Up Close and Spineless

No, this is not an interview with George W. Bush. This is a PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBIT. And for all photography buffs as well as those of us fascinated by the world of living things, this is a must see.

Weird and wonderful world of creepy-crawlies
These invertebrate photographs were submitted to the Up Close and Spineless competition, and are on display at the Australian Museum from 18 October 2008. They include photographs of a huntsman spider catching a lift on a cow horn, a bright green scarab beetle, and a cute grasshopper...

Grasshopper by Greg West

Anthrax Lies and Press/Government Complicity

The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential

For full article and commentary, please go to this URL: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html My own comments on the article: Very intriguing article. There was a report on television's CNN that the government was postulating that Ivins may have released anthrax in order to test his own vaccine development against anthrax. The whole story is so bizarre that it takes on a kind of "conspiracy theory" mythic "smell." It is certainly time for public disclosure of ALL FACTS related to this story by all parties involved - including McCain! If I were part of the Democratic campaign, I'd start digging for the dirt now and spill everything found to be factual. Is Ivins another possible scapegoat as was said of Lee Harvey Oswald after the Kennedy assassination? Was he a lose canon? Was he merely a guy doing what he was told to do by his supervisors? We do know that many media outlets have (and still do) accepted government press releases as fact without doing any investigative journalism during the last eight years. We know there are members of the Bush "team" even now accused of lying to Congress and the press. We have ample reason to be suspicious. If Americans are ever going to regain faith in their government, the truth must come out ASAP. What can you do? Write to every newspaper you normally read, write to your senators and repesentatives, let others know about this article. Use the power of the Internet to get the word out that America must be protected from its own government excesses!

EAT DIRT!

Bats Eat Dirt to Stay Healthy

Charles Q. Choi
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.comWed Jun 4, 9:10 AM ET

The strange act of eating dirt - known as "geophagy" - is actually common in the animal kingdom. Not only do our closest living relatives the chimpanzees do it - in order to help fight malaria - but so occasionally do humans all over the world.

Researchers suspect geophagy could help animals get key minerals they need for nutrition, much as they might from a salt lick. But hitting the dirt might also help them fight off poisons.

Chemical combat

When eating, people cut the green off potatoes because it is bad for you. Many fruits, leaves and things animals munch on naturally contain molecules that are toxic or could trigger cancer or birth defects. The minerals in the dirt animals eat could bind to electrically charged portions of the poisonous compounds and neutralize them.

Each night, tropical fruit-eating bats devour large amounts of such poisonous chemicals with their food. These molecules could prove especially dangerous to young bats, both those as yet unborn and ones still nursing from their mothers.

To see why bats might eat dirt, a team of researchers spent a month lurking around six mineral licks in the Amazonian rainforest at night.

"It is quite astonishing to see all the paths that lead to the mineral licks that were created by generations of tapirs and wild pigs," said researcher Christian Voigt, a behavioral ecologist at the Berlin Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany. "Indians hunted at these sites as well. Mineral licks are hot spots of mammalian activity."

The scientists captured bats with nets, briefly took some tissue samples, and released the creatures. They also sampled the clay they ate and the mineral-rich water they drank.

"At first glance it seemed that bats visit these sites for the same purpose as other animals such as large tapirs or birds - that is, to meet their daily mineral requirements," Voigt said.

Detox

But the researchers found the bats that stopped most often at mineral licks were fruit-eaters, not insect-eaters. And fruits are rich in minerals already.

Instead, Voigt and his colleagues suspect the bats eat dirt to detoxify themselves. The bats that stop at mineral licks are often pregnant or nursing mothers, so this geophagy may help them protect their young.

"Bats are doing the same as humans, especially Indian tribes in the Amazon," Voigt explained. Some tribes are known to eat dirt while pregnant or nursing. "Somehow the bats have found the same solution for the problem of toxic compounds in fruits."

The scientists now hope to investigate how specifically the minerals work, research that could lead to novel therapies.

"It is astonishing that eating mud is so widespread in mammals," Voigt told LiveScience. "Possibly, we should reconsider our assumptions regarding clay consumption. Maybe it is good stuff."

Voigt and his colleagues detailed their findings online on April 23 in the journal PLoS ONE.

Video: How Bats Fly Video: Smoking Out Secrets of Bat Flight Bat's Wrinkly Face Improves Sonar Original Story: Bats Eat Dirt to Stay Healthy

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Note: My grandmother used to say a baby needed to eat a peck of dirt to start life well. I guess she knew much more than I knew! She was from Poland and had visions which were later coaberated. A wise woman. Cockroaches and earthworms eat dirt, too. There are many micro-nutients in soil.