Sci+Art

Inktober day 12: Podicipediformes; H͞͏̜͔͈̼ ̢̠͙͓͔̥͇̞͔͠ó̴̧̭̻̭̙̦͇ ̘̝̳̜r̸̷̜͍͡ ̶̦̝͇̥̣͔̻̦̱n̲̦̕͡ ̤͇̮͉̳ͅé̜͉̩͎͖̬̯ͅ ̨̭̯̘d͎̗ ̯̯͍̻͍̝̻̠ ͓̜̱̼͈̙̤͕͝g͟҉̹̖̖͍͈̳̯̯̝ ̸̳̭͚̪̤̯̮r̷̼͖̝̟̠͓̕ͅ ̛̝̗͔̠e̶͔̕͟ ̛̠͍͙̙̝̞b̷͖̩̟͜ ̨̬e҉̢͕̜͓͝

Passenger pigeons were once the most abundant birds in the North America, and perhaps even the world. They flew in flocks that contained perhaps millions of individuals and would cover the sky en masse, hiding the sun and bringing the darkness in. There are only 260 million of the familiar rock pigeons today but pre-settlement billions of passenger pigeons existed in the North America.  Here is an account of an encounter with a passenger pigeon flock from people in Columbus, Ohio, in 1855:

As the watchers stared, the hum increased to a mighty throbbing. Now everyone was out of the houses and stores, looking apprehensively at the growing cloud, which was blotting out the rays of the sun. Children screamed and ran for home. Women gathered their long skirts and hurried for the shelter of stores. Horses bolted. A few people mumbled frightened words about the approach of the millennium, and several dropped on their knees and prayed- excerpt taken from “A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction” by Joel Greenberg.

The last passenger pigeon went extinct on September the 1st, 1914. The demise of these birds was caused by extensive hunting and habitat destruction brought by the European settlers.

On the cover of Cell

In this issue, Korb et al. (1209–1223) identified a subset of epigenetic regulators as potential targets in Fragile X syndrome. On the cover, the sagittal section of the human brain hemisphere is depicted using paper filigree, with contours of the anatomical structures outlined with artistic representation of the ‘‘chromatin fiber.’’ The repeat units of core histones are shown in canonical red, green, blue, and yellow colors, with linker DNA in teal. The parallel between chromatin architecture and cortical folding highlights the emerging role of epigenetic misregulation in human neurological disorders. Artwork by Alexey Soshnev.

More Birbs.

Jewel Beetles (Coleoptera Buprestidae)

Natural history of mammals  

By Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Etienne, 1772-1844  Cuvier, Frédéric, 1773-1838

White rhinoceros, in purples.