You're gonna need a better trap than that.

Here's a neat article about gorillas that have learned to dismantle snares set by bushmeat hunters.
http://www.ecorazzi.com/2013/07/19/young-gorillas-seen-dismantling-snares-to-protect-their-own/

Disgust at the familiar

NPR's Cosmos and Culture blog recently posted an wonderful article about coats made of human chest hair (men's) and ice cream made of human breast milk (women's). Public reaction to each of these products was enthusiastic disgust, but upon further consideration, one must ask, why? We eat ice cream made from the breast milk of cows and wear coats of the hair of weasels (mink) and don't bat and eye at it.

Author of the post, Tania Lombrozo, speculates that our very familiarity with humans is what elicits disgust. Conversely, the way we think about other, non-pet animals (distanced, anonymous, or not at all) suppresses any disgust toward the products. Strikes me as quite similar to the aversions we have toward eating "non-food animals" like dogs and cats, or the squeamishness people exhibit when butchering animals that they profess to love eating, when prepared.

It's a shame, though. Imagine the savings in resources and energy if our milk supply came from human breast milk donors and our "wool" sweaters were woven from human hair clippings... Sorry, am I grossing you out?

You can read the post here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/07/01/197453457/chest-hair-breast-milk-and-human-disgust

All the food you thought you knew...

Photographer Ajay Malghan has competed a photo series called Naturally Modified. His work for this series started out as a project in graduate school two years ago as the artist's commentary on genetically modified foods. In his own words, "Everything's so processed now... They're adding stuff, so why can't I?"

Malghan creates his photos by shining different colored lights through thin slices of fruits and vegetables onto light-sensitive paper. The result is a photograph of the colored shadow created. And these images aren't easily recognized as any food you've ever eaten. By enlarging the images and distorting the colors, Malghan makes these familiar foods into subjects no longer recognizable. It's the uncanny feeling of removing familiarity that Malghan says allows the viewer to be removed from their previous relationship with the food. He says that such distance "makes you realize how little we know about stuff."

He's also, apparently, experimented with this same process for deli meats.

You can find his portfolio at http://www.ajaymalghanphotography.com/

Exploited Artists!

Caddis fly larvae build cocoons with whatever debris may be lying around. So, artist (or slave driver?!) Hubert Duprat decided to leave gold and precious jewels just lying around. The result: what Duprat describes as spectacular bio-organic jewelry. And he's taking all the credit, might I add.

I have to admit, this is kind of awesome and creepy all at the same time.

You can read more about Duprat and his  caddis fly larvae art here: http://boingboing.net/2013/04/23/caddis-fly-larvae-coaxed-into.html

Kantian Philosophy Embedded in Environmental Policy

I'm taking a topics seminar on environmental policy formation and risk assessment.
As pros and cons and likelihoods and impacts are measured, evaluated and debated, I recognize a common theme. Value. Human-assigned value. Value of humans, to humans, by humans for humans.

No matter how much NEPA documents express American value of the natural world, all applications of the act and its required analyses are inherently anthropocentric. Kantian, even.

Makes me a bit sad to think about it. No matter your intentions, society will make regulations that prioritize benefits to society itself. Makes sense, of course... but still kind of sad that our quality control mechanisms are still so selfish. Or, perhaps more appropriately, not completely altruistic.

Flower Farms

     When we think of flowers, we think of flower gardens, we think of florists and greenhouses, but rarely do we think of farms. This image is of a Dutch flower farm, but thousands of these exist throughout Asia and South America, too. I find this image striking because we expect our corn to come from uniform rows, but to farm flowers as commodities seems to fly in the face of the reasons we purchase flowers to begin with.
     Perhaps it's just me, but humans plant, raise and buy flowers for their aesthetic appeal. Flowers are beautiful, artistic, even. We buy them to celebrate accomplishments, to communicate affection. Gifts of flowers are loaded with sentiment and meaning. It's more than just about the blossoms that will fade after a week or so, it's about expression, it's about bringing Nature's artwork indoors, into our lives.
     If this is true, then it's seems paradoxical that the symbols of our expression, of Nature's beauty, would be farmed as commodities in neat and uniform rows, completely removed from any natural setting. No flower garden here, just a means to an end. Certainly, flowers have been commodified since we've been buying them, but the act of ordering or purchasing flowers for a loved one rarely seems like a commercial one to the individual. It's an act of love, right? Not one of consumerism.
     This image makes very clear the system in which even that purchase of love contributes to, and that those garden-variety flowers are mass produced with the same pesticides and fertilizers as those other commercial crops. Flowers as crops is an idea not widely recognized, I think.

Noise Pollution Evolution

A new study featured in Discovery Magazine aimed to examine the effects of urban cacophony on house sparrows— you know, those ubiquitous songbirds that seem to hang out in every urban area. The Conclusion: urban noises can interfere with the calls between songbirds and their chicks. Makes sense. But what does it mean? Parents who can't hear and thus respond to their offspring can't be the best parents, meaning that chicks reared in the city are less healthy than their counterparts chirping and fluttering around in bucolic bliss.
    The study was performed by the University of Sheffield's Julie Schroeder, who found that loud noises drown out communication between mother house sparrows and their chicks, including the calls chicks make to beg for food. Only a handful of other studies have examined the effect of loud noises on songbirds mating and nesting habits, though none have quite tackled the serious maternal questions raised long ago in Dr. Seuss's seminal work, Are You My Mother? Sheffield's study is also made unique by the fact that she focused on a well-known group of sparrows living on Lundy Island, in Devon, England. These sparrows regularly trade swap their eggs among nests, which results in some parents raising chicks they're not related to (and I find myself wondering if all sparrows do this, or if it's just a British thing). This kid-swapping helped researchers separate the effect of a sparrow's parentage from the effect of its environment, just in case the genetically weaker sparrows were somehow more prone to doing something stupid... like live next to a roiling electrical generator, which is exactly what some of them were doing.
     The generators on Lundy Island (built in 2001) run continuously from 6 to 9 pm and emit 70 decibels of noise. Schroeder compared the nest boxes located in the generators' noise zone to nests located in a quieter zone. She found that, while the noise has no real effect on the health of adult birds (female birds could even lay the same number of eggs), it did adversely affect their offspring. Though chicks in quiet areas had a 25 percent chance of living long enough to fledge (such are the harsh realities of birdy life), the chicks in noisy areas had only a 21 percent chance. Plus, those urban chicks weighed less than their country counterparts, most likely, Schroeder believes, because mother birds visited their chicks less often and provided them with less food.
     The fact that adult birds seemed in fine health led Schroeder to single out noise as the culprit in the weakness of urban chicks, since, say, if air pollution had been stunting chick growth, adults would have been unhealthy too. Researchers suspect these findings may help explain the house sparrow's sudden disappearance in Western Europe and North America. "If what we suggest takes place in big cities too," she says, "it is likely to play an important role in the sparrow population dynamic, and is probably one cause of the dramatic population crash that we are currently observing." Discovery Magazine reminds us that the exact cause of the chicks' undernourishment is still uncertain — there may very well be a barrier between mother and chick communication in urban areas or loud noises may scare off  insects the birds eat.

It's probably pretty important, though, for us to keep track of the plight of these songbirds, lest -God forbid!- the pigeon become the only bird we can look forward to seeing on our stroll to work in the big city!