Chicken Little

According to various kinds of splendid squid, a lizard is always a lizard.

However, recall how our image of dinosaurs has changed over just a single generation. The models of dinosaurs I saw as a child really did look like terrible lizards, roughly equal-sized legs splayed out from the side of the body.

But science works and opinion changes. Gradually increasing evidence suggests that they were more like birds than lizards, not just in general appearance (models of dinosaurs are very different now) but even possibly in internal warm-blooded physiology.

Now possibly the final straw. The T-Rex was basically just an overgrown chicken :)

A New Kind of Life

Of course only idiots ever thought that differing numbers of chromosomes in different species of animal ruled out evolution of new species, but I did wonder about the mechanisms by which these chromosome numbers could change. But yesterday a very simple explanation was provided at the website of PZ Myers, the biologist who was recently expelled from a movie theater.

And the superb XKCD comically showed how artificial life could be created with a cheap PC, basic accessories and a hamster wheel.

The legendary digital cuttlefish has already written long epics about each of those two subjects, I just think of silly ways to link them:

Two of the blogs I most rated
An unholy new species created
This cuttle you see
And X K C D
Have finally now consummated!

The Elephant Siren

According to new research "an ancient ancestor of the elephant from 37 million years ago lived in water and had a similar lifestyle to a hippo"

There is further detail in analysis of the peer-reviewed research at Greg Laden's blog. And there is increasing evidence to support the claim - not just general observations about the hairless skin and long trunk being well suited for water, but specific and scientifically measurable features of the dental and renal systems have shown genuine evidence for the amphibious transition.

Elephants now live primarily on land, and the research talks about changes that happened tens of millions of years ago in Africa, it is a fair deduction that the region dried out considerably during that period. The modern human form also appeared tens of millions of years ago in Africa. You can see where I am going with this. Desmond Morris has been banging on for decades with the same suggestion.

Early humans may have evolved the ability to swim and lost the fur (unlike other chimpanzee groups) precisely because they lived in the water. The "aquatic ape" theory could be reborn.

Sold Out

I said yesterday that people who are not directly in sales tend to be in jobs where the percentage of successful transactions is higher. Another way to put it is to say that, at least in choice of career, we are more risk averse.

And as it's Friday, I may risk a verse.

Sorry, that pun was a crime.

So I'll resist this time.

But next week the gags will be worse.

Squids etc

Remember that Friday is sometimes limerick day.

Well I was amused to see that a rather amusing rather obscure little note by Jeff Vrabel caused a bit of a stir in the strange world of the squid loving community. I'm not part of that community, it's a day late anyway - but here's a little filler in praise of cuttlefish and in derision of IDiots.

There was a fellow called Vrabel who
On evolution had an unstable view.
This may surprise
But octopus eyes
Can see better than we are able to.

Our optic nerves give us a blind spot
But cephalopods have somehow got
The layout reversed.
So humans are cursed
With defects that cuttles have not.

Animal Magic

For anyone who read yesterday's post who was a kid in England in the 1970s, it might be possible to think that I was referring to the guy who presented animal behaviour from Bristol Zoo every week on children's television. There are many similarities, but one fundamental difference.

Both characters had an infectious love of wildlife in all its forms. Both had long and varied careers across the mass media of the twentieth century. Both presented television programmes that showed nature at its most basic level - great popularisation to some, dumbing down to others.

However, the fundamental thesis presented by Desmond Morris was that people behave like other animals. The fundamental thesis presented by Johnny Morris was that other animals behave like people. Both arguments have elements of truth. But anthropomorphism of other animals has less relevance to economic policy than zoomorphism of other humans.

Or to put it another way, dubbing an elephant with a silly voice may be very funny but it is not very educational.

Animal Management

A few days, in an oblique reference to our overcrowded island, I thanked the author of The Human Zoo. He was born eighty years ago today. As a populariser of science, someone who brought the immense timescale of evolution down to simple schoolboy comprehension, Desmond Morris was a giant of the twentieth century.

He has immense detailed knowledge and scientific qualifications, he even studied under the genius Niko Tinbergen and published nearly fifty scientific papers. However in his popular books he sometimes oversimplified his arguments with the broad brush strokes of a trained artist. Some of those arguments have been refined and adopted into today's acknowledged facts, others are still contentious to this day. But his single basic point was blindingly obvious yet fundamentally enlightening - if we accept that human beings are animals, then much is explained.

After a few years of engineering, I studied economics and management at college. And I still remember sitting in lectures about management theory, some of it based on serious psychology experiments, some of it based on solid economic statistics, and some of it just the buzzword bullspeak that still resounds today. Normally I read the recommended books and did the recommended work. But one time, and it was just the once, in a graded essay about the definition of an organisation, where I was expected to discuss leadership concepts of "common goals and shared consciousness" (I can't believe I even vaguely remember that), I dropped in a line that said that we should also explore how some ideas from the Naked Ape could help to define and explain organisational behaviour.

That line got a big red question mark next to it. My university was fairly unusual in facilitating cross-disciplinary migration, we were encouraged to drop into lectures in totally different departments if we found interest there, but my idea did not come from any lecture. To credit my tutor, he did not completely rule out my suggestion, but he strongly emphasised that if I wanted to make such points in future then I should back them up with proper academic references instead of popular paperbacks.

But I stuck to books from the management library for the rest of the course, and indeed through my career. Meanwhile Dr Morris has continued to educate and entertain on the page and on the screen while I see his ideas validated everywhere. Happy birthday Desmond.

Hippos and Cheetahs

Having spent part of my childhood growing up in Africa, I will always have a special affection for the continent. I will not mention the African Nations Cup that started in Ghana yesterday. But I will mention a widely distributed lecture by the Ghanaian economist George Ayittey that I saw at Greg Laden's site. The talk seems to have drawn great reviews from most people, but I have both a trivial and a serious disagreement with it - simple evolutionary principles explain both.

The minor disagreement regards the economist's choice of analogy. The headline of the piece is Hippos and Cheetahs, and the speaker pushes the basic theme that many African nations that gained independence in the latter half of the twentieth century have behaved like the slow lumbering hippo whereas they need to behave like the modern dynamic cheetah. That sounds unquestionable.

But cheetahs are not modern. And cheetahs are not doing so well. There are only small numbers left in the wild. Despite their great speed, they are able to kill only a few specific kinds of small antelope. Even when they manage to catch one, they are easily chased off the kill by lions or hyenas or packs of wild dogs, and these other animals have a much broader range of diet anyway. Basically, the most successful genes are not necessarily located in the fastest animals but in the most adaptable. In the long run, adaptability is key to success.

That was trivial. My major disagreement is about the ferocity of attack upon the "post-colonial" economic systems of the newly independent states. The speaker lamented the lack of economic progress and was angry about "swiss bank socialism" where much of the wealth of the continent was expatriated to Europe. This was a justified argument, but the speech then degenerated into a generic attack on any form of socialism or market restrictions.

But hold on a minute George, the theft of Africa's resources is not a "post-colonial" issue - the expatriation of wealth was surely even more significant when much of Africa was ruled by European states? The real issue that he touches upon (without considering the implication) is the immense centralisation of power and resources in very few people. So in a land where much of the population is still hovering around the border between poverty and famine, there may still be a case for actively seeking wealth redistribution as well as economic freedom. You cannot separate the economic from the political. We cannot just transfer limited resources from an unelected dictator to an unelected monopoly. Economic freedom needs to evolve at the same time as economic controls.

After all, hippos may well survive and prosper for much longer than cheetahs.

Read or Dead

I will read your comments later. I read a few comments today.

Today's note will lead to a more generic point. Yesterday's note led to a more genetic point.

In both "I read" and "you read" the tense is ambiguous and it can be very misleading. You thought. You wrote. You read. Why can't that word follow where others have led?

There is a significant trend in English for irregular verbs to become more regular. Based on millions of words of historical text, an excellent academic article has calculated the actual rates very precisely.

New verbs entering the English language universally follow regular conjugation rules. The least frequently used irregular verbs changed, or regularized, fastest. The data predicts the half-lives of 'be' and 'have' are 38,800 years, making these two verbs the most resistant to regularization. The team also predicts that the next irregular verb that will regularize is wed/wed/wed, because it is the least frequently used modern irregular verb. In fact, this verb is already is being replaced by wed/wedded/wedded in the four major English-language dictionaries.

Unfortunately, read doesn't seem to register as an irregular verb. I wish it did.

Adam and Eve

Although I refrained from doing so last year, this year I will sometimes permit myself to showcase an outside article in which I think something was explained well. Of course it must still be an example of insight that makes common sense out of apparently difficult concepts, but it will not necessarily be my insight.

However to start, a different subject from the core marketing and economic subjects as we take a short diversion into genetics. This is not the place to develop the theme that evolution explains everything. But when I first heard that "all women have a latest common ancestor who lived about 120,000 years ago" and "all men have a latest common ancestor who lived about 60,000 years ago" then I was initially sceptical.

Then I read this note by Mike Dunford and it all made perfect sense.

Free Willy

On reflection, I think the zoo arguments more or less balance out. The Pi view that animals are safe and protected versus the alternative view that zoos are inherently bad. So spacious well-managed zoos might be ok in principle, but they will still be stressful for the inmates due to the unvalidated visitors - they cause the taunting, provocation and general pushing at territorial boundaries that disrupt any peaceful existence.

But even for the best zoos I'd still draw the line before whales and other sentient beings. They should be free and exempt from zoological restriction.

Yet we still encourage the confinement of apes in small enclosures, taunt them, provoke them, laugh at them, deprive them of normal social contacts, restrict their exercise, give them artificial diets and generally create the complete antithesis of the natural environment in which they are evolved to thrive.

Of course I refer to The Human Zoo. Thank you Desmond Morris.

Does a bee care?

As I briefly mentioned the United States yesterday, another quick word about US politics before the moralising gets too demoralising. Most of it is sickening. But one statement was almost funny. "It's scientifically impossible for the bumblebee to fly ... But the bumblebee, being unaware of these scientific facts, flies anyway."

Obviously it is not scientifically impossible, but equally obviously, nobody ever claimed that it was.

It would be easy to dismiss this proposition as a harmless urban myth, except that such statements are deliberately used by those who delight in defeatism, those who want to retreat from evidence-based development into a mythical fairytale bronze age theocracy.

Oh well. According to another idiot, Freedom Requires Religion, so I'd better convert to Islam, that's a religion, so that will increase my freedom.

Life on Earth

The BBC have been looking for a successor to the legendary Sir David Attenborough as he gradually slides towards retirement, while one of the cable documentary channels has been playing his classic series back to back all weekend.

Now it would be sacrilege to criticise him, many feel that he is a national treasure and candidate for greatest living Englishman. And for once I agree with the many. But I never write here to echo them. For I have a criticism. Not of the man himself, of course.

However, I was struck by the tone of some of those early programmes. It was all done with courage, enthusiasm and knowledge. But they had little sense of history or of future - they seemed struck by the wonder of now. The tone often seemed to be to describe how "ideally" adapted all these amazing organisms seemed to be. The wing on a sycamore seed was "perfect" to carry it far from the tree. The teeth of carnivores were "perfect" for tearing flesh and bone.

But that is not quite true. All the evidence around us is of organisms that are barely better than competitors. There are some genetic patterns that are replicating well and others that are not. Within us, within nature, there are countless examples of things that do not work very well, that could work better. Some "species" are always doing a good job of dying out regardless of human intervention.

I still think diversity is good. But remember there is no "ideal" in nature.