Making Science More Better For You on 06/10/08

Headline of the day
Groom arrested at own wedding reception (LaCrosse Tribune)

Well, that bodes well.


Feed a monkey a fish and you have fed him for a day. Teach a monkey how to fish ...and you have a fishing monkey.

Scientists find monkeys who know how to fish
By MICHAEL CASEY
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Long-tailed macaque monkeys have a reputation for knowing how to find food - whether it be grabbing fruit from jungle trees or snatching a banana from a startled tourist.

Now, researchers say they have discovered groups of the silver-haired monkeys in Indonesia that fish.

Groups of long-tailed macaques were observed four times over the past eight years scooping up small fish with their hands and eating them along rivers in East Kalimantan and North Sumatra provinces, according to researchers from The Nature Conservancy and the Great Ape Trust.

The species had been known to eat fruit and forage for crabs and insects, but never before fish from rivers.

"It's exciting that after such a long time you see new behavior," said Erik Meijaard, one of the authors of a study on fishing macaques that appeared in last month's International Journal of Primatology. "It's an indication of how little we know about the species."

Meijaard, a senior science adviser at The Nature Conservancy, said it was unclear what prompted the long-tailed macaques to go fishing. But he said it showed a side of the monkeys that is well-known to researchers - an ability to adapt to the changing environment and shifting food sources.

"They are a survivor species, which has the knowledge to cope with difficult conditions," Meijaard said Tuesday. "This behavior potentially symbolizes that ecological flexibility."

The other authors of the paper, which describes the fishing as "rare and isolated" behavior, are The Nature Conservancy volunteers Anne-Marie E. Stewart, Chris H. Gordon and Philippa Schroor, and Serge Wich of the Great Ape Trust.

Some other primates have exhibited fishing behavior, Meijaard wrote, including Japanese macaques, chacma baboons, olive baboons, chimpanzees and orangutans.

Agustin Fuentes, a University of Notre Dame anthropology professor who studies long-tailed macaques, or macaca fascicularis, on the Indonesian island of Bali and in Singapore, said he was "heartened" to see the finding published because such details can offer insight into the "complexity of these animals."

"It was not surprising to me because they are very adaptive," he said. "If you provide them with an opportunity to get something tasty, they will do their best to get it."

Fuentes, who is not connected with the published study, said he has seen similar behavior in Bali, where he has observed long-tailed macaques in flooded paddy fields foraging for frogs and crabs. He said it affirms his belief that their ability to thrive in urban and rural environments from Indonesia to northern Thailand could offer lessons for endangered species.

"We look at so many primate species not doing well. But at the same time, these macaques are doing very well," he said. "We should learn what they do successfully in relation to other species."

Still, Fuentes and Meijaard said further research was needed to understand the full significance of the behavior. Among the lingering questions are what prompted the monkeys to go fishing and how common it is among the species.
Long-tailed macaques were twice observed catching fish by The Nature Conservancy researchers in 2007.

Another little known fact is that the Royal Coachman fly was created by a macaque that lived a quiet life as a fishing guide in a village near Saskatchewan. It’s said the bears swore by him.


Earth must seem like the Jersey Shore when those guys from Nebula 16 come here.
You've got to wonder how they both those heads into the T-shirt that says "The "rents" went to Earth and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."

Star wars: who are we inviting in from the cold?

* Graham Phillips/The Age.com.au
IT SOUNDS wacky, but a fight has broken out among scientists over whether we should be sending messages to aliens. Sure, it's a boffin fight: no vigorous punching, just vigorous publishing, spirited debate, and shock resignations from erudite organisations.

The latest instalment in the scientific scrap is a paper by Russian physicist Alexander Zaitsev. In it he shows why his alien messages can't be held responsible if extraterrestrials do one day invade the Earth. In fact if that happens, he says, blame astronomers.

At the core of the debate is a process called Active SETI. Ordinary SETI - the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - is a worldwide effort by astronomers using radio telescopes to listen for alien signals. Active SETI, which some researchers are now pushing, involves actually sending messages into space.

Zaitsev has been pursuing Active SETI for a decade using a radar facility in the Ukraine. He has sent messages in the direction of various sun-like stars in the Milky Way, hoping to attract alien attention.

But some astronomers believe this puts the Earth at risk. They argue that if we don't send messages, any hostile galactic super-civilisations out there won't know we're here, and we'll remain hidden among the billions of stars. If we do send messages, ET might read our greetings as a dinner invitation.

University of California biologist Jared Diamond has pointed out that there is no guarantee extraterrestrials will be interested in chatting with an inferior species like ours. After all, he says, look what we do to the inferior species on Earth. We shoot them, dissect them, cut off their hands for trophies, exhibit them in cages, inject them with AIDS as a medical experiment, and destroy or take over their habitats.

Now the probability of inducing alien invasion is very low. But because we don't know what is out there, the risk is not zero. New research continually indicates there is reason to expect that alien life in some form is relatively common throughout the universe. Just last month Australian National University researcher Charles Lineweaver added to that research by showing that stars like our sun are very common in the Milky Way. If life got going here, why not around some of those other suns too?

A group of people within the International Academy of Astronautics determines policy decisions on SETI matters, and last year two of its prominent members resigned. They were concerned too many people in the group were professionally interested in sending messages to ET. The two didn't think SETI scientists should be making decisions on behalf of the whole of humanity.

But Zaitsev has hit back at critics. He has calculated that his - and everyone else's - messages to other star systems are small fry compared with the standard exploratory signals astronomers have been sending out for decades. In an attempt to work out the properties of the other planets and orbiting asteroids, astronomers beam microwaves into the solar system. This radiation doesn't stop in our planetary system, however, it keeps going. Aliens could detect it and calculate our location from the signals.

The area of space that has received this radiation is 2000 times bigger than the area targeted with messages, calculates Zaitsev, so the radiation is far more likely to attract attention. Our secret is already out.

Really the only question now is, how much information about ourselves should we beam into the cosmos? So far, those in Active SETI have sent out only simple messages, often just patterns of numbers. The idea is, ET should be able to distinguish the patterns from the general radio noise that clutters the skies and recognise our signals as messages. Also, as the rules of mathematics are universal, aliens should speak the language of maths.

But why not go much further? Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in California, has suggested we transmit the entire contents of the internet to select stars in the Milky Way. By browsing those billions of websites, ET would not only know there are other intelligences out there, but would be able to learn all about us.

Actually, all that mindless internet detail might just put off the alien hoards from descending on Earth.