Window at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 9 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
17 November 2024
On a sunny day this month I was about to enter the back of Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) when I saw Venus rising in the sky. Not the planet, this was Venus on her scallop shell floating on translucent white waves in the sky above the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Actually she’s an optical illusion that’s In, On, and Behind the window next to the Portal Entry.
On the Window: The Venus herself is a sticker on the inside of the glass. Her shape alludes to The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, painted in 1485 (before Columbus!), in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
Behind the Window: Venus appears to be floating on translucent white waves but they are actually the edges of two giant clam shells in the room behind the window, seen faintly because of bright outdoor light. This photo gives you an idea of the shape. (This giant clam is not at CMNH.)
Frankly it took me a while to stand in the right place so the three images came together. When I examined the final photo, I decided that the reflected security camera to the right of Venus’ scallop shell was a nice modern touch.
If you’d like to see the Venus for yourself, approach the Portal Entry at the back of the museum (red arrow) on a sunny day. Venus and the clam shells are in the window to the right of the entrance.
Narrow openings don’t bother cats because their free-floating collarbones are attached to muscle, allowing them to flatten vertically.
Short openings are a problem though. Young cats make mistakes.
Cats: We’d had them less than an hour when Sid went in a hole and couldn’t get out – had to break the grill off to let him out. — caption on the photo below by cormac70
When I saw this NASA video of a spinning T-handle flipping in zero gravity it blew my mind. Does this weird flipping behavior happen only in outer space?
Naturally it is quite impressive in outer space as the object stays suspended while it flips!
Learn about the science, physics and math in this 14+ minute video: The Bizarre Behavior of Rotating Bodies, including why the Russians kept Dzhanibekov’s outer space discovery secret for 10 years.
Did you know that Tyrannosaurus rex was exclusively(*) a North American dinosaur?
He lived during the Campanian–Maastrichtian ages of the late Cretaceousperiod, 72.7 to 66 million years ago, on the former island continent of Laramidia which is now the western part of North America extending from Canada to Mexico.
This year they analyzed bones in a drawer at the Museo del Desierto that had been found in the Chihuahuan desert in northern Mexico in 2000. The bones were from a new-to-science relative of T-Rex!
Named Labocania aguillonae, the ancient predator was at least 6.3 m (21 feet) in length — relatively small by tyrannosaur standards [and] closely related to Labocania anomala, Bistahieversor sealeyi, and Teratophoneus curriei.
Unlike its heavily built cousin [T-Rex], this animal was long-legged and lightly built, with big eyes that may have helped it hunt in low light and a heavy snout for dispatching helpless prey.
… The species has been named Labocania aguillonae after Martha Carolina Aguillón, the local paleontologist who discovered it [in 2000].
In Greek mythology, Heracles (= Hercules) was the strongest and most courageous man on earth and the greatest hero of Greece. He often used his strength to help others but he was not very bright and sometimes experienced fearsome rages or (one time) temporary madness induced by the Goddess Hera that caused him to kill his wife and children.
Whenever Hercules caused trouble, he was always contrite and accepted punishment for his mistakes. He felt terrible about killing his family and willingly accepted the punishment of completing 12 impossible tasks, the Labors of Hercules.
The 10th task was to collect the cattle of Geryon (a monster), which were housed at the western end of the Mediterranean basin, and take them back to Cyprus. On the way there…
According to some Roman sources, while on his way to the garden of the Hesperides [to complete his 10th task] on the island of Erytheia, Hercules had to cross the mountain that was once Atlas. Instead of climbing the great mountain, Hercules used his superhuman strength to smash through it. By doing so, he connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and formed the Strait of Gibraltar. One part of the split mountain is [the Rock of] Gibraltar and the other is either Monte Hacho or Jebel Musa. These two mountains taken together have since then been known as the Pillars of Hercules, though other natural features have been associated with the name.
Interestingly, one version of the myth says the Mediterranean basin was dry at the time so Hercules’ action made it a sea again. It fascinates me that these myths describe something similar to what actually happened, even though humans would never have seen it. (According to Britannica the oldest known remains of the genus Homo date to 2.8–2.75 million years ago in Ethiopia.)
So now the Pillars of Hercules guard the entrance to the Mediterranean. No matter which way you sail through the Strait you will see them. In this photo a cargo ship is entering from the Atlantic so the Rock of Gibraltar in Europe is on the left, Jebel Musa (Mount Moses) in Africa is on the right.
p.s. At both sides of the Narrows there are governance surprises.
The Rock of Gibraltar and the town below it are a 2.6 sq.mi. British Overseas Territory called Gibraltar. It is not part of Spain. In 1704, Anglo-Dutch forces captured Gibraltar from Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession; it was ceded to Great Britain in perpetuity under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 (according to Wikipedia).
On the other side of the narrows on the Peninsula of Almina on the North African Coast is the town of Ceuta, an autonomous city of Spain. Ceuta is not part of Morocco. It is where the Pillars of Hercules statue stands, shown at top.
Almost four years ago, artist and photographer Robert E. Fuller posted this video of a baby wild stoat playing on a trampoline in his garden in the U.K.
Fuller has observed wild stoats for many years at his home in Yorkshire. The baby stoat that played on the trampoline in autumn 2020 appears to have started a trend. His video posted in July 2021 shows mother and kits at the same playground.
Yes, they are very cute, but … wild weasels are not good pets and it is illegal to keep them without a wildlife permit. If you want a pet weasel, get a ferret.
The fogging is done at dusk and night by a pickup truck with a dispersal (fogging) unit using insecticide Zenivex E20 (active ingredient etofenprox). I don’t have photos of ACHD’s trucks — this mosquito control truck is in Cuba, not in Allegheny County — but the photo gives you an idea of what fogging looks like. See photos of local fogging in the PublicSource article, linked above.
Etofenprox is a pyrethroid derivative which disturbs insect nervous systems following direct contact or ingestion. It is active against a broad spectrum of pests including Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants), Diptera (flies and mosquitoes), Hemiptera (cicadas, aphids, leafhoppers, bed bugs, shield bugs), Coleoptera (beetles), and Thysanoptera (thrips).
The fogging creates a miniature insect apocalypse for small night-flying insects touched by the insecticide. This ripples up the food chain to the plants, birds and animals that rely on them. One of them is my spark bird, the common nighthawk. PublicSource points out:
A bird conservation advocate agreed that nighttime pollinators could be affected, which could have ripple effects in bird populations, such as the common nighthawks that feed after dusk.
“Even when these products are used with the best intentions … in a highly targeted manner, they certainly do have the potential to affect non-target invertebrates,” said Hardy Kern, director of government relations of the birds and pesticides campaign at the American Bird Conservancy. “And these non-target invertebrates are really important food sources for birds.”
— PublicSource: Allegheny County ramps up mosquito control. Could it harm local ecosystems?
However, “The county wouldn’t need to spray as much if more people knew how to keep mosquitoes from breeding near their homes.”
And that’s where you come in. Mosquitoes breed in stagnant water. If you have standing water in your yard mosquitoes will breed there — even in a bottle cap. Dump out the standing water to kill the larvae. Dump out abandoned tires!
If you are being bitten by mosquitoes it’s most likely that those mosquitoes are being produced on your property. Mosquitoes do not like to travel very far. They are very weak fliers, and if they can find all the things that they need to survive on your property that’s where they will begin and end their life cycle.
— quote from PA DEP Video: Help Prevent Mosquitoes from Breeding
If you aren’t already avoiding black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) because of Lyme disease, yesterday’s announcement is another reason to be very careful.
The Allegheny County Health Department has announced that the first human case of Powassan virus disease has been detected in the area. It’s the first time the tick-borne virus has been seen in the county, and the first case in the state this year.
Powassan is a rare, but growing, disease that can only be caught from a black-legged tick bite. Initial symptoms can include fever, headache, vomiting, and weakness but it can also cause severe illness including inflammation of the brain (encephalitis) or the membranes around the brain and spinal cord (meningitis). This can result in long term neurological effects.
There is no treatment for Powassan and no vaccine. All that can be done is to wait for it to run its course and mitigate the symptoms.
#1. Check your body for ticks after you’ve been outdoors. There may be ticks in your own backyard so check every time.
How to do a tick check (image from PA Dept of Health & CDC.gov)
#2 Keep ticks off your clothes and skin. Wear long pants and long sleeves and spray your clothes with permethrin. Some suggest using DEET on your skin (if you wear shorts) but I can attest that long pants sprayed with permethrin is much better.
It’s Spray Your Clothes Day (photo by Kate St. John)
It looks like a skeletal sailing ship and in a way it is. Except that it walks. Like a giant bug.
Strandbeests are created by Dutch physicist turned artist, Theo Jansen, who has worked on them since 1990. He named them strandbeest which literally means “beach animal” in Dutch. They are native to the Netherlands.
Every year Jansen experiments in summer and designs new ones in winter in a constantly evolving process. Though the beests have existed for more than 30 years they became known only after he posted videos on YouTube about a decade ago. Since then the beests have been on tour. They came to the U.S. in 2014-2016.
And yet they remain mostly unknown, especially to people like me who live far from the beach. I learned about them last week in this 11-minute video that tells their story.
Endemic to Guam, where their indigenous name is “Sihek,” the Guam kingfisher (Todiramphus cinnamominus) has been extinct in the wild for almost 40 years. Though they nest in trees they were no match for the brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) which was accidentally introduced from its native range into Guam in 1946. Thanks to the Sihek Recovery Program the offspring of this pair at the National Aviary will be among the first to return to the wild.
Since their near extinction in the 1980s the Guam kingfisher has existed only in captivity with fewer than 200 individuals on Earth in 2017. The captive breeding program is increasing their population.
Yesterday two Guam kingfisher chicks hatched at the National Aviary began their journey back to the wild.
When the youngsters are ready for release they won’t be returning to Guam. Unfortunately the brown tree snake is such a successful predator that it overran the island in only 30 years and caused the extinction of 12 native bird species.
On Guam these snakes are so pervasive and so good at hiding that there is a real possibility they could hitchhike on outbound equipment and invade other islands. USDA has trained sniffer dogs to check everything for snakes before it leaves Guam including cargo and the airplane landing gear!
Guam is still infested with snakes so where will the young birds go?
When they’re ready to live in the wild they will be released at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, one thousand miles south of Hawaii and equidistant from New Zealand and the continental US. The refuge is mostly water with only 4.6 square miles of land. Research scientists spend short stints onsite but no one lives there permanently. Guam and Palmyra Atoll are marked on the map below.
