Japanese Knotweed in turn was introduced by the Victorians more than a hundred years ago into Britain. Meanwhile, the weed is a major pest that costs taxpayers 1.6 billion pounds a year to combat. The plant has a growth rate of 3ft per month and sends its roots down 6ft. Removing the pest means removing every particle of the roots as well, as it is able to reform from only particles of its roots. The weed is able to grow through concrete and asphalt and thereby damages buildings, roads, dams and other manmade structures.

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Japanese Knotweed has several scientific names, it is known as Fallopia japonica, Polygonum cuspidatum, and Reynoutria japonica.

Now the eminently gifted government of Britain has declared the Japanese psyllid Aphalara itadori which feeds on the sap of the knotweed to be no threat to other wildlife. If the government says so, I am sure the psyllid will do exactly as told. To back up their statement, ministers have cited a research by the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International in Oxfordshire. The scientists made an exhaustive trial run on 90 (sic) native British plants with the psyllid to prove that it will not attack anything but the Japanese Knotweed.

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Plants For A Future lists 7,000 edible, medicinal, and other useful plants alone on its webpage. Add to this some other plants, and the research on 90 plants by the institute mentioned becomes really impressive. There is no mention either of any tests having been made on birds or any other small predators that might feel inclined to take a nibble of psyllids. There is nothing like a well founded and exhaustive research by scientists to make you believe in a government statement.

For better or worse, licence has been granted to introduce and set free the Asian bug in Britain. With all probability, it will be another success story, the question is just for whom.

To cap it all up, the flunkies at the Daily Mail had the most amusing capture: “The psyllid dies out after destroying knotweed.” Quite so, dear David Derbyshire, that is why knotweed and psyllid are to be found well and alive in Japan to this day.

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Galls are caused by a variety of parasitic organisms, which can range from bacteria and fungi to insects and mites.  They look as if they are grown from the plant itself and are often structures with an extremely high level of organisation.  Such is the structure of many galls, the parasite can be quite easily identified.  These are the galls of the Silk-button Spangle Gall Wasp.  They take advantage of oak trees in two ways,  First of all they create galls on the underside of leaves which overwinter on the ground attached to fallen leaves.  This produces a single gender hatching – all female.  So far, so Alien!

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When the larvae pupate and emerge from the galls in March they lay their eggs in the buds of the oak tree and this will produce a second generation.  This generation of wasps will go on again to lay their eggs on the underside of leaves which will fall and overwinter – and so the cycle continues.  The galls form around the eggs.  Galls do not only have to be formed by insect or mite activity, however.  The example below is growing on a hemlock tree in Oregon.  It is an example of Phellinus punctatusa nasty looking fungus if ever there was one. These lumps on the side of the tree are the size of cats.

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The artichoke gall, (below) on the other hand is caused by an insect.  When an egg is laid the gall surrounds it – it is a chemically induced distortion of the buds on, in this case, the Pendunculate Oak.  A single eggs is laid within a leaf bud by the gall wasp.  The artichoke itself looks quite fragile – as if a squirell could destroy it if it wished.  Of course – it is not to be confused with the vegetable that bears the same name – they share the title simply because of the similarity in shape not because they are related in any way.

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However, there is a hard case inside the artichoke and this is where the larva lives until it is ready to emerge in the Autumn.  Strangely enough this generation of the wasp (Andricus fecundatrix) is asexual.  It lays its own eggs in oak catkins and it is this offspring that produce the sexual generation of wasps which will ensure the genetic diversity of the species.    This is one of the few insects in the world that will produce two generations in a year – one that is asexual and one that is sexual.  Are you ready to see what’s inside?

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This looks a little scary.  It is a knopper gall – so called because the word derives from German and was a type of helmet worn in the seventeenth century that had small protuberances, often studs or tassels.  This knopper gall contains several grubs of the gall wasp Adricus grossulariae. The nodules that appear on it are because the grubs inside are competing for space and pushing each other away to the extremities of the gall.  Altogether a little disturbing if you are of a delicate disposition.

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It is not only wasps who induce galls on plants.  Some species of aphids do this too.  Below you can see the offspring of the Poplar petiole gall aphid.  Each July they will drop green cottonwood leaves to the ground and emerge – a ravenous family looking for their first meal.

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Some galls can look quite pretty – they are not all the stuff of nightmares at all.  Or are they?  Below is a gall is known as the Rose gall or the Robin’s pincushion gall (quite a charming name).  It is caused by the Diplolepis rosae gall wasp and can contain up to sixty eggs. In medieval times it was dried out and then powdered – to be used as a toothache remedy.  It was even thought to cure baldness when rubbed on the scalp and was placed below pillows to help insomniacs get some sleep.

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However, as lovely as it looks you have to remember that inside it are up to sixty larvae, growing and maturing inside it.  It may have been used to send people to sleep but the sight one the interior may give some people nightmares.  Take a look.  You can see the fronds of the gall which give it its name at the edges of the picture – and the larvae within!

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The gall below is that induced by Disholcaspis coralline- the Coral Wasp and it is on a Blue Oak in North California.

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Some galls looks like eggs but they are not – that has hatched within it.  The gall is the protective layer around the egg which is forced by the parasite.  Although many look attractive, such as this striped pea gall of the wasp Cynips longiventris they generally reduce the fertility of the host plant quite greatly.

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Galls are sometimes even prickly, as can be seen above.  Back to fungus for a second here.  This is a sloe berry plant and the fungus is known as Taphrina pruni.  The common name is pocket plums – they are not to be eaten.

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The gall below is on the leaf of the Arroyo Willow.  There is a certain almost florescent beauty to it – remember though that the ‘spikes’ appearing on the gall is the action of the larva within – jostling for growing space.

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The gall that most people will recognize is known as the Oak Apple (again, not to be confused with the real thing).  The gall can be up to five centimeters in diameter and it can look like an apple, certainly in its early days.  They are common both in the US and the UK and share the same name – but are caused by different wasps.  They have their uses for us, however.  If you fish then you can use the larvae inside as excellent bait.  However unlikely, If you find yourself in an oak forest with nothing to eat then the larva are full of protein.  You do not need any further explanation there, perhaps.

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Sometimes, they can look like bits of human brain hanging from a tree – to be frank.

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The lime tree too has its own gall, caused by a mite.  Here, though the protuberance takes the form of an erect and curved pouch and will cover the upper surface of the leaf of the lime tree.  They are extremely visible because of their red color and can be spotted in the late spring.

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The mites, Eriophyes tiliae tiliae, spend the winter in crevices in the bark.  The gall inducer used is only about two millimeters in length but release chemicals powerful enough to have this dramatic effect on the leaf.  The grown mites will emerge in the autumn, pass the winter in the bark of the tree and then in the spring they will start the cycle all over again.

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Some galls really do look as if they are the eggs of an alien species, ready to hatch and wreak terror on an unsuspecting humanity.

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Although the gall has a detrimental effect on its host – we have something that we must thank it for.  When mixed with Iron Sulphate the oak gall creates a permanent ink of a purple black color.  It was the standard writing ink in Europe from the twelfth to the nineteenth century.  Without the ink created from the oak gall many of our precious medieval manuscripts would have faded centuries ago.

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If you enjoyed this article, you may also like:

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The Strange History of the Sunflower

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Black Swan: The Theory and the Feathered Friend

Image from Wikipedia

There are over 800 species of tarantula spiders in the world. Many are mild-mannered creatures and some are even kept as pets! Others, like the Goliath Bird Eating Spider, can be very aggressive. It’s the largest spider in the world (about the size of a dinner plate!) and can make a hissing sound to scare off predators. Its bite is painful and it can throw off barbed hairs from its back, which can irritate our skin.

RED-BACK

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These guys are common in Australia and they hang out in dry places like garden sheds and empty trash cans. Funny enough, red-backs don’t always have a red strip and only the female’s bite is harmful. It can cause headache, vomiting, stomach pain and even paralysis (loss of muscle movement).

WHITE-TAILED

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This fella’s bite can cause a burning pain and make you sick. In rare cases, it’s been suspected of causing the skin to break down iin a similar way to gangrene. However, it hasn’t been proven that the spider’s venom is responsible. Unfortunately, there’s no test to detect whether someone’s been bitten and there’s no antivenom either. It’s just as well they like to eat other spiders and not us!

FUNNEL-WEB

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It’s one of the world’s most deadly spiders. The Sydney funnel-web likes to wander into yards and houses looking for females around mating time. They can also stray into swimming pools and survive for days underwater. If cheated, this spider can get highly aggressive and inflict multiple bites in a flash.

SPIDER FACTS

1. Relative to its size, a spider’s web is twice as strong as steel.
2. The combined length of strands in a sider’s web can be up to 60 meters.
3. The weight of insects eaten by spiders each year is more than the weight of an entire population.

What are robots, really?

Robot scientists (called roboticists) define robots as reprogrammable brains that move a body but even souped-up remote-controlled vehicles can be called robots. We tend to think of robots as anthropomorphic — geek speak for human-shaped — but that is not usually the case. Most of today’s robots are simple robotic arms used in manufacturing plants worldwide.  Try making friends with that!

Still, some robots have made their way into people’s homes. The Electrolux Trilobite, for example, is a robot the size of a throw pillow that vacuums your home. It plots out its course, navigates around your furniture while sucking up dirt, and returns to its dock to recharge when its batteries run out. Not quite your robot buddy but it’s better than you doing the housework.

Moving Around

Getting a robot to walk on two legs is one of the most difficult things for roboticists. (Makes you realize how wonderfully advanced our bodies are). The most famous walking robot is Honda’s Asimo. Just over three feet high, this robot pop star has already been to several countries and met a few lucky girls and boys. Some robots, like Sony’s charming robot dog, Aibo, walk on all fours. Other robots roll around on treads like tanks or on wheels, and some even tiptoe like a spider on eight legs!

Make stuff, not war

Even if robots today aren’t as advanced as the robots in movies or cartoons, they are good for performing repetitive tasks. Imagine attaching doors to a car all day, every day for the rest of your life? That would be dull, dull, DULL! For tasks like these, it’s best to let a robot do it for you — they are stronger and more precise. Robots are also good for working in dangerous situations, like taking gas and lava samples from an active volcano. They don’t breathe so poison fumes won’t harm them, and their metal bodies can withstand much more heat than your fragile skin. Robots can also go to places humans can’t. They can explore Mars or dive the depths of the Atlantic Ocean in search for sunken ships.

Tech Tidbit!

Do you know where the word “robot” comes from? In 1920, Czechoslovakian playwright Karel Capek wrote R.U.R. (short for Rossum’s Universal Robots). The play became a worldwide success. Capek got the term from his brother Josef, who derived it from the Czech word Robota, meaning drudgery or servitude.

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So let’s do the math. It takes 1000 milliseconds to equal one second. That means if days are shorter by 6.8 milliseconds every day, it will take 147 days for us to be ahead by a full second.

We have to take this further in the future to really see something more impressive. In a little over four years, about June of 2014, our world will be a full 10 seconds ahead of time that we normally would have been if the Chile earthquake hadn’t occured.

10 seconds not impressive enough for you? Well then I guess you’re not enough of a science geek. Allow me to blow your mind.

In a little over 24 years, in 2034, we will be a full minute ahead of time. That means on a nice May afternoon when it was really supposed to be 3:02 pm, it will actually be 3:03pm!

So all because of the Chile earthquake, it’s like we’re traveling ahead in time 6.8 milliseconds every day!

Freaky.

These providers soon learned that Zhora preferred beer to vodka. Russia is not known for brewing world-class beer, but it’s doubtful that Zhora fretted about the taste. Like elephants, who are famously and often dangerously rowdy when they get a snoot full, Zhora was into it for the buzz.

Zoo visitors are also credited for turning Zhora on to cigarettes, which he quickly became addicted to. Soon the chimp’s cage became a very noisy place, as Zhora shamelessly screamed at and cajoled anyone in hailing distance to fix him up with a beer or a smoke, and preferably both. The two vices apparently go together even in the simian world.

Guys just want to have fun. Wikimedia commons.

Zhora’s habits did not temper his libido; he got more than his share of the ladies and sired several baby chimps. Perhaps even the homelier females started to look good to him after a few beers. There’s no word on whether he habitually lit one up after sex.

Though visitors were delighted by Zhora’s substance abusing antics, officials of the Rostov Zoo grew concerned about his health. “We asked visitors not to give him (alcohol and cigarettes), but it was all in vain,” one declared. Even augmented fencing proved ineffective in preventing visitors from getting contraband into the cage.

Zhora’s handlers concluded that sudsy chimp needed an intervention, so the shipped him off to a rehab facility in Kazan. Unlike his human counterparts in America, he probably won’t be rubbing elbows with celebrities or troubled politicians, nor will he be working a 12-step program or attending meetings. The only humans he is likely to see will be veterinarians, who won’t give Zhora what he really wants, though they may give him something to help with the shakes.

After all, giving up drinking and smoking at the same time has got to be a bitch, even for those who walk on all fours.

The ability of birds to find their way home is equally amazing. Birds have been taken by airplane fro their home to places 400 miles away. When they were set free, they flew back to their home!

To say they have an instinct to ” go home” doesn’t really explains the mystery. How do they find their way? We know that young birds are not taught the road by their parents, because often parents fly off first on the annual migrations, And birds who fly home often fly by night, so they can’t see landmarks to guide them. Other birds fly over water, where there are no landmarks of any kind.

One theory is that birds can sense the magnetic fields that surround the earth. Magnetic lines of force Magnetic lines of force stretch from the north to the south magnetic poles. Perhaps the birds direct themselves by these lines. But this theory has never been proven.

The fact is, science just doesn’t have a full explanation of how birds find their way when they migrate or fly home! An interesting bit of history is related to the migration of birds. When Columbus was approaching the American continent, he saw great flocks of birds flying southwest. This meant land was near, so he changed his direction to the southwest, to follow the direction taken by the birds. And that’s why he landed in the Bahamas, instead of on the Florida coast!

From this beilef a dance called the tarantella developed. It is a very lively Italian dance that gets faster and faster until the end. While the bite of tarantula is fatal to small insects and small animals, there is no evidence that it is poisonous to man. But the fear of tarantula is still strong among the people where it is found.

True tarantula are found only in Southern Europe and are named after the city of Taranto in Italy. They have hairy bodies about three quarters of an inch ling. Like some other spiders, they don’t spin webs. Instead they dig deep burrows, which they line with silk. During the winter they shut themselves up in their houses with a silken door and hibernate until spring.

Tarantulas wait for their prey somewhat like tigers. They lie hidden among leaves or rubbish or within their burrows. When an insect comes along, they rush out, bite it, and then drag it into their burrows. That bite either kills the insect or paralyzes it so it is helpless.

The spider then eats at its leisure. Tarantulas don’t chew or swallow their victims. They suck out the blood and body juices. But when it comes to their own youn, tarantulas are very considerate. They keep their cocoons in their houses, and carry them when they go out. When the young hatch, they ride on the mother’s back for a week or so.

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Australia, 1697.  Dutch Explorer Willem de Vlamingh was the first European to – incredulously – catch sight of a black swan.  Sailing along the coast of New Holland (which we now know as Australia) he sailed up a river and set a standard example of truth as Europeans saw it on its head.  All swans are white – that was taught at school as something both true and well known but here, up the (later named) Swan River de Vlamingh saw something thought to be impossible.  The news spread to Europe – to incredulous ears – but the proof of existence of this confounding avian was not verified until 1726 when a pair of the swans were taken to Jakarta and put on display.

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Fast forward almost three centuries and enter, stage left, one Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  In his book, The Black Swan (2007), Taleb wrote that virtually everything of importance in human history can be put down to a ‘black swan’.  That is that none of them were predicted – and neither were they directed.  He gives many examples, but some of the most notable are the PC, the attacks of September 11 2001 and the First World War.  It could be argued that some of these events were predicted but there is no extant record prior to their happening that adequately explains their consequences.

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The bird itself, elegant and beautiful can easily be seen as the antithesis of many of the events to which its name is often attached.  One tribe of Australian Aborigines, the Nyungar, believed that their ancestors were black swans who then became men.  They celebrated this in a ceremony known as woolberr until the 1920s until the last of that grouping died out.  Like the white swans of Europe it is a large water bird and it is found in the southeast and southwest of Australia.  Although it was first spotted in the seventeenth century it was not until 1790 that it was placed in to a genus – Chenopis – by the English naturalist John Latham.  We will return to the species later – for now we will concentrate on the theory and the event and how the term came to be.

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Before its discovery – and the species specific urban oral takeover by Taleb, the Black Swan featured – if not heavily then with a certain constancy – in the language and literature of Europe.  The oldest reference to be found is from Juvenal from the late First Century of the Christian Era – rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cycno.  With apologies to the women reading this, Juvenal railed that finding a perfect wife is akin to finding a black swan (a rare bird).   Shakespeare may well have used the term too – but by his day in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the black swan was used to describe something that was impossible.  Although the expression is not found in his works (perhaps he preferred to invent his own) the black swan represented that which was impossible (or nearly so) and therefore simply could not be.

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After the discovery of the real black swan in Australia then the expression – through sheer necessity – had to change with the times.  From being an impossibility, the term now changed its meaning to become something that was thought to be impossible but then discovered to exist after all.  The nineteenth century philosopher JS Mill used the term as an expression of a logical fallacy.  Its underuse pre 2007 may have meant that it was to be consigned to the dust closet where old expression are kept until they disappear altogether but Taleb came along and dusted it down and gave it meaning for our new century – to give things that almost defined meaning a label.

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A Black Swan Event, according to Taleb has three important characteristics.  It is not something that is expected on a normal day of the week.  Next, it carries an impact that is profoundly felt – either locally or globally.  Last of all it almost always relies on human nature to then try and make up reasons – however strange – for why it happened in the first place.  It can be argued that a very small number of Black Swans can explain virtually everything that has happened in human history – be they events, discoveries, religions or accomplishments.  These Black Swans may even, so Taleb asserts, be used to explain why some things happen in our own personal lives.  Not, perhaps, that they can be used as a panacea for blame but can make the inexplicable, well, interpretable or at the very least understandable.

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Why Black Swan?  Why Not?  A rose by any other name would smell as sweet (thanks, Bill) for sure, but the term has cachet and more than a little history – plus there is the added frisson of the association of black with cats and magic (and so on).  Taleb’s main thrust was not to predict these Black Swan Events – by definition their sheer improbability might confound the greatest mathematician.  What his intention was to build what he called robustness in to negative Black Swan Events (in other words, to get through them relatively intact) and to take as great advantage as possible of those considered positive.

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Millions of turkeys have Black Swan Events each year (one should hesitate before shortening the term and calling it a BS Event for reasons that should be self evident to any reader over the age of ten).  However, what is a surprise for a turkey is not for its butcher.  So, the main objective is not to be the turkey (or indeed the butcher).  Unfortunately, most people would feel that they end up at least feeling like the feathered gobbly beasts.  Perhaps it is the fate of those of who would necessarily append our gender with ‘in the street’.

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So much for the theory, what about the real thing – the bird itself?  In their native domain they can be found on their own but sometimes in groups of thousands.  Although they appear quite black, feather wise – they have their own surprise in store for us too as their flight feathers are as white as those of their European cousins.  Perhaps this goes with Taleb’s own theory that we must try to turn the Black Swan Event white (somewhat outdated terminology on certain lines, however, racial semantics are not the main thrust of this article).  What perhaps makes them stand out is the marvelous red bill that they have – perhaps if that had been brown or orange the bird would not look quite so remarkable.

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At full maturity the Black Swan can measure up to 142 centimeters and weigh as much as nine kilos.  It has a beautifully broad wing span of anything up to two meters and its neck is notable curved in to an ‘S’ shape – and is, relatively, the longest swan neck on the planet.  It has a surprisingly melodious call, which it emits while in flight or when it is on water but it can also whistle in quite a threatening manner.  If it is disturbed when it is nesting or looking after its cygnets, the noise it makes might well give you the fright of your life.

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It was thought as a species to be sedentary – that is it would stay in one place for its entire life.  However, Black Swans are now known to be highly nomadic.  There is, however, little pattern to their travels.  Their movements – often covering many hundreds of kilometers – are purely opportunistic.  If there is a wet year the population tends to immigrate in to the interior.  This reverses when years are drier.  In some ways the behavior of the bird could be seen to be dependent on one type of Black Swan Event all of its own.

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It is far from endangered – and is thought to number up to half a million individuals, so there is little chance of the Black Swan having its own Black Swan Event.

But then, that’s the whole thing about Black Swan Events.  We don’t know, do we?

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But if to you were to go to KingCheetah’s Place for Felines right now at kingcheetahpf.webs.com, you would get the following error message: “Important Notice! KingCheetah’s Place for Felines has been permanently shut down do to many issues. Along with the closure of this site, the podcast feeds will be taken down as well.” So does this message really mean what it says? Unfortunately, the answer is “yes”. KingCheetah’s Place for Felines has permanently closed down, and will never be in existence again.

Now you ask the question: “Why? What exactly happened that made KingCheetah shut down the site?” Well here it is: According to KingCheetah, the closure of K.P.F. happened because of many reasons, such as: low site traffic, no use of the K.P.F. community system at all, and there was also a lot of technical issues. Now what could be the root of these problems? Well here is KingCheetah’s explanation: “Well, I’m pretty sure the reason why there was such low traffic is probably because of the same reason my former website did, and that is two reasons, actually,” he said earlier today. “The first reason would be because there was no announcements prior to the launch of K.P.F., and there was absolutely no advertising done at all. There was plans to have advertisements and infomercials on YouTube and other video sharing websites later on, but now I know the advertising and the announcing should’ve been done about four months before K.P.F. was launched.

“Now the other reason why the site lacked traffic was do to the fact that I was sort of ‘reinventing the wheel’, if you know what I mean. Online forums, like the one on K.P.F., were first introduced in 1996, and they were mostly popular from that year, probably until about 1999. Forums are still widely used today, but they’re just not something you would use to gain massive amounts of traffic these days. The thing that people are really looking for now is a more sophisticated online community where you post various types of content without a bunch of technological limitations and having to know BBCode. What people want now is something like Myspace and Facebook. Now there was a plan to create something like that using an online community creation software, and it could’ve been easily done; but there was other problems I had to deal with besides upgrading the structure of K.P.F.”

So, along with fact that the way K.P.F. operated was a bit “old-school”, KingCheetah stated that there were technical problems that occurred. Such problems mentioned were things like podcast feed services failing to fulfill the needs of K.P.F. According to KingCheetah, that dragged down the website a lot, and turned a lot of people away that had hoped they would find some interesting content about felines. Apparently there was a way to correct those problems by using different technology, and switching all of K.P.F.’s media over to other servers, but it would’ve taken about six months to set up the media system and do various tests to ensure the new system was reliable, and KingCheetah felt that he might as well have just started over and created a new website. So, that is the explanation for the closure of KingCheetah’s Place for Felines.

There is a possibility that KingCheetah will create a new, and even better place for feline fanatics to explore and get involved in, but no plans of one have been confirmed.

To keep in touch with what is happening with KingCheetah, just follow this link: The Big C, and then click the subscription symbol, which is at the top of your browser and on the left of the URL in the address bar.

(podcast subscribtion symbol looks like this)