Because I seem to be suffering from an over-all writer’s block, and to make up for the missing Friday Pics, here is a cavalcade of photos that illustrate what sort of things have been taking up my spare time this spring.

Tiny tiny chickens:

Stockholm and beautiful spring weather:

Mountains of beekeeping supplies needing attention:

Planting of interesting varieties of elderberry and discovering beautiful critters:

The first true democratic assembly of the Swedish Humanist Youth Organisation:

Flowers and bees:

Please don’t give up on me. Next week I’m going to the World Humanist Congress in Washington D.C. That should yield some interesting blog topics and release me from my writer’s block!

bees, beekeeping, chickens, humanism, stockholm

Upon digging through some old folders on the computer I found some nearly psychedelic pictures taken during a course in organism biology. We spent a lot of time in a lab looking at pre-prepped slides of plant and animal tissues, marvelling at the incredibly beautiful staining (and hopefully learning a thing or two in the process). Below is a picture of the sorus of some fern - you’ve probably seen them sometime, small brown clumps on the underside of a fern leaf. Except in botany class, it’s not brown:

A sorus is in fact composed of many small sporangia, where the spores are formed. The sporangia, when mature, flick the spores away from the mother plant. Here’s a close-up of some sporangia, where you can see the individual spores inside them:

I took the pictures simply by holding my digital camera up to the eyepiece (or one of them) of the microscope. Modern technology, eh?

ferns, botany

Today’s picture barely needs a description. This beautiful little bumblebee I rescued from drowning in a jar of newly extracted honey, and undaunted by her near-death experience she simply proceeded to gorge herself on the sweet stuff.

With such a bountiful harvest, little wonder she had trouble lifting off afterwards!

bumblebee, honey

This week’s Pic was taken back in November when I spent a couple of weeks at a marine laboratory on the west coast of Sweden. On a walk along the beach I spotted this:

A seashell from a gastropod, lodged into a crack in the bark of a pine and cracked open. The shell was situated about a meter above ground, if I recall correctly, and there were more cracked shells and shell fragments on the ground beneath it.

I know woodpeckers and other birds lodge nuts and other food into the bark of trees to crack them open, and some shore-living birds bring shelled molluscs to certain rocks away from the shoreline where they crack and eat them. But I have never heard of a woodpecker gathering molluscs, taking them into the trees away from the shore, and lodging them into the bark just above ground! Of course, a human may have done this - possibly with the intent to confuse biologists - but that seems a bit unlikely.

Does anyone have an idea who might have done this?

seashell, mollusc

As I was tidying my harddrive the other day (something which I must admit happens rather more often than tidying my home…) I stumbled across some rather nice photos from last summer. Definitely nice enough to share. And Fridays seem like the day to be sharing photos in the blog world. So here’s the first of what will hopefully be a recurring theme, Friday Pictures. (Because I’ve been known to occasionally dabble in artsy endeavours, I won’t limit myself to Photos.)

Anyone who knows me even a bit will know that my fascination for eusocial insects doesn’t just extend to honeybees, but all eusocial Hymenopterans. Although I know far less about the workings of an ant colony than I do about bees, I probably know more than the average person. However, what’s happening in the above image, I think most people with an interest in nature in general has heard of: Ants harvesting honeydew from aphids. Notice the shiny drop of liquid between the ant’s mandibles!

Aphids are passive feeders, the pressure in the phloem of the host plant often causing more sap to enter the aphid than it can digest. The excess sap is secreted as honedew. I don’t know the species of ant or aphid on the picture, so I don’t know whether they are in a pure mutualistic relationship where the ants protect and move the aphids, the latter only giving up their sweet harvest in response to the gentle ministrations of ants, or whether this is an example of the more casual kind of ant-aphid relationship, where the aphids release the honedew anyway.

On one occasion I have seen a couple of ants mobbing a ladybug threatening some aphids. Unfortunately I did not have my camera on me.

ants, aphids, mutualism

Greg Laden has written a good post on the recent slaughter of a tiger.

That phrase is ambiguous on purpose. Tatiana the tiger killed someone, and was killed for it. It’s a tiger-eat-man-and-gets-shot-down world, eh? As Laden says:

It should always be assumed that large carnivores are deadly…. that’s why we call them l a r g e … c a r n i v o r e s…. See? Carn - i - vores = meat eater. Large meat eater. Large meat eating beast. Look out! Why do people not get this?

He goes on to question the very existence of zoos. Zoo visitors are notoriously bad at behaving themselves, often taunting the animals, trespassing and in other ways putting themselves and others in danger.

Should there be zoos, then? A couple of years back I visited what I believe is the largest zoo in Sweden as part of a course in ethology. We got to personally meet a pack of four male wolves, which was an extremely powerful experience, as well as see the “backstage” lion cage. We were told not to go too close to the bars, because although they were quite close together, lions could still fit a claw or two through them, and these captive lions have absolutely no respect for humans. That’s what happens when you try to treat large carnivores well: They see you as a bipedal snack. Wild lions at least have marginal respect for humans, because they don’t know us as well.

Let’s just say a male lion lunging at you is one of the scariest things imaginable. Even if there are thick iron bars between you and him.

One of my coursemates made the mistake of staring into the eyes of a silverback gorilla a moment too long. That also created quite a ruckus.

Anyway, apart from the large carnivores, the zoo obviously also keeps dolphins, giraffes and other animals. We were told that apart from quite a lot of research being done on site, many of the endangered animals are used for breeding. Zoos, the keepers explained, exist for conservation purposes.

I can understand that, and I don’t really see any better way. If we need to help animals to breed, then we need to keep animals in captivity in some way. The question, I suppose, is whether zoos should really be built for visitors (other than students of biology), or whether we ought to start thinking ONLY of conservation and research. Chances are the cages would then be constructed in ways better for the animals and safer for the humans. But the educational aspect and public outreach would be completely lost. Are a few maimed visitors and mad monkeys worth it?

zoo, carnivores, tigers, lions, wolves

Tangled Bank #89 up at Aardvarchaeology now. I haven’t had time to look through all of it but so far I really liked the entry about dogs and wolves.

Over the past week or so, I’ve been watching the amazing 2006 BBC documentary Planet Earth. Surprisingly, I have actually learned a fair few things that I didn’t know before, which is obviously a great plus. That’s not why I watch nature documentaries though. I suspect I do it for much the same reason some people go to church and worship. The sense of wonder and amazement a well done nature film creates in me is truly a natural high.

And Planet Earth has been the most worthwhile experience yet. My eyes ever widening I stared at the screen as a great white shark engulfs a seal, shooting out of the water with incredible speed and force. My heart fluttered in my chest and threatened to explode as I took in the grace of a hunting snow leopard of the Mountains. And the ending of the Caves episode - no spoilers here - actually made me cry.

The idea that all of this exists independently of humans, that this beauty was not made to please us, only increases my wonder. It seems to me absolutely absurd that some think the absence of an intelligent designer in any way diminishes the glory of the supposed creation.

I have only one complaint about the series as such, and that is the same as about every other nature documentary I have watched: The music and sound effects.

Don’t get me wrong, for the most part the music is actually perfect. But sometimes, it is very apparent what it is the makers intend for you to think and feel about certain images, and it doesn’t always agree with what I actually do feel. For instance, most hunts in which something small and cute dies are accompanied by dark, ominous music. Sharks hunting seal are clearly evil, as are lions hunting elephants or wolves hunting pretty much anything.* But river dolphins hunting fish get a happy tune instead. (In my head, I add screams of panicked fear as I watch the fish jump out of the water to get away.)

The sound effects are mostly alright, but sometimes it is just too obvious that they’ve been added. I love sped-up images of flowers opening, but to add sound effects to something that could not possibly make a noise as it takes hours to happen is just ridiculous.

So far I have seen seven out of the eleven episodes. I have heard the last, Ocean Deep, is a masterpiece. Given how much I loved the Blue Planet episode on deep oceans, I doubt I’ll be disappointed.

---

* Something about all this strikes me as exceptionally odd: Humans tend to love cats and orca, for being intelligent and cute. Crocodiles and sharks and other terrifying animals are treated with fear and loathing. And yet, which of these have a penchant for playing with their food while the food is still alive? It sure isn’t the latter group…

planet earth, nature, bbc