Wonderful Weird Science and its headlines

Coincidentally from the same (nonscience) NY Mag blog, The Cut.
I Too Want to Remain in One Spot for 7 Years

I think I love their headline writer

you should take a trip to the East Sahara . There , you can hear the dunes "sing" at about a 20 hz hum each dune has a slightly diff pitch and sometimes, very rarely, they harmonize, and it sounds like Throat singing.
Spooky

Singing sand occurs in about 35 desert locations around the world and also in areas with large beach dunes.
The sounds produced by the dunes can reach a volume of up to 100 dB and are usually around 100 Hz; however, frequencies of up to 770 Hz have also been documented.

One of North Shore’s most popular attractions is at Singing Beach, Manchester-By-The-Sea, MA. (Been there.)

yes but can yours sing harmony? We have em at the white sands in NM too but they are really low . Guys like Roger couldnt hear em

Fine, but did you ever hear roger singing?

now Ill be stuck with that thought in my head.
Thanks a lot for the brain worm.

An Old, Feisty Female Cardinal Bit the Same Scientist Eight Years Straight

Musician Plays Her Violin During Brain Surgery

Cuttlefish number sense better than a one-year-old human, research shows

Findings suggest that the cephalopods – which have the most complex brains of any invertebrate – also prefer quality over quantity when it comes to food
Elle Hunt, Fri 9 Sep 2016

New research suggests cuttlefish can not only count better than a one-year-old human, but they also prefer quality over quantity when it comes to food.

A study of 54 one-month-old cuttlefish hatched in captivity was carried out by Tsang-I Yang and Chuan-Chin Chiao, researchers at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. Their findings suggest that cephalopods count potential prey such as shrimps, crab and fishes, and make several judgment calls in deciding whether or not to strike.

Presented with different numbers of live shrimp, the cuttlefish showed consistent preference for the larger quantities, suggesting they had “number sense”.

The researchers also found that the density of the group of the shrimp did not affect their decision, and that cuttlefish took longer to decide when the numbers were higher. This indicated that the cephalopods were taking time to count the individual shrimp of each option, rather than making an assessment at a glance.

They pointed to similar studies of one-year-old humans, which found that babies could distinguish between one and two items, and two and three items, but no higher. Rhesus macaque monkeys could judge quantities of only up to four.
With cuttlefish able to distinguish between one and five and four and five, the researchers concluded that they “are at least equivalent to infants and primates in terms of number sense”.

Given the choice between one live shrimp and two dead shrimp, the cuttlefish also opted for the smaller quantity.

The researchers were particularly struck by their response to the choice between one large live shrimp and two small live shrimps, which depended on the state of their appetite. If the cuttlefish was hungry, it chose the single shrimp; if it was not hungry, it chose the two smaller shrimps.

The researchers concluded that this was a strategy of risk minimisation, with one shrimp in a group posing less of a threat than targeting one lone prey, and “probably an ecologically rational solution to the widespread problem of choice”: “For example, humans become more risk tolerant in their monetary decisions, as they get hungry.”

The study on “number sense and state-dependent valuation in cuttlefish” was published by the Royal Society in late August.

With the most complex brains of any invertebrate, cephalopods – a family that includes octopus and squid – are known for their sophisticated cognitive behaviours, including the ability to change colour in milliseconds.

Earlier this year, Australian researchers found that cephalopod numbers the world over were steadily increasing, potentially as a result of warmer ocean temperatures and reduced fish populations.

Complex ‘instinctive' behavior in general is fascinating. Some even say that cuttlefish are born knowing how to ‘hypnotize' a predator with those incredible moving patterns they can display.

As far as I know, there is no explanation as to how such behavior can be inherited genetically.
To put it in computer terms, Where is the bootstrap BIOS gene?

That the behavior can be inherited genetically is not in doubt. There's no training involved.

He has not. Neither has anyone else.

Ipso Facto. huh

Why yes, unless someone comes up with an alternative. It's a wide open field: complex behaviors are kinda hard to connect to biology. In the case of squids' (and humans') instinctive number sense, the explanation seems to be neuronal: their species (and ours) have neurons specialized in "seeing" each of the small numbers: 1, 2, 3, and 4. You can recognize four or three sticks immediately, instinctively, without counting. Squids can do the same. And like you and I, they have to take much more neuronal space and time to count that, say, a group of 7 stuff is larger than a group of 8.

Oh I don’t discount the possibility that there may be a more deeply encoded 'message' in its DNA that we have not yet unraveled,
but at the same time, I am not blind to the implications of such hierarchical structures. Such things existing without any 'designer', violates everything everyone from children to physicists know about entropy, statistics and logic. If you believe otherwise, you do so only on the authority of someone else.

The "designer" concept you embrace seems to try to void the entire methodology by which evolution accounts for itself. Evolution actually seems to use "whatever is already there and re-apply it on a different task.
Your comparison to computer science seems to ignore how biology works because every living organism is a separate " biochemical laboratory of potential change" and not an assemblage of exact copies all of which communicate via one means . Each of the biological organisms can be self directed by adaptation or modification via reproduction via combination.

You and I have been through this discussion already. My position is that, while I'm an agnostic re. the meaning of the universe and its origin, I find it almost impossible to imagine a "slow motion designer", who would have needed hundreds of millions of years to make evolution happen. The modus operandi of evolution is that of "learning by doing", trial and error, and it is incredibly slow. That doesn't fit well with my idea of a god.

I have challenged farmer, you and others to debate this question in scientific terms many times. In farmer's case, I specified that the first one to mention God or religious beliefs loses. He lost every time within three to four exchanges. The man just can’t keep his mind off that religious stuff.

This time you lost even before we began again. I did not mention 'a God'. I was discussing the probability that life as we know came to be by the natural causes we currently know about. If you wish to have a re-match, let me know.

But I am also very interested in anyone’s idea of a God so I would like to know what yours is if you are willing to talk about it.

I have heard the issue of 'time' in relation to both God and abiogenesis/evolution used many times. In the case of abio/evo, time is invoked as a magic ingredient. I guess the logic is that given a long time, anything can happen. Not a very scientific approach but it gets rolled out a lot.

In the case of 'God', you seem to object to a God that does things too slowly. It’s hard to believe you are taking the idea of God seriously if you insist on limiting him to your understanding of time.

From a purely scientific POV, there are many ways that it could be explained that from a 'God's' perspective, he could have made this universe five minutes ago. For example, Time virtually stops when below the event horizon of a black hole. He could wait there just long enough to have a snack then get back to things 13.8 billion of our years later. Time is a completely malleable thing. That's science, not religion.

So spill. What s your idea of god/God?