A freshwater fish as a predator and with a bird as its prey!!
The European catfish was introduced into the river Tarn in in France only in 1983. This is behaviour which has developed in just about 30 years. So the genetic pre-disposition of the catfish for this kind of hunting must have already been in place. Perhaps this is further evidence that the genetic portfolio of an individual determines the range of behaviours that are possible but which particular traits actually develop or come into play are determined by the surrounding environment.
In Southwestern France, a group of fish have learned how to kill birds. As the River Tarn winds through the city of Albi, it contains a small gravel island where pigeons gather to clean and bathe. And patrolling the island are European catfish—1 to 1.5 metres long, and the largest freshwater fish on the continent. These particular catfish have taken to lunging out of the water, grabbing a pigeon, and then wriggling back into the water to swallow their prey. In the process, they temporarily strand themselves on land for a few seconds.
Other aquatic hunters strand themselves in a similar way, including bottlenose dolphins from South Carolina, which drive small fish onto beaches, and Argentinian killer whales, which swim onto beaches to snag resting sealions. The behaviour of the Tarn catfishes is so similar that Julien Cucherousset from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse describes them as “freshwater killer whales”. …..
….. The European catfish is an alien, introduced into the Tarn in 1983, and currently flourishing there. Is it possible that these invaders have eaten too many local fish and are forced to seek sustenance elsewhere? Does this explain why it seems to be the smaller catfish that go after pigeons? Or is it that the smaller individuals are less likely to be permanently stranded on shore, or expend less energy in wiggling back into the water? Why, essentially, is a bird in the mouth worth being a fish out of water?
Reference: Cucherousset, Bouletreau, Azemar, Compin, Guillaume & Santoul. 2012. ‘‘Freshwater Killer Whales’’: Beaching Behavior of an Alien Fish to Hunt Land Birds. PLOS ONEhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050840
There are many industries which play the “science as marketing game” but perhaps the most blatant are the pharmaceutical and medical industries. Sometimes researchers are just unwitting pawns in the marketing game but in a sense they are also at fault in being susceptible to becoming pawns. This cautionary tale about the diabetes drug Avandia reported in the Washington Post only enforces my view that since society invests the scientist with an aura of objective truth-seeking, then society must also demand a measure of responsibility and accountability from the scientist. And that can only happen if scientists have a measure of liability for the “product” they produce.
Sometimes I think that for psychiatry and psychiatrists, all behaviour is abnormal. Of course there is a vested financial interest for the discipline – which is a long way from being a science – to include as many behavioural conditions as possible within the definition of what is an ailment. In many countries it becomes of great benefit for the “patient” to be formally acknowledged to be suffering from an “ailment”. It can trigger insurance payments and be the qualification for financial and clinical support. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders produced by the American Psychiatric Association is the most influential standard for diagnosis in the US and is extensively used world-wide. Currently the 4th edition is in use (DSM IV) and the 5th edition, DSM V, is scheduled for release in May 2013. The debates and arguments about what is to be included or removed from DSM V is reminiscent of political lobbying!
I have the perception that far more behavioural conditions are included as “ailments” than should be. In that sense psychiatry causes more illness than it cures! The APA invites ridicule when it indulges in (Slate),
While the Indian origin of the European Roma populations is linguistically and genetically well-established, accurate identification of their South Asian source has remained a matter of debate. A new open access paper PLoS ONE 7(11): e48477. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0048477now pinpoints the ancestry of today’s Roma to the ancestors of the Adivasi (“original people) tribes of North West India.
I have no doubt that the Care Pathways have the best of intentions to make an inevitable death as painless and comfortable as possible. But at best this is euthanasia and at worst it is something else. The latest article in the Daily Mail’s “campaign” is more than a little disturbing. If a Care Pathway – by definition – is intended to lead to a dignified and pain-free death then causing additional suffering by being put on the Pathway cannot be right. I am not sure where the ethical line goes but I cannot help feeling that a final painless lethal injection may be preferable to 10 days of starvation and thirst and suffering as feeding and fluids are denied and a baby shrinks to death.
Maybe the detection of fraud has improved lately but it is still highly unlikely that the majority of cases are being discovered. I have the clear perception that the increasing number of cases of manipulating or faking data that are being discovered is just the tip of the iceberg. These cases – as with the case described in my previous post about Diedrik Stapel – also demonstrate the systemic disinclination of peers to be critical or to find fault with their colleagues. Traditional peer review has always had its failings but is now also proving to be incapable of handling the huge increase in the number of papers being published. And the apparently increasing incidence of fraud among scientists will not change until scientists can be held liable for their misconduct. Academic freedom is all very well but it needs to be tempered with some responsibility and some corresponding accountability.
In the long run – over a few centuries – it probably does not matter. Scientific cheating does not alter natural laws or relationships but in the short term of our lifetimes the damage is considerable. Not only does it waste resources but the the misdirection of other scientific efforts leads to much work being done on a foundation of quicksand. On the shoulders of midgets!
In this case where Eric Smart has been found to have been falsifying data for a decade, the Office of Research Integrity has published its findingsand 10 papers are to be retracted and he will not seek grants for 7 years. 13 researchers at his lab “have moved on to other projects and endeavors.” The papers to be withdrawn have been cited over 100 times.
A new paper in the American Political Science Reviewsuggests that European colonialism was the key driver in establishing democratic systems of government around the world. Only states which had strong established political structures prior to the colonial wave managed to resist colonial rule and/or the establishment of “democratic” European institutions. According to the author, Jacob Gerner Harir of the University of Copenhagen,
”This could mean that perhaps we need to adopt a new view of the colonial era. Even though it led to massive exploitation and oppression of many people in the Third World, we can now see that it also contributed to the spread of democracy.”
There is a hint of defensiveness here, almost as if this work is also an attempt to justify the oppression and exploitation that was the main-stay of European colonialism.
Humans probably started selective breeding – artificial selection – with the domestication of the dog. Dogs diverged from wolves about 100,000 years ago. The earliest skeletal association of wolves with humans is also from about 100,000 years ago. The earliest evidence of an ancestral dog is from about 32,000 years ago.
It is not implausible that the first exercise of artificial selection is connected with the domestication of the dog and happened 50- 60,000 years ago.
Over the last 15 years or so I have often found myself advising employment seekers – from young graduates to potential Managing Directors – about how to write and structure their CVs. It has often occurred to me that in the heat of trying to write down everything that might conceivably be of some interest to somebody, the purpose and objectives of the CV are sometimes forgotten by the authors. Many CV writing guides are often focused on format. Some may even include something about content but most usually take the “purpose” for granted. In the overwhelming majority of cases the objectives of submission of a CV is to be first selected for an employment interview and then to form the basis or the starting point for the interview itself.
(Scroll to bottom of post for“Writing your CV” pdf)
If anything proves that he Greek crisis is essentially due to past profligacy it is the current improvement in the status of the finances of the city of Thessaloniki. And I have no doubt that it it was the entry into the European Union and the mirage which the EU creates of getting something for nothing which lay behind much of the public employees “jobs for life” attitude and the spendthrift behaviour that any self-respecting household would have eschewed. But of course the Greek crisis has been caused by just a small minority of Greeks. I suppose the analogy would be of a household where the husband was spending the family jewels on drink and a good time while his wife and family made do with whatever that was left. But what Thessaloniki is apparently showing is how to get out of the pit. And if Greece could have devalued their drachma and did not have the high value of the Euro as a millstone around their necks, the return of tourists and an escape from the depths would probably be faster.
With his craggy face, diamond earring and tattooed wrist, Thessaloniki mayor Yannis Boutaris looks an unlikely candidate to turn around the finances of Greece’s second biggest city.
But the 70-year old, who stands apart from the political mainstream, is pulling off reforms that have so far evaded the national government in a three-year-old debt crisis that has sucked in some 150 billion euros of international aid.
In contrast to the rest of Greece, this sea-front city of one million is shrinking debt, cutting business taxes to help firms and paying city employees and contractors on time.
