The Elegant Universe

The Elegant Universe, a PBS site, shows author Brian Greene discussing String Theory and a Theory of Everything. Click on the image, it links to the list of videos. It's a joy to watch when you're in a geeky sort of mood. It helps that he's kinda cute.

A Name, Eight Birds and Some Stamps

Photo: 1982 issue Philippine stamp for 30 centavos (sentimos), documented online here.

My childhood nickname refers to a fruit dove. Which particular species, I wondered? According to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, this document identifies 4 different species as "Punay" on p. 66. There are also other pigeons that go by the same name. Which one was I named after?

It might be Treron formosae filipinus, or the Whistling Green-Pigeon, once hunted as food fowl. Here is a photo of the Japanese species, as I can't find a local photo. Here is another, clearer side view photo, from Mangoverde.com, publisher of the Mangoverde World Bird Guide.

Photo: Treron formosae (Japan). Screen capture from this birdwatching site, with detailed descriptions.

Or it may be Ptilinopus marchei, the Flame-Breasted Fruit Dove / Marche's Fruit Dove.

Photo: Ptilinopus marchei. Screen capture from British Oriental bird specialist Desmond Allen's video originally posted here.

Or it may be Ptilinopus merrilli, the Cream-Bellied Fruit Dove or Merrill's Fruit Dove. Here's another screen capture from Desmond Allen's video.

Could it be, perhaps, Ptilinopus arcanus, the Negros Fruit-Dove? (See illustration below.) My mother is from Negros. There are no extant photos of this bird. The last documented sighting was a female specimen collected in 1953, unless you count this site's claim that "local contact Rene Vendiola sighted a Negros Fruit-Dove last year" (2002). International birder Sander Lagerveld reported to Oriental Birding that "the male Negros Fruit-Dove reportedly looks like a miniature Yellow-breasted Fruit-Dove." (Clicking on Lagerveld's name leads you to his 3-part Philippine bird tour report, complete with maps and local contact info!) In the meantime, here is an attractive illustration of that female bird, from BirdLife.org:

There's also Ptilinopus leclancheri, or the Black-Chinned Fruit-Dove. If you notice I'm posting another screen cap from Desmond Allen's video - it's because his videos are so very clear and show excellent frontal views in good light. However the "black chin" is not very apparent until you look more closely. Please also check out this excellent photo, from the gallery of photographer Romy Ocon. Here is another, by Mark Harper. There is a 2008 issue stamp! Look for it here.

How about the Treron pompadora, or Pompadour Green Pigeon / Philippine Green Pigeon? Here is a very clear photo by Romy Ocon, and another by J.P. Carino. This, happily, has a population that is not as threatened or endangered as the others.

And lastly, there are the bleeding-heart birds. The Luzon Bleeding Heart, Gallicolumba luzonica rubiventris, is called Punay. This is such a beautiful bird, check out this fantastic photo by Ken Ilio. The Mindoro Bleeding Heart, Gallicolumba platenei, is also called Punay. Unfortunately I have not found a photo of the bird at this time.

It appears that Punay is the local name given to some smaller varieties of fruit dove, green pigeon or bleeding-heart pigeon. Many of the birds listed here are threatened species.

As of this writing I want to look for the stamps featuring the Punay doves.

Birdwatch.ph (Wild Bird Club of the Philippines) is a wonderful site promoting local and provincial birdwatching activities. It also offers a downloadable taxonomic list of scientific and common names, among other great references..

There are a good number of Philippine bird references in print, or that you can Google for, if you would like to know more. I'll list them in a later blog, together with a list of links to local birdwatching groups and information sites online.

Attenborough and the Flying Squirrel

In the late 70s, little girls usually stayed in school until their parents came to fetch them. They would play Chinese garter/jump-rope games, patintero (a kind of tag) and show each other the contents of their Hello Kitty pencil cases. My mom the Biology professor didn't fetch me, because I was old enough to go home by myself. We also happened to live only four blocks away.

Walking home was fun, more fun than walking to school in the morning. I learned which flowers, when picked, had sweet dew in them that children sucked (I don't know the names, but it was a red trumpet flower that grew in a bush on the way home). I learned which hedges were the likely hiding places for pet spiders. On certain days, I practically ran home, because Sir David Attenborough's BBC series Life On Earth would be showing on Channel 9. Or it might be Jacques Cousteau, sharing yet another inner space adventure from his famous vessel The Calypso. These two are the heroes of my imagination.

The other day I read in print and online news about Nepenthes attenboroughii, a newly discovered species of rat-eating giant pitcher plant unique to the Philippines. The rare pitcher plant was found on the island of Palawan, one of our last natural frontiers. The species was named by its discoverers after Attenborough, as a gesture of thanks for his lifelong career as a natural history filmmaker for the BBC. His Life series (Life on Earth, The Living Planet, The Trials of Life) spanned from 1979 to 1990, which was most of my life in school!

One summer I was working as a student assistant at the UP Zoology Dept. where my mother was assistant to the Department Head. She gave an exam for Natural Science 3 and asked me to proctor while she lectured in the next room. One of the exam sections covered parallel evolution. She had two columns listing animals, and instructed students to match scientifically unrelated animals that evolved similar physical characteristics, and to name the characteristic they shared. The ones who'd listened to the lectures and read books had no problems answering the questions.

One guy, not particularly known for his studiousness, raised his hand. "Miss, er, can you explain the two-column thing again?" I explained it according to the script my mother gave me, without giving too many of the answers away. Then it transpired that he had no clue what some animals listed looked like. Obviously he didn't study. A bit exasperated, I said, "My goodness, many of the answers were on tv last week! Don't you watch Life on Earth with David Attenborough? If you watched that show you would be able to answer this entire exam." While most of the class started giggling, many of the other students had their "Aha!" moment right after that remark and scrambled to make up for lost time. The episode I was talking about showed and discussed the similarities between a bat and a flying squirrel.

The guy who didn't study was (I think) the same guy who later used brilliantine pomade to protect his hands while dissecting a cat in my mother's class for Comparative Anatomy. Eventually I believe he became a doctor. Now that I look back on it all I want to laugh at how prissy and supercilious I was as a proctor. It didn't occur to me that other kids preferred to spend their afternoons doing things other than watching BBC nature documentaries. But I loved it then, the way I love the Discovery Channel and the National Geographic Channel now. In fact one day I want to order the Attenborough videos.

So now the Philippines has a link to David Attenborough. Jacques Cousteau has a link with the Philippines, too - the Calypso docked here in the early 1990s when Cousteau was investigating an underwater cave system in Palawan, before sinking in a storm off Singapore in 1996. Imagine, two of my TV heroes, both linked to the country via Palawan. How cool is that? My sister, our friends and I mourned when Cousteau passed away in 1997. We had decided to learn scuba diving because of him. I no longer dive, but I still enjoy snorkelling. The oceans still hold much fascination for me.

When I close my eyes I can see David Attenborough's wildly windswept hair, and I can hear his voice, cultured yet emphatic. He'd probably be walking on the beach in his chinos, barefoot, pointing at a horseshoe crab and examining the undersides, comparing it to trilobites. Goodness, he must be in his mid-80s now. Today we have a crop of extreme adventurer-naturalists, whom I think owe their inspiration in some part to his filmmaking. They're very entertaining right enough, but sometimes I do look for an enthusiastic but contemplative commentary from a naturalist who lets Nature be the star instead.

Kuroshio Sea, by Jon Rawlinson

I want to share this amazing video by Jon Rawlinson featuring Please Don't Go by indie band Barcelona.

Geeky Conversations

My friend Benjie dela Pena turned me on to this interesting site that he posted on Facebook, the Sputnik Observatory for the Study of Contemporary Culture. (Link, and above screen capture, show theoretical physicist Michio Kaku discuss interplanetary life. There are other thinkers on the panel.) Yes, geeky, but SO interesting. It's nice to listen to people's ideas in a conversational manner, and to see how they relate things to real life.

Don't worry, it won't give you too much of a nosebleed. It just puts you into a certain perspective.

Benj recommended that I mouse over the site banner, and so I did - Hahaha! How VERY COOL! You go and do it yourself, and find out more.

Gems From National Geographic

From National Geographic magazine, November 2005 issue:

Health - Women feel more pain - and feel pain more - than men, notes a new study. The sexes' coping strategies may hint at why. Men in the study focused on physical aspects of discomfort, which apparently helped increase pain thresholds. Women focused on pain's emotional as well as physical aspects. Their pain proved harder to treat and seemed of greater intensity.

Astronomy - A new planet with three suns in its sky has been found 149 light years from Earth. Its type is named Tatooine after the dual-sunned planet in the film "Star Wars".

From the December 2005 issue:

Health - Olive oil contains a natural painkiller, scientists say. An ingredient in olives known as oleocanthal works in much the same way as the drug ibuprofen to suppress pain-causing prostaglandins in the body. The anti-inflammatory properties of oleocanthal may help explain the reduced incidence of certain cancers, stroke, and heart disease in Mediterranean populations that traditionally use large amounts of olive oil in their diets.

Animal Kingdom - Cats can't taste sugary foods. A defective sweet-receptor gene is why, according to a new study. This antipathy toward sweets may have helped shape feline evolution in the wild, leading to a preference for muscle-building protein over carbohydrates. Or, say scientists, the gene may have become defective from lack of use in cats' high protein diet.

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I truly love this magazine. I remember growing up as a kid reading my uncle's old back issues, and it felt like I was travelling a different country each time. My not-so-secret fantasy was to become a National Geographic photojournalist...