"They Actually Eat That:" Rhubarb.

 

If you ever see "rhubarb" on a menu, chances are you will wonder what it is unless you are a gardener. Rhubarb is a leafy green plant with a bright red stem, and has been used as a laxative for centuries (starting in China).  It is now grown worldwide. Rhubarb is usually found in dishes with strawberries, because red and red totally go together, dahling. 

No, you aren't eating the nice, green leaves of the plant. You're eating the stems. Just the stems.

 

The leaves of rhubarb are poisonous. They contain high levels of oxalic acid, a corrosive and nephrotoxic substance found in naturally high amounts in rhubarb. Spinach, often touted as one of the healthiest plants around, contains enough of this stuff to be worrisome (and would make a great entry on its own). The poison is usually used as a cleaner, especially for removing rust. Symptoms of rhubarb poisoning include weakness, burning in the mouth, difficulty breathing,  coma, and, umm, death. We warned you about the glue; this is even worse.

Crystal death.

 

Cooking does not get the toxins out of rhubarb. Ordinarily, one would have to eat a lot of rhubarb (5 kg of leaves) to die from it. When rhubarb was used as a cheap vegetable in WWI, people ate enough of the leaves to die of *gasp* RHUBARB POISONING.  There is still a small amount of the toxin in the stem, but it would take eating rhubarb like a crack addict to make one throw up. (Disclaimer: We are not responsible for the consequences of rhubarb being dealt in alleyways. K. Thanks.)

Remember that rhubarb is poisonous next time you chow down on strawberry-rhubarb pie. You have just eaten one of the fugu-ish members of the plant world.

Creature Feature: Blue-Footed Booby.

Ornithologists must have a ton of fun. Not only does their job consist of cataloging birds, which already sounds cool even if the birds in question are sparrows, but birds have all the silly names that get censored by forum mods. A friend and I have a running gag that talking a walk through the bird section at the Field Museum gets one some very good looks at tits, cocks, and boobies - all with a PG-13 rating.



No, you do not need to adjust your screen. That booby - yes, that is its name- really does have bright blue feet. The Blue-footed Booby (Sula nebouxii) is a seabird native to the tropical islands around Latin America, most notably the Galapagos. Like most seabirds, it eats various fish. It is not even remotely threatened - a miracle in those parts.

Unlike the word "manatee," the word "booby" has nothing to do with female naughty bits. Instead it may come from a Spanish word meaning "idiot," for the birds were notorious for landing on ships. There, they were easily captured and eaten. The most famous instance of this was on the Bounty, one of the most referenced sea voyages ever.



The booby's blue feet are used in the birds' exotic mating dance. The male raises his feet and displays his wings in order to earn the affection of his lifelong mate; soon the female copies him if she's interested. They have no mating season per se, so the boobies dance all year 'round. Sorry if that sounded dirty to you.

Bio-Art: Splice.

Anybody who has been paying attention to my writing (ANY of my writing) will know that I, as a person, am a HUGE fan of crossing the human-animal barrier. Scientific gene splicing excites me, if only for the vain hope that I might one day get reptilian scales, bioluminescence, or wings of my very own. Alas, there would be a very dark side to such a contract, even though such advances are inevitable.

Just what would happen if science created another sentient, not-quite-human animal? How would the public take it? The issue of genetic engineering in general is taken to an extreme in Splice, the 2009 movie directed by Vincenzo Natali.

For starters, the opening credits are awesome. The names are made of and put on various biological media, such as veins and snakeskin. We do not even know what we are seeing until the two 'splicing superstars,' Clive and Elsa, take it out of the artificial womb. We just know it's gonna be creepy as all hell from the opening alone.

We are not exposed to the film's cover monster at first. Instead, we spend a lot of time with the animate, genetically-enhanced turds named Fred and Ginger. Despite all appearances, Fred and Ginger are very valuable. They are organisms designed for the sole purpose of engineering drugs for use in livestock.

DNA helix -> disembodied genitals -> pills. It's that simple.

Fred and Ginger are only the first step in this drug-producing project. The two splicers eventually want to incorporate human DNA into the template to address any number of species-specific diseases. (They only cover the genetically-linked ones, such as Parkinson's and cancer - the usual suspects, as it were - but really, right now pigs and rats make most of our medicine.) Adding human genes to Ginger and Fred would indeed be the "medical breakthrough of the century."

Unfortunately, the bigger company only wants the special genes in Fred and Ginger. As one of the board members rightfully points out, politicians would tear anything involving human DNA to pieces (even though science has gone there already with rabbit and cow chimeras - lab-only, mind). Clive and Elsa have their department compromised until they can isolate the single protein that will rake in the dough.

So the two splicers go "screw you" and make a human-animal hybrid anyways. Elsa even goes the extra mile and creates a viable hybrid being as opposed to just DNA in a vat. The fetus grows faster than expected, meaning that, just as the two splicers are having an intimate moment, the cloning machine goes crazy with the weight of the growing fetus. The movie then proceeds to show exactly how bad things get with this hybrid baby, including monster sex with both parents. Yes, both parents.

This is honestly the less offensive of the two scenes.

The premise of the movie, as per a quote from the director, is "the way science is catching up with much of the fiction out there." This is so very true, but I wish it had been more embedded into the setting. We had several points at which the impact of genetically-modified organisms in general could have been discussed, or at least highlighted. You thought splicing human DNA into something was bad? There are people who object very strongly to GMO corn, and that's just a plasmid gene swap for pest resistance.

Science does not see eye-to-eye with ethics. A human hybrid would indeed be just as controversial as the big bosses said it would be. The cow-human and chimeras are under the restriction that they must be destroyed after a few weeks. I can guarantee that, in the near future, someone, somewhere will break that rule and carry a hybrid baby to term.  "If God didn't want us to explore his domain, why did he give us the map?" is indeed the condensed version of science as a whole.

Lucifer? That you, homie?

Although it was clearly written with 'science gone wrong' in mind, many aspects of Splice are just weird for the sake of weird. There was no need for the sex change or some of Dren's stranger attributes (the stinger, for example). Although Fred and Ginger were meant to be more utilitarian than aesthetically-appealing, was there no better way to represent that than with disembodied cocks? A lot of it is just strange because. These guys are supposed to be splicing superstars. You'd think they would know how to make something look pretty as well as scientific.

Some of Splice does not even feel like a science project. Once we figure out that Elsa used her own DNA in Dren, it becomes more of a parenting allegory than a story about science gone wild. Look closely during Dren's birthing scene and one notices that Elsa is never shown from the waist down, experiences severe pain, and is really out-of-it by the whole ordeal. Still, human babies are more mortifying than anything they could have spliced, so Dren was the better move.

Speaking of Dren, the monster is more compelling a character than either of the two scientists for most of the movie. We see her grow, realize that she herself is not human, and develop her own extra-specific feelings for her parents. When she's strapped to the surgery table, we feel sorry for her, even though she just attacked a cat and her biological mother. There's also a sliiiight hint of eugenics peeking through when we learn that Elsa has insanity in her family...

Since human-animal hybrids are inevitable (let's be honest, guys), we will eventually have to think up guidelines for how to treat them. Humanity has not had to deal with a non-human sentient life form in recent history. (This is not counting Neanderthals - those are prehistoric.) Furries, keep watching - you will be subject to EXTREME scrutiny if you ever get your wishes.

I'm not a furry, right? Right?!

Splice is very squicky and definitely not for the faint of heart (it's rated R for a reason), but if you're a fan of seeing science at its worst, give it a try. It does make its point beneath all of the layers and oversights. I am not an advocate of anvillicious writing, but it would not have hurt to show how gene splicing is becoming more and more of a real issue. It's in our meat, it's in our veggies, it's in our drugs, and we don't know what it's doing to us. Splice is a look at the inevitable future of such research.

Creature Feature: Triops.

At some point in your life, you have probably heard of Sea Monkeys. Sea Monkeys are a hybridized, selectively-bred form of brine shrimp that does not remotely resemble the race of freakish anthros on the packaging:

At least they ADMIT to wanting world domination.

For those of us that want to breed something a little bit more intense than Sea Monkeys, there are a number of other types of shrimp that go into diapause - that is, they do not hatch until the water conditions are juuust right. This, for example, is a more Lovecraftian version of Sea Monkeys.



Triops shrimps - also called long-tailed or tadpole shrimps - are not the same sort of shrimp that you see at cocktail parties. They instead resemble mutant trilobites that somehow survived through the Carboniferous into the modern day. Triops shrimp have literally gone unchanged for 300 million years, and, even though we keep them in fish tanks today, they are probably laughing at us from behind the glass for being stupid whippersnappers. They can be found everywhere except the coldest regions of the world.

Eldritch horror in a box.

 

The same process that makes triops oh-so-marketable is also its key to success in the wild. The natural habitat of triops is temporary ponds. They can only live that sort of life by making their eggs go into diapause every time the puddles dry up. In this state, they can survive extreme temperatures up to 98 degrees Celsius (ALMOST boiling water- think about that) for 16 hours. All they have to do is wait for it to rain until they can grow, quickly breed, and die after the water leaves.

The name "Triops" literally means "three eyes." Yes, they do indeed have three eyes. Nowhere says this better than the perfectly silly song by They Might Be Giants, complete with some cool videos of Triops in action.



Triops are easily available online from www.triops.com. They originated from a doctor's stock. He was studying their amazing diapause abilities. In theory, they could stop aging and possibly lead to the Fountain of Youth. Also, y'know, dealing with Cthulhu's underlings is a lot safer than messing with any cnidarians that actually do have eternal youth. We would rather deal with shrimp that definitely die than hydras and jellyfish when it comes to looking young and pretty all the time. Yep, that makes a lot of sense.

When Homo sapiens sapiens goes extinct, the Triops will still be here. Y'know, if the world has not become a swimming pool by then.  Even then, they will probably be only a diapause away from world domination.

Creature Feature: Olm (Proteus).

We love subterranean and cave life. No matter how squeamish one gets around things like salamanders, caves and living underground degenerate the eyes of things to the point where everything looks like it has a permanent smiley face. Plus, such things are usually white, which-



OH MY GODS A BABY DRAGON!

Kidding. That's a Proteus, a type of olm. Olm in general are neotenic salamanders that live in caves of Southern Europe.  They eat smaller, cave-dwelling animals including crabs, snails, and insects. Proteus is an especially popular type of olm to study because it's just so weird. Really, this thing looks like a Chinese dragon mated with a newt.

Like many cave, abyssal, and subterranean creatures, the olm is all but blind. The olm's degenerated eyes can only see the faintest darkness and shadows. Its pure white skin is also photosensitive. Like another strange herp, the tuatara, its pineal gland functions as a literal third eye.

The olm's main senses are hearing and another that allows it to pick up electric fields. The latter is so sensitive that he olm orients itself according to the Earth's magnetic poles. Experiments in the lab show that it responds to other electric fields as well. Other animals that employ a similar technique include the hammerhead shark and the platypus. You never thought you'd see those two in the same sentence, did you?

Olm are considered vulnerable for a number of reasons. The most shocking of these is that this amphibian only reproduces once every 14 years. Cave ecosystems in general are pretty fragile, and the olm's dwelling is no exception. The olm itself was put on the Slovenian conservation Red List - so no, you cannot have these baby dragons as pets.

Creature Feature: Giant Amphisbaena.

Fridays are going to be brief again, guys. That means these entries are going to be short, sweet, and cited! 

Wednesday, I had the honor of seeing a presentation on the rarely-talked about group of reptiles called amphisbaenids. Yes, that name does come from the mythical two-headed serpent. It was applied to the real creature because, as in some skinks, the front end looks a lot like the rear.

Amphisbaenids are not snakes or lizards. They are a third group of squamate that lost their legs independently of snakes, are nearly blind, and resemble earthworms in so many ways it's scary.

Imagine a giant snake-worm crossbreed. Have you wet your pants yet? No? Good, because this horror has the most derpy face since the anaconda entry.


Source: Wikimedia.

That face belongs to the giant amphisbaena, Amphisbaena alba. It is native to Brazil and some of the surrounding countries in South America. It is also called the red worm lizard or white worm lizard (which comes from its scientific name). Like all amphisbaenids, it spends a good portion of its time underground, munching whatever invertebrates its scissor-like teeth come across.

These amphisbaenids can get up to three feet long and as thick as a sausage around. They are rarely encountered. Should you have the fortune of seeing this or any other amphisbaenid, take pics. There are several herpers I know who will love you for them.

Creature Feature: Happy Face Spider.

The authoress has not had a good week. After an anxiety attack on the first day of classes and a frantic schedule readjustment, she is completely fried from senior burnout. Also, this blog was targeted for copyright infringement, which is a whole different headache.

So here's a spider with a smiley face on its rear.


Source.

No, that is not a bad Photoshop.  This may be the last time we get to say that, but that goofy face above is totally natural. Theridion grallator, AKA the "happy-face spider," is native to many of the Hawaiian islands. Yes, it is always that happy. (You would probably be happy too, if you lived on Hawaii.)

Nobody knows why this spider's rear looks like a smiley balloon. It's not intimidating enough to scare off predators, which the spider has very few of anyways. We doubt even arachnophobes are scared of this brightly-colored little guy. The types of inheritance vary from island to island, if the smiley is there at all. This is one of the few markings that seems to serve no purpose whatsoever...

...except further evidence that Mother Nature has a trollicious sense of humor.