Lake monsters

It used to be much more reasonable to think that there might be undiscovered large vertebrates in lakes and seas and the mountains – that is to say, monsters. Nessie. Cadborosaurus, a.k.a. Caddy. And my personal favourite, Ogopogo.

But in an age where cameras are damn near ubiquitous and something like 20 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube every 5 minutes, if there were such monsters, I’m pretty sure that we would have something better than this by now:



This is video from Lake Champlain, which is purported to be the home of a lake monster named “Champ.” What I think is notable about this, and most similar videos, is how poor they are. This is not to say that the person who took it did a bad job, but that you have something happening at a distance so that whatever is out there can only be seen at low resolution. You’ve got a couple of indistinct shapes and some waves.

In other words, you only get the possibility of a lake monster raised when the video is crappy and ambiguous.

If there were lake monsters, it seems highly likely that by now there would be video of something that recognizable as an animal. Heck, look for the animal that has probably been the source of inspiration for sea serpent stories, the oarfish, and you can find better videos of this unusual fish that normally inhabits the deep sea:



Hat tip to Tetrapod Zoology blog.

How do viruses swap genes?

If there’s a disease epidemic in the country that’s literally just a few miles down the road from you, but what you’re worried about is how viruses might exchange genetic information...

...You might just be a scientist.

Yes, everyone’s been worried about the swine flu. But what has been bugging me are comments that this swine flu strain was a mix of human, bird, and pig viruses. I read this in New Scientist:

(F)lu surface proteins come in 16 different families, and viruses interbreed and swap genes.

I knew that this had to be a simplification. And that’s fine, because New Scientist is not a technical journal. But I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the concept of viruses “interbreeding.”

Interbreeding implies two organisms loving each other very much in a very special way, which is to say, sex. In organisms like ourselves, sex at the genetic level requires the fusion of sperm and egg cells. Single celled organisms, like bacteria, don’t have to mess around with all that, but just exchange bits of DNA directly.

Viruses, though, are not cells at all. They have two main bits: genetic material (either DNA or RNA) and some proteins. Viral particles infect living cells, and they take over the machinery of infected cells to make new genetic material and proteins. This cycle is shown below.


I could see how you could get genetic variation in viruses by mutation. In particular, a lot of viruses have very sloppy mechanisms for duplicating their genetic information, and so they throw up a huge variety of variations. This is why it’s been so hard to get a handle on, say the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV): it mutates at very high rates, so it’s almost never the same exact virus.

I could also see how a virus could pick up some DNA from an infected cell by some sort of freak mistake, I suppose.

I went digging through Google Scholar, and fairly quickly confirmed that yes, viruses can intermix their genetic material, but the papers I saw made no mention of how they do this. But then I saw the key word I’d been looking for: “reassortment.” That’s what experts call viruses picking up new genetic information, not “interbreeding.”

Even once I started zooming in, I was surprised by how many papers said that reassortment occurs, but said nothing about how. Finally, I found a couple of articles (one older, one newer) that seemed to indicate what I suspected.

It seems that viruses can pick up new genetic information from each other when two viruses infect the same individual simultaneously. I’m still sketchy on the details, but I think what’s going on is that when two viruses are in the same cell, virus #1 can accidentally pick up genetic material or proteins being generated by virus #2. It’s probably not deliberate, just the nature of random chance at the unpredictable molecular level.

Ironically, literally as I was writing this post, it turns out that the idea that the current swine flu virus has a mix of bird, pig, and human viruses may not be correct. Nevertheless, I learned something very new and interesting in my efforts to sate my curiosity.

More sasquatch honesty than expected

From a story in The Age:

One of the two samples of DNA said to prove the existence of the Bigfoot came from a human and the other was 96 per cent from an opossum, according to Curt Nelson, a scientist at the University of Minnesota who performed the DNA analysis.

Possum? Are you kidding me?

And I thought it would be hard to mistake a bison for a sasquatch.

They tried to pass off a frickin' possum as an undiscovered bipedal hominid?

Biscardi said the DNA samples may not have been taken correctly and may have been contaminated, and that he would proceed with an autopsy of the alleged Bigfoot remains, currently in a freezer at an undisclosed location.

Give unto me a break.

You have contamination problems when you're dealing with traces from a crime scene, ancient DNA from hundreds or thousands of years ago, not when you have a two meter biped stored in a freezer that you can grab a few chunks from.

Smell the popcorn, carny's comin' to town

The sasquatch news is progressing about as I expected with this morning's news story in The Age:

The two men who claim to have found Bigfoot have admitted to filming a hoax video with a fake scientist, but they still claim they have a real Bigfoot corpse in the freezer and will reveal all at a press conference.

This reminds me a lot of the English girls who claimed to see fairies, fooled so many people, admitted to faking photographs but insisted they had seen fairies.

Sigh.

Yesterday, I didn't get a chance to post my predictions: that they'd show pictures of gels of claimed DNA, but not allow any other labs to take samples.

This is unraveling fast.

Hype, hoax, or hope?

US hunters claim they have found bigfoot.

Headline pretty much says it all. Except it should say, "US hunters claim they have found sasquatch," as far as I'm concerned.

I've blogged a fair amount about new species, because it shows how much we need to learn about the biology of our planet. For my thoughts on sasquatch, see here.

I suspect this is going to turn out like this previous sighting... That the pictures on on a site called http://www.inquisitr.com/ does not fill me with hope.

The picture itself does not fill me with hope. It looks a little too "carnival sideshow" to me.

Hope springs eternal

Metropolis is a classic science fiction film. "Masterpiece" is usually in the same sentence as its name. It is to science fiction what Charlie Chaplin is to comedy.

The original, uncut version has been found (also here and elsewhere).

If you can find something like this after 80 years, who know what other things thought lost might be retrieved?

Life imitating art scaring the pants off of life

I watch and read science fiction. Have done as long as I can remember.

Last night, I watched Episode 2 of Torchwood, about the havoc wrecked after a meteorite hits.

War of the Worlds movie adaptation. People thought the Martian spaceships were meteors.

It Came From Outer Space. In a meteorite.

And there was the "Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" segment of Creepshow.

This scares me.

Just think of a monkey, it'll cheer you right up!

I always had such high hopes for those people who chased after the Loch Ness monster, sasquatch, and Ogopogo. Unlike lots of other fringe ideas that violate the laws of physics flat out, these critters seemed at least plausible: that there were just big, undiscovered animal species out there. Indeed, the finding this year of the species Homo floriensis in Indonesia -- and that we may have missed seeing them by only thousands of years, which is nothing in biological time -- adds a certain plausibility to the idea. I always thought finding something like Cadborosaurus (from my old stomping grounds of Vancouver Island) would be so good for conservation and people's awareness of the natural world.

Sadly, the field of cryptozoology (which more or less means "hidden animals") has yet to yield one single noteworthy finding. Nonetheless, I still find the idea of new species unknown to science a thrilling one. Of course, new species are still being described every day, but the vast majority of them are small invertebrates. And while I have a great and deep appreciation of small invertebrates myself, I still have to admit there's a certain appeal in finding a new species that's a big vertebrate.

Today, I read this story about the discovery of a new species of monkey being discovered in India, one of the most heavily populated countries on the planet. Very, very cool. Maybe there's hope that we'll find a lake monster yet...

Quick! Who invented the telephone?

I bet you probably didn't come up with the name Antonio Meucci. Apparently, the U.S. Congress today recognized Meucci as the inventor of the telephone.

I suppose it's stories like this that make me glad that I'm not involved in research that has any immediately apparent commercial applications.