The Shakespeare’s England blog has a list of cooking/butchery words and phrases that involve certain animals. The list includes the following (and many others); I stumbled upon these rather charming 17th Century cooking terms today. To Carve is to Cut up a Dish of Meat, but according to the Meats, use these Terms for their […]
Tag: Birds
Researching Drinking Songs of Drunken Songbirds
The Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans is — at least in part — about wine, warblers, and song. This poster is that part (or part of that part): “Drinking songs: The efficacy of songbirds in alcohol research,” C. R. Olson [pictured below, near a glass presumably containing a beverage], A. E. Ryabinin, C. V. Mello, […]
Birds: oiling and de-oiling (patented methods)
“It is estimated …” say Ken Foster and Ralph Brendle in their 2007 US patent “… that a single hunting club or hunting resort may lose over $100,000 a year because of missed hunts due to rainy and damp weather.” The problem which the patent is addressing is primarily that of wet birds. “On wet […]
Disagreement About Reigning: Cats vs. Dogs
Cats and dogs fuel strong human opinions. Occasionally, other humans collect data about those opinions. Here’s a new heap of such data: “Opinions from the Front Lines of Cat Colony Management Conflict,” M. Nils Peterson, Brett Hartis, Shari Rodriguez, Matthew Green, Christopher A. Lepczyk [pictured here], PLoS ONE 7(9), epub September 6, 2012, e44616. The […]
Promiscuity, Paternity and Personality in the Great Tit
A new study further feeds humanity’s insatiable hunger for news about the birds called great tits: “Promiscuity, Paternity and Personality in the Great Tit,” Samantha C. Patrick, Joanne R. Chapman, Hannah L. Dugdale, John L. Quinn and Ben C. Sheldon, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, vol. 279, 2012, pp. 1724-1730. The authors, at the […]
Why Do Birds Bob Their Head While Running? (Locomotion, part 2)
The question : ‘Why do some*(see note below) birds bob their heads when walking?’ has perplexed scientists for many years. Some researchers suggest that head-bobbing may be correlated with the morphology of the retina, but others propose that it’s mechanically linked to the locomotor system, and that its visual functions are secondarily adapted. Either way, […]
Groucho Running (Locomotion, part 1)
Please observe the unusual locomotive behaviour which begins at around 55 seconds into this video – when Groucho Marx starts to run. Groucho is displaying a behaviour which scientists now call ‘Groucho Running’ *see note. But Groucho was by no means the first to develop this unusual gait. Take, for example the Tinamou. It also […]
Budgerigarian Contagious Yawning (quite untortoisean!)
Although scientists have failed to find evidence of contagious yawning in tortoises (though those scientists succeeded in winning an Ig Nobel Prize), other scientists have now found evidence, they say, of contagious yawning in budgies [a non-yawning specimen of which is pictured here in a photo by Elektrofisch]. They published a study about it: “Evidence for […]
Oddies in air & sea: Hitchcock, pelicans, & flying rays
Some oddities from the air and the sea: A new study about what got Into Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” birds: “Mystery behind Hitchcock’s birds,” Sibel Bargu [pictured here], Mary W. Silver, Mark D. Ohman, Claudia R. Benitez-Nelson and David L. Garrison, Nature Geoscience, vol. 5, nos. 2–3, 2012. Published online 22 December 2011. “On 18 […]
Be she the scientific scourge of cats?
A November 1 report in the Los Angeles Times reads like an extract from a crime novel: Smithsonian bird researcher is convicted of trying to poison cats A postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian’s Migratory Bird Center at the National Zoo was found guilty Monday of attempting to poison cats in her northwest Washington neighborhood. Security […]