I Don't Negotiate with Terrorists

Who said this?:

We need to impart a new vision: car bombs, 24/7 security cameras, embarrassing home demonstrations, threats, injuries, and fear. And, of course, [they] need to realize that any personal risk they are willing to assume will also be visited upon their parents, children, and nearest & dearest loved ones. The time to reconsider is now.

This sounds clearly like the manifesto of a terrorist organization, but if you think it's some overseas religious extremist you're wrong. The group in question is called Negotiation is Over (given the current stance, I doubt they ever considered negotiation), an animal rights group, and the quote above comes from point two of their three-point plan to target the "soft underbelly" of animal research: students. The full quote:

2. Students also need to understand that making the wrong choice will result in a lifetime of grief. Aspiring scientists envision curing cancer at the Mayo Clinic. We need to impart a new vision: car bombs, 24/7 security cameras, embarrassing home demonstrations, threats, injuries, and fear. And, of course, these students need to realize that any personal risk they are willing to assume will also be visited upon their parents, children, and nearest & dearest loved ones. The time to reconsider is now.

(Point three proposes invasion of privacy and smear campaigns against students). They even brag about intimidating one particular undergraduate student at an American university into denouncing her fruit fly research. It's disgusting, and has obviously been met with condemnation by the science community. Some posts on the matter:

On the targeting of undergraduates by animal rights extremists (and the dangers of victim-blaming). at Adventures in Ethics and Science

The animal rights radicals may have overreached this time at Respectful Insolence

Animal Rights Terrorists Are Coming After Your Students... at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess

Students are “soft-bellied targets” and NIO is doomed now at Pharyngula

Awesome Bird Videos

Enjoy a couple of videos of some impressive birds. First, the Superb Lyrebird. This may have been posted before, but I couldn't find it and it's worth seeing again. Narrated by the incomparable David Attenborough.



Next, a shapeshifting owl, responding to potential threats:



There's some discussion as to what the purpose of the second, "dracula" form is here. Either way, I'll probably have nightmares.

*Yawn*

Jason Goldman at The Thoughtful Animal has a post up about a pretty fun paper on the subject of contagious yawning. We're all familiar with the phenomenon: you see me yawn, then you yawn, etc. This paper documents contagious yawning between humans and dogs. That's right, zoonotic yawning!

The yawning condition made the dogs yawn for 21 out of 29 individuals, and none of the dogs yawned in the control condition. Further, no yawns were observed in the interval between the two conditions (there was a five minute break between each of the five-minute-long conditions). During the yawning condition, dogs yawned an average of 1.9 times, and there were no sex or age differences, and there was no effect of the order in which the conditions were presented.

One of the hypotheses for contagious yawning is empathy

it actually turns out that there is a correlation between the susceptibility for contagious yawning and self-reported empathy. Converging evidence for the empathy hypothesis comes from the fact that contagious yawning is absent in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Does this mean dogs have empathy towards humans, or is it just a response to mild tension (eg. to seeing teeth baring)? Can humans catch a dog yawn?

Drinking and Flying

High tolerance, whether innate or a product of hard drinking, is a good idea for an animal, particularly if you're the 'prey' part of a predator-prey relationship. You won't make it very long if the slightest whiff of fermenting fruit sends you wobbling into the waiting jaws of a snake or owl. Fruit bats are one such creature that will eat fermented fruit and nectar.

The natural question is how much booze can a bat consume before drunkenness affects it's behaviour. Luckily, a recent paper in PLoS ONE has done the homework, as Ars Technica reports:

To test the fruit bat's alcohol tolerance, researchers from Canada gave two groups of bats, from a variety of different species, a sugar water drink. One of the group's drinks was spiked with 1.5 percent alcohol, and both groups were made to drink the same amount per gram of body weight. After waiting a short time, the bats were then released, whereupon they flew through an obstacle course. The researchers measured the time it took to get through the course and how often the bats collided with obstacles. In addition, the echolocation calls were recorded to see if those varied.

According to the research, a large portion had blood alcohol concentrations of 110mg per 100mL or greater, yet still maneuvered the course quickly, and without obstacle collision.

No word on how their performance was affected in other areas.

Fruit Bat Blowjobs

This has been making the rounds, but hasn't made an appearance yet on the Bayblab yet.

A recent paper in PLoS ONE has found that fellatio amongst fruit bats increased copulation time. The image, from the paper, shows an artist's rendition of the act. Supplementary info also includes a video of the act - complete with weird soundtrack - if you're into bat porn.

Genital licking roughly doubled copulation time. The researchers aren't sure why the bats engage in fellatio, but offer a few speculations:

"First, genital licking may lubricate the penis or increase penile stimulation, prolonging the duration of copulation. Prolonged copulation might assist sperm transport from the vagina to the oviduct, or stimulate secretions of the pituitary gland in the female and hence increase the likelihood of fertilization. Second, prolonged copulation might be a method of mate-guarding, because the mates would normally segregate after copulation to form unisexual groups which persist throughout the non-breeding season. Third, fellatio may confer bactericidal benefits and assist in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) both to females, and to males that lick their own penis briefly after copulation. Saliva has a protective repertoire that goes beyond antibacterial activity to include antifungal, antichlamydial, and antiviral properties as well. Finally, genital licking may facilitate the detection and identification of MHC-dependent chemical cues associated with mate choice."

The Crow and the Pitcher

Thousands of years ago, Aesop wrote a fable about a crow who used stones to raise the water in a pitcher so he could have a drink.

The latest issue of Current Biology documents this behaviour in a member of the crow family, the rook.
The authors next plan to use General Relativity/time dilation to determine who actually crossed the finish line first: the tortoise or the hare.

The crows are a resourceful family of birds. They have been shown to employ teamwork, use tools and solve multi-step problems. (Follow links for video) So much for birdbrains.

Penises of the Animal Kingdom

Evolution has graced the Earth with a multitude of different species, and with them an array of genitalia that make the human frank-and-beans look like, well, frank and beans by comparison. Here's a list of some of the most interesting ones I've come across.

6) Barnacle - Despite spending it's entire lifetime bathed in frigid seawater, the barnacle doesn't suffer from shrinkage. On the contrary, the Dirk Diggler of the animal kingdom has a penis up to 50 times it's body length - making it the world's largest penis, relative to size. The reason size DOES matter? They're immobile and need the length to reach their mates.

5) Kangaroo - We've talked about interesting penis shapes before with the corkscrew penis of certain ducks. Pigs also have a corkscrew penis, but why go for a single freakshow when you can double your pleasure instead? Like many marsupials, the kangaroo has a bifurcated (or forked) penis, and the scrotum and testes are in the front. This matches the dual vaginas/uteri of female marsupials. Stranger still, the echidna penis (pictured) has 4 heads!

4) Dolphins - The dolphin, like some other cetaceans, has a retractable penis that is also prehensile, meaning it can grab, hold and wrap around an object (think monkey tail). Imagine the benefits of such an appendage! This guy did. But what's even more disturbing, is this joke faq about how to have sex with a dolphin. At least I hope it's a joke.

3) Argonaut - This specialized octopus can use its penis without having physical contact with a female. Like many cephalopods, the penis is a special tentacle called the hectocotylus. In the case of the argonaut it detaches and swims to its mate, embedding in the female and impregnating her.

2) Bee - Like any man, the male honeybee climaxes with an explosion. Unlike men, the male bee genitals literally explode and snap off inside the queen. Afterwards, the males do what any of us would if our testes exploded and our penis snapped off - they wander off to the corner and die. A similar phenomenon has also been observed in certain spiders. The evolutionary rationale is that the detached genitals act as a plug preventing other males from mating with the queen

1) Bedbug - The bedbug doesn't mess around with foreplay. In fact it doesn't even mess around with female genitals. Instead, the male uses its dagger-like johnson to pierce the body of the female and inseminate her. The bedbug isn't the only species with such a violent mating process. Hermaphroditic flatworms duel with their penises with the loser being pierced and becoming pregnant. I see your Schwartz is as big as mine!