A little depressing

The webs of aging spiders are not as well-spun as those of their younger counterparts.  My web is getting a little rough around the edges.

Randomly timed article...

...on the attributes of effective liars.  I'm sure it has nothing to do with current events.

A taxonomy that I can get into

So maybe we can identify the gene for buck-toothedness



Image by Neil Bromhall/OSF/Getty

Latest genome to be sequenced - the "coolest mammal on the planet", the naked mole rat.  Jokes aside, it's a remarkable animal with a complex social structure.

Fisher decline

When I was a kid, I owned just about every Golden Guide that was available.  Used to carry them around in my back pocket while I scoured the North Florida woods near my home.  I valued them for what they could tell me about the species I encountered, but I was just as fascinated by the ones that came from faraway locales that I could only imagine.  I remember being fascinated by the subarctic weasels like martens and fishers.  I still have a mental image of their depiction of a fisher, standing alertly on a spruce limb with its squirrel prey.

So, it's a little depressing to read that fishers (at least those in California) are in serious decline.  A study conducted by the Hoopa Valley Tribe and the University of Massachusetts shows that, between 1998 and 2005, fisher numbers went down almost 80% on the Hoopa reservation in northwestern California.  A number of factors may be at work, including habitat destruction, disease, and bobcat predation.

Jaws

Jaws apparently weren't an instant hit in the world's oceans.  New research published in Nature shows that it was almost 30 million years after the appearance of the first jawed vertebrates before they were able to make a serious dent in the success of previously dominant jawless fish.  Also worth noting that there was no detectable niche shift on the the part of the developing jawed fishes to fill the niches vacated by their declining counterparts. 

Science and Tot-Mom

The world is abuzz with today's acquittal of Casey Anthony, accused of murdering her two-year old daughter Cayley.  I hadn't followed the case closely until this weekend, when circumstances resulted in a an unavoidable exposure to a barrage of closing arguments from both sides.  When word broke that the jury was bringing back a verdict today, I couldn't help but pay attention.  Then, when the not-guilty bomb dropped, I was drawn to social media like Twitter and Facebook to follow the reaction.  I've been a bit stunned at the racial twist that seems to be developing in the responses - a popular post points to the discreprancy between this verdict and the conviction of Michael Vick for animal abuse.  Other posts suggest that if Casey Anthony's first name were of a more ethnic nature, the outcome would have been different.  I've even seen a few people making reference to Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela.  Really?

The most common racially-driven comparison seems to revolve around the "We got OJ, you got Casey." theme.  I don't really get it.  I don't see where race enters the picture (although I do think it may play a role in the aftermath - Casey Anthony as a reality TV star?)  What I do find most interesting, though, also involves a comparison between the infamous 1995 O.J. Simpson trial and the current media circus.  Among the most disheartening aspects of the Simpson trail (and there were many) was the degree to which the defense team was able to convince jurors that the tremendous weight of the scientific evidence could be disregarded as unreliable or misleading.  I saw the Simpson case, in many ways, as a rejection of science. 

My limited knowledge of the Anthony case suggests to me that, this time around, the opposite is true.  While circumstances seem to point toward this young mother as the likely killer of her child, the LACK of convincing scientific evidence is apparently the major reason that she's being set free.  That, in some sad, sad way, seems like a victory.

This land