When I first found today’s song, I immediately thought of this dragonfly photo I took while on vacation a few weeks ago:
That is, until I finished watching the music video and realized the video director and the artist might not realize the difference between a butterfly and a dragonfly…
If you’re keeping track at home, that’s a Taxonomy Fail Index of 57.8, and quite frankly, one of the least imaginable given the general popularity of both orders! Perhaps that was an artistic choice of some manner…
Time to earn some BioPoints; what is this, what was it designed to do, and how does it work? I’ll be providing the answers and doling out the points next Monday, and I’ll keep comments moderated until then so everyone has an opportunity to win. Remember, humor and accuracy will both earn you points!
Here we are at Tuesday again already. If you didn’t catch it last night, I finally got around to answering the ID challenge from August. Pretty depressing it took so long, but September was another busy month with papers submitted, friends defending their PhD’s, and of course NSERC applications coming due. I was little more than a fly on the blogosphere wall all month, but there was some fantastic things being posted by my fellow insect bloggers. Here are a few I’d highly recommend checking out:
The entomological blogging network has been rapidly expanding in recent months, providing me plenty of procrastination material coming into the conference season! And here’s a little something to help you put off starting your talk or poster, Fly on the Wall by AC/DC!
Of all the insects that someone could write a song about, I would never have thought that crabs would be one of them. But I suppose some artists just need to scratch that itch!
Crabs (Phthirus pubis), also known as pubic lice, generally find new dance partners during the horizontal hokey pokey, so be warned that this post is heading towards the gutter…
Have no fear, taxonomy and phylogenetics to the rescue! The human pubic louse has but a single sister species, Phthirus gorillae. As you might be able to guess, P. gorillae is found on gorillas, and these two species last shared a common ancestor roughly 3-4 million years ago (Reed et al., 2007). For the record, gorillas and humans last shared a common ancestor ~7 million years ago. So our pubic lice and the gorilla louse didn’t diverge when we did, but at some later point while we were on our way to becoming human and pre-gorilla’s were getting more gorilla-like. Anyone else sensing some weird hanky panky going on here? Clearly a speciation event took place, and it seems that our ancestors (perhaps members of Australopithecus, of Lucy fame) were colonized by a louse native to pre-gorilla pubes. Although there are some rather tame theories on how we first contracted our own crotch crickets (gorilla’s being hunted, us sleeping in old gorilla nests, blah blah blah), it must be considered that perhaps there was a little “Jungle Love” going on back in the day…
Anyways, back to present day musical crabs!
In case you’re concerned, the crabs in that video weren’t the crabs I’m talking about (or the ones Rivers Cuomo was singing about), and earns a Myrmecos Taxonomy Fail Index number of 75.
All this talk about crabs reminds me that Bug Girl wrote an awesome piece on whether Brazilian waxing is taxing pubic louse populations (loss of habitat don’tcha know). Definitely worth a read.
And speaking of Brazilians, I’d like to wish our resident Brazilian (nationality, not hairdo) a fond farewell! After 4 long years of teasing from his lab mates, Gil Miranda successfully defended his PhD dissertation and is headed back to Brazil to begin what will surely be a long and successful career! Must… resist… crab… jokes…
Reed, D., Light, J., Allen, J., & Kirchman, J. (2007). Pair of lice lost or parasites regained: the evolutionary history of anthropoid primate lice BMC Biology, 5 (1) DOI: 10.1186/1741-7007-5-7 OPEN ACCESS
Well, I’m back from a relaxing vacation with my wife at the family cottage, well-rested, recharged, and ready to dive back into my work with fresh eyes and new ideas! That goes for the blog as well, with inspiration for bigger posts and a themed week or two to come in the future!
Generally when you go on vacation it’s to escape from the stress and workload that comes with day to day life, so it’s somewhat fitting that today’s song is titled Escapism (Gettin’ Free). That’s not really entomological, and neither is the band name, Digable Planets, at first glance. But sometimes the sum of the parts are greater than whole, and Digable Planets is made up of Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler, Mary Ann “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira and Craig “Doodlebug” Irving! A triple threat of entomological nomenclature!
I’m a fan of nicknames, finding them considerably easier to remember (a task I’m normally horrible at), but how the 2 male members of the trio managed to acquire “Butterfly” and “Doodlebug” as their nicknames has got to be an interesting story…
As hurricane season arrives and dangerous storms approach the east coast of North America, it’s worth considering what causes these deadly cyclones. Not necessarily the warm waters off of Africa, but perhaps a butterfly on the other side of the world, whose flapping wings have set off an unpredictable set of events. Although the butterfly effect (as it relates to chaos theory, not that questionable Ashton Kutcher movie) may not be totally responsible for storms causing billions of dollars damage annually, the idea that simple atmospheric changes made by a flying butterfly can impact the total world is quite astounding.
Now to make you really think: as species become threatened with extinction thanks to human activity, how might a reduction or lack of these small atmospheric changes affect future weather patterns and civilization? Fewer storms? More? Who knows.
All joking and theorizing aside, if you or those you know live in places prone to hurricane or cyclone activity, please be safe in the coming weeks.
Something a little different for this weeks Tuesday Tunes, as we trace a simple yet successful phrase through the annals of music history and touch on some of the entomological connections associated with it!
Our phrase of the week is “A Taste of Honey”, and it’s pretty obvious why it’s being featured as a Tuesday Tune. If we dig a little deeper however (and go on a tangent or two), we’ll uncover some rather interesting ties between some big names and entomology! Lets start at the beginning shall we?
A Taste of Honey was written by Bobby Scott & Ric Marlow in 1960 for the Broadway adaptation of a British play of the same name. This original version went on to win a Grammy for Best Instrumental Theme at the 1963 Grammy Awards. The instrumental version was soon covered by a band already featured on Tuesday Tunes, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, who made the song a commercial hit on their album Whipped Cream & Other Delights in 1965, and the song was subsequently awarded 3 more Grammy Awards (Record of the Year, Best Instrumental Arrangement, and Best Instrumental Performance).
There was another big name who was taking the 1966 Grammy Awards by storm – Barbra Streisand, who’s debut album My Name is Barbra (which won the Grammy for Best Vocal Performance, Female that year) featured a vocal rendition of a familiar song…
Strangely enough, Barbra Streisand wasn’t even nominated for Best New Artist that year, with the Grammy going to Tom Jones, who would cover A Taste of Honey the very next year. Time for Tangent #1 – Barbra Streisand would release an album titled ButterFly in 1974, with the cover art featuring a fly on a stick of butter. I must say I like this kind of ButterFly more than the traditional Lepidoptera…
Before we leave the red carpet, there’s one more link between the Grammy Awards and A Taste of Honey. This time the award goes to the band A Taste of Honey, who won the award for Best New Artist in 1978, largely on the success of their smash disco hit Boogie Oogie Oogie. It seems that the members of the band were such fans of Herb Alpert’s rendition of A Taste of Honey that they adopted it as their band name!
There’s one more big name who enjoyed A Taste of Honey in a big way; The Beatles! The Fab 4 included a version on their debut album Please Please Me in 1963, an album which shot to number 1 on the UK charts and which would ultimately pave the way for Beatlemania and the British Invasion.
Tangent #2 – the entomological Beatles is pretty obvious, but did you know that the origin of the band name is also entomological? The Beatles chose their name as a tribute to Buddy Holly and his band The Crickets for their influence over their music. This of course leads us to Tangent #3 (wait, can you have a tangent off of a tangent? Hmmm, geometry never was my strong suit) – Buddy Holly (along with J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and Ritchie Valens) was tragically killed in a plane crash on The Day The Music Died, which just so happened to be 25 years to the day before a familiar entomologist was born – me!
To wrap things up, Tangent #4 (geometry be damned) is going to take us back to our original theme of A Taste of Honey. Also paying tribute to Buddy Holly, fellow British Invaders and recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, The Hollies covered our song of the week in 1966 on their US album Beat Group! (which also featured Fifi the Flea on the B-side).
So there you go, a full round trip through musical history on the back of a simple phrase! I hope you’ve enjoyed this little web of insect-associated music, and remember to come back next week to find an all new song!
Admit it, you’ve found a trendy pop song somewhat entertaining at some point in your life. Whether it was Rick Astley or Aqua, I’m sure everyone has had a guilty pleasure song or two which they find kind of fun despite the public backlash that may result from admitting it. Today I present you with one of mine… Butterfly by Crazy Town. While I’m not proud of it, I did make a mix CD with this song on it at the height of its popularity. Ugh.
Wow, I must say that takes the cake as the cheesiest music video I’ve shared here on Tuesday Tunes. Sorry about that.
Now can we all forgot this ever happened? Ok, thanks.
When I first found today’s song, I immediately thought of this dragonfly photo I took while on vacation a few weeks ago:
