Dr. Metablog

The Lobster -- Why?

Thomas Fairfax, a well-known nineteenth century lobster smack captain, wrote convincingly that "lobsters are very good as an article of commerce, and pretty enough to look at, after they're boiled, but, as to eating them, I prefer castoff rubber shoes." George Hoag, a down-easterner, added that "if them tourists want to come up from Boston and pay those prices, then, by Christ, let them. Damn fools. Lobsters, hell, they're big cockroaches, that's what they are. You won't catch me eating one, even if I could afford the damn things." Fairfax and Hoag may be two of the most honest men in the history of American commerce. Lobsters are loathsome, both in appearance and as culinary articles. The meat is stringy tasteless gristle. And inaccessible to boot. And messy to attack. How did modern "sophisticates" get themselves bamboozled into thinking that these big bugs of the sea should be considered a gourmet item. It boggles the healthy, balanced, sensible mind. Lobsters are hideous insect-like creatures. Who was the first addled individual who took a look at a lobster and said, "looks good, I'll try it." Eeew.

Then there's the practice of immersing live lobsters in boiling water. Just remember to put your fingers in your ears while the poor creatures screech. Human beings degrade themselves morally and aesthetically when they lower themselves to such indifference. How can they torture a lobster and then pretend that the poor things are palatable. 

I've eaten a couple, may all the gods of the sea forgive me. Before I reached the age of enlightenment I would go along to get along. I never pretended to enjoy them, but, petty conformist that I was, I would participate in the horrid feast. Now I'd rather eat kale and tofu, tasteless trendy manifestations of liberal guilt, than violate my integrity with a severed claw or tail.

it's time for a moral revolution in America. Let's make a start by liberating the lobster.

Bats

Bats originated approximately 50 million years ago. Although warm-blooded, many have "thermostats" that allow body temperature to vary with ambient temperature; they are therefore "heterothermic." There are 1300 living bat species -- about 20% of all mammal species. The Long-tongued Fruit bat has a wingspan of 1.5 centimeters; the Spectral Bat a wingspan of a meter. Many bats sport "noseleaves"  --fleshy projections around the snout and nostrils -- which aid in the transmission of sound. DNA studies have determined that the closest living relatives of bats are not rodents but hoofed mammals and whales. There are twenty bat families, nineteen of which employ laryngeal echolocation -- the twentieth relies on tongue clicks -- as well as ten extinct families. Bats have five unique muscles: the occipitopollicaris connects the back of the head to the hand and runs along the anterior edge of the wing. The coracocutaneous anchors networks of elastic fibers to the armpit. The humeropatagialis tightens and braces the distal parts of the wing membrane. The tensor plagiopatii anchor the trailing edges of the wing. The depressor ossis syloformis controls the interfemoral membrane between the hind legs. Hoary Bats can fly at 27 kilometers per hour. Migrating Silver Haired Bats fly at over fifty kilometers per hour. The heart rate of an alert Little Brown Bat hanging in a roost at room temperature is about 200 beats per minute but while flying the heart rate increases to about 1000 beats per minute. The heart of a hibernating bat beats five times a minute. Flying bats consume energy at about twelve times the rate of resting bats. Bats can feel changes in air pressure with the skin of their wings. Some bats' feet lock into place when hanging upside down, so no energy is consumed except when the bat releases and drops. Common vampire bats engorged with blood have difficulty regaining flight. They urinate copiously, then use their long thumbs to provide extra lift leverage. Bats use echolocation (as do toothed whales, dolphins, shrews and tenrecs). When Lazzaro Spallanzani claimed  (in 1794) that bats could see with their ears, he was widely mocked. "Does Signor Spallanzani also claim that bats can hear with their eyes?"  Ultrasonic noises were not detected by scientists until 1938. Echolocation calls cover a range of frequencies. A Little Brown Bat searching for prey usually produces echolocations at the rate of twenty calls per second. but a Hoary Bat will produce only five calls per second. Calls increase in frequency during the actual attack. Bats can vary the length of the call from less than one millisecond to over 50 milliseconds. Bats are very loud to those who can hear them. A hunting bat can produce a sound that is twenty times more intense than the alarm of a smoke detector. Bats, unique among mammals, can turn off their hearing. At about two milliseconds before a vocalization is produced in the larynx, muscles in the middle ear contract, disarticulating three bones in the middle ear; then the ear is "reconnected" allowing it to hear the echo of the sound it has just emitted. Bats can be insectivorous, carnivorous, frugivorous, nectarivorous, piscivorous and sanguinovorous. Some bats eat birds, some eat other bats. Eastern Red Bats eat both tent caterpillars and gypsy moths. They must eat about 150 moths per night simply to retain their weight (thank you, Eastern Red Bats). The upper incisors of vampire bats are greatly enlarged, but since they don't chew their food, the cheek teeth are reduced to mere spicules. More than 500 species of flowering plants are pollinated by bats. Bats may eat up to 120% of their body weight each day. The common vampire bat can consume about two tablespoons of blood during a single night. Tiger Moths produce clicks that "jam" the echolocation patterns of bats. Because bats must minimize their weight, their digestive systems are extremely efficient --  Little Brown Bats move food through their system in twenty minutes. One million bats roost under the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas. Bats are capable of eating 500 mosquitoes an hour. Some bats hibernate but bats can also enter into a state of torpor to consume less energy while roosting. Frio and Bracken caves in Texas each house over ten million Brazilian Free-tailed Bats during the summer. Bamboo bats roost in the hollow spaces in bamboo stems. In Borneo, Hardwicke's Wooly Bat roosts in the leaves of Raffle's Pitcher Plant and donates its feces to the plants nitrogen intake. Some Leaf-nosed bats bite the stems of banana and palm leaves in order to create tents for roosting. White-throated Round-Eared bats roost in excavated cavities of termite mounds. Hibernating Little Brown Bats bats breathe once an hour. Most bats bear one offspring rather than twins or multiples. Bats live surprisingly long lives. A banded Brandt's Myotis was at least forty-four years old. Vesper Bats mate in the fall but the female stores the sperm and does not ovulate until early spring. White nose disease is caused by a European strain of a common soil fungus. Bat droppings can contain spores that cause histoplasmosis in humans. Rabies, often bat-borne, kills 60,000 to 80,000 humans per year in Asia and Africa.

For more, see Bats: A World of Science and Mystery, by M. Brock Fenton and Nancy B. Simmons (Chicago:  University Press, 2014). 

Olivier Truc; Fiction; Age

Olivier Truc's Forty Days Without Shadow came highly recommended, both by the forty or so literary awards that it has garnered, and also by trusted friends. It's a murder mystery -- or rather a "police procedural" -- and indeed it is a very good "read." It's set in the northern reaches of Scandinavia amidst tensions between the indigenous Lapps, or more properly Sami, and their Swedish and Norwegian oppressors. It's got everything: a brutal murder, a child molester; a budding but blighted romance between a veteran policeman and his beautiful novice partner; a tough wise old "native" who clings to the traditional ways; a search for an old gold mine; stolen Sami artifacts, and enough red herrings to furnish a medium-size Stockholm restaurant. And snow, lots of snow. Snowshoes, snowmobiles, snowstorms, snowdrifts.

And yet I had to discipline myself to keep on with the reading. Something, perhaps age, has blighted my appetite for fiction -- not just genre fiction, like this mystery, but all fiction. Let me confess: to read stories, rather than to read history or biology or geology has come to seem frivolous. An indulgent  waste of time when I could be learning something substantive. 

I looked up some reviews of this novel. Let me quote one opinion: "the background information about the Sami lifestyle will slow down the action and readers may wish that Olivier Truc had left his documentary days behind." Interesting, but I had exactly the opposite reaction. What kept me intrigued and kept me plowing through the snowheaps was precisely the ethnographic and historical detail that the reviewer deplores. I wasn't just being "entertained";  I was learning something!

Five years ago, I reported on this very blague that in my youth I loved to read science fiction and fantasy, but that somewhere along the line, I lost my taste for such flights of imagination. (If anyone is interested, they can find the relevant paragraph here.) I would say that my condition has worsened -- my resistance to fantasy has now spread to almost all fiction. Odd that I don't feel the same way about movies: I prefer fiction films, stories, to documentaries.  

Darwin carried his Virgil and his Milton to Tierra del Fuego and claimed that the books sustained him throughout his Beagle days. But later, in his autobiography, he revealed that he no longer found any pleasure in poetry.  I can't compare myself to Darwin in any way except that we both grew older.  Yet I wonder whether an impatience with fiction and a loss of aesthetic sensibility isn't a characteristic of septuagenarians.