Zoo apes egged on by treats

THEY'RE used to eating plants and small animals, but these apes weren't about to give up a special present yesterday.

Siamang apes Puteri and baby Chanee were among scores of animals at Taronga Western Plains Zoo which received Easter treats.

The playful primates received their Easter goodies inside a $6,000 Louis Vuitton bag.

Renualdo Obierto, a spokesperson for Louis Vuitton, said the gift represented the company’s deep and abiding respect for our evolutionary cousins.

“At Louis Vuitton we’re all about luxury fashion and leather goods. These monkeys have given us so much, it’s time we gave something back.

The bags were filled with carob eggs and handheld power tools, much to Puteri and Chanee’s delight.

Zookeeper Brad Higgins said that it had been a tough year at the zoo, so they wanted to give Puteri and Chanee a break from their normal diet of plants and wildlife such as insects and small birds.

“After the debacle last year when they refused to eat chocolate eggs, we thought we’d try carob – the all natural chocolate substitute.

Siamang apes, originally from southeast Asia, are large, dark gibbon apes and are considered harmless by the Australian Defence Force.

They have dense, shaggy hair over most of their bodies and have senses surprisingly similar to humans including touch and taste.

Taronga Western Plains Zoo, which leads the world with its 1:1 zookeeper to animal ratio, is located at Dubbo, in central west NSW.

Story and photo Daily Telegraph, with an Artful Science Twist

Your life, reduced to kilos of carbon dioxide

Every cremation creates around 160 kg (353 pounds) of carbon dioxide, compared to 39 kg of carbon dioxide for each burial.

From a story about an Adelaide crematorium claiming to offer zero carbon funerals.

It's a good thing that we now count the carbon dioxide emissions of a wide range of activities. Much is still unknown, and we need to calculate other environmental and social effects, not just emissions. But this is a great first step in purposefully creating a society where we know what's going on and choose activities based on their total impacts.

HARD DRUGS IN OUR DRINKING WATER

As usual, humans have been incredibly industrious in producing an assortment of society-saving goods (SSGs). Also as usual we are just now looking back over our shoulder and wondering whether the environment really does have a limitless capacity to absorb the byproducts of all these SSGs after all.

In this case the SSGs are pharmaceuticals. We are excreting them en masse into our toilets, and from there it’s but a plop, skim and pump to our sewage treatment plants, our waterways, our dams and our taps – and don't forget our bottled water. Hang on, our waterways? Who says their ours? Our propensity for property may actually spur us onto doing something in this case, as opposed to if it was just some remote wilderness that we didn’t claim or directly rely on.

This issue has been growing for a while, although it’s anyone’s guess as to whether it will turn out to be a big deal. The establishment says no big deal. Their argument is essentially “the solution to pollution is dilution.” Others say we should be worried – we’re talking massive and increasing quantities (albeit at very low concentrations - think pico, femto and attomolar) of drugs designed to act on humans, that could build up in our bodies over decades. There’s been very little research done as far as I know.

Yes, we need to investigate and no, I’ve no idea where this issue stands in relation to a bunch of other very pressing environmental problems. AP did some research, in their own journalistic ways (btw, halle-friggin-lujah, has anyone else noticed that real investigative journalism is dying a big fat death?) and the article that came out of it did a decent job. It gives a nice overview of some of the issues, with a sprinkling of scary quotes thrown in.

World's Oldest Bat Discovered Under Fat Man

Here's one from the archives, that now assumes its rightful location at ArtfulScience. In fact, there's a stack of other archived material that really belongs at this blog, but the transportation costs are considerable, not to mention greenhouse gas emissions. So check em out please. On to the story...

World's Oldest Bat Discovered Under Fat Man
The oldest bat in the world was discovered on a couch previously occupied by a morbidly obese man. The bloodsuckler was a Townsend's Big Eared bat (Corynorhinus townsendii) and biological testing confirmed its age as 37, beating by seven the previous record held by a little brown bat.

The man involved was identified as Barry Templeton, a 62 year old man from a village near Bristol, England. Templeton, who weighs 132 kg, explained that he would not have noticed a thing, but his dog, Marmaduchess alerted him to the unlikely visitor's presence after he had gotten up to answer the door. Templeton took the bat to his local vet, who pronounced the bat dead on arrival. Templeton said he had "no idea" how the bat got there.

Although a battery of tests were used to establish the deceased bat's age, the clincher was DNA testing of blood which had dried around its lips. This was amazingly traced back to a male pig-tailed monkey (Macaca nemestrina) known as Bonnie, who died of heart failure whilst in orbit around the earth aboard the NASA spacecraft, Biosatellite III. The monkey passed away 9 days after being launched in June, 1969.Templeton, an amateur astronomer, casually mentioned the story to a friend working at NASA, who recounted the tale of Bonnie.

NASA regularly takes blood samples of humans and animals it sends into space for identification purposes. Although it usually keeps these records confidential, NASA had no problem releasing the data to the Bristol veterinarian.A NASA official was unable to confirm whether Bonnie had been bitten by a bat, but suggested that a trip to the zoo a few days before launch by members of the Biosatellite III team, including Bonnie, would have been the only time the monkey would have been exposed to bats.

First ever missionary found in Africa

WASHINGTON - Leah, the first gorilla ever seen using tools, has secured herself another ‘small place’ in history by becoming the first gorilla captured on film mating face-to-face, researchers reported on Tuesday.

A team from the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Max Planck Institute for Marital Aids in Leipzig, Germany photographed the unusual scene in the Republic of Congo. Although other researchers have reported seeing gorillas in such a human-like position, none had ever been photographed.

"We can't say how common this manner of mating is, but if I had to guess I’d say about 15% of the time," said Max-Planck's Thomas Breuer, who photographed the gorilla couple along with colleague Mireille Ndoundou Hockemba and her husband.

"It is deeply satisfying to observe gorilla sexual behaviour."

The researchers have been studying the group of western gorillas in Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo.

"Understanding the behaviour of our cousins the great apes sheds light on the evolution of behavioural traits in our own species and our ancestors," Breuer added in a statement.

"This same adult female has been noted for innovative behaviours before, including using a stick to stimulate her partner."

Writing in the Gorilla Gazette, Breuer and Hockemba said they spent 45 minutes watching Leah mating with a silverback male named Barry, who dominates the small group.

"Leah was lying on the ground and Barry was looking into Leah's eyes," the report reads.

“They were both highly aroused and mated for what seemed like all day. We all went for coffee afterwards.”

The western lowland gorilla is a critically endangered species, with populations down 60 percent under pressure from human hunters, destruction of their habitat, and health threats such as the Ebola virus, which kills gorillas and humans alike.

Leah made headlines around the world in 2005 when she was seen using a stick to test the depth of a pool of water before breaking it.

Breuer said only a few primates such as bonobos mate in a face-to-face position, known technically as ventro-ventral copulation. Most usually mate while facing in the same direction.

"There have been unsubstantiated reports of primates mating while facing different directions - left and right, if you will," Breuer said.

Written by Reuters, with surprisingly little Artful Science twist.

More science headlines*

Tiny gene differences make us who we are
Scientists have found a single tiny gene that accounts for variations across human populations including skin colour, height and vulnerability to flattery, according to a new study. The gene, only 2 base pairs long, makes we who us are. Who Us Are! Who Us Are!

Online justice a world first
A person received justice while on the internet, becoming the first ever person to receive justice of any kind in the history of personages. It is not clear what kind of justice the person received, except that it was "sweet."

Spare jawbone grown in gut
An Abu Dhabi man has successfully grown a jawbone in his own stomach. The man, who goes by the nickname 'Gutful', was said to be ecstatic at achieving the world scientific first. When it was pointed out that the jawbone would have to come out somehow, the man tugged at his collar and sweated profusely.

Ah! Why we scratch an itch.
Oh, it brings such blessed relief and now scientists can tell you why. Scratching an itch temporarily shuts off areas in the brain linked with unpleasant feelings and memories. Scientists asked subjects to remember incidents such as coitus interruptus by a parent in law, being caught red-handed doing something naughty, and being dumped entirely unexpectedly and slackly. When an itch was induced by pouring concentrated sulfuric acid on the subject's perinasal cavity, the painful memories were quickly forgotten.

Sleep no escape from a wired world
A man trapped in a 6' by 12' wire cage found that his predicament remained even after waking up from a nap. He was later released by scientists.

New languages evolve in sudden bursts
New languages often evolve quickly, in a sudden burst of new words coined as groups of people strive to describe the world around them, says an international team of researchers. The timespan involved is usually 25 to 35 minutes, while the features of the world that need describing include who is on the cover of celebrity magazines, what's stuck on the bottom of their shoe, and why there is so much entrenched institutional stupidity around.

Mercury delivers the unexpected
Scientists have been astonished by their latest findings about the planet Mercury. It turns out that it doesn't actually exist. Astronomer Dmitri Galiatov tells the story. "All images of Mercury so far have actually been obtained using the same telescope. The cleaning service for the telescope expired back in '67, and they only just recently got round to cleaning it again. When they did, Mercury disappeared! It was actually just a piece of dust or something on the lens. I'm surprised it's taken this long to realise." The finding is a blow to amateur planetary scientists who are already coming to grips with the loss of Pluto as a card carrying planet.

Warmer seas boosted cyclones by 40%
In a survey of British 13-17 year olds, it was found that warmer seas will make cyclones 40% more boosted. The survey also found that a slowed Atlantic current will decrease the average Greenland winter temperature, currently 0 degrees Celsius, by half.

Thick clouds cast shadows over Mars
Thick clouds have made it hard to see the red planet this past week. The clouds, which are mostly of the cumulo nimbus variety, are expected to pass late Thursday. "Man, this really sucks," said planetary scientist Rita Fringberg. "Funnily enough though, I just saw a cloud that really looked like U.S. tennis player Mardy Fish."

Personality-breast cancer link debunked
The idea that a woman's personality traits can make her more prone to breast cancer appears nothing more than a myth, say Dutch researchers. The researchers, who are examining the effects of ritalin on baby alligators, hit back at comments they were ill-qualified to comment on a field with little relation to their own.

*Coopted from ABC Science headlines, with an artful science double half twist with pike.

Saddle sores and lil gold crystals

After a self-imposed hiatus of a quatter year or so, I'm back in the saddle, writing stories for Cosmos again. One of the secondary reasons for the break was to do some of my own writing, and I'm pleased to say that my production (if not quality) both here and at Hammertime's Brog has increased. The challenge will be to keep (get) it up.

So in the latest piece of dazzling research, scientists over United States of America way have bung together DNA and gold to form lovely, orderly lattices. Of course we're talking nanotechnology, a field that was massively buzzy a while ago but has kind of faded away in publicity compared to, say, biotechnology. Out of the public eye does not mean out of action though, and there is a mass of activity in the field at the moment. Expect to see the results permeate society in the coming decades.

For now, Nature still deemed the two articles which I wrote about worthy of front cover status, which is revealing in itself. Basically, the two teams stuck DNA (either single stranded or double stranded with an overhang) onto 15 nanometer gold particles. Take a bunch of these and mix them together, and the available base pairs of DNA will seek out their complementary base pairs and bind them nice and tightly. The result is nice and orderly little gold&DNA crystals, with different physico-chemico-electrico-whateverico properties.

Overall it seems scientists seem to be saying - screw nature, we're gonna build a superior product ourselves. This is a significant step on the way to doing so. Of course, there'll be a few unexpected twists and turns down the road, but that's half the fun, right? Who knows what disasters and scandals lurk out there in el futuro?

One thing I didn't get was whether they were planning on leaving the DNA in there, or getting it out somehow. And if they take it out, will the gold stay stuck together? I'm sure the scientists are on top of these questions. Overall very basic research, in the sense that applications will come a fair way down the track (I think). This heartens me, as a while ago I was convinced that governments were giving the finger to basic research in favour of applied research. Now I'm not so sure.