From the robust boa constrictor to the venomous rattlesnake, all of the more than 3,400 snake species that slither today may have descended from the same prehistoric forest prowler, whose sinuous body had two small hind legs with toes and ankles, researchers reported on Tuesday.....Linnaean Snakes: Part I by Andrew Durso at Life is short, but snakes are long:
Although recent findings have shed new light on the (so far) oldest-known fossil snakes, extending the fossil record of snakes back in time an incredible 70 million years, this article is about a more anthropocentric definition of "the first snakes". It's about the first snakes to be named and described using the modern system of classification: those described and classified by Linnaeus in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae, using consistently together for the first time a binomial naming system for genera and species and a hierarchical category system for higher taxa (i.e., families, orders, classes, phyla, and kingdoms). Although Darwin's theory of evolution has ultimately refocused modern taxonomy on cladistics and phylogenetic trees, the Linnaean system is not wholly incompatible with our new understanding of the common ancestry of all life, and has and will continue to be used.....This is Not a Snake, It’s Some of the Best Mimicry We’ve Ever Seen by Kyle Hill at Nerdist:
......Native to Trinidad, you can find these incredible snake head chrysalises hanging on the underside of forest leaves. You’ve likely heard of or seen caterpillars that mimic snakes before, like the gorgeous Hemeroplanes triptolemus, but to see a chrysalis like this almost perfectly put on a viper’s visage…that’s something else........
Thirsty for more: Water quality reports are misleading, cryptic and incomplete by JoAnna Klein at Scienceline:
I’m thirsty. My throat is dry, my mouth is a cavern, and my tarred and feathered tongue feels cemented in place. My eyeballs are two spherical deserts, desperate to soak up any remaining moisture in my body. The panic sets in. I am so thirsty.....The octopus can see with its skin by Mo Costandi at Neurophilosophy:
Octopuses are well known for changing the colour, patterning, and texture of their skin to blend into their surroundings and send signals to each other, an ability that makes them both the envy of, and inspiration for, army engineers trying to develop cloaking devices. As if that wasn’t already impressive enough, research published today in the Journal of Experimental Biology shows that octopus skin contains the pigment proteins found in eyes, making it responsive to light......The Drouet Institute’s Tribe of Petty Rat-Swindlers by Jai Virdi-Dhesi at From the Hands of Quacks:
Sometime in the early 1880s, a man by the name of J.H. Nicholson, who called himself an “aural specialist,” introduced himself to a French doctor by the name of Drouet. Hospitalized for tuberculosis aggravated by alcohol, the doctor was once an obscure general practitioner operating in the tough Belleville district in Paris. It appeared that Nicholson convinced the doctor to lend his name to a new business he was establishing; tying the new “Institute” to a worthy French name, he insisted, would add an element of mystique and credibility to the firm. And more so, would ensure that the Drouet name would live after death.....1975: The year that quantum mechanics met gravity by Greg Gbur at Skulls in the Stars:
Since the revolutionary development of both theories in the early twentieth century, it is fair to say that general relativity and quantum mechanics have had a rather hostile relationship to one another. One reason for this is simple a matter of scale: gravitational effects, described by general relativity, are essentially negligible in particle interactions. It is rather straightforward to calculate that the gravitational force between a pair of electrons is 39 orders of magnitude smaller than the electrical force.....A New Voyage to Albion, III: The Apothecary by Scott Huler at The Lawson Trek: Along the Path:
James Petiver, the man to whom Lawson sent his botanical specimens from Carolina, was an apothecary -- what we would call a pharmacist but was actually in the early 1700s some combination of a pharmacist, a doctor, a scientist, and a museum director. .....Why Horses Aren’t Getting Any Faster by Doctor Ramey at David Ramey, D.V.M.:
I don’t know if you pay any attention to sports like swimming, or track and field, but if you haven’t, the fact is that people keep getting faster. Records made even a few years back routinely get eclipsed. The magic four minute mile “barrier,” which Sir Roger Bannister first broke in 1954 (a barrier about which doctors were concerned, because they thought that the person who broke it might die – he didn’t), has been lowered by something like 17 seconds in the 50 years since. On the other hand, thoroughbred racehorses keep plodding along (relatively speaking). Thoroughbred racehorse times haven’t improved much in, oh, the last 100 years or so (harness racing times have improved, by the way – more on that in a bit. The great racehorse Secretariat broke the equine version of the four minute mile back in 1973 at the Kentucky Derby – it’s only been done once since, by Monarchos, in 2001......Why We Should Let the Pantheon Crack by Courtney Humphries at Nautilus:
John Ochsendorf wants to tear down Rome’s iconic Pantheon. He wants to pull apart its 2,000-year-old walls until its gorgeous dome collapses. Destroying it, he believes, is the best way to preserve it. But the Pantheon that Ochsendorf, a professor of engineering and architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has in mind to destroy is less than 20 inches high, and it’s made of 492 3-D-printed blocks. It’s designed from laser scans of the real building. A gaggle of MIT engineering students will place it on a table with a sliding base and pull the walls apart, then put it back together and tilt it until it crumbles.....
And if that is not enough, more readings for later this weekend:
Rat Park drug experiment cartoon by Stuart McMillen at Stuart McMillen comics
Wonderful Scientific Names, Part 4: Yi qi by Stephen Heard at Scientist Sees Squirrel
Don’t Believe the Morbid Hype: Nigerian Restaurant (NOT) Selling Human Meat by Katy Meyers Emery at Bones Don’t Lie
Viewing nature can help your brain work better, study finds by Chris Mooney at Washingto Post
This Dog Bite "Fact" Could Get You In Trouble by Julie Hecht at Dog Spies
The Caveman’s Home Was Not a Cave by Jude Isabella at Nautilus
Ray-Ban’s Predecessor? A Brief History of Tinted Spectacles by Dr Lindsey Fitzharris at The Chirurgeon's Apprentice
"Infidelity Gene" Hyped in the News by John Horgan at Cross-Check
How Structure Arose in the Primordial Soup by Emily Singer at Quanta Magazine
The curse of Frankenstein: how archetypal myths shape the way people think about science by Alan Levinovitz at The Conversation
Is the solitary scientist an outdated idea? by Andy Henion at Futurity
A Migration Age Anglo-Saxon Leper by Michelle Ziegler at Contagions
Interview with Dino 101's Betsy Kruk! by Gary Vecchiarelli at Prehistoric Pub
19 Years of Feeding Animals GMO Shows No Harm by Steven Novella at NeuroLogica Blog
Be Very Afraid of Ticks by Melinda Wenner Moyer at Slate
Previously in this series:
FieldNotes: a view to spotted horses in the morning
FieldNotes: The Word For World is Blue (or is it Gold?)
FieldNotes: Golden Mean, polite middle-ground, and optimal numbers of legs.
FieldNotes: speeding up and slowing down time
FieldNotes: from Captain Ahab to Jeff Goldblum, chasing the giants
FieldNotes: this is not your grandparents' neuroscience!
FieldNotes: Brontosaurus in, Food Babe out.
FieldNotes: Rogue Microwave Ovens Call Home
FieldNotes: Let the sleeping apes lie
FieldNotes: one thing leads to another leads to another
FieldNotes: Seductive Allure of Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations
FieldNotes: do African horses do flehmen at the sight of Derby hats?
FieldNotes: How The Bird Got Its Beak
operation of Equine colic in horse
Posted by Agha Amin Ullah on Saturday, May 16, 2015
Image: An artist’s rendering of the most recent common ancestor of all living snakes. Its small hind legs probably served no purpose in locomotion. Credit Julius Csotonyi