Pheromonal Altruism

I really have been fascinated by the recent news story about the lions rescuing that 12-year-old Ethiopian girl from her kidnappers. I've done a few news searches in the past couple of days to see if there has been anything more reported on it. The story seems to have captivated tons of other people besides me, as the basic AP story was widely cited and reprinted after it came out. But, so far, not much additional information to the story has turned up in the news yet. One of the reasons I was scouring through the news reports was that I was hoping to find one that mentioned whether the lions were male or female. I did find one or two that mentioned the answer to that, but unfortunately the answer was that the gender of the lions was unknown, as reported in this one: BBC NEWS | Africa | Kidnapped girl 'rescued' by lions.

There was also this brief follow-up news report: Ethiopian 'lions' tale' thrills public but experts scoff - Yahoo! News. An excerpt from that one:

"Experts expressed extreme doubts about the report which was first carried by the official Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) on Tuesday and then picked up by state-run media, saying it was most likely too good to be true. In fact, they said, far from displaying highly unusual empathy with a human being, the lions were almost certainly preparing to eat or attack the girl when they were surprised by police searching for the missing youngster."

Hmm. Well, I'm no wildlife expert, but I (playing armchair animal behaviorist here) am inclined myself to scoff a bit at those experts' scoffing. Somehow it doesn't seem logical that the lions would just sit around with their intended food for 12 hours. If the lions had chased off the men to make it easy for them to eat the girl, well then, I think they would have killed and eaten the girl shortly after the men had been chased off. And gone on their merry satiated way.

However, I tend to agree that the lions probably didn't mistake the girl's sounds for a lion cub's cries nor took "pity" on the girl's helpless situation in the way we humans understand taking pity. Well, perhaps the sounds of distress could have attracted the lions' attention to some extent -- but it could have interested them not because it sounded like a lion cub but because it sounded like some already-injured prey they could easily scavenge. But as the lions, before actually appearing on the scene, most likely would have already ascertained by smell that the source of the cries wasn't one of their own and as they didn't attempt to eat the girl, it does then seem apparent that their reasons for intervening were neither of those.

So, what brought them onto the scene? Well, if I may indulge in a little hypothesizing here, I think there could be a slightly rational explanation, although this explanation would only make sense if the lions happened to have all been female and probably only if the place where this occurred happened to have been part of those lionesses's territory. But -- if they were all lionesses and if this took place on their territory --then I think it's entirely possible that what prompted the lions' actions and their seeming "sympathy" could have been an instinctual response triggered by the various pheromones that were in play at that moment.

Lions rely on their highly-developed sense of smell as their way to gather information and assess what is going on in their environment. Thus, this is why I think the key to the lions' unusual behavior in this situation could possibly be explained by pheromones. What pheromones might have been given off by the humans, especially the males, in this situation? Might those pheromones be somewhat similar to the sorts of pheromones male lions give off when outsider male lions infiltrate an established pride of lions? At least, might they have been similar enough that they could have signaled to the lions some of the same kinds of threats they are wired to respond to when outsider male lions kill off the young as part of their strategy when infiltrating an existing pride? (See this piece on African Lion Infanticide by David Shelburne for a detailed description of this particular behavioral response.)

Notable, too, is the fact reported that these lions stayed with the girl for twelve hours after they'd chased off the kidnappers and before the people searching for the girl arrived. If these were lionesses, the fact they could spare twelve hours staying with the girl probably indicates that these lionesses did not have cubs of their own that they had to get back to. Could this mean that perhaps these lionesses had recently lost their own young during a male lion takeover in their own pride? And, if so, might such a recent traumatic event have made the lionesses hypersensitive to the point where their response could have been triggered by somewhat similar pheromonal signals given off by the humans in this situation?

Anyway, just my little armchair hypothesis here. Whatever it was that prompted the lions' extraordinary behavior in this situation, it certainly is a captivating story.

Feral Altruism

I think the silly quote "coinage" from my previous entry -- "Hell is other people, but some animals are more equal than others" -- might have been onto something. It seemed somehow fitting for this AP News story (link via Instapundit.com), which I saw later on this afternoon: Lions Rescue, Guard Beaten Ethiopian Girl.

"A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday....

"'...."They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest,' Wondimu said."

Amazing.

Measuring Incremental Movements

Tuesday's West Coast tsunami warning (that I posted an entry about) was big news in all the usual places yesterday. But really there was not much for news outlets to say after reporting that an earthquake had occurred, causing no damage and a tsunami warning had been issued for a tsunami that thankfully didn't happen. Oh, wait, that's not quite accurate because technically a tsunami did occur. A tsunami, measuring a whole one centimeter, did hit the coast. The machines that take such measurements picked that up, and lucky that they did as otherwise we never would have known. Ahem.

But. Believe me, I'm not complaining -- I much prefer that what the news ended up having to report in this case was basically that nothing happened.

I sometimes can't help but marvel -- vacillating between admiration and disdain -- at the ingenuity of the press when they find themselves having to report these "nothing happened" stories, especially when they somehow feel obliged to continue doing so through a news cycle or two (or three or four or five).

But, then, sometimes I also kinda like Henry James's novels, too.

____________

Well. As I was just in the middle of composing this entry about nothing happening, something happened. Southern California just got hit with another earthquake. No real damage, no injuries reported at this moment.

And so the press has more fodder for this topic for some news cycles for a while. As there's a whole lot of shaking going on, even if (so far) it's been causing little tangible damage. Well, in California, at any rate, where most of the recent quakes have been located. The recent quake in Chile actually did cause some real damage and killed at least 8 people (from the last news report I saw on it).

And that itself, I predict, will end up being fodder for the world media's news cycles in the very near future -- as I think they'll probably very shortly become preoccupied with being irritated at our press's preoccupation with reporting how nothing has happened around here really. And then they'll take that opportunity to bitch about how the U.S. doesn't notice and doesn't care when earthquakes (or anything) happen elsewhere, etc. etc. etc.

But I think they're wrong -- at least about people here not noticing or caring about earthquakes. I think people who live in regions regularly affected by earthquakes, big or small, do take notice when quakes are reported anywhere. It's a weird but real bond people share when they experience the same kinds of natural (or unnatural) disasters.

True, our national news media doesn't usually devote much intense focus to earthquakes occurring in other parts of the world unless they're huge catastrophic disasters, but actually our national media doesn't devote much intense focus on our own country's earthquakes unless they're huge catastrophic disasters either. And, ya know, neither does the same foreign news media who bitch about what our news media covers either. So there.

But. That's what the news is: bitch, bitch, bitch, ohmygod something horrible's happened o' the humanity, bitch, bitch, bitch, release poll and research study data out of context, bitch, bitch, bitch, oh wow look at that, bitch, bitch, bitch, speculate, condemn, wring hands, gossip about celebrities, pontificate, weep, leap for joy, grouse about those who leap for joy, bitch, bitch, bitch, o' the humanity, o' the humanity, o' the humanity.

Anyway. This current focused news flurry is an aberration caused by the spate of quakes that have happened in somewhat close proximity within a short period of time. And unless another one hits soon and causes enough mayhem to satisfy the "if it bleeds, it leads" blood lust of the news media, I predict the attention is certain to be pretty short-lived.

____________

Hmm. I actually had been composing an entirely different entry here today that only was meant to begin with referring to the news' coverage of Tuesday's quake in a rather peripheral way. But the earth keeps moving and sidetracking my train of thought. It'll do that.

Tsunami Warning

Tonight was the first time I'd ever heard the Emergency Broadcast System on TV announce a local tsunami warning.

Fortunately, this tsunami warning was only briefly in effect, but initially hearing that the warning had been issued for all the west coast from British Columbia to Mexico after a 7.0 earthquake hit in the ocean off the coast in Northern California was definitely attention-getting.

Learned quickly the earthquake had hit at 7:50 pm (Pacific Time) about 90 miles southwest of the coastal town of Crescent City (which is about 300 miles north of San Francisco).

Crescent City happens to be significant -- historically, tsunami-wise -- because as this breaking news article points out:

"Crescent City was the site of the only known tsunami to kill people in the continental United States. Eleven people died and 29 city blocks were washed away when a tsunami hit Crescent City in 1964."

Well, about five minutes after I'd heard the Emergency Broadcast System announce the tsunami warning, the local news station I'd subsequently turned to was announcing the warning had been cancelled. The seismologist they were interviewing was saying the earthquake wasn't a "subduction" kind of earthquake, which are the types more associated with tsunamis -- see the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program site for what all that actually means.

Haven't heard of any reports of any damage or injuries (as of yet), so hopefully all it will have done is caused the whole west coast just a bit of an adrenaline rush ....

Yup, can certainly attest to the fact it added a little drama to an otherwise quiet Tuesday evening!

_____

The USGS site is really rather fascinating (as well as sometimes anxiety-producing). They have lists of significant world quakes by year going back over a decade. Even to a non-seismologist layperson like me, it'd be hard to miss seeing patterns in earthquake activity in different spots in the world as they've occurred year by year. And, looking at the site tonight after hearing of tonight's quake, I couldn't help but be struck by seeing a pattern in just the last week here on this USGS page that lists all the significant quakes worldwide for 2005:

January 01 -- Off the West Coast of Northern Sumatra -- 6.6M
January 16 -- State of Yap, Micronesia -- 6.6M

June 12 -- Southern California -- 5.2M
June 13 -- Tarapaca, Chile -- 7.8M
June 14 -- Rat Islands, Aleutian Islands, Alaska -- 6.6M
June 15 -- Off the Coast of Northern California -- 7.0M

Hmm. Yes. it's a bit curious to see how the plates on the west coast of North and South America seem to have been acting up, daily, for the past few days. I don't know enough about seismology to know if that means anything noteworthy, and although I am pretty sure that all the plates active in these recent quakes are not directly connected with each other ....still....

It does make me want to quote Dorothy Parker and just say "What fresh hell is this?"

As one never knows, does one?

Natural Born Killers

In a couple of recent conversations I had with friends where the South Asian earthquake/tsunami catastrophe was mentioned, I was surprised when these friends segued into indicating global warming being to blame. When I replied that global warming has nothing to do with earthquakes -- that the earth's plates pretty much shifted on their own unfathomable timetable that had nothing to do with what we did or didn't do -- I was met with skeptical and perplexed stares. It occured to me, after the second of these conversations, that maybe people often NEED to blame ourselves (or a fellow human scapegoat) for natural disasters -- perhaps so not to feel so utterly powerless or something of the sort? Perhaps, for some, blaming catastrophes, as once was common, on our "sins" (which the gods will punish us for) or, more currently, on our "excesses" (global warming) gives the illusion that there is possibly a way to stave off or fix future similar sorts of devastation.

Thus, today, I found it interesting to read Mick Hume's article in Spiked: After the tsunami: horrifying, but not 'humbling', where he delved into some similar musings at great length as well as some other notable points.

I have some further thoughts, though, on this point of his:

"There has been much talk about the lack of a hi-tech warning system for earthquakes and tsunamis in South Asia, such as the seismological monitoring system already in place in the Pacific Ocean (where such phenomena are more common). Yet whatever its merits, such a system would seem to be of limited use in societies that lack the basic infrastructure necessary to communicate warnings and evacuate communities. Some in the West may be shocked to learn that not every little Asian fishing village is on the internet...."

I think it's important, though, to also keep in mind that the effectiveness of any hi-tech early warning system for an approaching tsunami is likely to be affected by the earthquake that causes the tsunami. An earthquake of the magnitude that can cause a tsunami is devastating all on its own. Those all-important infrastructures Mr. Hume refers to might be severely compromised and damaged in an earthquake. Power often will be knocked out during an earthquake and evacuation routes might be blocked by fallen debris or by roads and bridges collapsing. So, in such situations, even the most-wired high tech modern metropolis can suddenly be rendered as internet-less (and infrastructure-less) as some of those little Asian fishing villages Mr. Hume refers to.

Although this certainly doesn't mean that hi-tech early warning systems would not be useful or desirable, still, there is only so much they can do, even in the best of circumstances.

People shouldn't overlook the fact that the earthquake (and/or the tide receding abnormally) is in itself THE significant (albeit low tech) early warning system -- as pointed out in two other articles I saw later on today. One was this article from S.F. Gate that speculates on the effects of a tsunami on the Californian coastline:

"Whatever triggers a future tsunami, Californians need to remember at least one thing, says Richard Eisner, coastal administrative chief for the state Office of Emergency Services:

"'If you are on the beach and feel an earthquake that lasts more than 15 to 20 seconds, and you have difficulty standing, you should immediately evacuate to high ground. Don't wait for notification (of a tsunami) because you might have only 10 to 15 minutes (before the tsunami strikes).'"

The second was an OpinionJournal article that describes the reaction of both locals and tourists, neither of whom seemed aware of the possible hazard of a tsunami hitting coastal areas after an earthquake (probably because in that area, tsunamis and tidal waves have been rare):

"The response of local residents and tourists, however, was unfamiliar, at least to tsunami field scientists for post-1990s tsunamis. In one report, swimmers felt the current associated with the leading depression wave approaching the beach, yet hesitated about getting out of the water because of the 'noise' and the fear that there was an earthquake and they would be safer away from buildings. They had to be told by tourists from Japan--a land where an understanding of tsunamis is now almost hard-wired in the genes--to run to high ground...."

Multimedia, Ferrets, and Sheep

In a Scientific American article entitled Captive Audience, the author expresses incredulity at a recently published study in the journal Nature:

"...at the end of September, Nature published a study in which scientists made ferrets watch the movie The Matrix. I'll wait while you read that last sentence again."

The author goes on to describe the basis of the study and then facetiously ponders on the researchers' rationale for this experiment.

It reminded me of the published results of a not too dissimiliar experiment I read of about twenty or so years ago in the journal Science. I think it was. That particular absurd experiment captured my fancy like this ferret/Matrix experiment seems to have captured this author's.

In the study I read about, the researchers decided to find out whether sheep would have a more pronounced reaction to seeing images of sheep with bigger horns. Yup, that was the big question the researchers were out to prove.

And how did they go about it? They showed their sheep subjects slides of other sheep -- some with big horns, some without horns, as well as some control slide images of non-sheep, including a man and an upside-down slide of a sheep.

In order to ensure that their sheep subjects would pay attention to their little slide show so that their reactions could be recorded (which they did by measuring brain wave activity), the researchers had to immobilize the sheep. This they did this by suspending each sheep in a hammock.

And after showing the sheep, suspended in their hammocks, their little slide show presentation, the researchers found that, yes, sheep do react more when they see sheep with bigger horns. Earth-shattering news, there.

But you know the really insane thing about this? It's not even the hammocks. It's that no doubt the researchers were granted funding for this study.

Sigh.

Do Not Share Occam's Razors with Others

This article in Spiked-Online, "AIDS in Africa: Sense at Last," has been bugging me for days ever since I read it last week. One of the puzzling mysteries of the epidemiology of HIV and AIDS, according to many articles written over the last decade and a half, has been, of course, the way the disease seemed illogically to follow different transmission patterns in Africa than in the West and elsewhere. Well, this article refutes that notion entirely and blames the earlier researchers of playing loose with some key facts:

...In short, tangential, opportunistic, and irrational considerations may have contributed to ignoring and misinterpreting epidemiologic evidence.'

In my view, the authors are correct in their interpretation and are right to be angry. The history of AIDS commentary and research is one of misinformation, hyperbole and plain lies (3). It should be no surprise that elementary facts about the disease were overlooked in the rush to declare AIDS an international heterosexual calamity. This view was always informed more by political correctness in the West, and by a prurient observation of immoral fecklessness on the part of Africa, than by any rational assessment of empirical data.

So, what exactly did these new researchers conclude had been misinterpreted all along? Read the article. It's rather mind-boggling, really, if it's true.

Never sharing razors was often one of the risky things prevention guidelines instructed people to avoid. After reading this article, I can only guess that unfortunately must have also included Occam's Razor.

Banned in France

From Reuters, Wed Aug 21, 1:50 PM ET:

French mayor bans residents from dying

LE LAVANDOU, France (Reuters) - The mayor of a French Mediterranean town, faced with a cemetery "full to bursting", has banned local residents from dying until he can find somewhere else to bury them.

Gil Bernardi, mayor of Le Lavandou on the coast 25 km (15 miles) west of Saint Tropez, introduced the ban after a court rejected his plans to build a cemetery in a tranquil setting by the sea.

Bernardi said most locals had obeyed the edict so far, but he was desperately trying to find a resting place for a homeless man who had recently passed away in the town.

"Initially, the decree has been remarkably well followed," the mayor said.

Bernardi has appealed against the ruling preventing the seaside cemetery being built, saying it would be the best final resting place for his townsfolk.

"What people want here, because it's a local tradition, is their own little personal plot of land, their burial spot, not an impersonal pigeonhole," he said.

les Doodles Dangereuse

Was rooting around in an old box of papers recently and came across a bunch of papers and such mostly dating from my high school years.

One of the things in the batch of papers was a weird doodle I'd done one day. It's quite the morbid little piece. I emailed it to Kallisti, as I knew she'd find it amusing and it was actually something to show her that went along with discussions we've had it the past about our respective high school experiences.

Months ago, there were those stories that hit the paper about students getting suspended or expelled for violent content in doodles they'd done. Kallisti and I both were swapping stories of the odd stuff we'd sometimes cough up in high school that would surely be unwise to do these days. I told her, for instance, I used to regularly doodle various scenes of people being executed and such.

I went to high school in the late '70s in a big high school (2000 students). No one ever batted an eye back then at any of my odd doodles, writings, or even the sometimes offbeat topics I'd pick for essays.

I mused that had I gone to high school at another time (or perhaps just another place), this kind of stuff probably would have caused some sort of concern about me, and I would have likely either been hauled off to a shrink, or in more alarmist times, probably seen as dangerous and expelled.

Anyway, here's one of my vintage morbid doodlings.

I would almost be tempted to add (for sake of argument) "hey, and I turned out all right." But I suspect those most given to alarm over such types of "expression" might not necessarily agree with me on that. C'est la vie.

Still. I can attest I did indeed draw this doodle mess (and others like it) as an adolescent and I wasn't then nor have been since particularly homicidally-inclined.

For what that's worth .....

Earthquake

We had an earthquake last night. 5.2 on the Richter scale and the epicenter was about a hundred miles south of San Francisco.

They say animals act weird right before an earthquake. I forget or haven't actually ever heard the definitive reason why this is, actually, but I know I have anecdotal proof of this in my own past. Including last night. About an hour before the earthquake, Alecto (our cat) was acting weird. For some reason, she was just sitting there with her tail poofed-out and bushy like cats do when they're pissed off. But she didn't seem to be particularly focused on anything while she just sat there in the room, her tail very very bushy.

"What's her problem?" Laszlo and I asked each other and we tried to figure out what was freaking her out. But she calmed down and her tail returned to normal proportions.

We shrugged and figured we had just missed seeing whatever it was that set her off.

Then, an hour later, the house shook.

Occasionally, people who have never been in an earthquake ask me what they're like. Well, they're interesting. They usually don't last very long. Generally, by the time you realize the shaking is an earthquake and you wonder if you should do something (the conventional advice is to stand in a doorway or get under something sturdy), the shaking stops. I've never personally experienced much damage in an earthquake -- luckily -- and I've been here during some of the nastier earthquakes. Such as the infamous 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco, which caused quite a bit of damage in the city and around. That was a scary earthquake and the shaking lasted longer than most I've experienced. I dived under my desk and had more than a few seconds to contemplate the possibility the walls might crumble. I live in the bottom floor apartment of a three-story building. I don't particularly like wondering if the building will collapse. I doubt standing in a doorway or diving under my desk would particularly help me much in such a situation.

One of the other scariest earthquakes I remember wasn't actually a big earthquake. It happened sometime in the mid-80s, but the reason I found it scary is it happened when I was work, and at the time I worked in an office in a tall downtown building on an upper floor. I don't remember, offhand, which floor it was -- 30-something? I think. The taller downtown buildings in San Francisco are built to withstand earthquakes -- which they do by having "give" in their structure. This means that after an earthquake, the building just continues to sway for quite a few minutes afterward. Even if one realizes, logically, that the swaying is supposed to happen and is part of what is supposed to make a tall building able to withstand a quake, well, I will tell you, it is still extremely unnerving to be in a swaying tall building. Because they sway A LOT.

The much larger 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake knocked the power out, and it stayed out in my neighborhood for 3 or 4 days. Still, considering that we personally hadn't experienced much direct damage and there were plenty of people who had, that wasn't so much to put up with.

After that one, they closed the freeway exit near my apartment and tore down part of the offramp as it had been deemed unstable after that earthquake. So, there's a broken freeway to nowhere at the end of my block that the pigeons have taken over.

I wonder if the pigeons act weird before earthquakes, too. And if one would notice a pigeon acting weirder than usual.

My cat was fine right after the earthquake last night, although she did look a bit annoyed with us. I'm sure she thinks we had something to do with it.