Everybody Claps
From French opera to Amazonian tribe dances, performances will be rewarded with the noise of humans smacking their hands together in sync. Applause is a behaviour as widespread as humanity, but how has it become so ubiquitous? We know that clapping mimics the behaviour of apes in excited states – stamping, whooping and slapping are orang-utan reactions to food or friends. But primates don’t truly applaud unless they’re taught to. Lift your hands and clap them together. Think about what a complex action it is: cupping your hands so you burst the air pocket between your palms, having the energy to repeat the action, knowing what speed matches the people around you. So why this, over howling or kicking or stamping? Some theorists link applause solely to the group effect, citing the tendency of applause to synchronise — listen to the next slow clap you hear, and marvel at our ability to keep steady time. Clapping also tends to be prompted by a group experience, like a punchline or a spectacle. Research at York University shows that just as people laugh louder in company to prove they’ve gotten a joke, applause is more synchronous in response to a snappy turn of phrase. It makes us feel included, a part of the group, and so has an evolutionary basis. Others suggest that clapping is instinctive. Babies clap in happiness from the age of four months, and patients in catatonic states will often adopt clapping as a fixation, suggesting that it produces pleasure independent of company. This could be because of the soothing regularity and rhythm it produces. But further, there is evidence that the act can induce seizure-like brain activity, pleasurable in short bursts. In which case, clapping is not just learned, but hard-wired in our brains.
Guest article written by biocurious
Guest article featured on Science Soup!
Darwinning: Tardigrades
Also known as water bears (way better), these tiny organisms are virtually indestructible and weirdly cute.
Water Bears!
- Survive being frozen
- Survive being denied water for a decade
- Survive pressures of 1200x atm
- Survive in a vacuum
- Survive in outer space
- Survive cryptobiosis
- Walk like bears
Know more at SciShow (video)
Darwinning: Mantis Shrimp
Mantis Shrimp are marine crustaceans, which grow up to a foot long and are ferocious enough to have earned the nickname “thumb splitters”.
They have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom, with 16 different types of photoreceptors. This allows to pick up on infinitesimally minor changes in light refraction, letting them notice transparent prey invisible to the human eye.
One of few crustaceans which actively hunt, their claws are adapted to kill prey as quickly as possible, and can move at the same speed as a bullet being shot from a revolver. This extreme movement in still water is so powerful that the shock wave alone is enough to kill small prey.
Some make their homes in coral skeletons, and occasionally find themselves in aquariums when the coral is used as tank decoration. In such an event, shrimp protocol is to eat every living thing in the area, and smash through the glass.
Follow Friday
@heardatnature chronicles an eavesdropper’s experience at Nature HQ.
TheScienceBoutique allows you to display your love and appreciation of Team Physics with this brooch set with the Solvay Conference
See also their Glow in the Dark Marie Curie ring and the Teslaclip
Crane.tv talks to Polly Morgan, meat artist.
Although known for contributing to the art collection of Kate Moss and Courtney Love, Morgan distances herself from twee Victoriana. She does this with the unusual composition of her mounts, specialising in and presenting the corruption of nature.
BrainBow is a technique where cells are made to express several fluorescent proteins, in essentially random amounts. The randomness derives from feedback loops in gene expression. Mixing of fluorescence wavelengths yields a remarkable colour contrast on the single-neuron level.
The method was originally developed by Jeff W. Lichtman and Joshua R. Sanes at the Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School.
Read more about BrainBow on Wikipedia or an introduction at the Harvard Gazette.
Barbados Threadsnake (Leptotyphlops carlae)
is a very small species of snake found only on the island of Barbados. This species is smallest species of snake currently known to science with an adult only growing to 4 in long. these snakes are very small so their diet is very limited, it is thought that they feed on termites and other small insects. Little is known about this species, and due the the loss of Barbados’s native forests their survival is a concern.
Phylogeny
Animalia-Chordata-Reptilia-Squamata-Serpentes-Leptotyphlopidae-Leptotyphlops-carlae
Angels and Ages is an utterly marvellous biography comparing the lives of two great men, born on the same day an ocean apart: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln.
Animal preservation with Emily Graslie
Jonty Hurwitz, a sculptor (and the co-founder of payday loan firm Wonga) best known for his Noble prize winning work “Behind Me”, presents a new series of digitally distorted and then fabricated sculptures of objects. Placed in front of a cylindrical mirror, these produce a clear image of the original object, leaving you to ruminate on the nature of perception and why you couldn’t guess without looking.
See also: left brain vs. right brain
