I do post on Patreon. The latest can be read at no charge, and includes a video of a ravenous black widow. The Patreon revenue is what is keeping them in juicy, delicious worms!
I am so confused…but then science is often confusing. I was reading this article in Science magazine that went against my impressions and biases.
For years, scientists have been warning of a precipitous drop in insect numbers worldwide, driven largely by deforestation, pesticide use, and other human activities. But the first study to survey insect populations on a continental scale—based on radar data typically used to study weather patterns—finds no evidence of widespread decline, at least over a recent 10-year period. Instead, the research—published this week in Global Change Biology—suggests bug numbers tend to be sensitive to the severity of winter weather, with warmer winters posing a problem.
What, no decline? But I’ve seen a dramatic decline here in western Minnesota! Could I be wrong? Maybe. My perspective is narrow and local, and I’ve been looking at a small number of species, just spiders, that I’ve assumed would be a good proxy for overall insect number. I could be totally off, misled by a local variation that fit what I expected to see.
So I read the source paper. First surprise: the title doesn’t say there is no evidence of decline, but rather “Systematic Continental Scale Monitoring by Weather Surveillance Radar Shows Fewer Insects Above Warming Landscapes in the United States“. So there is evidence of decline in areas that show signs of warming. The abstract complicates matters further.
Anthropogenic change is predicted to result in widespread declines in insect abundance, but assessing long-term trends is challenging due to the scarcity of systematically collected time series measurements across large spatial scales. We develop a novel continental-scale dataset using a nationwide network of radars in the United States to generate a 10-year time series of daily aerial insect density and assess temporal trends. We do not find evidence of a continental-scale net decline in insect density over the 10-year period included in this study; instead we find a mosaic of increasing and declining trends at the landscape scale. This spatial variation in density trends is associated with climatic drivers, where areas with warmer winters experience greater declines in insect density and areas with cooling winter trends see increases in density. Winter warming has a stronger negative effect on density at higher latitudes. After assessing temporal trends, we also use the 10-year dataset and atmospheric variables to model insect aerial abundance, finding that on a typical summer day approximately a hundred trillion (1014) flying insects are present in the airspace, representing millions of tons of aerial biomass. Our results provide the first continental-scale quantification of insect density and its response to anthropogenic warming and demonstrate the utility of weather surveillance radar to provide large-scale monitoring of insect abundance.
Right away, I have reservations. If my observations are insufficient because I’m looking at too few species in one locale, this study is using one technique with low resolution on a continent wide scale and one could argue that it could be equally insufficient and misleading. It is data, though, and should be part of any analysis of the problem. Let’s not pretend that their sampling method doesn’t incorporate its own systematic biases. It’s only going to detect flying insects that exhibit swarming behavior, and they’re only looking at daytime numbers. It’s a correlational study that associates declines with only temperatures, but I’d suggest that those other factors (deforestation, pesticide use, and other human activities) are so ubiquitous and difficult to measure discretely that they’d disappear in the analysis.
Also, their own data does show evidence of a decline…in latitudes above 40°.
Temporal pattern of change in insect density as a function of change in winter temperature. (a) 10-year trend in day-flying insect density as a function of the change in local mean winter temperature, colored by site latitude. (b) Temporal trend as a function of winter temperature at latitudes ≤ 40°. (c) Temporal trend as a function of winter temperature at latitudes > 40°. Fitted lines are derived from a least-squares linear regression on percentage change in insect density. Linear model with change in mean winter temperature, interaction with latitude, and longitude explains 18% of variation in insect declines.
They also see some interesting variations, like the effect of land development on the sensitivity of populations to change.
Temporal pattern of change in insect density as a function of developed land cover. (a) 10-year trend in day-flying insect density as a function of the fraction developed land cover in the landscape, colored by the change in mean winter temperature. Line is given by LM. (b) Change in mean winter temperature as a function of the fraction developed land cover. Line is given by LM, correlation coefficient = 0.37 p < 0.0001. (c) Change in mean winter temperature as a function of the fraction grassland in the landscape. Line is given by LM, correlation coefficient = −0.54, p < 0.0001.
Insect populations are actually increasing over developed areas? I’d like to know the baselines on that — this is a study over a short timescale of ten years, and who knows, minor fluctuations over areas where the population has already been decimated by development might appear as a larger percentage change. I also wonder if we might be seeing the effect of adaptation or invasive species on those areas.
I’d also be concerned that native grasslands are hurting.
They do argue that anthropogenic stressors are having a serious effect.
Although we do not observe continental scale declines, the spatial patterns of abundance trends identified in this study can pinpoint potential stressors or drivers of insect declines. Declines in aerial insect density were stronger in regions that experienced increasing winter temperatures. During overwintering, warming can decrease fitness by releasing organisms from cold-induced dormancy, thereby increasing metabolic rates, and depleting energy reserves. Winter warming may also result in increased mortality due to phenological mismatches with resources, and may extend the activity period for natural enemies and reduce pathogen die-off during the winter season. Negative effects of winter warming on insect abundance in temperate regions have been shown in local surveys of beetles, butterflies, and arthropods generally, indicating that winter is a particularly sensitive season for temperate ectotherms.
Sensitivity to winter warming varies across populations and is likely more common in cooler climates where thermal seasonality is strong. Our results show a negative effect of winter warming at high latitudes, with no effect at latitudes below 40°. This latitudinal interaction between winter warming and aerial insect density aligns with theory suggesting that climate warming will have the strongest effect on cool-adapted arthropods. For example, metabolic costs are greater at high latitudes, affecting organisms’ cold tolerance and resulting in greater risks of energy depletion if winters become warmer under global change. Experimental warming has shown that high elevation gall wasp species experience greater decreases in survival and fecundity than those from lower latitudes. These stronger responses from high latitude insects to winter warming are particularly concerning because the magnitude of warming under climate change also increases with latitude.
I definitely live in an area with harsh winters, which would explain how I have a strong impression of declines on the basis of local observations. I don’t understand, though, how the work in this paper can be used to minimize the changes in insect populations. I’m also a little concerned that it’s being used to endorse a hands-off analysis of relatively coarse radar data over expecting entomologists to get their hands dirty and get up close with the organisms.
Seriously, I’d love to visit the high Arctic. Utqiaġvik (formerly called Barrow) is the northernmost point of the United States, dangling on a small peninsula on the northern edge of Alaska. The sunset the other day was the last they’ll see for a few months, so it’s cold, remote, and dark, the kind of place I wouldn’t mind living in. The population size is about the same as the place I live in now.
I’m never going to get to visit it, though, so I’ll have to settle for the Utqiaġvik Sea Ice Webcam. You too can visit that website and observe the slow progression of darkness and ice in the Arctic. Well, maybe — right now it’s continuously dark.
You can also check out the sea ice radar and see what the ice is doing. It’s a little more lively than the town.
…one should spend some time with one’s spiders. I know it is numerically the 10th month, but it should be the 8th month by name, if not for some silly Romans who tried to squeeze a couple more emperors into the calendar. It was feeding day anyway, so I spent a little time giving them treats in celebration.
Here’s Blue, who gobbled down her mealworm instantly, and is now dabbling her toes in her water dish.
It’s getting more difficult to photograph Blue, because she’s covering everything with silk — when you look in from the side, it’s a haze of strands everywhere, and I have to remove the lid to the terrarium to lean in and see what she’s up to.
I fed the Steatoda borealis, the Parasteatoda tepidariorum, and the Latrodectus mactans juveniles as well. I’ve isolated about 80 black widow juveniles in individual vials, and am running out of room in the incubator, so there’s about 80-100 more left in a container together, like a giant colony of black widows. It’s a Darwinian world in there — I figure I’ll let the numbers decline and then extract the biggest survivors.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the isolated individuals, in spite of getting a bounty of fruit flies twice a week, are growing more slowly than some of the black widows in the communal container. Most are small, but there’s a few that stand out as growing distinctly larger than their siblings.
(Photos were taken immediately after I dumped a lot of fruit flies into the container, so they’ve all got their faces snout deep in dinner.)
I have to speculate that maybe, just maybe, some of the spiders are eating their siblings.
There was an interesting op-ed in the NY Times today (it’s been a long time since I could say that): We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself, by Stephen Greenblatt. Can you guess which scientific superpower he’s writing about?
Here are some interesting data.
According to the latest annual Nature Index, which tracks research institutions by their contributions to leading science journals, the single remaining U.S. institution among the top 10 is Harvard, in second place, far behind the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The others are:
The University of Science and Technology of China
Zhejiang University
Peking University
The University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Tsinghua University
Nanjing University
Germany’s Max Planck Society
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
A decade ago, C.A.S. was the only Chinese institution to figure in the top 10. Now eight of the 10 leaders are in China. If this does not constitute a Sputnik moment, it is hard to imagine what would.
Given Trump’s mantra of China, China, China
to blame that country, it’s amusing and depressing that he has completely handed over leadership in science to China. OK, and Germany. He is responsible for the abrupt change in status.
The article also makes a strong comparison.
From the start, this government investment in education wasn’t free of ideological interest. It was fueled by fear — fear of the Russians, fear of the atomic bomb, fear of falling behind in the “space race” — and intended to influence curricula. Not, to be sure, in the catastrophic manner of the Soviet Union, where Trofim Lysenko’s theories of genetics set back Soviet biology for decades, but rather by strengthening science departments across the country.
…
And now, notwithstanding its triumphs, the whole enterprise is in serious trouble. The Trump administration began its assault by using the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on many campuses to charge elite universities with antisemitism. The rationale has largely shifted to complaints about affirmative action, diversity initiatives, liberal bias and the like. Scientific research has been curtailed; postdoctoral fellowships have been abruptly canceled; laboratories have been shuttered and visas denied. The damage to scientific enterprise extends beyond our borders, whether it’s from the cancellation of nearly $500 million in funding for mRNA research under the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a kind of Lysenko lite — or the purging of data on which climate researchers around the world depend. We will never know what diseases might have been cured or what advances in technology might have been invented had the lights not gone out in the labs.
“complaints about affirmative action, diversity initiatives, liberal bias and the like”…sure sounds like someone we know at the University of Chicago.
I don’t know if I’d agree that RFK jr. is a Lysenko lite — he hasn’t come to the full power of a Lysenko yet, but you know that if he could he’d start imprisoning and deporting everyone who supports vaccination, for instance. Give him time. Give him a little more power and he’ll root out the Vavilovs in modern America.
What can we do?
For the moment, American universities still have the enormous advantage of their resources and their autonomy, and their joyous imaginative freedom. I walk through Harvard Yard on my way to teach a freshman course on great books from Homer to Joyce, and I am continually astonished by what I see and whom I meet. There are students from all over the world — from Mongolia as well as my hometown, Newton, Mass., from Athens in Ohio and Athens in Greece — and there are colleagues who have been immersed in a wide range of pursuits, from creating the first image of a black hole in space to deciphering the words on a scrap of ancient papyrus. We need to get up from under our desks and persuade our fellow citizens that the institutions that they have helped create with their tax dollars are incredibly precious and important.
That’s nice and optimistic, but I think it’s harder to restore prestige than that, and also we’ve permanently changed our prospects for the future — who would want a career in a US university when all it takes is a single election to completely shred our scientific institutions? We’re going to be forever aware that we’re on shaky ground.
When capitalism trumps science…this is Donald Morisky. He developed a useful tool called the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale, a questionnaire you can use to determine the likelihood someone will stick to a regimen of medication. It’s only 8 questions long, but I can see how it would be valuable.
Don’t belittle it because it’s only 8 questions, though. The hard part is validation — you’ve got to run it through a lot of trials and actually confirm its accuracy. So I expect that Morisky actually invested a lot of effort in the project.
There is some controversy over it, but that’s to be expected — it’s psychology, after all.
The tool initially involved four questions but in 2008 expanded to eight. But the paper describing the longer questionnaire was retracted in 2023 after one critic claimed the scale was no more accurate than flipping a coin.
The usual reward for this kind of research is that you publish it, you get respect and fame for it, and then researchers around the world cite your paper and you get even more well known. You get tenure. You get invited to talk at conferences about your scale. The usual.
Morisky took a different route. He published it, and then slapped a copyright on it, and allowed other researchers to use it IF they coughed up a hefty fee. The fee seems to be wildly plastic — some people get billed $500, others get a demand for $7500. Some get to use it for free.
Morisky has added a new wrinkle to his profit-making scheme: if he doesn’t get his money, he will demand that papers that used his scale be retracted.
By our count, there have been at least nine retractions for licensing issues related to the MMAS. But not all retractions of papers that use the scale explicitly cite a reason in the notice, so the number is likely higher.
Those might have been good papers, but that doesn’t factor at all into Morisky’s criterion: did they pay Morisky, or didn’t they? I call it corruption. The only responsible approach is to refuse to use the scale and to develop your own independent measures, but as I said above, that is hard work. In science, we’re supposed to be able to stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, but I guess you can’t if your predecessor was Donald Morisky.
This is a photo of the gravitational lensing caused by a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy.
The cosmic behemoth is close to the theoretical upper limit of what is possible in the universe and is 10,000 times heavier than the black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy.
It exists in one of the most massive galaxies ever observed – the Cosmic Horseshoe – which is so big it distorts spacetime and warps the passing light of a background galaxy into a giant horseshoe-shaped Einstein ring.
Such is the enormousness of the ultramassive black hole’s size, it equates to 36 billion solar masses, according to a new paper published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Meanwhile, here on the Planet of the Dumbasses, in a country renowned for its dumbassery, a dumbass religious fanatic has convened a conference featuring three dumbass astronaut-apologists to argue that the entire universe is only 6000 years old, and that only the Planet of Dumbasses is populated by dumbasses who are able to look up into the sky and appreciate astronomy. You can read a long and thorough review of this dumbass conference, but the comment that jumped out a me was this one:
Ham went on to discuss the cosmos, naming various constellations and nebulae and demonstrating his familiarity with astronomy. He explained his belief that God had created the universe to showcase His power to human beings; as Psalm 19 says,
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.The universe, Ham claimed, has no other purpose than to impress us here on Earth with God’s capacity for creation.
So, apparently, a god assembled this gigantic black hole, 36 billion solar masses in size, unobservable until now, in 2025, just to show off. You’d think he could have done a better job of this one planet full of his dumbass worshippers with all the energy and power he used to construct an impossibly distant sphere of death, that we can’t visit and most of us can’t even see. However, the narcissism of this Christian god is far greater than 36 billion stars, I guess, which is why we’re supposed to worship his bloated ego.
To treat science as merely one belief system among many is to misrepresent what science is and why it matters. Claims that science is merely a tool to promote a certain political perspective (whether accusing climate researchers of fabrication or reducing medical research to “Big Pharma” profiteering) are rhetorically powerful because they reframe empirical findings as mere opinion. But while no human endeavor is untouched by ideology, the strength of science lies precisely in its effort to weed ideology out. NASA’s science missions must be protected, not despite the fact that their findings may challenge deeply held beliefs or even particular political goals, but precisely because they do. In an era when the authority of evidence is often undermined or dismissed, defending the integrity of empirical discovery is essential – not only for the future of space science, but for the very idea that reality can be investigated and understood without fear of the consequences of challenging dogma, whether religious or political.
The reviewer is too nice to say it, but I’m not nice. Fuck Charlie Duke. Fuck Jeffrey N. Williams. Fuck Barry “Butch” Wilmore. They are people who have betrayed truth for a religious lie.
Agustín Fuentes has published a new book, Sex is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary. I just started reading it last night — and it’s very good so far — so don’t expect a full review just yet, but El Pais has published an interview with Fuentes in which he discusses the main themes. As you might guess from the title, he’s rejecting the idea that sex is a binary, and further, that the general implications of sex are not reducible. He’s an anti-Coyne. He’s also strongly advocating for a view of organisms that incorporates environmental factors beyond naked genetics.
Q. You assert that sex is a biocultural issue… but many of the people reading this interview will think that sex is about biology, not culture.
A. That depends on how you define “sex.” If you’re speaking only about gametes, everyone understands that [an] egg isn’t a woman and [a] sperm isn’t a man. We have to rethink a little about what we’re talking about. Just think about our feet, which are biological traits. But at the same time, look at your foot and look at the foot of a person who has never worn shoes. The two are almost distinct: the structure of the bones, the muscles and the skin changes. When I discuss sociocultural contexts, we’re talking not only about the embodiment of culture, but the mutual exchanges between experience, perception, bones, muscles, digestive systems, vascular systems… there’s a lot of interconnection between our physical body and the world and the experiences we have. There’s always more intermingling and a bit more complexity.
One of the unfortunate consequences of the Mendelian revelation is that we’ve swung way too far the other way, treating the individual as nothing more than the combinatorial action of a set of genes. Development is a critical and complicated input in generating the information that makes up the individual!
Then he gets into a point I’ve made multiple times before: there are so many distinct criteria that are used to identify a human’s sex, so just the fact that there are multiple independent measures refutes the claim that there is one pure definitive definition.
Q. You write about how the concept of “sex at birth” isn’t very rigorous, because it can mean many different things. You talk about the “three Gs.”
A. In the biological context, we’re talking about typical categorizations based on three factors: genes, gonads and genitals: the three Gs. A 3G woman would be one who has ovaries, clitoris/vagina/labia, and XX chromosomes. And a 3G man would be one who has testicles, penis/scrotum and XY chromosomes.
The importance of using 3G is the range of variation: it’s a spectrum that has standard groupings. We assume that, by looking at the genitals, you’re sure to have the other two Gs. And it’s true that they’re highly correlated, but not absolutely correlated, not 100%. We must understand, biologically, that these categories don’t contain all the variation in human beings; there’s variation beyond that. And, among the 3Gs, there are people – more than we think – in whom one of those Gs is a little different. If we use only the genitals at birth, or the chromosomes or the genes, we’re leaving out a lot of extremely relevant information.
I agree, except I’d suggest that there are more than three factors used. Some people claim that behavior is a factor in defining sex — true women, as we all know, are submissive, while men are dominant and aggressive. We can pile up all sorts of stereotypes and associations and none of them are going to be universal.
Q. This 3G explanation doesn’t reflect the biological reality of 1% of humanity, as you state in the book, which is at least 80 million people. But if it reflects that of the 99%, so isn’t it natural for many people to say, “Well, 99% is almost binary, isn’t it?”
A. But what is binary? I’m not saying there aren’t things that are binary in human beings. Gametes are binary: sperm and eggs. But saying that human beings are binary is a failure. It limits us too much when we’re thinking about the full range of variation between human beings. A binary relationship is that of one and zero. They’re completely distinct. This concept is used in computer science, because there’s no overlap in any element: either you have a one, or you have a zero. But human beings – our bodies, our ways of being – aren’t like that. There’s nothing between men and women that makes them totally different, like one and zero, because they come from biological materials that overlap on that spectrum of variation in our bodies.
To say that we’re binary is philosophy. It’s not biology. It’s declaring oneself essentialist: there are [men and women], two types of humans. But our biology doesn’t validate that position. Yes, there are binary things in our biology, but to say that human beings come in two different types is false. And we can prove it. Genitals, hormones, brains, organs… when you understand the range of variation between our bodies, it becomes very clear that human beings don’t come in binary, but in typical sets.
“Almost binary” — how can anyone say that with a straight face? The word “almost” refutes the claim.
Q. Is this an attempt to invoke science to justify a model for people? A model for society and a model for women?
A. Trump isn’t using science; all of his executive orders are a total scientific failure. Science – by pointing out the range of biological variation in human beings – shows us that there are indeed several ways to be human. And that’s the important thing. In any country, in any culture, there’s a range in bodies and sexualities, but our cultures, our governments, diminish the possibilities of expressing [ourselves] and living within that range. We’re always on an average; we’re bits and pieces of the full range of human beings. And the main thing is to at least know what the possibilities of that range are… to understand that this is what being human is all about: variation, not a standard.
Our culture is always controlling where we can express ourselves. We’re biocultural organisms: there’s always a greater range of variation than what’s culturally accepted. And that’s the difficult part. Because many people are certain that “this is a woman and this is a man.” But if they start thinking, “My cousin has a slightly different body,” they then realize that there’s greater variation. We all know people who are outside the typical categorization, be it behaviorally or biologically, of what we think women and men are.
Wait — he didn’t answer the question! Should we have a different model for society, men, and women? I’d say yes, and I can see how Fuentes is addressing an implied point, by bringing up Trump’s anti-scientific attempts to impose a rigid binary structure on America. It is the scientist’s role to explain how our preconceptions about the universe are contradicted by nature, and the narrow perspective of conservatives is flatly wrong, and therefore is a bad foundation for building social policy.
Fuentes for president! He’s American-born, so he qualifies, but he “wants to regain Spanish citizenship for fear of the political degradation in the United States,” so I’d worry that he’s going to be part of the flight of intellectuals from the US.
I’ve taught human physiology, so I already knew about the limits of protein consumption: if you rely too much on consuming lean protein, you reach a point where your body can’t cope with all the nitrogen. Here’s a good, succinct explanation of the phenomenon of “rabbit starvation.”
Fat, especially within-bone lipids, is a crucial resource for hunter-gatherers in most environments, becoming increasingly vital among foragers whose diet is based heavily on animal foods, whether seasonally or throughout the year. When subsisting largely on animal foods, a forager’s total daily protein intake is limited to not more than about 5 g/kg of body weight by the capacity of liver enzymes to deaminize the protein and excrete the excess nitrogen. For hunter-gatherers (including Neanderthals), with body weights typically falling between 50 and 80 kg, the upper dietary protein limit is about 300 g/day or just 1200 kcal, a food intake far short of a forager’s daily energy needs. The remaining calories must come from a nonprotein source, either fat or carbohydrate. Sustained protein intakes above ~300 g can lead to a debilitating, even lethal, condition known to early explorers as “rabbit starvation.” For mobile foragers, obtaining fat can become a life-sustaining necessity during periods when carbohydrates are scarce or unavailable, such as during the winter and spring.
I’d never thought about that, outside of an academic consideration, since a) I don’t live lifestyle that requires such an energy rich diet, and b) I’m a vegetarian, so I’m not going to sit down to consume over 1200 kcal of meat (I feel queasy even imagining such a feast). But when I stop to think about it, yeah, my hunter-gatherer ancestors must have been well aware of this limitation, which makes the “gatherer” part of the lifestyle even more important, and must have greatly affected their preferred choices from the kill.
There is very little fat in most ungulate muscle tissues, especially the “steaks” and “roasts” of the thighs and shoulders, regardless of season, or an animal’s age, sex, or reproductive state. Mid- and northern-latitude foragers commonly fed these meat cuts to their dogs or abandoned them at the kill. The most critical fat deposits are concentrated in the brain, tongue, brisket, and rib cage; in the adipose tissue; around the intestines and internal organs; in the marrow; and in the cancellous (spongy) tissue of the bones (i.e., bone grease). With the notable exception of the brain, tongue, and very likely the cancellous tissue of bones, the other fat deposits often become mobilized and depleted when an animal is undernourished, pregnant, nursing, or in rut.
So a steak is dog food; the favored cuts are ribs and brisket and organ meats. This article, though is mainly focused on bone grease and its production by Neandertal hunters. I didn’t even know what bone grease is until the article explained it to me. Oh boy, it’s my first Neandertal recipe!
Exploitation of fat-rich marrow from the hollow cavities of skeletal elements, especially the long bones, is fairly easy and well documented in the archaeological record of Neanderthals. On the basis of ethnohistoric accounts, as well as on experimental studies, the production of bone grease, an activity commonly carried out by women, requires considerable time, effort, and fuel. Bones, especially long-bone epiphyses (joints) and vertebrae, are broken into small fragments with a stone hammer and then boiled for several hours to extract the grease, which floats to the surface and is skimmed off upon cooling. For foragers heavily dependent on animal foods, bone grease provides a calorie-dense nonprotein food source that can play a critical role in staving off rabbit starvation.
Skimming off boiled fats does not sound at all appetizing…but then I thought of pho, which is made with a stock created by boiling bones for hours, or my grandmother’s stew, which had bones boiled in the mix, which you wouldn’t eat, but made an essential contribution to the flavor. Those we don’t cool to extract the congealed fats, but they were there. Then there’s pemmican, made by pounding nuts, grains, and berries in an animal fat matrix, which now sounds like the perfect food for someone hunting for game for long hours in the cold. It’s one of those things which seems superfluous when you’re living in a world filled with easy-to-reach calories, but it makes sense. I’m going to have to think about that when I’m prepping for the Trump-induced apocalypse.
Examples of hammerstone-induced impact damage on long bones from NN2/2B.
(A) B. primigenius, Tibia dex., impacts from posteromedial (no. 4892). (B) B. primigenius, Humerus sin., impacts from posteromedial (no. 4283). (C) B. primigenius, Tibia dex., impact from anterolateral (no. 8437). (D) Equus sp., Humerus sin., impacts from posterolateral (no. 21758).
The main point of the article, though, is that they’re finding evidence of cooperative behavior in Neandertals. It analyzes a site where Neandertals had set up a bone grease processing ‘factory’ where hunters brought in their prey to be cut up, the bones broken apart, and then everything was boiled for hours along a lakeside. The place was strewn with shattered bone fragments! They also found bits of charcoal, vestiges of ancient fires. There was no evidence of anything like pottery, but they speculate that “experiments recently demonstrated that organic perishable containers, e.g., made out of deer skin or birch bark, placed directly on a fire, are capable of heating water sufficiently to process food”.
Not only do I have a recipe, I have a description of the technology used to produce the food. Anyone want to get together and make Bone Grease ala Neandertal? I’ll have to beg off on actually tasting it — vegetarian, you know — so y’all can eat it for yourselves.
I caught these two fooling around on the milkweed, naturally.
I also collected 3 Parasteatoda egg sacs nearby, so it’s not just the beetles getting in the mood.
