Quicklinks: 6 – 12 March 2023

Clearly this is quite a bit later than it was supposed to be but, since I had already picked out the links, I decided I would finish it. However, I’m giving up on the weekly quicklinks; they were supposed to help me get some easy writing done in my spare time but they turned out to be a lot more effort and stress than they are worth.

The Japanese name for the wolf also means “great god.”

Did you know the Japanese word "ōkami" is a homonym for “wolf” and “great god”? The last wolf in Japan was killed in 1905, but since the 1990s, there have been groups advocating for reintroducing wolves to help mitigate the damage caused by deer and wild boars. #wolf #funfact pic.twitter.com/qGOsmWBDWM

— Wolf Haven International (@wolfhavenint) March 10, 2023

This article suggests that giving wild animals names, instead of just numbers or other designations, helps reduce the sense that humans are separate from the rest of nature.

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Quicklinks: 27 February – 5 March 2023

Good news, Mexican wolf numbers are increasing! To be clear, that’s Mexican wolves in Arizona and New Mexico. They were reintroduced in 1998 and are now at 241 wolves!

Unfortunately, not everything is good. There’s a worry that biophobia, the fear of nature, could lead to less conservation of wild spaces. With many people living in cities with few green spaces and opportunities to interact with wildlife, nature seems strange, scary and not worth preserving. This is something we need to guard against.

In my previous postdoc, I worked with Professor Don Cowan. There’s a nice article about him and his work in Antarctica, where he’s shown that there is far more microbial diversity than was initially suspected. A lot of his work has involved microbial life in extreme environments, see also when I accompanied him on a field trip to the Namib Desert.

Quicklinks: 16-22 January 2023

Let’s start off with something cute; wolves playing in the snow.

Swapped an SD card on Saturday and realized we got some dynamite footage of the Nashata Pack! Here is a snippet for some Monday morning zen…enjoy a few moments of a couple wolves being wolves in a snowstorm! pic.twitter.com/ebZRdz5akQ

— Voyageurs Wolf Project (@VoyaWolfProject) January 16, 2023

And here’s some good news for animals; New York became the 10^th US state to ban the sale of cosmetics which were tested on animals!

I’ve seen this in quite a few places, it’s a piece arguing that PhD training needs to be reformed. Now I’m not saying that PhD training (or universities in general) are perfect, they’re not. There are many things that can be improved but I don’t think this article is on the right track. In my opinion, many of the sort of issues that the article talks about are neither failings of PhD nor university education but a failure of society and expectations. A degree at any level is not supposed to prepare people for jobs. It’s supposed to provide domain-specific knowledge while building general skills in critical thinking, research and learning. It’s up to employers to provide job-specific training. There is also a problem of credential inflation where even basic jobs now require a degree, no matter how unnecessary that is. Furthermore, while I fully agree that we should value PhD graduates and that they can help find solutions to various problems, I think framing that as a key role of PhD training is sorely misguided. I say that because we don’t need more solutions! Look at the biggest problem of today – global warming. We already have renewable energy options, we know how to build public transport, we know how to make food more sustainable, we know we can cut back on consumption. The problems are not scientific, they are political. There is no political will to make the necessary changes. Most other big problems, from Russia’s war in Ukraine, censorship, human rights, equality and so on, those are all political problems that we can, in principle, solve today.

Quicklinks: 1-8 January 2023

In the early years of my blog, I occasionally did a “quicklinks” post which just included links to items of interest and a brief description. I didn’t do too many and that sort of short interaction was later taken over by Twitter. In an attempt to boost my activity, if not full-length posts, I thought I might try doing a weekly set of quicklinks that I’ve shared on Twitter. It will not necessarily include everything I see and share there but, hopefully, the most interesting and informative links.

The Royal Society reports that Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection, was born yesterday in 1823.

Alfred Russel Wallace FRS was born #OnThisDay in 1823. He independently conceived of the theory of #evolution by natural selection and his work prompted Charles Darwin to publish 'On the Origin of Species'. Wallace laid the foundations of modern biogeography. pic.twitter.com/IQNxoZuiAF

— The Royal Society (@royalsociety) January 8, 2023

I have yet to read the original article, but, apparently, ancient tools discovered in Brazil, which were previously considered to be evidence of some of the first humans in South America, were likely created by capuchin monkeys.

Wolves in South Africa

Male coywolf (wolf X coyote)

When I was in Port Elizabeth last week, I went, with friends, to the Tsitsikama Wolf Sanctuary. It is currently the only wolf sanctuary in South Africa and houses a number of wolves from zoos or that were originally kept as pets. Because of how they were raised, they can no longer be released into the wild. Even if they could be, they are not a native species to South Africa. It’s nice to know that there are people that are looking after these beautiful animals and, if you are in the area (It’s about an hour and forty minutes drive outside of Port Elizabeth), I would recommend a visit to support them. You can see some of my own pictures from the day below.