Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, myself again.. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming that I am a man.
Chuang-Tzu, 3rd century BC
I found an interesting article about some talking fish by Andrew H. Bass, Cornell professor of neurobiology and behavior. Below is an excerpt from the original article (please see link below for full article).
SEATTLE — It’s a problem faced by people joining noisy parties and by midshipman fish seeking mates: How to cut through the racket and find Mr. Right?
Now Cornell University biologists, who became underwater disc jockeys to study a homely fish that hums, say they have a clue as to how mate selection works. The auditory portion of the midbrain uses the acoustic qualities of all the noise to isolate one signal it is programmed to recognize as potentially interesting.
The biologists’ research applies only to midshipman fish, but it could, they say, also be relevant to people.
“Neuroscientists call this auditory scene analysis,” says Andrew H. Bass, Cornell professor of neurobiology and behavior who will present his group’s findings June 25 at the International Congress on Acoustics-Acoustical Society of America meeting in Seattle. “It’s really very similar to the cocktail party effect.”
In a way, midshipman fish have more problems than people at loud parties. Only some of the male midshipman hum (See “Humming Fish Facts,” attached), and those males are hiding in cavitylike nests they have excavated under rocks. All the humming males together sound like a huge hive of bees or a squadron of motor boats, and a female midshipman fish has to choose one nest in which to deposit her eggs. When a humming male succeeds in attracting a female, he fertilizes her eggs, which adhere to the rocky ceiling of his nest. The female leaves forever, and the male resumes humming in hopes of attracting another female with more eggs.
Wondering how the female fish find the right males, the Cornell biologists examined the structure and function of midshipman brains. From earlier studies with Robert Baker at the New York University Medical School, Bass knew that a part of the midshipman male brain, called the hindbrain, contains neurons that constitute a kind of vocal pacemaker. Like a rhythm generator, the pacemaker tells the sound-generating muscles on the male’s swim bladder to contract rhythmically and produce a hum averaging 100 Hz in frequency. In part of the midshipman female brain known as the midbrain (and humans have midbrains and hindbrains, too), Baker and Bass found neurons that respond to a 100-Hz hum.
Whenever the hums of two neighboring and competing males overlap, the Cornell biologists observed, the sounds form what is known as an acoustic beat. And because the tone of a midshipman’s hum is so pure and simple, computer synthesizers can easily reproduce it. That’s why the biologists were able to play disc jockey at a fish party, complete with underwater loudspeakers.
“Just as we expected, two or more synthesized fish hums played together produce the rhythmic, acoustic beats,” Bass reports. “And sure enough, the females were able to directly localize one of the humming speakers. Their midbrain neurons form a code of the beats that helps in their calculations to locate the hum of interest from all the rest.”
The brain side of the story recently was reported in the Journal of Neuroscience by Bass and by Deana Bodnar, a Cornell senior research associate in neurobiology and behavior. Details of the playback studies by Bass and by Jessica McKibben, a postdoctoral researcher in neurobiology and behavior at Cornell, will be published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
Meanwhile, experiments supported by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health continue with midshipman fish along the California and Washington state coasts as well as in Cornell laboratories. Field studies led by Margaret Marchaterre, a research associate in the Bass group, use hydrophones (underwater microphones) to eavesdrop on fish gossip at night. Together, the Cornell “midshipman crew” hopes to learn how courtship signals are encoded in the brain and what it is about one love hum that makes it more attractive than another.
“Midshipman are regarded as some of the ugliest fish in the sea and a nuisance because they hum almost incessantly,” Bass comments. “But they have thrived for hundreds of thousands of years, so they must be doing something right. We’d like to find out what.”
read more of this article here:
Humming Fish article click here!
Frogs have always interested me! I use to keep them as pets until they started to escape and end up all over the house 
I am very concerned about this chytrid fungus that is killing many of the frogs on our planet. This fungus occurs naturally but because of habitat loss and the use of leopard frogs in pregnancy tests, frog survival is very much at risk! There is a bacteria that has been used to treat infected frogs but the task is monumental when it comes to the number of infections and how quickly frogs can die when infected!
The following articles go into much more frog detail and are very interesting:
FROGBLOG1: Chytridiomycosis and global amphibian decline
FROGBLOG2:Origin and spread of the frog chytrid
photo courtesy dailymail.co.uk
Earlier this month three British divers took refuge on an Indonesian island after being swept away by currents in the ocean. Amazingly, while stranded on the remote island, they fought off an attack by a Komodo Dragon who was far from friendly!
Here is an excerpt from Dailymail author Alastair Fothergill :
“There is no question that Komodo dragons can be brutal killers: they can act in concert, they move at 15 miles an hour and can scent their prey from miles away.
They have also been known to kill humans. Last year, an eight-year-old boy was bitten in the waist and tossed viciously from side to side, according to a Komodo National Park spokesman. Half an hour later, he died of massive blood loss.
But the truth is that Komodos rarely kill people. The boy was the first recorded human fatality for 33 years and the people of the remote Komodo islands have existed side by side with these living Godzillas for centuries.”
more of the above article here:
Bees have been very symbolic to me this past week! I love the way they work tirelessly to gather pollen for honey production! I found an interesting article on bee symbolism on Andrew Gough’s Arcadia website :
The bees are back! I can always monitor the bee population around here by how many come back to the rockspray. I was lucky enough to catch this one bee for a photo shoot…they move so quickly!
Nora
Eric is an amazing photographer specializing in surfing and ocean photography! Below is a current photo called “Honu”
photograph by eric minugh
more of Eric’s Flickr Photos click here!
there is an excellent short video on the BBC website documenting this bizarre relationship! see the link at the end of the article.
Nora
Gecko ‘begs’ insect for honeydew
Image courtesy of BBC One’s Life in Cold Blood
Saturday, 16 February 2008, 07:28 GMT
Gecko and bug’s bizarre relationship revealed
A bizarre relationship between a gecko and a sap-sucking insect has been caught on camera for the first time.
The day gecko, which lives in the forests of Madagascar, has been recorded begging a bug for its dinner.
The lizard repeatedly nods its head at the insect, called a plant hopper, until it flicks over small balls of honeydew for the gecko to dine upon.
It is not yet understood why the insect so willingly offers up honeydew at the lizard’s behest.
Some believe that the presence of the hungry geckos may keep other predators away from the insect.
The footage was recorded for the BBC One series Life In Cold Blood.
It took the crew several attempts to capture this strange behaviour on camera as plant hoppers are very well camouflaged.
Life In Cold Blood is on BBC One on Monday, 18 February at 2100 GMT and is repeated on BBC One on Sunday, 23 February.
SOURCE:
This is a very interesting story about a bear from Iran!
Honour sought for ‘Soldier Bear’
A campaign has been launched to build a permanent memorial to a bear which spent much of its life in Scotland - after fighting in World War II.
The bear - named Voytek - was adopted in the Middle East by Polish troops in 1943, becoming much more than a mascot.
The large animal even helped their armed forces to carry ammunition at the Battle of Monte Cassino.
Voytek - known as the Soldier Bear - later lived near Hutton in the Borders and ended his days at Edinburgh Zoo.
| He liked a cigarette, he liked a bottle of beer - he drank a bottle of beer like any man Augustyn Karolewski |
“He was just like a dog - nobody was scared of him,” said Polish veteran Augustyn Karolewski, who still lives near the site of the camp.
“It wasn’t easy to throw a cigarette to him - all the attempts I made until he eventually got one.”
Voytek was a major attraction at the zoo until his death in 1963.
Eyemouth High School teacher Garry Paulin is now writing a new book, telling the bear’s remarkable story.
‘Totally amazing’
Local campaigner Aileen Orr would like to see a memorial created at Holyrood to the bear she says was part of both the community and the area’s history.
She first heard about Voytek as a child from her grandfather, who served with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.
“I thought he had made it up to be quite honest but it was only when I got married and came here that I knew in fact he was here, Voytek was here,” she said.
“When I heard from the community that so few people knew about him I began to actually research the facts.
“It is just amazing, the story is totally amazing.”
SOURCE:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/7208505.stm