Magpies Part 2: Alien Intelligence

When I learn and think about other creatures, the thing that interests me most is their perspective. What must it be like to see the world as a pentachromatic Pigeon sees it? Or as a Dragonfly with ~360 degree vision and a 200Hz flicker rate? Or what would it be like to “see” the world through sound, like a bat or a dolphin? Or even weirder, and harder (at least for me) to envision: what must it be like to “see” the world through smells, like your dog? Think about it. You’re probably around dogs at least once a day. But your whole life, you’ll never really understand what it’s like to see the world how a dog sees it. There’s probably no animal more familiar to most of us than a dog, and yet when it really comes down to it, their perspective is forever alien to us; we can understand and get to know and maybe even love them, but we can’t ever get inside their heads.

Tangent: In fairness, dogs could say the same of us. No matter how familiar they become with us, so much of what we do must be forever cloaked in mystery. Certainly they can never understand what most of us actually “do” all day (work), but on a more mundane level, I often wonder if they truly “get” cars. Oh sure, they understand that we all get in the car and go someplace. But do they understand that the driver’s actions control where the car goes?

Or for that matter, does it even occur to them that the driver decides where the car will take them? Or do they assume (quite logically, actually) that our relationship to the car is more like theirs: you get in, close the door and it takes you someplace- someplace you don’t decide. Then you get out and do stuff for a while before getting back in the car which then takes you home.

In my darkest moments, I wonder if this fundamental alien-ness really applies to all “selves”, whether “self” can ever, really truly communicate with “other.” Certainly politics, religion and workplace meetings are all routinely characterized by people talking past each other, and regularly failing to get inside other people’s heads and see the world from their perspective. When you really get down to it, can any of us ever really communicate with our colleagues, our friends, or even our spouse? Or are we simply engaging in a never-ending verbal and non-verbal dance of positioning, assessing and bilaterally manipulating each other, each of us ultimately alone, inside an impenetrable shell of “self”?

OK, lighten up. I don’t really think that*. And I’ll tell you why. Because the longer I live and the more I learn about people, the more I see that most people are more or less the same, with similar hopes and dream and worries. And as I’ve gotten to know about animals, I’ve come to gain a similar perspective about them. Because even though we perceive the world radically differently than horses or coyotes or chimpanzees or porcupines do, we all think. And we all think with brains that, while different in size and form, all share a basic, fundamental structure, with parts and components that do more or less the same types of things in all of us. And so while we may never “see” the world as dogs see it, I’m convinced that we know what it is like to think, to experience, many things- hope, surprise, sadness, fear, affection, satisfaction, and maybe even wonder- much as they do. And when I think about that, the world doesn’t seem quite so lonely.

*Not most of the time anyway. Usually only after elections in Utah.

But then there’s birds. The most interesting thing about Magpies isn’t their nests or tails or the color of their bills- it’s their brains.

Among birds, corvids are regarded as some of the most intelligent*. Nearly all of us have heard some smart crow or raven story- how they cleverly stole food or outwitted a dog or some such. Rather than just recite a whole list, I’ll tell you my absolute favorite:

*The other contenders, which may be even more intelligent, are large parrots and macaws.

2 New Caledonian Crows, Corvus moneduloides (pic right), were in a cage*. In the cage was a little bucket with a handle down below where the crows couldn’t reach. Also placed in the cage were 2 wires, one straight, and the other bent into a hook. The idea of course was to see whether the crows would pick up the hooked wire and use it to retrieve the bucket. This in and of itself wouldn’t be all that shocking. Several corvids have been known to use other objects as tools. Caged Blue Jays for example have been observed using folded strips of newspaper to obtain food from cracks/crevices where their bills or talons couldn’t fit.

*OK, this sounds like the set-up for a geeky ornithological joke, doesn’t it?

But what actually happened was this: One of the 2 crows- the male*- snatched the hooked wire away. Then the female bent the straight wire into a hook and used it to retrieve the little bucket. Wow.

*Of course it was the male, right?

New Caledonian Crows are the champion tool-makers of the avian world; in the wild they’ve been observed fashioning twigs and leaves into tools to extract grubs from holes and crevices. Several corvids use tools, but C. moneduloides is the only one known to make them. And perhaps even cooler, they teach other New Caledonian Crows how to fashion the same tools. The only other animals known to use tools with the same proficiency as corvids are primates.

Tangent: New Caledonian Crow. Which is endemic to- that’s right- New Caledonia. Are you kidding me? That place again? How many times do we keep winding up back there in this blog? At least 10, that’s how many! Rare trees, parasitic conifers, ratites and now genius crows, all on the fragment of an ancient supercontinent- seriously- How. Cool. Is. That. Place?

I’m not superstitious, but this project keeps leading me back there again and again and again. OK that’s it- I’m saying it right now, right here: Some way, somehow, in the next 5 years, I am getting my ass to New Caledonia. Enough is enough.

Closer to home many of our local corvids display impressive mental faculties as well. A favorite of mine is Clark’s Nutcracker, Nucifraga columbiana, which- incredibly- keeps track of the locations of up to 2,500 seed caches made over the year over a range of ~150 square miles. If I leave my keys in 1 room, my wallet in another, and my phone in a 3^rd, it is guaranteed that I will lose one of them within 15 minutes.*

*And that, once I break down and ask for help, Awesome Wife will locate the item in question in just 30 seconds.

Corvids also score well in tests of object permanence, the understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight, something which takes a human a year or so to figure out*. Object permanence is measured and rated through a series of tests, in 6 stages, 6^th being the highest. Eurasian Jays (Garrulus glandarius) (pic left) have achieved stage 6, a level matched only by primates. Magpies (specifically the Eurasian Black-billed Magpie, Pica pica) have clearly achieved stage 5, and possibly stage 6. Interestingly, Magpies don’t become fully independent of their parents until reaching stage 4 or 5.

*This has been the accepted conventional wisdom since the 1950’s. More recent research has begun to question this however, suggesting that human infants display a sense of object permanence when just a few months old.

But even more interesting is the social intelligence of many corvids. Ravens, crows and magpies in particular display many advanced forms of social intelligence, including the formation of coalitions and alliances (like chimpanzees and dolphins), social learning and tactical deception. For example Ravens will typically delay caching food items until out of sight of other ravens, and will even make false caches in view of their fellows in hopes of throwing them off.

Getting back to Clark’s Nutcracker for a moment, another corvid that regularly collects and caches pine nuts is of course the Piñon Jay, Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus (pic left). While Clark’s Nutcracker is pretty much of a loner, Piñon Jays are highly social, with apparently higher social intelligence. When tested on ability to perform various tasks- opening food containers, discriminating between different colored containers- Piñon Jays learned much faster by observing other Piñon Jays, whereas Clark’s Nutcrackers benefitted little by watching other Clark’s nutcrackers perform. Similarly, Piñon Jays and Clark’s Nutcrackers both display impressive ability in re-locating their own nut caches, but Piñon Jays show much greater ability in locating the caches of other Piñon Jays. Clark’s Nutcracker is smart, but a Piñon Jay shows higher social intelligence.

Tangent: Know what Clark’s Nutcracker reminds me of? Orangutans. An advanced primate, very intelligent, with a huge neocortex- which should mean a high Dunbar number- but largely solitary. Orangutans are suspected to have evolved from more social primates, but subsequently taken up a more solitary lifestyle. Similarly Clark’s Nutcracker is thought to share a common ancestry with more social corvids, and perhaps later followed a more solitary path. There’s something both weird and strangely admirable in such a possible story- if true- for either primate or corvid: a creature that turned away from socialization, that applied its impressive mental faculties away from its fellows and toward the physical world around it.

Even further off-topic, I can’t help but notice another possible parallel: humans with Aspberger’s syndrome. Is there some common thread? Something switched off, or even cast aside? Could Aspberger’s “suffererers” be not disabled, but just going following a different mental path?

Unsurprisingly, these birds, and corvids in general, have big brains. As a rule birds have a smaller brain weight-to-body weight ratio than mammals, though a much larger ratio than reptiles, who in turn have a much larger ratio than fish. But corvids have a ratio more like that of mammals, or even specifically primates*.

*But again, large parrots and macaws may be even more impressive, with a ratio almost 2/3 as big again. It’s interesting that while corvids have thrived world-wide, parrots and macaws have remained restricted to a far narrower tropical (and neotropical) range which is now under pressure from human expansion and development. Kind of like… chimpanzees.

So great. Magpies are smart. They have big brains. So what?

One of the most interesting things about birds is that they’ve solved so many of the same problems mammals have solved- color & foveal vision, thermoregulation and sex-determination are examples we’ve looked at in this blog- in fundamentally different ways*. The evolution of intelligence is another.

*The evolution of the ear is yet another example, which I had hoped to blog about before doing this post, but I felt I’d put this one off long enough.

I’ve mentioned in passing in this blog that I used to be into science fiction when I was younger, but gradually lost interest, probably in part because I “grew up”, but also in part I suspect because I found so much of the genre formulaic and unimaginative. In particular, I was almost always disappointed by depictions of aliens, who were invariably creatures who thought more or less like us, except they were generally less fun. Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons, War-Of-the Worlds Martians, Cylons, the Borg, the Visitors- they were all so dull, because they really weren’t different from us. And yet that’s what makes- or should make- the very idea of alien intelligence so darn interesting- that it would be different from us.

Tangent: The aliens of Star Trek- the original series- were particularly disappointing. The very first alien race we were introduced to were… Humorless White Guys with Pointy Ears. Really? That’s “alien?” Hell, at work I can work over to IT and see that anytime. And the Klingons*? Dark-Complected Sweaty Angry Guys with Facial Hair. You know, that’s pretty much me half-way through a bike race. And then the Romulans- still more Humorless White Guys with Pointy Ears- oh come on! Give us something else- a long nose? A third eye? Anything! I swear, you see more diversity at a Utah Republican Party convention…

*Again, in the original series, before Next Generation tarted them up with skull-ridges and such…

So here’s the thing about corvids: they’re the closest thing to intelligent aliens any of us will likely ever meet- far more alien than any of the fictional aliens listed above. Because corvids are living thinking creatures with exceptional memories, powerful tool-using capabilities and advanced social intelligence- just like primates- but with a radically-differently structured brain that evolved along a completely independent evolutionary path.

Side Note: Corvids (and many other birds), BTW, like primates, engage in social grooming. With birds it’s called allopreening. We humans no longer engage in social grooming of course*; the pop-anthropology explanation is that we now accomplish the same social bonding through chit-chat.

*With the notable exception of picking nits out of our children’s hair.

All the mammals I listed above share a common brain architecture which I touched upon in the Dunbar Number post last Spring. The top hunk of the mammalian brain is the cortex, which handles things like memory, awareness and perception. The outermost layer of the cortex is the neocortex, which is big and wrinkly in things like people, apes and dolphins, and which is associated with both higher-order intelligence in general and specifically social intelligence. I won’t repeat the whole story here; you can go check out the that post if you’re interested in the details. But the thing with birds- even smart birds like corvids, who use tools and have obvious high social intelligence- is that they have no neocortex.

Birds and mammals last shared an ancestor probably around 280 million years ago. That common ancestor almost certainly had a brain that would be characterized as “reptilian” today. You can think of a reptile’s brains as a stripped-down version of a mammal’s; it lacks a neocortex or a limbic system (hippocampus, amygdala), which is thought to be responsible for emotions beyond fear and anger. Over the ensuing 280 million years, mammals evolved these additional components, leading to the brains- and minds- we experience today.

Bird brains (diagram right, not mine) also evolved, but along a completely independent path which is reflected in their brain-structure. In birds the forebrain has developed and expanded, creating a structure called the nidopallium*, which appears to perform the same kinds of higher-order cognitive and social intelligence functions handled by the neocortex in mammals. Both neocortex and nidopallium developed out of an area called the pallium in the reptilian brains, but are constructed very differently. While the neocortex is organized in a layered structure, the avian forebrain appears more “nucleated” without any real layering**. It’s suspected- though yet unproven- that the nidopallium may contain a higher density of neurons than the mammalian neocortex, enabling greater brain activity in a more limited space.

*It used to be called the hyperstriatum, but was renamed within the last decade. You’ll still find the old name in many sources.

**An exception is a small area called the Wulst region, consisting of 3 or 4 layers, which seems to be involved in visual processing.

So the structure of bird brains is very different. Here’s one more Magpie story: In 2008, German researchers produced evidence that Magpies recognize themselves in a mirror, as shown by “mirror-induced self-directed behavior”, in this case using a mirror to reach and manipulate a mark on their bodies not visible without the mirror.

The sample size was small (5) and the success rate modest (3 out of 5) but this is more significant than you might think. Clear mirror self-recognition has been observed in chimpanzees and orangutans, but only maybe/possibly in gorillas. And even in chimpanzees, the self-recognition rate was only 75% in young adults, and lower in older and younger animals. In apes, such mirror-induced behavior has been taken as evidence of self-recognition, or a sense of self. Magpies, with their completely separate-from-us evolutionary history and their totally alien brains, appear to have independently evolved a sense of self.

That’s right- those annoying squawking birds, those “flying rats”*, with their fundamentally alien minds, are apparently self-aware, just like us. Now that’s a cool bird. (Pic right = Yellow-Billed Magpie in Yolo County, CA, taken by reader Alexis. It’s the best shot in this series- make sure to click on it. Thanks Alexis!)

*Coworker Sid’s description.

I’m not sure why, but I like that self-awareness, even intelligence, can evolve in different ways. It somehow makes the makes the world seem just a little less lonely, and hints at all sorts of crazy possibles across the big, wide universe. I’ll wrap up the post here; there’s something I want to go chat about with Awesome Wife.

Wednesday Filler: The Current Drama In My Personal Life

OK, so I meant to get the Magpie post Part 2 up this morning, but I’m not done yet, and want to catch a pre-dawn night-ride this morning, so I’m just going to post this whiny, self-centered filler post today, and then finish the Magpie post tomorrow. Honest. And it’ll be totally worth the wait because it’ll include science and philosophy and anatomy and evolution and amazing factoids and tangents about pets and Star Trek and you’ll read it and you’ll laugh and you’ll cry and it’ll be better than Cats and will Fundamentally Change Your Life*.

*Not really, but it’ll be a cool post anyway.

The Current Drama In My Personal Life

So for today’s Filler, let’s talk about me, and the Current Drama In My Personal Life.

Pretend that you came home from work one night, and you gathered your spouse and children together, And you explained to them that even though you loved them and had had a wonderful life together, you were going to leave them for another spouse and some other kids, who, while not really better people than they, had goals and likes and plans for the coming year that were a little closer to your goals and like and plans, and so you’re sorry but you’re leaving.

Man, that would suck, huh? And you’d feel really bad about it, and it would be totally appropriate that you felt really bad, because if you did that you would be a Way Big Jerk*.

*I used a worse word here initially (part of the anatomy, starting with the letter "A".) But I'm on this thing where I'm trying to to clean up the blog language because Bird Whisperer has been asking questions about the blog and I know it's just a matter of time till he reads a post...

OK, now think about how you’d feel and then lessen that by 2 orders of magnitude, so you only felt about 1% as bad. Clearly that wouldn’t be the end of the world, and you’d get over it and all, but you still probably wouldn’t feel great about it right then, would you? And maybe you'd still feel like just a teensy-weensy bit of a jerk...

That 1%-as-bad is pretty much exactly the feeling you get when you switch bike-racing teams.

That’s right, I switched teams. It wasn’t in the plans, but I got an unexpected invite last week. If it were from any other team I would’ve said thanks-but-no-thanks, but this is the one team that made me pause. I like and respect these guys; they’ve got a great Cat3 core group, one I’ve worked with and against before, including in some of the races I’ve covered in this blog, such as High Uintas Classic (Tyler2) and Tour de Park City (Perry, Josh, Legendary Courtney.)

So it would’ve been an easy switch, except that I already had a great team, with strong, loyal teammates who supported and sacrificed for me many times on the race course over the past 2 years. So this past weekend I was more or less the Hamlet of bike-racing, changing my mind at least 5 times. But late Monday, after countless emails and phone calls, I made up my mind: in 2010 I’ll be riding for Wright Medical Team Cycling. I’m excited and already motivated for another year full of training and racing.

My Spin colleagues took it well, like the gentlemen and good friends they are. Spin Cycle Racing has been a wonderful part of my life over the last 2 years, and I’m richer for it. Thanks guys.

In the bigger picture, when I step back and look at things, I know this is just life. People are always forming, changing and shifting teams, coalitions and alliances. We do it when we change jobs, when we move, and as we change and develop new goals and interests. Most other primates do, too. So do dolphins.

Know what else does? Magpies.

Magpies Part 1: The Basics

In May, 1990, my then-girlfriend and I quit our jobs, put our stuff into storage, and started driving cross-country. Over the next 3 months we wandered all over the Western US and Canada, partly vacationing, partly looking for a place to live. Finally in mid-August we parked it in Boulder, Colorado, and over the next few weeks, while she registered for business school classes at the University of Colorado, I zipped around the Boulder-Denver metro area on a couple of hundred errands associated with securing an apartment and a job.

We’d been through the area earlier in the summer, so it wasn’t entirely new to me, but as I drove around the neighborhoods and strip malls of the Front Range I kept noticing these funny black & white “crows” everywhere; growing up in New England, I’d never seen a Magpie before.

In the 2 decades since, Magpies have been around pretty much everyplace I’ve lived*. I drive, walk, run and bike past them routinely. For months in the summer, when so much is going on, I won’t really notice them, but when the cold settles in and the branches are bare and the songbirds have largely flown South or just shut up, I suddenly notice them again**, going about their business. Magpies aren’t the most beautiful or elegant or melodious or charming of the birds in my life, but they’re the most constant, some of the most common, and arguably, the most interesting. They’ve been on my “List” since day one of this project, and in some sense I think they’ve been on the “List” since before there was a list or a project, or even blogs, at all. They’ve been on the “List” since I parked it in Boulder almost 20 years ago, and it’s time to check them out.

*The notable exception was a 3 year period in the early 1990’s when I lived in Evergreen, Colorado, in a Ponderosa forest at ~8,000 feet. Magpies were replaced by another corvid up there, the Stellers Jay.

**And in fact this is the time of year when I always start re-noticing corvids again of all sorts. I mentioned last week the Stellers Jays hanging out in Mill Creek Canyon; in past autumns they’ve been common in Dry Creek. And there are dozens of Scrub Jays (pic right) right now across the street from the zoo, in the scrub oaks around the Shoreline trailhead.

All About Magpies

Magpies look like Crows because they’re closely-related to them, part of the Corvid family we keep bumping into. They’re super-common throughout the Western US, but (strangely) mostly absent from the East, and elsewhere they span the Northern hemisphere, stretching clear across Eurasia. Here in the US they have somewhat of a bad rap. They’re loud; their decidedly non-melodic squawks are harsh and make for a rough wake-up call, especially in Winter, when they often roost communally. They regularly prey upon the eggs and nestlings of other birds-especially songbirds, and they’re even rumored to peck at and enlarge open sores on the backs of livestock.

All of these things are true, but in their defense they’re dedicated spouses and parents, hard-working and industrious providers, and arguably way smarter than any of the pretty little songbirds we oo and ah about at our feeders.

Magpies are omnivorous generalists; they eat berries, seeds, nuts, carrion, small rodents, and lots and lots of insects, which comprise a larger portion of their diet- it’s believed- than they do any other corvid. And yes, they also regularly eat eggs and fledglings of other birds. But in fairness so do lots of other birds, including many we greatly admire, such as eagles and hawks, and in fact the eggs and fledglings of Magpies are regularly preyed upon in turn by hawks, owls and ravens, a factor that strongly influences the architecture of their nests as we’ll see in a moment. (And besides, most of the people I know eat plenty of mammals, so give ‘em a break already.) Unusual for birds in general, but not for carrion-eating birds, Magpies seem to have a well-developed sense of smell.

Serious Nests

Magpies live about 5 or 6 years in the wild*, and like most Corvids, are committed monogamists, mating for life**. But while pairs are closely-associated during breeding season (March-July), they’re a bit less so during the off-months. Every year, as early as January, romance seems to be rekindled and the pairs become closer again. As breeding season approaches, Magpies can often be seen flying about with twigs in their mouths, indicating that nest-building has begun. Their nests are the most impressive nests in Western suburbia, positioned in large trees 25’+ above ground, up to 4’ high and 3.5’ wide. And not only are they big- they’re roofed, with thick, protective domes covering them from above.

*Which isn’t all that long for corvids. Ravens for example can live for over 40 years in the wild, and Blue Jays up to 17.

**Although Magpies, like most corvids and in fact the majority of monogamous bird species, do “cheat” fairly frequently, engaging what biologists call “extra-pair copulations.” I blogged about this at length in last month’s Blue Jay post.

Magpies- male and female- spend 6 or 7 weeks diligently building their nests, a process which involves 5 stages. Stage 1 is the Anchor Stage, in which a clump of mud is transported up and packed into a base for the nest.

Stage 2 is the Superstructure Stage. The birds build up the base and roof of the nest, as well as the frame of the sides. But the sides are left largely open in this stage, probably for interior access during succeeding stages.

In stage 3 a mud bowl is built inside, and atop the base of, the nest.

After the bowl is built, it is then lined (stage 4) with grasses, tiny rootlets, hairs and other fine materials the birds find.

Finally (stage 5) the sides are built out and filled in, leaving only one or two small side entrances, which are small enough to keep out larger predators.

Magpie nests aren’t just some slapped-together bunch of twigs; they’re carefully architected and painstakingly crafted with a level of attention and care comparable to that of a beaver’s den.

Magpies nest just once/year, though they’ll sometimes start again if the first attempt fails. Mating usually, but not always, takes place in the nest and is pretty quick- less than a minute. Females lay (usually) 6 or 7 eggs, which they incubate for 2.5 weeks, during which time the male brings all of her food. After hatching, the nestlings start flying after about 3 or 4 weeks, and leave the nest after 2 months.

PG-13 Side Note: Male magpies, like most male birds, don’t have penises. Most birds- male and female- have a single anal-genital opening called the cloaca, used for passing waste, ejaculating semen, and laying eggs. Magpies mate by presses cloacas together, which in order to accomplish the male must get his tail under the female’s.

Tangent: Like most people, I was a bit grossed out when I first learned the details of avian anal-genital anatomy. Over time though, I’ve come to admire the engineering simplicity of their “architecture”. If you think about it, we mammals sport a rather complex anatomical array to achieve the same basic functions, a thought that’s almost certainly occurred at some point or other to every long-distance male cyclist.

You’ll sometimes hear BTW, that no birds have penises, but this isn’t true. Ducks and ostriches are 2 examples of birds that have them.

You may well have seen other impressive nests, of eagles, hawks and owls, but it’s worth noting that many of these nests were former Magpie nests, Many, many birds and even some mammals use abandoned Magpie nests for shelter.

Ravens (pic right- snapped this shot back in May in Arches NP and have been dying to use it) have been observed disassembling Magpie nests- twig by twig- to prey upon nestlings. While Magpies aren’t big enough to stand up to Ravens directly, they’ll recruit other, nearby Magpies to help mob attacking Ravens and drive them off. Magpies employ mobbing behavior not only for defense, but also “offensively.” A common tactic is to mob a larger predator such as an eagle or hawk who’s made a recent kill, in an attempt to distract it and snatch away the kill.

Side Note: In fact back in May I stumbled upon, and blogged about, just such a scene along Wasatch Blvd. My stop spooked the Magpies and allowed the Golden Eagle to escape with its kill- a snake.

Teaser For Next Post

Social cooperation, positioning, alliance-building and even deception are critical parts of the Magpie’s lifestyle and success, but we’ll get more into these aspects in Part 2, when we talk about their brains.

Different Magpies And Where They Come From

There are 2 species of Magpies in the US. Here in Utah, throughout the Intermountain West, and even up into Canada and Alaska, our species is the Black-billed Magpie, Pica Hudsonia. But if you live in or visit Central California, you’ll notice that Magpies there usually have yellow bills, and often whit-ish markings near the eyes. These are Yellow-billed Magpies, Pica nutalli. (pic right, not mine) The 2 species- like all Magpies- have a common form, with the distinctive gently-curved corvid beak and bristled-nostrils*, long tails (the longest of any corvid) and long (for a corvid, though not for birds in general) legs. The longer legs reflect the amount of time they spend foraging on the ground or hopping among branches; Magpies are capable but unexceptional flyers, and their long tails can be a liability in high winds.

*The nostrils of Piñon Jays and Clark’s Nutcracker are exceptions; they’re bristle-free, to avoid clogging with pine-pitch.

All corvid feet BTW, adhere to a common structure: independent, sturdy “tarsals” (i.e. not joined in a common body, like our feet) and strong, grasping toes. The feet are scaled on top, smooth on the bottom.

Black-billed Magpies look almost identical Eurasian Magpies, Pica pica, and for about 40 years the generally-accepted story of Magpie evolution was this: They evolved in Eastern Asia, probably somewhere around Korea, and then subsequently spread across Eurasia. A few million years ago, Magpies migrated to the Western US, via Beringia. Subsequent glacial advances narrowed and limited the range of these Magpies to the California coast and Central Valley, and they gave rise to Yellow-billed Magpies. Much more recently, Eurasian Magpies reinvaded Western North America, establishing the Black-billed Magpies we see today.

It’s a cool story, with multiple migration-waves reminiscent of the stories we’ve heard for bears and bison. Unfortunately it turned out to be totally wrong.

Probably the single most interesting thing about corvids that you never knew is this: they are apparently Australia’s most successful export. DNA evidence suggests that the original proto-crow evolved in and emigrated from Australia something like 25-30 million years ago*. Today corvids are wildly successful worldwide, on every continent except Antarctica.

*Around the same time primates appeared. Remember this: we’re coming back to it in Part 2.

Magpies, genus Pica, do indeed seem to have evolved from corvid ancestors in or around Korea, but the parallels with the “old” story end there. Korean Magpies, Pica pica sericea*, are the most distantly-related to all other Magpies and seem to have diverged earliest. Magpies from Western Europe across Siberia to Kamchatka are closely-related and a single species.

But Black-billed Magpies, despite outward appearances, are much more closely-related to Yellow-billed than to any old world Magpies, and it now appears that the 2 North American species are both descended from a common founder population of Eurasian Magpies that migrated to North America 3 or 4 million years ago via Beringia.

*In light of the recent DNA evidence, this guy will probably be reclassified from subspecies to species, P. sericea.

Side Note: This summary omits the “Magpies” of other genera, such as Cissa, Urocissa and Cyanopica, which include the various Magpie species of Southeast Asia and a few other Old World locales. These birds are more distantly-related to Pica, and appear to have evolved their “Magpie-ness”- long tail, etc.- independently, although they do appear to be more closely-related to Pica than are crows or ravens. (Pic right = Formosan Blue Magpie, Urocissa caerulea, not mine, because, uh… I’ve never been to Taiwan.)

Tangent: I hate googling for pics, because at least 1/2 the time my image search turns up really weird stuff that either a) I’d be embarrassed if Awesome Wife walked in and saw me looking at or b) an image is so weird I just know it’s going to give me freaky dreams, or c) both, as was the case here. This is the first image hit I had for “Formosan Blue Magpie.” Really? This came up first? Tell me again how Google works?

While we’re on the topic, all Jays in the New World- Piñon, Scrub, Stellers, Blue, etc.- appear to be a monophyletic family, more closely-related to each other than they are to crows, ravens or magpies.

Magpies And People

Another interesting thing about Magpies is that they seem to have adapted various ancestral behaviors to humans and human habitat. One example is what are called protective nesting associations. Magpies have long been known to nest close to- and even in the same tree as- hawks and ospreys. It’s thought that the presence of such raptors might help keep nesting areas clear of prospective nestling/egg predators, and raptors, strangely, are often tolerant of smaller birds nesting close by. (Though what they “get” in return for their tolerance I’m not clear.) Over the last century+, Magpies seemed to have transferred this behavior to human habitats, favoring nesting sites in tall trees in and around ranches and suburban neighborhoods. Humans generally keep their habitats (at least somewhat) clear of snakes, rats, raccoons and other threats, and so the association may make our neighborhoods somewhat safer nesting sites for them.

Another example is hunting/scavenging. If you know much about ravens, you may well have heard that they often follow hunters (and maybe even gunfire) in the Fall, hoping to scavenge recent kills/entrails. It’s thought that this represents a transference of an ancient behavior of following, tracking and showing up at recent wolf-kills, and in fact there’s evidence that Ravens will call wolves to dead carcasses, so that the wolves will open the carcass, something the raven cannot achieve with its bill.

It turns out that Magpies have long had such an association with coyotes, following them and relying on them to open carcasses. And like ravens, Magpies may have transferred this association to humans- not so much in the form of hunting, but in the form of road-kill. If you’ve driven anywhere in the Western US you’ve probably seen Magpies feeding on dead deer and elk along roadsides. Without the crushing/tearing impacts of motor vehicles, Mapgies would be unable to access most of the flesh in such thick-hided dead animals.

Oh, I almost forgot about the pecking-at-sores thing. Yes, Magpies really do this, though not often. More commonly they perch on the backs of both livestock and wild ungulates, feeding on ticks. In times of food-duress however, they’ve been known to peck at, enlarges and feed upon the sores caused by such ticks. (In this, I’d again cut them some slack, as it seems to be a stress-induced behavior, maybe analogous to starving humans eating dogs and horses*.)

*I tried horse once, in France, and you know what? It was pretty good. Like steak, but leaner and somehow almost slightly sweet, kind of like buffalo. And no, I’ve never eaten dog! What do you think I am- Hannibal Lecter??

Human habitat associations appear to be expanding the range of Magpies. Ranching has made them more common in the Eastern Great Basin than they are thought to have been historically, and human farms, ranches and suburbs seem to be helping them spread Eastward across the plains.

So Magpies have a lot going on, and are certainly worth checking out. But the coolest thing about Magpies isn’t nest-building or family life or human associations or any of the things we’ve talked about in this post- it’s their brains.

Next Up: Flying monkeys and the parallel evolution of intelligence

Note: Special thanks to reader and fellow Awesome Nature Blogger KB for her kind assistance tracking down Magpie phylogenetic research.

Watchersticker Follow-Up & Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I don’t have a real post today- I’m still “buzzed out” by the Fly posts. But I’m going to take advantage of the off-day to catch up on 2 things: some WatcherSTICKER-related housekeeping, and a current news item with a connection to a previous post in this blog.

Tangent: Speaking of “real” posts, a quick word about posting frequency over the next several weeks. Though I know it doesn’t seem like it from reading this blog, I do in fact have a Real Job. And though the details of that Real Job* aren’t important, the busy season for that job is the last quarter of the year, or Right Now. As such, I may be time-challenged for the next little bit to do full topic research and graphics for quite as many TdF**-type posts. I hope to post at least twice/week between now and the end of the year, but if I slack off a bit, don’t worry- I’m not flaking, just making sure the bills get paid.

*I sell stuff.

**Tour-de-Force.

First Thing

At this point I believe I’m completely caught up with WatcherSTICKERS, meaning that if you sent me a request/address for a STICKER, I’ve responded, mailed the STICKER, and you’ve received it. If you sent me a request/address, but did not receive a response, it means I didn’t get your email, so send it again to adventureREMOVECAPSbotanist@yahoo.com. If I emailed you back, but you never received the STICKER, it means it never made it to you, so let me know and I’ll re-send.

Also, I have STICKERS left, so if you were on the winner list but didn’t claim your STICKER*, you can still do so. (Or, if you weren’t on the list, but just want a sticker, just send me a nice email and I’ll probably send you one anyway.)

*Yes, believe it or not, a couple of winners never claimed their STICKERS, which seems simply unfathomable, given their Incomparable Utter Coolness.

Speaking of STICKERS, I thought they were cool enough when I came up with the idea, but now that I’ve seen them in action, they’re actually- if possible- Even Cooler. Here’s SkiBikeJunkie’s WatcherSTICKER, positioned enigmatically on top of his LOTOJA sticker. For out-of-staters, (*warning- link takes you to phenomenally annoying and utterly unnecessary flash intro*) LOTOJA is the much-hyped, longest single-day UCSF-sanctioned road-bike race in the US (207 miles.) Over the years the hype and bragging rights associated with the event have grown exponentially and the ubiquitous stickers (yes I have one- raced it 3 times) have become perhaps just a bit too popular in the view of many regular racers, as the race has attracted hundreds (thousands?) of participants who pretty much never race otherwise. This effect has given rise to an informal, grass-roots anti-LOTOJA backlash/jihad, led by none other than our own, otherwise mild-mannered, KanyonKris.

SkiBikeJunkie has a subtle mind and a well-developed sense of irony, so I’m not entirely clear whether his placement is poking fun of the LOTOJA-hype, or rather poking fun of the anti-LOTOJA-hype-backlash/jihad (and hence KanyonKris.) In either case, I’m proud that a WatcherSTICKER is part of his statement, whatever it is.

Speaking of KanyonKris, the man is living proof that family minivans can be Way Cool, merely by the addition of a well-placed WatcherSTICKER, as shown here. Sharp-looking wheels, KanyonKris!

And speaking of sharp-looking wheels, Maggie reconsidered her WatcherSTICKER placement and opted for the seat-tube (rather than the down-tube) on her Awesome-Canadian-Panda-Fixie-Bike, shown here parked along the happening streets of Toronto. I think the eye gives the Panda-Bike an almost sentient look, as if it were somehow self-aware*.

*Which I’m hopeful will dissuade would-be bike-thieves.

The WactherSTICKER looks sharp on other continents as well. Here it is gracing Ian’s Ford Mondeo in West London. I have to say, that burgundy compliments the WatcherSTICKER beautifully- great-looking car!

You might think, living as he does in the busy metropolis of London, that Ian would rarely see actual wildlife, except for the snippets he glimpses in blogs such as this one. You would be wrong. Here’s a Red Fox, Vulpes vulpes, in Ian’s urban back yard taken last week. Red Foxes aren’t unusual in London, but this one’s the biggest he’s spotted yet.

Nowadays Red Foxes are the only wild canines in the UK. They’re also found here in North America, but their distribution and origins are both fascinating and unclear. While they were apparently native to the Boreal Forest of Canada and the Northern Rockies in the US, non-native Red Foxes were introduced during colonial times in New York, Maryland and Virginia* (for hunting). The non-natives thrived in human-disturbed environments and spread throughout North America, coming into contact with native Red Foxes. Today it’s not clear whether there are really any true “native” Red Foxes left in North America, or whether they’ve been replaced, or hybridized out of- Oh wait! Stop! This is turning into a real post, and really, I’m just not up for that today. Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah- cool STICKER placement.

*And possibly later on the West Coast.

But the coolest WatcherSTICKER placement of all to date is by KristenT, who’s placed it on the rear window of her Rally Racer Nissan Sentra SE-R, shown here in the Mt. Hood 2009 Rally.

It’s cool enough that Kristen competes in the overwhelmingly male-dominated sport of road rally racing, but that she does so sporting a WatcherSTICKER is Even Cooler. And let me tell you- this lady can drive. Check out minute 7:20 of the video below, as Kristen rips around the corner in car #231*.

*The “T’s” are a family team. If you watch the whole video, you’ll see her 2 brothers and her dad racing in cars #232, 271 and 222 respectively. That’s right- the whole family races. Remember how in the old Speed Racer cartoons, the whole Racer family** raced? That’s KristenT’s family- she’s living Speed Racer in real life. How. Cool. Is. That?

**Personally, I always identified with Speed’s older brother, Rex Racer, who of course was really the mysterious RacerX, and who regularly appeared at Critical Cartoon Moments to get Speed out of jams. I don’t know why; I can’t say that I’ve ever gotten my real life little brother- let’s call him “Phil”- out of any significant jam…

Cool WatcherSTICKERS are everywhere. Thanks to all of you who sent photos, and if any other recipients have sticker-shots to share, please forward and I’ll see if I can work them into future (filler) posts.

Second Thing

So the second item is decidedly less frivolous. You may have seen in the news this week that former NBA star Kareem Abdul Jabbar made public that he is suffering from a rare form of leukemia. Though most of the articles mentioned the type- chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML)- they didn’t provide an awful lot of detail as to exactly what CML is, how it works, or what causes it. But long-time readers of WTWWU of course already know, for this is of course the same form of leukemia that my friend “Lance” suffers from. Both Abdul-Jabbar and Lance are being treated with Gleevec, which offers both of them good chances for many long years ahead. If you missed the Lance-CML post, and would like to know the details of Abdul-Jabbar’s leukemia, you can go check it out.

While CML is of course a tough thing for Abdul-Jabbar, there may be a silver lining. One of the challenges Lance initially faced was finding a local oncologist experienced in CML treatment. When well-known personalities face unusual illnesses, knowledge of that illness and its treatment often spreads more quickly both through the general public and the medical community. Abdul-Jabbar’s going public with his illness may well improve awareness and treatment for CML patients in general, and it was a good thing to do.

The Amazing Housefly Part 2: Coolest Eye Ever

As longtime readers know, I am fascinated by vision, and find it absolutely fabulous that the world is bathed- all day long- in electromagnetic radiation that bounces around all over the place and reflects off of practically everything.

I’m even more amazed that we have these funny little camera-like balls stuck in our faces with refractive lenses that focus this reflected radiation onto little screens set back in our heads, and that these screens, and the neural circuitry wiring them up to our brains, can turn this jumble of a gazillion different photons of different wavelengths and intensities into a full-blown 3-dimensional model of the world around us, extending from a few inches in front of our nose to dozens of miles away.

Think about that the next time you’re down in the dumps. You can see! Think about what an amazing, incredible, impossible thing that is, and you do it all the time without thinking about it. Sometimes we worry about work or family or the meaning of life or whatever, but if you step back and think about it- really think about it- the mere fact that you can actually see makes your whole life worth it even if you never accomplish anything else. Everything else in life is gravy.

I’m also fascinated by how other living creatures see, and how the world appears to them. So much of our sense of the world is wrapped up in how we see it, as is- I’d argue- our sense of self. Think about how you sense yourself. If you really think about where you are, in your body, it’s not in your hand or your leg or your belly- it’s in your head, right behind your eyes.

We’ve looked at the vision of other creatures before, including birds and other mammals. But all of the eyes we’ve looked at are camera-style eyes, very much like our own. Camera-style eyes are just one of several basic eye “architectures”, and by no means the most prevalent. No, the most common eyes in the world are compound eyes, and the trillions of creatures who bear them see the world very differently from you and me.

In a human eye (diagram right, not mine*), light passes through the cornea, and enters the eyeball through a lens which focuses the image, via refraction**, onto the back of the eyeball, or retina, where the various wavelengths of light received aan recognized by special receptors which communicate this information to the optic nerve. There’s a lot more detail, but that’s how it basically works, and the same general design is present in the vast majority of land-based vertebrates. There are plenty of differences between animals of course. For example, the shape of our eyes’ lenses is somewhat flexible, allowing us to focus on objects near or far. But some animals, such as snakes, have lenses that are fixed, and focus by effectively telescoping the lens***.

*Because hell, I already drew enough graphics for this post

**I explained refraction in this post.

***Arguably making them much more “camera-like” than ours.

There are also invertebrates- namely spiders- that have camera-style eyes, but the overwhelmingly majority- including Flies- have compound eyes. There are several different types of compound eye, but the most common design among insects is the Apposition Compound Eye. Here’s how it works.

A compound eye consists of multiple (from as few as 6 to as many as 30,000) individual “eye units” called ommatidia. Each ommatidium consists of a hexagonal tube capped by a teeny little cornea. Just below the cornea is a teeny little crystalline lens-cone, and just below that is a photo-receptive organelle called the rhabdom, and which consists of a small number of individual photoreceptor cells, called rhabdomeres, fused together toward the bottom of the tube. The light-data received by the rhabdom is transmitted through a single axon, or nerve fiber, which transmits the image to a succession of nerve layers (the lamina, medulla and lobula) where it’s combined with the thousands of other images being received simultaneously from other ommatidia and combined into a composite image in the insect’s brain.

You need to remember this part, or you’ll be lost when we get to the Fly-Eye. Go back and read it again if it didn’t make sense.

Tangent: There’s a cool parallel here with the plant world- composite flowers. Just as a daisy or a dandelion is composed of hundreds of miniaturized flowers, a compound eye is composed of hundreds (or thousands) of “mini-eyes.”

An apposition-eye image is generally not as precise as a camera-eye image. Part of this is due to the effects of diffraction* in the small opening of the tube; it’s likely that most (all?) insects cannot see stars in the night sky. So insects that need really good vision have lots and lots of ommatidia- close to 30,000 per eye in some Dragonflies. Even so, a Dragonfly’s image of the world is far less precise than ours.

*I haven’t explained diffraction in this blog, and unfortunately this post is long enough. If you’d like an explanation right now, you can check out the Wikipedia entry for (a longer than necessary) one.

Side Note: Many apposition-eye insects, such as dragonflies and drone (male) bees*, have areas of the eye with “acute” vision characterized by larger facets which help mitigate the effects of diffraction. This “acute vision” portion of the eye is analogous to foveal vision in birds.

*Drones have better eyesight (and flight-speed) than workers or queens, since pretty much the only thing they do in life is intercept a flying queen to mate.

But the apposition-eye has a couple of advantages over our camera-style eyes.

The first has probably already occurred to you- the field of vision can be huge. A Dragonfly for example has a nearly 360 degree field of vision.

Extra Detail: And that understates it. It’s 360 degrees (or close to it) with respect to a 2-dimensional plane. But the dragonfly is seeing up and down as well in a total field of vision that is nearly spherically 360 degrees. As if that weren’t enough, Dragonflies see more colors than we do; most are tetra- or pentachromatic*. In particular Dragonflies seem to have enhanced color sensitivity in the blue-to-ultraviolet range. It’s thought that this “brightens” the sky and makes prey insects stand out more clearly.

*This applies to day-flying Dragonflies. Many species are active only around dusk, and it’s not entirely clear what color-vision capabilities they have.

BTW, when I was doing this post I dug around in through some old photos for a Dragonfly* pic. This one’s from June, 2005, up the South Fork of Dry Creek. If you’re a Salt Lake-area trail-user, this is the major fork off to the right as you climb Dry Creek, about ½ way up. It’s a big, deep, seldom-hiked canyon, much deeper than Dry Creek proper, with a year-round stream. The day I hiked it the canyon was filled with these amazing-looking black & orange dragon flies, and I snapped a few pics (with, unfortunately, a lesser camera than I have today.) I filed it away and forgot about it.

*Dragonflies are of course Way Cool, and I intend to post about them next Spring/Summer.

Anyway I dug them up this week and think I ID’d it as a female Twelve-Spotted Skimmer, Libellula pulchella. Is she gorgeous or what?

The second benefit is that the apposition-eye forms and processes images much more quickly than a camera-style eye, which translates to a much, much higher flicker rate.

Humans have a flicker rate of roughly 50 to 60Hz, or images per second, and in fact if we see more than about 30 images per second we perceive constant motion. This is why old-style fluorescent lighting caused headaches; the refresh rate of the bulbs was only about 60Hz*. But other animals have different, and often higher, flicker rates. Most birds for example have flicker rates in excess of 100Hz, which is one reason they’re able to fly in and amongst tree limbs without colliding with branches all the time.

*This is not a problem with modern CFL bulbs, which have a refresh rate in excess of 10KHz.

Tangent: Know what other animal has a higher flicker rate than us? Dogs. In fact if you’re reading this on an old-style CRT monitor, and your dog is with you in the room, there’s a good chance that he/she sees your screen flickering right now. Most CRT displays are set to 70-90Hz. Dogs have flicker rates as high as 80Hz.

This also the case with CRT-design television sets, but not with modern flat-panel monitors or TVs, which have refresh rates of around 200Hz, and don’t really refresh the same way anyway.

But large-eyed flying insects have flicker rates in excess of 200Hz, which is incredibly useful when you’re in fast flight, chasing down another fast-moving, highly-maneuverable, flying insect.

So a Dragonfly or a Bee sees the world less precisely than we do, but they see far more of it and more real-time than we do. To a certain extent, they think faster.

Side Note: This BTW is the real reason it’s so darn hard to swat a fly. Yes, they can ride out the wind-wave pushed ahead by your hand or magazine coming down to swat them, but they have to be ready- and actually jump- to catch that wave. A Housefly can move into jump-ready/take-off position in 100 milliseconds, which is just 1/3 of the time it takes your brain to tell your hand to “swat.”

Refraction Superposition

So apposition-eyes have some real advantages, but they’re not the only kind of compound eye. Moths, for example have a completely different type of compound eye.

Moths, as you’ve probably noticed, are active at dusk and in the evening, when very little light is available. So they need eyes with an architecture that makes the most of what light they do receive. Moth eyes don’t aggregate images like Dragonfly eyes, but rather superimpose multiple images through a technique called refraction superposition.

While a moth’s eye looks superficially similar to an apposition eye, internally it’s radically different. Light is refracted through the lens element of each ommatidium in such a way that it emerges from the bottom of that ommatidium at the same angle, and then onto a teeny little retina.

So in a weird way, it’s- internally at least- a little bit more like our eye. The ommatidium achieves this by acting like a two-lens telescope, which it accomplishes by containing a cylindrical lens with a gradiated refractive index that continually bends the light as it travels through the tube. In other words, the refractive index of the lens varies depending on where it is along the tube. (This is way, way cooler than your telescope.)

The guys who figured this out BTW, an Austrian physiologist names Sigmund Exner, did so way back in the 1880’s, but it wasn’t until the 1970’s that sophisticated-enough instrumentation* was developed to prove him right.

*The interference microscope.

Reflection Superposition

Superposition is such a great idea that it’s evolved multiple times in compound eyes, using very different architectures. Lobsters for example, also live in light-poor environments where superposition helps improve image formation. But refractive lenses are trickier to effect in water, which has a much higher refractive index than air. So the lobster’s eye achieves superposition via reflection. The insides of a lobster’s ommatidia are mirrored, and each facet uses reflection internally to focus the image onto the teeny retina.

More recently (1988) a third type of superposition compound eye was discovered in a genus of crabs (Macropipus) that use both crystalline lenses and parabolic mirrors, and is called the Parabolic Superposition Eye. Superposition eye of all (optical) types BTW need to be very spherical in form to superimpose the images correctly.

Wow. That’s a lot of cool bug-eyes. But what does all this have to do with flies?

Everything. Because flies have the coolest* compound eyes of all.

*Totally my opinion, and I have absolutely no authority or credentials to back it up. But it’s true. Really.

Neural Superposition

A fly’s eye is structurally very similar to an apposition eye, like a dragonfly’s or a bee’s.

But it’s wired differently. It’s also a superposition eye, but it achieves superposition neurally. Remember when we walked through the structure of the apposition eye, after the images were received by the 8 rhabdomeres, or photoreceptor cells, they were joined into a single rhabdom which was connect by a single axon, or nerve fiber, to the lamina, or top nerve layer below.

But in a neural superposition eye, the rhabdomeres stay separated clear down the tube, and emerge from the bottom as 7* separate nerve fibers, each of which is then joined at the lamina to 6 other fibers from rhabdomeres from the 6 adjoining facets surrounding it which are angled in the same direction**. So the image received at the lamina is 7 times brighter than the image at any given photoreceptor, which helps flies form superior images in low light conditions. And because superposition is achieved via wiring (vs. optics) the shape of the eye doesn’t need to be as strictly spherical, allowing for greater flexibility of form. Neural superposition eyes are are also thought to be even more sensitive to motion detection than apposition eyes and might experience an improved signal-to-noise ratio.

*There are 8 rhabdomeres, but #7 and #8 sit on top of each other in the center, and are effectively one.

**The angles between individual rhabdomeres in a given ommatidium are the same as the angles between adjacent ommatidia.

Now that’s a cool eye.

Halteres, pulvilli, neural superposition eyes- they’re just 3 of a whole slew of amazing features in Houseflies. As is over and over again the case in this project, each little living thing turns out to have this amazingly cool story when you stop, check it out and learn a little bit about it.

Here’s something kind of gross about me: I routinely swat bugs with my bare hand. I’m not proud of it, but a couple of my apartments in college were so bug-infested that if I’d had to search for a tissue or swatter every time I spotted a roach, I’d never have managed to eek out a degree in 4 years. The habit’s stuck, and over the years I’ve become not-half-bad at hand-swatting flies. But this gal had been a fine subject, posing patiently on my driver’s-side window as I fumbled with focus and lighting to get my shot. I opened the car door, gently shooed her out, and walked across the lot to my office.

The Amazing Housefly Part 1: Stabilizers, Feet and Gender

You ever see some guy drive up into a parking lot, park his car, but then not get out for a bit? I see guys do that sometimes*, and I always assume it’s because they’re listening to something really good on the radio.**

*But never women. Let’s face it- guys are just weirder.

**Like one of those one-hit-wonder songs from groups that never put out another half-decent song- like Norman Greenbaum or Harvey Danger***- so you never bought the album, and you hang out till the end of the song because you don’t know when you’re going to hear it next. Or maybe they’re listening to a really funny comedy bit. Or maybe they’re just listening to one of those right-wing talk-radio jerks. Whatever.

***Confession: In the mid-90’s I actually bought a (the?) Harvey Danger album because I liked the song “Flagpole Sitta.” Terrible album.

But Friday morning after I pulled into my office parking lot, I sat in the parked car for a full 5 minutes, not to listen to “Spirit In The Sky”- the radio wasn’t even on- but to take close-up photos of the Housefly trapped inside the car, perched on the driver’s-side window. (Nice shot, eh?)

Tangent: I always imagine that for a fly- or any bug really- getting trapped in a car is like an alien abduction. 2 weeks ago we had a fly stuck in the car from Fruita, CO to Price, UT. What a weird trip it must’ve been for that fly.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have no idea how long I’m going to continue this project*. But before I end it- whenever that day comes- I have a list of things I really, really want to blog about, and I need to make sure I’ve covered all of the things on that list before I wrap it up. But here’s the thing: I haven’t actually written the list down, and if you asked me to recite the full list, I couldn’t. But every once in a while I’ll come across something, and just know it’s on the list. Houseflies are on the list.

*Though it is going to end one day, if only because I just hate things- 10 year-old sitcoms, “Rocky” movies, geriatric rock bands on yet another reunion tour- that never end. All things- especially good things- should have a beginning and an end.

All About Flies

Flies, true flies, of the order Diptera, are distinguished by their wing architecture. Dipteran have 2 wings, and 2 halteres behind those wings. Halteres are knobbed structures located behind the wings that are flapped rapidly during flight and act as flight stabilizers (maybe very roughly analogous to the tailfins of an aircraft, or the rear rotor of a helicopter.) (See diagram left from HowStuffWorks.) They almost certainly evolved from wings, as primitive insects had 2 pairs of wings, as many (most) species still do today. Dragonflies, damselflies, caddis flies, fireflies and butterflies are not true flies. Houseflies, horseflies, deerflies, botflies, gnats, midges and mosquitoes(!) are.

And, to start this series out with a bang, and show you just how awesome my little camera is, check this out: I got a photo of a Housefly haltere. Wow.

The fly in my car was a Housefly, Musca domestica. You can tell by the red eyes and the distinctive black and grey striped markings on the abdomen (pic below).

Those blue, metallic-looking flies people refer to as houseflies aren’t houseflies; they’re Bluebottle Flies, Calliphora vomitoria, which is a kind of blow-fly.

All About Houseflies

Houseflies occur all over the world, though they’re thought to have originated in Central Asia. They thrive in both tropical and temperate environments, and in both rural and urban settings. The Housefly lifecycle includes a complete metamorphosis from egg to larva (maggot) to pupa to adult. (pic below, not mine. BTW, adult at lower right = male, upper right = female, as we’ll see in just a bit.)

Females lay up to 500 eggs over a few days in batches of 75 to 150. Maggots hatch in a day or less, and immediately start feeding on whatever substrate they hatched in, ideally manure, though soils containing old manure also work. Horse manure is best for maggots, followed by human excrement, followed by cow manure.

After between 4 and 13 days the maggot pupates, transforming into an encased pupa while it develops into its adult phase. The pupal case is formed from the maggot’s last larval exoskeleton; maggots, like other invertebrates, need to regularly shed their old exoskeletons as they grow. The pupal stage lasts between 2 and 27 days, varying primarily due to temperature; in general the warmer it is, the faster the fly develops. The fly breaks out of the pupal case by hammering with a specialized organ on its head, the ptilinum.

Adult Houseflies can live as long as 2 months, but 2 to 4 weeks is more typical. They live longer at cooler temperatures, and lifespan appears to be extended by access to- get this- sugar. Once emerged from their pupal cases, their first order of business is eating; they need food before mating. The female requires protein (manure alone won’t cut it) to produce eggs, and so this is a time when she’s particularly likely to land on your hamburger. After mating, the female starts laying eggs in 4 to 20 days.

Speaking of eating, Houseflies- like Spiders- can eat only liquid food. They liquefy solid morsels by regurgitating digestive juices onto them (as of course you already know if you saw Jeff Goldblum in the remake of The Fly.)

This fast, productive lifestyle is extremely prolific. Flies in most of the US complete ~12 generations/ year, and closer to 20 down in the tropics. It’s been estimated that if an “Adam & Eve” pair of flies started in April, and every single one of their eggs survived and reproduced, and so on and so on, throughout the summer, by August they would have produced close to 200 quintillion (200 followed by 30 zeros) flies.

OK, but let’s get back to the pics I shot on my driver’s-side window, and the obvious question they raise: Why are my car windows so dirty*? Haha, no really, the question is: How do flies stick to glass? There are all kinds of answers floating around, from sticky feet to wet feet (capillary action) to apparently-smooth surfaces being actually pretty bumpy at a microscopic level to Van der Waal forces (which actually may well be partly at play as well) but the real answer is that a fly’s foot is pretty darn sophisticated.

*My car always needs washing. When people ask why my car is dirty, I tryy and spin it as a positive, attributing it to me go-getter-outdoorhead lifestyle. But really I’m just kind of lazy.

Fly legs- like most insect legs- are tipped with a pair of very small claws, called the tarsal claws. These claws can hang on to nearly any protuberance on a landing surface, but on glass or super-smooth plant surfaces there’s sometimes nothing to claw onto.

In between the tarsal claws, a Housefly has an organ called a pulvillus, which is a retractable floppy little sack, sort of like a deflated balloon. The pulvillus is coated with hundreds of teeny oily little hairs, the adhesion between which and the surface holds the fly in place.

Side Note: Hymenopterans- Bees, Ants, Wasps- have a similar but different structure, called the arolium.

So here’s the cool thing. In this photo you can just barely make out the extended, yellowish pulvillus holding the fly to the glass.

These pulvilli stick to all kinds of surfaces and things, including bacteria, and since Houseflies regularly land on manure, rotting flesh and human food, that’s how* they spread disease.

*One of the ways, anyway. The vomiting onto food-bits, and of course their feces “help” as well.

Back to names. As longtime readers go, I’ve thrown out about a thousand Latin names for different creatures in this blog, and most go in one ear and out the other. But I love the Housefly’s Latin name: Musca domestica. “Domestic” = “House” obviously, and “Musca” is practically the same as “Mosca”, which, as every Spanish-speaker or gringo who took high school Spanish knows, is the Spanish word for “Fly”. And that reminds me of a joke, which coincidentally, is a great setup for the 2 topics we’ll tackle about Houseflies: sex-determination and vision.

But here’s the thing: the joke only works in Spanish, because of the wordplay involved. But it’s easy Spanish, so surely if you live in pretty much anywhere in the US, you must know at least enough Spanish to follow along*.

El Chiste

Hay turista norteamericano en restaurante en Mexico.

Turista: ¡Oye camarero! ¡Hay un mosca en mi sopa!

El camarero mira la sopa…

Camarero: No señor, hay una mosca en su sopa.

Turista: ¡Ay caramba! ¡Que buena vista tienes!

*Really? You don’t speak any Spanish? OK, here’s the joke. An American tourist is in a restaurant in Mexico and he tells the waiter there’s a fly in his soup. But he uses the masculine version of the word “a” or “un” for the fly, or “mosca”, which is a feminine word in Spanish. The waiter corrects his Spanish with the feminine article, “una”, but the tourist misunderstands and thinks the waiter has identified the fly as female, as which point he exclaims, “Wow, what good vision you have!”

Tangent: If you don’t speak Spanish, you should. No, no, not because everyone in the US will speak Spanish in 10 years. That’s a bunch of xenophobic hokey. Recent immigrants speak Spanish, but their children and grandchildren overwhelmingly prefer English. No, the reasons are:

1- It’s a high ROI language to learn. You can travel to dozens of very different countries with some basic Spanish (as I highlighted in the Blue Piñon series.)

2- It’s a much better language than English. Seriously. It follows all the rules, each letter always makes one- and only one- sound only*, and a far lower proportion of the verbs are irregular than in English. Conjugation and syntax are simple and easy. At the same time though, it routinely conveys clearer meaning and specificity than English, through a complete subjunctive mode, a real 2^nd-person plural pronoun and conjugation (so you don’t have to say “y’all” or “you guys” all the time), a clear distinction between 2^nd person formal and informal conjugation (so you don’t talk to a Nobel prize-winner like you do to your toddler) and many, many examples of greater verb specificity, as highlighted in “ser” vs. “estar”, and “saber” vs. “concocer.”

*Well, except “h”, which makes no sound.

3- If there really is any kind of justice in the universe and an afterlife of any sort, it is an absolute certain given that in that next life, English-only speakers will be mowing the lawns, washing the dishes and cleaning the bathrooms.

Nested Tangent: I should confess that my own Spanish, though sufficient for travel, is pretty lousy. From time to time I endeavor to improve it, but I just don’t travel often enough. Lately I’ve been watching Univision in the morning while riding the trainer, but after following along a bit, I get lost, zone out and end up just spinning and staring at the weather-ladies*. Then I realize with a start that I’m essentially just watching soft-porn and switch the channel before Awesome Wife catches me.

*Seriously. Why are the meteorologists on Spanish-language TV so unbelievably-smoking hot?

But the joke brings up the whole fascinating topic of gender, and specifically gender-determination, in Houseflies.

All About Sex-Determination (In Flies)

With humans and other mammals sex is determined by sex-specific chromosomes: XX = female, XY male.

But insects are more complicated. Ants and Bees for example use a haploid-diploid system: females have 2 sets of chromosomes (like us) while males have just 1 (and arise from unfertilized eggs.) Flies are all over the place. Fruitflies for instance, which diverged from Houseflies ~120 million years ago, use an “X0” system, meaning that 2 “X”s make a female, and 1 “X” makes a male, and there is no “Y”.

Houseflies are a bit more like us. They have 12 chromosomes arranged in 6 pairs. One of those pairs is either “XY” or ”XX” and determines whether the fly is male or female, with the “Y” chromosome being passed through the male-line only, just like with us.

And that’s how it works. Sometimes.

Other Housefly populations have been discovered in which there is no “Y.” All of them- female and male- are XX. In these flies, another gene, called “M”, has been located that sits on one of the other non-sex-specific chromosomes, or autosome, (i.e. not the “X”) which creates a male Housefly when present.

Tangent: There’s a fascinating “Y”-less sex-determination system in the mammalian world. In recent years it’s been discovered that all Mole Voles, Ellobius lutescens, native to the Caucasus Mountains, are X-only- both females and males. There is no Y chromosome, nor does SRY, the gene on the mammalian Y chromosome responsible for “male-ness”, appear to exist on any other chromosome. The analogy isn’t perfect; Mole Voles are all (male and female) X0, rather than XX, with just a single X chromosome, and a diploid chromosome count of 17. So far, the sex-determining gene and its location are unknown.

The Mole Vole is of particular interest to biologists, because the mammalian Y chromosome is small, seems to be shrinking over time, and some researchers suspect that it may eventually become “extinct”, leading to the head-scratcher of how humans in the distant future might reproduce.

OK, so that’s interesting, but it gets even weirder. It turns out there are other Houseflies in which all the flies- male and female- are both XX and have M. In these flies, another gene- called FD, which is present in, and passed down by, female flies- deactivates M, and so sex is determined by the female, not the male. FD is a special variant of a gene, F, which is present in all Houseflies, and expresses “female-ness”, but is usually switched off by M. But the FD variant is dominant even when M is present, and flies carrying this (originally) mutant gene are always female.

Confused yet? There are even some other variants, but the point is that Houseflies show a wide range of- or a high degree of “plasticity” with respect to- methods of sex-determination, making them fascinating subjects for study.

Let’s return though to our waiter. Could the tourist have been right? Could the waiter have actually determined the sex of the fly by looking at it? It’s unlikely. But we can, and we can do it with my awesome driver’s-side window photos.

Male houseflies have larger eyes than females, set closer together. The bigger the separation between the eyes, the likelier that Housefly is female.

In this case the distance between the eyes is about as great- or greater than the diameter of the eye at its widest point, so we know it’s female.

Why are the male Housefly’s eyes so much bigger? To see better, one might reasonably (and correctly) assume, but that just raises another question: Why do males Houseflies need to see better than female Houseflies? To which the answer is: to find female Houseflies. Males that find females quickly and more often leave behind more descendants.

But this in turn raises a 3^rd question, which is how does a larger eye help the male Housefly see better? And this leads to the whole super-amazing architecture of Housefly eyes, which turns out to be way more complex, fascinating and all-around way cool than you ever knew.

Next Up: The Eye of the Fly

November Pipeline Ride Guide, My 2009 Social Review, And My Weird Recurring Dream

Wow. How about this weather? This week in Northern Utah has been so sweet & summery, I feel like I’m “getting away” with something, which has added an almost naughty thrill to the week, making it even that much better. After our little arctic blast last week, it seems like a little mini-Spring, or even a second Indian Summer.

Tuesday morning SkiBikeJunkie and I met shortly before dawn to ride Pipeline Trail in Mill Creek Canyon. I’ve been riding Pipeline for 14 years and I’m pretty sure that now- right now- is the best shape it’s been in ever. In fact it was so good that I went back and rode it again Wednesday morning.

Tangent: Speaking of SBJ, this is a great time for my…

Social Review of 2009

Yeah, yeah I know the year’s not over, but my social life isn’t all that exciting, and it’s unlikely any other major changes will occur in it between now and year-end. Besides social life and relationships are on my mind right now because yesterday Coworker Matt stopped by my office and asked my thoughts about adult men, and the evolution, or rather de-evolution, of their social lives as they get into their 30’s and 40’s. Meaning that men’s social circles so often shrink, or become subsumed into their spouse’s social circles as time passes. It’s an interesting topic and we spent a bit chatting about it, and the social trends going on in our own lives.

Nested Tangent: Matt and I have worked together for a few years. He’s very bright*, competent, and well-respected by pretty much everyone in our company. He sits about 20 feet away from me, and from time to time he’ll stop by with something non-work-related on his mind, always a thoughtful, insightful topic or question, and when he does I’m generally both pleased- as Matt’s always interesting to chat with- and a little surprised- because Matt’s at least as smart as I am, clearly has his act together, and I’m often not clear on how I’m going to be able to provide any great insights which haven’t already occurred to him. Nevertheless, I enjoy our chats.

*Although I still don’t know that he understands how a rainbow works.

Lately, I’ve noticed Matt* seems to stop by more frequently with deeper, more insightful questions/ topics, and I wonder if it’s just a coincidence or if he’s going through an introspective period of sorts. Matt’s 35, and it seems that guys in their mid-30’s go through a lot of self-questioning about direction, values and general existential angst of sorts. I know I did, and it’s funny, because although I remember doing so quite a bit myself when I was in my 30’s, I really don’t much at all these days, although I can’t remember any particular day when I stopped doing it. It’s almost like I got to 40, and some subconscious part of my mind just said, “Alright, enough about you already. Let’s start obsessing about other stuff.”**

*I should mention that I’m not saying anything about Matt I wouldn’t say to his face. And actually I am, as Matt is one of my several lurking-never-comment coworkers who read this blog. In fact Matt is a Watchersticker recipient, though I don’t think he knows what to do with it. It’s just pinned on his office wall, which is sort of odd when you think about it, since the guy who actually writes the blog sits just 20 feet away.

**Which come to think of it, is about the time I got interested in plants and birds and stars and bugs and all the other wacky stuff I obsess about in this blog. Hmm.

So here’s the cool social thing for me about 2009: I’ve bucked the middle-aged guy trend, and expanded my social circle. And specifically I’ve made friends who share my weird scheduling priorities. For example, I’ve ridden at or before dawn for years. But overwhelmingly my long-time friends abhor such early morning outings, and so for years I’ve ridden alone in the dark*. But this year I met both SBJ and Vicente, both of whom are at least as eager and willing to wake in the wee hours of the morning to ride and- even better- ride at the same level of speed and ability as I do. I also met KanyonKris, who shares my willingness to do crazy 1-day 700-mile round-trip desert trips to snag a day of desert biking, and Young Ian, whose unencumbered and relatively baggage-free lifestyle allows him to easily schedule night rides or full-blown weekend road-trips with an absolute minimum of planning and negotiation. My circle of friends also expanded through road-racing, both through teammates as well as regular competitors I’ve gotten to know and befriended. So all told, it’s been a great social year.**

*OK that sounds sort of sad and pathetic, but it’s not really. It’s actually been a lot of fun.

**With one notable exception.

Pipeline’s always a nice trail, and with plenty of Southern exposure and relatively low elevation, it’s one of the first canyon trails to melt out in the Spring. But that same exposure combined with heavy foot and bike traffic means that through most of the summer the trail is dry and gravelly. But not now. Now the low sun-angle and light traffic have allowed the trail to retain just enough moisture to be tacky, fast and quiet. Riding fast on Pipeline right now feels so smooth, it’s like one of those dreams where you can fly, except way faster.

Tangent: When I was a kid, I used to regularly have dreams in which I was able to fly. But it was never a fast flying, just a slow dreamy-flying. So that’s why Pipeline is cool right now- it’s that fast-flying dream I always wanted to have.

Strangely, I realized when writing this post that I haven’t a flying dream in decades. In fact the only transportation dreams I ever have now are either dreams where I’m biking, but my tires and or wheels keep flatting/falling apart/ or otherwise structurally failing, or ones where I am driving, or about to drive, but strange lights keep appearing on the dashboard of my car*. Freud would have had a field-day with my dreams.

*Oh wait. Maybe that’s when I’m awake.

Nested Tangent: OK, here’s a serious weird dream-thing for me, that I’ve had decades, that I’ve never heard of anyone else having: I dream of alternative geographies. Like I’m in a dream, and the geography of wherever I’m at in the dream is different, but I know it. No, I don’t mean that I know that it’s different- I mean I know the geography.

In the real (waking) world I have a great sense of geography/ direction; I almost always have a very clear handle on where I am, where I’m headed, etc. In my dreams I have this same sense of navigation, this same sense of familiarity with landscape, of absolutely knowing exactly where I am and being fully familiar with the area, even though the geography is both not real and completely different from geography in the real world. In many of these dreams I’m actually looking at maps, which when I wake up, I realize are completely wrong, with other states and coastlines and such in places where they aren’t in the real world, only in the dream-world they make perfect sense. Isn’t that weird?

There’s another thing about riding Pipeline now- all the leaves are down, the flowers all disappeared, the hummingbirds and the bees are all gone. And while this can make the scenery seem at first glance a bit gray and dull, I find that riding it this time of year I’m able to notice and tune into things I ignore or just blow by in the summer months.

Side Note: I touched on this aspect of “defoliated riding” several months ago, just before the world woke up, in a post I’m not sure anyone really got. But that same sense- that “quiet order of the brown world”- was with me on my Mill Creek rides this week and lent a sense of heightened perception to the rides, and the week in general. (Probably no one will still get it, but that’s the best I can explain it.)

Pipeline Ride Guide

So if you’re going to ride Pipeline, do it now. I like to ride it as an out & back, starting and finishing at the bottom of Rattlesnake Gulch. Yes, yes, I know the Rattlesnake climb’s a total pig, but it’s way worth it because you get the whole Pipeline in both directions.

The climb is stiff from the get-go, but it’s only about a third of a mile until you get to the first cool thing: this rock. It’s a huge limestone fin, sticking out of the ground at an almost 80 degree angle. If you look around on the lower slopes of the Wasatch, these kinds of fins aren’t uncommon; they’re scattered across the West slope of adjacent Grandeur Peak. But it’s rare that a trail bring you right up to “touching” distance of one. The trail up Rattlesnake Gulch climbs through geographic formation called the Park City Formation*, a combination of limestone and shale layers laid down between 250 and 300 million years ago. More recently crustal faulting (the Wasatch Fault) has buckled and twisted these layers in the present-day Wasatch range, and in spots such as this, the harder limestone has eroded more slowly than the layers “sandwiching” it, leaving behind the exposed fin.

*I got some valuable geology tips for this post from reader Jube. (Thanks, Jube!) However, the summary of the 3 geologic formations in this post I pieced together myself. I say this because there’s a significant chance it’s not 100% correct, and if not, the errors are entirely mine. In fact, any error ever in this blog- and I make plenty- is entirely mine.

After a series of switchbacks, the trail ascends a steep gully littered with small boulders and log steps, which I have yet to see anyone clean uphill, dab-free*. At the top Rattlesnake Gulch intersect the wonderfully level Pipeline Trail, and for the most part, your dues have been paid.

*I’m sure it’s been done, just not by me or the guys I ride with.

Mystery Moths

Right around dawn this week I’ve noticed dozens and dozens of tiny lights gray moths flying around here, flitting about the bare branches and fallen oak leaves, in what I assume is mating-related activity. They really catch your eye if only because there are so few flying insects about right now. I’m guessing they’re a type of “Lichen Moth”, possibly Crambidia sp., but haven’t been able to make the ID. If anyone can give me an ID, a Fabulous Prize will be yours!

These moths drive me crazy, because they seem to be lazily flitting about, yet they’re almost impossible to film. Here’s my unbelievably lame video attempting to capture one in flight. Don’t watch if you just ate- it’ll make you carsick.

Geologic Transition #1

After the brutal climb, the next few miles are a delight, rolling fast and level up-canyon. The trail alternates between traversing open rocky slopes and threading its way through bare clonal stands of scrub oak. Soon you’ll notice that the dirt and even the rocks are different. The dirt is a reddish brown, as are many of the rock outcrops. This rock is angular and fractured-looking; a great example is the exposed mini-climb about ¼ mile up-canyon from Grandeur Fork. This section, which is now protected by a wooden retaining wall, is chipped away year after year by passing foot and bike traffic, and every 5 years or so the Forest Service breaks down and hacks out a new trail.

The rock is different because when we climbed out of Rattlesnake Gulch we passed out of the Park City Formation, with its smooth, weathered limestone outcrops, and into the Woodside Shale Formation, which is characterized by highly-fractured, almost “chippy”, red shale. These rocks were deposited, probably in tidal areas, around 200 to 250 million years ago

Yeah, yeah so what, who cares about rocks? Here’s the cool thing about these rocks: the Park City – Woodside Shale Transition boundary marks the end of the Permian geologic period and the single biggest, most astounding mass extinction event in the history of the world. In this blog we’ve mentioned the K-T extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs; we’ve touched on the even greater (and possibly supernova-induced) Silurian-Ordovician extinction. But the Permian-Triassic extinction blows them all away. This one wiped out an estimated 70% of all land-based species and 96% of marine species. The Permian-Triassic event even caused widespread insect extinctions, an effect not observed in the other 4 most similar extinction events.

The reasons for the Permian-Triassic extinction are unclear; a big meteor is one suspect, but the leading theories today focus more on supervolcanism and radical climate change. It’s also unclear whether the extinction was really a single event, or multiple events over several million years. Whatever the case, it’s indisputably one of the biggest things ever to happen in the history of life, and you pedal right through it every time you go up or down Rattlesnake Gulch.

Magic Eye In The Forest

Around this point, this vegetation opens up a bit and you can see clearly across-canyon into the Porter Fork drainage. The South (North-facing) side of the canyon is very different both geologically and botanically, and is cloaked in dense PLT forest.

Here’s something I’ve noticed about riding this time of year: there are way fewer greens around, but sometime the differences between those greens becomes clearer. A great example is the PLT forest of the South slope of Mill Creek Canyon. The vast majority of PLTs on the lower slopes are Douglas Firs or White Firs. We’ve talked before about how to differentiate them close up via cones or needles, but a cool thing I’ve noticed in Fall and Winter is that you can tell them apart by color. The Doug Firs are distinctly yellower, and the White Firs bluer. Look again at the photo, and see if you can see the difference.

I noticed this same shade difference last Winter, but I’ve never noticed it in the Summer. I don’t know whether this is because I simply never noticed it in the Summer- with all the other green things around- or if the Doug Firs really are yellower in Fall and Winter*. In any case, it’s sort of like one of those 3D "Magic Eye" pictures, where you look and look and don’t see it, and then all of a sudden, you totally see it.

*If Doug Fir needles really are yellower in Winter, here’s a wild guess why: chlorophyll production in both trees is probably little or nothing in the cooler months. Chlorophyll is a big, unstable molecule that breaks down rapidly in direct sunlight. The beefier, waxier, needles of White Fir may have a thicker wax coating (built up from wax on the stomata) that blocks more of the sun’s rays.

Down Low, Still Green

One this side of the canyon, there’s not a lot of green, but along the “woodsier” stretches of the trail, you can see a green, holly/ivy-like carpet on the floor under the oaks (pic left). This is Oregon Grape, Mahonia sp., which I’ve been meaning to blog about for over a year now. It’s part of the Buttercup Family, Ranunculaceae, and so fairly closely-related to things like Monkshood and Marsh Marigolds, but only remotely so to real Grapes (genus = Vitis.)* Oregon Grape is one of the first things to bloom in the spring, with little yellow flowers all over the place, which later in the summer develop into little blueberryish “grapes”, which are sometimes made into jam. The leaves and roots contain the compound Berberine, an alkaloid used in homeopathic medicine, and if you google around a bit you’ll find recipes for its use in treating a number of (primarily digestive) ailments.

*Which are, interestingly, more closely related to Magnolias than they are to Blueberries, Raspberries, Thimbleberries or pretty much any other fruit we’ve looked at in this blog.

Our species here in the Rockies is Creeping Oregon Grape, Mahonia repens(pic right). True Oregon Grape, M. aquifolium, is native to the Pacific Northwest, and is a true shrub, growing up to 20 feet in height. But it hybridizes easily with our “low-cover” species. Interestingly, Oregon grape is a big-time weedy-pest in the American Southeast, where it’s on the Do-Not-Plant list of most states. Ironically, the other green ground cover lining much of Pipeline trail right now is the evil Myrtle Spurge, which we looked at way back in March, and is on our Do-Not-Plant list here in Utah.

Squawk!

Both mornings this week, shortly before the Burch Hollow junction, I passed a small pack of Stellers Jays in the Oaks alongside the trail. There aren’t many birds chirping around here in November, so their warning squawks stand our real clearly. This pack seems skittish, and I wasn’t able to catch a photo; here’s one from the post I did on them back in April 2008.

Stellers Jays are in my opinion the best-looking Corvids in Utah. They’re generalists, do lots of things fairly well, though nothing exceptionally so, and are sometime Pine Birds. Though not “latitude-migrators”, they’re “elevation-migrators”, sticking to high PLT forests in the Summer, and the migrating down lower* for Winter. The only time I’ve seen them in the mid-elevation scrub oak is in the transitional months: March, April, October and November.

*Though I’m not exactly sure where. I never see them in the valley in Winter.

At the Burch Hollow Junction, the big switchback-climb up starts, and though a bit long, it’s a cakewalk compared to Rattlesnake Gulch. When it tops out you have a nice view back down-canyon out into the valley (pic right). The trail levels off once again as you roll toward Elbow Fork.

Geologic Transition #2

Somewhere along this stretch the trail passes through another geologic change, this time into the Thaynes Formation* consisting of gray, fossil-rich and sometimes massive limestone, mixed with sandsone and shale. This formation extends clear up to the ridge, and you can see it exposed in the high, sheer gray cliffs far above. Along the last mile to Elbow Fork, the trail gets rougher, as it’s chipped out of Thaynes Formation limestone outcroppings.

*Named for Thaynes Canyon over in Park City.

One of the things I like most about this stretch is passing by green trees once again: Curlleaf Mountain Mahogany lines the trail along several short stretches in the last mile. I blogged about this tree way back last summer, and since then I’ve become even fonder of it. I love everything about it- its green waxy leaves, its mirage-like feathery achenes in summer, that it’s the only evergreen angiosperm tree for hundreds of miles around, that it’s part of the Rose Family, that its genus is unique to Western North America, that it’s quite possibly the longest-lived angiosperm* (possibly up to 1,350 years) in the world, that it’s wood is dense enough to sink in water. At the end of the long climb up-canyon, I’m always happy to finally reach this stretch, like I’m somehow reunited with an old friend that I can always count on to be there, to be the same, unchanging, reliable, long after the rest of the world has gone back to sleep.

*Not certain. Olive trees are another contender.

So there’s plenty to see now along Pipeline Trail, and since it’s an out & back, you have a second chance to catch anything you missed along the way up. But you have to look fast; the ride back down right now is nice and zippy. Like smooth, tacky, bat-out-of-hell zippy. Go ride it while you can.

Awesome Wife & I Spent The Weekend Nit-Picking

In the course of reading this post, you will most likely make 4 assumptions, all of which will be wrong. The first assumption you probably already made when you read this title of this post, and assumed that Awesome Wife and I spent the weekend giving each other a hard time of sorts. That was not the case. The title is literal: we spent the weekend picking nits- specifically the eggs, or more correctly egg cases- of lice out of Twin B’s hair.

At this point you have already likely made the 2^nd incorrect assumption, to which we shall return- and of which I will disabuse you- momentarily.

Parenthood brings many joys, some of which I’ve occasionally mentioned in this blog, but it also brings frustrations and headaches. And while in the big picture it isn’t anywhere near as bad as hearing that your child has been arrested or impregnated, it’s still kind of a drag to learn that your kid has picked up head-lice.

To her credit, Twin B figured it out first, after a week+ of itching and mild complaining, which AW and I- to our chagrin- largely ignored*. But a visit to the doctor quickly confirmed the infestation in her and Bird Whisperer’s heads. It turns out that a number of schoolmates have also been afflicted; if you’re a Salt Lake City reader with children at Beacon Heights elementary school, you might want to do a quick nit check.

*In our defense, Twin B has a history of overstatement and excessive melodrama when it comes to various perceived ailments, so perhaps there was a bit of a Peter & the Wolf effect at play.

All About Lice

Lice of course are human parasites. No, really I mean it. Not like politicians or insurance companies or FOX News commentators, but real human parasites, in that they live on a human body, and consume the products of that body, specifically blood. Lice are remarkably well-adapted to life on their hosts, with specialized claws that allow them to latch onto the hairs of their hosts and travel rapidly up or down them, as well as a saliva which when dried serves as a glue to attach egg-cases to individual hair strands. They reproduce quickly, from hatching to laying eggs in just 21 days.

Lice, insects of the order Phthiraptera, are a diverse and highly successful group, with over 3,000 species, most of which are specifically adapted to, and have co-evolved with, a specific host. They infest every order of birds and the vast majority of mammals*. Most bird species host between 2 and 6 different species of lice; most mammals between 1 and 3. Humans host 3. Or 2, depending on who’s counting.

*Whales, dolphins, bats, monotremes and a few other mammals- including one we will visit later on in the post- are lice-free.

The second assumption you may have made is that the Watcher Family lives in abject filth, and this I assure you is not the case. The Watcher Family enjoys a thoroughly first-world lifestyle, with daily showers, clean bedding and clothing, and daily room-straightenings*. But one of the interesting things about head-lice is that they very often infest the heads of children with good hygiene.

In fact, according to the UK’s National Health Service, lice may actually have an easier time infesting a clean head of hair, as it may be easier to attach egg-cases to clean strands. The typical first-world head-lice host, BTW, is a child between 5 and 11 years of age**. And somewhere between 60% and 80% of child head-lice hosts are girls.

*Although to be honest, it is difficult to keep the clutter in Bird Whisperer’s room under control. No matter how often it is “straightened”, it quickly reverts to its naturally chaotic state. He’s somewhat of a night owl, and late at night AW and I can hear various pacing, jumping, banging and crashing from his room downstairs. We’re not exactly sure what he’s up to, but suspect he is developing either a small aircraft or a suitcase-warhead.

**This is probably the only really compelling argument I’ve come across for home-schooling.

Side Note: Here’s a fascinating little tidbit about head-lice: they have a way tougher time infesting the heads of African-Americans. In fact a 1985 study showed African-American children to have less than 3% the infestation rate as Euromerican kids! But interestingly, African kids in Africa do routinely get head-lice. What gives?

American head-lice are largely descended from those brought over by European colonists and have claws well-adapted for clinging to European head-hairs, which are generally round-ish in cross-section. African head-hairs are more oval in cross-section, and our Euro-lice have a tougher time gaining a hold on them.

All head hairs are slightly oval in cross-section. In general the rounder a strand of hair is, the straighter that hair lies on the head. Most head-hairs average about 0.1mm in thickness, but they can range from 0.04mm to 0.25mm. Hair thickness also varies with race, with Africans usually having thicker head-hairs than Europeans.

Most head-lice infestations involve fewer than 20 live, adult lice at any one time. An adult female lays 3-5 egg-cases per day, so you generally see far more nits than there are actual lice on a given head. It takes roughly a month for a full-blown infestation to develop from the time the first egg-laying female makes her way into a head of hair. Contrary to popular belief, lice don’t jump, but are transmitted through close contact and shared brushes, combs, hats, clothing and bedding. Twin B’s good friend next door- who was also afflicted- and she frequently engage in dress-up games involving exchanged hats, scarves, dresses, etc. Here at home the Trifecta is fond of weekend sibling “sleep-overs” in which they all play and then sleep in 1 bedroom. In several of these sleepovers, we’ve noticed that Twin B and Bird Whisperer- who are particularly close- wind up sharing a pillow (pic right).

Tangent: Rationally, I get why head lice still exist in the first world, but intuitively it still stumps me. Given that they can’t survive longer than a day or so off-head, it amazes me that we haven’t gotten rid of head lice. I have 2 ideas for eradicating them:

First, Planet-Wide Quarantine. Everyone would go to their own room with food and water and lice-killing shampoo and stay there for a month. Of course everyone in the world would need their own private room with running water and a refrigerator and little infants would have to be tended by robot nurses… OK so, it’s kind of a dumb idea now, but maybe in the future we could do it, and who knows what else we’d eliminate? The flu? The common cold? Multi-level-marketing? (Actually this idea is weirdly appealing to me in that I’d finally get to catch up on my reading…)

Second, Planet-Wide Head-Shaving. Everyone shaves their head on the same day. Then we all do it again 10 days later so that no newly-hatched lice (from shaved-off nits) would have a place to feed or lay eggs. How about that?*

*Actually, it wouldn’t eradicate body lice, which would probably cross back over into being head lice soon enough… OK, so both these ideas suck. But I’m going to make up for it later on in the post with an Awesome Half-Baked Theory.

Different Lice For Different Parts

Humans host 3 types of lice, which are sometimes considered 3 distinct species and other times 2 species, one with 2 subspecies. In any case, 2 of the 3 are very similar and closely-related, and the other is way different. The 2 similar types are Head Lice, Pediculus humanus capitus, and Body Lice, P. humanus humanus. The 2 types are practically indistinguishable and can interbreed, but in the “wild” (i.e. on you) they occupy different habitats. Body Lice lay eggs in clothing, are transmitted by shared clothing or bedding and bite parts of the body that come into contact with these items. Interestingly, while Head Lice are not known to transmit any diseases, Body Lice are a transmission vector for Typhus.

DNA studies of Head and Body Lice reveal 2 interesting things. The first is that they seem to have diverged roughly 100,000 years ago, and the second is that they appeared to have “crossed-over” from hair to clothing multiple times. These 2 observations suggest that the evolution of Body Lice may have been coincident with the “invention” of clothing, which presumably came about sometime in the last 100,000 years or so and which was probably not a single “invention”, but likely came about a number of times and locations independently.

But it’s the 3^rd human-specific louse species that’s really interesting. This is Crab Lice, Pthirus pubis, which infests primarily pubic hair, but also armpit hair and even eyelashes*, and which is radically different in form from Head and Body Lice. Head Lice never infest pubic hair, and Crab Lice never infest head hair. Why not?

*Which is how and why Crab Lice can sometimes afflict prepubescent children.

Pubic hair is coarser, thicker and has a much flatter cross-section (photo right, not mine*) than head hair. Each species has claws adapted to its own type of hair, and neither can gain a foothold (or clawhold) in the other type of hair.

*Of course it’s not mine. What, you think I bought an electron microscope? I told you already, I blew the blog-budget on STICKERS.

OK, so now we know what lice are, how our kids “catch” them and why which types favor which locations. But where do they come from?

The Bizarre Evolution Of Lice

Lice have been co-evolving with primates for at least 25 million years. Our own Head and Body Lice are fairly closely-related to Pediculus schaeffi, the louse that infests Chimpanzees.

Side Note: With Chimpanzees, Gorillas and other non-human primates, there’s no distinction between Head, Body and Pubic Lice because there’s no such distinction between the hairs these primates have in different regions. Alone among primates, only humans have distinct head and pubic hair. Or facial hair for that matter, as I mentioned in this post.

DNA research on Chimpanzee and Human Head/Body Lice show that they diverged from a common ancestor a little over 6 million years ago. And in light of what we know about human evolution, this makes perfect sense. Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, and DNA evidence indicates that we last shared a common ancestor somewhere between 5 and 7 million years ago. So far, so good; the co-evolution story looks nice and tidy.

But Crab Lice are a whole different deal; they’re nothing like Chimpanzee Lice. In fact the mostly closely-related louse to a Crab Louse is the Gorilla Louse, Pthirus gorillae.

After Chimpanzees, Gorillas are the living things most closely-related to us. It’s thought that we and they last shared a common ancestor a little over 7 million years ago*. So a reasonable reader- or at least one still paying attention- might reasonably assume that Human Crab Lice and Gorilla Lice last shared a common ancestor somewhere around 7 million years ago. This would be the 3^rd wrong assumption. DNA evidence indicates that these 2 lice species shared a common ancestor only a little over 3 million years ago. How can this be?

*To be clear, Chimpanzees are more closely-related to us than they are to Gorillas. The 7 million-year-ago split referred to here was between the ancestor of Gorillas and the common ancestor of both Chimpanzees and Humans.

A likely explanation appears to be a “host-switch” of Gorilla Lice from Gorillas to humans roughly 3 million years ago. Lice species can occasionally switch hosts*, and such a switch from proto-Gorillas to proto-humans would explain the genetic history of Crab Lice.

*As can bacteria or viruses. Recent examples of host-switching viruses include “Swine Flu”, “Bird Flu”, and of course HIV.

Gorilla hair BTW is thicker and coarser than human head hair, and is more similar to human pubic hair, which would explain why the host-switch was only to our lower half. But it raises an awkward question: How did we get it? Among humans Crab Lice is overwhelmingly transmitted via sexual contact. Did ancient hominids and Gorillas get it on?

Not necessarily. Remember, Crab Lice are pubic lice for us, but they’re body lice for Gorillas. Lice could have been transmitted between the 2 species via shared bedding/leaves or even via a predator-prey relationship*.

*Which is apparently how humans acquired HIV from Chimpanzees sometime in the last half-century, not just once, but at least 3 times. 1 of those host-switches led to the current worldwide AIDS epidemic.

OK, so assuming such a host-switch occurred from Gorillas to hominids, the astute, still-paying-attention reader might well make a 4^th very reasonable assumption: that Pthirus- the Gorilla & Human Crab Lice genus- and Pediculus- the Chimpanzee & Human Head/Body Lice genus- last shared a common ancestor around the time when Gorillas and Chimps/Humans diverged, somewhere around 7 million years ago. Sadly, that reader would be wrong. DNA evidence indicates that Pthirus and Pediculus last shared a common ancestor some 13 million years ago.

Scientists make mistakes, and the “molecular clocks” revealed by mitochondrial DNA are constantly being revised and updated*, but a difference between 7 and 13 million years is extremely unlikely to be a mistake. 13 million years coincidentally is about the time of divergence of the common ancestor of Humans, Chimps and Gorillas from that of our next closest-living relative, the Orangutan. But Orangutans (both subspecies- there are 2) have no lice.

*For example, the divergence estimate for Head and Body Lice was initially estimated to be ~70,000 years ago, but more recently revised to 107,000 years ago.

So it’s unclear where Pthirus came from. One explanation is that Pthirus and Pediculus speciated for unknown reasons of geography, isolation or what-not and then both infested the common ancestor of Gorillas Chimpanzees and humans, but that Pediculus later became extinct in Gorillas while Pthirus later became extinct in Chimps/Humans, before re-infesting humans some 3 million years ago.

Conjectural Tangent: I’ve got another “theory*”, almost certainly completely wrong, but it’s my blog, so here goes:

*As frequent readers of this blog well know, all of my “theories” are completely half-baked.

The 13 MYA date is way fishy. Orangutans are the sole survivors of a once diverse and broad-ranging sub-family of primates, Pongidae, which included the now extinct Gigantopithecus, who at 10 feet tall was the largest primate ever to have lived. Perhaps Pthirus does date from the Pongidae-Homininae split and evolved as lice species adapted to some (now-extinct) Pongid species. If this species came into contact (common habitat, predator-prey, etc.) with the ancestors of Gorillas after the Gorilla-Chimp/Human split, an earlier host-switch could explain the presence of Pthirus on Gorillas*.

*My “theory” falls short in that it doesn’t explain the absence of Pediculus on Gorillas. 2 possibilities are that a) Gorillas lost Pediculus subsequent to the Gorilla/Chimp split or b) that Pediculus was the result of yet another host switch from some other primate to the common Chimp/Human ancestor, sometime after the Gorilla/Chimp split, but before the Chimp/Human split. OK now I’m getting really wacky**.

**But in my defense, when you spend hours and hours picking nits, you think about all kinds of weird stuff.

As far as Orangutans go, it’s worth noting that they practice a far more solitary lifestyle than Humans, Chimpanzees or Gorillas, which presumably makes them poorer hosts for lice. But we don’t know whether their Pongid ancestors from ~13 million years ago were as solitary, and perhaps the ancestors of Orangutan had lice but lost them as they evolved their present-day solitary lifestyle.

Anyway, regardless of the exact origins, the evolution of human lice is absolutely fascinating. But, as I so often do in these long, run-on, tangent-strewn posts, I have saved the best for last.

Let’s get back to our own Head Lice, P. humanus. DNA evidence shows that modern-day human head-lice populations break down into 2 distinct clades. A clade is a monophyletic* group consisting of a single common ancestor and all its descendants. One of these clades occurs all over the world, and the other occurs only in the New World. Now here’s the weird thing: these 2 clades diverged roughly 1.2 million years ago.

*For an easy explanation of monophyly vs. para- or polyphyly, see this post.

On the face of it, this makes no sense. Modern humans almost certainly evolved from a single small ancestral population sometime in the last 200,000 years, and left Africa only 100,000 years ago. How could our head lice have diverged over a million years ago?

The likeliest explanation is another host-switch, from another, now-extinct, hominid species, to us. About a million years ago is roughly when our ancestors are thought to have diverged from Homo erectus.

Homo erectus was a bipedal hominid who lived from somewhere around 2 million years ago to only about 30,000 years ago. It used fire and tools, hunted, and had a brain 2/3 the size of ours*. H. erectus is generally considered to be the ancestor of several later hominid species, including Neanderthals and us. Somewhere between 1 and 2 million years ago some “version” of H. erectus migrated out of Africa and across much of Asia, probably more than a million years ahead of Homo sapiens.

*For comparison, a Chimpanzee’s brain is 1/3 the size of ours.

Tangent: It’s worth pausing for a moment on the time-frame here. We tend to think of ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution. But our species has only existed in its present form for maybe a 150,000 – 200,000 years, we’ve only had real culture- with art and decoration and sewing- for the last 40,000 – 80,000 years, and only lived in the same places for maybe 10,000 years. H. erectus lived and roamed much of the world for 2 million years- apparently without wrecking it. Who’s the more successful hominid?

Modern humans migrated out of Africa sometime in the last 100,000 years, and throughout the Old World. More recently, probably 12,000- 15,000 years ago, humans migrated into Siberia, across Beringia and into North America. It’s suspected that en route modern humans encountered still-living H. erectus populations in Asia*, acquired the “New World Clade” of P. humanus from them, and carried it with them to the New World.

*Much as modern humans encountered Neanderthals in Europe, of which paleoanthropologists are pretty certain.

Side Note: Supporting evidence for this hypothesis is that Body Lice appear to have evolved exclusively from the “Worldwide Clade” of head-lice, implying that modern humans encountered the New World Clade well after the “invention” of clothing.

The story of lice and human evolution just gets curiouser and curiouser. More recently a third clade of human Head Lice may have been identified in Ethiopia and Nepal (of all places!), and this clade appears to have diverged from the Worldwide and New World clades some 800,000 years before the Worldwide- New World split.

Lice-removal kits include a shampoo, a gel and a comb. The shampoo- with which the entire Watcher family has now been treated- contains 2 active ingredients. The first is Pyrethrin (C21H28O3 or C22H28O5, diagram left). Though highly toxic, it’s a natural insecticide obtained from the seedcases of a species of Chrysanthemum, and is biodegradable. The second is Piperonyl Butoxide (C19H30O5, diagram right), which is a pesticide synergist, meaning that while it’s not a standalone pesticide, it dramatically increases the potency of several other pesticides, including Pyrethrin. While not especially (directly) toxic to humans, it is suspected to possibly be carcinogenic, and may even be linked to birth defects*. In any case, you don’t want to shampoo regularly with this stuff. We’ll re-treat in a week, after any surviving eggs have had opportunity to hatch.

*Neither claim has been proven.

The gel supposedly loosens nits from hairs; we found it somewhat effective for our short-haired boys, but for Twin B, whose thick tresses consumed >95% of our nit-removal efforts, we soon resorted to scissors, cutting a strand at a time. A buzz-cut would’ve saved us hours of time and frustration, not to mention enduring cricks in our necks, but that’s not really a humane option for an 8 year-old girl. Over the years Twin B has been a delightful daughter: smart, kind, and considerate, quick with a smile or a laugh. She’s been, quite honestly, our lowest-maintenance child so far, well worth the tedium of a weekend of nit-picking.

Note About Sources: Over the last few days I’ve read dozens of lice-related sites and papers. Although plenty of information is available on the topic, much of it- including specifics re: survival period of off-head lice, daily egg-laying capacities of female lice, survivability of eggs, rates/demographics of infestation,and efficacy of various treatments- varies widely between sources. In this post I’ve tried to stick with stats that seem most commonly cited, and made a few subjective calls along the way.

Side Note: Normally, when blogging about a medical-related topic for which so much of the available information is conflicting, I’d advise a reader to consult with their physician. Unfortunately the after-hours “KidsCare” physician to whom I took the Trifecta was remarkably poorly-informed about many of the details of lice, their lifecycle, and even treatment specifics. (I’ve half a mind to send him this post. Ironically the admitting nurse, who’d dealt with an infestation this past summer on her own daughter, was exceedingly helpful.)

In my flurry of panicked-parent research, I failed to keep track of all of the many, many sources I reviewed, but of those I did keep track of, I found this site and this site particularly helpful.

The 2 best sources on lice evolution I found were this paper by DL Reed et al and this paper by Robin A. Weiss (which heavily cites Reed’s work.) As always I am exceedingly grateful to researchers and institutions who make their work freely available to the public.

Chemistry info on the active ingredients of lice-killing shampoo was obtained from Wikipedia and the National Pesticide Information Center. Info on human head-hair comes in part from Chemical and physical behavior of human hair, by Clarence R. Robbins.

Monday Bike Filler

I have a great post in the works that includes mammals and bugs and kids and human evolution and surprise twists and mysteries and all kinds of great stuff all packaged together in an amazing post that will educate you, broaden your perspective, expand your horizons and Fundamentally Change Your Life*.

*Well, it’ll kill 15 minutes at work, anyway.

But I didn’t quite finish it last night*. So it’ll be up tomorrow. So today I just have a little Monday bike-related filler. In the meantime, if you want a cool science post, check out the current edition of Berry-Go-Round over at Beetles in the Bush. Ted’s put together the best edition yet. (It’s even got tangents!)

*Because these big posts are hard. I have to do research** and stuff.

**Because I don’t just make this shit up, you know. Well, not most of it, anyway.

It’s Fall of course, and I don’t know about you, but when the weather gets cold I find that I slack off on the biking a bit, and before you know it the pounds start to add on. Oh, I put on a few every Fall and Winter like everyone else, but I really try to keep up some sort of exercise regimen so that I’m not in too bad a shape come Spring. Last week I emailed with some of the guys on the team and given that the weather forecast looked good, we decided to meet up Saturday for a team training ride.

This was our team’s 4^th annual Sumo-Halloween ride, expertly organized and provisioned by Teammate-Ken. We all had a great time riding around Sandy and Midvale, and next year we’re thinking of working a ‘cross race into the ride at Wheeler Farms.

In the pre-ride group shot below, Salt Lake-area bikers familiar with my team may recognize something about the shop we’re posed in front of: it’s a different shop. A week ago our team switched shops, and this coming year we won’t be Spin Cycle Racing anymore, but Revolution Racing.

I wasn’t party to the switch-over, so I’m still not 100% clear on who broke up with whom, but the switch isn’t a bad deal for me. I’ve been a semi-regular customer at Revolution for years, and pleased with their service, though over the last 2 years I’d patronized Spin a bit more, mainly for the team discounts and priority service. Both shops have treated me well, and I’ve no complaints with either*. But Revolution is a bit closer to my office and has been where I’ve always gone for wheel-builds and suspension work, so assuming the switch means discounts and priority service then it’ll probably work out well for me.

*With the possible minor exception of annoying Flash intro on Revolution’s website. Really, people are still doing that? That is so 2002…

Tangent: Except for suspension overhauls and wheel-builds, I do all my own mountain bike maintenance. I tend to use shops more for road bike maintenance, partly because a) I’ve less experience with road bikes, b) I got into road-bikes when I had more $ than when I got into mountain biking, and c) mountain bikes are way more maintenance-intensive, meaning that if I didn’t do the maintenance I’d be at the shop all the time, whereas road-bike maintenance is less frequent, more predictable and easier to plan around. Oddly, you’d think the fact that they were less maintenance-intensive would mean I’d be more likely to do more work myself on the road bike, but it just hasn’t worked out that way. OK this tangent’s going nowhere.

Anyway it was a fun day and hopefully the shop-switch will work out well for the team.

On a serious note, the day reminded me of one of the things I don’t like so much about road-riding. During the Sumo Ride, passing cars waved, honked and laughed. And they gave us wide berth and lots of courtesy, passing us with extra space, waiting for us at intersections, even pulling back a bit from stop signs to give us extra room. All of them were happy to see us.

After the ride, out of the sumo suit, I jumped back on the bike and started pedaling home, Within 5 minutes I was cut off by an SUV piloted by a driver chatting on a cell phone, oblivious to my presence. It was back to normal, and I thought the same thought I think about 100 times a year: Road riding would be so awesome if it weren’t for the damn cars.

Maybe I should just ride in the Sumo Suit all the time. It sure was warm.

Next Up: OK, seriously. Real science post tomorrow. Topic = a little bit gross, but good science. Get a good night’s sleep and drink a cup of coffee first so that you can attention.

Fruita Halloween Tale Part 2: Creepy Spiders and the Divot of Human Flesh

Catching sight of our expressions in each other’s faces, Hunky Neighbor and I snapped to and got to work. We needed to a) cover/patch the hole in Vicente’s arm, and b) get him someplace where we could get it stitched/repaired/filled/whatever-it-is-they-do-for-missing-divots-of-human-flesh.

Tangent: I just love starting multi-part posts this way- right in the thick of the action, like after a cliff-hanger episode. But mostly I like it because I imagine someone who hasn’t read the blog in a week or so checking in and being like, “Huh? Who? What? Hole in Vicente’s arm? OMG!- What happened??”

The Long-Awaited (And So Worthwhile) Third Tip

And it is now that I will reveal the Third- and far and away most valuable- Tip: Ride with a 1^st aid kit. I’m always amazed at how few mtn bikers do. Different riders have different philosophies as to what they carry when riding. Some prefer a minimalist approach, with just a couple of bottles and a CO2 cartridge in a jersey pocket. Others prefer a Camelbak with some tools, snacks, a pump, maybe a couple of spare parts and an extra layer of clothing. I won’t debate the merits of either approach here*, but both easily allow the inclusion of a minimalist 1^st aid kit. Yes, minimalist, because when you get down to it, this is all you really need: Roll of Gauze, Tape**, and Something to Cut the Gauze With.*** My kit has a couple more odds & ends, the most useful of which has been a pair of tweezers.

*No, I won’t debate them here. But I am curious, if any other hydration pack-using mtn bikers are reading this: It seems that I am (very) frequently loaning/giving water, food, tubes, patches, cables, duct tape, bandages, etc. to bottle-only mtn bikers. It is just me or is this your experience as well?

**This doesn’t need to be medical/1^st aid-type tape; I carry short lengths of duct tape and electrical tape, both wrapped around my hand-pump.

***I actually carry a small knife, but that’s primarily so that I look bad-ass. Most multi-tools have a small cutting blade.

OCRick and I both had 1^st aid kits, but neither of us had ever bandaged anything like The Divot before. Hunky Neighbor* and I conferred, and quickly decided on the following: 1) a rolled-up ball of gauze inserted into the divot**, 2) the remainder of the gauze roll wrapped around the arm/wad/divot, and 3) a length of duct tape once around to keep thing in place.

*Not a doctor, but is married to one.

**Yes, this was the grossest part.

Vicente, remarkably, was calm and only in mild pain. We actively discouraged him from examining the wound, and I don’t believe he observed the structural/rotational aspect I described in the previous post. As we completed the bandage and re-packed our gear, something was bothering me. I snuck a furtive glance over my shoulder, casting a glance about for … something red. I looked again. No sign of it. We mounted up and started rolling back, taking a cut-off trail back toward the trailhead.

As we set out I admonished everyone to keep things mellow and to walk technical sections*. Pretty much everyone complied… except Vicente. He rolled 2 sections that made me hold my breath, including a rutted slope down into a gully that- I am not kidding- all the rest of us walked after him.

*So as not to encourage Vicente to ride them.

We made it back to the trailhead in less than 30 minutes and were driving shortly after. Hunky Neighbor googled a hospital on his iPhone (yes, he’s one of them) and then phoned in for directions. We made it there in about 15 minutes.

Fruita’s hospital is small but brand-spanking new. The staff is prompt, cheerful and courteous, and the waiting room was empty. Vicente was admitted in about 2 minutes.

In the waiting room the 4 of us twiddled our thumbs about and made chit-chat. Then one of us- I think it was Young Ian- asked, “Did any of you guys see it?” It quickly turned out that we’d all looked for it- The Divot- while pretending not to- but none of us had spotted it.

“Where could it have gone?” we all asked. Everything within 30 feet was brown, olive or tan; you would think a 1” x 1.5” chunk of bloody red flesh would show up… But none of us had spotted it. We all sort of shrugged and mumbled a bit more, somehow resigned but uneasy that we’d left an actual piece of our comrade out in the desert.

Vicente emerged in about 45 minutes with bandaged arm, knee, a dozen or so staples (which we couldn’t see) and prescriptions for codeine and antibiotics. He was smiling and we all laughed and walked back outside and… into the rain.

Our standard Guys Trip Weekend Plan is to ride during the day Saturday and Sunday, and also night-ride Saturday night. This is particularly important in the Fall when daylight is limited, because otherwise you’re looking at a LONG time around the campfire… But night-riding in the rain is just too much of a downer. We hemmed and hawed a bit, went by the drugstore to fill Vicente’s prescriptions, and then killed more time eating dinner in town. After dinner it was still spitting a bit, so we decided to head on over to the Kokopelli trailhead and see if the weather would let up.

We arrived just as darkness was setting in and the lot was emptying out. There were some picnic tables under an awning nearby and we went over to kill some more time and take shelter from the rain. I walked over, my headlamp lighting the way on a dark, rainy, spooky night. I’m fairly tall, about 6’2”, and the edge of the awning was only about a foot or so above my head. As I approached the awning, at the very last minute, my headlamp lit up, about 8” in from of my face- this:

Spiders are way cool when you spot them walking around on the ground in broad daylight. When you practically bump your face into them on a rainy night, they can give you bit of a start.

Thanks to last week’s tarantula encounter out in the Oquirrhs, we already know a bit about spiders and their anatomy. But one of the things we didn’t talk about is the incredible diversity of spiders. There are something like 40,000 species worldwide, and what’s cool about this spider is that when compared and contrasted last week’s tarantula it really showcases the diversity and breadth across the order Araneae. This gal- a Cat-Faced Spider, Araneus gemmoides*, hasn’t shared a common ancestor with a tarantula in over 200 million years- longer ago than when we last shared a common ancestor with kangaroos! It’s called “Cat-Faced” BTW, because the design on the top of the abdomen is thought to resemble the face of a cat. It’s sometimes also known as a “Jewel Spider.”

*Special thanks to Andrew over at BugGuide.Net for his help on the ID. What a wonderful site.

A tarantula is in many ways considered a “primitive” spider, in that it exhibits many of the supposed characteristics of very ancient spiders. Its fangs for example, move up and down, and its only webs are those lining its burrows or those used by the males to deposit sperm packets upon*. Since then, spiders have evolved the sideways-moving fangs common to most of the world’s spiders, and the ability to spin a variety of sophisticated web types, including Funnel webs, Dome webs, Sheet webs, Tubular webs, Tangle webs, and the type of web most of us think of when we think, “Spiderweb”, the Orb web. The Cat-Faced Spider is an Orb-Weaver, with sideways-moving fangs.

*Actually called “sperm-mats.” Yes, really. That’s what they’re called.

Spiderwebs

At least once a month in this project, I stumble across a topic where, once I get into it, I suddenly think, “Wow! I could do a whole blog on this!” Spiderwebs is one of those “wow” topics. Overwhelmingly, a given species of spider spins a specific type of web. Traditionally spiderwebs have been viewed in terms of 5 stages of complexity and sophistication, with stage 1 basically a trip-line or two in front of a hole, while stage 5 is a full-blown orb web. It was generally thought that each of these stages evolved from the previous stage, which in turn led to all sorts of fascinating examples of very distantly-related spiders having evolved very similar web designs. But now some researchers believe that orb webs have been around far longer than originally thought, and that other, apparently “less sophisticated” web designs may have evolved from orb webs. In this “monophyletic” view of orb-weaving, orb webs may signal an ancient and common ancestry between distantly-related species. The whole topic is unsettled, complicated and absolutely fascinating.

Side Note: Part of the problem is that neither spiders nor spiderwebs fossilize particularly well.

Arachno-Tangent #1: Just to give you a taste of the amazing variety of web-types, here’s the Coolest Spiderweb Ever. New Guinean spiders of the genus Pasilobus build triangular webs. The triangle is bisected by a single strand, called the mid-line. Then the mid-line is joined to the sides of the triangle by between 4 and 11 pairs of lines. These “catch-lines” are the only sticky strands in the web.

Now these catch-lines- and here’s the cool part- are connected to the mid-line by very strong bonds, but to the sides of the triangle by very weak bonds. So when a fly hits the catch-line, it breaks off on the outside, and then the fly is left hanging from the broken-off catch-line.

The spider then scoots down the mid-line to where it connects with the broken-off catch-line, reels in the catch-line and bites the fly. How cool is that?

All About Orb Webs

Regardless of how orb webs evolved, they work very well. Like nearly all spiderwebs, they’re generally vertical. Vertical webs are likelier to catch a flying insect (insects spend most flight time moving horizontally) and retain struggling insects (if an insect frees itself from a given strand, it tends to fall down.) Orb webs utilize 2 very different types of threads. The first are strong, non-sticky threads which provide the overall strength and structure of the web, and along which the spider can move rapidly. In most orb webs these are the radial threads, or the “spokes”. The second type are the sticky threads between the spokes, which ensnare passing insects through adhesion or entanglement.

Due to the spoke-like nature of the radial threads, the spacing between sticky lines becomes greater the further one gets from the center.

Arachno-Tangent #2: Spiders of the genus Nephila have evolved a neat solution to this problem. As they spin the web outwards from the center, they periodically “re-spoke” the wheel of the web to increase the density of radial lines as seen in this graphic (not mine*.)

*BTW, if you’re interested, the paper from which I pulled this graphic makes a strong (and very readable) case for the polyphyletic view, that orb webs have evolved independently multiple times.

Now, here’s the really cool thing: I came across this tidbit while researching spiderwebs for this post. And I thought, “Nephila… Nephila…. Where have I come across that before?” And then I remembered: The Golden Orb Spider that we saw back in March down in Costa Rica and about which I posted in the Creepy Crawly Post.

So I went back and checked my old photos, and sure enough, you can make out the “re-spoking” in the web. Wow.

Moral of the tangent: save your vacation pics!

Most orb webs are asymmetrical, rather than a perfect circle, and the “stretched”/bigger part of the web is almost always the lower half. The reason for this is that once an insect has hit the web, the spider needs to reach and bite it quickly before it escapes, and spiders can move down across a web much more quickly than they can move up it.

There’s another common reason for web asymmetry; the logical place for an orb-weaving spider to hang out- in terms of access to all parts of the web- is in the center. But center placement can make the spider visible to passing insects, and in fact this is why many spiders only hang out in the web-center at night. During the day many spiders stay in a “retreat” off the periphery of the web, which is connected to the web-center by a “trip-line.” But since the spider must travel first from its retreat to the web-center before proceeding to the prey location along the nearest radial line, it makes sense to place the center as closely as possible to the retreat.

The Cat-Faced Spider is the largest orb-weaver in the Western US. The irony with spiders in general of course is that size in no way corresponds to danger to humans, and this is absolutely the case with A. gemmoides. It avoids people, hardly ever bites them, and when it does is about as bad as a bee or wasp sting. The big ones you see in the webs are always females (males are much smaller) and you almost always see them in late Summer or early Fall. The reason for this is the same reason you don’t notice Sunflowers until late summer- they’re “annuals”. They hatch in the Spring, grow throughout the summer, and mate in the Fall. Females lay a single egg-case, and then die a few days later. Cat-Faced Spiders never encounter either their parents or their offspring. This in contrast, BTW, to tarantulas, which live for years or even decades.

The spiderlings scatter by “ballooning”, and the few that survive often take up residence by awnings and eaves in and around human habitation. A. gemmoides- lie pigeons, dandelions and brown-headed cowbirds- is one of those creatures that has benefitted from human settlement, and in fact they appear to have adapted to human habitation to the extent that they favor web-sites near lights, as they attract passing insects in the evening.

So scary-looking as they may be, Cat-Faced Spiders are pretty much harmless and eat lots of bugs. Leave them alone when you find them.

We killed time, with some minor bike maintenance until it was fully dark and the rain petered out. It hadn’t been enough to soak the trails and so we ventured out for our night-ride. We rode Rustler Trail, a beginner loop by day, but a thrilling, smooth, fast, twisty roller-coaster of a ride on a cloudy, moonless night. We liked it so much we did a second lap, which Vicente sat out, as his anesthetic was wearing off. (Video kind of lame, but none of the night-ride photos turned out. No really, here’s what they all looked like, right.)

Following the ride we returned to Rabbit Valley to camp for a 2^nd night. The sky was dark and forbidding, but the rain held off. Tired from a long day, we sat by the fire or a bit and called it a night.

Later, much later, I awoke. The sky was still partly cloudy, with just a few stars peeking out in Perseus and Cassiopeia. Something was nagging me. My mind wandered for a bit before locking onto it: Somewhere out in the desert right now, a small nocturnal rodent had found a delectable meaty morsel. Seizing it hungrily in her jaws, she scuttled back to her burrow to share the treasure with her brood, and together they feasted… feasted on a divot of human flesh!

Happy Halloween!

Post-script: On a serious note, I wish this were the end of the Halloween tale, but it’s not. Returning to Salt Lake, Vicente’s wound became infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. On Tuesday a surgeon reopened the wound to clean it and remove additional debris, and in so doing had to make 2 additional incisions, each 3+ inches in length. He left the wound open for a couple of days and put Vicente on stronger, intravenous antibiotics. Today Vicente returns to the surgeon, hopefully to close the wound. He’s scheduled to fly to Brazil tomorrow for a conference; he’ll know today if that’s still the plan. Wish him luck.

Fruita Halloween Tale Part 1: Tumbleweeds, Blood & Gore, and the Caloric Gradiometer

In this 2-part post I will give you, the reader, 3 valuable tips. The 1^st tip will be specifically for readers who do not have small children. The 2^nd and 3^rd tips will be specifically for mountain bikers.

First Tip. Halloween is Saturday. You need to go buy some candy. OK, that was a lame tip. You probably already knew Halloween was this Saturday, and you probably already bought candy*. I promise the next 2 tips will be way, way better. But to make this first (lame) tip just a titch more valuable for non-breeder readers, let me follow if up with this Special Bonus Tip.

*No, none of those kids in the photo are mine. I couldn’t locate any Halloween pics of the Trifecta any more recent than 2006, so I just googled this one. Man, I am a lame dad.

**Special Bonus Tip**: Give candy to trick-or-treaters. Only candy. Do not- I repeat, do not- give toothbrushes or fruit, or Jehovah’s Witness literature or anything else. Just candy. You will think you’re clever, or like some great public servant or an “out-of-the-box”, big high-ho kind of guy or whatever by giving floss or what-not, but my kids will not think you are cool; they’ll just think you’re a pompous jerk. My kids’ teeth aren’t your problem- they’re mine. Just give them some candy, already.

For those of us with small children, Halloween is already of course top-of-mind. And one of the fun things to do with young kids this week is to tell them spooky Halloween stories. Unfortunately, I never seem to be able to come up with any good ones. But this year, I have a great one. And though it’s not appropriate for small children, it’s a great one for nature-loving mtn bikers. It includes a spooky plant, a terrifying spider, and creepy tale of human flesh.

The Tale

Friday night Vicente, OC Rick, Hunky Neighbor, Young Ian (pic left) and I headed down to Fruita, Colorado for a weekend of mountain biking and camping. We generally do 2 of these “Guy Trips” per year, usually down to the Hurricane/St. George area in Southwest Utah, but we decided this year to try something different.

Tangent: Way back in Life 1.0, in the early 90’s when I lived along the Colorado Front Range, I used to visit Grand Junction/Fruita fairly often. Back then it was a little-known, lightly-visited area with few other visitors. Excepting a quick pit-stop-ride when passing through in 2003, I hadn’t been back since 1995. I was shocked at the change.

Fruita’s proximity to the Colorado Front Range, with its higher (relative to the Wasatch Front) population base, has fueled growth and visitation that has “Moab-ized” the formerly sleepy farm town, lending it a similar Disney-esque atmosphere, full of bike shops and bike-toting SUVs, invariably with Colorado tags beginning with the letter “M*”

*Boulder County.

Nested Tangent: In fairness, part of the problem is that a much greater proportion of Coloradans than Utahns are into (non-motorized) outdoor sports. No, I have absolutely no data to support this, but I’ve lived in both places, and I’m telling you, it’s a fact.

This factor- proportion of outdoorheads- is something other outdoorheads so often fail to think about when targeting places to live. Yes, Boulder has wonderful recreational opportunities for outdoorheads, but it also has about a zillion other people just like you who also moved there for the recreational opportunities. On the other hand, consider Las Vegas. Don’t laugh. Las Vegas has some of the best backcountry- and probably the best national park- access of any major metro area in the US. It has outstanding hiking and mountain biking within minutes of The Strip. But trailheads 15 minutes outside of Vegas are practically never crowded, because Vegas doesn’t attract outdoorheads.

It’s still a fun, beautiful place to visit and ride, but it reminds me of how great we have it here in Utah. We had a great time, but our next Guys Trip will take us back to Southwest Utah, and the un-crowded trails and easy camping of Washington County.

We camped the first night in Rabbit Valley, just inside the Colorado border, driving around till we found a site and setting up in the dark. We set up camp and had a beer or two around the campfire.

Tangent: Actually, we had several beers. When family guys go camping without their families/wives, this is not unusual. And like guys camping everywhere, we might’ve had just a beer or two more than we would have had, had our wives/families been with us. Which made us feel very happy and boisterous and self-confident and even creative. When this happens, guys are prone to come up with all sorts of Great Ideas. The vast majority of the time we forget these Great Ideas before the following morning, and on those rare occasions we do remember them, we invariably realize, in the light of day, that our ideas in fact sucked. But my reason for going on about this is that I actually remembered one of my ideas, and it is Awesome. And even better, I’m going to share it with you right now.

My Best Idea Ever

Like most guys, I would like to be very rich. But, again like most guys, I’m too disorganized and innately slacker-ish to actually do the hard work of getting rich. So, again like most guys, I secretly wish that I would come up with some amazing idea to get rich quickly with little or no real effort. In other parts of the country this often involves coming up with a brilliant idea for some new technology or what-not, but here in Utah, it almost always involves either a Ponzi scheme or a nutritional/dietary supplement. Lately we’ve had a rash of Ponzi-schemers getting busted here in Utah, so I’m more oriented toward the latter. Utah is full of companies marketing various nutritional/dietary/health products- juices, bars, gels, what-not- and because they’re not required to seek any kind of FDA approval for any health or nutritional claims they make*, they can tout whatever dietary benefits they want, with absolutely no corroborating science! To be sure, each one of these products has a “scientific” explanation for how it works, but it’s kind of like the “science” behind the Transporter or the Warp Drive in Star Trek in that it sounds really scientific to an eighth-grader, but it doesn’t actually… uh… do anything.

*Thank you, Senator-For-Life Hatch.

So we have lots of companies making all sorts of harmless, tasty and overpriced treats here in Utah, but I have one that will beat them all: Calorically-Gradiated Snack-Foods.

Yummy treats- like cookies for instance- have lots of calories. So sometimes people will eat just half a cookie* in an effort to avoid consuming so many calories. This may work to a point, but it means enjoying only half the pleasure of the cookie. What if- instead of eating 50% of the cookie and intaking 50% of the calories, you could eat 90% of the cookie and intake just 10% of the calories? With my new line of Calorically-Gradiated Snack-Foods, that dream will now become a reality.

*I was inspired in this by my coworkers who take half a donut during Friday donut hour and then put the other half back in the box. Yes, I know some of you read this blog, and I have 2 things to say to you. 1) Commit. Eat the donut or don’t eat it; don’t be the Hamlet of donut hour. 2) If you insist on eating just half, throw the other half away. I am not interested in in eating your fondled-then-rejected donut half.

In regular cookies, the calories are evenly spread throughout the cookie. But my cookies will be baked in a special thermo-convection oven which utilizes my new company’s proprietary technology device- the Caloric Gradiometer- to concentrate the calories in one small (dime-sized) spot on the cookie. We mark this spot- the Caloric Activation Nucleus- with red food coloring, and you just eat the entire cookie, except for the little red part. Isn’t that an awesome idea?!

Back to the Tale

Man, I better get on with this post. OK so we woke up this next morning and the desert looked open and sunny and beautiful. And as I walked around a bit I noticed- as I always do- the vegetation. There was a lot of the standard stuff- Juniper, Bitterbrush- but mostly what there was, was Tumbleweeds. Big, free-rolling tumbleweeds were piled up in draws and against trees and rocks, and little growing, live tumbleweeds were growing all over the place. In fact you couldn’t walk 3 feet around our campsite without shoes for fear of getting stabbed. Ah well, what’s more “Western” than Tumbleweeds, right? Only…

Remember that scene at the very end of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 version), that lady who has somehow managed not to fall asleep and get pod-ified for like a week is sitting all hollow-eyed on a park bench and Donald Sutherland walks by, and she’s like “Psst- hey Donald*, it’s me!” cause he was like the other last-surviving human. Only he’s not, and he turns to her and points and opens his mouth and makes that horrible shrieking noise and then all the other people around turn and start pointing and shrieking and no one is really human because they’ve all been pod-ified and you realize how awful it is and the movie ends…

*I can’t remember his character’s name in the film.

OK, that’s exactly the deal with Tumbleweeds. When Columbus landed in the New World, there wasn’t a single tumbleweed anywhere in North America. When Lewis and Clark trekked to the Pacific, they never saw a single tumbleweed. When the Golden Spike was hammered in, completing the first transcontinental railway, not one of the men who built it had ever seen a tumbleweed*. Tumbleweeds are just that- weeds- and yet they’re such phenomenally, amazingly and ubiquitously successful weeds that the vast majority of us just assume they’re part of the “Real West.”

*After typing that, I realized that might possibly not be true. Many of the railway workers were Chinese immigrants, and I suppose it’s possible one of them saw a tumbleweed in Western China. Although probably most were from Eastern/coastal areas. I’m way over-thinking this.

All About Tumbleweeds

Tumbleweed, or Prickly Russian Thistle* (PRT), Salsola tragus, is native to Eurasia. Salsola is part of the Amaranth family, and so far as I can remember not closely-related to anything we’ve covered in this blog. If you’re not familiar with amaranth, the most closely-related things to it with which you may be familiar are probably spinach, beets and carnations. S. tragus is a weedy shrub which after maturing and pollinating, dries up and breaks off at the stem. In this blog we’ve looked at all kinds of seed-dispersal mechanisms. We’ve seen seeds that get blown away by wind or by water; we’ve seen seeds that get collected and buried by birds and squirrels; we’ve even seen seeds that hitch rides on passing dogs and mtn bikers. But S. tragus disperses seeds by rolling. The broken-off plants are blown for miles, rolling across the open countryside, shaking and spilling off seeds as they go. The seeds typically germinate the following Spring in loose soil and require little moisture. As you might imagine, Salsola does well in dry, windy**, open landscapes- like the American West.

*The name ”Russian Thistle” gets bandied about for several other weeds, including at times one we’ve looked at previously, Musk Thistle, Carduus nutans. But this is the real “Prickly Russian Thistle.” Don’t be fooled by cheap imitations.

**Oh, and unsurprisingly, they're wind-pollinated.

In 1874 a shipment of Russian flax seed arrived in South Dakota which was contaminated with PRT seed. If you haven’t been to South Dakota, here’s the best one-word description of the place I can give: Windy. Within a few decades, tumbleweeds were ubiquitous throughout the West, piling up against fences, filling arroyos, and (later) snagging mtn bike drive-trains.

PRT tumbleweeds aren’t just annoying; they serve as a ready host for the Beet Leafhopper, Circulifer tenellus, (pic right, not mine) which is the primary transmission vector for Curly Top Disease, a major (viral) plant disease that attacks everything from melons to spinach to beets to tobacco. As tumbleweeds roll across croplands, they spread these virus-loaded insects to new hosts.

PRT has been nearly impossible to control. The species has huge genetic and morphological diversity, continually adapts to local conditions, and has evolved resistance to common pesticides. Possible biological controls include a weevil (Lixus salolae) a mite (Aceria salsoli) a moth (Gymnancella sp.) and a fungus (Uromyces salsolae) but none have yet progressed past the research stage.

It gets worse. A handful of other Salsola species have been similarly (accidentally) introduced to North America from the Old World and one of these, possibly from Africa, S. kali, has apparently hybridized with S. tragus to create a new, polyploid species in Southern California, thus adding to the fearsome diversity and adaptability of these weeds. Prickly Russian Thistle is the ultimate Western Horror Plant.

After a leisurely breakfast*, we decided to start off the day with a ride on one of the Rabbit Valley trails, which OCRick had ridden before and assured us was great. But as we embarked on the ride, one of OCRick’s less endearing qualities began to manifest itself, and it is this: The further away from a place he is, the surer OCRick is of that place’s geography. Right now you could call OCRick on the phone and ask him about a trail he hiked in New Zealand 5 years ago, and he’d be able to give you step-by-step directions with details such as fallen logs and where the best shade-trees were.

*Why does it take 5 men camping until 10AM to eat breakfast and pack up? Oh right, cause we were up so late designing the Caloric Gradiometer…

But the closer OCRick actually gets to any given place, the more his memory of the geography of that place fades, until, a mile into the trail, he is completely and utterly lost.*

*Then, when you finally figure out where you are and get him to the next junction, he’ll say, “Oh that’s right, I remember this!”

But fortunately, we had a map. Not because any of us had brought a map, but because there was one at the trailhead, and this leads me to the Second Tip: Always photograph maps at the trailhead. (pic below, right)

Think about it. You stare at the map at the trailhead like crazy, trying to memorize it. Then you go ride it, and 30 minutes later you get to an intersection and you rack your brain trying to pull the picture in your mind. But if you’re riding with a camera- or even a camera-phone- why not take a photo of the trailhead map that you can refer to over the course of the ride?

The ride was one sand-trap after another, so we cut the loop short and drove over to the 18 street trails North of Fruita, a network of rolling singletrack spread out below the book cliffs. We climbed Prime Cut over to Chutes & Ladders and started working our way East, up and down over successive alluvial fans. The trails were fun, the weather overcast but pleasant, and we were having a good time. At a junction we paused to re-group and I kidded Vicente how this was one of the first rides we’d done together where he hadn’t crashed. Yes, I really said that. Yes, you know what’s going to happen next, right?

The Blood & Gore Part

After a stiff climb, we rolled down a fast, twisting descent, Vicente in the lead, me right behind. On a fast, dusty, left turn, his front wheel washed out and he went down.

Vicente- as I have mentioned previously- crashes often. So I wasn’t too concerned when we slowly got up and picked up his bike. But he was a bit rattled, and carelessly plopped his front wheel down in a stand of Prickly Pear (Opuntia sp.) I grabbed the bike from him, and while Vicente groaned and took stock of himself, Hunky Neighbor and I spent the next 5 minutes pulling needles out of his tire, hoping to avoid a flat. Vicente complained that his shoulder hurt, and after a moment I looked up. I was crouched by his tire, and he was standing next to me. And as I looked at his arm, I noticed something was missing: a 1” wide by 1.5” long by 5/8” deep hunk of flesh. A veritable divot was missing from Vicente’s forearm. And as he turned his wrist, I saw the underlying sinewy layer of flesh- muscle? tendon? I’m still not sure- rotate inside the arm, independently of the surrounding skin and subcutaneous fat.

Now, I don’t have a close-up photo, and if I did I probably wouldn’t post it. But I am telling you now, it was really, really gross, like something out of a zombie movie. In fact, if you read SkiBikeJunkie’s blog, you probably saw the horrifying recent photo of his forearm injury. This was worse- not because it was bigger (it wasn’t)- but because a chunk of flesh was missing.

But right after the accident, before any of us realized the extent of the injury, Ian snapped this shot of Vicente checking his tire, and you can see the location (but not the detail) of the divot.

Mountain biking as I have for many years, I’ve seen my fair share of injuries, and my standard for a “Bad” injury is simple: If, after seeing the injury, I know more about human anatomy than I did before the injury, then it’s a bad one. This met the standard.

I turned to Hunky Neighbor, also crouched by the tire. The look on his face- a look of trying-to-look-cool-while-suddenly-horrified- told me he’d just seen the divot as well. And his stare told me that he was seeing the exact same look on my face.

Our ride-plan had just changed.

Next Up: Night-Time Horrors, and the Divot of Human Flesh...

Hike. Tree. Spider!

Sunday morning* I met up with my 2 favorite Botany-Heroes, Professor Chuck and Rudy Drobnick (pic left from last Fall- Rudy left, Chuck right.) Longtime readers may remember the series I did last Fall on rare hybrid oak clones in the Wasatch following my discovery of such a clone, which in turn introduced me to Professor Chuck and later to Rudy. You can refer back to that post and the next for background on that discovery and the significance of these hybrids in Northern Utah, which is nothing short of amazing**.

*Yes, I am just blogging about what I did last Sunday now. I am always behind in this project…

**The series included my subsequent discoveries of 2 more such hybrids, which I posted about here and here, as well as my introduction to Rudy, which I posted about here. I later posted here about my scramble to probably the most dramatically-situated of the hybrids, which Rudy initially discovered over 50 years ago.

Late last Fall, Rudy and Professor Chuck re-discovered another such hybrid, which Rudy had discovered in the late 1950s, but subsequently “lost” and omitted from his thesis. Sunday we returned so that I could get a GPS reading and some sample leaves.

Hike

Accessing the hybrid required an easy 4 mile round-trip hike along the old Bonneville shoreline-bench on the West slope of the Oquirrhs. Rudy waited at the car while Professor Chuck and I made the hike.

It was wonderfully warm Indian Summer morning, the foliage was beautiful, and it would’ve been a wonderful hike (or run) even without the hybrid.

Tangent: The lower west slope of the Oquirrhs has some absolutely beautiful stretches. It’s a lot like what I imagine the Wasatch foothills were like 50+ years ago, before they were cluttered with homes, hospitals and natural history museums- open golden, grassy slopes, broken by intermittent stands of scrub oak and maple, the vegetation growing more dens as one ascends the slope. It’s not a “destination” really, but well worth visiting for an easy hike in the Spring or Fall.

Tree

Rudy described the hybrid’s location for us, assuring us we couldn’t miss it. And indeed we couldn’t. Amongst the fading browns, oranges and yellows carpeting the slope, the hybrid stands out like a bright green jewel. Its live oak (Quercus turbinella) parentage gives the leaves a strong late-season persistence un-matched by any “regular” scrub oak (Q. gambelii) around. Sheltered by a large boulder, and consisting of several trunks, it’s a magnificent little stand.

Check out the leaves- bright green in mid-October, and clearly intermediate in form between the scrub Oak all over the place up here, and the little, shrubby, holly-like live oak you get down around Gooseberry Mesa. Professor Chuck thinks the clone is probably an F1 hybrid, formed sometime between 4,000 and 7,000 years ago, during the Altithermal. I think that’s what I love most about finding these hybrids- each one is like this little living time capsule from when the world- our world, right here in the Wasatch- was different. And yet hardly anyone is aware of them. They just go on cloning and growing, without any signs or plaques or fences proclaiming their coolness.

Tangent: And if I can be forgiven for waxing poetic for a moment, this, right here, is what I love about living in Utah. The state has a thousand little mysteries- mysteries of flora and geology and topography and hydrology and archeology and so much more, and no matter how long you live here and how much you explore, there are always a thousand more mysteries, waiting to be explored. It’s like living in the middle of a giant, continuous, never-ending adventure*.

*Yes, I realize this is exactly the kind of over-the-top boosterism I was poo-pooing in Wednesday’s post, but damnit it’s true. As Stegner wrote, “It is a land that breeds the impossible.”

October and November are the best times to spot such hybrids. Eventually, in late November or December, their leaves will turn, wither and fall.

We walked back, chatting about plants and moss and range condition* and the day grew warmer. A gopher snake slithered across the old 2-track we were following, and then a moment later I saw it- a nice, big Tarantula.

*Moss on the ground in open grassy areas is an indicator of good range condition. Mosses like these (pic right) don’t survive long on heavily grazed/trampled soil.

Spider!

Utah certainly has many animals I never saw in the wild growing up in New England. Mountain Lions, Elk, Coyotes, Bobcats, Golden Eagles, Magpies, Pronghorns, Buffalo- I never saw any of them in the wild before I moved out West. But of all the wild animals I’ve seen since moving here, I don’t think any freaks me out more than a tarantula.

By “freaked out”, I don’t mean “scared”; I just mean “freaked out.” A “bug” just shouldn’t be that big. Tarantulas here in Utah primarily eat other invertebrates, such as crickets and beetles, but occasionally a tarantula here will eat a mouse. A “bug” eating a mammal? That’s just wrong.

Tarantulas are of course spiders, and spiders are, as everyone knows, arachnids. But people tend to use the words “arachnid” and “spider” interchangeably, which isn’t the case. Arachnids are a huge class of invertebrates that include not only spiders, but also things like ticks, mites, vinegarroons*, pseudoscorpions**, windscorpions***, “daddy longlegs****” and much more. All arachnids have eight legs, but evolution has changed the form and function of some of these legs in some species so that they no longer look or function like legs. Arachnids also have a couple of other appendages: chelicerae, which are mouthparts used to grasp food, and are different from the mouthparts of insects (which are mandibles), and pedipalps, which are used from everything from feeding to movement to moving packets of sperm around during mating. Confusingly, the pedipalps of some arachnids have practically evolved into “legs”; a windscorpion for example appears to have 10 legs, but the front pair is actually modified pedipalps.

*These are also called whipscorpions, but I get a kick out of “vinegaroon.” Sounds like some weird kind of cookie.

** These are not the same as scorpions. Completely different kind of critter.

*** Nope. Not scorpions either.

****Called “Harvestmen” in much of the non-US English-speaking world. BTW, these are (I believe) the subject of Christopher’s studies over at CoO.

Arachnids have a distinctive two-chunk body-form: the cephalothorax, which is a combo head and thorax and to which the legs are attached, and the abdomen.

Extra Details: There are still lots of unresolved issues in arachnid evolution and phylogeny. One example is scorpions, which you’ll find included in lots of lists of arachnids, but which are now thought by many researcher to have evolved instead from Eurypterids, an ancient and varied and now-extinct group of (sometimes) monster-sized sea-dwelling creepie-crawlies (OK invertebrates) which included the largest arthropods that ever lived. (I googled for a Eurypterid pic, and this was my absolute favorite. I’m pretty sure that’s “Dwayne” from One Day At A Time.)

Detail Tangent: This is a good time to talk about why “bugs” don’t usually get all that big. An exoskeleton is a very efficient support structure for very small animals, and offers protection against both predators and dessication (drying out.) But it’s got a big disadvantage: as the animal gets bigger, the exoskeleton required to support it and house the increased musculature needed to move it, becomes too heavy and cumbersome*.

*Yet another disadvantage to exoskeletons is the whole molting-hassle.

With an internal skeleton, this isn’t nearly as much of a problem. Consider the thick, trunk-like legs of an elephant compare to those of a deer. Certainly an elephant’s skeleton is much more massive, and its leg bones thicker, but the weight of that skeleton is nothing what a suit of elephant-sized armor capable of supporting an elephant would weigh. BTW, this is a bigger problem on land than in the water, which is one reason why you get crabs and lobsters bigger than any tarantula or cockroach.

So skeletal mass and bulk is a size-limiter for “bugs”. But interestingly, the more important limiter- in that it becomes a problem sooner as a “bug” gets bigger- may be respiration. Insects don’t have lungs as we think of them. They use trachea (diagram above left, not mine), a network of tubes which carry air directly to the tissues that need it. Spiders have a different mechanism, called a book lung (diagram right, not mine either*)which is a gill-like structure in the abdomen full of hemolymph**-filled flaps. Both of these airflow mechanisms work fine for a small body, but terribly ineffective at getting oxygen to tissues in a larger one. And speaking of breathing…

*What, you think I have all day to sit around and draw pictures?

**Bug-blood. Confusingly, many other arachnids, like mites and Daddy-Longlegs, have trachea instead of book lungs.

Another unresolved issue is how many times arachnids evolved from water to land. Do all land-based arachnids* share a common terrestrial pioneer ancestor, which accounts for some of their common features, such as book lungs? Or did things like books lungs evolve multiple times independently in different pioneer-ancestors**?

*Aquatic spiders BTW are descended from land-based spiders that returned to the water, analogous to whales or seals.

**In which case these features would be analogous to Old/New World Vultures, C4 and CAM photosynthesis, isoprene emission in plants and about a zillion other things we’ve looked at in this blog. Isn’t it cool how the same or similar features keep evolving over and over again?

Spiders, the order Araneae, are air-breathing arachnids in which the chelicerae have evolved into hollow venom-injecting fangs. Nearly all spiders are predators, but are incapable of eating solid food, and so liquefy their prey by injecting it with digestive enzymes*.

*Although some spiders, including tarantulas, also do a bit of tearing and chewing with their fangs, and also grinding-up of food with their pedipalps.

Tangent: This is a good point to get back to the whole bug-eats-mammal, thing, because Bird Whisperer and I just saw this darn near happen last week, when we watched Return Of The King. You know, the part when Shelob the Giant Evil Spider paralyzes Frodo and wraps him up in her web? Yeah, that part is so bogus and here’s why… OK, OK, I know the whole movie is make-believe and there’s no such thing as wizards or orcs or hobbits (gay, straight or otherwise) or elves or whatever. But besides all that I mean. I mean the part that’s anatomically bogus: Shelob has a stinger. Spiders don’t have stingers- that’s what bees and wasps have. Spiders always inject venom through their fangs*.

*Oh yeah, and she’s way too big, too; she couldn’t breathe or walk, though maybe she’s just powered by some kind of physics-defying Magic Malice or something…

There are at least 40,000 known species of spider, some 900 of which are tarantulas, occurring on every continent except Antarctica. Most live in underground burrows and wait for prey to pass by. Many surround the burrow with a “welcome mat” of silk threads that alert it to passing prey.

Here in Utah, the common species- and the only one I’ve ever seen- is Aphonopelma iodius. Females rarely stray far from the lair; if you see a tarantula walking about, it’s almost always a male. I’ve seen tarantulas here in Utah about a dozen times, and except for 2 of them, every single sighting has been in the month of October, always crossing a trail or a road.

It’s thought that in the Fall males go wandering in search of mates. I’ve mostly seen them down in the foothills, around 5,000 feet, but I spotted one a few years back up by Jeremy Ranch, at nearly 7,000 feet. (The only place I’ve seen a tarantula twice around here is crossing the “paved” road of Mill Creek Canyon, about 100 feet below the entry-fee station, both times- that’s right- in October.)

Side Note: Speaking of males on the prowl, tarantula mating is pretty weird. The male spins a web and deposits a sperm packet on the surface. He then picks up the sperm with his pedipalps and attempts to insert it into the female genital opening. Successful or no, he runs a decent chance of getting eaten by the female.

Tarantulas have few natural enemies; a notable exception is the Tarantula Hawk, Pepsis sp. a wasp which stings, paralyzes and then lays its eggs within the spider’s body. The eggs hatch and consume the still-living-but-paralyzed spider from the inside-out. Interestingly, though I’ve seen Tarantula Hawks many times in Southern Utah and even in Costa Rica, I’ve never seen one in Northern Utah.

Fangs are the tarantula’s offensive weapon, and they’re used defensively as well. The fangs, BTW, move up and down, unlike most spiders, whose move side-to side. But a tarantula’s bite, though painful*, isn’t all that dangerous; there’s no record I could find of anyone dying from a bite.

*But nowhere near as painful as the sting of a Tarantula Hawk, which is apparently out-of-this-world-awful.

But the primary defensive weapon of New World Tarantulas, including A. iodius, isn’t venom; it’s hair.

All New World Tarantulas have what are called urticating hairs*, which are specialized barbed hairs that rub off easily and can embed in the skin or eyes of other animals. When embedded in skin, they can cause significant irritations; when embedded in eyes or mucous membranes* they can cause extreme irritation, and even death in small animals through edema. The level of irritation varies across species. The urticating hairs of the South American Goliath Birdeater, Theraposa blondi, cause a rash that supposedly feels like “shards of fiberglass.” But the only firsthand description I could find of the irritation caused by A. iodius hairs described it as “15 minutes of minor irritation.” There also seems to be a range in severity of the reaction depending on the individual afflicted, and it now seems as though the irritation may have a chemical component in addition to the mechanical one.

*A number of caterpillars also have urticating hairs, which they of course evolved completely independently. That’s right- yet another example of convergent evolution!

**The hairs can get in the lungs of small mammals, though there’s no known case of this occurring with humans.

Most hairs on a tarantula are not urticating; they’re just body hairs*. Urticating hairs on most species, including A. iodius, grow only on the top of the abdomen.

*It’s not clear what purpose the body hairs serve.

There are 2 really cool things about urticating hairs, each of which relates to another animal we’ve looked at previously.

Last month when we looked at porcupines, I noted that porcupines don’t actually “throw” their quills. But tarantulas do. When threatened, a tarantula will spin around to face its attacker, and then use its 2 rear legs to brush urticating hairs off its abdomen in the direction of its attacker!

You can often ID a tarantula that has recently employed this maneuver because it’ll have an actual bald spot atop its abdomen, and in fact you can see such a bald spot on the one we saw Sunday.

Reader “Enel” BTW was kind enough to send me some tarantula shots from where he lives (down in Central Arizona) and in this shot you can also see a bald spot.

They also seem to spread the hairs liberally around their lairs, on and around their egg sacs, and apparently, to mark territory. Urticating hairs BTW, don’t grow back until the tarantula’s next molt.

The second cool thing relates back to Black Widows, which I blogged about way, way back when, long before anyone ever read this blog*. You can go check out that post if you like, but the Readers Digest version is this: black widow venom contains at least 7 different toxins, specifically targeted towards different kinds of prey and/or predators- 5 for arthropods, 1 for vertebrates (i.e.us) and 1 for crustaceans (i.e. woodlice.)

*I’m serious. Like no one read it back then.

Similarly, there appear to be at least 6 types of urticating hairs, called types 1 through 6, which serve different functions and appear to target different creatures, although the full “target list” for each type is not yet clear. The analogy isn’t perfect; no tarantula has all 6 types. But like the toxins, the array of hairs and their forms and specificity is simply dazzling. Tarantulas are yet another thing that seem pretty cool at first, but then when you learn a little bit about them, turn out to be way, way cool.

Side Note: I had a really tough time determining for this post how many urticating hair types a given species has. Best as I can tell, the minimum is 1, the maximum may be as high as 4.

Type 3 and 4 hairs appear to be most irritating to mammals, and type 3 appears to be effective against both vertebrates (you, your dog, your ex-spouse) and invertebrates (bugs). The urticating hairs on A. iodius are Type 3. So while you don’t need run away from a Tarantula in the Wasatch or the Oquirrhs, I don’t know that I’d go picking it up.

Professor Chuck patiently waited while I examined poked, prodded, filmed (but didn’t touch!) A. iodius. After a bit, we finished the hike back, rejoined Rudy, and drove back home, passing and noting 3 other (previously-visited) hybrids en route. October’s a great time to spot both hybrid oaks and tarantulas in Northern Utah. Keep your eyes open.