Hey Hey! We’re The Monkeys!

 Updated and reposted from March 6, 2013.

A tamarin rock star
(photographed by Ltshears at Wikimedia)

Our moods change when we hear music, but not all music affects us the same way. Slow, soft, higher-pitched, melodic songs soothe us; upbeat classical music makes us more alert and active; and fast, harsh, lower-pitched, dissonant music can rev us up and stress us out. Why would certain sounds affect us in specific emotional ways? One possibility is because of an overlap between how we perceive music and how we perceive human voice. Across human languages, people talk to their babies in slower, softer, higher-pitched voices than they speak to adults. And when we’re angry, we belt out low-pitched growly tones. The specific vocal attributes that we use in different emotional contexts are specific to our species… So what makes us so egocentric to think that other species might respond to our music in the same ways that we do?

A serene tamarin ponders where he placed
his smoking jacket (photographed by
Michael Gäbler at Wikimedia)

Chuck Snowdon, a psychologist and animal behaviorist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and David Teie, a musician at the University of Maryland in College Park, teamed up to ask whether animals might respond more strongly to music if it were made specifically for them.

Cotton-top tamarins are squirrel-sized monkeys from northern Colombia that are highly social and vocal. As in humans (and pretty much every other vocalizing species studied), they tend to make higher-pitched tonal sounds when in friendly states and lower-pitched growly sounds when in aggressive states. But tamarin vocalizations have different tempos and pitch ranges than our tempos and pitch ranges.

Chuck and David musically analyzed recorded tamarin calls to determine the common attributes of the sounds they make when they are feeling friendly or when they are aggressive or fearful. Then they composed music based on these attributes, essentially creating tamarin happy-music and tamarin death metal. They also composed original music based on human vocal attributes. They played 30-second clips of these different music types to pairs of tamarins and measured their behavior while the song was being played and for the first 5 minutes after it had finished. They compared these behavioral measures to the tamarins’ behavior during baseline periods (time periods not associated with the music sessions).

As the researchers had predicted, tamarins were much more affected by tamarin music than by human music. Happy tamarin music seemed to calm them, causing the tamarins to move less and eat and drink more in the 5 minutes after the music stopped. Compared to the happy tamarin music, the aggressive tamarin music seemed to stress them out, causing the tamarins to move more and show more anxious behaviors (like bristling their fur and peeing) after the music stopped.

The tamarins also showed lesser reactions to the human music. They showed less anxious behavior after the happy human music played and moved less after the aggressive human music played. So, human voice-based music also affected the tamarins to some degree, but not as strongly. This may be because there are some aspects of how we communicate emotions with our voice that are the same in tamarins.

Can you imagine what we could do with this idea of species-specific music? Well, David and Chuck did! They have since developed music for cats using similar techniques.

We often think of vocal signals conveying messages in particular sounds, like words and sentences. But calls seem to do much more than that, making the emotions and behaviors of those listening resemble the emotions of those calling.

Want to know more? Check these out:

Snowdon, C., & Teie, D. (2009). Affective responses in tamarins elicited by species-specific music Biology Letters, 6 (1), 30-32 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.0593

Snowdon, C., Teie, D. and Savage, M. (2015). Cats prefer species-appropriate music. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 166, 106-111.

Science Beat: Round 9

If you're stressing out over midterms and you learn science better with a beat, take an educational break:

Chemistry:

Cellular Biology:

Genetics:

Which was your favorite? If you liked these, check out other science songs worth learning at Science Beat, Science Beat: Round 2, Science Beat: Round 3, Science Beat: Round 4, Science Beat: Round 5, Science Beat: Round 6, Science Beat: Round 7, Science Beat: Round 8, and Science Song Playlist. Check out some song battles about the life of scientists at The Science Life, Scientist Swagger and Battle of The Grad Programs! And if you feel so inspired, make a video of your own, upload it on YouTube and send me a link to include in a future post!

Friends Without Benefits: A Guest Post

A reposting of an original article by Joseph McDonald

Do you want to avoid the friend zone?
Photo by freedigitalphotos.net.

Guys DREAD the friend zone. That heart-aching moment when the girl you’ve been fawning over for years says you’re the best listener, the sister she never had, or so much better than a diary! You’ve been so nice to her and her friends, listening to all their drama. But that’s just the problem... you’re too nice to too many people.

Research performed by Aaron Lukaszewski and Jim Roney at the University of California – Santa Barbara (UCSB) tested whether preferences for personality traits were dependent on who the target was. In Experiment 1, they asked UCSB undergrads, on a scale from 1 to 7, the degree to which their ideal partner would display certain traits towards them and towards others. These traits included synonyms for kindness (e.g. affectionate, considerate, generous, etc.), trustworthiness (committed, dependable, devoted, etc.), and dominance (aggressive, brave, bold, etc.). Experiment 2 replicated the procedures of Experiment 1. The only difference was that the term “others” was divided into subsets including unspecified, family/friends, opposite sex non-family/friend, and same-sex non-family/friend.

Let’s go over the do’s and don’ts so that future “nice guys” aren’t friend zoned. According to the findings, as graphed below:

Figure from Aaron and Jim's 2010 Evolution and Human Behavior paper.

1. Women generally prefer men who are kind and trustworthy. So, to get that girl, don’t be mean; that’s not the point. This isn’t 3rd grade so don’t pull her hair and expect her to know that you LIKE-like her.

2. Women prefer men who are kinder and more trustworthy towards them than anyone else. So it’s not so much whether you are nice enough, its whether she knows you are nicer to her than anyone else.

3. Women prefer men who display similar amounts of dominance as they do kindness. Dominance isn’t a bad thing, as long as you can distinguish her friends from her foes; especially her male friends.

4. To make things more complicated, women also prefer men who are directly dominant toward other men but don’t display dominance toward them or their family/friends, whether male or female. Some guys may want to befriend these other men, but be weary. Women preferred dominance over kindness in this situation, so kindness may not be enough.

These preferences may have developed to avoid mating with someone willing to expend physical and material resources for extramarital relationships, and invest greater in her and the children. Moderate kindness and trustworthiness toward others will maintain social relationships and prevent detrimental relationships, which may be why women generally prefer kind and trustworthy guys. But in all fairness, women can be in the friend zone too; just look at Deenah and Vinny (excuse the shameful Jersey Shore reference).

There are some things that guys look for in a mate, so ladies, here is a little advice:

1. Guys generally want a mate who is kind and trustworthy, too. We’re not that different; so don’t act a little crazy because you think he likes it. He doesn’t.

2. Guys also prefer women who display dominance toward other women (non- family/friend). Don’t be afraid to put that random girl with the prying eyes in her place.

Contrary to the hypotheses predicting female mate preferences, male mate preferences may have developed as a way to take advantage of strong female-based social hierarchies. No matter what the reasoning, however, if you can
1) be kinder and more trustworthy towards that special someone than anyone else and
2) display dominance over other same-sex people, then feel free to say good-bye to the friend zone!


For further details, check out the original experiment:

Lukaszewski, A., & Roney, J. (2010). Kind toward whom? Mate preferences for personality traits are target specific Evolution and Human Behavior, 31 (1), 29-38 DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.06.008

The Science Life 3

The science life is a stressful one, no matter what stage you're at. Take a music break and know you're not alone.

"Take Exams" by AcapellaScience (parody of "Shake it Off" by Taylor Swift):

"Part of Your Lab" by Florence Schechter (parody of "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid):

"Some Budding Yeast I Used to Grow" by Nathaniel Krefman (parody of "Somebody That I Used to Know" by Gotye):

Vote for your favorite in the comments section below. If you would like to see more music videos on the life of a scientist, check out The Science Life and The Science Life 2. And if you feel so inspired, make a video of your own, upload it on YouTube and send me a link to include in a future post!

Science Beat: Round 8

It is midterm time again. If you learn science better with a beat, check these out:

Chemistry:

Cellular Biology:

Anatomy and Physiology:

Vote for your favorite in the comments section below and check out other science songs worth learning at Science Beat, Science Beat: Round 2, Science Beat: Round 3, Science Beat: Round 4, Science Beat: Round 5, Science Beat: Round 6, Science Beat: Round 7, and Science Song Playlist. Check out some song battles about the life of scientists at The Science Life, Scientist Swagger and Battle of The Grad Programs! And if you feel so inspired, make a video of your own, upload it on YouTube and send me a link to include in a future battle!

What Do Animals Think of Their Dead?

A reposting of an article from September 12, 2012.

You’re running around, going about your day, and suddenly you see a dead guy lying in the sidewalk. What do you feel? Sad? Scared? Do you look around to see if you might be in danger too? Would you feel any differently if the dead body on the sidewalk were that of a squirrel, and not a human? Do animals share these same emotional and thought processes when they come across their own dead?

Teresa Iglesias, Richard McElreath and Gail Patricelli at the University of California at Davis pondered this philosophical question themselves. Then they set off to scientifically test it. 

A western scrub-jay collecting peanuts from a windowsill.
Photo by Ingrid Taylar at Wikimedia.

Teresa, Richard and Gail had noticed that when a live western scrub-jay encounters a dead western scrub-jay, it hops from perch to perch while calling loudly, a response the researchers called a “cacophonous reaction”. This boisterous response usually attracts other scrub-jays, which either join in with their own cacophonous reaction or just sit quietly observing. Is this truly a response to seeing their own dead?

The researchers put bird feeders baited with peanuts in backyards all over Davis, California (with the permission of the backyard-owners, of course). Once they find a feeder, western scrub-jays take the peanuts one at a time and fly off to cache them away before returning for another peanut. While the scrub-jays were away caching a peanut, the researchers put a collection of painted wood pieces on the ground, arranged to vaguely look like a dead scrub-jay. Then they snuck away to watch if the scrub-jays responded when they returned. Several days later, they came back to the same feeders, waited until the scrub-jay was away caching a peanut, and then placed an actual scrub-jay carcass and feathers (usually found somewhere in the area). Then they snuck away again to watch if the scrub-jays responded any differently when they returned.

Watch the behavior of western scrub-jays before and after

the placement of a dead scrub-jay. The “after” response starts

about one minute into the video. Video by Teresa Iglesias.

And in a nutshell, they did. When the scrub-jays returned to find a dead scrub-jay, they called like crazy and hopped around in a full-blown cacophonous reaction. In most cases, this reaction attracted other scrub-jays who joined in the lively response. Additionally, when the dead scrub-jay was present, they took 90% fewer peanuts. None of this ever happened in response to a pile of painted wood. When a scrub-jay returned to find painted wood, it went about its day, calling at normal rates and collecting peanuts as usual. One jay was so unconcerned by the painted wood, it even cached peanuts under it!

A western scrub-jay thinks the painted wood makes

a good peanut-hideaway. Video by Teresa Iglesias.

This convinced the researchers that the scrub-jays were not simply responding to something new near the feeder, but were instead responding to dead bodies. But does it matter whether the body is a conspecific (the same species) or a heterospecific (different species)? And what do these group responses mean? Are they gathering in mourning? Or is their response a way of hollering, “Look out! Something out there is killing us!”?

To find out, the researchers did the same thing they had done before, but this time, they placed either a scrub-jay carcass or a mounted great horned owl (a scrub-jay predator). Interestingly, the scrub-jays responded with the same cacophonous reactions and avoided the peanuts in both cases. However, the scrub-jays called for longer and defensively swooped at the mounted owl, something they didn’t do to the scrub-jay carcass. To check if this heightened response to the owl mount was due to its lifelike position, they repeated the study, comparing scrub-jay responses to a scrub-jay carcass or a mounted scrub-jay. Although the dead-looking carcass always elicited cacophonous aggregations, mounted scrub-jays only elicited cacophonous aggregations a third of the time. But when jays did respond to the scrub-jay mounts, they often swooped at it as if it were a competitor, something they never did to a scrub-jay carcass.
What does this all mean? Western scrub-jays respond to conspecific (scrub-jay) carcasses not just because their appearance is surprising, but because they may represent some kind of risk. They seem to recognize that the carcass is not a living threat, because they don’t swoop at it like they do to both owl and scrub-jay mounts. But they do produce an alarm response, much as they do when a predator is present. So their responses to dead scrub-jays are not so much “funerals” in the way that people mourn and reflect on their dead, but rather a way to announce a risk of getting hurt or killed.

Are western scrub-jays uniquely aware of the risk a dead conspecific may represent? Maybe not. Although this was the first comprehensive study of this phenomenon, similar behavioral responses to dead conspecifics have been observed in ravens, crows and magpies, all members of the corvid family of birds, like scrub-jays. But rats and even bees have also been observed to avoid dead conspecifics. Many animals may be more cognizant of death than we give them credit for.

Want to know more? Check this out:

Iglesias, T.L., McElreath, R., & Patricelli, G.L. (2012). Western scrub-jay funerals: cacophonous aggregations in response to dead conspecifics Animal Behaviour DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.08.007

Why This Horde of Idiots is No Genius

A modified reposting of an article from May, 2012.

At first look (in Part 1 of this post), swarm theory seems to predict that the larger the social group, the better the resulting group decisions and behaviors. Then, with over 300 million of us in the U.S., shouldn’t we only be making brilliant decisions? And with over 7 billion worldwide, shouldn’t we have already prevented all international conflicts, cancer, and environmental destruction?

A riot in Vancouver, Canada after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup
in 2011 left the city with scars. Photo by Elopde at Wikimedia Commons.

Many large groups of people make incredibly stupid decisions. Like proverbial lemmings (a hoax perpetuated by Disney), large groups of people have caused incredible damage to their community after their hockey team lost the Stanley Cup, quit their jobs and given away all of their possessions believing the end of the world was coming on May 21, 2011 (ehem… we’re still here), and insisted that wearing baggy pants around the thighs is a reasonable thing to do even though it is not sexy and it trips you when you try to run. Where are we going wrong?

Tom Seeley at Cornell University has gained tremendous insight into effective group decision-making from his years observing honeybees, which he shares with us in his book, Honeybee Democracy. (By the way, this is also one of the best books out there for painting a picture of the life of a behavioral biologist).

Honeybees live in swarms of thousands. When the hive becomes overcrowded, about a third of the worker bees will stay home to rear a new queen while the old queen and the rest of the hive will leave to begin the process of finding a new home. During this time, the migrants will coalesce on a nearby branch while they search out and decide among new home options. This process can take anywhere from hours to days during which the colony is vulnerable and exposed. But they can’t be too hasty: choosing a new home that is too small or too exposed could be equally deadly.


This homeless honeybee swarm found an unconventional "branch". They'd better
decide on a new home before the cyclist gets back!  Photo by Nino Barbieri at Wikimedia.

Although each swarm has a queen, she plays no role in making this life-or-death decision. Rather, this decision is made by a consensus among 300-500 scout bees that results after an intense “dance-debate”. Then, as a single united swarm, they leave their branch and move into their new home. At this point, it’s critical that the swarm is unified in their choice of home site, because a split-decision runs the risk of creating a chaos in which the one and only queen can be lost and the entire hive will perish. This is a high-stakes decision that honeybees make democratically, efficiently, and amazingly, they almost always make the best possible choice! How do they do that? And how can we do that?



Each dot represents where on the body this dancer
was head-bumped by a dancer for a competing site.
Each time she's bumped, she's a little less
enthusiastic about her own dance. Figure from
Seeley, et al. 2012 paper in Science.

The honeybee house-hunting process has several features that allow them as a group to hone in on the best possible solution. The process begins when a scout discovers a site that has potential for a new home. She returns to her swarm and reports on this site, using a waggle dance that encodes the direction and distance to the site and her estimate of its quality. The longer she dances, the better she perceived the site to be. Other scouts do the same, perhaps visiting the same site or maybe a new one, and they report their findings in dance when they return. More scouts are recruited and the swarm breaks into a dancing frenzy, with many scouts dancing for multiple possible sites. Over time, scouts that are less enthusiastic about their discovered site stop dancing, in part discouraged by dancers for other sites that head-bump them while beeping. Eventually, the dancing scouts are unified in their dance for what is almost always the best site. The swarm warms up their flight muscles, and off they go, in unison to their new home.

What can we learn from this process? Tom has summarized his wisdom gained from observing honeybees in the following:

Tom Seeley’s Five Habits of Highly Effective Hives

1. “Group members share a goal”.
This is easy for honeybees, but not as much for us. All of the honeybees in a swarm share the same goal: Find the best possible home as quickly as possible. People are not always similar in our goals, needs and wants and one person’s goals are sometimes in direct conflict with another person’s goals. The trick here is finding common ground.

2. “Group members search broadly to find possible solutions to the problem”.
Seek out information from as many sources as you can. Be creative. Use your personal experience. And if the group is diverse, there will be a broader range of personal experience to harness. Diversity increases the ability of a group to make the best decisions.

3. “Group members contribute their information freely and honestly”.
This requires a welcoming and supportive environment that withholds judgment of the individuals for the ideas expressed. You don’t have to agree with an idea to respect and listen to the person expressing it.

4. “Group members evaluate the options independently and they vote independently”.
Just as scout bees don’t dance for a site they have not visited and assessed themselves, we should not advocate possible solutions or candidates that we have not ourselves looked into and thought critically about. A group can only be smarter than the individuals in it if the individuals think for themselves.

5. “Group members aggregate their votes fairly”.
Everyone gets a vote and each one counts equally. ‘Nuff said.

We can learn a lot from these honeybees. Even when the stakes are high, we can make good decisions for our group if we are open, honest, inclusive, fair and think independently.


Want to know more? Check these out:

1. Seeley, T., Visscher, P., Schlegel, T., Hogan, P., Franks, N., & Marshall, J. (2011). Stop Signals Provide Cross Inhibition in Collective Decision-Making by Honeybee Swarms Science, 335 (6064), 108-111 DOI: 10.1126/science.1210361

2. List, C., Elsholtz, C., & Seeley, T. (2009). Independence and interdependence in collective decision making: an agent-based model of nest-site choice by honeybee swarms Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364 (1518), 755-762 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0277

3. Honeybee Democracy by Thomas Seeley

4. The Smart Swarm by Peter Miller

5. The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

Can a Horde of Idiots be a Genius?

A modified reposting of an article from April, 2012.

Let’s face it: The typical individual is not that bright. Just check out these human specimens:

Yet somehow, if you get enough numbskulls together, the group can make some pretty intelligent decisions. We’ve seen this in a wide variety of organisms facing a number of different challenges.

In a brilliant series of studies, Jean-Louis Deneubourg, a professor at the Free University of Brussels, and his colleagues tested the abilities of Argentine ants (a common dark-brown ant species) to collectively solve foraging problems. In one of these studies, the ants were provided with a bridge that connected the nest to a food source. This bridge split and fused in two places (like eyeglass frames), but at each split one branch was shorter than the other, resulting in a single shortest-path and multiple longer paths. After a few minutes, explorers crossed the bridge (by a meandering path) and discovered the food. This recruited foragers, each of which chose randomly between the short and the long branch at each split. Then suddenly, the foragers all started to prefer the shortest route. How did they do that?

This figure from the Goss et al 1989 paper in Naturwissemschaften shows (a) the design of a single module, (b) ants scattered on the bridge after 4 minutes (I promise they’re there), and (c) ants mostly on the shortest path after 8 minutes

You can think of it this way: a single individual often tries to make decisions based on the uncertain information available to it. But if you have a group of individuals, they will likely each have information that differs somewhat from the information of others in the group. If they each make a decision based on their own information alone, they will likely result in a number of poor decisions and a few good ones. But if they can each base their decisions on the accumulation of all of the information of the group, they stand a much better chance of making a good decision. The more information accumulated, the more likely they are to make the best possible decision.

In the case of the Argentine ant, the accumulated information takes the form of pheromone trails. Argentine ants lay pheromone trails both when leaving the nest and when returning to the nest. Ants that are lucky enough to take a shorter foraging route return to the nest sooner, increasing the pheromone concentration of the route each way. In this way, shorter routes develop more concentrated pheromone trails faster, which attract more ants, which further increase pheromone concentration of the shortest routes. In this way, an ant colony can make an intelligent decision (take the shortest foraging route) without any individual doing anything more intelligent than following a simple rule (follow the strongest pheromone signal).

Home is where the heart is. Photo of a bee swarm by Tom Seeley

Honeybee colonies also solve complicated tasks with the use of communication. Tom Seeley at Cornell University and his colleagues have investigated the honeybee group decision-making process of finding a new home. When a colony outgrows their hive, hundreds of scouts will go in search of a suitable new home, preferably one that is high off the ground with a south-facing entrance and room to grow. If a scout finds such a place, she returns to the colony and performs a waggle dance, a dance in which her body position and movements encode the directions to her site and her dancing vigor relates to how awesome she thinks the site is. 

Some scouts that see her dance may be persuaded to follow her directions and check out the site for themselves, and if impressed, may return to the hive and perform waggle dances too. Or they may follow another scout’s directions to a different site or even strike out on their own. Eventually, the majority of the scouts are all dancing the same vigorous dance. But interestingly, few scouts ever visit more than one site. Better sites simply receive more vigorous “dance-votes” and then attract more scouts to do the same. Like ants in search of a foraging path, the intensity of the collective signal drives the group towards the best decision. Once a quorum is reached, the honeybees fly off together to their new home.

But groups can develop better solutions than individuals even without communication. Gaia Dell’Ariccia at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and her colleagues explored homing pigeon navigation by placing GPS trackers on the backs of pigeons and releasing them from a familiar location either alone or in a group of six. Because they were all trained to fly home from this site, they all found their way home regardless of whether they were alone or in a group. But as a flock, the pigeons left sooner, rested less, flew faster, and took a more direct route than did the same birds when making the trip alone. By averaging the directional tendencies of everyone in the group, they were able to mutually correct the errors of each individual and follow the straightest path.

In each of these examples, each individual has limited and uncertain information, but each individual has information that may be slightly different than their neighbors’. By combining this diverse information and making a collective decision, hordes of idiots can make genius decisions.


Want to know more? Check these out:

1. Couzin, I. (2009). Collective cognition in animal groups Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13 (1), 36-43 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2008.10.002

2. Goss, S., Aron, S., Deneubourg, J., & Pasteels, J. (1989). Self-organized shortcuts in the Argentine ant Naturwissenschaften, 76 (12), 579-581 DOI: 10.1007/BF00462870

3. Dussutour, A., Nicolis, S., Deneubourg, J., & Fourcassié, V. (2006). Collective decisions in ants when foraging under crowded conditions Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 61 (1), 17-30 DOI: 10.1007/s00265-006-0233-x

4. List C, Elsholtz C, & Seeley TD (2009). Independence and interdependence in collective decision making: an agent-based model of nest-site choice by honeybee swarms. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 364 (1518), 755-62 PMID: 19073474

5. Dell'Ariccia, G., Dell'Omo, G., Wolfer, D., & Lipp, H. (2008). Flock flying improves pigeons' homing: GPS track analysis of individual flyers versus small groups Animal Behaviour, 76 (4), 1165-1172 DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2008.05.022

6. Honeybee Democracy by Thomas Seeley

7. The Smart Swarm by Peter Miller

The Harm of Verbal Promiscuity

Eastern chimpanzees don't want to be judged. Image by Ikiwaner at Wikimedia.com.

Whether they have one true love for life, multiple partners, or are free-loving, animals have many different mating systems. We have different scientific terms for these different mating systems, and most of these terms have very specific meanings. An animal is socially monogamous when it has one exclusive mating relationship, but maybe has sex with others outside of that relationship. It is sexually monogamous when it has one exclusive sexual relationship and is sexually faithful to that partner. Animals are polygamous when they have multiple sexual relationships. Polygamous animals can be polygynous (when one male has a mating relationship with multiple females), polyandrous (when one female has a mating relationship with multiple males) or polygynandrous (when multiple males and multiple females all have a mating relationship). However, one mating system term has been used much more loosely: promiscuous. In some scientific papers, promiscuous is used to describe animals that aren’t choosy about whom they mate with. Others use promiscuous to describe animals that don’t form mating relationships. But promiscuous is also misused by many people, including scientists, to refer to polygamous animals. This loose use of terminology can be damaging to both our scientific understanding and our society.

Scientific terms generally come from common language, but are then are given more specific definitions for their scientific use. When we confuse scientific terms for their common-use meanings, society can be harmed. For example, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary includes a dozen different definitions of “theory” that all include strong elements of uncertainty (such as “an unproved assumption” and “an idea that is suggested or presented as possibly true but that is not known or proven to be true”). In contrast, the scientific term theory refers only to scientific explanations that have been substantiated through such a large amount of rigorous scientific testing and evidence that we are almost certain they are true (because scientists are supposed to never be completely certain). When the scientific term theory is confused with the common word “theory”, then concepts regarded essentially as fact among informed scientists are disregarded by politicians and many of the general public as “just a theory”.

Promiscuity is one of those scientific terms that was originally borrowed from common language and is now confused with its common-word counterpart. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “promiscuous” as “having or involving many sexual partners”, which is almost exactly the scientific definition of polygamous. Thus, “promiscuous” is often misused, even by scientific researchers, when polygamous, polygynous, polyandrous, or polygynandrous are more accurate. Misidentifying the mating system of a species can obscure meaningful connections between behavior and ecology and can negatively impact conservation, captive breeding efforts, and medical and psychological advances.

Image from freedigitalphotos.net

Mark Elgar and Therésa Jones from the University of Melbourne and Kathryn McNamara from The University of Western Australia found that when “promiscuous” is misused in research, scientists are much more likely to use it to refer to polyandrous females than to polygynous males. This biased misuse of the word reflects our moral judgments and causes us additional harm as a society. The common word “promiscuous” has pejorative connotations and evokes negative emotions, especially when applied to women. Our human cultures generally have expectations that women will be faithful to one partner, while we are more understanding of the infidelities of men. When applied to animals, and especially primates, promiscuity has an anthropomorphic nature that places our human expectations and interpretations on other species. It’s bad enough when we judge each other – let’s try not to judge animals too.


Want to know more? Check this out:

Elgar, M., Jones, T., & McNamara, K. (2013). Promiscuous words Frontiers in Zoology, 10 (1) DOI: 10.1186/1742-9994-10-66

Do Not Google These Animals

This is not my week to be mature, so we’re going to point and laugh at animals with funny names.

Great Tits

Image by Ken Billington at Wikimedia Commons.

The great tit (Parus major) is a common songbird throughout Eurasia. There is actually a whole family of tits, which also includes the less-fortunately named ashy tit (Melaniparus cinerascens), and the strip-clubbing cousin, the stripe-breasted tit (Melaniparus fasciiventer). “Tit” also means small, which is likely the origin of using it to describe a small bird that doesn’t even have nipples.

Brown Boobies

Image by Muriel Gottrop at Wikimedia Commons.

Brown boobies (Sula leucogaster) are large seabirds that commonly breed on the islands in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Like the tit family, there is also a booby family, including the more commonly known blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii). Boobies were named using the Spanish word bobo, which means “stupid” or “clown-like”, due to their clumsiness on land and lack of fear of humans.

Slippery Dick

Image by Brian Gratwicke at Wikimedia Commons.

The slippery dick (Halichoeres bivittatus) is a small fish in the wrasse family that lives in reefs in the tropical western Atlantic Ocean. The name of this unfortunate species apparently predates the present use of the term. "Slippery dick" was mentioned as early as 1859 in John Jones’ The Naturalist in Bermuda as the name fishermen commonly used for this wrasse species. It apparently is difficult to hold onto and easily slips through your fingers. “Dick”, at the time, was the common nickname for Richard and was commonly used to refer to any “fellow”. It was not used to refer to a body part until the late 1800s, and this latter use of the term is attributed to British army slang.

Science Beat: Round 7

Final exams and final project due-dates are quickly approaching. If you learn science better with a beat, check these out:

Where to Round:

Periodic Table:

Anatomy and Physiology:

Vote for your favorite in the comments section below and check out other science songs worth learning at Science Beat, Science Beat: Round 2, Science Beat: Round 3, Science Beat: Round 4, Science Beat: Round 5, Science Beat: Round 6, and Science Song Playlist. Check out some song battles about the life of scientists at The Science Life, Scientist Swagger and Battle of The Grad Programs! And if you feel so inspired, make a video of your own, upload it on YouTube and send me a link to include in a future battle!

Science Beat: Round 6

It is that time in the semester when midterm pressures start building and the facts we're supposed to be learning for tests start disappearing like lost keys. Sometimes putting the material in a new context can help. Try these:

Cellular Biology:

Anatomy and Physiology:

Cellular Respiration:

Vote for your favorite in the comments section below and check out other science songs worth learning at Science Beat, Science Beat: Round 2, Science Beat: Round 3, Science Beat: Round 4, Science Beat: Round 5, and Science Song Playlist. Check out some song battles about the life of scientists at The Science Life, Scientist Swagger and Battle of The Grad Programs! And if you feel so inspired, make a video of your own, upload it on YouTube and send me a link to include in a future battle!

Caught in My Web: All About Dogs

Image by Luc Viatour at Wikimedia.

For this edition of Caught in My Web, we celebrate our wonderful canine companions.

1. Nina Golgowski at HuffPost Science explains research that shows that dogs give treats to their doggy friends, but not to doggy strangers.

2. Rafael Mantesso's wife left him and took everything but the dog and the empty white apartment. Rafael found inspiration in his predicament and created some of the most wonderful photos ever! Check them out here.

3. Let puppies teach you about complexity theory in this TED talk by Nicolas Perony.

4. Virginia Hughes at National Geographic shares research that shows that dog brains process voice information similarly to our own.

5. And just for fun, here is Bella the dog singing “Jingle Bells”:

The Science Life 2

The life of a scientist is increasingly stressful. Sometimes it helps to relieve stress in song:

“Bad Habits” by Nathaniel Krefman (Parody of “Magic” by B.o.B. featuring Rivers Cuomo):

“Eight Days a Week” by the UC-Berkeley Molecular and Cell Biology Department (Parody of “Eight Days a Week” by The Beatles):

“The Tale of a Post Doc” by James Clark at Aerospace Medicine at King’s College London (Parody of "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen):

Vote for your favorite in the comments section below. If you would like to see more music videos on the life of a scientist, check out The Science Life. And if you feel so inspired, make a video of your own, upload it on YouTube and send me a link to include in a future post!

Science Beat: Round 5

Science concepts can be daunting at times… and sometimes they just make more sense with a beat. Try these science music videos on for size:

Chemistry:

Cellular Respiration:

Anatomy and Physiology:

Vote for your favorite in the comments section below and check out other sciency song battles at Science Beat, Science Beat: Round 2, Science Beat: Round 3, Science Beat: Round 4, Science Song Playlist, The Science Life, Scientist Swagger and Battle of The Grad Programs! And if you feel so inspired, make a video of your own, upload it on YouTube and send me a link to include in a future battle!

Y'all Tawk Funny, Doncha Know

All of our struggles for dialectal conformity (admit it, even you have tried to talk like the cool kids at times) have come from the fact that we learn language through both vertical and horizontal transmission (and no, I’m not talking about the way STDs are spread). We learn language both from our parents (vertical transmission) and our peers (horizontal transmission). We now suspect that orcas (also called killer whales) do too.


Photo by Olga Filatova.

Today I am revisiting my thoughts on dialects, learning languages, and orcas from an article I wrote in the early days of The Scorpion and the Frog. You can read the article in it's entirety here.

Science Beat: Round 4

It’s exam time again, and some of us need to study and let off some steam. These sciency music videos are just the ticket!

Biochemistry:

Cellular Biology:

Neuroscience:

Vote for your favorite in the comments section below and check out other sciency song battles at Science Beat, Science Beat: Round 2, Science Beat: Round 3, Science Song Playlist, The Science Life, Scientist Swagger and Battle of The Grad Programs! And if you feel so inspired, make a video of your own, upload it on YouTube and send me a link to include in a future battle!

Science Beat: Round 3

Sometimes science just makes more sense with a beat. Last January, I shared with you some fun music videos on fish genetics, climate science, and sexual reproduction. In Round 2, we saw music videos on the periodic table, cellular respiration and muscles. Here are the competitors for Round 3:

Cellular Biology:

Anatomy and Physiology:

Taxonomy:

Vote for your favorite in the comments section below and check out other sciency song battles at Science Song Playlist, The Science Life, Science Beat and Science Beat: Round 2, Scientist Swagger and Battle of The Grad Programs!

And if you feel so inspired, make a video of your own, upload it on YouTube and send me a link to include in a future battle!