in some areas of research. A study of earthquake hazards, genetic phylogeny of chickadees, or how long a particular virus lingers on a surface will not have a double blind methodology.

In some fields of study, a single idea will often be represented by a single major publication (sometimes a book) and will not be seen elsewhere unless it is being criticized. This is not common in the true sciences, per se, but this does happen in the peer reviewed literature. In other fields of study, a single idea may be addressed in hundreds of peer reviewed papers. In some fields of study, if a published peer reviewed paper presents a conclusion that is thought to be wrong, because of some flaw, the scholars in that field are expected to learn of this problem and thereafter avoid citing that paper. In other fields, when this happens, the paper is withdrawn from the literature after the invocation of complex rituals that might or might not involve the sounding of trumpets.

There seems to be two falsehoods affecting some of our thinking about COVID-19. One is the idea that a “study” or “publication” about some detail of the disease tells us something that we can take as fact. Yes, Covid-19 stays on a certain kind of surface for N days, therefore we can’t do X! That sort of thing. However, this research is, firstly, not peer reviewed. There may very well be no peer reviewed papers on COVID-19 at this time. This Pandemic has lasted less time that the typical peer review process takes. Maybe there are a few out there, but mostly, we are dealing with non-reviewed work, or work in review. This is good work, and important work, but it is more like a set of “emergency results” that address specific pressing questions in a provisional way.

It has been important to decide which of a small number of broad categories COVID-19 can be placed in, and the work on persistence on various surfaces has provided that rough and ready guide. There are pathogens that can find their way out of an exam room, go 20 feet down the hall, and infect a person sitting in a different exam room. There are pathogens that are so unlikely to infect another person that you practically have to lick the inside of their mouth five times to catch the disease. COVID-19 is in the in between category, where it sheds into the air and hangs around on surfaces for long enough that surfaces are found to have the virus on them. Is COVID-19 more or less surface-contaminating than, say, norovirus? Rotavirus? Nobody knows, because the research to determine that, and the publication array that would be necessary to lead to policy and recommendations about that, will take time. Someday there will be a study that looks at how much of the virus persists for how long on various surfaces, integrated with the other important question of how can the virus on a given surface actually infect a human, in order to allow for a realistic and useful statement about how to go about keeping a home, and ICU, an examining room, or a school relatively safe. COVID-19 has the potential to be the most studied pathogen in recent history, but not today.

So, that is the first fallacy: that a handful of quick and dirty, rough and ready, studies designed to get a clue about this disease constitute a well tempered and developed peer reviewed literature from which we can glean an accurate characterization of most o fhte important details of this disease. Nope.

One cost of this fallacy is the second fallacy, that we can evaluate models of either COVID-19’s behavior, or the efficacy of our reaction to it, based on a solid knowledge of the disease. That is backwards. We will eventually be able to evaluate ideas like “curve flattening” by understanding a lot about COVID-19, but that will happen after we have actually seen what various curve flattening efforts have done. A recent proposal that certain areas of the world may have seen a prior passage of COVID-19, causing some local immunity. One well meaning expert (not an actual expert) on social media responded that given the way COVID-19 operates, this is simply impossible. But that is backwards. The way we will eventually be able to describe how COVID-19 actually works is by observing it, measuring it, developing good explanations for what we see, strengthening and tempering those explanations by further hypothesis testing, replication, critique in the formal peer review process as well as the less formal but sometimes more important conversations at the conference-bar setting, and time. Time to just think. Then, we will be able to say things like “X is pretty much impossible because this is how COVID-19 works.” Now, we have an expansive void where some good theory and data will eventually reside, and the job of the scientists focused on this problem is to carefully and thoughtfully fill that void with what they come to know. To get a sense of how this works, read up on the literature that came out of the 2013 Ebola epidemic. Many key known things about the pathogen and its effects were not nailed down until months or years after the last patient was identified. These things take time.

I’m not an epidemiologist, but I play one in the classroom. Amanda and I teach a class on the immune system and epidemiology. Had I not gone into palaeoanthropology, I might have gone into this field. Excellent books on the topic include The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance by Laurie Garrett (not current but mind-changing and foundational, includes some important forgotten history), Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present (Open Yale Courses) by Frank Snowden, and for a good textbook, Gordis Epidemiology.


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The Biology of Extremes: Superlative by Matthew D. LaPlante

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Superlative: The Biology of Extremes by Matthew D. LaPlante is not just about extremes, but about all the things in between that make the extremes extreme. LaPlante looks at size, speed, age, intelligence. For all the various subtopics that come up in such an exploration, LaPlante does a great job of bringing in the latest research. Mostly, this is a collection of interesting evolutionary and biological stories that happen to involve tiny things, giant things, old things, fast things, or things that are in some other way — superlative.

Go for a swim with a ghost shark, the slowest-evolving creature known to humankind, which is teaching us new ways to think about immunity. Get to know the axolotl, which has the longest-known genome and may hold the secret to cellular regeneration. Learn about Monorhaphis chuni, the oldest discovered animal, which is providing insights into the connection between our terrestrial and aquatic worlds.

I’m not endorsing every idea or story in this book. One can not write a book about adaptations and have any evolutionary biologist worth their salt not bump on things. But the author does an honest and straightforward job of representing the research, and you’ll learn quite a bit that is new, see new perspectives on things you’ve considered in the past, and you’ll enjoy LaPlante’s writing.

I will probably be recommending this volume as a holiday gift for the Uncle who has everything or the teenager who likes natural history. Teachers of wildlife biology, evolution, or related topics will be able to mine this volume for stories. The use of footnotes is notable.* I recommend Superlative


  • … and well done.

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The rat in the can effect

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To find out more about the rat in the can effect, you can read this book: The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit by Mel Konner, where I think it is described. Here, I will summarize it, in simplified form. If you seriously need to know about this in more detail, do more research and don’t rely entirely on what I say here. Continue reading The rat in the can effect


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Time itself as a resource that drives evolution

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Many of the key revolutions, or at least, overhauls, in biological thinking have come as a result of the broad realization that a thentofore identified variable is not simply background, but central and causative.

I’m sure everyone always thought, since first recognized, that if genes are important than good genes would be good. Great, even. But it took a while for Amotz Zahavi and some others to insert good genes into Darwin’s sexual selection as the cause of sometimes wild elaboration of traits, not a female aesthetic or mere runaway selection. Continue reading Time itself as a resource that drives evolution


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Great new kids’ science book

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Don’t Mess With Me: The Strange Lives of Venomous Sea Creatures by Paul Erickson is part of a series that is currently small but hopefully growing by Tilbury House. I previously reviewed One Iguana Two Iguanas (about iguanas).

Like the Iguana book, Erickson’s book for third through seventh graders (8-12 or so years of age) contains real, actual, science, evolutionary theory, and facts about nature, along with great pictures. The key message is that toxins exist because they provide an evolutionary advantage to those organisms that use them. Why are venomous animals so common in watery environments? Read the book to find out.

Species mentioned includ the blue-ringed octopi, stony corals, sea jellies, stonefish, lionfish, poison-fanged blennies, stingrays, cone snails, blind remipedes, fire urchins.

Highly recommended as a STEM present this holiday season.


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Educational Kids Gift: The Human Body by Smithsonian

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There is a new series of educational kits called Exploration Station, coming out in a few day. You can pre-order them. I’ll post about three of them, starting with Exploration Station: The Human Body.

Nicely packaged, the box itself will be useful even after the stuff inside is long gone.

The kids are designed for learning by kids six years and above, but I think they are ideal for third or fourth graders. All the kids follow a similar theme. There is one item that will end up on a bedroom shelf along with other toys like items. In this case, a make it yourself human skeleton one foot tall. There is a book on the subject, in this case, the human body. There is a large sheet of heavy duty laminated material and a set of stickers to stick on to it. In this case, it is a 13 by 18 inch poster with a depiction of the human body. In addition, this kit includes a set of flash cards about various aspects of the human body or physiology.

The back of the box. Note that this is for kids 6 and older. Eight or nine is an ideal age.

The science is good, the book is engaging, lots of words but also lots of pictures. The manipulable materials are fun and educational.

Comes with a great book at about 3rd or 4th grade reading level.

I think the kits were originally designated to be about $22, but the pre-order price is closer to $15 . I think they are worth the larger price, but the lower price is very nice.

Includes flash cards, a set of stickers, and a large body picture (not shown) to put the stickers on, and a small skeleton you can build yourself.

This is an ideal holiday gift for a kid in the right age range. It is not going to fill your space with a pile of useless crap, and it is not going to make a mess, or any noise. The educational value is high, and the quality is right in the range for an item of this price range. The only down side is that it is a little hard to wrap round things, but you’ll mange.

I recommend the Exploration Station: The Human Body for the kid in your life.


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People have big heads, but children have giant heads.

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A human is born with more neurons than they will have as adults. This is one of the main reasons that the size of the head of a child is not going to increase much as it grows. (Also, it is simply hard to make heads get bigger for various reasons, so it isn’t just humans that have large heads relative to body size when they are young.)

A person’s mass (weight) which roughly relates to volume goes up about 900% during growth. A person’s head circumference goes up about 35%. Big difference, even if you factor in the dimensional effect.

Try this: Find a small child. Preferably, your own, or if not, get permission. Show the child how you can touch your ear with the contralateral hand, by arching your arm over your head. Then, ask the child to try it. LOL.

This phenomenon, of head growth vs. body growth, comes up every time I teach about brain development, which I just did. And, it happens that right after doing that, I came across an interesting photograph. The photo is from a set of comparisons, putting an old family photo of one or more people when they were kids, to now, matching setting, clothing, props, body position, and facial expression.

When you do that, you see the head size thing really clearly in many photos. This one in particular shows it dramatically:

If you use the person’s right shoulder to help define her coronal plane, and visually project that onto the bricks, you can see that her head is close to three bricks tall in both photographs.

(I think the setting is not the same in both photos, by the way. Different bricks, different almost everything. But the person is the same, and that is what counts.)


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Whitey Bulger Dead, and the Trivers Willard Hypothesis

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The original version of this post was called “Whitey Bulger Caught, and the Trivers Willard Hypothesis.” A while after that, I wrote a post called “Whitey Bulger Convicted, and the Trivers Willard Hypothesis.” Today, it was announced that Whitey Bulger, Boston crime boss, is dead at 89. Thus, the new title.

Thumbnail image for 0470656662.jpgMost of you won’t know who Whitey Bulger is. He was for a while on the FBI’s ten most wanted list. He spent a lot of time overseas running from the Feds, but they eventually caught up with him, convicted him, and tossed him in jail.

Whitey was top dog in Boston’s Winter Hill gang. His brother was a Senator for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and served as Senate President for several years.

It is said that Whitey was an FBI informant, and that his handler, FBI Special Agent John Connolly, tipped Whitey off that he was about to be indicted on racketeering charges. No problem. Whitey had left stashes of cash in safe deposit boxes all around the world, in preparation for the day he had to go on the lam. So he took off in 1995. Special Agent Connolly spent several years on vacation in the stir.

I remember when Whitey disappeared, and ever since then, I’ve used him almost annually in lecture material describing the Trivers-Willard hypothesis. It goes like this:

Thumbnail image for 0470656662.jpgThe Trivers-Willard model (I prefer to call it a “model” rather than a “hypothesis” because it is not specific enough to really be a hypothesis … it’s a model that generates lots of hypotheses) states that selection should favor the ability to differentially bias investment in offspring by sex if the two sexes have differential variances in reproductive success, and if there is any way to predict offspring rank. That’s a bit thick, so it requires some examples and further explanation. Maybe a story about a mobster would help..

OK, so an example: Red deer (also known as Elk) give birth to one offspring (max) per year. Males compete for access to or to be chosen by females. So, only a small percentage of male red deer mate in a given year, a significant percentage may never mate at all, and a very small percentage sire many many little red deer. Male red deer have a high variance in reproductive success. If you tried to predict how many offspring a given randomly chosen male would have, knowing nothing at all, your best guess would be the average number of offspring red deer have in an average lifetime. But you would be wrong almost every time because the actual number is highly variable. Male red deer have high variance in RS.

Females, on the other hand, have a pretty standard number of offspring. There is not much competition among them, they can always find a male to mate with, etc. If you needed to guess how many offspring a particular randomly chosen female red deer would have in a life time, you could guess the average, and you would be right on or very close. Female red deer have low variance in RS.

So, male and female red deer have differential variance in RS. Males high, females low.

If a female red deer could somehow “predict” the likelihood of her offspring getting to mate, i.e., if she could tell if any offspring she had in the present year (male or female) would be average vs. high ranking, then selection should favor the evolution of a mechanism to actually give birth to the appropriate sex offspring (thus biasing investment in one sex or the other). It turns out that she can. A female red deer that is herself average or lower-quality (thin, ill, injured) is likely to give birth to an offspring that will be either low ranking or average. But if the mother-to-be red deer is high ranking, she is likely to give birth to an individual who will grow up to be high ranking.

Under these conditions, she should have a female offspring if she’s average or low ranking, but a male if she’s high ranking. And that, it turns out, is what red deer actually do.

That should be clear. But in case it isn’t, let’s take it down do real life, and bring in the gangsters.

You check the mail this afternoon, and there is a letter from a law firm you have never heard of. It says that your Great Aunt Tillie (whom you’ve also never heard of) just died, and left you with $1,000 in her will. The check is enclosed.

Thumbnail image for 0470656662.jpgThis may or may not be a recent photograph of a male red deer. Holy crap. Found money! What are you going to do with it? So you and your close advisors (your roommates, your cat, etc.) discuss it and you narrow it down to two choices. Choice A and Choice B.

Choice A is to go to your broker and buy $1000 worth of a nice, relatively safe mutual fund. The fund will buy and sell reliable blue chip stocks, thus spreading the risk over several companies, and over time you can expect to get a return of 50 bucks a years, easy.

Choice B is to buy 1000 one dollar lottery tickets. Your chances of winning are slim, but if you do, you will win 87 million dollars.

So, what do you do? The obvious sane choice is to buy the mutual fund.

But what if your cousin is Whitey Bulger? Whitey Bulger, as head of the Winter Hill Gang, is said to have owned the director of the Commonwealth Lottery agency.The connection between Whitey Bulger and the Lottery has never been proven. They don’t have a shred of evidence. He was, however, indicted for 21 counts of RICO-Murder. It is said that one of the things that tipped off authorities about this is that some of his relatives were winning the lottery a little more often than they should have. So, say your cousin is Whitey Bulger, and last time you saw him (at a family wedding) he told you … “hey, if you ever want to take a “chance” on the lottery, let me know … I can make that work for you…”

So now, you have two choices.

Choice A: Invest in a mutual fund and gain a return of 50 bucks a year (that’s dollars, not elk); and

Choice B: Buy 1000 PowerBall tickets and have a great deal of certainty of winning 87 million dollars.

What would you do?

In case it isn’t already clear. the baby male elk is a lottery ticket, the baby female elk is a mutual fund, but the female can guess pretty accurately if the lotter ticket (male offspring) will pay off. Because the elk’s cousin is Whitey Bulger. See?


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