My weekly pop-sci NewScientist issues have been showing up at erratic intervals; this week, after what seemed like weeks of no issues, two showed up on the ame day, although of a non-contiguous nature. No doubt just more evidence of the, shall we say, demonic incompetence of Postmaster General DeJoy in combination with the more comprehensible delays inherent in publishing during a pandemic.
Paging through the 8 August 2020 issue, I was struck by the surrealistic features of two articles. The first, concerning a variety of termite which always lives with another specific species in their nests, contains this little gem:
“Many times,” says [Helder Hugo of the University of Konstanz in Germany], “when two unrelated colonies are put together in a single confined space – such as an experimental arena – the outcome is warfare with losses from both sides.”
But that didn’t happen here. Despite attacks from host termites, the tenant termites were acquiescent. Hosts would bite or spray the inquilines [foreign termites] with acrid chemicals, but their targets never responded in kind, opting to flee. Some ignored the hosts completely.
At most, the lodger termites would squirt faeces towards a threatening host termite, surprising their assailant long enough to retreat. “By preventing conflict escalation, inquiline termites may considerably improve their chances of establishing a stable cohabitation with their host termites,” says Hugo.
Yep, that’s right – they pooped on their hosts. Or in their hosts’ living room.
From Wikipedia.
This is the sauropod, not the mammal.
However, the ribaldry comes right out in the open in this article on finding mammalian toothmarks on the bones of a sauropod – and small mammals at that. While interesting in itself, I fear I woke my Arts Editor when I started laughing at the penultimate paragraph:
The mammals must have been scavenging, says [Felix Augustin at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in Germany], as it isn’t possible that such tiny mammals could have taken down a huge sauropod dinosaur.
Beyond the obvious, I can also remark that this reminds me of my aborted project to construct an animated film involving a T-Rex finding himself in similar contretemps. If some young Blender artist, looking to showcase their skills, needs a project, I might be persuaded to share the story with you. My Arts Editor thought it was fairly cool, but my time constraints and relative clumsiness with Blender has made it unlikely that I’ll ever get beyond the picnic basket.
