#science!

[cynicalclassicist]

We may well be going extinct in the next couple of centuries. We can speculate!

If humans were reconstructed from nothing but bones, they would 100% give us fur. The idea of “hairless except for the top of the head where the hair is actually the longest in the entire animal kingdom” would never come up

[kedreeva]

In more good news, the Sir David's long-beaked echidna, made an appearance on an expedition team's trail cams! This species hasn't been documented in over 60 years, and was thought to be extinct. This is also the first time a live specimen has been photographed/recorded, as the species was only identified in 1961 by a single dead specimen.

[bobcatmoran]

Holy crap, possibly the first ever live recording of a meteorite strike?

Debris samples were sent to the University of Alberta, which verified that it was a chondrite meteorite.

[qwantzfeed]

as a kid this was my favourite fantasy, way better than winning the lottery because the odds against it happening were SO much higher.  if it happened people would be like "damn, that person really beat the odds incredibly well.  not in a good way but still: objectively impressive."

[cherryblosom-themed-racoon]

On today's episode of cool animals from Madagascar!

Giant Emerald Pill-Millipede: when these enormous millipedes are all rolled up, their bodies can be as big as a baseball, a tennis ball, or a small orange

This species (Zoosphaerium neptunus) is commonly known as a giant emerald pill-millipede. The females can measure up to 90mm long (roughly 3.5 inches), making this the largest species of pill-millipede in the world.

There is a significant degree of sexual dimorphism in this species, with the males measuring only about 45mm (1.8 inches) long -- roughly half the size of the females.

Giant emerald pill-millipedes are found only in Madagascar, which is home to several endemic species of giant pill-millipedes (order Sphaerotheriida). The Malagasy name for giant pill-millipedes is "Tainkintana," which means "shooting-star."

Pill-millipedes use conglobation as a defense mechanism, which means that they can curl their bodies up into a spherical shape so that their dorsal plates form a protective shield around the softer, more vulnerable parts of their bodies, just like an actual pill-bug or a "roly-poly."

When they roll themselves up completely, they look almost like gently polished chunks of malachite, emerald, or jade.

Giant emerald pill-millipedes will sometimes form large swarms that travel together as a group. This is the only species of giant pill-millipede that engages in any sort of swarming behavior, and the purpose of that behavior is still unclear. The swarms often contain thousands of individuals, with almost all of them moving in the same direction, even when there is no physical contact that might allow the millipedes to "herd" one another along.

Their swarming behavior also has some very peculiar features, as this article explains:

During swarming, Zoosphaerium neptunus individuals pay little attention to their surroundings; many specimens were observed walking straight into and drowning in small puddles. Some swarms even display ‘cliché lemming behaviour:' in Marojejy, a large part of a swarm walked into and drowned in a small river.

No single specimen was observed walking ‘against the current,' all specimens were moving in the same direction (southeast), even when not in contact with one another.

Of 273 randomly collected individuals, 105 were males, while 168 were females. The males were 8.3 - 14.1 mm wide (average width 10.4 mm). According to the inner horns of the posterior telopods, all males were sexually mature. The females were 9.95 - 15.4 mm wide (average width 11.4 mm). All females displayed non sclerotized vulvae and were sexually immature.

Some researchers argue that the swarming serves as a defense mechanism, providing a layer of protection (or at least some cryptic cover) against local predators, but the swarming behavior is still poorly understood.

Important Note: I just want to remind everyone that these animals belong in their own natural habitat -- they should not be trapped, bought/sold, traded, shipped, collected, or kept as pets. This particular species does not survive well in captivity, either, and the demand for these "exotic" invertebrates is putting the wild populations in jeopardy. The previous article discusses those issues, too:

Another possible threat for Z. neptunus swarms are collections for the pet trade. There exists a large demand in Japan, Europe and North America for 'green -eyed monsters’ as pets. Giant pill -millipedes from Madagascar unfortunately have a very short survival time in terraria. The species is specialized on low-energy food (dead leaves), and adapted to the cool climates (<20°C) of the highlands. Specimens in terraria often starve to death quickly.

So I know that they're adorable and really, really fascinating...but let's just let them be their chunky, adorable little selves out in the wild where they belong.

Sources & More Info:

European Journal of Taxonomy: Seven New Giant Pill-Millipede Species and New Records of the Genus Zoosphaerium from Madagascar

Madagascar Conservation & Development: Swarming Behavior in the World's Largest Giant Pill-Millipede, Z. neptunus, and its Implication for Conservation Efforts

Bonn Zoological Bulletin Supplementum: The Giant Millipedes, Order Sphaerotheriida (an Annotated Species Catalogue) (PDF)

African Invertebrates: Madagascar's Living Giants: Discovery of Five New Species of Endemic Giant Pill-Millipedes from Madagascar (PDF)

[m0ose-idiot]

Ever wondered whether Yonderland or Ghosts is the sauciest show? WONDER NO MORE, let this Very Important ScienceTM put your mind at ease

[datasoong47]

Sound on!

[sephirthoughts]

Vincent’s lingering obsession with Lucrecia is excellent drama, but their story is not a doomed romance.

This is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think Lucrecia deserves nearly as much pity and excusing of her actions as she gets. This is not character-hate post, it's an analysis of a character I think gets short shrift as a Mother-Mary in a bell jar, and deserves better.

Lucrecia is morally grey. Charcoal grey. I love complex, morally grey characters, particularly when they're women, since usually women are relegated to roles that infantilize and objectify them, particularly in video games, which have historically been a very backward, androcentric medium. I strongly dislike brainless victims, subject to the whims of the male characters, without much agency, and Lucrecia was not such a character.

Lucrecia was an adult with agency and brains. She was a grown ass adult. She was a brilliant scientist. She made decisions with her eyes open, and even sacrificed her unborn child to her work. She is a very interesting character. The fact that she didn't idolize motherhood as the end-all of female existence, and that her obsession with her work was stronger than her desire to be a 'good mother' makes her far more interesting than otherwise. The fact that she regretted it later and wanted him back doesn’t magically make her a good person, or change the choices she made. It demonstrates guilt and remorse, which are part of character development. The bottom line is that she committed atrocities in the name of science, then felt guilty about it later, once she realized how devastating the consequences were to her personally. To say she didn’t know what she was doing or Hojo manipulated or controlled her is to infantilize and disrespect her character. She’s not some sacrificial angel who was a victim of circumstances; she was a willing participant in her own downfall.

Lucrecia is a tragic character, but she's not a romantic lead. Except in Vincent's head. After all was said and done, she had one of those too-late changes of heart that make tragedy so emotionally impactful. She had a human reaction to Vincent's death and felt terribly guilty for her role in all of it, as she should. That doesn't mean she loved him, it means she wasn't a monster. She lost her son, and gradually, Hojo's callous inhumanity and her inability to escape the net she wove with her own hands closed in on her. Did she deserve to never hold her baby son and never see him even once? No. But she caused it, with her own actions. That's tragedy. She was miserable, bereft, and riddled with guilt, so she made a last-ditch effort to make something right...by doing more insane science shit that turned Vincent into a monster. Seeing that she'd only made everything worse, she tried to kill herself, but was unable to, and thus ran off to become a crystal statue in a cave (this is a trope that I dislike, but that's the story, so that's what we've got).

Vincent is a bad judge of the circumstances. Vincent persists in seeing her as a lost love, and someone from whom he was unjustly separated by circumstances. The fact that he is so blinded by his feelings for her that he places her on this pedestal and can't blame her for what she did is excellent characterization, and I love it, but it's because he’s wrong. He loved her. She didn’t love him (I think she was in love with his father, but that's just icing on the tragedy cake, at this point). His lingering attachment, not to the real Lucrecia, but to the idealized version of her he has in his mind, is a very sad reality that adds so much delicious pain to his character. In the end, he is unable to blame her, because he loved his image of her (and Hojo is a way easier target for anger, because he's literally the worst), which speaks far more to his personal bias in the situation than to her actual role in it. She’s not moustache-twirlingly evil like Hojo but she’s not Vincent's star cross'd soul mate tragically torn away by cruel fate. Lucrecia was her own person.

In summation. Their story is not a doomed romance, it's a complicated, messy, ugly tangle of thorns, and one of the best written tragedies in a game that literally bleeds tragedy from every orifice. It's got one-sided love, obsession, mad science, betrayal, jealousy, fetal experimentation, murder, corpse reanimation, and a guy who can't die, and is left to deal with the consequences of everyone else's actions by himself forever. No one is innocent and no one comes out unscathed…strike that. Vincent is innocent and Hojo comes out unscathed. But still. Lucrecia is not a holy mother, she's not a brainless victim, and she's not Vincent's lost love. She's a person he loved, and who didn't reciprocate. Most importantly, she's a person. A whole-ass, complex, morally grey, fully developed person, who made terrible choices, then made even worse choices, and in the end, couldn't escape the fate she wove for herself.

And then wound up encased in crystal so she could be a pretty statue forever cause the game devs just couldn't help themselves I guess.

[alexseanchai]

...what.

oh that's for real. the fuck.

(actual medical advice is, unsurprisingly, talk to an actual medical professional about the symptoms that brought one to the conclusion of intestinal parasites, because assuming it's that when it isn't will delay diagnosis of the actual condition in play, and even of it is that which it probably isn't, there are treatments that don't have cyanide in)

(and though applying cyanide to parasitic worms in laboratory conditions has opened research possibilities including but not limited to potential new treatments for afflicted people, that's not because the cyanide killed them, because it did not do that; it's because the worms shut down the system that cyanide damages for long enough to clear out the cyanide, and it's that backup respiratory system that the desired new treatments are to target)

How did we decide cyanide smells like bitter almonds? How many people knew what bitter almonds smell like and also encountered cyanide enough to make the comparison our main point of reference? When was the last time anyone checked if it’s even true and not just something one random Victorian decided one day and we all went along with?

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Quotes:

"If you've ever had the chance to try a raw cocoa bean, you will realize that the aroma pretty much doesn't have anything to do with the conventional milk chocolate," Krug says.

That's because chocolate's aroma forms during the fermentation and roasting of the cocoa bean. Krug and her colleagues tried fermenting and roasting more than a hundred other ingredients, including apricot pits*, olive kernels, jackfruit seeds and potato peels, until they finally settled on oats and sunflower seeds.

*Apricot Pits?! I thought they had cyanide in them...

The goal for ChoViva isn't to replace chocolate entirely, says Max Marquart, who runs the business side of Planet A Foods. Instead, he hopes to replace chocolate in applications where it's merely an ingredient in a larger product. He cites candies like M&M's and Snickers bars or even cereal or ice cream with chocolate chunks.

@athelind (and anyone else allergic to chocolate): I hope this becomes a viable and widespread alternative for you.

[grampasoup]

Chicken Science Swednesday: Chicken as a liquid

Many people are unaware that some chickens, when exposed to direct sunlight, become puddles:

There is no reason to be alarmed, as this process is 100% reversible. Indeed, most chickens will return to their solid form within a few minutes of melting, without any external assistance.

Don't worry if you were unaware of this. Even chickens who are not currently puddles are often confused by these encounters:

[prize-pig-collection]

Any creature on earth would eat as much as it could, as often as it could. The pursuit of food, to sustain and grow your body, is one of the most basic instincts there is.

The only thing limiting most animals is:

Need to stay physically able to access more food, and escape predators (i.e. not get too big)

Lack of unlimited food supply

Luckily for you, modern humans have solved these problems. Stay inside on the couch or in bed, and you’ll be safe from any danger. Fire up your food delivery app of choice and whatever you could possibly want to eat can be at your door in minutes.

If anything, you deserve to be an immobile blob that’s constantly eating. If not, you’re rejecting the advantages that millions of years of evolution and civilization have blessed you with. And that just wouldn’t be right 😢

[boss-of-armadildos]

It's a bad black-and-white PDF scan. The original was obviously in colors.

I think this example in Sheath & Cole, from the same issue, is even more amazing:

Who thought this was a sensible way to convert paper articles to PDF??

Pictures of various black splotches against a white background. They are, allegedly, pictures of algae

from Vandermeulen et al, 1990, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071619000650221

Submitter comment: They really let you do whatever back then

[jokingluna]