Video: The End of Morality?

A lot of people will probably not like this video. Hear the guy out; he knows that wolves and even creatures as simple as bacteria have an organized social system and thus a sense of morality. I'm surprised he didn't bring up whales and dolphins.

Dolphins are a particularly interesting example of "morality." On one hand, they have a complex social structure and can show an amazing amount of compassion for and comprehension of other species; on the other, dolphins rape, murder, and kill porpoises for fun. They show both the black and white of the morality Oreo. Take note of how there is usually more black than white in said Oreos.

Chimpanzees are also not sparkly-clean examples of morality.  As I said in a previous entry, they wage war, kidnap, and eat young chimps. Chimps are brutal animals by human standards. If the argument for Darwinistic morality is all based on altruism, someone hasn't done their research on chimps.

This eventually dips into the issue of animal rights. The Amazing Atheist doesn't go that far, but it's an issue whether animals can actually have morals or not. I'm with him in thinking that humans ONLY have morals is pure egotism. You?

Creature Feature: Indus River Dolphin.

Is there anything happier than a dolphin? Really, name one creature that lights up a room more than a giggling, clicking, smiling dolphin. As Cracked put it, "no animal is more closely associated with Day-Glo rainbows."

Then we get into river dolphins. River dolphins are Flipper turned nightmarish. I won't go into a more thorough description than that. Just...

...that. Just that. You would not want that to save you while drowning. (Well, maybe Bogleech would.) This dolphin warps our perception of dolphin so well it's awesome.

"That," in this case, is an Indus River dolphin (Platanista minor). The Indus and Ganges River dolphins are technically the same species, although how scientists decided this is anybody's guess (how would you breed these two?). It eats shrimp, carp, and catfish, among any other small seafood unfortunate enough to get caught in those teeth. It is native to the Indus River in Pakistan, joining leopard geckos and sand cats on the "cool animals that can be found in war-torn areas" list.

When it comes to river dolphins, all things that make dolphins cute go downstream. That goofy smile is replaced with an elongated grin full of teeth that show even when the jaw is closed. There are no sympathetic eyes to look into.  Instead of being sleek and grey, this dolphin looks like a mottled pink dolphin corpse sent to float down the Ganges.

All dolphins echolocate, but the Indus River dolphin is entirely dependent on sonar. Its eyes are almost nonexistent; the most they can do is detect light and shadow, if that. It doesn't even have a lens in those rudimentary eyes. It is one of the rare mammals that is completely blind. Yeah, we're pretty sure this has to have some mythological relative - maybe the makara. A legless, scaleless makara.

An animal THIS weird MUST be a messenger of the gods! 

Like all river dolphins, the Indus River dolphin is highly endangered. Dams, industrial runoff, and irrigation have all hurt these creatures. Aside from habitat fragmentation, they are also hunted, and not because they look like creatures out of H.P. Lovecraft. Apparently some people are well-aware that dolphins are really horny bastards; the meat and oil can be used as an aphrodisiac. They can also be used as catfish bait - take your pick. Even if they freak us out, that doesn't mean we should kill them. They have enough problems.

"They Actually Eat That:" Cellulose Gum.

Ever wonder what "cellulose gum" actually is? It's one of those products that seems to be in everything, from shampoo to ceramics to ice cream. Just what the hell is this cellulose gum, and why does it seem to be in everything? This doesn't loop back to corn, does it?

This is NOT crack.

For once, no. Cellulose gum is one of the few things with no corn in it whatsoever. It is, however, a polymer with the alternate names of cellulose sodium glycolate and sodium carboxymethyl cellulose. Those names and the word "polymer" should tip you off to cellulose gum being, well, unnatural. Yeah, this one is almost entirely man's doing.

Now, usually, with a long name like that in an ingredient list, somebody's hiding what that ingredient really is. This one isn't terrifying enough to give you nightmares, but still quite weird: Cellulose gum is extracted from wood pulp and cotton cellulose. The resulting powder can absorb up to 20 times its starting weight. Only the purest cellulose gum is fit for human consumption; the rest gets put into shampoo or other non-edible things. That doesn't make me feel any better about seeing it in my food.

Even soup has it!

So, why is it in everything, anyways? Cellulose gum is almost a miracle polymer. It mixes things that would not normally mix very well. It is typically used to thicken or bind things. It also stabilizes the protein in protein drinks, makes sweet things sweeter (as the "-ose" might suggest), and helps keep ice cream just frozen enough. It is also oil-resistant, making it useful while drilling. Also, it's very cheap to make!

Cellulose, gum or not, cannot be properly digested by humans. It does not contain any health benefits; luckily, it is not harmful, either. Instead, it passes through our digestive tracts without so much as a scratch. Just think of it as eating paper.

And now we've got wood on this column. Great.

Creature Feature: Northern Short-Tailed Shrew.

Ever see a shrew and wonder, "what's up with shrews, anyways?" I don't mean the 'shrew' as in 'mean woman'- I mean the not-mouse that looks almost like an elongated mole. They're usually pretty secretive, so if you haven't seen 'em, don't feel too bad. Yep, this is one of those entries that makes you look at regular life differently.

Hi!

The northern short-tailed shrew (Blarina brevicauda) is exactly what it says on the can: A shrew with a short tail that lives in the northern U.S. and into Canada. It is mostly carnivorous, eating insects, worms, centipedes, and other crawly things. Mice and salamanders have also been reported.

Shrews are already pretty weird animals. They have been around since the Pleistocene, i.e. the same time as mastodons and saber-toothed tigers. They're closer to moles than rodents. In case you had any doubt that shrews weren't weird, well...I feel ashamed for never covering them before. They're also kinda cute for carnivorous ground monsters.

This particular shrew can also echolocate. It also eats up to three times its body weight in a day, making it almost a hummingbird among mammals. It also caches most of what it kills. That's even weirder than most shrews. Oh, and this shrew is also venomous.

Wait...let's read that last part again.

Yes, B. brevucauda shrews do, in fact, have venom. It is similar to kallikrein, a protease found in snake venom and the human pancreas; for those of you not science-y, that means the venom cuts proteins. Some suggest that it is used to subdue mice, but this is a relatively rare occurrence in shrews. It works well on most other vertebrates.  In other words, aside from being a vestigial evolutionary trait from days gone by, nobody knows for sure why these shrews have venom. I personally think nature decided to use this opportunity to laugh at us.

Why? This venom has seemingly little natural function, yet it hurts humans like a bitch. One excerpt tells of how a shrew bite caused someone's left finger to swell to twice its normal size; another time, it was a whole arm. Some people have no reaction whatsoever to it. Other feel shooting pain for up to a week.

In other words, this shrew is nature's way of trolling. There's no way to know whether this shrew will affect you or not. It's so weird that it almost sounds like a sick joke. You will never see shrews the same way again after a bite from one makes your hand puffy as a marshmallow.

Bio-Art: SymbioticA Worry Dolls.

Art is meant to throw the status quo into question. It's meant to make you think. At the same time, you're supposed to 'get it,' which cannot be said of much modern art. Good art is not only aesthetically-pleasing, but comprehensible. That applies to bio-art as well.

Credit goes to the lab, obviously.

Thus SymbioticA's Semi-Living Worry Dolls. They are based off of Guatemalan talismans that effectively absorb the worries of the owner. The idea is that they "worry in the person's place." These particular worry dolls just so happen to be made of bone and muscle tissue, courtesy of Australian lab SymbioticA.

If the name SymbioticA sounds familiar, it's because we've already covered at least one of their projects. They also did Pig Wings, which played with gallery-goers' expectations, and Disembodied Cuisine, which was part of the no doubt PETA-desired "victimless utopia." Both of these have features on this blog.  I may have to make a tag for this Australian bio-art team.

Now we have the symbolism of the worry doll to factor into science. Take three guesses of exactly what worries these dolls are meant to absorb. Go ahead. I'll wait.

If you said "stem cell research," "cloning," or anything related to the fears about genetic engineering, you get a gold star. When it comes to manipulating life, progress is inevitable. Science itself takes no responsibility for how the research is used, so it's up to us to worry. What should we do with the ability to manipulate life? According to Zurr, one of the workers at SymbioticA, we have to become "post-humanist. Species is not important."

The team at SymbioticA took things to an even further level: If growing artificial cells was not enough, they were also grown in an artificial womb. In-vitro fertilization is already alive and well; it won't be long until 'natural' sex becomes obsolete, or so people fear. Personally, I don't think sex is going to die any time soon. If it worries you, however, we have a doll for that.

Creature Feature: Musasabi.

Before you immediately assume that the title above is some sort of Japanese liquor, consider the following: 1. you know this blog only covers "LET'S BREW!" topics on Wednesdays, and 2. Japan is a chain of islands with a bunch of unique wildlife by default. Did you really think that their weird mythology just happened? Nooo, their wildlife inspired a lot of it, just to make things extra-disturbing!

Nocturnal = shiny eyes. The squirrel is not possessed...as far as we know.

The musasabi (Petaurista leucogenys) is known as the "Japanese giant flying squirrel" in English. Specifically, it lives in Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku in the Japanese archipelago, as well as Guangzhou in China. It eats fruits and nuts. They can be found fairly close to civilization, with Mt, Takao being only an hour away from Tokyo.

Once again, the question is "how giant is giant?" This video actually gives you a pretty good idea. For those of you who prefer stats, it can weigh up to 1500 grams and can be up to 90cm long including the tail. Aside from being a darn big squirrel, the musasabi can also glide up to 160 meters. It's almost as big as a cat, and it can all but fly. Japan has fine nightmare fuel indeed.

From here.

The weird does not stop at its size. Like something out of a hentai, the musasabi plugs the female's vagina with a sticky protein called a coitus plug after sex. There could be a number of reasons for this, such as increasing chances of fertilization. It also prevents other males from mating with the plugged female. Supposedly, they're monogamous, too. Between these guys and raccoon-dogs with overlarge testicles, we should not be surprised that Japan has a reputation for weird porn.

Although not as well-loved as the momonga, the musasabi does have some representation in Japanese culture. It can be found at Japanese exotic pet conventions, although, aside from having an easy diet, I cannot see these squirrels being good captives. There is also a popular Italian restaurant on the Keio line called "Musasabi." The mususabi, like the momonga, also has the rather funny honor of being a Kaiyodo sculpture and featured on a children's trading card:

Frankly, we're surprised that the electric momonga in Gen V doesn't evolve into this monster-squirrel. That would be kinda cool. FUND IT.

MYTHBUSTER OP: Five-Headed Snakes?!

Last night, a friend told me something interesting. A live, five-headed serpent had been found in the wild, alive and well. The radio shows described the image as looking "freaky." Supposedly, the polycephalous snake was taken into a temple because it was thought divine.

Aside from this report from Argentina, I have not seen anything that would cement this snake's existence as fact. I try to keep an open mind; after all, this blog covers a million 'impossibilities' that actually happen right under our noses. Five-headed snakes are also consistent enough in mythology that one must wonder if they can indeed occur in nature. It would not surprise me if they could exist, but actually seeing a good photograph of one strikes me as unlikely.



That said, every image of a five-headed snake I have ever seen has been a fake. The snake above is unfortunately a bad copy-paste job. It's obvious that the scales don't flow right, and it just looks bad. Others are more convincing, but none of them are the real McCoy.  Just because some are nicely done doesn't mean any of them are real. 

This is not to say that a five-headed snake is completely impossible. Two-headed snakes happen all the time. For whatever reason, turtles and snakes have a higher than normal track record of having two functional, separate heads. Hydras and genbu already have plausible reasons to exist.  A report of an amphisbaena surfaced recently as well. Five is unheard of, but there's always a first time. I have hope.

So now we have a rumored news report of a live, wild, five-headed snake. Can anybody confirm or deny this? There are certainly plenty of fakes out there. If a real 'naga king' has been found, it should be making world news.