Deer antler

We live in an area that affords us the opportunity to watch various wildlife pass by outside our dinning room window.  I’ve installed bird feeders around the rhododendron bush and we often deposit our rice, bread and vegetable leftovers there for the critters.  Our most exotic animals have been a porcupine, which nearly stumbled upon me one evening before slowly backing away, and a family of turkeys.  There has been a mountain lion in the neighborhood but we didn’t see her.  Mostly, we’re visited by birds, a couple of squirrels, a rat (I think is now dead), the occasional raccoon and deer.

The deer have grown from spotted fawns to antlered adolescents.  We’ve watched as they became segregated because of their genders and found entertainment in the way the males act increasingly antagonistic towards one another.  This year one male adolescent sprout his first antlers but they were small and odd shaped and we wondered aloud if there was something “a little odd about that one there”.    

Before bed I spend about twenty minutes reading which I do outside, under our carport and in a fairly small cone of light from the back door.  I get a little spooked at times because I hear the movement of things outside my sphere.  The other night was one such night.  Though I knew the sounds I heard were deer pillaging my birdfeeder, the option for flight remained a trigger’s breath away.

The next day, after spreading some seed, I saw an antler on the ground.  The not-quite-right buck had knocked it off (probably on my bird feeder).  Now, I am not proposing that he lost his antler because it wasn’t screwed on properly.  I know that deer shed their antlers each year and then grow them back.  However, I didn’t know any real particulars when it came to the growing and shedding of antlers so I decided to take a look. 

Beside way too many pictures of people posing with disem(deer)bodied antlers and the number of buck baiting products which popped up, I found some interesting things.  I learned that the deer that travel through our yard are most likely mule deer of the family Cervidae.  The areas on their brow  from which the antlers grow are calledpedicles.  I also learned that the nutrient rich velvet surrounding the antlers as they grow contains Growth Factor-1 which is similar to insulin and it has been used for about 2,000 years for its presumed curative properties.  Some of the images of deer shedding their velvet are ghastly but I find the process fascinating.  Imagine men’s faces shedding their beards in a bloody layer to reveal a hardened crust of secondary sexual characteristic face bone and you’d have an idea.

Since this is the prime time of year for antler shedding, a process regulated by seasonal changes in sunlight, there’s no need for alarm regarding Goofy’s noggin but the irregular shape his antler may be an indicator of something wrong with his health.

Tell you what, I sure wish I found some porcupine spines.  That would be pretty neat.

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Let's Talk About Evolution

I was introduced to this video recently through various social networks. It contains several scientists I follow through twitter and their individual blogging endeavors. I feel obligated to share since I often write about my own mediocre thoughts concerning evolution in my posts. If you have already seen the video, you certainly don't need any additional commentary from me. If you haven't, then, all I can say is here ya go. I think those in the video are much more capable than I. (I will add an aside. Dr. Carin Bondar's analogy sums up my thoughts concerning the debate.)

Let's talk about evolution


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My Daughter is a Monkey and so Can You!

I have noticed a lot of evolution talk lately. I don't know if it's a hot topic because of the phylogeny changes written about in Science and discussed on Coyne's site, or because of the stupid comments made by Bill O'Reilly regarding Richard Dawkins in their ongoing feud - or should I say O'Reilly's crusade. Maybe there is something special going on to which I am not privy. Is November "Evolution Month"? Perhaps there's absolutely nothing special going on and it's somewhat random. Whatever the reason, I can't think of a more serendipitous time to post this piece.

If you've read some of my previous posts, you'll know that I have a bit of a - relationship to the subject of evolution because of my childhood. I believed it was an agenda-based belief system that was outside of science and an affront to religious understanding. My view has since changed. I hold a fascination and a lot of respect for the subject. I haven't converted or been persuaded by a believer. I once denied evolution out of hand, but now I know better and so can you. Simply open your eyes and look around.
Let me start by saying my daughter is a monkey.
This, of course, is not true. However, if you were to see my daughter you might have to think about it. Imagine the infant here with much lighter coloring and less hair and you might actually have my daughter in mind. I love it!
I was watching my wife feed our daughter recently and it really struck me how animal it appeared. I didn't think, "How sweet!" or "Isn't it beautiful and wonderful?" I didn't ooh and ahh at the calm bonding of the woman and child before me. Perhaps I've grown desensitized by having seen each of our four children breast-feed for a year apiece. Perhaps my daughter's noisy gulping or the use of her feet during eating is simply too distracting. I don't mean to present myself as a detached or cynical observer. I do see the beauty. I love my children and marvel at my wife's nurturing capabilities. (My wife just said it's 'cause she's like a comic -that's a reference to my use of 'marvel,' by the way. You must understand that my wife's sense of humor is underdeveloped and hasn't yet evolved.)
Just by chance, I had been reading The Nature of Human Nature by Dr. Carin Bondar. The synopsis on the back begins with, "Members of the human species behave as though we are vastly separate from other animals." That's such a great statement, isn't it? I had wanted to read this book since I first learned of it because of its premise. It's a fun foray into the subject, covering lots of examples and the easy style with which it is written makes it accessible to a wide variety of experience levels. One of my favorite facets of Dr. Bondar's book, and her persona across the web, is simply the enthusiasm she brings. We should see our natural world enthusiastically and be constantly considering how we figure into it alongside our biological brethren.
My own imagination has put into mind several things. The first and foremost of which is how incredible it is that our children, derived from ourselves through our genes and then influences, emerge as fully individual entities. As they socialize (i.e. learn new tricks) I see them for the animals they are which is not hard to do with four kids. However, despite all the similarities to our hairier cousins, the striking point is really how far we've come as a species.
The purpose of all this rambling really comes down to, as a father, I see our connection to the rest of the animal kingdom and therefore, suggestions of evolution all the time. In fact, I can no longer image the world of people without evolution. Watching my children develop is akin to a curtain blowing open just a bit to where I have discerned the stage and players in between sets of a production.
And it's brought up all kinds of entertaining questions.
*Warning - Spoiler Alert* The following statements are purely the musings of an evolutionary novice and father of four equally yet independently crazy children. My wife and I share our bed with the youngest: i.e. haven't had a complete night's sleep at home in at least two years since we had also previously shared it with her brother. So one should not take anything that follows as gospel.
Question #1: How could we ever have evolved to a point where we must take care of our children for so long? Where is the fitness in that?
Those of us who are normal collectively have only enough children to keep the population at a plus, the others have television shows and book deals. This means that we really don't produce a lot of kids and early on the growth in population would have been slow. Obviously, we now have the ability to keep our children alive in ways we didn't possess when we walked out of Africa. As we tarried north during the last ice age, was it our budding mental capacities that kept us alive? I can't believe that the energy lost during the raising of Sally-gluck-gluck for so many years helped out much.
I'd like to think that we could somehow conceptualize or anticipate the difficulties of the move and the need for us to cozy up to our newly acquired constant companions the dog or our dumb but warm cousins the Neanderthals helped us survive. At some point our thoughtfulness led to survival and completely belied the extremely long bout of virtual helplessness that our children continue to exhibit.
(I must interject here that my two year old just came to me to show how naked and therefore unprotected he currently is. This is clearly not a survival instinct.)
Now, yes, I know that evolution is not intentional or "upwardly" directional and hasn't been leading to us. There is no chimpanzee that thinks, "I like these cigarettes so much that I want to be human so I can buy them myself."

Smoking Chimp

There's no Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics driving others to gain our big brains and bad backs. So it must have been the mutational development of those big brains that allowed us to out-survive our hardier kin.
I realize that what we are currently is nothing like what we were then. I don't mean our technology and society, rather our ability, physically and mentally, to generate those things. We couldn't have just gone from an animal that walked on all fours with our young tucked away in a nest of sorts to one walking upright with screaming babies on our backs. There had to have been earlier versions of we were to become. Case in point: my daughter, who is totally mellow most of the time(the rest of the time she's awake), screeches at such decibels that it makes our older children's previous volumes seem muted. I'm not sure, but I'm fairly certain that, given half a chance, predators of yore would not have allowed that attribute to persist.
Question #2: Even with our evident loss of animal instincts, how can anyone deny our stupid animal-like behaviors?
It's hard enough being a parent. There is a constant re-evaluation of what matters and what makes sense. In addition, on any given day, my children invoke their inner monkeys, dogs, squirrels, birds and fungi. If we had arrived fully form, made from scratch as it were, without any intermediate forms, then why must we socialize our children? Why should we need to tell them to lower their voices, stop running with dangerous objects in their hands, stop hitting their siblings and stop playing with their genitals at the lunch table? Our actions and attitudes as children so closely mirror behaviors seen in the animal kingdom that it's hard to discount the connection.
Even as adolescents and adults we exhibit behaviors that are not supported by our societal norms but rather suggest our lineage, such as certain posturing and mating behaviors. They don't compare in complexity or beauty to the rituals of various bird species we've become familiar. (There is currently a buck outside our window that is missing one antler and has a bloody back flank. We don't have to go through that, thank goodness.) Perhaps our species would be better off if we did participate in a more elaborate mate-selection process. Would we all look like Greek heroes with brains like Einstein? I don't mean that we should practice eugenics or anything, even dogs don't do that. Besides a distinguishing aspect of humans as a species is our society and our sense of responsibility to and for our fellow members and those of other species.
Question #3: Sure, we are still very limited in our experience of the rest of the universe and it doesn't help that we know of no similar life out in the cosmos, but what is so unbelievable about evolution? Why is it so hard to accept that we are part of the same system that regulates the rest of life?
I remember thinking as a child that if evolution were true then we would see monkeys becoming humans all the time. I now realize how flawed my logic had been and am disappointed when I come across similar statements from others. It's okay to not understand evolution, but I feel that any adult saying something to that effect is ridiculous. I previously posted some thoughts on this topic. I also mentioned a guy who said to me he believed in evolution, just not human evolution. When I hear anyone make a declaration like that, it makes me want to jab 'em in the coccyx. Look, we're all in this boat together. We eat, breathe, sleep, reproduce and die in such fundamentally similar ways that evolution is undeniable in my book. The thing that distinguishes us most is our complex culture. Just as whales have a culture and ants have a culture and bees and birds and monkeys each have cultures, we have our own distinct and varied culture. Of course, for humans geography is our greatest determining factor, whereas other animals are governed by their species.
My last point is I think it's a shame that many people with a faith-based belief system feel a need to discredit the obvious. If you're a believer, then "...with God, all things are possible." And how awesome is His creation? If you're not a believer then how awesome is this mechanism of nature? It's a net win either way. I overcame my prejudice and learned something in the process and so can you.
In summary: my daughter is not really a monkey, but she looks like one. My kids are all crazy animals but have no survival instincts and many of their actions probably reduce fitness, but I love them anyway. Neanderthals were probably dumb yet warm friends- with-benefits. And even religious people can believe in evolution without giving up their faith.
Expect more from me about this in the future, but for now I need to go and save my son from himself.

The Nature of Human Nature - Review

In her freshman book, The Nature of Human Nature, Dr. Carin Bondar, biologist with a twist, gives a wonderful introduction to how the human species compares with other species of the animal world. Dr. Bondar clearly enjoys her subject which you can discern from any of her dozen locations on the web. Whether filming biology shorts for her biomusings, blogging for Scientific American or tweeting, plusing or facebooking to her followers, Dr. Bondar is constantly forwarding her enthusiasm.
With Nature she uses an easy, sometimes conversational, style to her writing and keeps her subjects short and to the point. The book is composed of two parts, Survive and Reproduce, each section broken into chapters and further short sub-chapters which the reader can devour at their leisure in 3-5 minute increments. The topics range from waste management and crop production to transvestites and male pregnancy. She covers obvious choices like mating rituals, but addresses aspects that one may not have previously thought about like how a species may benefit from having an experienced male or a virgin female. I felt that the less obvious chapters fell under the Survive section and concerned themselves with less sexy but very interesting issues such as peer pressure and home remedies. The information and concepts are presented in a language which a novice can understand but also allows one with previous exposure and experience to remain interested and entertained. Though several of her chosen subjects could be viewed as risqué to some readers, Dr. Bondar stays light in how she treats them and parlays any real controversy that may otherwise arise.
I would liked to have read a more in-depth coverage of fewer subjects, perhaps sticking to the actions and attitudes which are believed distinctly human such as eating junk-food and prostitution. However, I feel that overall Dr. Bondar has produced an satisfying read that gives a glimpse of our world through a slightly different lens. I enjoyed my brief dip into her world and look forward to her subsequent endeavors.
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