If you want to see some sex, violence and blackmail, don’t bother with soap operas – try looking at the surface of your local lake or stream. There, you’ll find small insects called water striders (or pond skaters), skimming across the water on outstretched legs. These legs can pick up the vibrations of prey, predators and mates, but they can also produce vibrations by tapping the water surface. And males use this ability to blackmail their way into sex. It’s a drama of sexual tension played out across the surface tension.
Water strider sex begins unceremoniously: the male mounts the female without any courtship rituals or foreplay. She may resist but if she does, he starts to actively strum the water surface with his legs. Each vibration risks attracting the attention of a hungry predator, like a fish or backswimmer (above). And because the female is underneath, she will bear the brunt of any assault. By creating dangerous vibes, the male intimidates the female into submitting to his advances. Faint heart, it is said, never did win fair lady.
A male water strider doesn’t have to go through the hardships of pregnancy and he plays no role in raising the next generation. It’s a theme that echoes throughout the animal kingdom and it means that the best strategy for him is to mate with as many females as possible. After all, he has plenty of sperm to go around. A female, however, has a limited supply of eggs and mating opportunities. When she has sex, it has to count, so it suits her to be choosy. And she has the right equipment for the job.
Last year, Chang Han and Piotr Jablonski from Seoul National University found that female red-backed water striders (Gerris gracilicornis) can block their vaginas with hard genital shields. This defence is important because once the male manages to insert his penis, he can inflate it to make him harder to throw off. The female’s only hope is to prevent him from getting through in the first place.
Hyper-violent males can sometimes wear the female down but some opt for a subtler approach – they tap intricate rhythms on the water with their legs. When Han and Jablonski discovered these rituals last year, they suggested that the males might be trying to demonstrate their quality, by tapping out the most consistent rhythms. Now, they have another explanation – the tapping is a form of blackmail, a way of coercing sex from the female with the threat of death.
The duo studied the preferences of the backswimmer – a predatory bug that floats upside-down at the water’s surface and listens out for the vibrations of potential prey. When given a choice between a silent male water strider and a mating pair with a tapping male, the backswimmer always headed towards the vibrating duo. And since these predators attack from below, the female was always the one who was injured while the male strode off to tap another day.
The backswimmer menace is so potent that after a few minutes of tapping from the male, the female relents by opening her genital shield. If she had been previously attacked by predators, she gave in almost instantly. And only when she relented did the male stop his threatening taps.
But all of this changed when Han and Jablonski prevented the males from sending out their deadly summons by gluing a bar on the females’ backs. This stopped the males’ legs from touching the water and it made the females much less forthcoming. On average, they only gave in after 20 minutes and some held out for a full hour.
Of course, it’s possible that the males tap the water for an entirely different reason, and the threat of predators is just a happy side-effect. But Han and Jablonski found that the males, particularly large ones, actually tap faster when backswimmers are around – they’re clearly trying to attract these predators.
This predator-summoning strategy probably evolved from more innocuous behaviours. Water striders already tap their legs to communicate with each other during fights. And the males of another species, Aquarius najas, also tap their legs during sex but without causing harsh ripples and without affecting female resistance. It’s possible that these signals originated as a way of demonstrating male quality, as Han and Jablonski initially suggested, before they were co-opted for more sinister purposes.
The battle of the sexes between male and female water striders has led to a whole suite of adaptations and counter-adaptations. Some males have evolved special grasping structures to give them a better hold of females, while females have responded by evolving spines and other defences to weaken their grip. Females evolved their impregnable genital shields, which males have countered with a behaviour that makes females more likely to lower their defences.
To be honest, the female water strider has an easy time of it. In other insects, where females have evolved an upper hand in the war of the sexes, males have developed even more extreme counter-strategies. Look no further than the common bedbug – the male bypasses the female’s genitals altogether and stabs his sharp penis straight into the female’s back, a technique known appropriately as traumatic insemination.
Portal Required Reading at Wabash College
Valve's hit title to be featured as part of new "Enduring Questions" course at liberal arts college.
In what is perhaps a first, a videogame has become required reading for all students at a higher education facility. Michael Abbott, editor of The Brainy Gamer and a teacher at Wabash College has revealed that Portal is to be a core text of a new course called "Enduring Questions" that all students at the college are required to take.
A freshman course to be held during the spring semester, Enduring Questions is "devoted to engaging students with fundamental questions of humanity from multiple perspectives and fostering a sense of community. Each section of the course includes a small group (approximately 15) of students who consider together classic and contemporary works from multiple disciplines. In so doing, students confront what it means to be human and how we understand ourselves, our relationships, and our world."
All students must pass the course to graduate from Wabash. In giving his reasons for including the game forward for the course, Abbot explained,
"One of the central questions of our new course, 'Who am I?' is the focus of [Erving Goffman's study Presentation of Self in Everyday Life]. He contends we strive to control how we're perceived by others, and he uses the metaphor of an actor performing on a stage to illustrate his ideas ... [The] tension between backstage machination and onstage performance is precisely what Portal depicts so perfectly - and, no small detail, so interactively. Goffman would have found a perfect test subject in GLaDOS. Bingo! Assign students Goffman's Presentation of Self and follow it up with a collective playthrough of Portal."
Good for this guy, but Wabash of all places? This seems like an awfully progressive required course for one of the few all-male schools left in the country. A school, I might add, that considers the inclusion of female and black writers in literature courses "unorthodox."
Still, I'd love to talk to this guy and follow the course through its implementation. It would be amazing if they could pull off a course that's both required by everyone and students and faculty enjoy.
Visitors to the Munich Oktoberfest this year drank their way into the history books by downing an unprecedented 7 million liters of beer, beating the previous high of 6.94 million reached in 2007, the organizers said. The impressive list of lost items includes a set of dentures and a live rabbit.
Was it the sunny weather, the economic recovery or the special anniversary? All three factors might have played a part in the surge in beer consumption at the two-week Munich Oktoberfest this year to 7 million liters, up 500,000 from 2009 and just above the previous high of 6.94 million set in 2007, according to an impressive set of statistics provided by the organizers after the party ended on Monday.
"I've no idea why people drank that much," Gabriele Papke, the spokeswoman for the festival, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "They were simply thirsty."
It was a record that befitted the 200th anniversary of the world's biggest beer festival which began in 1810 to mark a royal Bavarian wedding. The total number of visitors was estimated at 6.4 million, and some 550,000 to 600,000 people came on Saturday alone.
The annual compilation of statistics always makes for entertaining reading because it conveys the gargantuan scale of the party that attracts tourists from around the globe and has helped to make Bavaria's folk culture of dirndls, lederhosen and beer world-famous.
The visitor record was in 1985, when 7.1 million flocked to the festival.
Dentures Back on the List
The intriguing account of lost items provides a sound indicator each year of the power of a few liters, or Mass, of beer.
Firstly, and this may come as relief to close observers of Oktoberfest statistics in recent years, items retrieved from the tents this year again included a set of dentures, which had been absent from the list in 2009 for the first time in many years.
One hearing aid was also found, as were a leather whip, a live rabbit, a tuba, a ship in a bottle, 1,450 items of clothing, 770 identity cards, 420 wallets, 366 keys, 330 bags and 320 pairs of glasses, 90 cameras and 90 items of jewellery and watches.
A total of 37 children were also lost.
Vintage Festival Section May be Repeated
Some 117 oxen were roasted on spits and 59 calves were also devoured, along with many thousands of portions of grilled chicken, sausages and pork knuckles.
The Oktoberfest marked the anniversary by devoting part of the Theresienwiese festival ground to a special historical section with a vintage tent serving specially brewed Jubilee Beer to the music of a traditional oompah band which played original tunes like "Heit gibt's a Rehragout," a happy song which means "Today We're Having Venison Ragout."
Some 310,000 liters of the Jubilee Beer were consumed as visitors emptied every single barrel of the rich amber nectar brewed in an unprecedented cooperation between the city's six main breweries -- Hofbräu, Löwenbräu, Augustiner, Hacker Pfschorr, Spaten and Paulaner. The addition of a historical section to the Oktoberfest was so successful that the organizers said they were considering repeating it in the coming years.
"People liked it so much that they started a petition appealing to the city to make it a permanent feature," the Oktoberfest spokeswoman, Gabriele Papke, said. "But it first has to be decided by the city council and no decision has been taken yet."
'Exceptional, Unique, Incomparable'
"The special flair of the nostalgic Jubilee Festival on the southern part of the Theresienwiese radiated across the entire festival," said Gabriele Weishäupl, the head of the organizing committee, in a statement. "This year's Oktoberfest was an exceptional one, unique and incomparable."
It was also unique in that it was the first Oktoberfest to impose a strict smoking ban in the 14 giant beer tents in line with a new Bavarian law outlawing smoking in pubs and restaurants. Beer tent managers had worried that the absence of smoke might infest the tents with unpleasant smells from from toilets, spilt beer and stale fat, but there were no reports of any worse than usual stench -- possibly because many visitors were too comatose to notice.
The heightened focus on tradition in this jubilee year increased the pressure on visitors to come in lederhosen and dirndls. Indeed, Bavarian folk fashion is becoming ever more popular around Germany in a marked change from just a few years ago when most northern Germans wouldn't have been seen dead in a pair of leather breeches or a frilly folk dress.
The theft of the heavy beer glasses fell to an estimated 130,000 this year, but police said there was a disturbing rise in the number of brawls in which the mugs were used as weapons.
(CNN) -- A 300-pound chimpanzee got away from its owner's home and spent a half hour on the streets Tuesday, smashing a police patrol car's windshield, Kansas City, Missouri, authorities said.
"It was a bizarre lunch hour at 77th and Indiana today," Police Chief James Corwin's blog item began.
Animal control officers fired twice at the primate with tranquilizer rounds, striking it once, but Corwin called the shot "ineffective."
The chimpanzee dragged a trash bin and jumped on the patrol car, causing the damage. At least one officer was in the car, with video showing the vehicle quickly backing up and driving away from the chimpanzee.
It jumped on at least one other vehicle. Eventually, the owner got the chimp to get into a cage in the back of his pickup truck, police said.
CNN affiliate KCTV said the animal was taken to Monkey Island, a rescue and zoological sanctuary in Greenwood, Missouri.
"Police were ready with patrol rifles in case the animal became a danger to people," Corwin wrote.
Michael Abron and his girlfriend -- residents of the neighborhood where the chimp was prowling -- were so concerned that the chimp would knock down the door or break windows that they scrambled to the roof of their house, where they were able shoot video of the action.
"Oh my God, it was crazy!" Abron told affiliate KMBC.
Rhonda Flores, supervisor at the police department's communications office, said she did not know whether any citations were issued. CNN affiliates and the Kansas City Star said the owner was cited for having the animal within city limits. A message to animal control was not immediately returned Tuesday night.
"Michael Abron and his girlfriend -- residents of the neighborhood where the chimp was prowling -- were so concerned that the chimp would knock down the door or break windows that they scrambled to the roof of their house..."
Somehow climbing onto a roof to avoid a chimpanzee doesn't seem like the best plan of action.
Dude, there's a real fucking monkey island a couple hours from me.
There is a giant lake nearby called Qiandao Hu, which translates as 'Lake of a thousand islands.' I did a boat tour once where we went to several of them to visit. Some islands were just a couple trees, some were a little bigger and had some old Buddhist shrines built inside. But the best one was an island completely inhabited by tiny monkeys. It is literally called Monkey Island, and you could feed the monkeys. The monkeys were tired of the food they sold on the island, but if you brought bread or other snacks then they'd come up close to you.
A town near drug cartel capital Juarez, Mexico, had just one applicant for police chief after a spate of killings of public officials in drug-related violence.
So now the new chief in Guadalupe, a town of 10,000 residents near the Texas border, is 20-year-old college criminology major Marisol Valles García.
Public officials have increasingly become the targets of assassination as Mexican cartels try to tighten their grasp on the country. Just this year, 11 Mexican mayors have been slain, including the former mayor of Guadalupe, who was killed in June. In the small town, "police officers and security agents have been killed, some of them beheaded," according to the AFP.
Valles tells a local paper that she took the job to help the town's people become less fearful. "Afraid? Everyone is afraid and it's very natural. What motivates me here is that the project [to make the community safer] is very good and can do a lot for my town. I know that we are going to change and remove this," she said.
[Photos: Mexico's brutal drug war]
One Mexican criminology professor told the Arizona Republic that getting elected to public office in Mexico "is like winning a tiger in a raffle."
"Before, it used to be an attractive job, living on the public payroll," said Dante Haro of the University of Guadalajara. "Now being a town mayor is very difficult, not just because of the economic problems but also this issue of obedience to organized crime."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently that Mexico is "looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago," when drug lords had a chokehold on many public officials.
A young Guadalupe citizen complained to Valles, "We are spending a great part of our lives locked up inside our homes," according to a Spanish-language paper. Valles responded that she wants to encourage more events for young people in the town.
"The weapons we have are principles and values, which are the best weapons for prevention," Valles told CNN en Español. "Our work will be pure prevention. We are not going to be doing anything else other than prevention."
More than 28,000 people have died in the country's drug violence since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels in 2006.
I know that this probably doesn't belong in the awesome news thread for all sorts of tragedy-related reasons, but this is so freaking awesome I couldn't not put it here!
A MAN who lived in his own “zoo” of lizards and insects was fatally bitten by a pet black widow spider, then eaten by the other creepy-crawlies.
Police broke in to Mark Voegel’s apartment to find spider Bettina along with 200 others, several snakes, a gecko lizard called Helmut and several thousand termites had gorged on his body.
Neighbours alerted police after becoming alarmed by the stink.
And horrified officers were met by a nightmare scene.
A police spokesman said: “It was like a horror movie. His corpse was over the sofa.
“Giant webs draped him, spiders were all over him. They were coming out of his nose and his mouth.
“There was everything there one could imagine in the world of reptiles.
“Larger pieces of flesh torn off by the lizards were scooped up and taken back to the webs of tarantulas and other bird-eating spiders.”
Loner Voegel, 30, never invited people back to his “jungle” home, a small apartment in the German city of Dortmund.
Police described it as a cross between a botanical garden and the butterfly breeding ground in the serial killer movie The Silence Of The Lambs.
One tarantula had built a nest the size of a swallow’s in a corner of the ceiling.
Voegel also had a boa constrictor and several poisonous frogs from South America.
Spider expert and animal cruelty officer Gabi Bayer said he kept creatures “that should never be allowed in a private home”.
She said: “He had spiders so aggressive they are the equivalent of a pit-bull in the animal world.”
The reptiles were allowed to roam free in the flat.
The heating elements on two tanks containing spiders and their termite snacks had exploded and dislodged the metal tops allowing them to escape.
Voegel is thought to have been dead for between seven and 14 days.
A post-mortem will be carried out in the next few days. But authorities believe Bettina alone was responsible for Voegel’s death.
I think it fits here. I hope that when I die, my body is gorged upon by badass reptiles and spiders. Though I hope that's not the cause of my death. After I'm dead though, I'd be cool with it.
After billions of years the Sun finally has an owner — a woman from Spain's soggy region of Galicia says she's registered the star at a local notary public as being her property.
Angeles Duran, 49, told the online edition of daily El Mundo on Friday she took the step in September after reading about an American man who had registered himself as the owner of the moon and most planets in our Solar System.
There is an international agreement which states that no country may claim ownership of a planet or star, but it says nothing about individuals, she added.
"There was no snag, I backed my claim legally, I am not stupid, I know the law. I did it but anyone else could have done it, it simply occurred to me first."
The document issued by the notary public declares Duran to be the "owner of the Sun, a star of spectral type G2, located in the centre of the solar system, located at an average distance from Earth of about 149,600,000 kilometres".
Duran, who lives in the town of Salvaterra do Mino, said she now wants to slap a fee on everyone who uses the Sun and give half of the proceeds to the Spanish government and 20 per cent to the nation's pension fund.
She would dedicate another 10 per cent to research, another 10 per cent to ending world hunger — and would keep the remaining 10 per cent herself.
"It is time to start doing things the right way. If there is an idea for how to generate income and improve the economy and people's well-being, why not do it?" she asked.
Good for her. I hope she earns enough to cover all the melanoma lawsuits. Not to mention any accidental death or injury caused by sun glare. If she owns it, she's liable.
A funny thing happened on the way to a trial in Missoula County District Court last week.
Jurors – well, potential jurors – staged a revolt.
They took the law into their own hands, as it were, and made it clear they weren’t about to convict anybody for having a couple of buds of marijuana. Never mind that the defendant in question also faced a felony charge of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs.
The tiny amount of marijuana police found while searching Touray Cornell’s home on April 23 became a huge issue for some members of the jury panel.
No, they said, one after the other. No way would they convict somebody for having a 16th of an ounce.
In fact, one juror wondered why the county was wasting time and money prosecuting the case at all, said a flummoxed Deputy Missoula County Attorney Andrew Paul.
District Judge Dusty Deschamps took a quick poll as to who might agree. Of the 27 potential jurors before him, maybe five raised their hands. A couple of others had already been excused because of their philosophical objections.
“I thought, ‘Geez, I don’t know if we can seat a jury,’ ” said Deschamps, who called a recess.
And he didn’t.
During the recess, Paul and defense attorney Martin Elison worked out a plea agreement. That was on Thursday.
On Friday, Cornell entered an Alford plea, in which he didn’t admit guilt. He briefly held his infant daughter in his manacled hands, and walked smiling out of the courtroom.
“Public opinion, as revealed by the reaction of a substantial portion of the members of the jury called to try the charges on Dec. 16, 2010, is not supportive of the state’s marijuana law and appeared to prevent any conviction from being obtained simply because an unbiased jury did not appear available under any circumstances,” according to the plea memorandum filed by his attorney.
“A mutiny,” said Paul.
“Bizarre,” the defense attorney called it.
In his nearly 30 years as a prosecutor and judge, Deschamps said he’s never seen anything like it.
*****
“I think that’s outstanding,” John Masterson, who heads Montana NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), said when told of the incident. “The American populace over the last 10 years or so has begun to believe in a majority that assigning criminal penalties for the personal possession of marijuana is an unjust and a stupid use of government resources.”
Masterson is hardly an unbiased source.
On the other hand, prosecutor, defense attorney and judge all took note that some of the potential jurors expressed that same opinion.
“I think it’s going to become increasingly difficult to seat a jury in marijuana cases, at least the ones involving a small amount,” Deschamps said.
The attorneys and the judge all noted Missoula County’s approval in 2006 of Initiative 2, which required law enforcement to treat marijuana crimes as their lowest priority – and also of the 2004 approval of a statewide medical marijuana ballot initiative.
And all three noticed the age of the members of the jury pool who objected. A couple looked to be in their 20s. A couple in their 40s. But one of the most vocal was in her 60s.
“It’s kind of a reflection of society as a whole on the issue,” said Deschamps.
Which begs a question, he said.
Given the fact that marijuana use became widespread in the 1960s, most of those early users are now in late middle age and fast approaching elderly.
Is it fair, Deschamps wondered, in such cases to insist upon impaneling a jury of “hardliners” who object to all drug use, including marijuana?
“I think that poses a real challenge in proceeding,” he said. “Are we really seating a jury of their peers if we just leave people on who are militant on the subject?”
Although the potential jurors in the Cornell case quickly focused on the small amount of marijuana involved, the original allegations were more serious – that Cornell was dealing; hence, a felony charge of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs.
Because the case never went to trial, members of the jury pool didn’t know that Cornell’s neighbors had complained to police that he was dealing from his South 10th Street West four-plex, according to an affidavit in the case. After one neighbor reported witnessing an alleged transaction between Cornell and two people in a vehicle, marijuana was found in the vehicle in question.
The driver and passenger said they’d bought it from Cornell, the affidavit said. A subsequent search of his home turned up some burnt marijuana cigarettes, a pipe and some residue, as well as a shoulder holster for a handgun and 9mm ammunition. As a convicted felon, Cornell was prohibited from having firearms, the affidavit noted.
Cornell admitted distributing small amounts of marijuana and “referred to himself as a person who connected other dealers with customers,” it said. “He claimed his payment for arranging deals was usually a small amount of marijuana for himself.”
Potential jurors also couldn’t know about Cornell’s criminal history, which included eight felonies, most of them in and around Chicago several years ago. According to papers filed in connection with the plea agreement, Cornell said he moved to Missoula to “escape the criminal lifestyle he was leading,” but he’s had a number of brushes with the law here.
Those include misdemeanor convictions for driving while under the influence and driving with a suspended license, and a felony conviction in August of conspiracy to commit theft, involving an alleged plot last year to stage a theft at a business where a friend worked, the papers said. He was out on bail in that case when the drug charges were filed.
In sentencing him Friday, Deschamps referred to him as “an eight-time loser” and said, “I’m not convinced in any way that you don’t present an ongoing threat to the community.”
Deschamps also pronounced himself “appalled” at Cornell’s personal life, saying: “You’ve got no education, you’ve got no skills. Your life’s work seems to be going out and impregnating women and not supporting your children.”
The mother of one of those children, a 3-month-old named Joy who slept through Friday’s sentencing, was in the courtroom for Friday’s sentencing. Cornell sought and received permission to hug his daughter before heading back to jail.
Deschamps sentenced Cornell to 20 years, with 19 suspended, under Department of Corrections supervision, to run concurrently with his sentence in the theft case. He’ll get credit for the 200 days he’s already served. The judge also ordered Cornell to get a GED degree upon his release.
“Instead of being a lazy bum, you need to get an education so you can get a decent law-abiding job and start supporting your family,” he said.
Normally, Paul said after the sentencing, a case involving such a small amount of marijuana wouldn’t have gone this far through the court system except for the felony charge involved.
But the small detail in this case may end up being a big game-changer in future cases.
The reaction of potential jurors in this case, Paul said, “is going to be something we’re going to have to consider.”
Staff at a German marine centre have turned to Justin Timberlake in a bid to get their shy sharks in the mood for mating.
The marine predators were so slow in the romantic stakes that, as an experiment, Sea Life staff began piping music into the sharks’ aquariums for two hours a day to stir their libidos.
And the tunes seem to have had the desired effect, with 50 eggs discovered at the end of the four-week experiment, the Independent reported.
Among the top shark love ballads were Justin Timberlake’s Rock Your Body, Push It by Salt-n-Pepper, Joe Cocker’s You Can Leave Your Hat On, and Traumschiff by James Last.
But Britney Spears elicited no reaction from the discerning sea creatures.
The experiment was conducted by 10 Sea Life centres in Germany after the country’s captive breeding program began to lag.
The experiment followed a research project six years ago at the Rowland Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which showed fish processed music in a similar way to humans and appreciated different melodies and tunes.
In Konstanz and Dresden, staff and tourists watched the sharks follow each other and bite each other on their fins.
At the Timmendorfer Strand aquarium, the sharks reportedly “danced” to the tunes of Joe Cocker.
Jenz Hirzing from Sea Life Timmendorf said: “The study gives us and scientists the chance to investigate how much influence music can really have on sharks and their mating behaviour”.
Comments
Jesus.
For SCIENCE!
I'm taking notes.
Still, I'd love to talk to this guy and follow the course through its implementation. It would be amazing if they could pull off a course that's both required by everyone and students and faculty enjoy.
Who the hell brings a live rabbit to Oktoberfest?
Then the children.
Somehow climbing onto a roof to avoid a chimpanzee doesn't seem like the best plan of action.
There is a giant lake nearby called Qiandao Hu, which translates as 'Lake of a thousand islands.' I did a boat tour once where we went to several of them to visit. Some islands were just a couple trees, some were a little bigger and had some old Buddhist shrines built inside. But the best one was an island completely inhabited by tiny monkeys. It is literally called Monkey Island, and you could feed the monkeys. The monkeys were tired of the food they sold on the island, but if you brought bread or other snacks then they'd come up close to you.
If I go again, I should give them beer...
College student named police chief in Mexico; no one else applied
insect and reptile keeper dies and is eaten by his pets
(Courtesy of my2k)
I'm this pale for a reason, lady.
Romantic music puts sharks in the mood