Category: nature

Mad Scientists and Human-Animal Hybrids

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Over at the University of Minnesota, scientists–are we sure we know what a “scientist” is, anymore?–are growing human organs inside animals and creating bizarre whatsits that could not survive in nature ( http://www.technologyreview.com/news/545106/human-animal-chimeras-are-gestating-on-us-research-farms/ ), Technology Review has reported.

Says one of the honchos on the project, Dr. Daniel Garry: “We can make an animal without a heart. We have engineered pigs that lack skeletal muscles and blood vessels.”

Way to go, doc. That’ll show all those people who said you were mad.

They’re also playing with human brain tissue in animals. In mice and rats. Gee, how badly does the world need mice and rats with human brains?

There doesn’t seem to be much supervision over this. But hey, they’re scientists, they don’t need any supervision.

Supposedly this research will lead to all sorts of medical breakthroughs. Yowsah. It’s part of the humanist utopia that our ruling class has promised to us. We’re gonna live 500 years. Nah, we’re gonna live forever. And we’re gonna have sex with really cool robots that can see in 3-D.

I am pretty sure God doesn’t like this. Not one little bit.

But don’t worry about a thing, because we are, like, totally in control and not one thing can go wrong.

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things.

A Praying Mantis Matinee?

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This mantis was waiting in line outside a theater where they were having a Heaven’s Gate revival.

Here’s  an awesome scientific experiment you could probably do yourself, if you had the patience and the manual dexterity for it.

Scientists have been showing 3-D movies to praying mantises, to find out whether the insects can see in three dimensions ( http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-praying-mantis-3d-glasses-20160108-story.html ), reports the Los Angeles Times. The purpose, supposedly, is to find some way to build robots that can see in three dimensions.

So far they have only shown the mantises little film clips of potentially edible bugs. But what would happen if you showed a mantis Gigli? Or Star Wars: The Force Awakens? How about a whole theater full of mantises?

And what if you could find out whether the insects liked the movie, or not?

The movie industry needs help. The average feature film costs over $100 million to make, and the makers lose their shirts on a fair number of them.

But in insects Hollywood has a potential audience hundreds of times greater than all of the people in the world. One swarm of locusts, or a couple of attics full of Chinese shield bugs, and you’ve made your money back!

Maybe we could even wind up with movies made for insects and watched by robots.

How much worse could they be than some of the movies we avoid now?

 

Gloom and Doom Report: Yellowstone Volcano

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The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof: the world, and they that dwell therein…   –Psalm 24

Fortified by hymns and a bike ride, I return to my journalistic function. Wahoo.

Today we have scientists warning us that the volcano under Yellowstone Park, or some other big nasty, might blow sky-high in an eruption: “a major one that could kill millions and devastate the planet” ( http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/632054/Yellowstone-about-to-blow-1-in-10-chance-super-volcano-will-kill-millions ).

Global Warming gonna get us… no, it’s the ocean gonna get us… we’re all gonna die…

There have been some pretty terrible volcanic eruptions in the past–like Krakatoa, or the one that destroyed the Minoan civilization, and Vesuvius is always itching to wipe out a few more cities. But it is not in the nature of a volcanic eruption to “devastate the planet.” I mean, The Planet is pretty big, and even the biggest eruption, by comparison, is pretty small….

If Christians warn people that God’s wrath is nothing to trifle with, and that He just might order the land to spew us out, well, they all laugh at us, or even shake their fists and make faces at us.

But when “scientists” warn us that we’re doomed, we’re all supposed to take it seriously.

They’re always trying to scare us. I think it’s supposed to whip us into line. There’s absolutely nothing they can do to prevent the volcano under Yellowstone from erupting; but if this story gets repeated often enough, you can bet the house that somebody in Washington will move to set up a Dept. of Volcano Safety and demand we all pay higher taxes. Or it’s part of Climate Change, and we must all pay higher taxes.

Or, like, maybe we could stop provoking God’s wrath?

I dare any public figure to suggest that.

The Sea Lily Walks

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Hi, Mr. Nature here, with our first video of 2016.

Here is an animal which most people, looking at it, would think was a plant. Scientists call it a crinoid. Some people call it a sea lily. These are very commonly found as fossils, but as you can see, they’re still around today.

This footage was taken by a camera on the deep bottom of the sea. Hey, is that the flower’s stalk dragging after it? Yes, that’s what it is. Imagine seeing that in your garden: a tulip crawling along, dragging its stalk behind it. Except, of course, the crinoid is an animal, related to the starfish. And it can detach its stalk from whatever it’s clinging to.

Doesn’t God make cool stuff? I mean, really, if you were creating the world, would you have ever thought of crinoids?

 

A Most Pettable Pet

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Oh-ho-ho, you and me,/Giant brown rat upon my knee…

Hi, everybody, Mr. Nature here–with the Gambian pouched rat. If you look around youtube, you’ll find a lot of people have these as pets.

Around here we’ve had many regular mice and rats as pets. Their only fault is that they have short life spans. Rats and mice are smart, affectionate, and cuddly. In fact, they’re so smart that, if they lived ten years or so, they’d be winning chess tournaments and giving financial advice.

I don’t know how our cats would like sharing quarters with a Gambian pouched rat or any other kind, and I don’t propose to find out. But it sure looks like this would be a nice pet to have, especially if you don’t have a lot of space.

Yes, I know–some of you just have to see a mouse or a rat, and you’re outta here. But I also know that, when I used to bring one of my rats to see the vet, and had her–the rat, not the vet–sitting patiently on my shoulder, as good as gold, people who were at first quite unhappy even to see the rat wound up petting her and going kitchy-koo.

Praise God, for giving us animals that we can love and that can love us back. If we had been creating the world, we never would have thought of that.

Monarch Butterfly Crosses the Atlantic Ocean

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Here’s another fragile butterfly: this one has survived a cold snap.

Hi, Mr. Nature here, celebrating the wonders of God’s Creation.

What could be more fragile than a butterfly? If you handle one, the wings might crumble in your hand.

But in 2012, crowds of bird-watchers in Dorset, Southwest England, gathered around to see a monarch butterfly with a tattered left wing–a butterfly that could only have gotten there by crossing the Atlantic Ocean ( http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-19557711 ).

Okay, so he had a little help from the wind. Most likely he didn’t have a choice in the matter. Nevertheless, there he was. Scientists reckon he got caught in the wind, swept up into a high altitude, and blown clear across the ocean.

Monarchs don’t take root in England because milkweed doesn’t grow there and that’s what the monarch caterpillars need to eat. (It makes them toxic to predators.) But on the rare occasions when they do make it to England, at least they seem to find the flowers to their liking.

Butterflies on a Butterfly Bush

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Hi! Mr. Nature here, on a cold, rainy, miserable day in New Jersey, our second in a row–and tomorrow isn’t predicted to be any nicer.

If your weather is behaving as badly as mine, I thought you might enjoy this little video of butterflies enjoying a butterfly bush in someone’s garden. Several different kinds of swallowtails show up.

My grandpa always had a butterfly bush in his garden. How I miss it!

Thankfully, there’s always youtube. So let’s flutter back, in our imaginations, to the early summer…

A Hard Day Around the Bird Feeder

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Just to enjoy and relax with something that the bad guys haven’t yet managed to corrupt and destroy… Here’s a cardinal trying to enjoy his lunch at a bird feeder; but sparrows keep trying to horn in on it. The cardinal has some patience with them, but they quickly use it up.

No one gets hurt, though.

Cardinals are not uncommon in my neighborhood. I love their glorious redness and their wide repertory of calls and songs. If you hear it and you don’t know what it is, it’s probably a cardinal.

My Pet Tree Frog

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Hyla versicolor.jpg

Behold the grey tree frog, hyla versicolor. He also comes in bright green, because he has the ability to change colors.

These are about the nicest frogs you can have as pets. They tame fast. Mine would perch on my finger like a canary–their toes can curl, and also stick to slippery surfaces, like glass–and snap up mealworms I offered with the other hand.

I once had three of these; and because it was springtime, mating season, every night they used to line up on a stick and sing. The Tree Frog trio. They would sing all night long. And very loudly. So loudly, my housemates finally forced me to release the frogs back into the wild.

And that’s it for today from Mr. Nature.

The Mystery of the Jersey Devil

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Here is the definitive work on the Jersey Devil. Yes, I know co-author Ray Miller is my brother-in-law. That doesn’t mean there’s no Jersey Devil. Doesn’t mean there is, either.

For those of us who think we know everything, or someday will know everything (thanks to Science), allow me to introduce the Jersey Devil.

Stories of the Jersey Devil have been circulating in New Jersey since the 1730s, and encounters with him, or it, are still being reported today ( http://weirdnj.com/stories/jersey-devil/ ). Normally associated with the Pine Barrens of southern NJ, the Devil has recently–so it seems–expanded his operations to the area of Round Valley Reservoir in the northern part of the state ( .http://thedamienzone.com/2012/06/16/jersey-devil-sightings-in-northern-new-jersey/)  Over the centuries, he’s also popped up in other states.

We are at liberty to say the stories aren’t true. There are an awful lot of stories, though. Thousands of ’em. And why should anyone but a kook want to go around saying he’s seen the Jersey Devil, when he hasn’t? Is everyone a liar? Is everyone a kook?

We don’t have the fire, but we sure do have a lot of smoke.

What is the Jersey Devil? Some say it’s just that–a devil, a demonic entity. Others insist it’s a flesh-and-blood cryptozoological critter, like the Loch Ness Monster. Or a raptor, like in Jurassic Park. The point is, no one knows. No one has ever known.

And, in all probability, never will.