Do Rhinos Put Out Fires?

I actually first heard about this myth on The Simpsons. There was one episode where Marge saves Homer from a rampaging rhino by setting their car on fire. The rhino immediately abandons its attack and puts out the fire. Day is saved.

Funny joke. Thought it was just random humor.

Actually, though, it’s not just a stupid joke. I mean, it is a stupid joke, but, whatever. I found out later that it was really a spoof of two scenes from the excellent 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy, a comedy set in the Kalahari Desert of Africa. You can watch them below.

But this just creates further questions. If I got it from The Simpsons, and The Simpsons got it from The Gods Must Be Crazy, where did they get it from? It is a myth, right?

Turns out the myth dates back a ways. And it is a myth. Fire can make a rhino panic, but its first instinct is to run from the fire, not try to fight it. Also, in an interesting twist, although the myth always references African rhinos, the myth doesn’t seem to come from Africa! No native cultures in Africa ever had a story about fire-fighting rhinos.

So why is it there?

It’s actually a weird artifact of colonialism. There are myths about fiery rhinos, but they start over 7000 kilometers way in southeast Asia, near the countries of Malaysia and Myanmar. Now, Africa’s black and white rhinoceroses don’t live in Asia, but those two countries do have their own flavor of rhino, the Sumatran rhinocerous. It is smaller than its African cousins and lives in the jungle, instead of the savannah.

It’s also hairy sometimes. Which looks kind of weird.

Two Sumatran rhinos at the Cincinatti Zoo.

N. J. Van Strien notes in his study of Sumatran rhinos: “Rhinos… are said to be attracted by campfires or smoke. Whenever it sees a fire it runs up and tramples and devours it, causing a lot of damage and panic in the camp (F. Mason 1882).” The locals even have a specific name for these creatures, Badak Api, literally fire rhinos. It’s not known what they do with the fire after they eat it.

Perhaps they breathe it. That’d be scary. Fire-breathing rhinos. Or their horns could be made of fire. Maybe they’d run on propane.

Either way, the European naturalists heard these myths and brought them back to the Western world, accidentally confusing some of the details along the way. Hence fire-eating Asian rhinos became fire-hating African rhinos. Which stuck around long enough to make it to Hollywood.

And, eventually, The Simpsons.

 

Hero Shrew has an Unbreakable Spine

The hero shrew – a big name for a small animal. The animal is small, nondescript. It looks like any other shrew in the world. It lives in the forests of central Africa, mostly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s a relatively recent find for western science –  Europeans first heard of it in 1910 and a sister species was only discovered this year. The following account is from the field notes of one Herbert Lang, published by J. A. Allen in 1917:

“The natives of these regions, especially the Mangbetu, who are well acquainted with this shrew, first called our attention to its abnormally strengthened back-bone by their performances upon captive specimens. These people feel convinced that its charred body or even its heart, when prepared by their medicine-men, transmit truly invincible qualities, if worn as a talisman or taken like a medicine. Perhaps this mystic reputation has often contributed to make of a brave man a real hero, wherefore the Mangbetu gave it a name meaning ‘hero shrew.’ Those engaging in warfare or setting out upon an equally dangerous enterprise such as hunting elephants are anxious to carry along even a fraction of the ashes of this shrew. Though only worn somewhere about their body, they believe that neither spears nor arrows, nor any kind of attack can seriously injure them, much less bear them down. One can easily imaging that by the removal of the inhibitory influence of fear their courage, cunning and cleverness are set free for the best possible achievements.

Whenever they have a chance they take great delight in showing to the easily fascinated crowd its extraordinary resistance to weight and pressure. After the usual hubbub of various invocations, a full-grown man weighing some 160 pounds steps barefooted upon the shrew. Steadily trying to balance himself upon one leg, he continues to vociferate several minutes. The poor creature seems certainly to be doomed. But as soon as his tormentor jumps off, the shrew after a few shivering movements tries to escape, none the worse for this mad experience and apparently in no need of the wild applause and exhortations of the throng.”

An animal that only weighs 100 grams supporting a fully grown man! That’s would be like a soldier getting run over by an M1 Abrams tank!

Hero shrews can support this kind of weight because of their spines. Instead of 5 lumbar (lower-back) vertebrae which are loosely connected, like in humans, the hero shrew has 11 densely-packed inter-connected bones. These are in turn supported by enhanced muscles and chest bones.

The hero shrew is on top. A normal shrew is on the bottom.

The evolutionary benefit of this massive spine is still unclear, but a promising theory suggests that this adaptation helps the shrew hunt for invertebrates. The thinking goes that maybe the shrew can use it’s back like a hydraulic jack to lift up large rocks or logs, exposing the bugs and worms hiding underneath. This hasn’t been proven, but anecdotal evidence seems to support it.

Body of a mouse. Spine of steel.

 

I ♥ Silphium

Ever wonder why the heart symbol (♥) looks the way it does? As any socially awkward anatomist will tell you come Valentine’s Day, the human heart looks more like a pear, or maybe a loose bag, not ♥ (perhaps that’s why they’re so lonely).

No one really knows why that particular symbol gained popularity, but there are a few theories. Most of the theories think it’s a simplistic depiction of different female body parts including the breasts, buttocks, stomach, vulva, groin or, well, just about any sexually interesting area. One theory goes that the symbol originated in the brothels of old Pompeii as a kind of crude trademark.

There’s another theory, however, that the ♥ symbol isn’t based off any kind of anatomy – at least, not animal. This coin comes from the ancient city of Cyrene, in what is now present-day Libya. Cyrene was a Greek settlement that was later taken over by the Romans and was famous for exporting one particular substance – a tall, fennel-like herb called silphium. It was so important to the local economy that they even put it on their money. The image to the right isn’t meant to be a heart, it’s a silphium seedpod.

So could a seedpod have come to be associated with love and sex? The answer lies in silphium‘s medical properties. In one of Pliny the Elder’s texts he recommends the use of a silphium pessary to “promote the menstrual discharge”. In layman’s terms? As an herbal contraceptive.

The idea is that the herb, widely used throughout the Mediterranean since antiquity, had through these properties come to be associated with sex and love, especially in Rome. Science seems to back up these claims. Many plants in the same supposed family have contraceptive properties. Wild carrot and Queen Anne’s lace are still sometimes used today.

There’s a bit more to this story, however. You’ll notice I said “supposed” family. We’re not completely sure what species of plant silphium was. However, we do know that it was extremely popular and that it was extremely persnickety. It absolutely refused to grow on cultivated land and had to be harvested wild from the rocky uplands that surrounded Cyrene, giving the city a virtual monopoly on silphium production. Great for trade, not so great for sustainability.

It’s believed that the plant went extinct sometime around 50 AD, the victim of overgrazing, overharvesting, and desertification. Pliny reported that the last stalk was given to Emperor Nero, who reportedly ate it out of curiosity.

Sources: TheStraightDope

 

The Sterile Insect Technique

The screwworm is a terrifying insect. It’s a fly and, like all flies, breeds by laying maggot eggs on potential food sources. But instead of targeting rotting fruit or dead animals the screwworm fly goes for fresher prey. The females lay up to three hundred eggs on the exposed flesh of warm-blooded animals, targeting places such as open wounds or the navel. The eggs then hatch and hundreds of maggots burrow inward. It’s a major agricultural pest, can infect humans, and the infection (and subsequent secondary infections) can prove fatal.

But we have a clever way to eradicate it, one that turns the flies’ own biological drives against them. Instead of using pesticides or chemicals to try to eliminate the fly, scientists and governments have been using a method known as the sterile insect technique.

To put it in simple terms, scientists breed up a huge stock of male flies, sterilize them with radiation, and them release them into the wild. Male flies don’t attack animals and only live to impregnate the females. The females, presented with a sudden glut of males to choose from, are likely to end up picking one of our nulls. Lacking viable sperm, no eggs can be produced and no maggots can be laid. The best part? Female flies will only mate once in their lifetime. If she picks a null, that’s the end of her family line.

The United States pioneered this technique and successfully eradicated the screwworm from within its borders in the 1980’s. Since then other countries have followed suit. A sudden flare of screwworm infections occurred in Libya in 1988. Aircraft started air-dropping cardboard boxes of sterile males across the desert, releasing as many as 40 million nulls per week. Within a few years the outbreak was completely nullified.

There are some drawbacks to this plan. It can take longer to work than traditional pesticides and new batches of sterile males must be released periodically to really take effect. Sometimes nulls can be hard or expensive to breed. Nevertheless, it has no chemical residues and does not affect any species other than the target pest. It’s been lauded as an environmentally safe technique and other pests like the medfly and some local tsetse fly populations have also been effectively controlled with this method. Scientists are now targeting both Anopheles and Aedes mosquitoes (the vectors of dengue, yellow fever, and malaria) and other agricultural pests.

Sources: www-iswam.iaea.org, BBC News, Wikipedia

 

Nature’s Nuclear Reactor

I’ve always been drawn to the nuclear age. There’s something to America’s vast and sudden post-war wealth, the growingly divergent half-McCarthy half-hippy culture, and rising technology that seems effortlessly and inherently American. But we as a country seem to be in love with things that are already half-departed. The cowboy only became a national symbol well after the range was fenced in. Similarly, the uranium reactor seems like it’s on the way out already. Germany just announced a planned retirement of its nuclear reactors. But even though the yellow-and-black triad may less than a hundred years old, nuclear reactors are actually far more ancient than most people realize.

Okay, a quick crash course. Nuclear reactors are powered by nuclear fission. In fission, radioactive atoms will sometimes shed a neutrons as they ultimately decay into more stable isotopes. The uranium atoms are usually too far apart and the neutron is usually absorbed by other surrounding elements, but if the uranium atoms are condensed enough it will actually set off a chain reaction. Think of it like tossing a single lit cracker into a fireworks factory. Each time something goes off it only makes the reaction stronger. Small cracker, big dense pile of fireworks, lots of energy. Small neutron, big dense pile of uranium atoms, lots of energy. Yeah? Yeah. (Okay, so it’s actually a lot more complicated than that, but you get the idea).

Anyways, back in 1956 someone named Paul Kazuo Kuroda hypothesized that this arrangement needn’t be man-mand and could actually be possible in nature. And sixteen years later, deep in the heart of Gabon, he was proven right. The French physicist Francis Perrin found evidence that one particular uranium mine was actually the home of an intermittent 1.7 billion year old reactor that must have run for more than a million years. The reactor had long run out of steam, but it’s still-radioactive by-products are still around today and still available for study.

Source: geology.about.com, http://www.ans.org/pi/np/oklo/, Wikipedia

 

Leiningen versus the Ants

One of my favorite short stories as a kid was called Leiningen versus the Ants, written by Carl Stephenson. The hero: a brooding plantation owner, the villains: ants. Thousands and thousands of angry, hungry, army ants, emerging from the jungle like an act of god. They are said to form a mile wide corridor of death, capable of stripping a horse bare of its flesh in six minutes. They form bridges and construct complicated plans to attack their prey, knocking down foliage and tree trunks to evade obstacles. Eventually Leiningen has to make a mad dash through them in order to survive.

One of the creatures bit him just below the rim of his goggles; he managed to tear it away, but the agony of the bite and its etching acid drilled into the eye nerves; he saw now through circles of fire into a milky mist, then he ran for a time almost blinded, knowing that if he once tripped and fell…. The old Indian’s brew didn’t seem much good; it weakened the poison a bit, but didn’t get rid of it. His heart pounded as if it would burst; blood roared in his ears; a giant’s fist battered his lungs.

Then he could see again, but the burning girdle of petrol appeared infinitely far away; he could not last half that distance. Swift-changing pictures flashed through his head, episodes in his life, while in another part of his brain a cool and impartial onlooker informed this ant-blurred, gasping, exhausted bundle named Leiningen that such a rushing panorama of scenes from one’s past is seen only in the moment before death.

He survives, of course, although perhaps not with all of his parts intact. Hollywood made an adaptation of this story, casting Charlton Heston as the protagonist. They also included a love interest (of course) and titled it The Naked Jungle (it premiered back in 1954).

Of course, Stephenson does make a few exaggerations. Leiningen’s ants were the wrath of an angry god, but no predator is that indomitable. An ant colony capable of creating a mile wide front would be beyond anything scientists have ever seen. And while ant armies can be very dangerous to agriculture, the creatures most at risk are the old and the newly born. Most are able to simply move out of the way (although unfortunate domestics may be trapped behind fences or pens). The only adult people at risk of attack are the sleeping or the drunk. Also, victims are not simply consumed alive, although the truth might be even more disturbing to some. Animals die when the ants move through the nose and mouth down into the lungs, either suffocating on the insects or drowning in blood.

Some animals have actually evolved specific ant defenses, as they would against any predator. West African earthworms leave the earth and escape to the trees, while land snails surround themselves in a sticky mucus bubble shield. Wasps will raise an audible alarm by beating their heads against nests, warning nest mates of the impending attack. Some wasps even try aerial harassment, grabbing and flinging ants away from the nest (although this doesn’t really work in the long run). Most animals simply flee and return to the area afterward. Although, like a forest fire, the ants’ cleansing sweep is often followed by heightened biodiversity as animals and plans file back in. Empty niches to be filled, after all.

Sources: National Geographic (2), Wikipedia, ClassicShorts.com

 

Lake Nyos

In August, 1986, Lake Nyos burped. This is quite unusual for lakes and is due to a unique conflux of geologic factors.

For one thing, Lake Nyos sits on top of a volcanic hotspot, formed in the crater of a four-hundred year old explosion. The rocks here are actually still active, although you wouldn’t guess it from the surface. All the activity happens far below, where a still-living magma chamber vents carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and sulfur gas, which leach upwards through the rock. However, instead of venting out of the ground, they meet the waters of Nyos and dissolve in it.

Normally, the gases would continue upwards and emerge harmlessly from the surface of the water, but Nyos is different. The lake is so deep that different layers of water have formed: a layer of warm, less dense water that floats on top of a colder, denser one; effectively capping the gas-rich waters below. This prevents the gas from escaping into the atmosphere. So instead it stays in the water and slowly builds over time. Eventually the water cannot hold anymore and the whole system reaches a critical supersaturated state. At this point, any upset to the lake can cause the gases to violently erupt upwards.

In 1986 such an event occurred. The exact trigger of the event is unknown, but in one huge eruption 1.6 million tons of carbon dioxide suddenly rushed up from the waters of Lake Nyos. This formed a fountain 300 feet tall and created a 80 foot wave that rushed outwards. But the wave, although destructive to those living nearby, wasn’t the real threat. Instead the carbon dioxide gas, heavier than the surrounding atmosphere, settled back down over the lakes surface, hugging the ground and creating a mass of deadly, unbreathable air known as a mazuku.

To the north of the lake were two valleys, each of which contained a handful of villages. These sloped down away from the lake and created a natural funnel for the gas, which quickly started to flow downhill. The invisible cloud would have moved at up to thirty miles an hour, displacing the oxygen-rich air surrounding the villages and suffocating any caught in it’s path. Seventeen-hundred people died. And even if the victims survived the gas, they would have had to deal with numerous deleterious effects and gruesome scenes as they evacuated. One local, Joseph Nkwain, describes what he saw:

I could not speak. I became unconscious. I could not open my mouth because then I smelled something terrible . . . I heard my daughter snoring in a terrible way, very abnormal . . . When crossing to my daughter’s bed . . . I collapsed and fell. I was there till nine o’clock in the (Friday) morning . . . until a friend of mine came and knocked at my door . . . I was surprised to see that my trousers were red, had some stains like honey. I saw some . . . starchy mess on my body. My arms had some wounds . . . I didn’t really know how I got these wounds . . .I opened the door . . . I wanted to speak, my breath would not come out . . . My daughter was already dead . . . I went into my daughter’s bed, thinking that she was still sleeping. I slept till it was 4:30 p.m. in the afternoon . . . on Friday. (Then) I managed to go over to my neighbors’ houses. They were all dead . . . I decided to leave . . . . (because) most of my family was in Wum . . . I got my motorcycle . . . A friend whose father had died left with me (for) Wum . . . As I rode . . . through Nyos I didn’t see any sign of any living thing . . . (When I got to Wum), I was unable to walk, even to talk . . . my body was completely weak.

Since then the international community has taken an interest in monitoring the lake. Scientists and government officials are carefully measuring the levels in not only Nyos but also two other lakes, Lake Monoun and Lake Kivu, that also possess similar outgassing properties. To release the pent up gas, deep siphons have been installed on floating platforms, effectively creating a straw down to the lower colder layers of water. The resulting fountain allows the lake to relieve itself in a more controllable (and less deadly) manner. More are planned.

Sources: www.geo.arizona.edu, PBS, Wikipedia

 

A Green Sahara

It has happened in the past and it will happen again in the future. The Sahara, a desert almost as large as the contiguous United States of America; so harsh the name literally means The Great Desert. But the array of life here will surprise you. Bears live and hunt in the high Atlas Mountains. Crocodiles have been found grasping onto survival amongst water holes in Southern Mauritania. The same species of fish have been found in oases thousands of miles apart and separated by nothing but sand, wind, and rock. But for all the world the desert should be an impassable wasteland. These animals should not be here.

The truth is that the desert was not always so inhospitable. In fact, during its infrequent wet periods the Sahara would seem much different. The latest wet period was known as the Neolithic Subpluvial and lasted from about 7000 BC to about 3900 BC. During this time the Sahara would have appeared as vast savannah grasslands, much like current subsaharan Africa. With no desert to bar movement, animals would be able to freely travel between the Middle East, Southern Europe, and Africa. Even fish were able to spread (somewhat) unhindered. Humans were no exception, and it is actually thought that this cycle may have contributed to our exodus from Africa. More than once in our history our ancestors may have followed a series of large lakes northward out from the Olduvai area, dating as far back as the days of Homo erectus. Skeletons and other remains have been unearthed throughout the Sahara and more modern human movements have even left behind exquisite rock art depicting hippos, giraffes, and swimming figures.

It has even been suggested that the last sudden drying of the Sahara (known as the 5.9 kiloyear event) may have rocked our ancestors so that entirely new ways of thought arose. In Steve Taylor’s book, “The Fall”, he suggests that this triggered, “the rise of patriarchy, institutionalised warfare, social stratification, abuse of children, the development of the human ego, separation from the body, the rise of anthropomorphic gods and the concept of linear historic time.”

The reasons for the Sahara’s variability are complex. In part the cycle of glaciation and warm periods determines the amount of rain. Ice ages tend to be drier, with less rainfall and reduced ocean levels. The cycle can also be affected by the orbit and tilt of the Earth. Earth wobbles like a top as it circles the sun, and it’s path is not always identical in shape. The different alignments can deprive or glut an area with sunlight, changing global weather systems. Interestingly enough, this cycle means that the Sahara will turn green again sometime in our future. Climate change may even bring that about within the next millennium, although this remains to be seen.

For more stunning pictures of archaeological digs I highly recommend this Boston article.

Sources: The National Geographic Society, Discover Magazine, Science Daily, Boston.com, Wikipedia

 

The Gorilla (500 BC – 1861 AD)

Today, it is hard to remember what  used to be myth. I was amazed when I first learned that plate tectonics is actually a relatively new theory, having only been accepted since the 1960’s. Was it really in doubt so long? The same thing happened with gorillas. Today they are a ubiquitous cultural touchstone, but it was not always this way.

The first recorded accounts of gorillas is credited to a man known as Hanno the Navigator. Hanno the Navigator lived in Carthage (modern day Libya) around 500 BCE. He was one of the first explorers to make a major expedition up and down the Atlantic coast of Africa and described his gorilla encounter thusly:

In its inmost recess was an island similar to that formerly described, which contained in like manner a lake with another island, inhabited by a rude description of people. The females were much more numerous than the males, and had rough skins: our interpreters called them Gorillae. We pursued but could take none of the males; they all escaped to the top of precipices, which they mounted with ease, and threw down stones; we took three of the females, but they made such violent struggles, biting and tearing their captors, that we killed them, and stripped off the skins, which we carried to Carthage: being out of provisions we could go no further.

Whether or not Hanno the Navigator really saw gorillas has been disputed. The explorer himself seemed to think they were a kind of human, which leads many scholars to point to indigenous tribes rather than animals. Others have pointed out that Hanno would have been unfamiliar with the concept of the great apes. The only rubric he would have had to compare them to would have been humans. Either way, the name stuck.

Amazingly, gorillas wouldn’t be encountered again by western explorers until the sixteenth century AD, nearly two thousand years later. An English sailor named Andrew Battel was captured by the Portuguese off the coast of West Africa. Battel, kept on the mainland, described two kinds man-like apes (gorillas and chimpanzees) that could occasionally be seen prowling around the campfire. Later accounts in the 1600’s would confuse these animals with pygmy tribesmen.

Science was introduced to these creatures in the 19th century. The first collection of skulls and bones is credited to an American doctor named Thomas Staughton Savage and the naturalist Jeffries Wyman circa 1847, although it was a French-American explorer named Paul du Chaillu who named himself as the first recorded white man to actually see a live gorilla in the daytime*. He was conducting an equatorial expedition from 1856-59 and brought back whole deceased specimens when he returned to the UK in 1861. It was his detailed anatomical and behavioral accounts that cemented them in the public mind, although unfortunately he also depicted them as savage, bloodthirsty creatures. This image would not be dispelled until well into the 20th century with the works of George Schaller and Diane Fossey.

So as westerners we’ve really only known of gorillas as living breathing animals since the 1850’s, less than two hundred years. I would personally love to find more Victorian accounts of seeing these great apes revealed to science for the first time.

Sources: cryptomundo.com, seaworld.com, The Encyclopedia Brittannica, The Darwin Poems, Wikipedia

*Note: du Chaillu may have actually been beaten. “Jenny”, an ape that was only later identified as a gorilla, was exhibited since atleast the late 1850’s in George Wombwell’s Travelling Menagerie. I’m looking for more information about this, so if you know of any resources I’d love to hear about them.

 

The Poisonous Rhino

There has been quite an interesting development in the war surrounding rhino horn. The demand is mostly fueled by practitioners of traditional chinese medicine, who believe that powdered rhino horn can cure convulsions and fevers (the idea that it is used as an aphrodisiac seems to be a myth), although the material has been used before to create jewelry, sword handles, and other objects. The demand has become so high that rhino horn is know twice as valuable as gold. In fact, the Ipswich Museum reported last month that someone had broken into their museum and stole the horn off a 100 year old specimen! Collectors and other museums have been warned to use casts or mockups instead of the real thing for fear of attracting even more thefts.

Conservationists are worried. Poachers are becoming more and more sophisticated in their attacks on rhinos and owners and game operatives cannot protect their animals 24/7. There has been some discussion about legalizing the trade of rhino horns in order to impose regulations, but this measure doesn’t seem to be gathering much support. However, a new, quite novel idea has been invented by a few caretakers. They are going to make the rhinos poisonous. It’s doesn’t quite make sense at first, but, well, see for yourself (skip to 1:27 if you don’t want to see the introduction).

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The idea is that, by treating the horns with a medicine designed to kill parasites (not cyanide, as the man in the video stated), the horns themselves would become poisonous. It shouldn’t hurt the animal itself, since the medicine would never actually get to the animal’s bloodstream, but anyone who ingests tainted horn would suffer from headaches and potentially serious convulsions. Ideally, patients would be scared to buy rhino horn, the demand would plummet, and poaching would stop. Furthermore, the medicine glows a bright neon pink when under airport scanners, which should hinder international trafficking.

It’s an… interesting idea. We’ll have to wait and see if it’s implemented, but if it is, poachers may have to think twice about the costs and benefits of hunting their prey.

Other Sources: Wikipedia, PBS, Discovery, News24