Get used to this sight: it'll make your last moments easier.
Courtesy chylunski marcinDecades of the careful planning and strategic positioning of snakes across the world may have been laid to waste by the actions of one overeager python.
Twenty-nine year old biology student Erick Arrieta was killed and partially eaten by a 10-foot Burmese python at a zoo in Caracas, Venezuela. Working the night shift alone in the reptile section of the zoo on Saturday, Arrieta, for reasons that remain unclear, broke zoo regulations and entered the cage holding the python.
The next time Arrieta was scene, he was dead and wearing a snake over his face, so the details of the attack are not known. However, I think we can make some assumptions of just what happened on Saturday.
“Snake,” probably said Arrieta, “You’re the only one I can talk to. I hate biology, but I love snakes. What am I to do?” Arrieta then very likely proceeded to subject the python to the unfortunate details of his love life, academic career, and personal ailments. The snake, I imagine, endured this as long as it could, the details of its assignment running through its eager brain all the while. But when Arrieta mentioned that “nice guys finish last,” the snake could no longer restrain itself.
“Ha ha!” said the snake, and sprang into action, latching on to Erick’s arm with dozens of needle sharp, inward-curving teeth.
“Oh no!” thought Erick, but was unable to utter the words, as the snake had already begun to wrap around the man’s chest and neck. Instead of straight out squeezing Arrieta into jerky, the python, in the way of all constrictors, would have slowly asphyxiated the student, tightening its coils as the man struggled or exhaled, until it had fully wrapped itself around its suffocating victim.
When Arrieta finally gave up the ghost, the snake did its best to hide the evidence. Starting with the head.
This is how the other zoo employees found their colleague in the morning—with his head inside a snake. The python was then beaten until it released the body.
With these events, phases one through three of an ambitious and clandestine serpentine plan have been unveiled to humans. Phase one: get close. Phase two: attack! Phase three: eat.
The fourth and final stage is now all too clear: digest. I only hope that Arrieta’s brave sacrifice was not too late.
Tags : Scotland at war!
in Earth and Space Science, Life Science, Interdependence of Life, and Biological Populations Change Over Time
A gull bomber: See? They're gross. Gross and bad.
Courtesy SancheznThat’s right, Buzzketeers, you heard it here first: Scotland has declared war.
Muskets are being cleaned, shakos brushed, wigs powdered, kilts pleated…
And who or what is this war on? England? No, Braveheart settled that one with an academy award. Personal hygiene? I’m afraid that war was lost centuries ago. Drugs? Maybe, but Trainspotting was so much fun.
So what’s left?
Birds, y’all, birds. Scotland has finally declared war on the birds. Actual birds. I don’t mean, like, a cockney version of national misogyny. Seagulls, in fact, are the targets here.
Why? Why ask why, I say. Have you ever seen or heard a seagull and not wanted to destroy it and all of its ilk? That, by the way, is a rhetorical question.
Scotland has drafted a more formal—though only just—list of complaints against the bird nation: they thrive on litter, and their aggressive behavior towards humans and other animals is increasing. They are, in short, “a menace.”
The Environmental Minister even whipped out the story of a paper delivery boy (called a Scottish Flat-hat Lad, I believe), who has had to abandon his duties for fear of bird attack. Wars have been started over less.
The initial campaign will kick off in the southwestern town of Dumfries, Scotland, during the gulls breeding season. The Scots are clearly taking seriously the old saying “Hit ‘em where it hurts” (the genitals). Anti-gull task forces are being formed to destroy nests and drive the birds off. It’s going to be like a Scottish Starship Troopers.
There may be another solution here—this article points out that the gull population of Britain began rising sharply and steadily after the introduction of the Clean Air Act in 1956. It isn’t that gulls thrive in clean air (they probably hate it, rats that they are), but that the act prohibited the burning of garbage by local landfill owners, giving the horrible birds all the delicious trash they could ever hope to eat.
So Scotland needs to start firing up those landfills! Sure, it’s dirty, but we need to consider the perils of off-balancing animal populations. Just look at zebra mussels and, like… zebras. Get out your bagpipes and claymores! Fill the sky with the greasy black smoke of victory!
A tapeworm: like a friend that will always be with you. A friend that's taller than you are. Living in your intestines.
Courtesy SavadorjoI just came across this tasty little item on CNN.com: A Chicago man recently passed a nine-foot-long tapeworm, which he believes to have gotten from undercooked salmon.
I’m not sure of the best way to express my feelings on this subject, so let’s just talk about tapeworms.
Tapeworms are, of course, parasitic flatworms. Humans can become infected with tapeworms by consuming food or water contaminated with the eggs or larvae of the worm. You might not think it, but whether one is infested with eggs or larva can make a big difference. If you accidentally eat the eggs, the larvae that hatch from them may migrate out of your intestines, and make little cystic homes in other parts of your body, like your lungs or liver. These cysts are both super gross, and super dangerous—you can die from them, and treatment is difficult. If, on the other hand, you unwittingly eat tapeworm larvae, it’s much more likely that the baby worm will snuggle up in your guts, and eat what you eat. This is super gross, and still pretty bad for you, and it’s best if you avoid it.
If you do get a tapeworm living in your intestines, as the man in the story did, you may suffer from nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain, weakness, and loss of weight. Or you might not demonstrate any symptoms at all. But you’ll still have a huge worm living inside you.
There are a variety of tapeworm types that might infect you, including the beef tapeworm, the pork tapeworm, the dwarf tapeworm, and the fish tapeworm. Some tapeworms go through their whole lifecycle inside one host, developing from egg to larva to adult, while others attach themselves to the lining of the intestine, and others still allow themselves to be passed (into the toilet).
According to the Mayo clinic’s page on tapeworms, adult worms can grow up to fifty feet inside their hosts. So, all things considered, the Chicago guy should feel lucky.
Tapeworm eggs can be passed from one person to another via… stool… so be sure to wash your hands. Constantly.
Then let them eat rat!
in Life Science, Interdependence of Life, Flow of Matter and Energy, and Human Organism
"He wouldn't make a mouthful": said William, who had already had a fine supper, "not when he was skinned and boned."
Courtesy Radha BlossomHey, everybody! Remember yesterday?
I sure don’t. The last thing I remember is TGIF programming, and feeling really angry about something (it wasn’t the TV I was upset with, that much I know), and the next thing I’m aware of is waking up under the sink…in the yard! It was my yard, but not my sink. Weird.
Anyway, the last week is a little blurry, to say the least. What happened in this week? I only have a few clues to go on: new tattoos (did I get my own name tattooed on me, or the name of someone else called JGordon?), a new t-shirt (it smells like burned hair, and it says “Try me, Lincoln!”), and some Science Buzz blog entries.
Bloody noses? Bigfoot? I thought this was supposed to be a science blog! I was clearly out of my gourd—there’s not a test tube or a lab coat to be seen in those posts.
And then there’s the kangaroo meat post. I might have been on to something there: it’s about the environment, and animals, and Paul Hogan. Whatever was going on in my head, I seem to have momentarily surfaced near enough to lucidity to string several paragraphs of real words together. Words about eating animals and environmental impact. And stuff.
Wherever I was (geographically) yesterday, I like where I was going (mentally), and I have decided to pursue that train of thought.
The word, then, is “patal-bageri.” I mean “words.” Words.
The Indian state of Bihar, unwilling to be out-crazied by Australia, may be pursuing a new meat industry of its own: rat, or “patal-bageri.”
Like the Aussies, the welfare ministry of this state is hoping to kill two birds with one stone (except one of the birds will actually be a rat, and they probably won’t use a stone—maybe a hammer instead). Hunting rats would reduce the amount of grain lost to the rodents (naturally) as well as provide a cheap and plentiful supply of meat. Rat meat.
The minister of welfare has pointed out that the Musahar caste, of which there are 2.4 million members, have traditionally eaten rats for a very long time (“Musahar” roughly translates to “rat eaters” in Hindi), hunting them in their rice fields. If the Musuhars—one of the poorest castes in the country—can eat rats, says the minister, why can’t everybody else?
Someone got to this rat already!: Nuts.
Courtesy erik langnerThe ministry plans to set up rat meat stalls in rural fairs, to give people a taste of the protein-rich meat, and hopes to eventually have “rat meat centers” in urban areas. The Musahars could be engaged to start rat farms, hopefully empowering them socially and economically (I have a feeling, though, that some people might still look down on rat farmers).
The eating of rats obviously has kind of a stigma to it, but it’s certainly not unheard of—in cultures that don’t specifically forbid eating them (Islam and Judaism, for instance, have strict taboos against consuming rat meat), rats may be eaten as a crisis food, or regularly with other bush meats. Cane rats make up fully half of the locally produced meat in Ghana (check out this picture of a soon to be delicious cane rat).
I might eat rat meat, but it’s good that I don’t have to eat rat meat (it’s nice to have control over that decision). Should anyone be unable to wait for the patal-bageri industry to arrive on American shores, however, here are some recipes for rats (and mice):
How convenient!: Jumpmeat, with a little pouch to hold more jumpmeat!
Courtesy .robbieY’all got kangaroo knives, right?
What? You don’t have kangaroo knives? Well… I mean… what… How do you cut your kangaroos up, then?! This is madness! Cats and dogs, living together! Ewok Adventure! Sour candy! Madness!
I think there must be some kind of misunderstanding. A kangaroo knife isn’t necessarily like a big Crocodil Dundee knife* (although, that is a really nice kangaroo knife). No, pretty much any sharpish object can be a kangaroo knife. So, yes, a knife can be a kangaroo knife, but what else? A chipped rock? Yes, what else? Sure, a jagged piece of scrap metal would make a nice one. Anything else? A sharpened spoon? Very good, yes, a sharpened spoon could work. A fingernail? Well, I suppose it depends on the finger and the nail, but maybe.
I think you’re getting the idea. But why do we need all of these kangaroo knives in the first place? To be honest, it’s probably only the Australian Buzzketeers out there (maybe?) that would have any use for them, but it doesn’t hurt for the rest of us to be prepared. See, a recent article in the journal Conservation Letters recommends that expanding the kangaroo industry in Australia, and shrinking the cattle and sheep industries, would significantly cut the continent’s greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, growing the kangaroo population to 175 million by 2020 (and reducing the cattle and sheep populations proportionately) would eliminate 16 megatons of greenhouse gas, or 3 percent of Australia’s total emissions.
It’s not just any old greenhouse gas that would be cut, either—we’re talking about methane, one of the stinkiest, hottest, greenhousiest greenhouse gases of them all. Ruminants—animals that chew cud and have multi-chambered stomachs, like cows and sheep—produce a lot of methane, up to 60 percent of global methane emissions†. A dairy cow can produce about 50 gallons of methane gas a day! Kangaroos, on the other hand, produce only about one third of the methane of a ruminant animal does. And, as a little environmental bonus, kangaroos’ large, padded paws are much easier on the land than the hooves of ruminants, and contribute less to erosion.
But what are we supposed to do with all these millions of kangaroos? Eat them, naturally. (This is where the kangaroo knives come in!) Kangaroo meat is reportedly high in protein, low in fat, and it has high concentrations of conjugated linoleic acid (a chemical that seems to have anti-cancer properties, and tends to reduce body fat in humans). But, you know, it’s kangaroo meat, which some people may have a problem with**.
It’s difficult to say, too, what the other environmental ramifications of increasing one animal’s population dozens of times over might be. Maybe the kangaroos could be trained to eat rabbits, or something.
Assuming y’all had some kangaroo knives, do you think you could deal with eating kangaroo? You know, for nature?
*Doesn’t Paul Hogan look like he’s about to do something just awful to Manhattan there?
†The EPA’s website says that ruminants only account for 28% of global methane emissions. But that’ still a lot.
**The kangaroo meat industry actually held a competition to come up with a new name for the meat that didn’t conjure up images of doe-eyes and fuzzy little faces. The finalists included kangarly, maroo, krou, maleen, kuja, roujoe, rooviande, jurru, ozru, marsu, kangasaurus, marsupan, jumpmeat, and MOM (meat of marsupials), but the winning name ended up being “australus.” Australus was for sure not the best name. The best name was “jumpmeat.”
Henry: His own bad self.
Courtesy KeresHWe live in exciting times, Buzzketeers, exciting times! Never before has the population of the world been so thrilled to see a 111-year-old get it on.
I’m talking sex here, folks. Sex.
Yes, the world has carefully peeled its eyeballs from now-damp television screens across every continent, forgoing the stale gender isolation that is the summer Olympics for the steamy, primordial, and sexy land of iniquity we call Middle Earth. I mean New Zealand.
This feisty Casanova had everything going against him and his love live. Aside from his formidable age, he only recently got out of 17 years of solitary confinement, a punishment given for an aggression problem that culminated in him giving a serious bite to a lady—the very lady that would become his baby’s momma all these years later! Why do we love the ones that hurt us the most? On top of all this, the centenarian, name o’ Henry, has scaly lizard skin, and was born with a third eye. Also, he had a tumor on his butt until the recent past. And he’s a lizard, which can’t help things.
Or not a lizard, precisely, but a tuatara. Tuatara made an appearance on Science Buzz not long ago, regarding their status as not-exactly-lizards, and potential their inability to survive in our spicy hot new world.
Well, Henry the tuatara and his 70-something lady friend, Mildred, are doing their best to prove us wrong (about the viability thing, not the lizard thing). Henry, never before observed mating in his long life, is now the father of 11 eggs. How many of these eggs actually hatch remains to be seen, of course. Whether they yield a healthy ratio of males-to-females (see the Buzz link above) may be up in the air too, although the fact that they were laid in captivity probably means that they’re being carefully incubated in the appropriate temperature range for developing embryos of both sexes.
Oh, gold medals all around!
A yeti: preparing a powerful spell.
Courtesy teotwawkiIt’s time again, Buzzketeers—get on the cryptocouch. Go on and sit down. Just as you are is fine. I understand that some of you may be a little crusty and gross, and that’s fine; you were probably just planning on getting a little internet on by yourself this morning, and maybe you let your crust build up, your funk get funkier, and didn’t expect to have to set yourself down on a cryptocouch with other Buzzketeers.
Don’t sweat it. The cryptocouch is big enough for all of us, with room to spare for buffer zones, and it’s upholstered such that I can just hose it off later. And that may be necessary, if your orifices aren’t up for some serious cryptozoology this early in the day.
And now you’re on the cryptocouch, despite your reservations. How did I ever convince you to do that? Hey, it’s only to be expected—my Yeti magic is particularly strong today. Usually my Yeti magic is fueled by groundless faith, but today, oh today, my Yeti magic is burning the high-octane gas of scientific uncertainty.
Uncertainty may not sound very good to some of y’all, but when science gets up in your grill as often as it does with cryptozoology, you take what you can get. And today, instead of scientists thrusting and grinding statements like “That’s bear hair,” or “That’s a sick coyote” in our faces, it says, “hello, this is different.” That is, so-called Yeti hair collected in India has recently been identified as “inconclusive.”
Let’s slow down and use our words.
Scientists at Oxford Brookes University, lead by “ape expert” Ian Redmond, have recently spent some time examining a couple of mysterious hairs from the Garo Hills of northeast India. The hairs were collected after a local forester reported seeing the region’s Yeti/Bigfoot thinger (specifically, the “Mande Barung”) in the area three days in a row.
The hairs have been compared to samples collected by Sir Edmund Hilary, a mountaineer and explorer, who did some Yeti-searching in Nepal in the 60’s. And that’s cool, except Sir Edmund’s specimens have generally been agreed to be from a kind of antelope, something that Hilary himself was probably aware of.
The Oxford Brookes researchers, then, began examining the new hairs “fully expecting them to come from a known animal.” The hairs, each less than two inches long, however, now appear to have come from an unknown animal. The scientists say that, under a microscope, the hairs look slightly human, slightly like an orangutan, and slightly like Hilary’s samples (so, slightly like antelope hair). But they don’t look exactly like hair from a known animal, especially none that are known to live in the Garo Hills. So, even if the hairs don’t come from a Yeti (or whatever)m they may be evidence of a slightly more mundane new species. Which is pretty neat.
The next step that will be taken with the hairs is their submission to that colossal buzz-kill we call genetic testing. The hairs, which still have follicle attached, will be sent to two separate laboratories in Oxford and Cardiff for DNA analysis. Even if the results don’t identify the hairs as belonging to a specific species, they should at least show what their original owner was related to (like a primate, or, say, a type of antelope).
How about that? Powerful stuff, huh? So cast your Yeti spells while the news is still hot, because who knows what the DNA tests will bring us.
Now get off the couch. I have to sleep there, and you’re making it all grimy.
"Doctor Fish": The hand will be skeletal inside of three minutes.
Courtesy Nemo's great uncleI pride myself in my ability to scoot along the greasy razor edge of what’s cool at any given moment. Like right now this is cool: Tentacles. And…now collecting vintage Booberry, Frankenberry, and Count Chocula boxes is cool. And now tentacles are cool again.
It amazes me, then, that this new wave splashed right by me: foot flesh-eating fish. Or, really, I suppose they’d eat flesh from anywhere, but what they’re getting is foot flesh. But how could I have missed this for so long? I mean, Tyra Banks, Eastern Europe, and big chunks of Asia are already all about flesh-eating fish. Sure, Tyra Banks is a little wiser than most people, and I can’t remember a time when Eastern Europe wasn’t dancing on the cutting edge, but that doesn’t mean I have to feel good about it.
So, what we’re dealing with here, to go back to the very beginning, are little carp, Garra ruffa. The carp are native to rivers across the Middle East, and are kept and bred in outdoor pools in Turkish spas. Why? Because they swarm people and eat the dead skin off their bodies.
The fish eat skin because food can be scarce in the warm pools they live in, and because their little jaws are toothless, they’re only able to eat dead skin.
Apparently dead skin isn’t very cool. (I have a feeling that it’s going to be the next big thing, though.) If you’ve got some dead skin on your feet that you’re afraid people will see, there’s a foot fish spa near D.C. The fish are also recommended as an alternative treatment for psoriasis, but you might have to cross an ocean to get to a pool full of psoriatic plaque-gulping fish.
The circle of life. Fantastic.
You deserve it Avis: Be careful though—it may be a trophy, but it really fires. Golden bullets.
Courtesy davidaugspurgerRata a tat tat tat get yourself psyched a tat rat rat rat rat…
The award goes to Avis Blakeslee of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania!!
Now, before we get into Avis’s specific accomplishments, let’s have a little background on the Sara Connor award itself.
A female-only award, meant to recognize the truly hardcore ladies out there, the Sara Connor award is, in fact, a precursor to the Otzi the Iceman Medal of Badassery. The OtIMoB, was created more than a decade after the SCA, under social pressure to acknowledge that men can also, on occasion, be pretty tough. But the Sara Connor is truly the original, and as deserving as the Otzi winners are, the Badassery medal is in a different—and frankly lower—league.
Originally the Sara Connor and Lt. Ellen Ripley Medal of Valor, the award was split after the selection committee could not agree on a recipient. Those members who would eventually form the Lt. Ripley Organization wanted to give the award to Margaret Thatcher, for eating the eyes out of a living goat, while the charter members of the Sara Connor board felt that an Argentinean woman who gave birth while clinging to the wing of an airborne Learjet was more deserving. The board members of the award parted ways amiably, although the Sara Connor Award has since received greater attention and respect, on account of widely held opinion that the Lt. Ripley Organization is simply unable to “keep it real.”
The Sara Connor Award is given regularly, but not necessarily every year. For example, in 1995, the SCA was given to Svetlana Kovach of the Ukraine after she removed her own cystic kidney using only a bottle of grain alcohol and a claw hammer (while trapped in a mineshaft, although this was only discovered after the ceremony—Ms. Kovach was tremendously modest), but in 1996 no suitable recipients were nominated. The award was given once again in 1997, posthumously, to Nozomi Chinen of Okinawa, who clawed her way out of a shark’s belly, and drowned fighting a second shark barehanded.
Avis Blakeslee, this year’s deserving recipient, is being recognized for an epic battle with a rabid fox in the garden of her farmhouse.
Although Ms. Blakeslee’s accomplishment is perhaps not as immediately impressive as those of past recipients (it pales in comparison even to 1999’s formidable runner up, a 15-year old Jordanian who slapped a mortar out of the air), extenuating circumstances must be considered. Again, the fox was rabid—and if you read last week’s post on the bat-pantsed Scotswoman (who is unlikely to receive a nomination), you’ll know that rabies is serious business. Paralysis, insanity, hydrophobia, etc; rabies is no cakewalk. The disease is no doubt what lead the fox to leave its habitat to attack an unsuspecting gardener. Ms. Blakeslee had never even seen a fox in person before, and believed the creature to be a small dog (before it went crazy on her). Another important factor here is Avis’s age: 77. Avis is a grandmother, and not used to fighting wild animals, and yet she wrasseled that pooch into submission, even after sustaining seven leg wounds, an arm wound, and severe blood loss. She then pinned the rabid fox to the ground, holding its jaws shut with one hand, until help arrived to dispatch the creature with a firearm. I have no doubt that, had Mavis a free arm, she would have simply driven a finger into the fox’s brain. As it was, however, she did her two-armed best and subdued the fox ultimate fighting style, until the cavalry came to do its own thing.
A job well done, Avis, a job well done. You’ve taught us all a little bit about what it means to be hardcore, and for that…we salute you.
Influenza Outlook
in Life Science, Cells, Diversity of Organisms, Interdependence of Life, Biological Populations Change Over Time, and Human Organism
Flu vaccine: This is CDC Clinic Chief Nurse Lee Ann Jean-Louis extracting Influenza Virus Vaccine, Fluzone® from a 5 ml. vial.
Courtesy CDC/Jim Gathany
Did you know back in February scientist and medical professionals selected the influenza virus strains for the upcoming flu season? Now that it is July the pharmaceutical companies are well into manufacturing, purification and testing the vaccine. Meanwhile, it is winter and flu season in the southern hemisphere and the virus is busy mutating. The big question on everyone’s mind is will it mutate so much that the northern hemisphere vaccine will be ineffective?
I agree with Dr. Steven Salzberg remarks in his recent Nature commentary…
"The current system, in which most of the world’s vaccine supply is grown in chicken eggs, is an antiquated, inefficient method requiring six months or more to ramp up production, which in turn means that the vaccine strains must be chosen far in advance of each flu season. More crucially it sometimes prevents the use of the optimal strain, as it did in 2007."
Influenza (the flu) is a serious disease
Each year in the United States, on average:
- 5% to 20% of the population gets the flu;
- More than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu complications, and;
- About 36,000 people die from flu.
Some vaccine problems in the past
In recent years the match between the vaccine viruses and those identified during the flu season has usually been good. In 16 of the last 20 U.S. influenza seasons, including the 2007-08 season, the viruses in the influenza vaccine have been well matched to the predominant circulating viruses. Since 1988, there has only been one season (1997-98) when there was very low cross-reaction between the viruses in the vaccine and the predominate circulating virus and three seasons (1992-93, 2003-04, and 2007-08) when there was low cross-reaction (CDC). So after last year’s miscalculation the committee picked three new strains for the vaccine this year. One is a current southern hemisphere vaccine virus which they expect will still be present next year. In addition, they predict a second new Type A strain, known as H1N1/Brisbane/59, to also hit, along with a newer Type B/Florida strain.
Dr. Salzberg feels last year’s miscalculation was a failure…
"The harm was thus twofold; people fell ill and their trust in the vaccine system was undermined. This failure could have been predicted, if not prevented, through a more open system of vaccine design, a stronger culture of sharing in the influenza research community and a serious commitment to new technologies for production. The habits of the vaccine community must change for the sake of public health."
He goes on to suggest…
"The process of choosing flu-vaccine strains needs to be much more open. Other scientists, such as those in evolutionary biology with expertise in sequence analysis, could meaningfully contribute to the selection. At present, external scientists cannot review the data that went into the decision, nor can they suggest other types of data that might improve it."
Even with all of these miscalculations, I still feel getting the vaccine is worth the risk. But that doesn’t mean the process shouldn’t be improved. So once again I will be vaccinated and I will make sure my family is too—but what can we do as citizens to improve this process? What will you do?
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