The coldest day of my life

I haven't written much lately; been busy with things. I thought I'd tell a story, just to keep things interesting.

November 2003, Fish Hatchery Management class.

We were on a field trip to the Adirondack Hatchery, way up near Lake Placid. It's damn cold up there in the North Country in November. The usual thing for this field trip was camping out by the hatchery, but we were looking at single-digit temperatures, a first for the trip. There was a dorm-style facility, but they weren't permitted to let us stay there overnight because it was above a garage, and some regulation said that we could get carbon monoxide poisoning. Instead, they were willing to let us freeze to death.

We arrived at the hatchery after a five-hour drive from Cobleskill, NY. The trip started out ominously, as our rented vehicle hit a deer less than a mile away from the campus, but the vehicle was fine, and the deer leapt up and dashed off toward some woodland. Most of my classmates slept on the trip. Two of us, myself and N, had a tendency to get godawfully carsick, so I had loaded up on the Dramamine, sharing with him, and he gallantly offered me the front seat--which we both found reduced our motion sickness a great deal.

The Adirondack Hatchery spawns and grows land-locked Atlantic Salmon, big silvery beauties with a row of black X's down their sides. Salmon really like their water to be as cold as possible, so the hatchery itself was the same temperature as the air outside. In fact, the tall windows lining each side of the hatchery were fitted only with screens, which allowed air flow while keeping out insects and birds. The water in each of the circular tanks was kept solid only through kinetic energy--fast-flowing pipes dumping spring water right into the tanks, keeping that water moving. A good thing, too, as the air temperature was no more than 20ºF.

So we walk in, and get the basic idea of the spawning process going on, and we're heaved right into the thick of it. The process basically goes like this: Net salmon out of tank, put into anesthetic bath (MS-222), take salmon out of anesthetic bath after it's knocked out, squeeze the eggs out into a container (this takes practice; I'm not too shabby at it), put fish back into tank, in a separate section, so you don't grab the same fish twice. While this is going on, which takes about three people, someone else occasionally takes the eggs, mixes them with milt stripped from fish trapped out of the lake, and lets them fertilize before taking them off to the incubator room.

This whole process is very wet, obviously, and when it's already freezing cold out, your hands turn into claws of ice and agony. We were all well-clothed in long underwear, warm clothing, and rainsuits (rain suits keep the water OUTSIDE your clothing), but that didn't help our chilly faces or frozen hands much, and it wasn't long before we were all just chilled to the bone.

That night, we made dinner in the dorm area, had a party and warmed up, and then got permission from the hatchery manager to stay in the visitor's center! Now, that would have been really great, but he turned OFF the heat in the center so we wouldn't "roll up against a heater and burn" ourselves. The center was bitter cold, because they had a display pond of salmon, which was kept freshened by a constant flow of chilly water. I found out that night that my sleeping bag, rated for 0ºC, was indeed enough to keep me warm, even in 15ºF conditions.

The next day, we went out to the lake, where a boat brought in salmon that had been trapped on the lake. We stood on a dock and took turns stripping eggs and milt from the trapped salmon. All of the milt used to fertilize the eggs, even inside the hatchery building, were from trapped males. On the dock, we were unprotected from the chill wind, and there wasn't enough shivering, foot stomping, and running in place to keep us from becoming agonizingly cold.

At this point in my life, I had not developed fibromyalgia. I had, however, already developed arthritis in my hands, wrists, right shoulder, and ankles, especially the right one. By the time we were done with this field trip, I was in more pain than I probably had ever been. I do like to tell people that, after this experience, I will probably never be truly cold again in my life--but I have no desire to work at a salmonid hatchery, EVER, because they are such painfully cold places.

Bio-geekery: The Giant Isopods

I had no idea this group even existed until today, but here they are!

The Giant Isopods!


Here's a photo I took of some small, terrestrial isopods (you know them as pillbugs):

The Laws of Physics: Part One

I am standing on top of a three-story building, located in a normal city somewhere on Planet Earth. The weather is sunny, with only a light breeze. I go to the edge of the rooftop and drop an object over the side. The object does not fall. It instead rises upward, moves laterally, and eventually glides downward, coming to rest in a tree. After a moment, the object rises upward again, coming to rest on my hand.

I have defied the laws of physics, right?

Or, maybe my little falcon just went out for a spin. Despite being heavier than air, this living creature can use its body parts to overcome gravity for periods of time. It must expend a tremendous amount of energy to do this, but evolution has given it reason to develop wings, light bones, and strong pectoral muscles.

A dead falcon, of course, would not be able to do this. I could take a freshly dead falcon, drop it over the edge, and it would plummet straight downward. It is life that flies in the face of physical laws, defying them as long as possible in order to survive, thrive, reproduce, and move on to the next generation of living beings to repeat the cycle. Every living cell of every living being works until its death to stave off entropy and keep on living just a little bit longer. There is a will involved to manipulate things at even the molecular level. There would be no reason for the molecules of our bodies to pick up a chunk of rock and move it from one place to another, unless there were a will involved--and, in fact, once the ineffable quality of life dissipates from our molecules, we are no longer moving rocks around, or even ourselves around.

Life is intention.

When primordial life crawled from the oceans, it found that land-dwelling required an enormous energy expenditure in order to simply remain alive. Hard structures were needed to keep organs from collapsing under their own weight, as jellyfish washed up on shore. Plants developed cellulose so that they could grow upward, collecting more solar energy. Animals developed skeletons, both endo- and exo-, to support their organs and permit them to move their bodies. All of this, to fight hard against the physical law of gravity, which threatens daily to pull us down, flatten us, immobilize us. Fighting against gravity requires so much from us, even causing pain. Why the effort? Why not just lie down and die, and not put forth the effort?

Life is fighting.

Entropy threatens us at every level of our being. Our organs must constantly work to keep our bodies in order. We must keep ourselves warm enough. We have to eat in order to replace molecules and energy lost through life processes. We breathe to maintain a proper level of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our blood. Cells are lost and replaced in the neverending construction zone of our bodies. We race to keep these bodies together long enough to accomplish something, usually reproduction (for most organisms), racing against the inevitable flaws that occur in a system that isn't built to last forever, just long enough to ensure successful replacement.

Life is a struggle against the physical laws surrounding us. Defying those physical laws is something we do on a daily basis, every time we stand up, and every time we take a breath. An act of will, extant only in animate matter. Perhaps someday the nature of animate life, will, and intention will be explained by minute chemical reactions. We have already unraveled a number of these chemical reactions, after all, as part of man's quest to further unlock ways to extend life past its existing limitations. The way I see it, however, is that the relationship between living matter and physical laws is an ancient, complex struggle, for the animate to master its own matter, in defiance of the laws of physics.

This is just the beginning. I'll be getting more technical and more philosophical in the next section.

Let's talk about teeth

Edited to add:
Apparently, some people lack reading comprehension, and proclaimed this article to be "dumb", "irrational", and says that it makes vegetarianism look bad. Aside from the obvious projection going on, let me say this: Nowhere in this blog entry do I tell you that humans are or are not naturally herbivores. Nowhere do I say that you should become a vegetarian. It is simply a humorous way to respond to those pain-in-the-ass people who come up with silly arguments like this. If you take it as anything else, then you're reading way too much into it. If you are upset by this, then click on something else and go on with your day. There is no reason for you to be a dick to me over what you read in this article.

Edit #2: I've gotten a lot of feedback stating that hippos are omnivores. While there are occasional reports of carnivory, cannibalism, and carrion-eating, these reports are few and far between, and it is generally accepted that this is the result of abberant behavior or nutritional stress. During shortages of their preferred grasses, they typically first turn to aquatic vegetation and elephant dung as an alternative. If, during the drought season, they do eat meat, seemingly out of desperation, it can have disastrous consequences in the form of diseases such as anthrax. In zoological parks, they are fed herbivore diets, and this is the absolute healthiest diet for them; it is what their bodies are truly designed to digest. Think about it this way: Rendered meat products have been added to cattle feed for a long time now. This does NOT mean that cows are omnivores, or that it is healthy for them; it just means that most very hungry warm-blooded creatures will eat what's available if the other option is starving. It doesn't mean their bodies are designed for that; it means that they're desperate. Every available resource, including zoos and textbooks, will tell you that a hippo is an herbivore, and I agree with that.

If there's one thing I'm sick of, it's anti-vegetarians howling, "But, see, we have CANINE TEETH, and them's for eating meat!" So, let's talk teeth, and why your pathetic, flat, short little canines are barely worthy of herbivory, let alone killing animals and rending their flesh. I'm going to cover mammals, because it's irrelevant to discuss more distantly related animals, including turtles, whose beaks are the same from carnivore to herbivore to jellyfish-ivore, or carnivorous frogs, whose few teeth are designed to keep prey from escaping their enormous mouths.

First, let's talk about omnivores. Raccoons, pigs, and bears all have sharp, pointed canines that are useful for killing and tearing flesh. You probably have a good idea of what bears' teeth look like, so here are the others.
Raccoon:

Pig:


See the pointy teeth? How they're significantly longer than the rest, and that they are round, for puncturing? They are proportionately much larger and sharper than human canine teeth.

Now, let's have a peek at a chimp's skull. A Chimpanzee is one of our closest cousins. They are omnivorous, eating mostly fruit, with about 5% of their diet (and ranging anywhere from 4 to 10% with seasonal variations) comprised of animal matter. While they eat a lot of insects, especially termites (yum yum!), a major vertebrate prey species for them is the red colobus monkey. So, here's the skull:

(Image from Bone Clones, who is linked from the image)

Note the very large, round, canine teeth. Teeth that, incidentally, are not used to kill prey! They grab their prey (again, usually baby colobus monkeys) and fling them repeatedly against the ground or a tree limb until they are dead. Also, hunting in chimpanzees appears more related to impressing chicks than it does to obtaining protein.

Chimps and humans are the only great apes to eat a significant quantity of animal protein; the rest, including bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are primarily herbivores, opportunistically eating some insects. The lesser apes (gibbons) are primarily fruit and insect eaters, with some of them taking in tree bark and leaves as well. All of the great AND lesser apes other than humans have large, pointy, rounded canines. Here's a gorilla skull with a human skull for comparison:


Now, they sure don't need those canines for killing termites, but compared to humans, their mouths are positively fierce. But, let's not just pick on our relatives, let's have a look at the very herbivorous even-toed ungulate known as the hippopotamus:


Whoa! Fierce! Rawr! Hippos have long, sharp canines! They are widely considered to be the most dangerous animal in Africa, partly because their 8000-lb bodies can reach land speeds of 18mph (faster than you), and partly because they can bite off your head and shoulders with one angry chomp. They're fiercely territorial, and they use those big nasty teeth to fight, both with one another and with potential predators.

So, there you have it. Canine teeth are present in a number of different mammals for a number of different reasons. For many herbivores, they are used to fight off predators and competitors (and they're great for tearing the flesh of FRUITS!). Most of our closest genetic relatives are omnivorous only to the extent that they eat insects, but I don't see any of these chest-beating meat-eaters clamoring to chow down on a termite colony. Compared to true omnivores and many herbivores, our own canine teeth are quite puny, not well-shaped for hunting or even defense.

So why ARE our canines so small and flat? There are a few theories on this, one of which is that we adapted mouths that could allow us to hold our breath (perhaps to dive for shellfish during a coastal phase of evolution), and to enable sucking (fruit juices, insects and seafood from their shells, that sort of thing). These changes eventually allowed us the ability to speak; if we had big canine teeth like our cousins, we would have difficulty making all the sounds we need for communication.

I'm not telling you to go vegetarian. That's up to you. I am asking that you stop pointing to your puny-ass canines and pretending that they make you a meat-eater. Also, our new house came with a termite problem, so if you're really proud of being an omnivore, this vegetarian homeowner could really use your help!

When the scientists get it wrong

When I was going to school from K-12, I had faith in science. Yes, I know, the fundies are going to have my head for that line, but bear with me.

I sincerely believed that scientists were altruistic researchers who wanted to add to the body of knowledge in the world, and maybe get a little scientific glory for themselves. Once in college, I learned that I was very wrong. While there are some of those starry-eyed researchers out there who want to find real truth, many of them are primarily seeking a particular outcome, no matter what the facts say.

Data is massaged and manipulated. Studies are well-crafted to ensure a particular outcome. Experimental results that do not benefit the desired outcome are often tossed out completely. Basically, most of these guys want to be able to prove their point at all costs, often because the money's flowing from someone who says, "Give us THESE results."

There are no video cameras in the lab to ensure that the correct numbers are written down. There is no way to check and see if mice with undesirable results were quietly discarded. If I'm in a laboratory, and I count X number of bad results, I can write down Y results instead. In my last job, I was actually encouraged to alter data so as to avoid having to do something about products that were out of spec.

When you're selling an idea, the real motives are often hidden. For example, U.S. citizens were informed that Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq was directly tied to the events of September 11, 2001. We now know that this was not the case, and the true motives behind selling the idea of invading Iraq were probably something quite different from protecting U.S. citizens from terrorism.

Those selling the idea that fat is bad and unhealthy are not motivated by an altruistic concern for people's health. If you find that a study is funded by the diet industry, you will probably find that its results are quite beneficial to the industry. This allows the industry to continue selling products and services that do not work, especially ones that work in the short term, but eventually fail. Built-in repeat customers are quite profitable, after all.

This makes me wonder how many other ways we are kept "sick" by the pharmaceutical and other industries that fund medical research. I remember when they changed a number, and suddenly a lot more people had high blood pressure. I had just gone to my (former) doctor in an extreme amount of pain from an infection, and my blood pressure of 140/90--higher than I'd ever had it since one awful night of agony in the ER*. My history of low-side-of-average readings and current stressful state didn't matter to him; he saw an opportunity to prescribe, thanks to the drug reps that pepper every available surface of doctors' offices with free gifts. I dug in my heels and refused to be put on blood pressure medication at the age of 28. Amazingly, I was fine at my next visit, since my pain was relieved, and I've been fine since. Had I been put on the medication, I would have suffered all kinds of side effects, and would have derived no benefit.

I think what aggravated me the most about it was that, instead of treating the cause, which was my pain and infection, he wanted to treat only the symptom. Artificially lowering high blood pressure is not necessarily a useful thing to do, and if a cause can be identified, it makes far more sense to fix THAT problem instead. Remember the old joke, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this"? Doctors today say, "Oh, here's some pain medication," when they should be saying, "Stop doing that!"

Of course, scientists have been getting it wrong all on their own for hundreds of years without the help of pharmaceutical grants. Every time I read about the medicine practiced even a hundred years ago, I get the feeling that they just made stuff up and declared it to be true. "Vapors", "humors", and "hysteria" are just a few of the ridiculous ideas that took way too long to overcome, and at the cost of many people's health, freedom, and lives.

People have been resisting change in scientific thinking for as long as science has existed, too. If you grew up thinking that a bat was a bird, you're going to fight pretty hard against someone who says it's actually a mammal. Add to that someone's financial stake in keeping the status quo, and you have our current situation of making sure that fat continues to be thought of as an illness. Ill people need medicine, surgery, treatment. If they realize that they can forgo these things, a lot of interested parties are going to lose a lot of revenue.

Follow the money, and remember that science is ALWAYS to be questioned. Learn to critically examine new studies--not just their abstracts, but their methods and data as well. If you're not comfortable doing these things, then at least have a look at others' interpretations of them; try to find the other side of the story. Sandy of Junkfood Science does a good job of doing this for us, and there are plenty of other authors out there doing it too.

*It turned out that my gallbladder was acute. I'd never even had an attack, so this was quite the surprise. They scheduled surgery asap, then rescheduled it even sooner after the bloodwork came back. Yikes. That was the worst physical pain of my life.

Fish behavior and good ole boys

I read an article that was complaining about PETA's stance on fishing. I'm not going to go into my opinion of PETA, fishing itself or aquaculture, because it isn't relevant. The author annoyed me, however, by acting like an idiot.

PETA contends that fish “are intelligent animals who observe, learn, use tools, and form sophisticated social structures” and “talk to each other with squeaks, squeals...Some fish even woo their potential partners by singing to them!” They also contend that “Some fish tend well-kept gardens, build nests, and collect rocks for building hiding places where they can rest.”

I can imagine this guy chortling at the ridiculousness of fish behaving in these ways, as if PETA made them up out of whole cloth. "Contends"? Well, ol' boy, I'd like to point out that all of these behaviors are well-documented by aquatic biologists.

Anyone who's kept cichlids in aquariums can attest to their masonry skills, which for some fish borders on an obsession. Many other fish move rocks for nesting and shelter as well. This is so widespread and well-documented that I don't need to provide details.

Tool use in fish IS fairly simple, because they do not have fancy limbs like we do, but it happens, mostly consisting of using rocks to crush hard-shelled prey and spitting water (water is the tool). Archerfish (Toxotes jaculator) spit water onto insects that hang out above the water, knocking them down so they can be snarfed. Puffers and other fish spit as well, usually spitting water onto the substrate to reveal prey hidden just below the sand; this behavior frequently manifests in captivity as they spit to get a keeper's attention when begging for food.

The well-tended gardens of Garibaldi, the largest damselfish species, are cultivated for the purpose of getting babes. Male Garibaldi cultivate a patch of algae on a rock; the females come along to inspect the gardens and, on the basis of who's the best available gardener, choose their mate. Herbivores such as surgeonfishes and damsels will tend and protect a patch of algae.

Sound production in fish is a BIG field of study these days; cod, haddock, toadfish, damsels, cichlids, and many, many other species use sound for a variety of communication purposes. Studying these sounds may help fisheries scientists figure out better ways to protect collapsing fisheries, especially since they are so often associated with mating behaviors.

Finally, the sophisticated social structures are very real. One of my favorites to talk about is the cichlid species that has effeminate males that pretend to be girls for the purposes of getting some sperm into the egg pile while a masculine male is mating with a female. Trannsexual sperm-sneaking fish--does it get any weirder than that? (Yes, it probably does, actually!)

So, if this guy wants to make the point that PETA is full of crap, he should maybe not be mocking information that is actually true. Maybe he just thinks a fish is a mindless creature that does nothing but swim, eat, and squirt out gametes, but as far as I can tell, he's projecting a bit there.

And this:

If you are a fisherman and see the whole thing as a crackpot scheme, don't laugh. Our side doesn't have any grassroots support like this and regulations can be swayed these days by the correct voter turn-out for ballot initiatives.

Yes, absolutely, there are no such organizations as Trout Unlimited, Rod & Gun Club, Bassmasters, or the other 140+ organizations that unite anglers socially and politically. Nope. Doesn't exist. And state governments do absolutely nothing to support the recreational fishing industry.

Get real.

Iguana Care

A friend asked me for advice on the care of her pet iguana. It occurred to me that most people who get their first iguana don't actually know much about their needs. Iguanas are probably one of the most demanding pet lizards due to their dietary, lighting, and space requirements. There is a lot of really bad information out there, unfortunately, and it's easy to do long-term harm to a pet iguana by giving them the wrong food, lighting, and enclosure.

The first big issue is to understand that iguanas are diurnal (active during the day) and need to be exposed to sunlight for their health. There are special light bulbs that can help give the right spectrum of light, but they should be supplemental to allowing the iguana to bask in natural sunlight, if possible. If they do not get the right kinds of UV radiation (UVA and UVB), they will, over time, develop calcium deficiencies that manifest as misshapen or broken bones, neurological problems, and other problems. So, it's very important to make sure they get that lighting, and they should also be given a vitamin D3 supplement with their diet.

Also, iguanas are vegetarians. Giving them animal-based foods can be hard on their kidneys. However, it can be difficult to give them a varied diet of fresh greens, vegetables, and fruits every day, especially when you're a bit low on cash. It's expensive to keep fresh produce on hand at all times. I have just a few tips for keeping food costs down:

1. Collard greens, a great leafy vegetable for iguanas, keep very well if you chop them up and store them in a container that has a paper towel on the bottom and top. The towel absorbs excess moisture to keep the greens from getting slimy, but allows enough humidity to keep them fresh for a while.

2. Dandelion greens, probably the optimum leafy vegetable, can be grown in your own garden (whether you want to or not, even!) or purchased cheaply at the grocery store. This can keep summer and fall costs down. When using store-bought dandelions, leave them whole and only slice as much off the top of the bunch as you need. Unlike the collards, these do not fare well if they are chopped up ahead of time.

3. Frozen fruits with no sugar added are your friend. I keep at least one kind of frozen fruit on hand for my box turtle. They're cheaper, keep for a long time, and the animals don't mind them at all.

4. If you have fresh fruit that's right on the edge of going bad, freeze it. Grapes, berries, and other small stuff can be frozen whole, while larger stuff can be sliced up first. Bananas, apples, and melon do not freeze very well, but most other stuff is fine.

5. Share with your iggy! If you're having zucchini, set aside a small amount to put in your lizard's salad. Having a peach? Slice off a bit and give it to your friend. Whatever you're cooking, if you're using fresh vegetables or fruit, it can save you time when you share.

6. The grater is your friend. I shred sweet potatoes, parsnips, winter squash, and other hard vegetables to make them easier to eat. It's easier than dicing, and you can keep the bulk of the vegetable whole while you store it (especially with sweet potatoes, a favorite of my box turtle).

I very strongly recommend the book "Iguanas for Dummies" by Melissa Kaplan. She's an awesome lady, and her website has a lot of good information as well. I have linked the book below; if you use this link to purchase it, it will give me a small commission as part of the Amazon Associates program.

The Laws of Thermodynamics

We often hear about the "Laws of Thermodynamics" when talking about whether or not diets work. I rarely hear the actual laws quoted by people, so let's review them:

The zeroth law of thermodynamics:
"If two thermodynamic systems are in thermal equilibrium with a third, they are also in thermal equilibrium with each other."

The first law of thermodynamics:
"In any process, the total energy of the universe remains constant."

The second law of thermodynamics:
"There is no process that, operating in a cycle, produces no other effect than the subtraction of a positive amount of heat from a reservoir and the production of an equal amount of work."

The third law of thermodynamics:
"As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant. "

There are also proposed fourth, fifth, sixth, and other laws based on other principles, but we will stick to the basics here (bet you never heard of the zeroth, though).

Most people, when they bring up the laws of thermodynamics, are referring to the first law, which is also called the Law of Conservation of Energy. Basically, the conservation of energy states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant, although it may change forms, e.g. friction turns kinetic energy into thermal energy.

When you are learning physics in high school, you test these laws with some simple experiments, usually involving burning a specific quantity of material and seeing how much it heats up a container of water. Or, you might be observing a change in temperature from one object to another as the heat is transferred. Very simple, very simplistic.

Many mechanical engineers will tell you that thermodynamics, even among non-living things, is way the heck more complicated than all that. But, it is also important to remember that changes in energy are only simple to identify in isolated, closed systems. It's very easy to tell that, when your cup of tea cools down, its surroundings become warmer.

However, as is obvious to most people who aren't disingenuously quoting science they aren't familiar with to prove a point that isn't valid, a living organism is much more complicated than that. It isn't simply that we ingest calories and expend them with physical activity like a car does with fuel; it is that we are so very complex that even our brightest minds have not unraveled the biochemical nature of our very being.

In other words, calories in/calories out is a ridiculously simplified idea that in no way actually describes what is actually happening inside the human organism. Never mind that we aren't taking into account the size of a person's mitochondria, the differing ability of each person to digest food, and the plethora of non-human organisms that dwell in every person's body; never mind that they've found that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't seem to hold true for microscopic systems; even if our bodies did operate so simplistically, we simply cannot account for the use of every calorie consumed with simple math because there is no way to monitor each muscle twitch and every degree of heat produced.

It's a moot point; thermodynamics does not really account for life. Part of life is the denial of entropy; to take energy and harness it with some degree of purpose. Without my being alive, the glass of tea on my desk would not simply move itself from one place to another. There would be no physical science reason for it to do so. The will demonstrated by the tiniest forms of life demonstrate the ability to change matter and harness energy toward a purpose that would simply not be possible as a random act of nonliving matter and energy.

Much of our organic design is for the purpose of opposing the forces of physics. Organisms that live on land must expend enormous amounts of resources to defy the pull of gravity. Terrestrial plants build structures out of cellulose in order to remain upright. Aquatic plants, buoyed by their surrounding water, are much more tender; it is easier for you to eat and digest kelp than for you to do the same to woody plants. We need a sturdy skeleton of hard bones to keep us functional on land; fishes' bones are generally fine and delicate, and the majority of organisms in the sea rely only on hydrostatic pressure to keep them from collapsing in on themselves (jellyfish or squid, for example).

We take energy and matter and organize it into specific ways. We grow new tissues, repair damaged parts, and, ultimately, pour a great deal of energy into the race to replicate ourselves before the laws of physics take their toll, a process that is so powerful that those of us who choose not to reproduce must expend enormous effort to counter it. We resist deterioration for as long as we can, our cells working autonomously to keep us going despite some of the worst odds. Life exists in defiance of entropy.

So when I hear someone saying that it's as simple as "finding how many calories your body needs, and only eating that much", you'll have to pardon me while I laugh. Do you even know HOW to measure how many calories you use? Despite the nifty little charts on every elliptical machine, my body does not expend the same amount of calories to do the same activities as yours. There are little mathematical formulas that you plug your height and weight into, and these are notoriously inaccurate. There's a machine that measures how much oxygen and carbon dioxide you are breathing out. Some studies measure metabolism in cell cultures by measuring heat production. There are sensors in development to measure parameters at the cellular level, too.

However, most of the methods that are relatively accurate were not created to measure the metabolism of a multicellular organism. They are for scientists who need to determine how much energy is being used by cell cultures for various reasons. The truth is, there isn't a terribly reliable way to see how many calories you are burning.

Even if we could tell, there are so many other factors involved. For example, you do not necessarily digest everything you eat. If you've ever eaten corn, you know exactly what I am talking about. One person's ability to utilize the food in their bellies efficiently is different from another's. I don't digest fats efficiently because I don't have a gallbladder. If I eat fatty foods, I will be rewarded with the unpleasantness associated with an inability to completely digest the fat, an unpleasantness similar to the effects of eating too much fat while taking Xenical or Alli. A friend has Crohn's disease, which, through damage to her intestines, leaves her ability to absorb nutrients compromised (interestingly, I've known several women with Crohn's, and while one was very thin, the others were on the heavier side of average).

Let's also not forget about the natural flora and fauna living within every person's body. You're full of cute little bacteria, and your set of bacteria may be different and more or less efficient than my set of bacteria. You might have a pet tapeworm to feed, or maybe you're nursing a colony of roundworms. It's almost impossible to tell what bacteria you've got and how many, or whether you've got a load of dependents that you didn't expect. You just don't know!

So, when I eat a meal, the different components of that meal are digested and utilized in different ways. Maybe I ate 300 calories, but 25 of it was fat and just went right through customs without so much as a luggage search. One bite of that potato went to Tapey, and about 100 calories of the meal was expended on the panic attack I had when I couldn't find Marcus, my yellow rat snake, who had quite cleverly burrowed so deep into the substrate that I thought he'd escaped.

Finally, I want to say something about fibromyalgia and other physical ailments. There is some research that indicates that sufferers burn much more energy while asleep than non-sufferers. It's like we're stuck in second gear while waiting for a stoplight. Some people have insulin resistance, which affects their ability to utilize carbohydrates--so the body stores them instead of burning them. Others may have thyroid problems; hypothyroidism results in weight gain and slow metabolism, while hyperthyroidism results in the opposite. The hypothalamus, which can change metabolism, can be damaged or abnormal, resulting in a wide range of results including anorexia and weight gain.

So, to put it very succinctly, no, it's NOT that simple.

Otters--and Aliens and Dinosaurs (?!)

By special request from Caitlin, who asked that I write about otters, dinosaurs, and aliens, but the dinosaurs and aliens cannot eat the otters.

I've had a handful of otter experiences. One of my favorites was at the Australia Zoo, which was Steve Irwin's zoo. They were doing an "otter show", and the keeper was wearing some nice thick Wellies. The otters were a small Asian species called the small-clawed otter. The little monsters were doing their best to chew through the boots, and the keeper was talking about how vicious these cute, adorable animals really were. She told us that a "certain animal expert" at the park was overly dismissive of the wee darlings, boasting about his animal handling prowess. So he picked one up and promptly had his thumb bitten down to the bone. He sheepishly admitted his error as he was sent off to the emergency room for stitches. Of course, we all knew who that person was, and she dropped plenty of hints along the way to be sure.

I also had a customer at an aquarium store come in to tell me that her koi pond had been raided and wiped out by river otters. She had spent a great deal of money on koi, and all of them were otter snacks by the end of the summer. She decided all future pond residents would be feeder goldfish after that!

In 2004, an otter species that existed in the time of the dinosaurs was discovered in some Chinese fossil beds. They're calling it a "beaver-tailed otter", and it was about the size of a housecat. It appears to have eaten aquatic animals and insects. It was found with the fossils of other mammal species, one of whom seems to have fed upon dinosaurs and was about the size of an opossum!

As far as otters and aliens go, I recently read a study about the Eurasian otter adapting its food habits based on alien species being introduced to rivers in Italy. The smallmouth bass, a US native, was introduced to Italian rivers, but it was about 13 years before there was evidence of significant predation of these fish by the otters. At first they thought the otters had a learning curve with catching the fish, but it turned out that the bass needed to be present in large enough numbers for the otters' opportunistic feeding habits to affect them. Otters need a LOT of food, as they have high metabolisms, so they'll eat whatever gives them the maximum food for the minimum effort. As the alien bass started nudging out native species, they became so plentiful that the otters were pretty much stuck eating a lot of bass.

Invasive Algae threatening trout populations

In the Upper Connecticut River and Vermont's White River, an invasive algae called didymo, aka "rock snot", has been found. If it spreads, it could wipe out wild trout populations. Didymo likes cold water and forms huge mats covering gravel and rocks on stream beds. The algae prevents benthic invertebrates from living there, and these invertebrates are the basis for the diet of young trout.

Didymo spreads really easily because the cells are tiny. They absorb into clothing and footwear and stick to hard surfaces, and can survive eight months or more on gear that is not thoroughly cleaned and dried. Using a 5% detergent solution made of dish soap or laundry detergent and hot water to soak clothing and gear for 30 minutes will kill the algae. Hard surfaces like kayaks and fishing gear should be washed in this solution as well.

New Zealand has a lot of experience with this nasty invasive. They have a great website with more information here: http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/

Biology lesson: Leeches are fascinating! No, really!

Leeches are really neat creatures. They have a lot of habitats; there are even some that live on land! They are used medically today in limb reattachment. Anyway, this site has everything you could ever want to know about leeches, just about!

And maybe stuff you didn't want to know, like how leeches make little leechlings!