Postcards from the Planet

Farmers have long been breeding animals for their particular needs. Scots sheepherders bred the border collie to help them manage their flocks of sheep; duck hunters in Canada bred the Labrador retriever to swim out and bring back their ducks. The Black Angus cow was bred for good tasting beef. The Tennessee fainting goat was bred to be easy to manage on a small farm.

You’ve never heard of a Tennessee fainting goat? The New York Times describes the goat this way: “At the visitor’s approach, Chip apparently had second thoughts. His left foreleg stiffened, his brown eyes went glassy and he began to list to one side.” See this article: Rare Breeds, Frozen in Time.

Now an organization in Rhode Island, the SVF Foundation is trying to make sure that rare domestic farm breeds like the Tennessee fainting goat don’t vanish as larger and larger farms manage more and more of our food production. After all, if you want a small manageable goat for your back yard, the fainting goat would be great. After all, in Portland, OR, the locavore food movement is saying that Goats are the New Chickens.

What’s a locavore? That’s someone who tries to eat more locally produced food, to support local farmers and reduce the amount of carbon used in getting their food.

NASA’s Terra satellite has been orbiting for ten years, taking measurements of the earth with many sensors. People say, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” and these satellite images definitely fit the description. Right now, my house is in the snowy region of the Northeastern US. Looking at this image gives me a sense of sympathy for all the other folks in the wintry, snowy parts of the northern hemisphere — and it shows me where they are!

NASA satellite image of global snow cover, posted December 18, 2009

Check this link for more Terra images: Terra Turns Ten: snow, clouds and sunlight.

So what happened at the Copenhagen Climate Summit? Read what US President Obama thinks here: Obama agrees that Copenhagen was a disappointment.

Why was it a disappointment? The main reason was that no global treaty was agreed on. The progress that was made came as 5 nations agreed on climate  goals. As United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, the accord marks an “essential beginning” in which some important countries, including Brazil and China, pledged to limit the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.

As of December 15, it looks like talks in Copenhagen are nearing a deal to help countries be compensated for preserving forests, swamps and other natural areas that help absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So far, this looks like one of the few agreements likely to come out of the negotiations. Read about it here: Possible Forest and Landscape Preservation Agreement.

On December 14, UN leader Ban Ki-moon addressed the conference and tried to remind participants of its importance. “We do not have another year to deliberate,” he said. “Nature does not negotiate.”

The Will Steger Foundation and its youth delegates have twitter feeds, blog entries, photos and videos live from Copenhagen. Find out what’s going on each day during the conference at Expedition Copenhagen.

The United States has declared that greenhouse gases may be threatening to human health — as well as to planetary health.

The announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency has been welcome for many climate activists, and also for world leaders gathered at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. 192 countries including the US are represented in Copenhagen.

The Summit will continue until December 18, and hopefully will result in a strong world agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions.  For more on the Climate Summit, you can check out BBC coverage:Copenhagen.

You can also read Tweets from Copenhagen by New York Times environmental reporter Andy Revkin here:Revkin Tweets.

Last week I wrote about snakes in Asia, and how they are evolving to take advantage of the local snails. This week it’s birds in Europe.

Blackcap warblers in central Europe have a genetically determined migration route that takes them to the Mediterranean when the weather cools in the fall. Well, it used to take them to Spain… now some populations go to England instead.

Why England? Bird feeders. People feed birds during the winter in England, and the birds evolved to take advantage of that. 30% of blackcap warblers now migrate to England.

Since food is readily available during the winter in England, and it’s a shorter route back to their summer home in Germany and Austria, the birds get to summer nesting sites earlier, and the English-winter birds mate with each other and not with the Spanish-winter birds.

This is called “reproductive isolation” and it’s one of the first steps in creating new species. The warblers are still the same species–they can still mate and produce fertile children–but they’re beginning to look different, fly differently, and eat a different diet.

More details, and some excellent photos here: Feeding Birds Could Create New Species.

The New York Times published a wonderful slide show of science photos. Check it out here: Science in Pictures: Jellyfish Venom and Tick Saliva.

Over time, new kinds of organisms develop as a result of mutations and changes to existing organisms. Bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics; the bacteria that aren’t resistant to antibiotics die off–and the very few that have a gene that makes them less likely to die are the only ones that live to reproduce. This process, in which better adapted organisms survive to reproduce and less adapted organisms die before reproducing (or have fewer offspring), is called natural selection and is the key concept of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Darwin published the first edition of his book on the evolution of species one hundred and fifty years ago, in November of 1859.

Darwin was curious about many things, and was interested in how land snails–like the European snail that ends up being eaten in the French dish escargot–could get to islands, because they don’t survive in salt water. After discovering that a short bath in salt water didn’t kill them, he decided that perhaps they got there on floating logs.

But more modern scientists have discovered that land snails come in right-handed and left-handed versions. The right-handed versions are more common, but there are more left-handed snails in Asia than elsewhere. Why? Well, it turns out that some snakes have evolved jaws that work better on the right-handed snails than on the left-handed ones. So as the right-handed snails get eaten more often, the left-handed snails are more likely to survive and reproduce, so there are more left-handed snails where there are more snakes that eat right-handed snails. Evolution and natural selection in action!

Read all about it here: In Snails and Snakes, Features to Delight Darwin.

The Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched on November 16, carrying not only spare parts for the International Space Station but also two kinds of butterfly larvae — Painted Lady and Monarch caterpillars. The butterflies are going to live in special habitats on the Space Station, and they’re part of an experiment in finding out how living in different gravity affects the development of the larvae. Students across the US will be raising butterflies and comparing them to the ones in space. For updates, photos or video, visit Butterflies in Space.

Galileo Galilei, the famous astronomer who “”perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science” (according to Stephen Hawking, who should know, being a physicist himself) died in 1642, while under house arrest near Florence, Italy. (He was put under house arrest by the Catholic Church, which then ruled what later become Italy, because he believed in a sun-centered Solar System, which was considered heresy at the time.)

95 years after his death, his body was moved to Florence to a special tomb near Michelangelo’s, in Florence. At that time, a tooth, his right thumb, and his right middle finger were kept by an admirer, and the relics were passed down through the family.

But now they’ve been given to the Museum of the History of Science in Florence and will soon be on display there. This is true. Read about it here: Galileo’s fingers, tooth are found.