I recently read this interesting but pretty revolting account describing a type of parasitic crustacean commonly known as the tongue-eating louse. Basically, the little thing gets into the mouth of a certain type of fish (Spotted Rose Snapper) and attaches itself to the base of the fish’s tongue.

There it lives and grows by sucking the blood from the artery feeding the tongue. Eventually, it uses up so much blood that the tongue ‘dies’ and shrivels up to a stub. The amazing thing is:

The louse, which grows to be about the same size and shape as the original tongue, remains connected to the stub of the tongue—in other words, it effectively replaces the fish’s tongue with itself. At this point, having lost its blood supply, it switches to a new food source: bits of whatever the fish happens to be eating. Other than having a lousy tongue, the fish appears to be unaffected by the parasite; it can still, in fact, manipulate the louse just as it would its natural tongue. No other parasite has been found to completely replace an organ in the host.

If you want to see a couple of pictures go here.

Earlier this year when I was on a walking tour of Kruger we became very conscious of poaching in Kruger. We encountered more than one heavily armed anti-poaching patrol and our guide had several harrowing stories of encounters with poachers.

I must say that I loath poachers and revile them at every turn. I know that they are poor and often desperate, but I still hate them – there are better ways. So I was pleased to hear that one of those Kruger patrols recently bumped into and killed a poacher recently.

Apparently after midnight an anti-poaching patrol bumped into an unknown number of poachers. “A gun battle ensued between the rangers and the poachers. One of the poachers was killed.”

I admire the brave men and women (I saw several female rangers) who put their lives on the line to protect our wild animals.

I have often heard that because of the manufacturing process and the batteries involved the Toyota Prius (a hybrid electric car) actually uses more energy over it’s lifetime than a Hummer. I am ashamed to say that I swallowed that one a little too easily and I have even passed on the little anecdote a few times.

Here is an article rounding up most of the available information and showing pretty conclusively that the Toyota Prius is better for the environment than a Hummer.  Basically, the original study was based on “faulty methods of analysis, untenable assumptions, selective use and presentation of data, and a complete lack of peer review.”

Prius is the clear winner and I really hope that the Hummer urban legend dies a quick death.

Here is a National Geographic photo gallery about Toygers. These are cats that have been painstakingly bred to resemble tiny tigers. A woman named Judy Sudgen began the breeding program back in 1980 and has done pretty well. She began with a tomcat in she found on the streets on India and recently introduced genes to produce the “big cat body”.

They are pretty cool, but would set you back up to $3,000.

The Economist has some interesting articles on ANC leadership election happening this weekend (here is the best one, but also here, and here). Basically they are saying that it is a pity that the ANC are choosing “between two deeply flawed candidates, neither of whom should be running the ANC or the country after next year”.

The article has scathing criticism of both candidates:

• “Mr Zuma should have been ruled out on several counts. His dreadful views on sex were revealed during his trial for rape last year. He was acquitted, but claimed that he could tell by the way a woman sat whether she wanted to have sex with him and that his Zulu culture demanded he should oblige her; also that he could avoid contracting HIV by taking a shower. He may soon be charged again with corruption.”
• “Mr Mbeki is standing just to stop Mr Zuma. But Mr Mbeki has shown by his own autocratic ways and weird views on AIDS—which he seems to think is not caused by HIV—that he too should no longer be leading the ANC”.

The real problem in South Africa is something that the articles do mention: there is no competition for the ANC.

“14 years of unbroken power have given way to corruption, factionalism, paranoia and arrogance” within the ANC. Although the ANC has “on the whole done a good job” since 1994, it is now no longer the party that should be leading the country. The ANC should spend a term in opposition so that it can “purge or renew itself”.

The problem is that the masses are an unthinking lot who blindly vote along historical lines despite the current problems in the ANC. If only they would see past race and think rationally they would know that there is a better, if imperfect, alternative – just look to Cape Town!

“South Africa deserves a lot better.”

The UN climate conference is busy wrapping up in Bali at the moment. Once again, the United States are the main obstruction to progress. The Yanks really annoy me when it comes to climate change. They cause more damage than anyone else, yet they refuse to make real progress on reducing that damage.

In short, most of the rest of the world is calling for mandatory reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases (principally Carbon Dioxide – CO2) and the US (with a few cronies) is saying no.

The States are saying that they prefer “voluntary reductions” over specific target reductions because:

• “Specific targets would limit the scope of future talks“. They think that having no goal other than some kind of voluntary reduction will be more effective than a specific target… Doesn’t make too much sense to me.
• Targets will “harm the U.S. economy”. Of course they will you morons. Everyone else accepts taking a hit now in the interests of reducing global warming. Basically they are saying: “We want to continue ruining the world for everyone so that we can stay rich for the while”.
• The same targets are no applied to poorer but fast-developing nations. This sounds like a good point, but it is actually rubbish. For instance per person emissions in India and China are currently less than a quarter of those in the US. And over the last 50 years the vast majority of emissions have come from the Americans. So although there should be targets for India and China, they are already kicking the hell out of the US. See the graph below (click for more detail).

So the US is full of it. Wired has reported on Al Gore having a go at the States while speaking at the Bali conference. He is basically saying that although the US is “principally responsible for obstructing progress” people shouldn’t give up hope. In two years the US will have a new president who is far more likely to be proactive on climate change than the idiot Bush.

Australia recently replaced their prime minister and the new guy ratified the Kyoto agreement almost immediately. Lets hope something like that will happen in the States.

I just heard that the great author Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers. Pratchett has written stacks of excellent books which have sold over 55 million copies worldwide. His Discworld novels are brilliant and The Science of Discworld is a superb introduction to scientific thought.

He has released this letter making the announcement. I think that he is remarkably positive (speaking of getting a few more books out) but it is clearly devastating news. Alzheimers is a horrifying disease – I wish him all the best.

I like the end of his letter:

PS.  I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as ‘I am not dead’.  I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else.  For me, this maybe further off than you think – it’s too soon to tell. I know it’s a very human thing to say “Is there anything I can do”, but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.

In his book Breaking the Spell Daniel Dennet briefly describes the fascinating Lancet fluke. It is a little parasite with an amazing life cycle (nicely described here). The little bugger reproduces in the liver of grazing mammals, but its eggs are excreted in their feces. That means that the larvae somehow need to get back into the grazing mammals. No problem, they can use mind control. Seriously.

The larvae get themselves eaten by ants and then, literally, take over the ants’ brains at night. Once into an ant, the larvae take control of part of the ant’s brain and cause it to climb to the top of a blade of grass every night. There they wait all night, hoping to get eaten (they only do this at night because during the day it would be too hot and the larvae would die).

If the ant hasn’t been eaten by morning it is allowed to return to normal behavior. Until the next night that is. Sooner or later a passing sheep/cow comes past at night and munches the grass and the little Lancet fluke is home free. Amazing.

The New York Times recently posted an article on similar parasite called Toxoplasma gondii which reproduces in cats. It needs a similar way of getting back into the cats after being excreted in feces and it does so by infecting the brains of rats. Rats infected by Toxo lose their fear of cats, and in fact are attracted to them. You can see where this is going…

The scary part of this story is that T. Gondii also infects people! Wired reports that it is estimated that more than 20% of people are infected. The exact impact on humans has not been conclusively proven yet, but it seems plausible that infected people would be attracted to cats.

You know that crazy cat lady next door? Maybe her brain has been infected by a mind altering parasite!

The Economist has this article about how designers are using software to evolve better designs. The approach is called evolutionary design and it “enables a computer to run through tens of millions of variations on an invention until it hits on the best solution to a problem.”

The system takes the design blueprints as a genetic makeup and then evolves a population of different designs. Ones, that work well, are discarded and those that are promising are mixed with other promising designs. This process is repeated for perhaps millions of generations until some truly “inspired” designs are generated.

The article describes cases where evolutionary design has come up with novel designs that human designers had not thought of. For instance:

• At the University of Sydney, in Australia, Steve Manos used an evolutionary algorithm to come up with novel patterns in a type of optical fibre that has air holes shot through its length. Normally, these holes are arranged in a hexagonal pattern, but the algorithm generated a bizarre flower-like pattern of holes that no human would have thought of trying. It doubled the fibre’s bandwidth.

The evolutionary algorithm (creating and mixing blueprints) is quite easy to develop (I once wrote one), the hard part is evaluating which designs are “good”. That is done using a software simulation of the designs and is the true constraint on this novel technology.

Still, very interesting.

National Geographic has this pic of some absolutely tiny little frogs. They are Solomon Island tree frogs and are “among the few frog or amphibian species to skip the tadpole phase and emerge as mini-adults.”

Very cute little things.