Links - 15th January 2020 (1)

Peacocks, Eye Tracking, and the Brains Behind Decisions - "How do male peacocks size up their competition? Not by looking at the brightly colored tail feathers and upper eyespots for which these birds are known, but instead by focusing on their lower feathers and legs. The birds also pay more attention when their competitors shake their tails and move rather than when they are sitting still... “Neither male nor female peacocks spend much time looking at all the plumage, which really raises a lot of questions about why in the world male peacocks would invest so much energy in its development,” Platt says. “We think it probably has something to do with signaling from a distance in dense vegetation, and also potentially during competition between males.”"

Animal attraction: peacocks and sexual selection - "The scientists weren't surprised when they saw that the peahens looked at each peacock when it fanned its tail feathers upward. But, intriguingly, the females focused nearly completely on the bottom part of the train, close to the ground. They mostly ignored the conspicuous upper fan.However, the peahens did pay attention to the upper feathers when the lower train was obscured - as it might be if the males were relatively far away and partially hidden by the dense vegetation of the birds' natural habitat in India.This suggests that the flashy upper train is mostly a long-distance attraction signal, but the lower feathers are more important to close-up courtship."

Fish or Fishes? Shoal or School? A Few Fishy Terms Defined - "A shoal is a group of fish congregating together to benefit from “safety in numbers” but not moving or behaving in unison. They may be facing every which way with one specimen snatching plankton from the water column, another showing off to the opposite sex, still another browbeating a subordinate, and so forth.A shoal becomes a school when all of the members of the group coordinate their movements and behavior—for example, swimming tightly together on the same heading, changing direction in unison, etc. I suppose one could define a school as an organized shoal"

How Do Fish Schools Work? - "A group of fish can switch from shoaling to schooling and back again. Schooling seems to have evolved as a defense against predators and in some cases as a way to increase feeding efficiency. Every fish in a school must execute perfectly to get the best results. Fish schools are all the more amazing when one considers that there’s no leader. Schools come together on their own, a phenomenon known as self-organizing. The secret to cohesion hides in plain sight: a school does not need to act together, instead every individual needs to coordinate with nearby individuals. In a coordinated school, one fish turns, then it’s neighbors turn, then their neighbors turn, etc., all in the blink of an eye. A massive coordinated school is thousands of individual movements that make up one overarching movement."

Charles Darwin Not Only Discovered Species, He Also Ate Them In A Glutton Club - "Throughout his life and travels, he sampled the meat of dozens of different animals, including a puma, an ostrich-like bird, and even a 20-pound rodent.Darwin’s taste for rare animals started during his days at Cambridge University when he joined a club known as the Glutton Club.The club, like most, met on a weekly basis. However, where most clubs met to discuss their weekly duties, the club only had one duty — to consume “birds and beasts, which were before unknown to the human palate.” During their time together, the club sampled mostly birds, among them a hawk, a heron-like bird called a bittern, and a brown owl. The owl, however, was the club’s downfall, as they lost their gusto upon tasting its “indescribable” flesh. Apparently, it wasn’t the good kind of indescribable... While on his voyage, Darwin dined on puma, which he described as “remarkably like veal in taste,” iguanas, armadillos, and his famous giant Galapagos tortoises. Not only did he eat the tortoises, but he also sampled a cup of the tortoises’ bladder contents, which he described as “limpid” and “slightly bitter.”... In Argentina, he also dined on a lesser rhea, a South American version of an ostrich, which he had spent several months attempting to catch to study it. Apparently, his team, aware of his desire to consume rare creatures, prepared the bird without informing Darwin what it was. Upon realizing that it was his yet-unclassified lesser rhea, Darwin panicked, ordered everyone to stop eating, and gathered all of the remaining bones, feathers, skin, and gizzards, immediately sending them back to England for safe keeping... Darwin’s favorite meal while on his journey was that of a 20-pound rodent, thought to be an agouti, which he described as the “very best meat I had ever tasted.”"

What Did Charles Darwin Put In His Mouth? Pretty Much Everything. - " The giant tortoise was famous among sailors for its delicious meat, and Darwin, who ate a few of them, loved the buttery taste"

The Fantastic Fur of Sea Otters - "The true insulating power comes from a layer of air the fur keeps trapped next to their skin. Otter fur has two special properties that make it especially good at creating an insulating layer of air: It’s dense, and it’s spiky. Otters fur is about 1,000 times more dense than human hair. But it wouldn’t do them any good if it were smooth and perfectly combed. Otters want their hair as tangled as possible, so that the air bubbles they blow into their pelts can’t get out. This is where the spiky aspect comes in handy.Otter pelts feel smooth and soft to us, but if you look at otter hair with a microscope you can see that it’s covered in tiny, geometric barbs. The barbs help the hair mat together so tightly that the fur near the otter’s body is almost completely dry. And keeping the animals dry is key to keeping them warm."

Explained: The Physics-Defying Flight of the Bumblebee - " the big misconception about insect flight and perhaps what tripped up Magnan is the belief that bumblebees flap their wings up and down. "Actually, with rare exceptions, they flap their wings back and forth"... The fluid dynamics behind bumblebees' flight are different from those that allow a plane to fly. An airplane's wing forces air down, which in turn pushes the wing (and the plane it's attached to) upward. For bugs, it isn't so simple. The wing sweeping is a bit like a partial spin of a "somewhat crappy" helicopter propeller, Dickinson said, but the angle to the wing also creates vortices in the airlike small hurricanes. The eyes of those mini-hurricanes have lower pressure than the surrounding air, so, keeping those eddies of air above its wings helps the bee stay aloft."

A Biodegradable Label Doesn't Make It So - Scientific American - "“When we look at biodegradability as it pertains to landfills, biodegradability is not a desirable attribute for a material. And the reason for this is that when we design for biodegradability, we’re typically designing for rapid biodegradability, and yet landfills do not begin to collect the gas that’s produced typically for two years…so much of the gas, the methane, from biodegradability is released to the environment before gas collection systems are installed."

Cholesterol Climbs after Crows Chomp Cheeseburgers - Scientific American - " crows that dined on cheeseburgers did indeed have higher cholesterol than crows who did without. But here’s the surprising thing: higher cholesterol didn’t affect crows’ chances of survival over a three-year period. And in one population, birds with higher cholesterol were arguably in better condition than other crows. Meaning chubbier."

Nature Docs Avoid Habitat Destruction - Scientific American - "It’s not clear if that's really a bad thing, though—we still don’t really know whether showing environmental tragedies on-screen motivates people to support conservation. But what climate change communication has taught us, Rust says, is that the ideal way to motivate audiences is with optimism—tinged with trepidation.
So much for climate change hysteria

Breakfast at Britain's grumpiest cafe: with zero tolerance for vegans, allergies or gluten-free fads - "No substitutions. No side orders. No seasoning. No vegan. And don’t ask for the music to be turned down. These are some of the rules listed outside the Rousdon Village Bakery near Lyme Regis in Dorset, along with the following allergy information: “we only cook in butter; our muesli contains lots of nuts; we produce bread with gluten”. If you’re happy to go along with this, you will enjoy good coffee and lovingly prepared food; if you disobey and ask for an extra sausage, you might as well show yourself out. “If you want to design your own food, do it at home,” grumbles Clive Cobb, the owner and head chef of what is surely Britain’s strictest restaurant... Cobb has set out to do the unexpected. His aim at Rousdon Village Bakery is to build a profitable brand by stepping away from the culture of entitlement that has become so ingrained in Britain. “In the Fifties and Sixties, you didn’t expect restaurants to cater for your foibles but now it’s gone too far the other way and it lowers standards”... His zero tolerance policy towards allergies and veganism appears harsh in a world where we all tamper with menus, but it allows Cobb to run a profitable business using local suppliers with as little waste as possible. “It’s as if entitlement is a rule,” he sighs. “When I say that I don’t do vegan they want to report me. But I don’t go into a vegan restaurant and ask what the meat option is.” When I visit at 9am on a Sunday, it’s clear that Cobb’s refusal to bow to the whims and fancies of his customers isn’t losing him business. The eight tables are packed with people enjoying milkshakes and his version of the egg McMuffin, served with his overnight roasted pesto tomatoes. “McDonald’s can’t cook runny eggs; I can”... According to the bakery’s contactless payment system, almost 75 per cent of his customers are return visitors... If other small businesses would only stop trying to cater to everyone, they could become more profitable, he says. He doesn’t care that he runs out of bread every day and that there’s aren’t always enough tables or car-parking spaces. Chaos works, he insists; you only have to look at the demise of chain restaurants to know that consistency is not the solution."

Why I decided to remove my hijab after 26 years - "it is precisely because of my commitment to having an authentic relationship with my faith and with my public image that I have made the choice.Clearly, the vast majority of Muslims will disagree with my decision. In a survey by SingleMuslim.com (one of the biggest Muslim brands in the UK) 87% of Muslims felt that women should cover their hair - or even their faces - in public... Most Muslims - including some parts of the modest fashion industry - don’t see modesty as a continuum, but rather an “either/or”. But surely modest wear should be culture-specific, if it is to mean anything at all? If I visit Pakistan soon, there will certainly be occasions where I will wear a long, baggy gown. If I ever found myself in rural Afghanistan, perhaps I would cover my face, simply because of the prevailing customs there.By the same measure, in a boardroom in the city of London, surely a maxi skirt and long-sleeved top is enough to preserve my chastity as a Muslim woman?"

Ping, Pang and Pong ousted from Toronto Turandot - "The Canadian Opera Company has opened its season in Toronto with the North American premiere of Robert Wilson’s production of Turandot – and the world premiere appearances in this Puccini opera of Jim, Bob and Bill.Opera fans who do not recognize these roles might be more familiar with Ping, Pang and Pong, the court bureaucrats who add comic relief to the tale of love and death in ancient Beijing. Their names were judged potentially hurtful by the COC’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity Committee, and particularly committee member Richard Lee, who is named in the credits as a production consultant... “Jim, Bob, and Bill sound like they’re straight out of [Puccini’s] La fanciulla del West[,] which isn’t quite as incorrect a portrayal of America as Turandot is of China, but it’s definitely a caricature as well. Are Americans supposed to get offended by that one now?”"
Bowdlerisation is good when it is due to a liberal agenda

Animal rights activists abuse blind man for having guide dog - "Animal rights activists have attacked a blind man for having a guide dog, saying the animal did not give its “consent” and that it should be “out there playing in the fields” instead of working"

Why Viewers Are Drawn to Renaissance Artists' Go-To Pose - "A new study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior suggests artists have long known a simple trick for improving sitters’ attractiveness: Just have them pose with their weight shifted to one foot.This stance—called contrapposto—should be familiar to anyone who has seen Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, the Venus de Milo or Michelangelo’s David. As artnet News’ Taylor Dafoe explains, contrapposto finds subjects placing their weight on one leg to create a slight bend between the hips and waist. (Invented by the ancient Greeks, the pose represents “one of the first examples of artists imbuing into facsimiles of the human figure a sense of movement and emotion.”) Tilting the torso slightly and ensuring one’s arms and shoulders do not run parallel to the hips lowers the waist-to-hip ratio, or WHR, producing a curvy hourglass shape... Pazhoohi, a leading body language expert who has previously studied the appeal of arched backs and inward-facing toes, tells Davis, “When models [walk on the] catwalk or dancers do belly dancing, they try to appear frequently in exaggerated contrapposto body forms.”He adds, “Similarly, when women walk [in] high heels, it helps accentuate the contrapposto form.”"