Animal metaphors of questionable taste, IV
In a LiveScience article about how capuchin monkeys wash their hands and feet in urine:
"So we think the alpha males might use urine-washing to convey warm, fuzzy feelings to females, that their solicitation is working and that there's no need to run away," [primatologist Kimran] Miller said. "Or they could be doing it because they're excited."
Aside from the problem of staying warm and fuzzy when you urinate on yourself, that wasn't such a bad metaphor (and I think Miller's study is kind of neat), but then the article sets up this groaner:
As to whether these monkeys use their own pee to improve their grip, "studies have not found a lot of support for that idea," Miller said.
Bu-dum ching!
Animal metaphors of questionable taste, II
From a Carl Zimmer story about the incredibly long phalluses of certain ducks:
Gazing at the enormous organs, [Patricia Brennan] asked herself a question that apparently no one had asked before.
"So what does the female look like?" she said. "Obviously you can't have something like that without some place to put it in. You need a garage to park the car."
Animal metaphors of questionable taste, VIII
In an otherwise very interesting story about the mechanism of behavioral dimorphism in fruit fly mating:
The next stage was to find out how effective the artificially induced songs were as mating calls.
For this, the "Cyrano de Bergerac" test was applied.
Animal metaphors of questionable taste: ventro-ventral gorillas
The National Geographic story about gorillas mating in the missionary position is one of those unique science stories: it's full of lines that sound innocuous to stodgy science-types, but would make any 13-year-old boy giggle uncontrollably. Such as:
Her mating partner in the photos, George, is named for a famous president -- Washington, not Bush.
And:
Such tool use was considered surprising for wild gorillas, which some believe are less intelligent than other species of tool-wielding great apes.
Maybe I'm just in a weird mood today, but I couldn't read the thing without Beavis and Butthead voices in my head. "Huh-uh huh huh. He said, 'harem,' huh-huh."
Besides this has to be some kind of record for the minimum actual new scientific content for a science story. The whole story is just a photograph. It's like a Paris Hilton moment -- the stalkerazzi version of gorilla mating!
Animal metaphors of questionable taste, III
In a press release about the successful application of green bottlefly larvae to cure (by chewing on) foot ulcers in diabetic patients, by University of Manchester researcher Andrew Boulton and colleagues:
"Maggots are the world's smallest surgeons. In fact they are better than surgeons - they are much cheaper and work 24 hours a day," Professor Boulton jokingly said.
And then this stomach-turning idea:
"There is no reason this cannot be applied to many other areas of the body, except perhaps a large abdominal wound."
Uggh!
Questionable animal metaphors: monkey outsourcing
So, a monkey in North Carolina was controlling a robot in Japan, using only its brain waves.
"It's walking!" Dr. Nicolelis said. "That's one small step for a robot and one giant leap for a primate."
Well, what else did you expect him to say? Maybe "Mwa-ha-HA-HA!"?
Anyway, the study looks kind of cool -- they had a monkey on a treadmill for an hour, got the electrode reading neurons related to walking, and had the monkey watching the robot's legs on a television screen. Once the monkey got used to the idea of controlling the robot's legs, they stopped the treadmill. At this point, even though the monkey had stopped, its brain kept the robot walking.
The next step: virtual robot monkey reality:
In the near future, Idoya and other bipedal monkeys will be getting more feedback from CB in the form of microstimulation to neurons that specialize in the sense of touch related to the legs and feet. When CB's feet touch the ground, sensors will detect pressure and calculate balance. When that information goes directly into the monkeys' brains, Dr. Nicolelis said, they will have the strong impression that they can feel CB's feet hitting the ground.
At that point, the monkeys will be asked to make CB walk across a room by using just their thoughts.
Unfortunately, they will have to move offshore to have virtual robot monkey knife fights.
Animal metaphors of questionable taste, volume 1
From a story titled, "Porn sparks panda baby boom in China":
The audio-visual approach [i.e., training panda males with panda porn] "is the same idea as chimpanzees seeing people smoke and then copying it," says the Thai researcher.
Animal metaphors of questionable taste, VII
Not exactly a metaphor, but certainly of questionable taste in this story titled, "'Sex Pest' Seal Attacks Penguin":
Marion Island is the only place in the world where Antarctic fur seals are known to hunt king penguins on land, so the idea that the fur seal was trying to eat the object of its attention made sense.
"But then we realised that the seal's intentions were rather more amorous."
John Hawks Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin—Madison
Copyright © 2007 John Hawks