Monday, January 02, 2006

Dialectical Science-JBS Haldane


Haldanes Law:Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose.


Today is another science day on Le Revue Gauche. Checking out and posting stories yesterday about science and the natural world I came across J.B.S. Haldane, a marxist scientist and evolutionary theorist. So today became not just science day at Le Revue Gauche but 'Left wing' science day.

There can be no truce between science and religion. JBS Haldane
Scientific education and religious education are incompatible. The clergy have ceased to interfere with education at the advanced state, with which I am directly concerned, but they have still got control of the children. This means that the children have to learn about Adam and Noah instead of about evolution; about David who killed Goliath, instead of Koch who killed cholera; about Christ's ascent into heaven instead of Montgolfier's and Wright's. Worse than that, they are taught that it is a virtue to accept statements without adequate evidence, which leaves them prey to quacks of every kind in later life, and it makes it very difficult for them to accept the methods of thought which are successful in science. JBS Haldane
Children are taught that it is a virtue to accept statements without adequate evidence, which leaves them a prey to quacks of every kind in later life, and makes it very difficult for them to accept the methods of thought which are successful in science.--J. B. S. Haldane
Since science cannot be anything but radical, meaning to get to the root of , or antiestablishmentarian, since it confronts dogmas and religious ideologies, it is left wing. When it is used by the State for ideological purposes or for the technology of power it is then not Science but its similcarum, Scientism.

Scientism' may be used to imply an ignorance (or denial) of a relationship/disjunction between metaphysical and natural phenomena. This sense of the term comes close to Hannah Arendt's use of it in The Origins of Totalitarianism; in her view, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had made the human condition a matter of scientific exactitude, and thus otherwise impossible moral or ethical questions (such as, "Can a man be worthless? And if so, can we euthanize him?") are easily resolved within the internally-consistent "scientific" methods of the state. In other words, the inhuman aspects of such totalitarian states cannot be said to be entirely unrelated to their adherence to pseudo-science as the ultimate arbiter of value.



So today we will take a look at Haldanes Dialectical materialist views of science.

And low and behold when I typed in J.B.S. Haldane into Google News looking to see if anyone else had quoted this staunch defender of evolution and marxism, well I came across these two articles on ID and Creationism. One from the Left Coast, Berekely and one from Kansas City, where ID was introduced into the curriculum in the schools, prior to the recent court ruling in Pennsylvania.

Everything You Know About Lizards Could Be Wrong
Berkeley Daily Planet, CA
So there goes another paradigm. And that’s fine; that’s the way science is supposed to work, what distinguishes science from theology. Any scientific theory is potentially falsifiable. Someone once asked JBS Haldane what he would consider as clenching disproof of evolution. “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian”, he replied. Fair enough; if those 600 million-year-old rabbits ever turn up, science will have some explaining to do. But no rabbit, fossil or otherwise, is ever going to convince the acolytes of faith-based pseudoscience that their belief in intelligent design is misplaced.


Windows to God’s work
Kansas City Star, MO
ntelligent design doesn’t belong in textbooks; science should be in Sunday school. Why? If nature is God’s expression — God’s language — then natural things are the Rosetta stone.

Every dyed-in-the-wool creationist should have bird-watching binoculars and a garden trowel. The anatomy of a leaf should be his verse, the workings of a dragonfly’s eye, inspiration. The spiritual seeker doesn’t replicate miracles in a laboratory or test faith like measuring cholesterol. Experience is evidence. Truth, not fact, is its realm.

British scientist and atheist J.B.S. Haldane reportedly said, “If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation, it would appear that God has a special fondness for stars and beetles.”

The supporters of Christian Identity Science; Creationism and ID believe that, like flouridation, evolution is a commie idea. And their idea of science is not empirical or scientific, its simply attempting to make the facts fit their ideology, not unlike Lysenkoism in the USSR. Ironic that.

In fact they even attempt to use Haldane's work to discredit Darwin. Or they attempt to use current scientific discoveries to refute his work, which they can't.

Haldane is familiar to all of us even if we don't know his name, because he postulated that life began in a primordial soup. And he was the first to apply a mathmatical formulation to biology.

Oparin-Haldane Theory
Working independently, in the 1920s, Aleksandr Oparin and J. B. S. Haldane proposed similar theoretical schemes for how life may have originated on Earth (see life, origin). Hence, the term "Oparin-Haldane Theory" is sometimes used when referring to their views. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Oparin in Russia and Haldane in Britain independently developed similar theories suggesting how conditions on the early Earth may have been conducive to the chemical evolution of life. Both postulated a primitive reducing atmosphere in which simple organic chemicals were synthesized. These organics, they argued, accumulated in the surface waters of the ocean, forming a "primordial soup", out of which, in time, life in its most elementary form emerged. In the 1950s, through the endorsement of Horowitz in the United States, Bernal in Britain, and others, the Oparin-Haldane theory achieved widespread recognition and was given powerful empirical support by the positive results of the Miller-Urey Experiment (1953). At the same time, Watson and Crick broke the genetic code, revealing the structure of DNA, and thus completed the knowledge of the structure of the basic chemical building blocks of terrestrial life).

Since evolution takes a materialist view of the natural world, and promotes empiricism and materialism which are philosophical views of the world, and since Historical Materialism and Dialectics are used by both science and Marxism, evolution therefore is a ruse to suck us all into being commies. And of course Haldane proves them right. He was a Dialectical Scientist who defended both Marxism and Evolutionary Theory.

JBS Haldane’s famous book, The Causes of Evolution (1932), was a major work of what came to be known as the “modern evolutionary synthesis,” re-establishing natural selection as the premier mechanism of evolution by explaining it in terms of the mathematical consequences of Mendelian genetics.

As one of many “fellow-travellers” of the Communist Party among the British intelligentsia in the 1930s, he wrote many articles for The Daily Worker, but only joined the Communist party in 1937. He left in 1950, shortly after having considered standing as a Communist Party candidate for Parliament. The rise of Lysenko’s pseudo-science, with the overt support of Stalin was the principal factor which turned Haldane away from the Communist Party.

In one of the last speeches of his life, Biological Possibilities for the Human Species of the Next Ten Thousand Years in 1963, he coined the word “clone,” from the Greek word for twig.
Haldane was far from being a dogmatic Marxist. In rejecting Lysenkoism he opposed Scientism or the idea of the State using science as an idelogical justification for its actions.

"there is … a very grave danger for science in so close an association with the State … it may lead to dogmatism in science and to the suppression of opinions which run counter to official theories. …


In fact he was very much a libertarian communist in later life. His ideas of decentralization ifluenced supporters of the idea of small is beautiful, and the idea of urban environments based on neighbourhoods, like the works of Canadian Jane Jacobs. What Kropotkin had predicted in his works Mutual Aid and later in Fields Farms and Factories, that decentralization was a natural phenomena of evolution, was proved by Haldane.

Another essay by Haldane, "On Being the Right Size" (1927), virtually created analytic morphology. By pointing out, for instance, that exoskeletons can only get so large before the internal organs collapse under their own weight, this essay has influenced fields as diverse as the criticism of mass urbanization, the alternative technology movement, and decentralized economics.
Haldane, JBS Summary


Writing in 1923 before the advent of large scale petrochemical production or Agribusiness Haldane said this about the future of agriculure;

But before that day comes chemistry will be applied to the production of a still more important group of physiologically active substances, namely foods. The facts about food are rather curious. Everyone knows that food is ultimately produced by plants, though we may get it at second or third hand if we eat animals or their products. But the average plant turns most of its sugar not into starch which is digestible, but into cellulose which is not, but forms its woody skeleton. The hoofed animals have dealt with this problem in their own way, by turning their bellies into vast hives of bacteria that attack cellulose, and on whose by-products they live. We have got to do the same, but outside our bodies. It may be done on chemical lines. Irvine has obtained a 95% yield of sugar from cellulose, but at a prohibitive cost. Or we may use micro-organisms, but in any case within the next century sugar and starch will be about as cheap as sawdust. Many of our foodstuffs, including the proteins, we shall probably build up from simpler sources such as coal and atmospheric nitrogen. I should be inclined to allow 120 years, but not much more, before a completely satisfactory diet can be produced in this way on a commercial scale.

This will mean that agriculture will become a luxury, and that mankind will be completely urbanized. Personally I do not regret the probable disappearance of the agricultural labourer in favour of the factory worker, who seems to me a higher type of person from most points of view. Human progress in historical time has been the progress of cities dragging a reluctant countryside in their wake. Synthetic food will substitute the flower garden and the factory for the dunghill and the slaughterhouse, and make the city at last self-sufficient.

Daedalus, or, Science and the Future
A paper read to the Heretics, Cambridge, on February 4th, 1923. by JBS Haldane

Haldane coined the term 'cloning' as well as writing on the potential of invetro fertilization in 1924!

In 1924, Haldane published a truly remarkable work of fiction entitled “Daedalus”.

What made it so remarkable was that it introduced the concept and scientific feasibility of “test-tube babies” brought to life without sexual intercourse or pregnancy. At the time, of course, it was regarded as nothing more than shocking science fiction.

But Haldane himself knew very well that his theory would in all probability one day become a reality.

Haldane was the inspiration for Alduous Huxley’s “Brave New World”
Haldane was the inspiration for Alduous Huxley’s “Brave New World”

“Daedalus” was a hugely popular and influential book. It was the inspiration for Alduous Huxley’s “Brave New World” (Huxley and Haldane were friends), published in 1932, in which a society based on test-tube babies turns out to be less than ideal.

By the mid-1930’s, leading geneticists announced that “in vitro” (“in glass”) fertilisations would soon be possible and within 40 years the first test-tube baby was science fact.

Ironically, in spite of his predicting its feasibility, Haldane became a fierce critic of eugenics (the science of tampering with the hereditary qualities of a race or breed), complaining that he suspected it was being distorted for political ends by what he called “ferocious enemies of human liberty”. The later work of “Doctor Death” Josef Mengele certainly demonstrated that his fears were entirely justified.

As a microcosmic example of Haldane’s massive influence on modern genetics, in one of the last speeches of his life, “Biological Possibilities for the Human Species of the Next Ten Thousand Years” (1963), Haldane coined the word “clone” for the first time, from the Greek word for twig.

Daedalus-1824 (ebook) By: J. B. S. Haldane

Daedalus Summary:

Ever since the time of Berkeley it has been customary for the majority of metaphysicians to proclaim the ideality of Time, of Space, or of both. But they soon made it clear that in spite of this, time would continue to wait for no man, and space to separate lovers. The only practical consequences that they generally drew was that their own ethical and political views were somehow inherent in the structure of the universe.

And his work was used by Science Fiction writer Olaff Stapledon in his novel Last and First Men.Haldane himself not only inspired science fiction writers but wrote a science fiction short story in 1932 entitled the Gold Makers. He and other scientists of his time created the conditions for scientific fiction, based on current scientific understanding and not just speculative fiction. "The Cambridge Quintet": An Experiment in Scientific Fiction

This would not be the only science experimentation that Haldane predicted that was in the realm of science fiction for its day, he also narrated a Soviet film on the ability to bring dead dogs back to life. His work on life extension influenced the modern development of statistical biology, genetics and studies in theoretical biology and the more controversial area of immortality studies.

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms (1940)

This disturbing film records the successful experiments in the resuscitation of life to dead animals (dogs), as conducted by Dr. S.S. Bryukhonenko at the Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy, Voronezh, U.S.S.R. Director: D.I. Yashin. Camera: E.V. Kashina. Narrator: Professor Walter B. Cannon. Introduced by Professor J.B.S. Haldane.

Haldane was Scottish by birth, English by education and finally a naturalized Indian, dying on the contient which was his adopted home.

In protest at the British Government's response to the Suez Crisis, he immigrated to India in 1957. He adopted Indian nationaility and worked with the Indian Statistical Office (Calcutta), before establishing a genetics and biometry laboratory in Bhubaneswar (Orissa).

But how many people have read Haldane? Let alone have heard of him? And yet his work is at the crux of the modern debate around evolution and genetics. It is not Darwin the creationists wish to bury with ID but Haldane.

So I decided to check out more Haldane on the net, and found these additional links as well as the ones above. Enjoy I know I have.

Haldane's Writings

A Dialectical Account of Evolution, 1937

"The Effect of Variation on Fitness" in American Naturalist, 1937

The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences, 1939

On Being the Right Size

JBS Haldane on CS Lewis's Space Trilogy

“Biological Possibilities for the Human Species in the Next Ten Thousand Years” 1963

Marxist Writers: John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

Enzymes J. B. S. Haldane 1965

VIVOS VOCO: JBS Haldane (1892-1964)

What ails Indian science*
Various observations of JBS Haldane on slow growth and unworthiness of Indian
science

His last words; Cancer’s a Funny Thing 1964

The Faking of Genetical Results By Professor J. B. S. Haldane

Rats By J. B. S. Haldane
J. B. S. HALDANE
THE APPROXIMATE NORMALIZATION OF A CLASS OF FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTIONS
Biometrika 1938 29: 392-404; doi:10.1093/biomet/29.3-4.392 [PDF]


On Haldane

Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History by Helena Sheehan.
a biographical chapter from this excellent online text, is on Haldane.

Biography: Charlotte Haldane

Stephen Jay Gould on Haldane

John Haldane Biography at Spartacus

J. B. S. Haldane Transhumanist Award

Random Mutations and Evolutionary Change: Ronald Fisher, JBS Haldane, & Sewall Wright.

Two Geneticists: JBS Haldane and CD Darlington

The Man who Invented the Chromosone: a Life of Cyril Darlington

A Brief History of Evolutionary Genetics Part 5: JBS Haldane

JBS Haldane at AllExperts

Words About Words - JBS Haldane

Letter from Joshua Lederberg to JBS Haldane (October 12, 1946)

J. B. S. Haldane From Wikipedia

Quotes of the Day for 5 November 2004 - JBS Haldane

Note on J. B. S. Haldane's Paper: " The Exact Value of the Moments of the Distribution...
COCHRAN Biometrika.1938; 29: 407

"A very enjoyable experience..."Was what J.B.S Haldane said of his experience in the First World War,Haldane was a chap who was obsessed, among other things, with finding ways to relieve submariners and divers from the "bends" a crippling and sometimes fatal condition where nitrogen enters the blood as a gas.

Theory of Diving Tables
All dive table theories began with the work of JBS Haldane in 1908

Centennial: JBS HALDANE, 1892-1964 -- Crow 130 (1): 1 -- Genetics

Ronald W. Clark's biography of Haldane "JBS" (now hard to find) is considered definitive

AAS Biographical Memoirs - Michael James Denham White 1910-1983

JSTOR: RA Fisher's Contributions to Genetical Statistics

Natural History: A Conversation With John Maynard Smith

Professor Peter J. Bowler, Queens University, Belfast
Popularization and the Public (Mis)understanding of Science:
Science, Religion and Public Debate in the Early Twentieth Century

The Danish Peace Academy, Avery, John: Eliminating the Causes of War
In the 1930’s, JBS Haldane and RS Fisher attempted to understand on the basis of
the Darwinian theory of natural selection why humans are willing to die in War

Guide to the Julian Sorell Huxley Papers, 1899-1980

Last judgment: the visionary biology of JBS Haldane.

Excerpts from "LIFETIDE"

Susan Merrill Squier. Babies in Bottles: Twentieth-Century Visions of Reproductive Technology . New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1995. xiii + 270 pp.

Griffiths, Paul E. (2004) Instinct in the ‘50s: The British Reception of Konrad Lorenz’s Theory of Instinctive Behavior. In 1950 most students of animal behavior in Britain saw the instinct concept developed by Konrad Lorenz in the 1930s as the central theoretical construct of the new ethology. In the early 1950s J.B.S Haldane made substantial efforts to undermine Lorenz’s status, challenging his priority on key ethological concepts. Haldane was also critical of Lorenz’s sharp distinction between instinctive and learnt behavior, which was inconsistent with Haldane’s own account of the evolution of language. Haldane’s account of transitions between learning and instinct drew on a view of the genotype-phenotype relationship common amongst his contemporaries and which may have ‘preadapted’ some British biologists to respond positively to Daniel S. Lehrman’s 1953 critique of Lorenz’s instinct concept. By the 1960s Lorenz drew a clear distinction between his own views and those of the ‘English-speaking
ethologists’.

ICARUS, or the Future of Science
Bertrand Russell
Responding to J.B.S. Haldane's 1923 essay on science and the future, Russell took a more pessimistic view.



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Sunday, January 01, 2006

Chimps and Man Closer Relatives In Time

Ok so today is science blogging day here Le Revue Gauche. Just one more little find to debunk the Creationist/ID/Christian Chumps;

Chimp-human segregation not beyond 7 m years ago: Study
By Sankar Ray


Scientists, working in a collaborative venture, at the Arizona State and Penn State Universities, inferred that the genetic divergence between the ape man and the man took place sometime between the last five and seven million years. The leading scientist, an Indian by birth, is Sudhir Kumar, director of the Center for Evolutionary Functional Genomics in the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University.

Based on palaeontological appraisal of 167 different gene sequence sets from humans, chimpanzees, macaques, and mice, using "multifactor bootstrap-re-sampling approach", a modern stochastic method, the geneticists and research scientists of related disciplines, were able to narrow down the period of Chimpanzee-human separation time period from 13 million years to 5-7 million years from now.



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The Three Beetles

Well how did I miss this stunning scientific discovery of 2005? I dunno, I guess the White House wasn't to keen on announcing this;

- The guardians of animal nomenclature had mixed feelings over a proposal to name three newly-discovered species of slime-mould beetle after US President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. A pair of insect experts reserved the names Agathidium bushi, Agathidium cheneyi and Agathidium rumsfeldi for their latest creepy-crawlies. Science on a lighter note: offbeat tales of 2005

Speaking of beetles, or Coleoptera, it reminds me of this quote;

"I'm not sure, but he seems to be inordinately fond of beetles."

-- J.B.S. Haldane, when asked what the study of science taught him about "the creator"


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Design Yes But Not ID

Yesterdays Science News Today.

2005 ended with a court decision that reaffirmed the Scopes trial ruling, that Creationism and its offspring ID, were no match for the scientific theory of evolution. As the year ended it wouldn't be a court ruling that really nailed ID into the box labeled crackpot, it would be actual science. Revenge is sweet.

Stephen Jay Gould, so hated by the forces on the right and by Creationists and ID apologists, thesis of the Panda's Thumb had found further evidence in the discovery of a missing thumb like appendage on fossil remains of a Red Panda.

In The Panda's Thumb, a book of essays, Gould explained that the so-called thumb that allows the panda to strip the leaves off bamboo is really part of the wrist (the sesamoid bone) and evolved for this use because the panda lacks an opposable digit. He noted that "odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution - paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process. . . follows perforce." Evidence published on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the thumb of a second kind of panda, the raccoon-like red panda, provides what researchers claim is "an even more striking example of how evolution works opportunistically". A Spanish team has uncovered the earliest evidence of a "false thumb" in the panda fossil record, a finding that also clarifies the evolution of, and relationship between, the distantly related red and giant pandas. Both pandas share the unique false thumb. But the thumbs are structurally different and it is likely that they evolved independently.

In the Centennial year of Einsteins Unified Field Theory, it was found to be the explanation for all creatures great and small, having a common evolutionary basis for movement.

Unified physics theory explains animals' running, flying and swimming

The findings, published in the January 2006 issue of "The Journal of Experimental Biology," challenge the notion that fundamental differences between apparently unrelated forms of locomotion exist. The findings also offer an explanation for remarkable universal similarities in animal design that had long puzzled scientists, the researchers said.

"The similarities among animals that are on the surface very different are no coincidence," said Adrian Bejan, J. A. Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke's Pratt School. "In fact, animal locomotion is no different than other flows, animate and inanimate: they all develop in space and in time such that they optimize the flow of material." In the case of animal locomotion, this means that animals move such that they travel the greatest distance while expending the least amount of energy, he said.

"From simple physics, based only on gravity, density and mass, you can explain within an order of magnitude many features of flying, swimming and running," added James Marden, professor of biology at Penn State. "It doesn't matter whether the animal has eight legs, four legs, two, even if it swims with no legs."

First conceived by Bejan and published in 1996, the constructal law arises from the basic principle that flow systems evolve so as to minimize imperfections -- energy wasted to friction or other forms of resistance -- such that the least amount of useful energy is lost.
And all was right with the world without the mention of the word G*D.




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True Native Spirit

Now watch somebody get offended. And it won't be Native Americans, just Nativist Americans.


APRIL: Dr. Mark Seraly, dermotologist, explains his sculpture, cast in bronze, titled "An American Holocaust, April 3, 1513 -- December 29, 1890." The inscription on the plaque on the base reads, "In memory of all Native American Indian men, women and children who died in their fight for freedom." The sculpture shows an American Indian streched out as if crucified on the horns of a buffalo skull.
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We Love Animals

Last year seemed to be made up of some strange animal love stories as well as stories about animals that we love to read.

Strange animal love; well I posted here about the Dolphin Marriage, and according to the Seattle Times their most viewed online story was about Horse Sex.

Speaking of horses, there is the story of the deaf, blind, diabetic
equastrian.

"When I'm on a horse, people can't tell I'm different. That is, they don't see me using a cane. They don't know I can't hear very well. They don't know I have diabetes."

Melissa Collins, 26, of Peters explaining one advantage of riding horses and being a member of the California University of Pennsylvania Equestrian Team.

Melissa Collins gives Breeze a quarter horse, a hug before riding him as she prepares to practice with the California University Equestrian Team. Ms. Collins has a significant hearing loss and is legally blind.


Cathie From Canada has one of those rescued cat stories that tugs at our heart strings.

But how about Sooty the Goldfish that survived being almost eaten by a Heron, dropped down a chimney, falling on potato peels covering the coals, tumbling out onto the hearth in front of a guy eating fish and chips? And this was no ordinary goldfish, it weighed over a pound, was 27 centimeteres long and would be called a Koe by most folks.

Then there was the cop who was attacked by five vicious Chihuahuas and suffered, wait for it, bites to his ankles. I can see a vicious dog bylaw in the making.

March of the Penguins was the sleeper hit in the theatres and is now out on DVD, it was a source of controversial debate around monogamy and the animal world, there was this other film about birds that got overlooked and should be in your collection as well; The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

"An "engrossing, delightful film" (The Washington Post), The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is the bonafide sleeper theatrical hit of the year.

The film's endearing guide is Mark Bittner, an aging bohemian, but the supporting cast members, a rambunctious flock of urban parrots, are the true stars, and their surprisingly humanlike behavior makes for a wondrous and rare experience. The film follows the ups-and-downs of these wild birds within the green niches of San Francisco as Bittner befriends, feeds, and names the members of the flock. Along the way, we meet many unforgettable characters: among them Connor, the grouchy yet lovable outcast of the flock, crying for a mate but luckless in his pursuits, and "the lovers," Picasso and Sophie, inseparable until Sophie is forced into mourning when Picasso disappears. More than a mere birdwatcher, Bittner finds solace in his immersion with these strikingly beautiful creatures - but how will he cope when he's evicted from his sanctuary and forced to live away from the parrots?


Now of course Birds are cute, well these birds are anyways. But what about Bats?
One of our most useful animal allies, but one that is badly misunderstood, and of course sterotyped. In Northern Alberta bat populations are crucial to the fragile ecology of the Aspen forest.
Merlin Tuttle is founder and president of Bat Conservation International (BCI), an organization dedicated to preserving bats and their habitats. He earned his Ph.D. in mammalogy from the University of Kansas in 1974 and conducted research full-time for 11 years before founding BCI in 1982. Tuttle is also an award-winning wildlife photographer whose pictures of bats have appeared in National Geographic and many other publications. He lives in Austin, Texas.

I started a top-down approach in Austin, getting to leading media people and community leaders and talking about the fact that these bats moving in to their renovated Congress Avenue Bridge were far more allies than enemies. I made bats relevant to human interest, and was very diplomatic in my approach. That's how I built BCI — not by saying that bats had rights. A lot of people now agree with me that they're incredibly fascinating animals, but we started with like 'em or not, you need 'em. They're just as essential ecologically and economically by night as birds are by day. For example, about 70% of all tropical fruits eaten by humans come from plants that in the wild rely on bats as their primary pollinators or seed dispersers. Think where the developing world would be without bananas, breadfruit, plantain, avocados, papayas, peaches, cashews, jackfruit, dates, mangos — those are all bat dependent.

When you travel around the world seeing all these crazy things long enough, it affects you. I got my start by getting the gray bats federally listed as endangered. I convinced the federal government to preserve several of their key hibernating and nursery caves. But even then, nobody wanted to do anything about them. It's one thing to get an animal listed as endangered, but if it's not popular, nobody puts any money or effort into it. So, I had to get more and more involved. It was kind of a nuisance side thing to what I really wanted to do, which was research. But I just couldn't sit back and ignore all this outrageous killing of beneficial animals. I'm not an animal rightist — I hunt and fish — but I don't like seeing people destroy the natural order of the world around them. So I started speaking out more and more.

In about 1978, the National Geographic Society asked me to write a chapter in their book WILD ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA. I went to Washington to help their photo editors go over bat pictures. I was horrified. All the pictures they were going to put with my chapter were close-ups of tormented, snarling bats. In those days no one knew how to photograph bats. They'd just grab one, the bat would close his eyes and hunker down, thinking he was going to die, then they'd torment him until he snarled, then they'd take a picture. Then they'd blow the picture up to page size. No wonder everybody feared bats.

I said, "One of those pictures is going to completely undo everything I said in my chapter." So they agreed to send one of their staff photographers, Bates Littlehales, out in the field with me for six weeks to see if he could get better pictures. I asked him lots of photography questions. He got some good pictures. At the end he gave me the rest of his film and said, "Why don't you try taking some pictures now?" I ended up being the second most-used photographer in the book.

I used those pictures in talks to show the public what bats are really like. I found that they had a really big impact. One day, a little old lady came up after one of my talks and said, "You know, Dr. Tuttle, if you just founded a non-profit we could get a tax-deduction for donating to, some of us would like to try to help bats." So, with a grand design no bigger than I was going to hire a half-time secretary to help answer questions and produce educational brochures, I founded Bat Conservation International.


Then there were the stories of animals saving humans, which I wrote about here and here. And of course there was the tragedy of Katrina and Rita and the animals left behind, through no fault of their own or their owners, but rather by the bumbling bueracratic mishandling that overshadowed the entire disaster relief efforts.

So we still have to ask where are those U.S. military trained and armed Dolphins that got swept away during Katrina. And are they going to be the new threat in the Gulf coast, attacking swimmers and divers caused they have been trained too? And if they meet another pod will they transfer their training to them? Well don't expect anwsers to these questions since the military denies any knowledge of this program.

Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy’s cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying ‘toxic dart’ guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet’s smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.





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