Starling dance spins a tale of design
Researchers miss the obvious in study of synchronized bird flights
The perfectly choreographed movement of thousands of starlings as they swoop and billow across the sky, almost like a single organism, is spectacular to see and a perfect example of well-planned design. Scientists have marveled for years at how the birds can twist and turn in perfect unison, without one single bird crashing into another.
Now, in a study published in Plos One, British researchers have attempted to figure out why these graceful birds fly in collective motion, called murmurations. Although the murmurations of starlings, captured in this video, materialize in various shapes, including spheres, planes, and waves, the group remains centered around a focal point on the ground, usually the roosting site.
In an effort to understand how and why starlings engage in this behavior, the researchers collected data from more than 3,000 starling murmuration sightings across 23 countries over two years. They observed that even though the entire group moves in perfect synchrony, each individual bird moves in accordance with only six or seven of its closest neighbors. The researchers speculated that each bird must follow certain, simple rules. They also noted the birds appear to use the collective movement for protection. When predators were present, murmurations tended to get larger and fly longer, with the birds flying down to roost en masse rather than dispersing. Safety comes in numbers, and the more birds in a group the greater the chance of spotting a predator before it is too late. Also, the soaring and diving of the group as it sweeps across the sky is likely to confuse any predator that tries to attack.
The researchers did not mention evolution in their paper, but Darwin’s theory clearly cannot account for such exquisite behavior, noted writers on Discovery Institute’s blog, Evolution News & Science Today: “One thing we can be sure of: performing split-second decisions in tight formation in 3-D without colliding doesn’t just happen.”
The writers also noted if the behavior evolved simply to protect against predators, there surely would have been an easier way to obtain protection than for thousands of birds to evolve the ability to fly in perfectly timed and synchronized maneuvers. Camouflage or scattering certainly would have been much easier.
The starling study poses several questions that a naturalistic, evolutionary explanation leaves unanswered. If the starling murmurations evolved, why wouldn’t the predators have evolved ways to deal with the murmurations? Couldn’t they have evolved murmurations of their own so to dive-bomb the flock on its roost? What about the rules the researchers said the starlings appeared to follow? Who made those rules? How are they enforced? Without intelligent design, how could each bird know the rules?
“Starlings appear to follow simple rules, but without reliable programming in each individual, the murmuration could turn into a demolition derby,” the bloggers wrote.
Archaeologists discover Solomon-era linens
Archaeologists from Tel Aviv University have unearthed 3,000-year-old dyed wool fabric samples from the time of Kings David and Solomon. The archaeologists discovered the samples at a large, ancient Edomite copper smelting site and nearby temple in the Timna Valley, a desert region in southern Israel. They date the cloth from the 13th to 10th centuries B.C. The fabric was so well dyed that even now the original colors are visible.
The discovery, reported in Plos One, highlights several aspects of cultural life in the Timna Valley at that time. It shows highly skilled weavers made the fabric and that it could not have been produced in the Timna region, an area too arid to grow the plants needed for dyeing or to provide a water source needed for the process. The people of the Timna Valley would have needed a long-distance trade route to obtain the fabric. And the cloth would have been costly, indicating the presence of a socially stratified society led by an elite group.
“It is apparent that there was a dominant elite in this society that took pains to dress according to their ‘class,’ and had the means to engage in long-distance trade to transport these textiles—and other materials and resources—to the desert,” lead researcher Erez Ben-Yosef said in a statement.
The textile makers used a sophisticated process in which they cooked colorful plants in water and then added the fleece and used alum to chemically bond the dye to the fabric, producing a colored textile resistant to fading by washing or sun exposure.
The weavers appeared to have taken great care to create fine, thin threads, which they twisted together to make thicker, stronger strands before weaving the yarn flawlessly into fabric.
The researchers are not certain where the cloth was produced, but much evidence points to somewhere along the Mediterranean coast and nearby regions, such as Judea and Transjordan.
According to the researchers, dyed and finely woven textiles were a desired luxury item that conveyed the owner’s status and wealth. The fact that they found the exquisite linens in the area of a copper mine suggests the metalworkers at the mines enjoyed an elite social status because they were esteemed for their high level of skill.
“Metalworkers played a substantial role in ancient societies, holding knowledge of one of the most sophisticated crafts of the ancient world,” the researchers wrote. —J.B.
Drinking during pregnancy may put grandkids at risk
Research has consistently shown women who consume alcohol while pregnant put their babies at risk of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). But a new study, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, indicates moms who drink alcohol during pregnancy may also be putting their grandchildren and great-grandchildren at risk.
The researchers found mice exposed to alcohol in utero suffered brain changes that could be passed down to future generations. The offspring of mice exposed to alcohol before birth showed the same increased anxiety and depressive symptoms, as well as the sensory-motor deficits, of their parent, even though they were never exposed to alcohol themselves.
The results “suggest that FASD may be a heritable condition in humans,” lead researcher Kelly Huffman said in a statement. —J.B.
A sweet relationship between adult cacao trees and their seedlings
Even in the plant world, adults are designed to protect their young. Researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute have discovered baby cacao plants, which produce the beans used to make chocolate, have a 50 percent decreased risk of becoming infected with a serious pathogen when exposed to microbes from healthy adult cacao plants. The researchers found one fungus in particular, often passed from adult cacao trees to seedlings, can get quickly into the young leaves and crowd out pathogens that might otherwise infect the new plant.
Natalie Christian, lead author of the study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, likened the process to when a human baby passes through the birth canal and picks up a host of bacteria and fungi from the mother that strengthens the baby’s immune system: “We showed that an analogous process happens in plants: Adult cacao trees also pass along protective microbes to baby cacao plants.” —J.B.
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