Blackgang: a whale of a chine

There aren't many roles for whale skeletons in literature, but one appears in Maxwell Gray's 1913 novel Something Afar (published in the USA as The Desire of the Moth), where the author gets in a reference to her native Isle of Wight and a description (fancifully embroidered by Blanche, the protagonist's wife) of the celebrated whale skeleton at Blackgang Chine.

A Slight Trick of the Mind

Further to Aged Holmes stories, I just finished Mitch Cullin's A Slight Trick of the Mind, a novel imagining Sherlock Holmes at 93, long retired to the Sussex Downs and his bee-keeping. Although it dates from 2005, I only checked it out recently after news reports mentioned it as source for the forthcoming film Mr. Holmes.

The Lion's Mane and other seaside fun

“Here is a book,” I said, taking up the little volume, “which first brought light into what might have been forever dark. It is Out of Doors, by the famous observer, J. G. Wood. Wood himself very nearly perished from contact with this vile creature, so he wrote with a very full knowledge. Cyanea capillata is the miscreant’s full name, and he can be as dangerous to life as, and far more painful than, the bite of the cobra. Let me briefly give this extract.

Mysterious superwhatevers #5

They've thinned out lately, but here's a small new crop of "mysterious superwhatevers", weird plants and animals used as minimally relevant teasers for health product ads (this batch mostly appears as part of crass monetizing of local newspaper sites).

Firstly, we have "One weird trick to relieve joint pain". This one's a stock photo of the massive fruit of Kigelia - the Sausage Tree ("The fresh fruit is poisonous and strongly purgative; fruit are prepared for consumption by drying, roasting or fermentation ... The tree is widely grown as an ornamental tree in tropical regions for its decorative flowers and unusual fruit. Planting sites should be selected carefully, as the falling fruit can cause serious injury to people, and damage vehicles parked under the trees").

Mysterious superwhatevers #4

Yahoo! advertising has showcased another rich crop of biological oddities, this time drawn from a mix of plant and animal kingdoms. I say "oddities", but they're not - eggs and seeds are commonplace biologically - but they're certainly odd when used irrelevantly in advertising something completely different. The ads all have the slogan "Eat THIS, Never Diet Again" and lead to the blurb for the latest fad weight-loss nostrums: "Garcinia Cambogia" (which has mysteriously changed its name almost overnight from the same advertiser's "Garcinia Gambogia") and "Green Coffee Bean".

This first one appears to be the eggs of some species of Apple Snail, probably the invasive Pomacea canaliculata. I haven't been able to identify the source image, but there are plenty of images of its distinctive pink eggs online.

This, as I described at Mysterious superfruit #2, is a Finger Lime (Citrus australasica), the fruit of a thorny shrub native to Australia; it has lately acquired a reputation as a gourmet "lime caviar".

Google Images didn't find this one (I wonder if the advertisers are getting sneaky and trying to avoid identifiable images). But I'm pretty sure it's Alaska Salmon roe - see the image at Alaska Fish Radio.

This one: I don't know. It might be more roe.

I couldn't identify this one ... but (24th November update) Emily at Ephemeral Curios has a likely identification that it's a salp (or, I think, two of them). See the comments section below.

These are slug eggs: image cropped from a Dutch Flickr photo by "Jolle" (eitjes van 'n naaktslak).

More fish eggs: these are eggs of Arctic grayling, an image from a series by the brilliant photographer Paul Vecsei showing the developing embryos. See Inside the egg at the blog Way Upstream.

One I recognise: these are the edible fruit of the longan (Dimocarpus longan), a tree of the soapberry (Sapindus) family, closely related to the lychee. They're rather nice - while very similar to the lychee, they have a pleasant aromatic muskiness - and our local greengrocer occasionally has them in.

These I recognised too. They're wasabi peas,  a hot (spice-hot, not temperature-hot) snack made by dusting dried cooked peas with a seasoning powder containing the very pungent brassica, wasabi (aka Japanese horseradish). The image seems to come from this Romanian online food magazine.

More salmon roe, I think

A third I recognise: a raw cocoa pod (the fruit of Theobroma cacao). The image tracks to a stock photo from Visuals Unlimited.

No luck, but it looks like some kind of fish eggs on seaweed.

Most likely slug or snail eggs again ...









... and finally, more slug or snail eggs, the image cropped from this Flickr photo - teeny tiny eggs - by "Luckybon".






Whatever the dubious merits of the advertised products, these guys certainly provide interesting biological quizzes ...

- Ray

Shellular automata

We just had our bathroom renovated, and this rather nice seashell is hanging on the light pull-cord. I got it a while back at B&Q as a curiosity, but this is the use they were selling it for. I forget the country of origin - somewhere Indo-Pacific - but I recall the label said these particular B&Q ones were produced on a sustainable basis; the molluscs are used for food, and the empty shells sold as decorative objects or collector's pieces.

The particularly neat thing about this one is the pattern: a classic example of pattern-forming processes that have been successfully analysed mathematically. The mollusc, when it's alive, has a mantle whose edge contains cells that deposit pigment on the shell lip as it grows. These cells interact with their neighbours - they can switch on and switch off each others' pigment-making according to well-defined conditions - so the whole band of cells has a dynamically-changing linear pattern of pigment production; and as the shell grows, a record of that pattern is left behind.

The Algorithmic Beauty of Sea Shells

One of the classic expositions of the theory on this is Hans Meinhardt's The Algorithmic Beauty of Sea Shells (Springer, 4th ed. 2009, ISBN  978-3-540-92141-7). Meinhardt analyses the patterns in terms of hormone diffusion, successfully simulating the patterns on a range of shells. As part of Springer's Virtual Laboratory series, it comes with companion software for playing with the simulations. If the maths is not of substantial interest to you, it's still a compendium of beautifully -photographed shells - although at nearly £40 it's rather expensive as a coffee-table book. Springer have an online preview: see the intro page and reader.

Whatever 'computational engine' drives the pattern changes on the shells is effectively a close analogue equivalent of the digital algorithmic device called a one-dimensional cellular automaton (you can play with an applet here). The outputs are very similar in appearance, and one celebrated example, Cymbiola innexa, displays Sierpinski triangles, a classic fractal pattern produced by many 1D cellular automata.

The rather peculiar aspect is - what function do these patterns serve? In many species of mollusc, the patterns aren't visible during life, as they're covered by a dull-coloured protective "periostracum", so camouflage or identification (the usual reasons for animal patterns) don't seem to apply. Do they have a function we don't yet know? Are they fossils of a past function that's better served by the tough periostracum? Or are they "spandrels" (the term borrowed from architecture by Gould and Lewontin for non-adaptive by-products of other adaptively evolved functions)?

- Ray