Margay cat of Brasil mimics primates to lure prey

// September 1st, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Science Communication

Altered image, original by Malene Thyssen

At some point in this post I’m going to be tempted to say “copy cat,” so I’m just going to say it now. Copy Cat. There, it’s out of my system, now let’s move on.

On fieldwork in Brasil (so jealous right now) a group of researchers saw a large cat called a margay making some weird noises. It sounded like a pied tamarin pup, a small, supercute primate species, and I recommend you click through that link so you can bask in the cuteness.

In pied tamarin society only the alpha female gives birth, usually to twins, and the pups are looked after mostly by the father. So when the margay made some pup-like mewls, an adult male pied tamarin came down to see what the deal was.

The pied tamarin stayed in the area for a good half hour while the male was keeping an eye out. But as he was watching, the margay made his move. Across some branches… almost… almost… but at the last moment the pied tamarin saw the cat and raised the alarm. All the pied tamarins in the group high tailed outta there quicker than a pirate on shore leave.

In this instance, the margay went without its meal, but a cat using noises to attract prey is unusual. In fact, this was the first time (report came out June 2009) a feline from the neotropical region was found to mimic animal cries. What’s really interesting about the report is that it says local Amazon jungle inhabitants had already told them that the margay and other cats in the area mimicked animals to catch prey. But we don’t accept it scientifically until some scientists witness it and write a report. Just strikes me as unnecessary. Maybe I’m being unscientific, I don’t know.

The margay is an interesting feline. It spends most of its time in trees. It is one of only two cats with the ankles needed to climb down trees head first, the other one being the clouded leopard. It’s been seen dangling from trees hanging by only one foot. I wonder if that observation was made by a scientist?

Talk like a pirate day coming soon! Prepare yerself.

// August 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Jibber Jabber

Ahoy there!

Just a quick reminder that the most important day in the year is coming up – Talk like a Pirate Day! It’s on September 19, which this year is a Sunday. ‘Tis an excellent day for some serious pirate frivolity, particularly in a drinking-in-the-backyard setting. Start planning yer party now!

Did the CIA spike a bakery in France with hallucinogens?

// August 27th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Drugs, Poisons, Sex and Reproduction, The Realm of Bizzare, Unethics

On August 15, 1951 a small town in southern France called Pont-Saint-Esprit briefly entered the twilight zone. Hundreds of people reported acute psychotic episodes and physical symptoms such as nausea. They experienced traumatic hallucinations, and 50 of those affected were put in asylums. Five died. The event was later traced back to pain maudit – cursed bread.

In 2009 American journalist Hank Albarelli cited evidence that it was actually caused by CIA experiments into LSD. His book A Terrible Mistakesuggests the mass hallucinations experienced that day was a government funded field experiment into the newly found drug.

There would be potential for LSD to be used as chemical warfare – sprayed onto an army it would turn soldiers into… well… I don’t know but with guns involved I think it would be bad. I’m not sure if his conclusion is correct, but his article makes a compelling argument.

I have to say, conspiracy theories really do it for me. I think they’re great. Nothing like a little paranoia to keep you on your toes. There are, however, other opinions on what caused the Pont-Saint-Esprit madness.

One explanation is ergotism. Ergot is a group of fungi (most prominently Claviceps purpurea) which grow on rye, wheat and related grain-producing when-I-grow-up-I-want-to-be-bread plants. The fungus produces a neat little cocktail of alkaloid drugs which cause spasms, diarrhea, nausea and hallucinations – similar to those experienced at Pont-Saint-Esprit that fateful day.

In fact, the psychosis could have been caused by ergot or LSD, both have similar symptoms. LSD was first derived from the ergot alkaloid ergotamine. Controlled doses of ergot poisons have been used to treat migraine headaches and control bleeding after childbirth. Accidental, and dangerous, ingestion of ergot was known as Saint Anthony’s Fire (not to be confused with Saint Elmo’s Fire) for the monks of Saint Anthony who were really good at treating it. Ergotism was also blamed for Agent Scully’s hallucinations in the episode Never Again, where she gets a badass tattoo with some red ink that could have been coloured with ergot.

Greek myth time! In Ancient Greece annual initiation ceremonies were held for the cult of Persephone and Demeter. Demeter was the goddess of grain, farming and plenty, a bit of an Earth mother goddess with rich wheat coloured hair and a flowing dress. She guaranteed a good harvest. She had a daughter called Persephone, who loved the flowers. One day when Persephone was looking at some flowers in a field, Hades the god of the underworld noticed her, opened up the ground and abducted her. When Demeter noticed her daughter was gone, she was stricken with grief and refused to bring the harvest.

Persephone was trapped in the underworld for months on end. Desperate for her hand in marriage, Hades would offer her food, but Persephone know not to eat the food of the dead or she would never be able to leave. However one day Hades offered her a pomegranate, her favourite dish, and she ate six seeds.

Up in the mortal world, the land was dying. People were starving, having never experienced such famine. No matter how they prayed to the goddess she would not bring the harvest. Seeing the despair of the people, Zeus the king of the gods went down to his brother Hades and asked if he could bring Persephone back to her mother. Awkward conversation ensued.

Hades finally agreed, but oh noes! Persephone had eaten the food of the dead! The six pomegranate seeds meant that she had to spend six months of the year in the underworld as Hades wife. The other six months she would live with Demeter her mother. That’s why we have the seasons – autumn and winter when Demeter mourns, spring and summer when Demeter is reunited with her daughter.

Anyhoo, to be initiated into the Demeter and Persephone cult was called the Eleusinian Mysteries, some mysteries including this myth with added details. I think some of the mysteries included the use of pomegranate as a contraceptive (the link between fertility and death, perhaps.) You also had to fast during the initiation, and afterwards you would drink a barley drink called Kykeon and great revelations would be revealed.

Kykeon, made of barley, quite possibly tainted with ergot. Revelation or hallucination, you tell me.

Apothecary bottles found in a collectibles shop

// August 21st, 2010 // No Comments » // Drugs

About a week ago I was in Gulgong, a small town in New South Wales near the wine region of Mudgee. The main road was spelled Mayne Road, and was brown stone rather than tarmac. Along the footpaths were old stone troughs for watering horses. Key landmarks included the Ten Dollar Motel and the Gulgong Butchers Cafe. It was an old gold mining town which had lost its gold but kept its rural charm.

Wandering the streets I came across a collectibles shop filled with coloured glass jugs and gold rimmed plates. Amongst the copper kettles I found these old bottles from an apothecary, dated around the 1800′s I believe.

The craftsmanship is stunning, and they teased my imagination. What were these drugs used for? What did they look like, when those bottles were filled, and who was the chemist who filled them?

I have since looked into some of the medicines written on the bottles.

Iodoformum is now called tri-iodomethane (CHI3). The crystals are lemon yellow and have a disagreeable odour and taste. I think it was used to treat tuberculosis, and is still used in homeopathy for a range of ailments. Hexamine may have been mixed with hippuric acid to make methenamine hippurate, which was used to treat lower urinary tract infections. Salol was a white powder derived from salicylic acid, the active ingredient in willow bark, which we take as acetylsalicylic acid in asprin. It was used to reduce pain and fever. Menthol you probably recognise from chest rubs. It comes from mint oil, though it can be made synthetically. As well as clearing sinuses it can ease sore throats and muscle pains, and is one of the ingredients in tiger balm.

While researching I found an issue of the British Medical Journal from September 5, 1885 which is an interesting read.

National Science Week

// August 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // Jibber Jabber

Just a quick one to say that National Science Week has officially started. If you’re in Australia, there’s tons of awesome science shows and stuff to do this week. Post a comment if you know of something particularly incredible that’s happening.

I’m in Parkes, NSW (home of the Dish) at the moment, so I’m missing out on most of it. I’m feeling pretty FOMO actually. FOMO is a great adjective, isn’t it. Start using it too and maybe it will really take off.

Pea found growing in lung

// August 15th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // The Realm of Bizzare

Well it don’t happen every day. The BBC reported last week that a Massachusetts man was rushed to hospital with a collapsed lung. X-rays revealed that a 1.25 centimeter pea plant had sprouted inside his lung. He’d been battling emphysema for months, perhaps the extra moisture helped germination. He’s now recovering at home.

When I was young I was always slightly terrified that I would accidentally eat an apple seed and die from a tree growing inside my stomach. Fortunately we have acid in our stomachs that stops that kind of thing (right guys? I can eat apples now, right?) I grew up on horror stories of ancient torture techniques where someone was forced to lie on a table while bamboo shoots grew from under them and THROUGH them. That is not cool.

Then there’s the Triffids, and the pod people, and the druids who imprisoned people in the hollows of oaks! Who does that to someone?

You know what, I’m just not going to think about it. I ate a watermelon seed today, and I’m just not going to think about it.

How does a pea start growing in a lung? Is it something that could pretty easily happen?

Doctors say that in this case, the man must have accidentally inhaled a pea a dinner. The pea found itself in a warm, moist locale with a good source of oxygen and decided to give it a shot. Poor choice, mister Pea.

I wonder if there are any more cases where plants have started sprouting inside someone…

Adopt a microbe from the deep sea

// August 10th, 2010 // No Comments » // Just for Fun, Science Communication

Would you like to adopt a microbe from the deep sea? Sounded like fun to me, so I have adopted Mariprofundus ferrooxydans, a fancy pants microbe that produces ribbons of rust. That’s him in the picture, ain’t he cute. He’ll grow up to be a fearsome microbe one day, methinks I’ll call him redbeard.

If you’d like to adopt one for yourself, click through. It’s free, and you can do fun activities like model your microbe out of balloons, write a haiku about the microbe, or take swabs of your teeth and see what kind of bacteria grow.

Here’s my haiku about Mariprofundus ferroxydans

Redbeard be your name
Rust ribbons dost thou excrete
Let’s burn and pillage!

Solar powered laptop bags and handbags

// August 5th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Science Art, Science at Home

Voltaic Generator Bag

Winter sun is something worth enjoying. Spreading out lizardlike and soaking up UV rays to make Vitamin D is an excellent endeavour. I often take my laptop out with me and blog in the sunlight.

Today as I was doing just that, my laptop started complaining about low charge. It made me wonder if you could solar power your laptop. Turns out you can.

You can have a panel on just about anything. Most only charge small devices like a phone, but you can have one on your desk, one on your bike, or even one on your hat (powering a small fan which spins faster as it gets more sun.)

The one pictured is a laptop bag with solar panels on the front, and it’s capable of charging a laptop. They charge a battery inside the bag, which you can run your laptop on.

Solar Handbag

I did a bit more snooping, and I found some fashionable handbags that do a similar job. These were sold on auction in mid July (one of a kind, probably couldn’t have afforded them anyway), and feature sexy solar panels that can charge your ipod, camera or phone as you walk.

It’s part of the portable light project, which has sadly finished. They create flexible photovoltaic textiles for use in developing countries. The material lends itself to traditional weaving and sewing, so people can incorporate the technology into their own culture. Open source electricity.

The solar units charge during the day, and at night work as lamps. They also have a USB port to charge phones, making it easier for traveling artists to connect with stores or midwives to seek clinic advice and diagnosis.

A mighty fine endeavour, but I’d be happy with something that quickly charged my iPod nano because he has problems. It leaks charge all over the joint like a poorly toilet trained puppy. I leave it switched off and locked in my bag, and next time I try to use it, it’s gone to Davey Jones locker. Perhaps it be time to update to an iPhone…

Science of Inception – sedatives, dissociatives and dreaming

// August 1st, 2010 // 6 Comments » // Drugs, Science in the Movies

Inception is a movie which grabs you by the throat and won’t let you go. Having seen it, I can’t stop thinking about it and I just have to write something down. For those who haven’t seen it, I will keep this vague enough to avoid spoilers.

Dreaming is, well, weird. We don’t really know why or how it happens, though we have plenty of theories. I’ve had dreams so real that afterward I think they happened in life. It makes you think, if we can dream or imagine something that looks real, how real is reality? Could it all be a chemical hallucination, reality merely a response to stimuli that triggers a release of endogenous drugs? What makes reality more real than a dream?

If you really start thinking about it, nothing seems real. So let’s not think about it right now.

Instead let’s talk about sedatives – drugs which relax the body and the mind. Examples include alcohol, kava, valium, and barbiturates which are sometimes used as general anaesthetic (we made one at Uni once – sleepiest class ever!) Sedatives can be used to treat insomnia, and come with the danger of addiction.

So sedatives can put you to sleep, but what about dreams? The few times I’ve had general anaesthetic I haven’t had any dreams at all, and I’ve never noticed different dreams after a big night of drinking rum or sharing kava on the islands.

I’ve been racking my brains trying to think of a drug that enhances dreams, and I think I’ve found one. Ketamine, the horse tranquiliser known on the streets as Special K. They had it once in House – the episode “No Reason” starts with House getting shot and given ketamine as anaesthetic. The rest of the episode he hallucinates wildly and finally decides everything is a dream and kills a patient to prove it – then it flashes back to the start as House is rushed to the emergency room and says “Tell Cuddy I want ketamine.” And the whole thing was a dream. Best episode EVER.

Based on that and descriptions on Erowid I think ketamine is a good contender for inducing dreams.

It can act like a sedative (you know, seeing as it’s a tranquiliser and all) but it’s actually classed as a dissociative. Being awake under a sedative means being able to react to stimulus, but with ketamine someone is in a trancelike state with analgesic (not anal gesic, sir, the pills go in your mouth) and amnesic properties.

If I know a dream is about to become a nightmare, I can usually just wake up out of it. Sweet, right? Yes, except sometimes when I wake up I try to turn on the light and the power is out. Then I know I’m still dreaming, and the nightmare starts again. I’ve woken up into other dreams ten times in a row before actually waking up. Does that happen to anyone else, or am I as mad as Ahab?

So, even after all that research and writing, I still can’t get Inception out of my head. I think I’ll have to see it again next time I’m on shore. Come with me?

Big Blog Theory announced – Second place in best Australian blogger!

// August 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // Jibber Jabber

A somewhat belated announcement – A Schooner of Science was awarded second place in The Big Blog Theory, sharing the runner up position with Mr Science Show. Huzzah!

Congratulations to the winner, Bec from Save Your Breath for Running Ponies. The blog has a really interesting writing style, a bit like a novel with characters and dialogue. I’m looking forward to seeing her coverage of National Science Week.

Thank ye to all who voted for me, I’m honoured to be Australia’s equal-second-best science blogger and I couldn’t have done it without your support. Let’s dance a merry jig about my ship and down a mug o’ rum in celebration!