Discovery News: Born Animal

The World's First Weapons

To accompany this week's Discovery News feature on early weapons, here is a mini timeline sketch illustrating the first weaponry.

According to anthropologist John Shea of Stony Brook University, the origins of human weapon use could go back to primates hurling vegetation and feces.

When humans evolved anatomy more suited to throwing and bipedal locomotion, we probably quickly figured out that a rock does more damage than a pile o' poop. No one knows when the slingshot was first invented, but the technology probably was about the same as today's slingshots.

Having spent most of the day throwing or flinging rocks for their suppers, ancient hominids must have graduated fairly quickly to shaped stone weapons, like arrowheads, and other lithic tools.

We've all heard of the Stone Age, but what about the Bone Age? Below is a photo showing various views of the bone arrow in what was probably the world's first known bow and arrow set. It dates to 61,000 years ago and hails from Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Credit for the image goes to Lucinda Backwell.

Neanderthals and archaic humans in Europe hunted big game the hard way, based on new analysis of fossils. Instead of throwing spears overhead from a distance, or shooting arrows from behind the safety of coverage, these robust human ancestors probably went face-to-face with their prey using thrusting spears. Imagine running up to a woolly mammoth with weapons like these:

The bayonet later on served double duty, functioning as both a knife and spear. The introduction of metal also led to much sturdier weapons.

The story could go on here, with firearms, bombs and so on, but then things get pretty ugly and depressing and you know most of the rest anyway. It is amazing, though, that the arms race might've begun with some pissed off primate tossing a turd.

And think of those rough and ready early European hunters, should you ever eat a roast beast dinner. I once went to a London carvery restaurant, where the server wielded his knife with seeming primal forte. Maybe his ancestors thrust spears into ancient cattle?

Vivid Photographs of Peacock Feathers

While peahens may not be very impressed by peacock feathers (you can read about that here) we humans enjoy their luminescent beauty, bright colors and complex patterns.

Isn't the below photo a stunner? Look at this male showing off his feather train. Credit for this pic, and the others, goes to Mariko Takahashi of the University of Tokyo.

You've probably heard of "River Dance," but what about "Shiver Dance?" That's what peacocks do before mating. They first call out for females. If interested, a female will then perform a "run around" the male, who responds by lifting his train and shaking it, which produces a rustling noise.

Peahens— the females— aren't nearly as visually interesting as peacocks, at least from the perspective of us humans. To a peacock, they must be just fine, as evidenced by the offspring results of one successful mating.

Watch a Lecture on Ancient Humor

Since it's tax time, here's a freebie for you. Earlier this week, Discovery News ran a feature about ancient humor. The story included some commentary by classicist Owen Ewald, who recently gave a lecture on the subject at Seattle Pacific University. The university kindly provided a videotape of his entire 45 minute lecture, "What Are You Laughing At? Humor in the Ancient World." Sit back, relax and enjoy. 

How to Use Bear Pepper Spray

Should you ever venture into bear country, you'd do well to arm yourself with an 8-ounce can of bear pepper spray.

A new study conducted by Thomas Smith of Brigham Young University found that a well-aimed spritz of the spray could stop half a ton of claws, muscle and teeth in its tracks at least 92 percent of the time. If you're wondering about the other eight percent, no one required hospitalization, and the ineffectiveness likely had to do with misuse of the spray.

Before we go on here, I'd like to share this photo of Smith holding two polar bear cubs next to the cubs' sedated mother. One suspects Smith isn't a meek sort.

The research debunked a bunch of myths about bear pepper spray use. One is that the spray doesn't work when it's windy. Since the spray comes out at around 70 mph, it usually works fine in the wind, so long as you're not standing in the middle of a hurricane. But then both you and the bear would face worse problems.

Another myth is that the user will wind up spraying himself or herself in the face. That's a rarity, although some people in the study reported experiencing minor irritation from the spray. If they'd have carried a gun, they could have shot themselves in the foot, but the research didn't go into that for obvious reasons.

Yet another myth is that the can won't work when you need it to. The very good news here is not a single malfunction occurred throughout the testing.

My favorite part of the study has to do with users who sprayed objects, like tents, hoping to repel bears in the first place. The sprayed stuff actually attracted bears, which, like me, probably enjoy a bit of hot sauce on almost anything. The key here may be to think like a bear. You might salivate over a spicy this or that, but if someone threw a bottle of Tabasco in your face you'd likely run off.

Here's more news about the spray and how to use it:

The Peaceable Kingdom with the Leopard of Serenity and a Surprise Concerning La Surprise

Some interesting news this week about two important pieces of iconic, animal-related art...

On May 22, Sotheby's New York will be auctioning off American folk artist Edward Hicks' influential painting, The Peaceable Kingdom with the Leopard of Serenity. While few of us could afford the estimated 6-8 million dollars, I hope that you'll have the time today to take in, at least virtually here, some of its many details. (If you click on the images, you'll see even larger views.)

Hicks was a Quaker who taught his church's doctrines of salvation through light, peace and harmony. He was one of seemingly only a handful of individuals who recognized animals as being connected to such an idealized world vision. The above is one in a series of Peaceable Kingdoms paintings that he created. It dates to 1846-1848.

In other art news, there's a surprise about French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau's La Surprise. I used to have a plate with a reproduction of this painting on it, simply because I always got a chuckle looking at the nosy dog that made its way into the image. Here's this passionate, romantic scene, and then there's the dog just curiously sitting there, taking it all in.

The original painting had been missing for almost 200 years and was presumed destroyed. It was known only by a copy in the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace. Maybe the Queen, a known dog lover, liked looking at the curious pup too? At any rate, the original has been found and it too is going up for auction, this time by Christie's London on July 8. It's expected to fetch 6-10 million dollars or more, which would establish a world record price for the artist, who lived from 1684-1721.

Early Humor Let It All Hang Out

To set the appropriate highbrow tone for today's post, I'd like to first show you this film scene:

Now it doesn't take too much stretch of the imagination to consider what some aspects of human behavior were like thousands of years ago. People would have been sitting around fires too and making light of animals, surprising events, bodily functions and more. According to the University of Manitoba's Joseph Polimeni, the first evidence for humor was a conversation between Australian aboriginals, whose ancestors had all been genetically and culturally isolated from the rest of the world for at least 35,000 years. When a big thunderstorm hit, instead of running for their lives, they "burst out laughing" whenever nature let loose with an odd sound. Why cry or scream when you can laugh? Humor has got to be one of our best coping mechanisms. It's no wonder that many researchers believe it evolved at around the same time that human mental capacity for spiritual concepts did.

The Greek playwright Aristophanes has been compared to today's Jon Stewart. Like Stewart, Aristophanes also had to crank out material to please his audiences. To detect one of his favorite subjects, you need only read some of his titles: "The Frogs," "The Birds," "The Wasps." With its singing amphibians and Eddie Izzard-like cross dressing satire, "The Frogs," in particular, had the ancient Greeks rolling in the aisles way back in 405 B.C.

While animal topics were popular fodder for early humorists, the world's first joke book, the 4th century's Philogelos, reads to me like a collection of Borscht belt one liners. I would not be surprised if Mel Brooks' ancestors created some of these close to 2000 years ago. I'll leave you with a few examples, as translated by B. Baldwin. Please also be sure to read the full Discovery News story on ancient humor. You'll find it here.

No. 187: An ill-tempered astrologer cast the horoscope of a sick boy, promised his mother that he would live for a long time, then demanded his fee. "Come back tomorrow and I’ll give it to you then." "But what happens to my fee if he dies in the night?"

 

No. 201: On returning from a trip, someone asked a charlatan prophet how his family was. "They are all well, especially your father." "But my father’s been dead for ten years!" "Ah, clearly you do not know your real father."

 

No. 202: Having cast a boy’s horoscope, a charlatan prophet predicted that he would be first a lawyer, then a city prefect, and finally a provincial governor. But the boy died. His mother came back and remonstrated, "My son has died, the one you said would be a lawyer and prefect and governor." "I swear by his memory," responded the prophet, "he would have been all of those things had he lived!"

 

No. 203: Someone went to a charlatan prophet and inquired if his rival would come back from a voyage. The prophet promised that he could not. But the man found out a few days later that he had come back. "Well," said the prophet, "how shameless can you get?"

 

No. 204: A charlatan prophet cast a client’s horoscope and told him he could never have children. "But I’ve already got seven!" "Then you’d better take good care of them!"

 

No. 205: A charlatan prophet was captured by the enemy, and confessed his trade. Now it so happened that they were about to fight a battle. "You’ll win it," he promised them, "as long as the enemy doesn't see the hairs on the back of your heads."

See What Lives In Your Vacuum Cleaner

Have you ever seen a flea up close? Check this out:

Glen Needham of Ohio State University took that pic. He and W. Fred Hink study the parasites in hopes of finding the safest and most effective ways of keeping them out of our, and our pets', lives. The strands surrounding the flea are fibers in somebody's carpeting. Little did you know that when you vacuum, fleas and their larvae grab onto carpet strands for dear life, fighting not to get sucked up. Sometimes they win.

If you don't want a flea problem and have an old-fashioned vacuum (not one of those sexy, cyclone-spinning kinds) hang onto that machine dinosaur, at least for now. Needham and Hink determined that the older style motors, with lots of moving parts, literally bang suctioned fleas to death. The parasites have a hard, polished-looking exterior that helps to hold in moisture, sort of like the shell on an M&M candy. When the flea exterior goes, the insect desiccates. The same holds true for termites and many other insects. They dry up easily, once you can figure out how to remove the water source. Bed bugs, for example, hang out in the upper most layers of mattresses because they need the moisture that naturally comes off human bodies. If you flip your mattress every so often, it's like sending parasites to Siberia. They have trouble traveling back to the top of the mattress and often perish. It helps to vacuum and rotate your mattress every so often too.

Needham is helping to develop new vacuum technologies, based on ultraviolet radiation. One, called the Halo, is already on the market now. What's killer about UV-based vacuums is that they zap bacteria and viruses, in addition to bugs, so you can have these benefits along with the energy efficiency and slickness of the more modern vacs.

In the meantime, if your vacuum doesn't do in the parasites, here's footage Neeham took of flea larvae probing inside of a vac.

Bunnies Go Back 53 Million Years

The first bunny hippity hopped into the world around 53 million years ago, based on what could be the luckiest rabbit's foot ever, at least for Johns Hopkins anatomy professor Kenneth Rose. He had a "eureka" moment while displaying the bones of an old animal foot as part of a seminar, when suddenly he noticed that they looked like modern day bunny bones.

Sure enough, Rose and his colleagues determined they had a very old rabbit's foot, dating back to 53 million years ago. The fossils, excavated in India, predate the oldest previously known rabbits by several million years. We now know that bunnies missed the dinosaurs by around 10 million years, but that's probably a good thing. Not pleasant to think of tiny rabbits getting underfoot of Jurassic giants.

Rose and his colleagues say these fossils, along with other found bones and molecular data, suggest rabbits and hares diverged from pikas, also known as "the whistling hare" because of the high-pitched alarm calls these big-eared, bunny-looking critters make before they dive into their burrows. I've always had a soft spot for pikas. They're often very shy around people (probably for good reason) and are just so darned cute.
Pika

When asked how many years of good luck one gets with a 53 million-year-old rabbit foot bone, Rose quipped that he “already got lucky with the feet, but what we really would like are some teeth that tell how different these animals really were.”

In celebration of spring, here's a video showing what happens when an Easter bunny gets rained out, but has a companion indoors to help weather the storm.

Exhibit Celebrates Family Resemblances

As you sit around the Easter, or other springtime celebration, dinner table, notice how your relatives share similar physical (and probably behavioral) characteristics. A recent University of Manchester exhibit celebrated this very phenomenon. It investigated physical resemblances, as well as similarities in character, temperament, talents, health and other factors.

Katherine Davies and Professor Jennifer Mason from the university's School of Social Sciences want to know why resemblances seem to matter so much to people and what they mean.

Davies said, “Family resemblances can be the source of great pleasure and can help people to feel connected to loved ones, including those who have died."

“But not all resemblances are welcome," she added. "Sometimes people can feel upset or worried by them, for example where a mother fears that her son might inherit his grandfather’s criminal tendencies, or maybe someone feels they may inherit an illness or take after someone they don’t like.”

However, she concluded, “Resemblance is an important aspect of who we are, and investigating family resemblances can help us to understand what it means to be related, for good or ill."

"Kate Rowles - Home and Away"
The below is a still from a video of Kate and her mother singing the Home and Away (Australian soap opera) theme tune to each other, in an effort to make close and make personal the lyrics. The video project explored the significance of this process for relationships - between parent and child, life and death, belonging and separation.
The photo was chosen not only because of the strong physical likenesses between Kate and her mother, which are emphasized by the shot taken in profile and the light and shadows, but also because the researchers liked the way that it demonstrated how resemblances can be found in behavior, in what we do, in voice and in sound.

Here's an image taken by award-winning professional photographer Charlie Meecham. It shows a grandmother with her granddaughter.

Rosanna Farrell - Reversed Roles
This is a picture of Rosanna's mother and grandmother. Rosanna feels it shows how her mother has now taken on a maternal caring role. In this picture she is arranging flowers to the delight of Rosanna's grandmother.

Andrew Stevenson - No Fake Copies
Andrew believes that while bloodline and physical appearance can reflect family resemblance, often it is our behavior that unites us, as in these two gentlemen of Derbyshire sharing a meal together.
The photo was chosen because it shows the way resemblance can be part of ordinary everyday life, like what and how we eat, body posture and demeanor, the clothes we wear, the places we go, the people we spend time with. The researchers said the 'no fake copies' motif adds a nice play on the distinction between individuality, similarity and duplication.

Did People Used to Lay Eggs?

If you are interested in your family's genealogy, then consider a family tree that goes back 310 million years. Instead of a baby photo, you could show an egg, because the ancestor to all mammals then—the "Mother of all Mammals"— was laying eggs.

So why didn't you pop out of a shell? David Brawand and colleagues of the University of Lausanne investigated what went on at the molecular level, and when, to turn nearly all mammals into non egg layers that give birth to live young. The monotremes, platypuses and echidnae, are the only two mammals that still lay eggs.

Echidna

In a twist on the famous, "Which came first the chicken or the egg?" question, you could ask, "Which was lost first in mammals, the yolk or the white?" The answer is the yolk. The yolk contains all of the nutrients required for the development of the embryo that's inside the egg. From around 200 million years ago to 30 million years ago, mammals gradually started to lose the genes needed to make yolks. Instead, they evolved the ability to nourish the embryo through the placenta (an organ that, in humans, develops in the uterus during pregnancy) and lactation, or milk-making. There's another breakfast trivia question for you— "Which came first, the milk or the egg?" Definitely the egg.

Modern humans evolved much later than 30 million years ago, so no person ever laid an egg, at least literally, but in the grand scheme of evolution and connectedness with all mammals, your distant ancestors did.

Here's a little video that might give you pause for thought the next time you sit down to eat an omelette or other egg dish. Don't take such food for granted. As you'll soon see, it takes a fair amount of effort for a chicken to give us this tasty and nutritious food source.