Link Banana

This is rather old, but it was news to me: when taught to use currency, monkeys pay for sex.

(via Wired Science)

The Big Picture really should try to do a post about this. Even Passport’s rather small picture is impressive.

More than 10,000 people have been mobilized to clean up green algae that has invaded the Olympic sailing venue in Qingdao, Shandong, China. The Qingdao Olympic Sailing Committee estimates that the area will be cleared before July 15.

Sarah Bird desperately wishes that she could change her son’s sexual orientation: she wants him to be gay.

How could I not dream of having a son who cared deeply about all the right things: fashion, musical theater, interior décor? But mostly a son who cared deeply about the most right thing of all: his mother? How could I not yearn for a son who would tell me that the bias cut emphasized my saddlebag thighs, that no one was staining concrete anymore, that the tiniest bit of white on the upper lids would open up my eyes and make me look 10 years younger? And now that California is handing out marriage licenses, what mother could resist the opportunity to micromanage a union in which both participants would obsess with her about whether the color theme celadon and peach or apple green and hot pink best expresses their love?

Not unrelated: William Saletan discusses a feasible genetic cause of male homosexuality.

Psychology Today has a great article about the errors in reasoning that (vestigial) fear causes us to make. The ten:

• Risk and emotion are inseparable.
• Fear skews risk analysis in predictable ways.
• We underestimate threats that creep up on us.
• We prefer that which (we think) we can control.
• We substitute one risk for another.
• Using your cortex isn’t always smart.
• The “risk thermostat” varies widely.
• Risk arguments cannot be divorced from values.
• “Natural” risks are easier to accept.
• Worrying about risk is itself risky.

(via Lone Gunman)

Because I didn’t know slugs could be so colorful.

(via kottke.org)

I feel like I heard of this idea recently, but I can’t remember where. It intrigues me.

In sum, I was suffering from a severe case of biobigotry: the persistent and often irrational desire to be surrounded only by those species of which one approves, and to exclude any animals, plants and other life forms that one finds offensive.

It was not my first episode of the disorder, and evidently I don’t suffer alone. “Throughout history there have been vilified animals and totemic animals,” said John Fraser, a conservation psychologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society. “There are the animals you don’t like and that you dismiss as small brown vermin, and the animals whose attributes you absolutely want to own,” to be a tiger, a bear, lupine leader of the pack.

This article from The Economist’s a little long and dry, but I did find it’s conclusion rather intriguing.

Evolutionary biologists tend to be atheists, and most would be surprised if the scientific investigation of religion did not end up supporting their point of view. But if a propensity to religious behaviour really is an evolved trait, then they have talked themselves into a position where they cannot benefit from it, much as a sceptic cannot benefit from the placebo effect of homeopathy. Maybe, therefore, it is God who will have the last laugh after all—whether He actually exists or not.

It’s best not to call them all facts, because a lot are just playful space wasters. Still it’s interesting:

6 Barbary macaques have a distinctive way to get their mates to make a sperm donation: yelling. If the female does not shout, the male almost never climaxes.

7 How do we know this? German primatologist Dana Pfefferle watched a group of macaques, counting the females’ yells and the males’ pelvic thrusts. She says this work is “quite weird, but it’s science.”

8 Here in the US of A, that kind of stuff ends up on YouTube.

(via clusterflock)

E. O. Wilson’s dream, as announced at TED a few years ago, is similar to a Wikipedia of animals. Though I don’t know or care much about zoology, it’s neat to see this thing go online — even if they seem rather unprepared for the volume of traffic they’re getting. As it explains itself:

EOL is an unprecedented global effort and we want you to be a part of it. Natural history museums, botanical gardens, other research institutions, and dedicated individuals are working to create the most complete biodiversity database on the Web, but without your help it cannot be done.

Virginia Morrell’s article about how animals can learn and create was much more interesting than I expected. But then the last time I read National Geographic was when I was forced to in the sixth grade.

But if animals are simply machines, how can the appearance of human intelligence be explained? Without Darwin’s evolutionary perspective, the greater cognitive skills of people did not make sense biologically. Slowly the pendulum has swung away from the animal-as-machine model and back toward Darwin. A whole range of animal studies now suggest that the roots of cognition are deep, widespread, and highly malleable.

(via brijit)

Robin Henning has a great story about the study and science supporting the usefulness (or uselessness) of play. She comes to a positive but reserved conclusion:

It’s a pretty idea, the notion that play gives you hope for a better tomorrow, but science demands something a little less squishy. Science demands that if there are important long-term benefits to play, they must be demonstrated. That is why studies of play-deprived rats are so fascinating; they offer objective evidence that in at least some animals, insufficient play can have serious consequences.

I just noticed a rather interesting argument that’s broken out between Slate’s William Saletan and the authors of Embryo, Robert George and Christopher Tollefson. The rather civil confrontation is over when an embryo becomes a distinct person. It began in Sunday’s Times Book Review, with a rebuttal at the National Review, and Saletan’s response to the rebuttal at Slate (title link), from which this bit is taken.

The embryo does have a program, and its launch does mark the sharpest line in human development. But even that line is dotted. Transitions that are supposed to happen at fertilization happen after or without it. As the embryo grows toward maturity, it becomes more like a person. Its individuality solidifies. Its body plan and nervous system develop. Its boundary with the mother closes. It placenta passes away. These, too, are lines in human development. It’s reasonable to build moderate IVF, stem-cell, and abortion policies along such lines, even if, like the rest of biology, they’re not absolutely clear.