Biology

Reading Indigenous Authors

Mei-Mei1 Comment

Today happens to be the last day of Native American History Month here in the US, so it seems like a good time to mention some of the Indigenous authors I’ve been reading this year. I’m always trying to diversify my reading in various ways, and recently I’ve been enjoying some Native viewpoints across various genres.

Calling for a Blanket Dance

by Oscar Hokeah

I discovered Oscar Hokeah’s writing through his blog here on WordPress. When I saw that his debut novel was coming out, I immediately requested it at the library. Calling for a Blanket Dance is a contemporary generational family drama, with a similar feeling to Pachinko or Roots. It tells the life and struggles of Ever Geimausaddle through the myriad voices of his family members, finally ending with himself. It was such an engaging read, and I loved the writing and the voices of each of the narrators. I also loved the format of interconnected vignettes that fit together to tell and overarching story. Hokeah draws a lot from his own life and family, so it feels very authentic.

Braiding Sweetgrass

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

As a biologist, this nonfiction exploration of Native ecological wisdom really appealed to me, but it is so well written that it is very accessible to nonscientists as well. We often have a stereotype of Native peoples being “noble savages,” living in perfect harmony with nature, and this book explores some of the Native myths and practices behind this, both from Kimmerer’s Potawatomi heritage as well as the peoples of upstate New York where she lives. It also backs up observations with clear, accurate scientific details, much of which I remembered from college botany, but I’ve been learning some new things, too.

Though there is some interconnectedness, each chapter mostly reads like its own distinct essay, which makes it easy to pick up and put down; it’s not really the kind of book to read straight through as fast as possible. I’ve been listening to it on audiobook (narrated by the author) while I drive, and each essay is conveniently about the length of my commute.

A Snake Falls to Earth

by Darcie Little Badger

I just started reading this one for the recent Big Library Read on the Libby app (which allows for unlimited copies for lending). The sophomore effort from the Elatsoe author (also a scientist!) has been nominated for numerous awards, including this year’s Newbery Medal. It is a bit of a slow tale, but it has really great elements of magic mixed with a coming-of-age story. It pulls from folklore of DLB’s Lipan Apache heritage. If you like YA fantasy like I do, I think you will enjoy this one.

Finding My Dance

by Ria Thundercloud

Ok, I’m going to throw a picture book in here, too. I read this to my kids, and while it was just a touch above their age (better for early elementary), as a former dancer myself I loved it. It tells the author’s journey into the dance world, starting with powwows with her family. The pictures were lovely, too. Here is the author performing the Eagle Dance mentioned in the book.

What’s next on my list? On my to-read list:

  • The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, a contemporary adult novel about a haunted bookstore set in 2020
  • Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley, a contemporary YA mystery/thriller nominated for a lot of awards
  • anything by Joy Harjo, the former US Poet Laureate

If you are looking for further recommendations, here are some great infographics from the bookstory Room of One’s Own

Clawdia the rare blue lobster rescued from local seafood restaurant

Mei-Mei8 Comments

Need a feel-good news story to pick you up today?  Here you go.  It’s certainly nice to see Ohio in the news for non-COVID reasons.

The Akron Zoo, where I worked briefly about 10 years ago, recently got a new resident: a blue lobster.  Employees at the local Red Lobster restaurant, which is literally down the road from me, discovered this specimen in one of their shipments and reached out to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which put them in touch with the Akron Zoo.  It turns out that only one in about 2 million lobsters are blue, which certainly makes this lobster pretty special!

A blue lobster taken at the Lobster Trap fish market by Jane Carter / CC BY-SA

“Clawde” then got adopted and relocated to the zoo, which happens to have a lot of experienced aquatic animal keepers because many were hired on there after SeaWorld Ohio closed in 2000.  After settling in there, zoo staff discovered that the lobster was actually female, and she was renamed “Clawdia.”  She’s being housed in the Komodo Kingdom building where the aquatic exhibits are located, though you can’t visit her yet as all zoo building are currently closed to the public due to COVID-19 precautions (the zoo itself is open).

File:Blue-lobster.jpg
Blue American lobster (Homarus americanus). Taken at the New England Aquarium (Boston, MA, December 2006. Copyright © 2006 Steven G. Johnson and donated to Wikipedia under GFDL and CC-by-SA.

Clawdia’s special color is due to a genetic mutation: she produces an excess amount of a certain protein, which interacts with a red carotenoid molecule known as astaxanthin to form a blue complex known as crustacyanin. As rare as Clawdia is, blue lobsters are caught by fisherman fairly regularly, probably every year.  Even rarer are yellow lobsters and albino lobsters!  And some lobsters can actually be two different colors on their right and left sides, like little crustacean jesters.

So kudos to the Red Lobster staff for recognizing Clawdia’s uniqueness and helping her live out her life in comfort.

ETA: If you want to help support Clawdia, you can donate $50 for her care through the Akron Zoo’s Care for a Critter program, and receive an adorable blue lobster stuffed animal for a limited time.

Read more:

Akron Zoo adopts rare blue lobster from Red Lobster restaurant

Red Lobster employee saves rare blue lobster from becoming dinner

 

 

Engineering a squirrel obstacle course: Practical deterrent, entertainment, or science?

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Like many of us bored during the COVID stay-at-home period, YouTuber Mark Rober turned to a new hobby: backyard birding.  But Mark is a former NASA engineer (you may know him from his glitter bomb bait package video), so when he saw squirrels getting into his bird feeder, this new hobby spun out into an experiment in squirrel-proof bird feeders, which then (naturally) eventually involved into building a Ninja Warrior-style squirrel obstacle course in his yard.

Rober’s squirrel obstacle course

His YouTube video on the subject is highly entertaining, but what impressed me most as a scientist was…the science!  Did you know there was going to be science?  You might have missed it because it was so interesting.

His observations of the course begin by identifying his subjects: 4 particular squirrels were included in this study.  My favorite: Phat Gus aka Phantastic Gus, who turns out to be a pregnant female.  Speaking as another currently-pregnant female, Phat Gus is quite frankly an inspiration to me.

Phat Gus is my spirit animal

The study here really consists of two types of animal behavior science.  The most interesting to me is the part involving ethology, the study of animals’ behavior typically in their natural environment with limited interference.  This type of research was my primary focus during my undergrad; my career goal was to study animal behavior in zoos (spoiler alert: this is not my current field of biology at all).

For example, I would observe the manatees at the Columbus zoo, creating an ethogram of their behaviors (eating, sleeping, social interaction, swimming, surfacing to breathe) to see how much of their time was spent doing each activity, and what part of the exhibit they were doing them in.  This led me to be fascinated by the physiology of how manatees use their tails, flippers, and bodies to rise to the surface to breathe, even while sleeping.

File:Marine mammal animal manatee surfacing to breathe.jpg

Rober is similarly fascinated by the physics of how squirrels are able to land so cleanly even after being launched or dropped from his platforms: lowering their terminal velocity, turning in midair and pulling in/stretching their limbs, spotting their landings, and using their tails to adjust their trajectory.  He nicely ties this back to the evolutionary ecology of squirrels, considering it an adaptation to life in trees.

Spotting his landing

Also under the ethology category would be his initial pilot study of which type of seeds or nuts the squirrels prefer: walnuts, which he then used as his obstacle course final reward.

But why’re the walnuts gone?

The obstacle course itself is a great example of behaviorism, measuring behavioral responses to stimuli (typically in a laboratory environment).  This is the kind of research people typically think of with rats in mazes or Pavlov making dogs salivate to a bell.

The course includes rope and slinky bridges, a maze, spinning obstacles, a dropping platform, a photo op, angled steps, and a (gentle) catapult.

It only took the squirrels about a week to get to the end of the obstacle course, and they were eventually able to do it all in less than 40 seconds.

Rober also highlighted another important aspect of animal research: the safety of the subjects.  I appreciated his repeated comments on how he made the course humane so the squirrels would not actually be harmed.

Gotta keep these guys safe.

This video highlights so much of why I love animal behavior research.  Animals are endlessly fascinating to me, and I find interacting with them, even just by observing in a research setting, to be a rewarding educational experience.

Rober never did find a bird feeder that completely stopped the squirrels.  But in the end, he didn’t really care.

You keep doing you, Phat Gus.

Review: Where the Crawdads Sing

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20191009_091115-1Guys, I am not sure I have ever seen another book hyped like this one.  Where the Crawdads Sing, the debut novel of Delia Owens, has been out for just over a year now and was at the #1 spot on the NYT bestseller list for about half of that time (it’s currently sitting at #5).  It is the top-selling book of 2019 so far with over 1.5 million copies sold.  It catapulted to fame when Reese Witherspoon picked it for her book club, and the movie rights have already been acquired, with Witherspoon producing.

After waiting many months for it at the library, I am happy to report that it is indeed an excellent book and I happily recommend it, though I wouldn’t say it was the best book ever, or even the best book I read this year.

Crawdads is the story of Kya, abandoned as a child by her family in the marshes of North Carolina during the 1950s, interspersed with the 1969 investigation of the murder of a popular young local man.  The back-and-forth between the two plot threads is wonderful, though the payoff when they finally connect was a little underwhelming to me.

The writing in general is excellent, though at points it does feel like a debut novel.  The world building is really special, with a unique setting and atmosphere.  There also is a sweet young love story that I was head-over-heels for.

But what did I really love?  The biology!

black and white bird
Photo by Wendy Wei on Pexels.com

Kya grows up in the marshes, swamps, and estuaries of the coastal South, and comes to see Nature as her real family.  She sleeps outside and lives off the land.  She knows all the plants, birds, and fish of the region.  She collects flowers, nests, and bird feathers which she then sketches and categorizes by species.  She feeds the gulls on the beach and names them.  Many people have said that the marsh is treated like a character in the book, and it’s really true.

The descriptions of all these ecological details are like catnip to a biologist like me.  As someone with a background in animal behavior, I loved the way Kya approaches human relationships from the lens of the animal behavior she has observed and read about.  She always looks for comparisons between animal and human social behaviors; sometimes they correspond well, like with certain male and female mating strategies, and sometimes slightly less, like with certain maternal behaviors.

Owens is a biologist herself, having already published books about her time spent studying wildlife in Africa.  (She’s also been published in Nature, which is a pretty big deal for a scientist.)  As a biologist and aspiring novelist, Owens is a big inspiration to me, along with other biologists such as Diana Galabdon (Outlander) and Stephanie Laurens (Regency romances) who have gone on to have phenomenal careers as fiction writers.

If you are looking for a quick, engaging read with some new perspectives but nothing too groundbreaking, I think Crawdads is for you.  I enjoyed reading it, but I didn’t think it quite lived up to the excessive hype.  Since many of you reading this have probably read it, what were your thoughts?

Parental Trolling, lvl 50

Mei-Mei8 Comments

This is a story of how my parents trolled me…on my birthday, no less!

You may remember that one of my pet peeves is cute holiday imagery of penguins and polar bears living together in harmony, because as a biologist I know that penguins and polar bears do not overlap in the wild.  Penguins live in the south pole (only Galápagos penguins live near the equator), and polar bears live in the Arctic.  Never the twain shall meet.

My mom also makes me a creative birthday cake every year.  She’s done Jane Austen books, a Skellig Michael landscape, and even jungle animals. After I analyzed the species of the jungle animals, I think she assumed I’ll always be blogging about her cakes.

So here’s what I got this year:

wp-1491058047215.jpg

Yes, she spent hours making these intricate cupcakes, just for the sake of irritating me by putting polar bears and penguins together.  She has whole books full of cupcake designs, so I imagine that once she saw these two animals she couldn’t resist.

To be fair, they were really cute, and also tasty.

Mini marshmallows for paws
Marshmallow for stomach, Starburst for beak. Oreos for wings, and he’s also dipped in chocolate.