Suppose you find yourself on an alien planet, battling with indigenous species. On your side, you have smarts, both natural and technological. The alien defenders have nothing; no technology. Well, they do have slime, but that’s all.
Brains against the brainless: Who do you think will win?
Blithely headed into tick-infested woods.
I spent a summer weekend with my family in a cabin in the Virginia mountains a few years ago. It was nature at its finest, until we discovered after a short walk in the woods that ticks seemingly rained down upon us and were invading our bodies as fast as their little legs could move. We were food, and they were hungry. Human-sized meals didn’t come around those woods very often, apparently.
The entire family, adults and children, stripped down to our underwear on the porch of the cabin, trying to rid ourselves of the invaders. Modesty took second place to the fear of miniature arachnids.
Once the imagined itching had abated and the baby was asleep, we soothed our nerves with puzzles and games, or reading from a well-stocked bookshelf. I picked a book with an interesting cover; it was John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War.
I cannot say enough good things about Scalzi’s debut novel, a futuristic science fiction, other worlds story. Suffice it to say, it features combat between Earthling soldiers and all sorts of bizarre and ruthless alien life forms. Although Scalzi didn’t write about invading armies of ticks, per se, I could easily envision such a terrifying encounter.
This author devouring Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War”.
I also think and write about extraterrestrial aliens. Like most writers, I assume ETs are sentient, and calculating. Depending upon the writer, those ETs may have either high morals, or no morals at all, but they always have a brain.
Lately, I’ve had to rethink potential plot elements dealing with intelligent life forms. The reason is, scientists now claim that a single celled animal, a slime mold, acts with a shocking degree of intelligence. The kicker is, being a single celled organism, slime mold does not have a brain.
Slime mold knows a good thing when it finds it. (Photo credit: SB_Johnny)
Intelligence without a brain?
Compared to slime mold, ticks are geniuses if we count the gray matter cells contained in their single-minded heads. However, according to a Japanese researcher the brainless slime mold can solve problems even scores of engineers could not easily solve.
Sounds like science fiction to me.
So now imagine the following storyline. Your spaceship lands on a verdant planet that has no higher, brain-possessing life forms, at all. However, what it does have in abundance is slime mold. And of course the threat from slime mold is easy to ignore — until it is too late. The mindless protoplasm senses all sources of food, and fans out in all directions, following the scent.
The ship’s science officer tries to warn the mission commander, but the arrogant and miscalculating commander responds with a volley of lead rounds into the nearest slime; which of course is not in the least bit deterred from its food-finding task.
And when the crew sleeps, as of course they must, the brainless mold finds the food sources, one by one, absorbing the human nutrients.
Human-sized meals don’t come around those woods very often, apparently.
Being brainless, slime mold cannot be considered cunning. But, one could argue, it’s not stupid either: it can’t be tricked. It is, if anything, relentless.
From a cinematic perspective this is not an entirely new theme. The 1958 movie The Blob starring Steve McQueen popularized the idea of mindless organisms devouring humans. But at that time there was no real science behind it. Now there is.
Some interesting science facts about slime mold are found in this link and the following Scientific American – NOVA video.
A Closed Circuit Rebreather diver in a Florida spring.
In technical or recreational rebreather diving, safety is a matter of personal choice. Wrong choices can turn deadly.
Some poor choices are made for expediency, while others are made with the best of intentions but based on faulty or incomplete information. As a diving professional, it is those latter choices that concern me the most.
David Shaw
A poignant and well documented diving fatality involved a record setting Australian diver, David Shaw. David was an Air Bus pilot for Cathay Pacific.
Professional pilots are immersed in a culture of safety, a culture that makes airline travel the surest means of long distance transport. David applied that same sort of attention to his diving, recording on his personal web site his detailed plans for a record setting dive to recover the body of a diver who died in the 890 feet (271 meter) deep Boemansgat Cave of South Africa 10-years prior to David’s ill-fated dive.
Despite his extensive preparations, David Shaw made a fatal mistake. Like those who fail to appreciate the threat of an approaching hurricane, David failed to recognize the risk of really deep diving with a rebreather.
Unlike other types of underwater breathing equipment, a rebreather is entirely breath powered. That means you must force gas entirely through the “breathing loop” with the power of your respiratory muscles. On a dive to 890 feet, you are exposed to 28 times normal pressure, and breathing gas more than five times denser than normal. The effort involved is enough to dismay some U.S. Navy divers at depths far less than David Shaw intended to dive. Yet in David’s own words, he had previously never had a problem with the effort of breathing.
“The Mk15.5 (rebreather) breathes beautifully at any depth. WOB (work of breathing) has never been an issue for me. Remember that when at extreme depth I am breathing a very high helium mixture though, which will reduce the gas density problem to a certain extent.”
He goes on to say, “I always use the best quality, fine-grained absorbent on major dives. The extra expense is worth it.”
“I have had 9:40 (9 hrs, 40 min duration) out of the canister and felt it still had more time available, but one needs to qualify that statement with a few other facts. Most of the time on a big dive I am laying quietly on deco (decompression), producing minimal CO2 (carbon dioxide).
In those words lie a prescription for disaster.
A rebreather scrubber canister containing granular absorbent through which a diver has to breathe.
David wanted to use a single rebreather that would accomplish two tasks — provide a long duration gas supply and CO2 absorbing capability for a dive lasting over nine hours, and provide a low work of breathing so he could ventilate adequately at the deepest depth. To ensure the “scrubber canister” would last as long as possible, he chose the finest grain size, most expensive sodalime available. His thought was, that was the best available.
Arguably, the two aims are incompatible. He could not have both a long duration sodalime fill and low breathing resistance.
Cartoon of breathing through a scrubber canister.
As illustrated in a previous blog posting, the smaller the size of granules you’re breathing through, the harder it is to breathe. Think of breathing through a child’s ball pit versus breathing through sand.
Perhaps if David had maintained a resting work rate throughout the deepest portion of his fatal dive, he might have had a chance of survival. After all, he had done it before.
But the unexpected happens. He became fouled and was working far harder to maintain control of the situation than he had anticipated. That meant his need to ventilate, to blow off carbon dioxide from his body, increased precipitously.
A sure sign of high breathing effort is that you cannot ventilate as much as is necessary to keep a safe level of carbon dioxide in your blood stream. CO2, which is highly toxic, can build rapidly in your blood, soon leading to unconsciousness. From the videotaped record, that is exactly what happened.
Purer A, Deason GA, Hammonds BH, Nuckols ML. The effects of pressure and particle size on CO2 absorption characteristics of High-Performance Sodasorb. Naval Coastal Systems Center Tech. Manual 349-82, 1982. (Click for larger image.)
Had David been fully aware of the insidious nature of carbon dioxide intoxication from under breathing (hypoventilating), he probably would have chosen an alternative method to conduct the dive.
One alternative would be to use a larger granule size absorbent in a rebreather at considerable depth (say, 100 meters and deeper), and reserve the fine-grain absorbent for use in a separate rebreather shallower than 100 meters.
David chose the fine-grain absorbent because of the longer dive duration it made possible. Although fine grains are more difficult to breathe through than large grain absorbent, fine grain absorbent lasts longer than large grain absorbent.
But that long duration is only needed during decompression which is accomplished far shallower than the deep portions of the dive. The time spent deep where work of breathing is a threat is quite short. He did not need the capabilities of a long duration, fine grain absorbent.
From the U.S. Navy experience, there are other problems with this dive which might have hastened the end result. A rapid and deep descent causes the oxygen pressure within the rebreather to climb to potentially dangerous levels; a phenomenon called oxygen overshoot. Thus he might have been affected somewhat by oxygen toxicity. A rapid descent might also have induced the High Pressure Nervous Syndrome which would affect manual dexterity.
While those contributing factors are speculative and not evident on the tape, the certainty of the physics of dense gas flow through granular chemical absorbent beds is an unavoidable fact.
No doubt, many have offered opinions on what caused David’s accident. I certainly do not claim to be intimately involved in all the details, nor familiar with all the theories offered to date. Nevertheless, David’s mistaken belief that using the “best absorbent” was the best thing for his dive, is a mistake that needs to be explained and communicated before this accident is repeated with a different diver in some other deep and dark place.
Thank-you for contacting Cosmic Capacity Corporation’s FAQ regarding our popular Personal Black Hole Product.
1. The price of your product seems astronomical. Will there be equally large maintenance fees?
As they say, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. But keep in mind, science has shown that if your PBH is not properly maintained it will disappear due to Hawking radiation.
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It is microscopic. That is the only way to make sure the PBH remains safe for the environment. And of course, CCC is an environmentally mindful enterprise.
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There is no higher security. Once in, there is no coming out.
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Any attempts to defeat it will cause a transitory swelling of the PBH, just enough to consume whatever is attempting to tamper with the device. Again, physics dictate that the swelling will be both limited and transient. Of course the device will be consumed in the process and your investment will be lost.
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CC Corp has to be satisfied that criminal elements are not purchasing our equipment for nefarious purposes, such as body and evidence disposal. While our device is obviously ideal for that purpose, we would be negligent to not screen, within the limits of the law, all potential customers.
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The physically catastrophic events occurring at the event horizon make safe any material entering it. For Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) questions, please contact our military sales representative.
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Well, as they say, “Garbage in, garbage out.” But security should not be your concern. Any universe spawned by human waste or discarded items is unlikely to be suitable for life as we know it.
9. The bullet riddled body of my traitorous Uncle Harry is unlikely to become a star or something on the other side. Right?
I admit it, my early training in physics has made me irritatingly sensitive to the principle of parsimony.
Parsimony, pronounced similarly to “alimony”, can be summed up by the following: the simplest approach to understanding nature should be considered before contemplating a more complicated line of reasoning. In a famous example, it is more probable that planets, including the Earth, orbit around the sun than the visible planets and the sun orbit around the Earth. Of course, in a different time that probability was not obvious to the common man. But then they hadn’t been thinking about parsimony.
Thank-goodness someone (Nicolaus Copernicus) did.
In the search for habitable exoplanets (planets outside of our solar system), the following statement was recently made by astronomer Steve Vogt in response to a storm of skepticism about a potentially habitable planet. “I do believe that the all-circular-orbits solution is the most defensible and credible,” he said. “For all the reasons I explain in detail … it wins on account of dynamic stability, goodness-of-fit, and the principle of parsimony (Occam’s Razor; in Latin, lex parsimoniae).”
William of Occam (also Ockham) was an English theologian of the 14th century. He did not invent the premise behind his razor, but he famously used it to slice through the complicated philosophies of the day and rebut them by an unfaltering demand for simplicity over complexity.
Photo credit: damianskinner.com
Medical students are taught essentially the same principle, albeit using different words: “When you hear hoof-beats, don’t think of zebras.” Wise physicians know that occasionally zebras do show themselves, but they should not be the first thought when a patient presents with unusual symptoms.
If simplicity is to be generally preferred over complexity, then an example in the diving literature comes to mind. This example annoys me to no end, but I’m slowly coming to terms with it. It is the growing popularity of referring to the respiratory effort required to breathe through a scuba regulator or a closed-circuit underwater breathing apparatus (a rebreather) as work (in joules, J) per tidal volume in liters, L.
When work in joules (J) is divided by volume (L), dimensionally the result is pressure (kiloPascals, kPa). To be exact, what is often called work of breathing in diving is actually the average pressure exerted by a person over the entire volume of a breath. The principal of parsimony says that if it is a pressure, if it has units of pressure, then we should call it a pressure (kPa) and not something more complicated, such as Work of Breathing specified with units of J/L.
The light grey ellipsoidal area within this pressure-volume loop is equal to the work (J) of breathing for that breath.
(Examples in the regulatory diving literature correctly using Work of Breathing with units of joules can be found in early editions of NATO STANAG 1410. EN250:2000 is an example using the units of J/L for work.)
I find in my dealings with non-respiratory physiologists, that the concept of work of breathing is difficult to grasp since mathematically it involves a definite integral of pressure over a change in volume. I have made various attempts to simplify the concept, but I still find knowledgeable medical professionals misunderstanding it. In fact, mathematical integrals seem to be as frightening to most physicians as poorly dissected cadavers would be to laymen. Even engineers who certainly should grasp the intricacies of work and power end up confused.
I’m sure it adds to the confusion when some diving physiologists speak in quotients. For example, since a cubit is a length of 48 cm, and a hectare is 2.47105 acres, you could describe a person’s height as 165,400 cubic cubits/hectare. Dimensionally, that would be correct for a six foot (1.8 m) tall individual. However, most people would prefer the units of feet or meters rather than cubic cubits per hectare. Certainly, the simpler description is far more parsimonious than the former.
The shaded area within this triangle is equal to the “Work” inside the previous P-V loop. By dividing by tidal volume, you obtain the average mouth pressure on the vertical axis.
For the same reason, it makes more sense to speak of a descriptor with units of pressure as simply pressure (kPa) rather than a quotient of work per liter (Joules/L).
If describing a simple parameter like pressure as a quotient is not defensible scientifically, is it defensible psychologically?
Maybe. The U.S. Navy has used terms like “resistive effort” to convey the impression that a volume-averaged pressure is something that can be sensed by a diver. To breathe, divers have to generate a pressure in their chest, and that pressure generation requires effort.
“Effort” is admittedly not a hard-science term: it doesn’t even pretend to be. However, the use of “Work of Breathing” connotes hard science; the concept of work is pure physics. But as I have shown, the way it is increasingly used in diving is not pure physics at all. So its use is misleading in the eyes of a purist, and undoubtedly confusing to a young engineer or physicist.
But to a diver, does it matter? Does it somehow make sense? Do divers care about parsimony?
Well, I have yet to find anyone who does not intuitively understand the notion of the work involved in breathing. If they have asthma, or have tried breathing through a too long snorkel, they sense the work of breathing. So I imagine that the inexactitude of J/L is of no import to divers.
However, I also believe that the over-complication of an arguably simple concept should be just as unappealing to designers of underwater breathing apparatus as it was to William of Occam or, for that matter, the designer of the Cosmos.
Not every animal that flies is an aviator. June bugs and mosquitoes fly without any particular destination in mind; they just seem to flit around, hoping to detect a random meal. In my way of thinking, to be called an aviator you have to navigate, to use the air as a travel medium with a destination in mind, either consciously or subconsciously. By definition, navigation is not random; it is purposeful. Migrating Monarch Butterflies qualify as navigators and aviators, and so do migratory Bats.
While visiting Austin, Texas, I searched the front pages of the Austin Telephone directory for points of interest. No. 1 on their list was the nightly bat show at the downtown Congress Ave. Bridge.
I was just one of hundreds (maybe thousands) of tourists waiting on and around the bridge to see the show that night. Once downtown I was told that about half of the 1.5 million strong Mexican free-tailed bat colony had already migrated to Mexico for the winter, but the remaining bats might put on a good show at sundown. They did.
Bats exiting the Congress Ave. Bridge, Austin, TX. From: http://joyridevideos.com/567/ignite-your-senses-in-austin-tx/
Once the skies had fully darkened, I saw what looked like a soundless horizontal waterfall of bats erupt from underneath the crevices of the bridge structure. Can you imagine 1000 planes a second leaving a major airport at the same time, using all available runways, with no controllers and no collisions? That’s how it seemed.
I watched with morbid fascination as a very fat bug made the biggest mistake of its short life by blundering near the bat departure pattern. At least five bats peeled out of the pattern and within milliseconds honed in on the hapless target. The first bat to the target must have gotten a meal because the squishy bug disappeared out of the traffic pattern with nary a puff of smoke. No NTSB investigation needed.
Walking up on the bridge for a different view I saw an even more incredible sight. Every once and awhile a bat jetting up the departure pathway would make a high speed 180° turn and head straight back into the torrent, without getting hit, best I could tell in the midst of the furiously flinging wings. It made the head-to-head passes of the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels look like child’s play. Why they did that I don’t know; maybe just for the adrenaline rush.
On the other hand, even the best aviators can screw up. I saw evidence of this back in Panama City while looking out at my pool one evening. In the dim light I could see ripples in the usually glass smooth surface of the pool. On investigating, I found a Little Brown Bat in the pool, spreading its wings to support itself by the surface tension of the water. They really were — dare I say it — water wings. But it was clearly tired and in danger of drowning.
Had his bat radar gone on the fritz? Or did he just mess up like the occasional seaplane pilot who becomes disoriented by a glassy water surface. On the one hand, bats can maneuver safely through a storm of oncoming high velocity fellow bats, but could be foiled by something as innocuous as a still water surface. Strange.
I guess even great human pilots have messed up for lesser reasons.
A frightened Little Brown Bat.
I scooped up the bat in a net and laid the wet furball on the ground to recuperate. Oddly, after a minute’s rest, the bat started crawling forward towards my foot using the hooks on its wings to pull himself along. Then he climbed onto my shoe. My Granddaughter who was watching the whole scene thought that was very strange. I did too.
But then the little water-soaked bat started climbing up my slightly nervous leg. I assure you the sensation of having a bat crawl up your leg can be discomforting, but my sense of curiosity was far more compelling. I was trusting he wasn’t looking for a place to bite me. However, as he got closer to my most sensitive region, that thought began to really concern me. Fortunately all he wanted to do was climb, to safety from predators I assume. At least he didn’t consider me a predator. Maybe he thought I was a tree: I was, after all, standing oh so still.
As he approached my neck I began to wonder whether he was a werebat, looking for a succulent neck. Then it occurred to me that fleshy earlobes might be ripe for biting — like fat bugs perhaps, in a bat’s mind. Yet strangely I didn’t feel threatened, even when I could feel his hooked wings gently grab a “handhold” on my neck.
I then realized that once he reached the top of my head he had nowhere to go. And the thought of a bat sitting on my head for a while was not all that appealing. I wasn’t about to pick him off my head without a thickly-gloved hand. They do have teeth.
So I choose a non-confrontational course of action. I leaned my head into a tall pine tree trunk, and sure enough the soaking wet little bat kept on going. The photo below taken from behind him shows him (or her) continuing the ever-so-slow climb.
Water-logged Little Brown Bat climbing up a pine tree.
I have mixed emotions about the fact that my granddaughter did not take a picture of me leaning my head against the tree — with a bat on my head.
Moral of the story for human aviators? The little guys are absolutely awesome fliers, with unbelievably fast reflexes, unerring navigation, and the best possible terrain avoidance equipment. But even they can screw up. And when they do, their survival depends on the help of others; others willing to take a risk to help the fallen air-critters.
I was pleased to share this Nature moment with my Granddaughter. After all, it’s not every day you get to watch a bat climb your Grandfather, from his toes to his head.
Every fall I look forward to the current of Monarch Butterflies coursing their way across our local roads and beaches in Panama City Beach, FL, searching for one last refueling stop before heading out across the Gulf of Mexico to overseas destinations. They know where they are going enmasse, so casually it seems, not in the least concerned about the doubtful safety of single engine flight over vast stretches of unforgiving water.
While over land, most fly low, at human shoulder height, perhaps looking for food. It makes for an almost magical walk outside — continuously being passed by little animated flying machines. When crossing roads, most of the migrating butterflies, but not all, climb to safer altitudes, and increase their speed. I like to think that strategy is deliberate, but it could in fact be nothing more than the effects of buffeting by the wake of passing cars. Nevertheless, their success rate at crossing roads seems to be better than that of squirrels, which are arguably larger-brained animals. But then squirrels are dare-devils, not aviators.
I have walked to the water’s edge, watching how the little aviators behave as they approach the beginning of their long leg over water. They do not hesitate, but fling themselves forward into whatever awaits them.
Whenever I witness this sight I want to cheer them on, like Americans must have cheered Lindbergh as he set off across the Atlantic for the first time. It seems like folly for them to attempt such a journey, but amazingly, millions of them make that transit every year.
Image Credit Flickr User Texas Eagle
The scene during their return in the spring is even more emotional. Walking on the beach at that time, you see the surf washing in the numerous bodies of those aviators who almost made it, reminiscent of the beaches at Normandy. And like the scenes of war, dragonflies lie in wait at the water’s edge attacking the weakened Monarchs soon as they cross over the relative safety of land.
I have been so infuriated at the sight of such wanton attacks that once I chased a heavily laden dragonfly with a Monarch in its grasp, and caused the little Messerschmitt to release its prey.
The Monarch I saved did not thank-me by landing on my shoulder to take a breather. It was too dangerous to stop, and it had places to go, places far away from the sea, driven by a genetic memory of fields of milkweed.
Oddly enough, experts seem unsure as to whether there is actually a migratory flyway from the Panama City area to Mexico, the over-wintering grounds for most Monarchs. To me the answer is obvious; even though the flight of roughly 800 miles over water with no place to feed is almost unimaginable. The little aviators make that trip, spring and fall, as proven by the millions of orange and black-rayed butterflies crossing the white sand shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and by the surf-washed bodies of those brave aviators who died in the attempt.
Migration map from Queen's University Dept of Psychology
This Christmas there is a fashion war going on in my front yard. It is a war of colors.
The harsh grays and whites of winter are invariably followed by a vernal bloom of pastel colors which ease our eyes away from bleakness, preparing us slowly for the cacophony of intense color we know as summer in the garden.
Fall, even in Florida, gives us one last chance at vibrant colors shortly before those Chrysanthemum blooms darken to become lifeless cocoons settling in for the cold winter.
At least that’s how it is in most parts of the world.
December in the Florida Panhandle gives us a reprieve from an immediate garden death sentence. Bouts of warm weather, following spells of cold, entice Azaleas to bloom, haltingly perhaps, not with abandon as in the spring, but celebrating in a measured sense the pleasure of 70° degree Florida sunshine.
Locals tend to say the flowers and shrubs are confused, but I don’t think Florida plants are as mindless as many gardeners think. I feel they are simply taking advantage of another opportunity to re-experience their glorious youthful days of summer. Don’t we humans do the same thing when the chance presents itself?
Gaillardia
This fall we planted both Mums and Gaillardia, and when both were in full bloom in October we noticed we seemed to have a bit too much yellow. The yellow Gaillardia were scarcely ten feet away from the yellow Mums. Both flowers had yellow petals and maroon centers. Whereas true gardeners would consider that a travesty, we, being somewhat more tolerant of our foibles, simply decided the flower colors complemented each other. And that is how it would have to stay until next year.
I have always been one to give flowers a chance to bloom again, and so as any caring husband would do, I asked my wife to prune off all the dead blossoms from the yellow mums, just to see if they would bloom again. There appeared to be nascent buds hiding beneath the green foliage.
It did not take long for us to realize that the trio of Mums appreciated the deadheading and repaid us with December blossoms. But much to our surprise, all three plants decided, in unison, to change their colors.
Now, true Fashionistas would proclaim underneath their breath that they would not be caught dead wearing the same wardrobe as the gaudy Gaillardia next door. And so they didn’t. They reversed their colors, wearing a winter coat of maroon accented by yellow centers.
When a Christmas visitor comes up our walkway, they are no doubt inspired by the clever combination of fall colors that still adorns our flower beds.
But I am confessing to you that we, the flower guardians, had absolutely nothing to do with it. The Mums managed a magical switch in color that we were powerless to even conceive, never-mind enact.
And I must profess, there is a certain aesthetic logic that the Mums demonstrated. After all, dark colors are more in keeping with the relentless slide into winter that will, sooner or later, catch up with northern Florida.
The Gaillardia blooms, on the other-hand, are optimistically unchanging, blithely unaware of what is coming. The first killing frost will, I fear, catch them quite by surprise.
Once the Gaillardia and Mums finally decide to rest for the winter, I wonder what color schemes they will be dreaminbg about. Will next year include even more surprises in the fashion competition between showy species, each trying to out-compete the other?
I called him Poncho Villa. He was an animal baby who stole my heart.
Our time together began as I was walking past the eaves to our Florida home and I heard an unusual scratching and distinctly animal sound. It didn’t sound like a rat or a squirrel, but whatever it was, it didn’t seem happy where it was. And I of course didn’t want it there either. I followed the sound around a corner, and saw that whatever it was, was trying to enlarge a small break in the eaves so it could get out.
It didn’t take me long to get a ladder and rip out a section of the eaves, and when I did, I saw the face of a baby raccoon. But as soon as I saw it, it disappeared around the corner again.
I would have to be patient.
Thinking that perhaps it could climb down the ladder, I decided to leave the ladder in place through the night. Hours later as I was pulling a car out of the driveway, my headlights shown on a nondescript little furry thing in the yard, several feet away from the ladder. I put the car in park, and leaving the lights shining on whatever it was, walked over to investigate. It was a baby raccoon, lying fairly motionless even as I approached. I assumed it was the one I had briefly spied earlier. When I saw how small it was I knew he must have fallen, hitting the ladder on the way down, for he was much too small to climb down the ladder.
His fall must have just happened because he had not moved far, and none of the local dogs and cats had found him yet. He was completely defenseless, and did not resist when I picked him up by the scruff of his neck, as I assumed his mother must have.
Fortunately I had a large metal cage we’d once used to house guinea pigs, and it made a secure place for him to spend the night while I researched what to do with him. As shown by one of the first photos I took of him, stretched out on a pool skimmer net, he was small.
I learned two things right away — he was far from being weaned, and he could barely see. One eye was covered in pus, and the other was barely open. I think that contributed to the fact that he did not scamper away from the base of the ladder; he was essentially blind.
I thought I was in luck because a veterinarian lived next door, and I quickly told him what I’d found. Surprisingly, he seemed very disinterested. I later learned he felt the baby had no chance of survival. But I was determined to give it a go, in spite of the odds.
The Internet taught me that he could be sustained by artificial puppy milk (Esbilac) given to him from a dropper. Sure enough, he avidly drank as I squeezed it out of the dropper. At that point I committed myself to raising him till he was weaned.
Like any baby, he fed frequently, and seemed to be thriving on the ersatz mother’s milk. I started taking him outside as often as I could just to give him a break from the cage, but he never wanted to stray more than a foot away from me. He had fully accepted me as his caregiver and protector.
He’d only been home a couple of days when it occurred to me to get a can of pressurized saline from a drugstore and wash his eyes, which had been undoubtedly damaged and infected by fiber glass in the attic. A gentle pulse or two of saline was all it took to wash away the pus from one eye and cleanse the matted goopiness from the other eye. He now seemed to be able to see.
But when I took him back outside, he looked up and froze. Instinctively he seemed to realize that he was exposed to predatory birds — he seemed the most afraid of any time I’d had him, which made him stick even closer to me when outside. So we spent more time inside than out.
It helped that my wife was out of state so she didn’t seem to mind the thought of a baby raccoon housed in the bathroom of our now grown children. But she explained he would have to be gone by the time she got back. That didn’t leave me much time to get him weaned.
We developed a routine; I’d feed him at midnight and morning, and go home at lunch to feed him again. He’d get more feedings in the afternoon and evening. Whenever I got home I’d find him hanging upside down on the top of the cage, making baby raccoon sounds, eager to be fed again. He was gaining strength. I’m sure he’d nurse much more frequently from his mother, but somehow my work schedule and his feeding schedule just had to work out. And it did.
I started trying him on grapes, with only very limited success. Other solids didn’t really interest him, but he loved simulated puppy milk. He was a messy drinker, just like a human baby, and much of what came out of the dropper went down his chin and neck. So sooner or later it was bath time, in the bathroom sink. Although he was not happy about it, he did not resist. After all, his body was the size of the palm of my hand, so he accepted the frustration of being washed with the same confusion and passivity as a newborn human baby.
Now that he could see, he became interested in new toys, although he was not up to playing with them like a puppy or kitten. I suppose that was too much to expect. He also was reluctant to leave his cage, and only with some trepidation did he sniff around when I pulled him out of it. To him the cage was security, where he slept and was fed.
It wasn’t long before I saw the mother raccoon, sticking her head up through a hole in the roof. A 100-foot tall pine tree had dropped limbs on a portion of the roof, breaking the plywood, and allowing water to enter enough to begin softening the wood. The pregnant mother coon had been looking for a roof weakness to exploit, and finding it, she literally ripped a hole in the plywood enough for her to enter and raise her offspring.
Apparently Poncho Villa, being mostly blind from infection, had strayed far from the nest in the attic and became trapped in the eaves. The access to the eaves was too small for his mother to squeeze in to return him to the nest. Had I not found him, he would have perished.
It was summer, and when my wife returned I had to move Poncho outside into the heat. As much as I hated it, at least his cage was in a shaded, covered porch, which had to be much cooler than the attic where he had begun life.
During one of my visits during lunch on a hot day, he taught me a lesson in regulating body heat. I found him sleeping soundly on his back with his almost bald stomach exposed to the air, and with all four limbs outstretched stiffly and all fingers and toes splayed widely. It looked like he was using his stomach and non-furred paws to act as radiators, transferring heat out of his body. Clever little baby coon.
Eventually he was very close to being weaned, and it was time to find him a more accommodating home. Fortunately, our local zoo had received a rescued raccoon baby the year before, and was excited to see Poncho. As shown in the final photo, Poncho was as uncertain about leaving his human mother, me, as I was at leaving him with the zoo.
I had grown fond of the way he would cling to my chest and stomach with his baby claws as I carried him around the house, and eventually the zoo. I would soon miss the chittering sounds he made, evident in the video at the bottom of this posting. I felt like a parent to him, and he responded as I suspect a raccoon kit (baby raccoon) would to its mother. Except for the nursing of course.
But at least the zoo gave him a physical checkup, vaccinated him, and groomed him for a role in fund raising for the zoo, a noble cause I believed. In fact, he quickly became a radio station celebrity. He never had much to say, of course, but the local radio personalities carried on about him as the zoo used him for promotion.
After a brief stint as a celebrity, he was taken to the farm of his zoo caretaker and was slowly transitioned for release into the wild, a wilderness that, unlike most raccoons, he’d never known.
Ironically, right after I saw the mother raccoon, and made a futile attempt to locate the nest, the raccoons left. The playfulness of his siblings led to their eventual undoing. I woke one night hearing chittering and scampering sounds in the walls of the house where I believed the nest to be, far out of my reach. As I stood in the room trying to localize exactly where the sound was coming from, one of the kits broke a wire in the wall that triggered the whole house alarm. The horn was situated in the attic near where the nest was, and as loud as it was to me in the room below, it must have been deafening to the raccoons. After that night, I never saw or heard from the family of coons again. I’m sure the mother moved them to a quieter neighborhood.
The video below is a fair representation of the sounds Poncho Villa made when I would come to feed him. The raccoon kit in the video appears to be a little older than Poncho was when he graduated from puppy formula to, of all things, animal crackers!
Pine cones are falling from the sky and smacking the roof with a thud, with all the earnestness of a piece of reentering space debris. The sound reverberates among the rafters, giving the impression of a large falling limb, sending us scurrying outside searching for damage to the roof.
It is October in the Florida Pan Handle, the time of year when pine cones eject their winged pine seeds. Once emptied, the cones are rejected by their parental trees like useless appendages.
Those seeds had begun their race towards destiny high in the outstretched branches of 100-foot tall slash pines, being nestled by the overlapping leaves of their natal cones. But once ejected from their nest, they were on their own, distributed by gravity, winds, and those always tricky helicopter aerodynamics.
Walking outside this morning I could see those seeds helicoptering down to the ground, or the pool. Those landing fruitlessly, without hope on the concrete were distributed forlornly like bodies on a battle field. But those landing in a pool, being swept towards the uncaring maw of the pool skimmer, did something interesting.
It reminded me of illustrations of the attempted fertilization of human eggs by sperm; all lined up, jockeying to be the first to the prize. The heavier seed end of the wing seemed to be attached to the pool ladder as if by magic, although I suspected some subtle electrical charge interaction with the metal.
This was not occurring in still water; there was a considerable flow carrying unattached seeds swiftly past those clustered around the ladder.
Click to enlarge.
But then I saw the seeds clustering around other objects, the walls of the pool, and in an almost Oedipal fashion, a pine cone floating in the pool. One cluster of seeds were touching their ends together as if in some group incest.
Keep in mind, each seed fluttered down on its own, singly. Yet when they met in the water they had an unexplained physical attraction, literally.
The last two photos made me suspicious that the attraction was not based on electrical charge, but on surface tension — somehow. In the photo of the pine cone you can see dimples in the water around the wings and seed, an observation that positively screams surface tension.
Just how surface tension works to orient these seeds in the way they do is unclear to me. However, I see an evolutionary benefit.
Concrete pools are not of nature. In nature, seeds falling in water might be benefited if surface tension orients the seed end towards the edge of whatever stream or pond the seeds fall into. If the seed ends can touch the soil of the earthen banks, then they have a chance to germinate. If the seed ends pointed away from the soil, they would eventually become water logged and sink, thus drowning the potential pine seedling.
In the following short video clip we see the strange maneuvering of three separate seeds, unattached except through some invisible force, moving to and fro in the eddy behind a pool ladder in a relatively swift current.
[youtube id=”CDmWVLZOpu4″ w=”525″ h=”439″]
One of the many joys of being human is discovering the beauty and mystery in nature. You don’t have to understand it to appreciate it.
Leopard Frog (Rana pipiens). Photo credit: Bill Sutton
The little fellow was fast, and wily.
I was chasing him around the pool with a skimmer net, trying to herd him to the side of the pool where I had some chance of scooping him up with my hands. As the net approached he would kick to the eight foot deep bottom and then gracefully glide, legs in trail, along the contour of the bottom and sidewalls up to the edge of the pool. In dark water that tactic worked beautifully because his enemies could not see where he was going. But since he was in clear pool water I could see exactly where he was headed.
I’d sneak around the pool edge, out of his sight, and then grab for him as he floated at the surface. But he’d invariably see me in time to flip over and kick to the bottom again.
I had to admire his strength, speed and agility. He was clearly in his element. And besides that, he could breathe through his skin, absorbing oxygen from the water. Neat trick I thought, as I remembered various attempts by engineers to create artificial gills for humans — attempts that have all failed — so far.
Tadpoles have gills, but those gills are lost as the tadpoles metamorphose into frogs. Instead, frogs use a combination of lung breathing and skin breathing, called cutaneous respiration. Breathing through their skin allows them to remain underwater for months during the winter, when they are hibernating. However, when frogs are actively swimming, their oxygen demands are quite high, as you would expect. As the chase continued I had no idea how much or how little oxygen he could extract from the pool water.
For cutaneous respiration to work, frog skin has to stay moist, hence their desire to be close to water. But this frog was in the wrong water. I was about to pour chlorine into the pool, and if he didn’t get out of the pool, he wouldn’t survive. The chase was really in his best interest, but he didn’t know that of course; he was simply trying to avoid becoming my lunch.
So basically he never had time to take a breather. I figured at some point he’d grow tired from all the exercise and would allow me to catch him in the net and lift him out of the pool.
I was wrong. Before he quit swimming he apparently ran out of oxygen, in spite of the fact that he was getting oxygen from the water through his skin. But he wasn’t getting enough; he passed out.
Well, that sure made it easy to scoop him up.
Once I got him in my hands, I started frog CPR. No, I did not give him mouth to mouth ventilation. But I did give his little chest tiny squeezes, thinking that would do him some good. Apparently it didn’t; he never regained consciousness.
I buried him in my garden with all the solemnity due a frog, and vowed over his little green body that I’d do better with keeping the chlorine levels up so future frogs would not be attracted to the pool. Of course that was for my benefit as well, because where frogs are, water moccasins are not far behind.
I think it’s tough being a frog.
I mostly kept to my promise, but inevitably, another leopard frog or two attempted to take up residence in my concrete lined pond.
Being a scientist, I decided to conduct an experiment. I repeated my earlier, potentially deadly chases, but this time I reacted instantly when the frogs passed out. Soon as they went limp I scooped them up with my net and laid them in the grass. Before long they recovered and started frog-hopping away. Speed was of the essence in their rescue, and quick reactions on my part worked to keep the frogs alive.
So yes, frogs can breathe through their skin, absorbing oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide, but only enough to support resting needs. When they are active, they must supplement gas exchange by gulping air into their lungs. Now I know.
(The loss of the first frog was an accident, not animal cruelty! Do not repeat this in the name of science, because it also is not science.)
I’ve since learned that I’m not the only person with frog-in-pool problems, and conveniently, small animal escape devices are available. Here’s a video of one that allows frogs to self-rescue without being dependent on any near-death escapes foisted upon them by me. (I’m not associated with the manufacturers or dealers in any way.)
