Atrocious, er, Ferocious Planet

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Here we'll explore the raw ferocity of a planet, as envisioned by an aimless movie crew who just can't be bothered to make an effort. The film quickly establishes tension between characters for no reason other than as a sad excuse for character development and back story. I was mildly excited to see John Rhys-Davies, knowing he is no stranger to bad cinema. The fact that I was longing for the comfort of a chupacabra terror loose on a cruise ship says a lot about this movie. Fortunately for John, his character is killed in the first 15 minutes by some kind of budget-animated dinosaur-alien-monster.

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Ok, let's back up. Science has allowed us to see into other dimensions, but not go to them. Seems a little odd, since there's have to be some way to get images and sent them back, right? Anyway, the alternate dimensions look pretty much like ours, but with maybe a differently colored sky. Wow, what creativity. I'm not saying that an alternate dimension has to be wildly different; in fact, I embrace subtlety. In an infinite multiverse, there will be one in which everything is as we know our world to be, but there are marginally fewer left-handed raccoons, and one where all is as it seems except the flavors we know as mint and toast have been swapped. These worlds exist, and I think we are sorely missing out by not exploring them through cinematic creativity.

Anyway, our “heroes” are suddenly (and without explanation) sent to a parallel universe: Dublin, Ireland. They proceed to react (or not) to a variety of situations as if they weren't actually people. Find a bunch of dead dudes? No big deal, just pile them up! Weird creature-thing in your presence? Poke it with a pen until it spurts lethal fluid at someone! Oh, he's dead now? Whatever! Need to see outside? Shoot some holes through the thick concrete wall with a pistol! Find a parking meter impaled through a tree? Steal the quarters out of it! The list goes on, but I won't.

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The ensuing quest for 50 gallons of water, needed to power the cold fusion computer (!) that allows inter-dimensional travel, is more inept and less engaging than quests for a different thing. For those unfamiliar with that film, it is a dialogue-less estimate of pre-human culture, wherein the grunts and moans of filthy, barely-dressed actors conveys a wider range of human emotions than the ham-fisted acting on display here.

Many of the characters who (I guess?) had names, are killed off for a variety of inane reasons while the computer repair efforts coast about intellectual space before landing on ammonia. This compound flows in the monsters' veins (and eggs) and can obviously be used in the place of Freon, since they are in the same “family”. I'm no chemist, but putting these things in the same family is like saying hammers are substitutable with pickles because both take up space and could be used as doorstops.

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The film wraps up so suddenly, they must have simply extinguished the budget. A major character is mercilessly left behind for no good reason while the remaining two teleport back to the normal world. Or do they?!? Actually, we can't tell. And, no, it's not because we are left to wonder how it is that we identify reality while forced to observe the world through a necessarily subjective point of view deeply influenced by the cultural constructs in which we exist while simultaneously constructing. It's because nothing is shown to us and then the credits come flying in. Huzzah!

Inappropriately goofy music throughout ruins any attempt at establishing a mood for the film, so it is impossible to even attempt to contextualize the characters' actions. Also, I think the title is misleading. Since there is only one planet involved, though it occurs in multiple universes. I'd say the filmmakers were commenting on the ferocity fundamental to the ongoing conflict between humans and nature, but that's me being rather generous to people who clearly don't care. Honestly, the worst aspect of this movie is that everyone involved seemed to know they were part of making a bad movie. That's not to say that they didn't take their roles seriously, but that they lacked the depth of conviction that is the hallmark of truly bad movies: earnest attempts to perform despite (or in ignorance/denial of) surrounding, catastrophic failures.

Mystery of the potato onion spider

Curious spider news has been a bit slow as of late, but some elements of this recent story caught my attention.

1. The spider was found in a bag of onion rings. Spiders have made appearances in produce, such as bananas or grapes, but finding them in processed food is pretty rare.

2. The article suggests the spider was still alive, though I'm skeptical. I've seen the highly-mechanized processes used in packaging mass-produced goods, and it seems unlikely a spider could infiltrate such an operation. Not impossible, but unlikely. The spider may have been dead, which doesn't really solve the logistic problem, but is somewhat more believable.

3. The store selling the onion rings apologized to the family and compensated them for their troubles. They clearly have a laser-focused attention to detail, as they suggested the spider likely got in when the potatoes were harvested. Potatoes grow underground, and although many spiders live on the soil surface and some burrow, there is not way a spider could survive harvest, processing, and packaging intact. Also, and this might be a minor point here, the spider was found in a package of onion rings. I'm no botanist, but I don't think onions are potatoes. The science might still be out on that one: teach the controversy!

4. The company said they were going to trace the packaging number from the onion rings to “investigate what happened”. What could they possibly find? I can only imagine they'll pull up records showing that David was working in the packing line the day that package went out. You know David, right? He's the notoriously surreptitious spider sprinkler, wanted in eight counties for adding spiders into assembly lines for unhealthy food products.

As is often true of things on the internet, the comments section for the article is a place of amazement and unjustified hatred. The mother of the child spooked by the spider responds to assaults against her, her lifestyle and parenting, and her child. One comment, which appears to be sincere, sympathizes with the mother but ends by saying that the writer hasn't been outside in 17 years since finding a spider in the garden “just in case there are two of them”. It's either a brilliantly disguised jab at the mother or a shockingly pathological case of arachnophobia. There are way more than two spiders in your garden, but probably none in your onion rings.

Of dogs, bells, and tadpoles

In this blog post, we'll explore how the risk of predation affects the cognitive functioning of prey.

Different populations of the same species of prey often face different levels of risk. For example, one population may coexist with a low number or low diversity of predators compared to another population. Experiments and models have revealed that this background level of risk influences how prey respond to future predation risk (e.g., the risk allocation hypothesis). However, it remains to be seen how experience with risk affects prey cognition (e.g., learning new things and remembering old things).

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The authors make use of a classic system: tadpoles. These critters have been shown by countless researchers to be sensitive to the risk of predation by changes in body shape, life history, and behavior. Grinding up tadpoles produces alarm cues that inform other tadpoles danger is nearby. Combining these alarm cues with the smells released into the water from a salamander allowed the researchers to use classic Pavlovian conditioning to “teach” the tadpoles about a new risk.

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A clever design with a variety of treatments revealed that coming from a high-risk background makes prey less responsive to continued risk (tadpole alarm cues) but more likely to respond to new kind of risk (predaceous salamander cues). Although these effects mostly wore off after ten days, the Pavlovian conditioning only stuck around for tadpoles from a high-risk background.

These results largely confirm hypotheses about how prey should respond to the risk of predation. When living in a scary world (high-risk background), prey cannot afford to freak out at more run of the mill scares. However, these same on-edge prey are better prepared for a new kind of risk than those who have lived a life free of stress (low-risk background). The stress-free prey have the luxury of taking time to evaluate a new risk and see if it is worth responding to, whereas prey living in a scary world take a shortcut and assume the new risk is definitely dangerous. The loss of responses after ten days indicates prey incorporate experience to adjust their assessment of risk: what seems scary at first no longer elicits a response if its scariness is not reinforced somehow. Exactly why prey from a high-risk background would remember a conditioned response longer is not totally clear, but it may be that the conditioning combines with the background to cement the memory more permanently that in the mind of prey from a low-risk background.

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So, what does it all mean? Well, prey are clearly not passive players in the predator-prey game of eat or be eaten. Not only can they sense their predators and respond to them, but their history of sensing predator risk colors their response. Information uncertainty is central here, as prey are constantly gathering information and updating estimates of how risky their world is. Perfect information (knowing all risks exactly) isn't attainable, so all organisms must make assumptions about how best to spend their time. Because prey can't respond to predators all the time (they also have to eat, mate, and do other stuff), they are forced to take risks. Computing when and where to take these risks is complicated, and the prey we see alive today are the offspring of parents who did a good enough job solving these problems. If the ability to do these risk-taking calculations is heritable, then we would expect prey to continue to improve their ability to avoid predators. However, predators evolve as well, keeping life interesting for both prey and scientists who study predator-prey interactions.

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Mitchell et al. (2016) Living on the edge: how does environmental risk affect the behavioural and cognitive ecology of prey? Animal Behaviour.

Prepare to have your mind...contaminated!

Alien Contamination was one of the 72 “video nasties” at the heart of a censorship struggle in the UK during the early 80s. I've seen a couple of these movies, so I was excited to delve into another. Disappointment sets in pretty quickly here.

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The movie opens with an assault of bad dialogue. The terribleness of the sound quality is greatly enhanced by recording the actors through respirators donned to keep them safe from a strange smell coming from a cargo ship. Upon inspection, the crew is missing!

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They find some dudes covered in blood and conclude they exploded(?)! I might have made a similar decision if the lighting had been better. Our crack team of investigators quickly conclude that no bacteria or virus could cause these deaths, and then scramble to prepare for an epidemic. An explosion epidemic? I'm not sure what that would mean, but I guess people would be asked to stay inside. There would probably be a ban on all carbonated beverages, just to be safe. I can also imagine the government issuing some kind of anti-explosion containment girdle to everyone, just to corral the forthcoming mess during this catastrophe.

As you might have guessed, our team soon finds crates of giant avocados (possibly alien eggs) that quickly explode. Naturally, once the goo from the eggs gets on you, you explode as well. That's how these things usually work, in my experience.

We meet a high-ranking female military officer who quickly takes control to start calling the shots. First order: freeze the entire cargo ship. Heat seems to, I don't know, accelerate the eggs? Surely freezing them is the answer. Back in the lab, we learn that these aren't eggs, but masses of bacteria. After using the bacteria to explode a lab rat (for fun?) our heroes immediately intuit that whoever was intended to receive the shipment planned to introduce the bacteria into the sewers. This is obvious, conclusion has no bearing on the rest of the movie.

When they find a warehouse full of eggs, they destroy them with fire. Now, I know what you're thinking. It's usually best to avoid thinking during these movies, lest you become agitated and miss the movie explanation for what's going on. One character comments on how using fire to kill the eggs makes no sense, but he is dismissed with a “I'm only doing my job” containment, which we are left to ponder. All containment protocols are initially heavily enforced and then carelessly discarded almost immediately. The capriciousness is blamed on the woman in charge, who is oddly never in uniform, despite her rank, unless heavy eye makeup counts as a uniform.

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It turns out these eggs are nothing new, since they were seen on a mission to Mars from two years ago. I can see why the space agency wouldn't have followed up on such a monumental finding. Science is hard, and maintaining even the most basic level of curiosity about the world around you is a lot of work. Besides, there's no way the eggs would possess an astronaut and use his body as a puppet to further their race, right? Right?

The film slows to a crawl as we travel to South America, where the eggs originated. One highlight is an “attack” by an egg, which apparently just make sad trombone noises without being threatening in any measurable way. Since the only danger they pose is getting the exploding goo onto you, it seems they could easily be neutralized by covering them with a towel or something. Instead, our heroine has a screaming fit, lightly pounding at the door for quite some time, filmed in a way to pathetically evoke the “Here's Johnny!” scene from The Shining.

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When the movie wakes up, we quickly learn that the eggs are being farmed under the direction of The Cyclops. This large, slimy alien has some telepathic powers (I guess), a few mouths, and a hunger for human flesh. It might be a cousin of Jabba the Hut, though we don't get to learn much about it before it is killed and then spontaneously combusts. And no, it does not explode like every single other thing in the movie, but instead catches on fire. Why not?

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The overall alien plan is never quite clear, so I'm not sure who won in the end. It doesn't matter, really, and this Italian knockoff of Alien is just another in the long chain of imitations that fail spectacularly. It did succeed at presenting lots of uncomfortably tight head shots that linger for far too long, and propagating weird sexual tension that did nothing to develop characters or further the plot. Go watch Galaxy of Terror, The Blob, or even Critters if you are looking for good-bad horrorstuff, and leave this one for the deep freeze. Or fire. Whatever.

How similar are plants and animals?

This is the first of my blog posts wherein I'll share my thoughts on scientific papers I read. The only unifying theme will be stuff that catches my eye, though I am typically drawn to behavior and ecology, often focusing on predator-prey interactions. Spiders may also feature prominently. Anyway, on to the paper!

The authors review similarities and differences in how plants and animals respond to the risk of being eaten. Spoiler alert:

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(http://australianmuseum.net.au/uploads/images/11950/frog%20caerulea_big.jpg)

All living things face similar challenges in the ultimate goal of passing genetic material through offspring into the future. Most (all?) organisms must avoid being eaten, whether by herbivores (enemies of plants) or predators (enemies of animals). Although these terms are somewhat murky (re: seed predators), it is clear that sensing and responding to the risk of being consumed would be beneficial.

Plants are different from animals in many ways, and two of the most obvious ones (movement and structure) are rather important when considering how individuals deal with the risk of being eaten.

Movement: Being rooted to the ground limits mobility, so plants often respond to herbivores by changing growth patterns or moving substances (e.g., poisons) from one place to another. Animals, on the other hand, can usually get up and run away from danger, though while doing so they lose out on time spent doing other stuff (e.g., eating). A less obvious effect of the movement differences between plants and animals is the ability to acquire information about the risk of being consumed. Plants are fairly limited in the distance over which they can sense risk, whereas animals can sometimes sense a predator long before it is in danger.

Morphology: Compared to most animals, plants have relatively un-specialized organs with a high level of redundancy. Compare the breathing apparatus of a fern to that of a tern. Ferns breathe through their leaves, of which they have many. Terns breathe through their lungs, of which they have only one pair. Therefore, plants are more tolerant of partial consumption than animals, which feeds back into the fact that their responses to herbivores are slower than the responses of animals to predators. This tolerance of partial consumption allows plants to respond to very reliable cues (“I'm actively being eaten!”), whereas animals often rely on indirect cues (“Smells like a predator has been here recently”).

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I was surprised to learn that plants can defend themselves after sensing some indirect cues: herbivore eggs and herbivore mating chemicals (pheromones). The eggs will soon hatch into tiny lawnmowers of doom, built to demolish the plant on which they live. Chemical cues of mating herbivores are a precursor to eggs, so plants that “know” herbivores are mating nearby is enough to trigger defenses in preparation for being consumed. Pretty cool stuff!

Figure one from the paper lays out basic similarities and differences between plants and animals. Dogs clearly don't tolerate leg amputation well...

An interesting comparison can be drawn between plants and plant-like animals, such as corals. Animals that don't move share many limitations with plants, and they have evolved similar ways of managing the risk of being consumed. We always look for examples like this in biology, as they serve as strong tests of our hypotheses. If corals and plants did not share similar responses to the risk of being eaten, then arguments based on lifestyle (e.g., mobility and morphology) would not be as compelling.

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Overall, a sharing of ideas between plant and animal researchers will likely lead to new, productive research programs. An odd, but very interesting, collection of articles in Behavioral Ecology from 2013 contains an interesting discussion between plant and animal biologists about if and how plants may communicate with each other through sound. Continued cross pollination between researchers in these historically separate fields is rather exciting and should be fruitful (see what I did there?).

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Karban et al. (2016) A comparison of plants and animals in their responses to risk of consumption. Current Opinion in Plant Biology.

Silly spider strangeness

Two stories came across my radar recently, both of which highlight how spiders get involved in strange news stories.

In the first story, we are presented with "evidence" of some kind of giant spider spotted via Google Earth.

Incontrovertible proof!

The image seems pretty straightforward to me: find a satellite image of a remote island and slap a blurry spider image on there. The story about this image surfaced on a UFO blog, including this statement: "...goes to prove that scientists don’t have the slightest clue about the hidden giant species that exist in the oceans of the world."

While it is true that the ocean is poorly explored and even large species can escape our notice...spiders? Really? Spiders? Spiders.

Spiders do not live in the ocean, do not grow to the size of a bus, and would likely have been noticed by now if such spiders existed. If they are coming ashore, then they should be more visible than deep sea giants. Also, they'd have to eat a lot, as spiders are voracious predators. Spiders, as fluid feeders, cannot feed while submerged, though I suppose these giant marine spiders could find a way to make it work. Pushing the obviously ridiculous claim over the edge, the person who shared this image did not include coordinates, thus preventing independent confirmation of the image.

The other weird, though less crazy, thing that happened with spiders in the news goes in an unexpected direction. At a grocery store in Sweden, a large spider (tarantula of some sort) was found in with some apples. Now, as I've described before, large spiders do occasionally show up with bananas, but apples are an unusual crop, especially for coincidental tarantulas.

The real twist here, the one that puts this story in a different category than any spider-in-produce news piece I've ever seen, is that a person was seen putting the tarantula on the apples. So, how do we make sense of this behavior? Was the spider being dropped off, perhaps with the hope it would find its own way in the world? Why apples? Does the Swedish education system create some kind of link between tarantulas and apples? Or maybe this is simply the face of modern Swedish terrorism?

Maybe the owner intended to come back later and pick the spider up, using the apples as some kind of tarantula day care. I'm going to assume this is what was going on, and encourage grocery stores to have a more explicit location for spider drop-off and pick-up. Putting them next to the apples might be ideal, because then the spiders could at least gaze at the sweet, crispy bounty. Please write to your local grocery store and demand a safe, clearly marked place for people (Swedish or otherwise) to deposit their large arachnid pets!

Grappling with grapes

Continuing the theme from my last post about spider news, we have a “news” story about a woman who found a spider in some grapes. The article has a decent mix of level-headed fact reporting and questionable phrasing/behavior. Apparently, finding a spider in a bunch of grapes was the woman's worst nightmare, which is a sign to me that she must live a very comfortable life. My worst nightmare would be something more along the lines of realizing that ghosts are real and that they can force us to watch their terrible television programming in our minds as we go about our daily routines. Either that or having to wander the torture chamber known as Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Yugh.

Anyway, the woman was at least aware of the fact that produce will occasionally come with a bonus toy (or demonic terror, depending on your point of view), so she didn't fly into full panic mode. Unfortunately, the spider was killed. Since the grapes were likely transported from elsewhere in the country (or planet), it might actually be preferable to not let the spider go in the wild. Aside from making for some interesting population genetics, there could be potential for spreading parasites, bacteria, or viruses along with the spider. I advocate for keeping spiders as pets until natural aging takes the spider away to that big web in the sky. They are pretty easy to care for and are fascinating to watch.

As people with the financial means continue to increase the demand for organic produce, there should be an expectation for a higher incidence of finding spiders or other critters in fresh food. This is only a problem if we are incapable or unwilling to check produce ourselves and remove the offending arthropod. Grocery stores wash and assess their goods, but they can't catch everything. So, should you find an eight-legged prize in your next bunch of grapes, celebrate. Organic practices encourage control of pests by predators, which is better for the environment than widespread pesticide application. Plus, the spider does not want to be in your house and certainly means you no harm.

Alien Species? More like Alien Feces! So clever...

Twenty years ago, we were given a great blockbuster alien invasion movie: Independence Day. While there is lots of talk about the needless sequel, nobody seems to be talking about the other alien invasion movie from 1996: Alien Species.

Set in the distant future of 1999 (three whole years beyond when this film was made), aliens visit our planet and immediately set to work on their master plan:

1. abduct a cow and some people
2. destroy a few vehicles at random
3. ?????
4. profit

Fortunately (?) for us, an astronomer, his granddaughter and acolytes combined with some deputies and their prisoners are here to help. After their truck gets upended by a (drunk?) alien pilot, the group takes shelter in a cave (like you do), only to find (uh oh!) the aliens have set up shop in there for, well, it isn't clear. I assumed some kind of alien pottery seminar, though I didn't see a wheel. Perhaps it is an Earthist assumption that a wheel would be involved, so increased cultural exchange between our races is clearly needed. Anyway, the cave is used by our heroes to run back and forth through the same ten or so feet, while the aliens lay waste to a city somewhere.

What's important is that we later learn that being abducted by the aliens means going to the cave to be covered in spiderwebs and/or enclosed in some kind of cocoon. Hatching from the cocoon makes you a zombie, a curious story element that goes nowhere. The humans fail miserably at everything, but they do destroy one ship, which sends the aliens packing. World saved!

This movie is full of ACTING, as shown to us by people who have probably heard of acting, but only over the radio or something. It's filmed almost entirely at night with insufficient lighting to make out a lot of what's going on. I'm filing that second point as an accomplishment, and I think the movie would have been better if it were even darker.

That's more like it!

Going bananas over spiders

In a recent article, we learn of a woman afraid that thousands of spiders have infested her home by hatching from an eggsac stuck to a banana. What's more, it's assumed these are the most deadly spiders in the world: Brazilian wandering spiders! She had her entire home fumigated, treated with a "UV fogging agent", and insect monitoring stations installed.

I ran out of eyebrows to raise while reading this story. Here's some things to consider:

1. The Brazilian wandering spider (Phoneutria spp.) rarely makes it into banana shipments. Data from the U.S. show that, from 1926-2014, only 6 of these spiders have been found in international cargo. It is unlikely, to say the least, that someone will discover another one.
2.  The majority (94%) of bananas consumed (in the U.S., at least) are from Ecuador, as well as Colombia and Central America. Brazil produces bananas, but consumes most of them domestically.
3. While the venom from a Brazilian wandering spider is indeed medically relevant, the venom from the pantropical huntsman spider (Heteropoda venatoria) is not. The pantropical huntsman spider is the most common large, startling spider to be shipped with produce, along with members of the comparably harmless genus Cupiennius.
4. Spider identification is a notoriously tricky business, and even world experts can spend hours laboring over taxonomic keys before arriving with confidence at an ID. Large, unique spiders are certainly easier to identify, but not from their eggsacs! The pictures accompanying these kinds of stories always show a small, nondescript eggsac. You cannot count on pest control specialists to identify a spider by its eggsac, especially when expert arachnologists could only laugh if you asked them to do so.
5. It may be a small comfort, but Phoneutria spp. eggsacs contain hundreds, not thousands of eggs.
6. Even if the eggsac did belong to a Brazilian wandering spider and the spiderlings survived long enough to hatch, they would not be a threat to anyone. I'll save my position on spider bites for later, but just trust me for now.
7. People can spend their money however they see fit, but the measures taken here seem rather extreme. The "nuke it from orbit" approach to pest control is certainly more costly and hazardous to the homeowner's health than a more reasonable "catch/squash every one you see" tactic. I'd keep them as pets, but hey, that's me.

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Vetter et al. (2014) Spiders (Araneae) found in bananas and other international cargo submitted to North American arachnologists for identification. Journal of Medical Entomology.