The Firefly and the Deer – “Moonbeam Death Ray”
Since, it seems that I've been on an art post kick for the last two days, I thought I'd toss one more out for you. This is on oldie for me, but I'm betting that few if any of my current readers have seen it.
Way back in 2006, a buddy of mine (Joshua Robertson) was in a band called "Bronze Fawn," a progressive, instrumental group based in Seattle.
One of their songs (9 minutes in length) was called "Moonbeam Death Ray". Listening to it in the car one day, I had a "vision" (i.e. a cool idea).
I had just recently picked up a copy of the 3D computer animation software, Maya 7. So I thought, "what better way to learn to animate than by practicing with my idea for Bronze Fawn. I'm sure they will appreciate the surprise video!"
That, in essence, is how the following music video was made.
Josh was more than a bit surprised.
The video was written, directed, and animated by me with Maya 7 Unlimited. It took 200 hours over 4 months plus 600 hours of computer render time (i.e. I would set up the render and let my computer crunch out the stills while I was at the lab finishing my PhD). I modeled and textured the deer and firefly based on deer in my yard and fireflies I caught. I initially mixed the song down to its current 3 minutes length.
The YouTube version of this video has currently been watched about 478,000 times.
I have many, MANY problems with the animation (like some horrible deer movements, texture problems, lighting, etc...), but overall I was pretty happy with it for a first animation.
If anyone wants to learn animation - I say just do it. Download the free and opensource Blender software and start doing tutorials!
My interest in animation started when I needed a good animation for my dissertation defense on frog heart development. This was the result (intended to be illustrative, NOT 100% accurate - and yes, that is what early Xenopus larvae look like):
And one more just for fun (no sound).
"Feeding Time"
You can see more of my animations HERE.
Adaptation of the Week – Timber Rattlesnake Camouflage
Image by John White
I've decided to start a weekly series highlighting interesting, strange, or just plain cool evolutionary adaptations. If any of you have suggestions for adaptations that you find particularly interesting, I would be happy to include them.
I'm gonna start off with a species that is dear to my heart, the Timber Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus). Back in my college days, before moving on to molecular and developmental biology, I was an HHMI undergraduate fellow privileged to spend a summer working under Dr. Steven Beaupre radio-tracking timber rattlesnakes in the Ozark Mountains of Northwest Arkansas.
During the summer, I had about a dozen snakes "assigned" to me. These snakes lived in a large expanse of fairly remote wilderness and it was my job to find each of them on every other day using radio-telemetry, after which I would record a bunch of data on them. One of the most interesting things about the Timber Rattlesnake I learned is that they have largely de-evolved their need or use of their rattle. Granted, this is not really true and most herpetologists and evolutionary biologists would rightly throw a fit for me phrasing it as such; I am using the term de-evolve very loosely. If you pick up one of these snakes and throw it in a bucket (to take it to the lab for example), they will most certainly rattle as if the world is coming to an end.
Watch your step!
Nevertheless, in the wild these snakes are incredibly loathe to make any noise whatsoever, which is quite different from my experiences with diamondbacks in Texas. Diamondbacks that I have found typically want you to know immediately that you are getting close and should get the Hell back. However, I routinely tracked these Timbers and would sit a mere 5-6 feet away from them while taking down their info. By and large, they were content to stare at me tasting my air. The few times they felt threatened, they simply unraveled themselves and slithered away. In fact, in one of the most frightening events of my life (shortened version of the story here), a particular snake's signal bounced strangely leading me to accidentally kick it. Not only did it not strike me (which would have certainly lead to my death under the circumstances), it never rattled. It simply stood erect on its coil, feinting, and doing a great job of looking incredibly terrifying (in response to which my lungs released a bloody-murder scream that I don't believe I can ever replicate).
"Can you hear me now? Good."
The point of all this is that the Timber has taken a different route to self-defense: near-perfect camouflage. More often than not, I would track a snake and know that I was standing withing 10 feet of it yet spend an extra fifteen minutes just trying to see it, even though it was often coiled among the leaves in the open. Many people in the Ozark Mountains can live their entire lives living among Timbers and yet never actually see one in the wild.
Obviously the animal kingdom is filled with myriad examples of camouflage even more amazing than the relatively simple colorations of the Timber Rattlesnake. However, I find the example of the Timber interesting largely because of the public perception of how a rattlesnake should behave (this includes their mild disposition as well as their camouflage).
Don’t Fear the Creatures
Me manly. Throw baby.
I fear nothing.
No, that is not statement of my own masculine machismo, which I generally lack. In fact, if you were to stick a fuzzy kitten or a baby before me, you would find me near-instantly reduced to fawning and cooing like a 5-year old girl. I’m not ashamed of that.
No, what I mean is that, for whatever reason – be it upbringing or genetics – I seem to lack a trait that in my experience 95% of the general public harbors. That trait is an irrational fear of some aspect of the living world.
Here is one example of this. I have talked to literally hundreds of people about this over the course of my thirty years, and without fail, nearly everyone I have ever spoken to reveal some sort of prejudicial bias against some specific branch of the animal kingdom. Usually it either is bugs in general, spiders, or snakes. For others it is raccoons, or opossoms, or rats, or any “pesky” vermin.
Often, instead of verbalizing it as fear, they will say “oh, I hate them,” or “I really don’t like them.” However, it all seems to break down to the same thing: an irrational distaste for entire groups of living creatures.
"I hate you too."
I simply cannot understand it. I mean, yes I understand intense phobias. My wife is a psychologist and I have a firm grasp on the nature of phobias. But the prevalence of this hatred and fear seems to go far beyond a massive case of societal phobia.
Considering that I seem to be alone in this (though in view of the subject of this blog in general, I’m sure many of you readers are like me), it seems to me that the main question I have is not “why do they fear?” but “why do I not fear?”
I was raised as a redneck rat-tailed child in the woods in Northeast Texas and then in the Ozark Mountains of Northwest Arkansas. I grew up surrounded with snakes, spiders, scorpions, and all manner of wildlife. But the rub of it is this: so did everyone else I ever grew up around! So did my parents, my siblings, and my friends. Yet still, all of them have some major irrational bias or another against one or more of these creatures.
So why is it you can throw a timber rattlesnake 3 feet in front of me and I’ll be like “wow! cool!”, whereas most people will scream and cry? My entire property is overrun with Northern Black Widows (see pics and video here), yet I have never had the faintest urge to call an exterminator.
I think at this point I should quickly define fear. If you stuck the same snake within striking distance of my body, you can be damn sure that fight-or-flight would kick in and I’d retreat in haste. I wouldn’t dare handle a black widow. The fight-or-flight is reflex to avoid bodily harm. The rest is rational fear, or more accurately, simple respect. This is not the fear I am talking about. I’m referring to the guttural yuk, eww, or aghhh factor that so many harbor.
So tell me, dear reader, because I honestly would like to understand – why do you fear/hate/dislike whatever part of the animal world you do?
I have thought about this a lot, and my best hypothesis is that, for me, fascination trumps fear, and even kills it. I have had an insanely passionate fascination in all things biology (and science in general) since I was 5 (as far back as I can remember). When I was young, I dissected dead things, I played with insects, and I handled king snakes. Some of my little friends did this, but even then, I remember that I seemed much more interested by those things than my friends did. So is this the simple answer? Maybe, but I’m not so sure.
If so, the question just shifts a degree to “why the hell doesn’t everyone else find the living world as fascinating as I do?”
"Be glad glass is too smooth. Be very very glad."
I had several traumatic animal-related events as a child. When I was 9, a scorpion found its way into my pajamas while I slept. It got wedged against my calf where it stung me 8 times. My dad ran in, ripped my pants down, and stomped the scorpion that fell to the ground, while I screamed bloody murder. Still, I think scorpions are awesome. A giant black rat snake I once handled grabbed my hand and chewed it until the blood flowed (also see my related post on black rat snakes and ignorant rednecks). I’ve been stung by countless hymenoptera (hornets bees, wasps, yellow jackets). I’ve been bitten by spiders. Still, I love them all.
Is my brain simply not wired to make the kind of phobic connections that so many others have? My wife is deathly afraid of cockroaches, yet I’m sure the worst that ever happened was that she got one in her hair. Somehow I doubt that a difference in my own susceptibility to phobias or conditioning is the answer – I can’t imagine I wouldn’t develop PTSD if a truly traumatic event were to occur to me.
Am I more rational? I know that in many cases I’m much more rational than others, though I still have my own irrational quirks. However, my lack of fear also extends to other things – like death. I have thought and thought and I can honestly say there is nothing that I simply fear. There are many things that I’d rather not happen, but none that I chronically fear.
I don’t mean this to come across as arrogant at all. I have many many faults, most of which I can admit. But this seems to be a trait of mine I have observed. Those that know me – tell me if you disagree.
It just doesn’t make any sense to me to dislike, hate, or fear any type of creature. There is nothing logical about it. To me it’s like saying “I don’t like the color green.” What does that even mean? I can understand not wanting to wear green because one finds it less aesthetically pleasing or because it doesn't match one's eyes. But this is fundamentally different from not liking the color itself. I would be scared to tromp through a grizzly den, but I don’t hate or fear grizzlies in general.
Anyway, I’ve rambled enough on this. I would very much like to hear any thoughts any of you have.
A Small Example of the Ignorance of (Some) Rednecks
Black Rat Snake (aka "the only good snake is a dead snake")
Today, once again, I witnessed a not-too-uncommon display of ignorance and primitive barbarism in the rural south.
I was driving along a small country back road near my home in North Carolina, listening to a book on CD (no it’s too embarrassing to tell…OK, fine – it was “Twilight” the first novel by Stephenie Meyer about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire. Hey screw you – it has amazing character development and who doesn’t like vampire stories?)
Anyway, I was ambling down the road when I saw what I thought might be a snake crossing up ahead. No one was behind me, so I stopped in the middle of the road and got out to check it out. I’m usually the guy who stops to pick up box turtles and carry them across the road – what can I say? I’m a biologist. Sure enough, it was a black rat snake of average length - about 4 feet long – stretched out across the road and moving as if in no hurry. I was glad he had not been run over - usually when I see a snake in the road it’s already dead.
I see a truck pull on to the road a quarter mile down and head right toward us. “Shit,” I think, “This truck will probably aim right toward him.” So I grab the tip of the snake’s tail with the intention of toss him in one quick movement into the ditch. But the snake’s scales were firmly latched onto the blacktop. Plus, he was much quicker than I anticipated. He lashed out at me and coiled into a raised striking position in the middle of the road. He did not find my actions quite as altruistic as I did. Black rat snake bites can be quite painful, considering their row of tiny sharp teeth. I’ve been bitten by one before. They also have a tendency to chew on you once they grab hold. So I backed off.
The truck was not slowing down and other cars were now moving towards us. My car was parked in the middle of the road. I could not see any sticks or anything to handle the snake with, so I decided to leave it to the fates. Maybe the redneck will see that I was just out looking at the snake and will leave it alone, just for my sake (note: I come from a long line of Arkansas/Texas rednecks myself). I get in my car and quickly start it up. I slowly pull forward, and the truck, which had a long trailer attached to the back pulled to a stop in front of the snake. I watched an elderly man get out of the pickup in my rearview. He glanced at the snake, jumped back into the cab, swerved his wheels into the center of the lane, and squashed the snake.
Yet this old man went out of his way to smash a creature that spends its days protecting the man’s crops, or his neighbors. Out here, I’ve seen people swerve to hit opossums, raccoons, snakes, and any other little non-dog-or-cat species.
I saw it writhing over itself - dying - as the truck righted into the lane.
Why do I taste burning rubber?
The black rat snake is non-venomous. It feeds almost solely, as its name implies, on rodents. The land around where we had been is all farmland, the truck was carrying farm equipment, and the man looked himself to be a local farmer.
It makes me sick. I simply cannot understand the mind that would derive pleasure from brutally snuffing out our animal neighbors, particularly considering that these are people that have been raised in their presence. I’m not a hippie PETA activist. And I’m not a vegetarian. In fact, I do experiments on animals for brain research. But the pointless, barbaric smashing of animals with a car for pure fun simply reinforces my own views about large swaths of the human population – namely that in many people, pure barbarism lingers within their psyches, reinforced by superstition, fears of things they don’t understand, and utter unadulterated ignorance.