Giant Salamanders? No, Seriously-- Giant Salamanders

So: imagine an amphibian, about 4 -6 feet in length, with beady eyes, tiny fetus-like fingers, and a gaping maw that opens far enough to wrap around the forearm of a full grown man. Sound a little nightmare-ish? Here's some photos...

Really, could it get any more evil parasite-looking?

Again, can't you just see those little hands grasping a laser pistol?

Both of the above are pulled off of Loren Coleman's Cryptomundo site, but there's nothing secretive about these guys. The Chinese and Japanese giant salamanders are well documented, if bizarre looking, inhabitants of Asian waterways. 

Mostly gentle giants, they do have some ferocious teeth, and will bite if handled improperly or if snatched out of a resting place, as seen in this still from the terrific show River Monsters:

And here's a close-up of the teeth of the North American Giant Salamander, maxes out around 2 feet in length. (Photo from the University of Washington Archive):

If you're interested in helping preserve the giant salamanders, check out The Cryptobranchid Interest Group or EDGE for donations or more info.

Strange Fruit -- Amazing Australian Dance Troupe (on a stick!)

Just came across these guys. Inspired by a field of wheat, the dancers perch on 16 foot tall flexible poles. This allows them to bend and sway over their audience. Seeing humans move in such unexpected ways is both mesmerizing and a little disorienting. I love it.

I'd really like to see them live, and I'll be keeping an eye on the Strange Fuit website to see if they'll be travelling near me. Until then, I'll just have to be content with the youtube videos. (The videos on yourtube are mostly shakey-cam, so I recommend checking out the Strange Fruit demo reel on their web-site for more variety and less nausea inducing wobblieness.)

Today I dug a grave for a Rubber Chicken

The Invite (click for full size) 

There was once a time when a small group of my friends never went to a bar without a rubber chicken in tow. In an attempt to amuse ourselves and confuse strangers, we would insist on taking pictures of our friends, bartenders, and wait staff posing with the chickens (Ralphonso and Giselle were their names, and a more distinguished pair of chickens you can't even imagine).  As the night went on, onlookers would invariably ask to also have their pictures taken with the plastic poultry. Those chickens were great ice-breakers, allowing us to easily identify other people who also had a sense of humor that was a little, well... you know.

Eventually we gave Giselle eyes and stuffed her with sand so that she could pose for her photo ops better. That might have killed her in the long term, as I recently found that her delicate plucked rubber skin had dried out, becoming brittle and cracked. I realized that it was time for her to move on to a better place. But she still had one last mission to amuse/befuddle.

At an somber, intimate gathering this afternoon, we interred Giselle. We said our good-byes, poured out a beer in her honor, and had some BBQ and cheesy potatoes.

But I take heart knowing that someday, someone will go to plant a tree or till the soil, and they will find the remnants of a once-proud fowl, along with a time-capsule containing photos of strangers in bars tongue-kissing a rubber chicken. And they will be confused.

RIP Giselle.

Perseverance, Rationalization, & Damn Hard Games

Just posted a quick blurb over at Ninja Camp about a game which thoroughly defeated me when I was younger: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

You really should click over to read it at Ninja Camp but for those too lazy, here it is:

Douglas Adams died about 10 years ago. In honor of that not-so-happy event, Rock, Paper, Shotgun has an excellent entry in their "Gaming Made Me" series dedicated to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game. Check it out here. Note how much the article's author enjoyed the difficulty of the game. To quote her briefly:

"The Hitchhiker’s game left me curious and perplexed in equal measure. Why wasn’t my Dad any better at extracting progress from the game than I was? Or my older brother? The game was truly difficult. You would play for a few hours, learning by trial and error what the correct responses were to get you past the earliest hurdles, actually not getting very far at all."

It's available to play online, for free. The game in its monochromatic text-only glory is here, and a version with graphics tacked on is here. I'll be playing it through, one of these days...

There are many games that I never finished because I lost interest or got busy doing other things. There are two games which I really enjoyed but stopped playing due to glitches. One is the original Fallout, which had a disagreement with my video card and got me so monumentally pissed that I didn't speak to it for 10 years. The other was Hitchhiker's, which came with a bad disk, and as a kid I couldn't figure out what to do about it.

That's how I remember it, though now I wonder if I just took advantage of the situation to quit. In fact, I think there's a chance that that the only "glitch" involved was that I kept dying, and 10 year old me was just so unprepared for that kind of resistance that I convinced myself that a disk must be bad. It really was a damn hard game.

Chap Hop

There is currently a beef between two hip-hop stars. A beef which centers around handlebar mustaches and quality tea. The two heavyweights involved, Mr. B and Prof Elemental, are the leading lights in the sub-genre of "Chap Hop".

Recently getting coverage from Wired Magazine and The Wall Street Journal the two artists have been making waves in their native England, and on the internet. (I can't believe the Wall Street Journal found out about these guys before I did! I can't even tell you how old that makes me feel.)  

Nothing original from me on this stuff, just wanted to share a couple interesting points, such as the following wonderful quote:

As scantily clad cabaret dancers apply false eyelashes, Mr. Burke sums up the influences behind his brand of Chap-Hop: Public Enemy's Chuck D, Noel Coward and British music-hall star George Formby.

(Seriously, the WSJ article is really well done and fun.)

And how hard does this sound:

Onstage, resident DJ Earl of Ealing (Ian Crouch to his friends) is mixing tracks using two 1930s picnic gramophones playing 78-rpm swing records. The process is laborious, requiring the phonographs to be wound and the needle to be changed for each record: no easy task, especially while holding a martini.

Both Professor Elemental and Mr. B are getting a fair amount of views on youtube, and they each have some pretty well done videos up.

Comedy in Remodeling

My day job isn't usually a source of huge chuckles, but when we were asked to install concrete contertops in a kitchen remodel, I did come across something pretty amusing: Vibrator Town!

A "concrete vibrator" is used to shake out any excess air or particles out of wet concrete. We hopped online to price one out, fully expecting what we'd get when we searched "concrete vibrators" through Google. But I wasn't expecting to see a store where you could find both industrial and, um, more personal selections on the same page. A little tip: make sure you double check your cart before checking out. 

Weird Wednesday: Parasites and Mind Control

It's a given: parasites are creepy. The idea of something invading our bodies and feeding off of us is disturbing in any number of ways. Apart from the general sense of violation, they are known to cause disease and dysfunction. Whether they're causing diarrhea in humans or gid in sheep, parasites make us sick. But could a parasite ever directly control the behavior of its host? 

In fact, documented cases of parasites directing their victim's actions date back to the 1930s, and there is some fossil evidence that indicates that this behavior has been going on for eons. In the modern age, as observation techniques and technology have improved, an ever more bizarre list of example behaviors have been uncovered.

(Illustration: Patrick Kastner / The Columbus Dispatch)

Parasites that show evidence of being able to exert such influence have a multi-step life cycle. They often are only able to breed inside one kind of host, and must travel through one or more secondary hosts in order to reach their destination. If they develop into a new stage while in their host, it is called a “intermediate” host, but if they just hitch a ride with transforming they are said to be in “transport” host. The final host is called “definitive”.

Most evidence of parasitical control is found in transport or intermediate hosts whose behavior is modified to make it more likely that they will be consumed by the definitive host. For example, the “gid” disease in sheep mentioned earlier is caused by a tapeworm which infects the sheep and causes them to stumble around. This makes them prime targets forwolves, which are the definitive host for the tapeworm.

There's a slide show at ScientificAmerican.com with a few excellent photos of some of this parasitic behavior, including a wasp that stings cockroaches then rides them around like motorbikes before laying eggs inside them Alien style, and this great photo of some enflamed ant butt:

 (photo credit: Steve Yanoviak)

The parasite Myrmeconema neotropicum turns its ant victim's endparts bright red, then forces it to march away from the colony, and position itself in leafy vantage points where, mistaken for a berry, it will make a nice snack for the definitive host: a bird. 

Here's a great excerpt from Parasites: Latching on to a Free Lunch by Paul Fleisher:

This worm's definitive host is a sheep, cow, or other grazing animal. A snail picks up the fluke's eggs from the animal's manure. The eggs hatch inside the snail. The worm larvae make their way to the snail's digestive system. The snail soon sheds the larvae inside little balls of slime. Each slime ball contains as many as five hundred larvae. An ant finds the slime and eats it. The ant in now infected.

Here's where the story becomes astounding. Fluke larvae make their way to the ant's tiny brain and take control. Somhow the larvae force the ant to act in a way it never would otherwise. In the evening, instead of returning to its nest, the ant climbs a blade of grass. It grabs the grass with its jaws and holds on. Why?

The flukes need to get into a sheep's stomach to complete their life cycle. When a sheep or some other grazing animal eats the ant along with a mouthful of grass, it gets a bellyful of worms. What if the ant isn't eaten? The next morning it crawls back down and goes about its business. But that evening, the worms take over and it climbs up another blade of grass to try again.

These last two examples are especially interesting because they involve a change in the appearance of the host, as well as behavior changes that only take place at night. For the sci-fi or folklore buff, this provides an explanation for countless stories about everything from zombies to werewolves. Is it possible that a parasite-infected human could have such strange behavior and physical changes to eventually inspire myths and legends that we still tell today? Of course, in order to believe that we would need evidence showing that human behavior can be affected by parasites. (You can probably see where I'm going with this one...)

Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite which affects warm-blooded mammals, including humans. Its definitive hosts are cats, with the intermediate host of mice and rats. The smaller animals pick up the parasite through cat feces, and then begin to be bolder and less likely to run away from cats. This unnatural behavior makes them more likely to be eaten by felines, and keeps the cycle going. The problem for humans is that we are also susceptible, and in fact Toxoplasma gondii is estimated to infect up to a third of the world's human population . Although the infection usually results in mild flu-like symptoms psychiatrists like Robert Yolken and E. Fuller Torrey have tied T. gondii to schizophrenia, and separate research from Kevin Lafferty has looked at broader personality changes among the infected. Interestingly, Lafferty has found that while both infected men and women were more likely to be guilt-prone and self-doubting, other symptoms such as changes in aggressiveness seemed to have a strong split between the sexes. And for the record, women show increased intelligence, while the men's IQ dropped. Lafferty's initial article is here, and is good reading.

So if we know that some parasites are capable of altering the mental processes of their victims, and we have clear record that such parasites can infect humans, how much of a stretch is it to imagine some new parasite that could reshape human behavior?

Pleasant dreams, kids.

From Beyond: new review at Ninja Camp

Just put up a quickie review of The Super Flash Bros' "From Beyond". Check it out the review at Ninja Camp or go play the game at the developers' site.

Priorities, and missing those who are gone.

Merlin Mann has an eloquent new post on 43folders.com. You can find it here.

There's two reasons I wanted to point to his article.

1) He talks about what it felt like when they took his dad's rental hospital bed out of the family home.  A couple of weeks ago when they took my dad away, and the next day when they took the bed, I was struck by how much of a void was left behind. The empty bed looked almost obscene sitting there by itself with the constant whir of its pressure adjustments silenced. I actually had to go find a blanket to cover the thing up, as though it were a corpse. And the following day, when the hospice people took the bed, I couldn't believe how BIG that room was.

I know that's a normal reaction, but it still felt good to hear someone else say it. And to hear them still say it 40 years on means that it stays with you. Good. 

I never want to forget the fact that 10 years after his stroke, after 9 months in a bed, and after almost 19 days without food or water, my dad still had a presence that could fill up a room and leave a near vaccuum when he was suddenly gone.

2) Mann's piece is really about priorities, and making sure that whatever your top priority is, it's at the top because you put it there. By definition your top priority trumps the stuff underneath it, and we all need to make damn sure that what we really care about isn't being choked out by something we feel we “need” to do. None of us can avoid making occasional concessions to reality, but if we don't fight that slow creep, it's so easy to let our souls get gradually pushed down the pecking order. And then instead of living, we're just going through the motions.

All of which seems a bit heavy. I'll try and get more giant spider factoids to balance it out.

Giant Spiders (the Spider Goat is real)

The other day I came across mention of Congolese stories of the J'ba Fofi. These creatures are supposedly giant spiders (about 5 feet across) that live in the jungles of the Congo, preying on animals and the occasional unwary human. I've always been told that such a large arachnid would be impossible, and out of curiosity I thought I'd try to understand the reasons why. In the process I came across something every bit as amazing as the J'ba Fofi: spider/goat hybrids which are living on a ranch in Wyoming.

As a fan of weird tales and unknown animals, I've seen the concept of giant spiders surface in popular culture countless times. Some of the more memorable include almost all of Tolkein's works, and of course all of the oversized 1950's sci-fi creatures. Ray Bradbury's short story “The Finnegan” is a personal favorite, as is “The Spider”, a radio drama which appeared on the show Lights Out in 1943. And last but not least there is an episode of The Twilight Zone that I personally credit for my fear of spiders to this day, an episode which was also written by Ray Bradbury (damn you, Ray!).

Reports of spiders the size of J'ba Fofi also can be found outside of Africa, from the Urban Legends of the American Bayou, and the stories that have filtered through the armed forces since the first Gulf War about Camel Spiders, with occasional emails getting passed along featuring photos of monstrous looking critters. In addition, tales of the Chupacabra, while not being described as a giant spider, often behaves as such, leaving its livestock victims drained of fluid, with two puncture wounds in their sides.

Giant Spider Reality Check: They don't get that big.

The Camel Spider photos are well-known exaggerations. In reality they top out a little over 6 inches in size, which admittedly is bigger than anything you want hiding in your boots. Their bite is extremely painful, but they don't attack humans or livestock, and thy don't jump onto your face. They're also technically not spiders, but I'm not pedantic enough to argue that point. See this article on Snopes.com for more info. 

There's a few reasons to doubt that spiders could grow to giant size in today's environment. Primarily because spiders do not have lungs in the sense that you or I do. Instead, they have either “Book Lungs” which are a series of flat sheets which collect oxygen, or tracheae which are essentially tubes that run into its body, or a combination of both. Generally speaking, the faster and more nimble a spider is, the more likely it is to have tracheae-dominant oxygen supply. The key point is that spiders, just like insects, don't have lungs to act as bellows pumping oxygen through their systems. Around 350 million years ago the Earth seems to have had a denser, more oxygen-rich atmosphere, which allowed insects' tracheal tubes to carry more O2 through their bodies without having to increase the volume of air processed. This allowed insects to grow to larger sizes and achieve flight easier, and there is evidence of insects which fall within the size range attributed to creatures like J'ba Fofi. While there is no fossil record of large spiders from that time (the one which was a possibility was later shown to be a sort of early crab), the difficulty of finding an exoskeleton fossil doesn't rule out the possibility that they existed. (And with some of the incredible fossil insects found so far, you never know what will turn up.)

An illustration from Britannica.com showing "Book Lungs"

What this means is that if a spider were of enormous size, then its physiology would have to be considerably different than spiders as we know them now. Their breathing system would have to function differently, and there may well need to be some element of skeletal support to replace/supplement their exoskelton. In order to see such changes there would have to be some major changes in the spider's DNA. But what are the chances that someone would go messing around with the spider gene pool? Well.....

Spider Goat Reality Check: Truth is stranger than fiction

In 2000, a Canadian company began breeding goats that had been modified with orb weaver spider DNA. If you're like me, this sounds unbelievable. Here's some coverage from the BBC, The New York Times,  and an informative video produced by VCU.

The rationale behind the project was based around the incredible range of potential uses for spider silk . From Lawrence Osbourne's NY Times piece:

Nexia foresees tapping into the $500 million market for fishing materials as well as the $1.6 billion market for industrial fibers in the near future. And the haute-couture world is already intrigued by a nearly weightless gossamer-like fabric. But the real gold mine might be body armor: the Pentagon is working with Nexia to develop a prototype of a new kind of vest that might be made entirely out of goat silk. The vest would be only a little thicker than nylon, but it could stop a bullet dead.

[...]

In any case, the properties of spider silk have long been recognized. Fishermen in India have always prized it for the making of their nets; American Civil War soldiers frequently used it as a surgical dressing. The problem lay always in getting sufficient quantities of it. Whereas silkworms are peaceful herbivores and can easily be farmed, spiders are aggressive territorial carnivores that need plenty of space and solitude. In farm conditions, they moodily attack and eat each other.

The solution to this problem was to find a way to create an animal that had the ease of husbandry and the silk production of spiders. Enter Prof. Randy Lewis of the University of Wyoming. He lead the team that spliced spider genes into goat embryos that were then cloned to make two kids. These goats were then bred, passing the added spider genetics down their bloodline. Nexia worked with a number of breeds, with the total number topping out around 500. There is a good summary interview with Randy Lewis here .

However, Nexia ran out of cash, and by 2005 hundreds of spider goats had been euthanized. The few dozen that remained were transported to another Canadian farm, where they were eventually picked up by Lewis, and brought back to Wyoming. They are there still, and the research continues. In January of 2011, David Pogue's “Making Stuff Stronger” program for the PBS series Nova spent some time at the facility and gives a very good explanation of the process (at the end of this episode, if you're curious).

Prof. Lewis and his team are doing good science and have really intriguing ideas. Although it's certainly startling to hear about a spider goat, it's important to keep in mind that it's only 1/70,000th spider. If you want to describe the process in a more palatable way, consider that spider silk is 100% protein, and goats' milk is filled with different proteins. These goats have just been tweaked to allow this one additional protein into their milk.

So if you've read this little article and if you still find the J'ba Fofi ridiculous, if you laugh at the unbelievable things that some people claim to have seen, then imagine siting down with a member of the Baka tribe, and explaining that in the middle of the United States, there are goats which are part spider casually living out their lives, running around on a farm munching on plants. And maybe, just maybe, those plants might also be part spider. Don't believe me on that one? Check out the University of Wyoming's patent application.

Pleasant dreams, kids.

spider goat photo from: https://sites.google.com/site/noespidergoat/3/3a