13 hours ago
Is that orca being friendly or am I turtly deluded?
It must be a relief to know, if your boat is attacked by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar, that they are probably only playing. Some scientists think the whales have discovered that detached rudders make excellent bath toys. We reported this week that their latest puzzling behaviour — the whales', not the scientists' — is the apparent offering of gifts of food, and I use the term loosely, to humans. Readers were quick to jump in with their theories in the comments section.
'Maybe,' suggested Breaca Moger, 'they think the humans seem to be good at killing things so they are encouraging us to work cooperatively with them.' Carl May took a more spiritual view: 'Throughout our history as a species, we have made offerings to beings that we imagined were superior to ourselves. Perhaps, looking at our achievements, these creatures are bringing us their sacrifices, imagining that it will bring them favours in return.'
The experts in our report had admitted they could not rule out a darker, 'Machiavellian' explanation for the behaviour. 'Beware of orcas bearing gifts,' Samuel Lowe warned.
'Yes,' agreed J Prawer, 'the turtle they brought may have been wooden and filled with dozens of heavily armed orcas.' Orcamemnon was presumably waiting out of sight. Akilleres had died earlier.
John Holmes noticed a curious coincidence in Letters. 'On Thursday you published two letters from the little Hampshire village of Hartley Wintney (from Neil Grundy and Elizabeth Dalling). Is this a record? I will discuss this matter with the inhabitants of our two duck ponds.' John is also from Hartley Wintney, of course.
The two letters concerned Starmer's U-turns and Wimbledon linesmen and women, and the letters editor assures me there was nothing untoward in their selection. Readers will no doubt have noticed similar quirks of fate in Letters as well as the nearby birthdays column — three famous actors on one day, say — and I expect statisticians would tell us it would be odder not to see such conjunctions. In fact it brings to mind the so-called birthday paradox: if you put 22 people in a room, the next person to walk in is more likely to share a birthday with one of them than not. Alternatively, there is something in the water — and I don't mean the ducks — at Hartley Wintney.
A letter from Dr Jeremy Auchincloss of Elgin on the same day had cleared up a debate that had been raging, or perhaps slowly coagulating and ripening. He explained that 'the science behind cheese and dreaming is straightforward: cheese is rich in tryptophan, one of the building blocks for neurotransmitters that influence sleep and moods. Wallace and Gromit never eat Wensleydale before bedtime.'
Grand advice for David Ben-Nathan, who had written to Feedback: 'It was nice to find out that I am not alone in finding cheese causes nightmares. I am in my late fifties and in the last few years have noticed that when I have even a small amount of cheese, even in the morning, I usually have very disturbing dreams. I now rarely buy cheese because of this. It's good to know that there is a university where this is a whole area of study. I may contact the researchers and see if they will pay for me to go out to Montreal if I volunteer to take part in some experiments.'
I wish you bonne chance, David. I predict they will discover 1) you have lactose intolerance, as in our report; 2) you are being haunted by the ghost of a former business partner; or 3) tryptophan.
I cannot claim to have earned my ornithologist's wings, but the word lover in me could not resist having a beak at Richard King's query. Richard, from Macclesfield, said that for the past month he had been enthralled by watching his bird table through the kitchen window. 'There have been numerous daily visits there by a family of spotted woodpeckers: first the adults feeding the newly fledged young, and now the youngsters managing on their own. In attempting to determine the male v female and youngster v adult attributes and colourings, I have resorted to consulting the RSPB's and other books on British birds. They all give the same names. Question: why should Dendrocopos major, the great spotted woodpecker, be so named, whereas Dendrocopos minor is called the lesser spotted woodpecker? Why not greater and lesser? Or great and small? Any guidance you can give would be appreciated.'
I'm not sure about guidance but I reckon I can make things a bit more confusing. In geography we tend to use greater and lesser, as in the Antilles. Body parts too we label greater and lesser — the hippocampus, say — but constellations such as Ursa Major and Minor are generally called Great Bear and Lesser Bear. Or Little Bear.
Now for the birds. The larger Dendrocopos — a wonderful Greek compound meaning tree-basher — has occasionally been known as greater. Bird nomenclature can be a little flighty. But the British Ornithologists' Union publishes a handy table, which shows that since 1923 the greater black-backed gull has changed its name to the great black-backed gull, while its lesser cousin has remained lesser. In the same period the two spotted woodpeckers have remained great and lesser, but have unaccountably changed their genus from Dryobates to Dendrocopos. I can't blame them: I'd far rather be a treebasher than a woodwalker.
In late breaking news I hear our lesser basher may be changing his Latin name back to Dryobates. I warned you Richard's question would put the caterpillar among the woodpeckers.
