Memories of 21, 42, 63 ... the 84th meandering

Stradee,

What if they holdup all the laws that consider dog fighting to be animal cruelty and thus, illegal, but say the first amendment protects the right to film it and profit from it?

Wish I could get to the original sources mentioned in all the notes (one printed here) because the research sounds so good.

October 6, 2009, 9:45 pm
‘Leopard Behind You!’

I’d like to continue Predator Appreciation Month with reflections on one of the more intriguing effects that predators can have on their prey: the development of a vocabulary of alarm. (Or should that be “an alarming vocabulary”?)

CREDIT Vervet monkey

This isn’t a complicated vocabulary, with thousands of words. Nonetheless, it’s clear that for many animals, alarm calls are more than simple squawks of fear. Vervet monkeys, for instance, use different sounds to warn of different types of predator. “Leopard!” is not the same as “snake!” or “eagle!” If you hide a loudspeaker in the bushes, and startle unsuspecting monkeys by playing recordings of “snake!” at them, they will look around at the ground. “Eagle!” makes them look up. “Leopard!” sends them scampering to the trees.

Vervets aren’t unique. Other primates " including Diana monkeys and Campbell’s monkeys " also distinguish between eagles and leopards. (Diana monkeys are elegant animals, with fur of several colors. Also, like male vervets and Campbell’s monkeys, male Dianas have a scrotum that’s a tasteful shade of blue.)


Tim Ockenden/Agence France-Presse Diana monkeys protectively cradle a baby.


Some animals make rather subtle distinctions. Gunnison’s prairie dogs have a different sound for each of coyotes, dogs, hawks and humans. More impressive, they describe what a particular dangerous animal looks like: a human in a blue shirt is announced differently from a human in a yellow shirt. Similarly, meerkats " those charismatic mongooses that stand on their hind legs to scan for predators " give calls that announce both the general type of predator (coming from the sky, coming from the ground) and how close it is " in other words, how urgently everyone should react. Black-capped chickadees " small songbirds that live in North America " have calls that say whether a predator is flying or resting, and if it is resting, how dangerous it is. For example, pygmy owls eat lots of songbirds; horned owls don’t. Sure enough, chickadees kick up more of a fuss about perched pygmy owls than they do about perched horned owls.

In and of itself, it’s not surprising that the sounds animals make are not just noise, or a reflection of the state an animal’s in (scared, happy and so on). But the subtlety of the calls " the full amount of meaning they contain " is only now being appreciated. Decoding animal sounds isn’t straightforward; indeed, alarm calls are among the easiest sounds to study, because the animals hearing the alarms tend to respond in ways that are easy for us to understand and describe " for instance, they stop eating and look about, or run away.

But here’s what I particularly like about all this: animals of one species often respond to the alarms of another. In a small way, it’s like those childrens’ stories that have rats talking to toads, or elephants arguing with ostriches.

Diana monkeys, for example, don’t use the same sounds for “eagle!” or “leopard!” as Campbell’s monkeys do. But they respond to recordings of a Campbell’s monkey shouting “eagle!” or “leopard!” just as they would to a shout from one of their own, or a sighting of the predator itself. Yellow-casqued hornbills " forest birds that have problems with eagles but not leopards " react to Diana monkey shouts of “eagle!” but ignore their cries of “leopard!” (Yellow-casqued hornbills remind me of aging rock stars: their head feathers have that kind of wild look.)

Predators sometimes respond too. After all, alarm calls don’t just let other animals know there’s danger in the area. They can also let a predator know that it’s been seen. Ambush predators, like leopards, often give up and go away once an alarm has been sounded.

Paying attention to the cries and hoots of others can be particularly important for animals that have a bad view of the neighborhood, or that spend a lot of time alone and thus don’t get warnings from their own kind. An example: Gunther’s dik-dik, a species of miniature antelope. These creatures live in pairs, in large territories. They have many enemies " leopards, lions, eagles, hyenas, vultures and the like " and spend much of their time hiding in thickets of undergrowth, where they don’t have a good view. So perhaps it’s not surprising that they tune into the alarm calls of go-away birds " which sit high in the tree-tops, announcing passing predators.

All of this makes sense: you’d expect animals to evolve to pay attention to all the information available to them, especially in matters of life and death. The more important question is, how do they come to know what the different calls mean?

The short answer is, we don’t really know yet. However, there are three basic possibilities. One: they are born with the knowledge " it’s innate. Two: they learn by personal experience, or by watching the fates of others. Three: it’s some combination.

Young vervet monkeys, for example, appear to have an innate tendency to shout “eagle!” " but they do it at anything that’s in the air, be it an eagle, a vulture or a falling leaf. They shout “snake!” at long, thin things on the ground " like twigs. As they get older they learn to refine their calls. This seems to be through positive reinforcement " when they make the right call, adults join in and do it too. (It’s tempting to think there may be negative reinforcement as well. One researcher reported seeing a mother run up a tree after her infant gave a “leopard!” alarm. But there was no leopard " only a harmless mongoose " and when the mother caught up with the infant, she gave it a smack.)

Moreover, many animals are quick to make associations between sounds and danger. In areas where wolves have been absent and then reintroduced, female moose that have lost a calf to wolves are much more attentive than other females to the sounds of wolf howls. Perhaps dik-dik fawns see their parents reacting to the cries of the go-away bird, and learn to do it too.

This subject is not merely of academic interest. Many programs in animal conservation depend on reintroducing captive animals to the wild. But if an animal doesn’t know what to be afraid of, it probably won’t last long Out There. Understanding how animals acquire fear of predators " and then teaching them what to be afraid of, and what to listen out for " may be essential if newly freed animals are to survive.

Notes:

For vervet monkeys responding differently to different alarms, and for young vervets being trigger happy, see Seyfarth, R. M., Cheney, D. L. and Marler, P. 1980. “Monkey responses to three different alarm calls: evidence of predator classification and semantic communication.” Science 210: 801-803; for a more lengthy, and fascinating, discussion of all this, see Hauser, M. D. 1996. “The Evolution of Communication.” MIT Press. (The description of a young vervet being smacked by its mother for making the wrong call is given on page 309.)

Hope everyone read that.

Herre is the analysis of the dogfighting video and First Amendment controvery, in plain English.

October 7, 2009
Court Hears Free-Speech Case on Dogfight Videos
By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON " Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wanted to know if Congress could ban a “Human Sacrifice Channel” on cable television.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked about videos of cockfighting.

“What about hunting with a bow and arrow out of season?” Justice John Paul Stevens asked.

“What if I am an aficionado of bullfights,” Justice Antonin Scalia wondered, “and I think, contrary to the animal cruelty people, they ennoble both beast and man?”

And Justice Stephen G. Breyer asked about “stuffing geese for pâté de foie gras.”

The rapid-fire inquiries came in an exceptionally lively Supreme Court argument on Tuesday in the most important free speech case this term.

The case concerns the constitutionality of a 1999 federal law that bans commercial trafficking in “depictions of animal cruelty.” The number and variety of questions suggested that most of the justices thought the law was written too broadly and thus ran afoul of the First Amendment.

In defending the 1999 law, Neal K. Katyal, a deputy solicitor general, cautioned the justices against pursuing an “endless stream of fanciful hypotheticals.”

Mr. Katyal reminded the justices that the case before them concerned videos of dogfights and that the law itself was mainly prompted by so-called crush videos, which cater to a sexual fetish. Those videos show women in high heels stepping on small animals.

But the 1999 law by its terms applies to audio and video depictions of all sorts of activities in which “a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed” if that conduct was illegal where the depiction was sold.

The case before the court, United States v. Stevens, No. 08-769, arose from the conviction of a Virginia man for selling videos of dogfights. The man, Robert J. Stevens, was sentenced to 37 months in prison. The federal appeals court in Philadelphia last year overturned Mr. Stevens’s conviction and struck down the law on First Amendment grounds.

Patricia A. Millett, a lawyer for Mr. Stevens, urged the justices to follow suit, saying the law could not be rendered constitutional by narrowing it through judicial interpretation.

“There is interpreting and then there is alchemy,” Ms. Millett said, “ and I think this statute requires alchemy.”

The law does exempt materials with “serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value.”

But several justices indicated a discomfort with the vagueness of that standard and with entrusting the question of a work’s “serious value” to prosecutors and juries.

“Could you tell me what the difference is between these videos and David Roma’s documentary on pit bulls?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Mr. Katyal, referring to “Off the Chain,” an exposé of dogfighting. “David Roma’s documentary had much, much more footage on the actual animal cruelty than the films at issue here.”

Mr. Katyal responded that “the line will sometimes be difficult to draw.”

Justice Scalia said the law violates the First Amendment by treating speech condemning depictions of animals fighting more favorably than speech celebrating the fighting. Mr. Stevens’s “message is that getting animals to fight is fun,” Justice Scalia said.

The hypothetical Human Sacrifice Channel came up late in the argument. Justice Alito described how it would work.

“Suppose that it is legally taking place someplace in the world,” he said. “I mean, people here would probably love to see it. Live, pay per view, you know, on the Human Sacrifice Channel.”

Ms. Millett haltingly said that Congress could not ban such a channel solely on the ground that it was offensive.

Mr. Katyal, to the apparent surprise of some of the justices, agreed, saying the First Amendment would not permit a law banning such a channel unless it could be shown that the depictions made the sacrifices more likely. The distastefulness of the depictions alone would not justify the ban.

The justices did not seem inclined to expand categories of speech outside the protection of the First Amendment, notably obscenity and child pornography, to encompass violent images unrelated to sex.

In child pornography, Justice Ginsburg said, “the very taking of the picture is the offense " that’s the abuse of the child.” In dogfighting, by contrast, she continued, “the abuse of the dog and the promotion of the fight is separate from the filming of it.”

Ms. Millett agreed. “If you throw away every dogfighting video in the country tomorrow,” Ms. Millett said, “dogfighting will continue.”

Justice Breyer suggested that Congress would be able to draft a more carefully tailored law focusing on crush videos and the kinds of animal cruelty that are illegal in all of the states.

“Why not do a simpler thing?” Justice Breyer asked. “Ask Congress to write a statute that actually aims at those frightful things it was trying to prohibit.”

“I am not giving Congress advice,” he added, “though I seem to be.”

China's efforts at reducing carbon emissions are paying off.

October 7, 2009
Climate Agency Sees China’s Efforts Paying Off
By JAD MOUAWAD

One sticking point ahead of global negotiations over the climate later this year is the contribution of developing countries like China, and whether they should agree to mandatory targets to reduce carbon emissions.

An analysis released Tuesday by the International Energy Agency showed that China could slow the growth of its emissions at a much faster pace than was commonly assumed because of its huge investment in wind and nuclear energy and its emphasis on energy efficiency. The reportalso points out that the global downturn is offering a unique opportunity to tackle climate change.

As a result of slower economic activity, global carbon emissions from energy is expected to decline as much as 3 percent in 2009, the steepest drop in the 45 years that data has been compiled by the agency. That compares with an average growth of 3 percent a year over the last decade, and means that global emissions will be 5 percent lower in 2020, even in the absence of new policies, than the agency estimated last year.

The agency stressed, however, that limiting the rise in global temperatures would require significant and rapid investments in clean technology. An “energy and environmental revolution” is needed to achieve meaningful cuts in carbon emissions and avoid some of the worst consequences of climate change, the International Energy Agency said.

“This gives us a chance to make real progress towards a clean-energy future, but only if the right policies are put in place promptly,” the energy agency’s executive director, Nobuo Tanaka, said. A deal at the global climate summit in Copenhagen at the end of the year, he said, “is crucial in this regard.”

Energy-related carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas, account for more than two-thirds of all greenhouse-gas emissions.

The report shows how governments can achieve cuts in carbon emissions through energy efficiency and investments in clean technologies that would keep global temperatures from rising more than an international goal of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit). The measures would lead to greenhouse gas concentrations being stabilized at 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide.

“The message is simple and stark: if the world continues on the basis of today’s energy and climate policies, the consequences of climate change will be severe,” Mr. Tanaka said.

The cost would be $10 trillion from 2010 to 2030, the agency said. But savings from energy efficiency would be about the same amount by then.

One of the report’s most intriguing findings was that China’s current policies were achieving much bigger cuts than expected. China overtook the United States as the world’s top carbon emitter in 2007 after more than a decade of rapid industrialization.

But China is building more nuclear power plants and increasing the role of renewable energy, raising efficiency standards in new buildings, and gradually moving the economy from its manufacturing base to services, the energy agency said.

As a result, China’s carbon emissions, which were 6.1 gigatons (a gigaton is a billion tons) in 2007, could rise to 7.1 gigatons by 2030, much less than the 11.6 gigatons that were expected.

“These savings would put China at the forefront of all global efforts to combat climate change,” Fatih Birol, the energy agency’s chief economist, said in an interview ahead of the report’s release.

Such savings from China could put the pressure on the United States, which has so far failed to come up with a coherent policy to reduce emissions, as well as other industrialized nations.

The world currently emits about 29 gigatons of carbon, and estimates are that that will rise to above 40 gigatons by 2030 if nothing is done. To meet the agency’s targets, and limit the rise in global temperatures, the world would need to reduce its emissions by 24 percent by then.

In the transportation sector, for example, which is dominated by fossil fuels, 60 percent of worldwide car sales by 2030 would have to be either hybrids, plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles.

One plan being discussed in the Senate would reduce emissions in the United States by 20 percent compared to their level of 2005. The House passed a bill earlier this year that aims for a 17 percent cut. The goal in the European Union, meanwhile, is to cut emissions by 20 percent by 2020.

Revenue of oil-producing countries drop by 16 percent from 2008 to 2030 if a global agreement to slash emissions is reached in Copenhagen. However, the cumulative revenue of members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries over that period, which would total $23 trillion, would still be four times as much as they earned from 1985 to 2007, which was $6 trillion, the agency said.

“The cost of addressing climate change is manageable,” Yvo de Boer, the executive director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said in a foreword to the report. “The cost of not doing so is unaffordable.”

Another water contaminant to worry about.

October 7, 2009
Regulators Plan to Study Risks of Atrazine
By CHARLES DUHIGG

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to conduct a new study about the potential health risks of atrazine, a widely used weedkiller that recent research suggests may be more dangerous to humans than previously thought.

Atrazine " a herbicide often used on corn fields, golf courses and even lawns " has become one of the most common contaminants in American drinking water.

For years, the E.P.A. has decided against acting on calls to ban the chemical from environmental activists and some scientists who argued that runoff was polluting ecosystems and harming animals.

More recently, new studies have suggested that atrazine in drinking water is associated with birth defects, low birth weights and reproductive problems among humans, even at concentrations that meet current federal standards.

The E.P.A. is expected to announce on Wednesday that it will conduct a new evaluation of the pesticide to assess any possible links between atrazine and cancer, as well as other health problems, such as premature births. The E.P.A. may determine that new restrictions are necessary.

The decision by E.P.A.’s administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, who took over the agency in January, is a significant departure from the policies of the E.P.A. under President George W. Bush.

For years, agency officials said that atrazine in drinking water posed almost no risk to humans or the environment. As recently as this summer, E.P.A. staff members argued that current regulations were adequate.

“We’re going to use our scientific resources in a new and more aggressive way regarding atrazine,” said Stephen A. Owens, who was recently confirmed as E.P.A. assistant administrator for prevention, pesticides and toxic substances.

“There are new scientific findings that deserve attention, and we’re going to engage our scientific panels in actively reviewing the work of this office under previous administrations,” he added. “We have a question: Did the decisions made in previous administrations use all the available science?”

A representative of atrazine’s largest manufacturer, the Swiss company Syngenta, said that she had not been fully briefed on the E.P.A.’s announcement. However, the spokeswoman, Sherry Ford, said, “we expect a positive outcome for atrazine at the end of this process.”

Ms. Ford added that the company “stands behind the safety of atrazine, which has undergone extensive testing. We are a science-based company, and we expect the E.P.A. to make sound decisions based on science, no matter which administration is currently in power.”

Observers say the E.P.A.’s announcement signals a significant shift.

“This is a dramatic change,” said Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. “There is growing evidence that atrazine could be a hazard to human health. This is a strong signal that the world is changing for some of the most widely used chemicals.”

Atrazine has become a lightning rod in disputes over how the E.P.A. has used scientific findings to regulate chemicals and toxins.

The agency was sued in 2003 by an environmental advocacy organization, the Natural Resources Defense Council, amid claims that regulators had ignored studies showing that atrazine was dangerous to some animals.

In August, The New York Times reported on recent epidemiological studies that suggested small amounts of atrazine in drinking water, including levels considered safe by federal standards, might be associated with birth defects " including skull and facial malformations and misshapen limbs " as well as premature births and low birth weights in newborns.

E.P.A. officials said those studies, as well as recent papers reviewing numerous studies that showed that atrazine interferes with the development and hormone systems of some animals, played a role in their decision to re-evaluate the chemical.

A Times analysis of E.P.A. records also found that in some American towns, atrazine concentrations in drinking water had spiked sharply, sometimes for as long as a month. Though the E.P.A. and Syngenta were aware of those spikes, they often did not promptly warn local water systems, and the reports produced by local regulators and distributed to residents often failed to reflect those higher concentrations. Interviews with local water officials indicated that many of them were unaware that atrazine concentrations sometimes jumped sharply in their communities.

But officials in other communities have grown concerned. Water systems in six states " Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi and Ohio " recently sued atrazine’s manufacturers to force them to pay for removing the chemical from drinking water.

The E.P.A. is expected to announce on Wednesday four meetings over the coming year of the agency’s independent scientific advisory panel that will focus on atrazine.

October 7, 2009
Editorial
No Going Back

The standard cartoons about evolution always look forward: A fish emerges from the sea and begins to walk more and more upright; or a row of primates strides ahead, each one more erect and human in appearance. We take it for granted that, in evolutionary terms, time’s arrow points ahead.

But, until recently, scientists had never really tested the biological law " first proposed in 1905 " that evolution couldn’t run in reverse. No one expects whole organisms to mutate back into their evolutionary antecedents. But what about the proteins we’re made up of? Under the right circumstances, can they find their way back in time?

The answer, it turns out, is no.

A University of Oregon research team has tried, in essence, to return a protein " called a glucocorticoid receptor " to one of its ancestral states by reversing the mutations that produced the modern version of the receptor. They discovered that the mutations happened in two stages " two separate groups of mutations. The trouble, they report in the current issue of Nature, was that each separate cluster of mutations produced a dead receptor, no matter which one was chosen first. In other words, there was no way the protein could select a preferable state that would lead it, in nature, toward its ancestral form.

Evolution opens gateways into the future. But it appears to close them " firmly " behind it as well.

Somebody at the NYT's editorial board has the same kind of mind as I have. And no, Danon, I am not posting these interesting tidbits elsewhere. You guys read them or it is a waste of my time.

There's a ten year old law banning the production and sale of animal cruelty videos - Stevens was convicted and jailed.

Here's the problem: In order to uphold the ban, then hunting magazines and animals rights groups could also be arrested and tried for distrubuting animal cruelty videos.

"The fact that conduct is repulsive or offensive does not mean we automatically ban the speech."

The justices repeatedly asked each side if, under the law, certain images could be prosecuted. Justice Antonin Scalia spoke about bullfighting. Justice Stephen Breyer raised other examples - quail hunting, the slaughter of animals, deer or bear hunting, or the stuffing of geese to make foie gras.

The NIH funds animal labs that have been fined by the gov for cruelty to lab animals. There isn't a law against using animals in testing labs.

The free speech issue is of course important and should not be taken lightly.
We just need to enact laws that are clearly written, so people such as Stevens remain incarcerated.

I can appreciate the article, sue

Deer warning calls are rare, but they are very distinctive. Coyotes sing before hunting, and all the critters without wings begin calling to one another "get the hell outta here"! The winged smaller birds chirp warn and disappear when hawks arrive. Even the wrens warn when Jays approach the feeders.

It is amazing how proactive animals in the wild are with their kind and other species as well.

OK, tks, and no offense, but I can't reconcile your instructions with anything displayed on the actual site. Sumac, could you please take over and rephrase? I have to register from scratch as I remember neither username nor password from back when - and it's many laptops ago so the site wouldn't recognize my IP. Thanks.

Hoft, then begin again.

Re-register at care2, then click the team link each day. (remember your password}

Here's the 'wolf' link - just copied the address from the care2 site:

http://www.care2.com/click-to-donate/wolves/

Sorry i couldn't be more helpful. If you need more info regarding team links, please e mail Beth. (no offense, sue)

Beth is the aktbird expert.

Tks, Stradee - I did find the wolfie link after realizing that when you write "display" your really mean "list" (sorry, too many years of talking to computers make you forget human speech patterns ) I'm sure Sumac took no offense, she knows me as long as you do. My California project is going along slowly - the Sacramento legislature is almost as bad as our own in Albany - but I expect to get there soon.

Progress - I got an account there, and I clicked for the rainforest AND the wolves, and the site now knows my IP, but I'm still not sure how to credit ehBeth's group. I'm now [email protected] and btw, do they forward e-mails?
Thank you Stradee

Hello everyone - all clicked and read sue's articles. Some interesting stuff re. the Supreme Court.

Welcome aboard Hoft.......Great clicking.

Your welcome, Hoft.

Call me when you visit California! We may finally meet for lunch, or chat on our cell phones....however schedules permit, it will be nice talking with you.

And Happy Birthday, H! Well not until the 8th, but just in case you miss a few days checking in at the thread, hope you have a marvelous celebration!

http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674 = Team Link

Care2 did send notifications for e mail, but i'm not certain if they still do.
You can check your e mail at the site though.

sumac, re. your 7 Oct post. I think I misled (see, I did it again) mislead you by misspelling the word rarefied. It means "relating to, or, interesting to a select group of people." That's we Wildclickers.......Sorry bout the misspelling.

All Mzspelled and creaked for today.

All clicked, and now I go looking for interesting articles.

I know that deer have a kind of bark.

Harlequin frog is near extinction, thanks to climate change.

October 8, 2009
Editorial
Ardi, Humans and Primates

Between present humans and our earliest prehuman ancestor, there is a direct genetic and evolutionary link, a clear map of descent that includes the earliest common ancestors we share with other primates. We just don’t know what it looks like yet. Whether paleontologists will ever be able to fill in all the details on that map depends on discoveries like one made by a team of scientists led by Tim D. White from the University of California, Berkeley " the fossils of a species called Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi for short.

According to a report in the journal Science, Ardi pushes the hominid story back to 4.4 million years ago and to a site in the Afar Rift region of Ethiopia. She (the most complete skeleton is probably female) also pushes the human story into a different ecosystem than Australopithecus, the grassland ancestor who lived, in various subspecies, as long as 3.7 million years ago. Ardi, who was discovered in 1992, lived in a “woodland with small patches of forest,” a discovery that downplays the importance of open grassland to human evolution.

Like Australopithecus, she walked upright without most of the characteristic postures of chimpanzees and gorillas. Her skull is smaller than Australopithecus, about the same size as that of a bonobo.

Paleontologists are not looking for a “missing link” between humans and present-day primates closest to us " gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. What they’re hoping to find is the earliest common ancestor from which the separate lines of development leading to humans and modern great apes emerged. Ardi is not that common ancestor. If anything, this find helps demonstrate how quickly early hominids moved down a separate path of evolution. It also suggests that living primates do not represent some primitive stage of a shared ancestry but are, as the scientists write, “highly specialized, but through very different evolutionary pathways.”

These are tremendously important discoveries, recasting the story of hominid evolution and making us eager for the next chapter.