0 Bio-Art: Mermaids: The Body Found.

A while back, there was a huge controversy about how Animal Planet had gone from being an educational channel to more of an entertainment channel. This sentiment reached its peak with Mermaids: The Body Found, a pseudo-documentary (2012) that worked around making mermaids as realistic as possible. They did such a good job that people were fooled into believing it was real. So just how do you make such a realistic pseudo-documentary, anyways?

Here's a hint: start with facts. The documentary opens with mention of conspiracy theories, and how even conspiracy theories need evidence. In particular, it mentions two events: the "bloop," a mysterious noise heard on sonar, and whale beachings brought about by sonar testing. These are both real.Pseudo-science, you're doing it right.

Throughout the film, the narrator details how mermaids could have evolved from a humanlike ancestor, taking to the sea instead of staying on land. Now, marine mammals are not my forte, but in spite of much of the documentary being fake, I'm going to give Animal Planet the benefit of the doubt when it talks about marine mammal evolution. The stuff about whales coming from wolflike (!UNGULATE) ancestors is definitely true. Point is, I didn't see any obvious flaws like I did in Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real. If mermaids did indeed wind up being real, this is some pretty solid reasoning of how they could have evolved.

The documentary also mentions the Aquatic Ape Theory. This is a thing, not something made by Animal Planet. Due to having little hair, a certain balance of body fat, and requirements like iodine for healthy brain function, the theory posits that part of mankind's evolutionary history happened in a marine environment. Unfortunately, even a mere glance at the linked site will tell one that a lot of this stuff has been discredited. It was still used well in the documentary, so I'll give it the paragraph it deserves.

Suffice it to say, the mermaids look amazing. As if the tail was not enough, the creators also factored in brain composition, communication (with dolphins!), sensory adaptations for life in the deep sea, and other features that one would usually not think of on the average mermaid. The transition stages are also pretty believable, with ancestors sporting tails like pinniped fins at one point. Neat.

Granted, there is one huge flaw almost unrelated to the content: the pacing of this thing is awful. It's one thing if you're trying the "American Godzilla" approach of not letting us see the monster without us seeing the movie. It's another when you advertise "Mermaids: The Body Found" and the first hour or so of the 1 hour and 21 minutes deals with bits and pieces and random, apelike creatures that are not the body promised. The word "mermaid" does not even come up until like 50 minutes in. In my personal opinion, that's a little bit too late for something advertising mermaids. This is in-character for science, which would indeed be in denial about such a subject. At least Dragons showed us the body right out of the gate; the mermaid "body" is a mess when we see it. Talk about beating around the bush.

That said, it's still a great documentary, and I'd advise anyone interested in pseudo-science or mermaids to give it a look. It's not quite as good as Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real (which still has flaws), but in the same vein and an enjoyable, if uncanny, watch. The mermaids themselves look believable.  The people making it did a darn good job.  Check it out, and do as the documentary advises: continue to treat mermaids as mythical creatures, even if they are out there.

Detail: Bio-Art: Mermaids: The Body Found.

0 The Human Foot: an Ode to Unintelligent Design.

So, I've seen some people who think the human form is a thing of perfection. Indeed, a lot of people see the human form as beautiful. Most of the art done over the ages has been of humans. We happen to be the most powerful species on the planet right now. How could something actually be wrong?

My answer to them? Just look at the human foot.

Source.

The human foot is a marvel of inefficiency. Look at all those segments. Look at those too-flexible joints. There are exactly 26 bones and 33 joints in the human foot - by foot standards, that's a lot.  There is a reason humans are susceptible to sprained ankles, arch pains, and so on. We have not really evolved to walk as well as some things. Beauty is only on the surface; the human skeleton, including the foot, is a right mess- and proof that evolution is a thing.

For starters, humans are plantigrades - the slowest type of terrestrial movement aside from, oh, slugs. The other two common forms of tetrapod movement, digitigrade and unguligrade (paws and hooves, respectively) both have fewer digits and overall less surface area on the ground. The fewer digits you have on the ground, the faster you move. Ungulates walk on their nails; that is why a horse will always be faster than you. Period.

Kangaroos are pretty much the only fast-moving plantigrades in existence. Most of their movement consists of hopping instead of walking. Kangaroos have dealt with being semi-bipedal and plantigrade pretty well; look at the foot above and how similar it is to that of an ostrich, which is probably the most efficient bipedal foot in existence. That is how far behind we are compared to say, birds. Seriously, just look at a (digitigrade) T-Rex foot compared to our messy human foot:

Our feet are messed-up as they are for a reason. Great apes, our closest relatives, have feet very much like hands- meant for grasping, with all five digits in tact and flexible joints. This is not the ideal form for a terrestrial foot, let alone a bipedal foot. We like to think our hands and feet are sufficiently differentiated. In reality, they're not; there's a lot of arboreal ape hand-foot still left in there. Ow.

The reason it isn't gone? Foot fetishists. Or, rather, there was no reason for this horribly inefficient foot to leave. It wasn't really hindering our survival, just being a nuisance. If anything, there is positive sexual selection for feet that look the way they do right now. Especially in cultures where women are covered from the waist down, the ankles and feet are downright attractive. If this attraction was absent and we had, say, predators to flee from, rest assured the foot would be a more beautiful thing.

Detail: The Human Foot: an Ode to Unintelligent Design.

0 Creature Feature: Springtails.

By request of one of our readers, we began looking stuff up on insect evolution. It's not covered too often, so the request was more than welcome. This led to our discovery of the oldest insect in the world, Rhyniognathus hirsti.

Source.

Wait a sec. What is that? Not in this blog's usual WTF way, but really, that fossil's hard to see. 
So here's the next best thing: a living fossil of an insect called a springtail.

Boing!

Actually, we aren't even sure if springtails are insects. Some people think that they diverged from insects a while back, and thus deserve their own class (Entognatha). They have most of the right stuff- six legs, exoskeleton, etc. - but also have some traits that stick out. Unlike most insects, they never really metamorphose, and don't have external mouthparts. Also, as per the name, springtails possess a long structure in their rears (called a "furcula") that lets them jump. That last one doesn't keep them from being insects - it's just cool.

Springtails go way back. They go so far back that the first bug ever was first thought to be Rhyiella praecursor - a basal springtail. The same chert section with R. praecursor held the fossil first mentioned up above. This makes springtails among the first arthropods to ever walk on land. No wonder their taxonomy is confused.

Springtails may be creepy, but are they harmful? Yes and no. They are agricultural pests at worst, a title shared with many insects. They are, however, sensitive to herbicides and many other soil alterations. One springtail in particular is used as a model organism to test for potentially-toxic soil. See? They're not all bad.

If you wish to find springtails, well, this was an entry covering a whole class of bizarre little arthropods. Springtails are tiny, but can be found beneath leaves and in other humid places. As shown above, they are tiny, and frequently confused with fleas. They eat decaying matter and keep microoorganisms in check. Plus, they bounce; there's not much to hate, even though some people thing any creepy crawly is legitimately creepy.

Detail: Creature Feature: Springtails.