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It's late March, and things are warming up here. After seeing very few invertebrates during the winter months, Trish and I were on a hike a few days ago, and she spotted what may be the largest centipede we have found in Missouri. It was about 3 inches (7.6 cm) long and seemed to be on the prowl, roaming around looking for prey (FIRST PHOTO). FYI—centipedes and millipedes are very different. Each group makes up its own Class, which means they are as different from each other as a human is from a fish, or from a snake. Centipedes, with one pair of legs per body segment, are fast-moving predators. Millipedes, with two pairs of legs per body segment, are slow-moving grazers. If a millipede is like a gentle brontosaur, a centipede is a vicious T-rex. Near the head (the business end) of a centipede is a modified pair of legs (called forcipules) that act as fangs, injecting venom that quickly paralyzes prey. In fact, a "giant centipede" (those in the genus Scolopendra) that weighs only 3g can immobilize a 45g mouse in less than 30 seconds. Most smaller centipedes, of course, eat small invertebrates, but "giant centipedes" can prey on lizards, snakes, rodents, birds, and even bats. The centipede we found on our hike (the first photo) is not considered a "giant centipede." However, for many years, Trish and I have regularly hiked the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas, where we often find the tiger centipede (Scolopendra polymorpha). This beast grows to SEVEN inches (18cm) long. The SECOND PHOTO is a tiger centipede we found in 2011. I have to tell you a brief story. Back when we were both biology teachers, we captured the largest tiger centipede we could find so that we could show it to our students. We put it in a plastic butter tub, and when we got home, we decided to transfer the creature to a larger container. This did not go well. The centipede made a wild lunge at the stick I was using to coax it from one container to the next. This startled me, and I dropped the butter tub. The centipede took off across the living room floor and disappeared down a crack next to the stairs. It was under the floorboards of the house—the house where we lived, slept, and routinely walked around without shoes. We never saw the centipede again, but we found it somewhat more difficult to relax for several weeks after the centipede incident. By the way, the tiger centipede is not particularly dangerous to humans, but a bite would be extremely painful. Other species of giant centipedes can be more dangerous. One of the largest of the giant centipedes, the Amazonian giant centipede, grows to 12 inches (30cm) long. Okay, one more morsel of information to satisfy your burning curiosity. Giant centipedes are not considered as food for humans in many cultures. But in some countries, including China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, they are sometimes eaten grilled or deep-fat fried and are usually served on skewers, like you see in this the THIRD PHOTO. Oh... and one more thing: the giant centipede was actually my inspiration for the venomcrook, a nasty living weapon wielded by an alien creature in Bridgers 3: The Voice of Reason. Trust me... you don't want to get hit with a venomcrook. FOURTH PHOTO.     Photo Credits: - Missouri centipede and tiger centipede from Kansas - Stan C. Smith - Centipede snacks - DepositPhotos - Bridgers 3 cover - created for me by Jake at JCalebDesign
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The first time Trish and I visited Queensland, Australia, we were on a long hike around a huge park in Cairns, and I looked up to see dozens of huge birds flying into the park. These things had broad wings than spanned well over a meter. Then I realized they weren’t birds at all—they were bats. To be more specific, they were flying foxes (FIRST PHOTO). Needless to say, I was jumping up and down in my excitement. Anyway, hundreds of them flew into a city park and roosted in the trees for the night. I was so enthralled with these creatures that I have included rather monstrous versions of huge bats in two of my novels, Profusion and Hostile Emergence. Those creatures are kind of scary, but real flying foxes are remarkably… well, cute. Flying foxes are in the group of bats called fruit bats (mostly in the genus, Pteropus). Take a look at the face of just about any flying fox and you'll understand how they got their name. They have very fox-like faces. There are about 60 species of flying foxes, and they are widely spread throughout the subtropics of Asia, Australia, East Africa, and many islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. One thing that distinguishes flying foxes from other bats is that they eat fruit, pollen, nectar, or flowers. This means they have to live in areas that have flowers and fruit to eat year-round (tropical). Also, these bats do not have echolocation (sonar) to help them catch insects. Instead, they have very well-develop eyesight and smell. Like many other bats, they hang upside down (SECOND PHOTO). Of course, flying foxes are the largest bats in the world. Some have a wingspan of five feet (1.5 meter)! Some flying fox species are rare, partly because they are simply not very prolific. In fact, the large flying fox (yes, that’s its name) usually has only one pup (I love that they're called pups), and that's after a gestation period of 180 days! And then it takes 3-4 months for the pup to be weaned, and it won't be sexually mature for about two years. And… flying foxes mate while they are hanging upside down. This seems awkward. And I guess I could add that the males often have a penis that is one-fourth the length of his entire body. So, are you starting to see the logistical problems involved here? Flying foxes hang out (literally) in trees in massive groups called camps. Sometimes these camps can have several hundred thousand bats. But this isn't nearly as many as they used to have before their numbers were depleted. In the 1930s, there were camps that were four miles wide and had 30 million flying foxes. (PHOTO THREE).    Photo credits: Flying fox #1 - DepositPhotos Flying Fox #2 - hanging - DepositPhotos Flying foxes #3 - group - DepositPhotos I just finished writing a time travel story, titled The Sorcerer, and so this stuff is on my mind. Let's talk about two problems with logic regarding time travel. First, let's dismiss the idea of time travel to the FUTURE. We can already travel to the future. For example, every time you are unconscious, you awake in the future having experienced no passage of time. Also, if you get in a spaceship and travel really fast (like half the speed of light), or if you go near a black hole where there is extraordinarily intense gravity, we know that time passes more slowly for you than for people on Earth. Depending on your speed or the intensity of the gravity, you could leave Earth for what seems like only one year to you, but when you return home, hundreds of years have passed on Earth. This method isn't practical, but it is a proven, observable fact resulting from Einstein's theory of relativity. Even more interesting conundrums come in when we think about traveling to the PAST. Of course, we have no practical concept of ever being able to travel to the past. Probably won't ever happen. However, in the spirit of die-hard sci-fi fans, let's say it IS possible. There are two issues that most time travel stories struggle with. Issue #1: if jumping back in time is possible, a new timeline has to be created at the moment any person or object arrives in the past. By "new timeline," I mean a new universe. Yes, jumping back in time requires the existence of infinite parallel universes (and there are at least five plausible scientific theories that suggest the existence of multiple universes, including the concept of “daughter universes” suggested by the theory of quantum mechanics). Why does a new timeline (universe) have to be created upon the arrival of any person or object from the future? Because that arrival changes the events that are happening in the past. Let's say I have a time machine, and I send an iPhone (or a rock, or a hamster, or a person) back in time 100 years. The moment that iPhone appears, it triggers a sequence of events that are different from the other sequence of events that happened in those 100 years. But that original 100-year series of events has already happened. It's impossible to undo something that has already happened (the disappearing photograph in "Back to the Future" is silly for this reason). So, the appearance of the object in the past has to create a new timeline (a new universe). Anything can happen in the new timeline. Even if no one ever finds the iPhone in the past, random events will make it so that different events happen in the next 100 years in that timeline. This is also why, if you could jump to the past, you could never get back to your own place in your original timeline... because the moment you arrive in the past, you are in a new universe. Even if you live another 100 years, you will not end up in the same place you started from. Jumping to the past is basically a one-way trip. Issue #2:Jumping back in time (or forward, for that matter) is really space travel. Almost all time travel stories ignore this obvious fact. The Earth is moving... really fast. Even if we only consider the Earth's rotation, you are moving at 465 meters per second (1,037 miles per hour) at the equator (a bit slower if you are not at the equator). But remember, the Earth is also orbiting the sun, the solar system is spinning with the entire Milky Way galaxy, and the galaxy is hurtling through space as the entire universe expands. If we only consider our solar system moving in a huge orbit around the center of the galaxy, you are moving at 230 kilometers per second (514,000 miles per hour). Seriously. So, if I have a time machine and I instantly jump back in time one second, I will appear at least 230 kilometers from where I started, probably somewhere deep in the Earth's crust (ouch) or somewhere beyond the Earth's atmosphere (ouch again). If I jump back in time 100 years, I'll appear 450.6 billion miles from where I started. See the problem here? A time machine has to be capable of transporting you across vast expanses of space and placing you at your destination with mind-boggling precision. Pretty cool stuff, huh?  Image credit: Clock in the stars - Midjourney We’ve all felt it, right? You sit in a position that causes extra pressure to your leg or arm. After a while, you lose feeling in that area. Then, when you move your extremity to relieve the pressure, you start to feel the “pin pricks.” What’s up with that? First, the feeling is called paresthesia, and you may be surprised to learn it isn’t caused by blood circulation (a common misunderstanding). Instead, it’s caused by compressing the nerves for too long. Here’s how it works… If you put excess pressure on an extremity, the nerves in that area stop transmitting signals to the brain. For a while, the nerves try to transmit signals, but when they don’t receive any feedback, they simply stop trying. Because those nerves are no longer sending signals to your brain, you perceive the area to be numb. Or you think, "My arm fell asleep." It’s somewhat disturbing because you experience difficulty using those muscles for a while, even to the point where you might fall down if your foot is asleep. When the pressure on the nerves ends, the nerves can sense this, and they initiate a series of tests. They send out signals to all the neurons down the line, to make sure they are still there and are alive. The neurons respond with a jolt of pain… their way of saying, “Yes, I’m still here!” After thirty seconds to two minutes, our brain realizes everything is well, and it shuts off this firing pattern so it can resume its normal operations. You can usually speed up the recovery process by shaking or rubbing your arm or leg. I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day because that means it’s going to be up all night.  A few days ago, while hiking in the forest, I came upon two nine-banded armadillos. The first one I saw, a large adult, scurried off when I got close to it. The second one, a smaller juvenile, seemed almost oblivious to my presence. As I approached, the creature froze a few times, then it went back to snuffling through the leaf litter searching for worms and bugs. When I got close enough to touch it, the critter finally turned around and sniffed at me. PHOTO ONE AND PHOTO TWO. I spoke to it—something ridiculous like "Hey, dude, what's up?" It still didn't seem startled. I won't say that I then had a one-sided conversation with the creature, but I won't say I didn't. By the way... you may have heard that armadillos carry leprosy (Hansen's disease), but the risks are highly exaggerated, and the risk of casual, brief handling of these animals is infinitesimally small. Armadillos have poor eyesight, so I'm not surprised it didn't see me. But they have very sensitive smell and hearing. Part of the reason these creatures often pay little attention is because they have no natural predators in this area—therefore, they aren't fearful. What the heck is an armadillo, anyway? Armadillo is a Spanish word meaning little armored one. This of course refers to the bony, protective plates that cover the creature's body. There are about twenty living species of armadillos, all of them native to the Americas. Only one species, the nine-banded armadillo, lives in the United States. The others are found in Central and South America. Armadillos are the only living mammals that have this type of bony armor (see PHOTO THREE). There is a mammal called a pangolin, with large protective scales, but those scales are attached to the skin and are not actually made of bone. With Armadillos, portions of the armor are bone-like, particularly over the shoulders and hips, as well as several bands that are connected by flexible skin. Below is the skeleton of a nine-banded armadillo. By the way, they don't always have nine bands around their middle. Nine is the average—they can have between seven and eleven. Interestingly, armadillos did not live this far north until recent decades. It wasn't until the late 1800s that these creatures crossed the Rio Grande River from Mexico into the United States. Since then, they have been steadily spreading across the continent. When I was growing up in Kansas, I never once saw an armadillo. Now I see them regularly, both in Kansas and in Missouri, and they have been sighted as far north as Nebraska and Iowa. These critters need to be able to dig in the soil for their prey, so they cannot live in areas where the ground freezes solid for long periods of time. So, climate change is partially responsible for their rapid expansion. Missouri no longer has the really cold winters like we used to. With warmer soil, and the fact that a female armadillo can produce up to 56 babies in her lifetime, and there are no natural armadillo predators here, these fascinating critters are spreading fast. Historically, people have eaten armadillos, but usually they have been considered "last resort" food animals. During the Great Depression (in the U.S.), armadillos were called "poor man's pork" and "Hoover hog" (because many people blamed President Hoover for the Great Depression), and even "possum on the half-shell." Did you know nine-banded armadillos almost always give birth to four genetically identical quadruplets (which explains why we had exactly four babies living under our shed a while back). In humans, identical twins or triplets make up only 0.2% of the population. There are a few animals that frequently have identical twins (ferrets, deer, and polar bears, for example), but only the nine-banded armadillo makes a habit of popping out identical quadruplets. I mentioned there are about twenty armadillo species. Perhaps the coolest of these is the pink fairy armadillo, the smallest armadillo species—about the size of a dollar bill. They live in Argentina, and they are so rare that one researcher worked in this critter's habitat for thirteen years before seeing one. PHOTO FOUR.     Photo Credits: - Nine-banded armadillo - Stan C. Smith - Armadillo skeleton - Ryan Somma, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons - Pink fairy armadillo - Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons Life's Great Mysteries - What will be the fastest mode of transportation in the near future?2/9/2026 I grew up watching The Jetsons… you know, the flying cars, robot maid, all that cool stuff. Like many people, I thought we’d have flying cars long before now. So, it’s worth digging for a serious answer to this question. First, though, we need to define “near future.” It’s almost impossible to predict technology in the far future (I’m a sci-fi author, so this is often what I try to do… but it’s only a rough guess), so let’s look ahead only a few decades. Say, by the year 2050, or maybe 2060. This makes prediction more manageable. Also, let’s just consider transportation from one point on Earth to another. Forget about travel to other planets for the moment. I don’t think there’s any doubt about what the fastest vehicles will be. You might assume it will be supersonic jets, but I think it will be sub-orbital transports instead. Sub-orbital ships reach space, so they can fly at higher speeds without air resistance, but they do not reach escape velocity. Which is to say, they do not become a satellite and orbit the Earth. Instead, they have an orbital path that takes them to a destination on Earth rather than all the way around the planet. Presumably, the destination would be a distant city. Numerous sub-orbital flights have been performed, of course, but regular passenger flights are still several years away. When commercial use becomes reality (and when it becomes affordable), passengers could fly up to 17,000 mph, traveling from the U.S. to Europe, for example, in less than one hour. Several companies and organizations are planning sub-orbital vehicles that might be used for passengers, including the SpaceLiner (from the German Aerospace Center) and the Starship (from SpaceX). Another exciting mode of fast transportation is called hyperloops. The idea is simple: create a long tube with very low air pressure inside the tube. Then put a mag-lev (magnetic levitation) passenger train inside the tube. The train can travel with low air resistance and minimal friction, moving at up to 760 mph. Faster than traditional airliners, which typically cruise at 500 to 600 mph. Hyperloops are not far in the future—we already have the technology to do this—but we need to build the infrastructure to make it widely available. We need a network of these vacuum tubes connecting major cities, then we can start cutting back on airliner flights, which use far more fuel and are far worse for the environment. But what about flying cars? Well, in the next few decades, these are most likely going to be eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) vehicles, or air taxis. These already exist, and they work. However, we need to figure out all the safety issues. First, I think we’ll see more of these as trained pilots transport goods from one place to another. Then we’ll see air taxis, again with highly trained pilots, carrying passengers from their home to the grocery store (or wherever). After that, will we see thousands of these vehicles buzzing around over cities, with regular citizens flying them to and from work? Yikes! Awesome, but also scary. I predict, by that time, they will be self-flying vehicles, so the owners don’t have to take months or years of flying lessons. And this will be safer for everyone (assuming AI navigation becomes as sophisticated as we hope it will).  This past summer, a tornado tore through our area. Fortunately for us—but not for some of our neighbors—the worst damage was about a quarter mile away. On two hill ridges near our house, countless trees were blown down. Some of them broke off, others were torn out out of the ground, roots and all. When I was hiking through that area observing the devastation, I came upon this large tree than had fallen down on this smaller tree, bending the smaller tree completely over. Without breaking it. How in the heck did this tree NOT break?? At the time, I didn't think to try to identify the tree species. Now that I examine the photo, I see that the larger fallen tree is a shagbark hickory, and I think the smaller bent tree is an oak, but it could also be an ash. Both ashes and oaks are hardwoods and are strong, but ash wood is known to be more flexible and can be bent (with the help of steam) to make chair backs and such. I suppose it helps that this is a younger tree, but this tree is far larger than a sapling (at least 7 inches in diameter at the bend), so this degree of flexibility seems extraordinary to me. Okay, without going too far down this rabbit hole, let's briefly consider why some trees can bend without breaking. A lot of it has to do with three substances: cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. The cell walls of wood cells are made of these three substances, and the proportions of these three substances can determine how flexible the wood is. Cellulose is basically very strong fibers. Lignin is like a rigid glue that holds things together. And Hemicellulose is like a flexible web that surrounds and links cellulose fibers and lignin (apologies to the real botanists out there for oversimplifying). Trees that have more hemicellulose are typically more flexible. Trees that have more lignin are rigid and strong. Young trees have more hemicellulose and are therefore more flexible. Older trees have more lignin, which makes the wood harder and less flexible. Obviously, the young tree in this photo has a LOT of hemicellulose! That's your fun tree lesson for the day.  Come on… you have to admit you’ve wondered this, right? First, let’s figure out how venomous snakes can even live at all, considering a deadly venom is inside their body. It’s important to understand the difference between venom and poison. Generally, poison is something that has ill effects when you ingest it, or when it gets on your skin. For example, some toads are poisonous because they secrete a substance that is harmful if swallowed. Venom, on the other hand, is harmful when it gets injected into your bloodstream. Snake venom is only toxic when it gets into your blood. You can think of a rattlesnake’s fangs as syringes for injecting their venom. Well, snakes store their venom inside special glands, which keep the venom from entering their blood system, thus protecting them. When a rattlesnake bites its prey, the prey animal dies, and the snake can swallow it whole. So, the venom ends up in the snake’s digestive system, but venom cannot get into the snake's blood from inside the stomach or intestines. But what if a snake bites itself? Usually, nothing dramatic happens, but sometimes it can be deadly. In other words, there's not a simple answer. Venomous snakes show a variety of different ways to protect themselves from their own bites. Some work better than others, and they work differently in different parts of their bodies. You know how curious scientists are, right? Well, many scientists have studied this by, well… injecting snakes with their own venom. Ethical issues aside, scientists have learned a great deal about this. It turns out different snakes have many different types of venoms, with many different damaging effects (nerve damage, circulatory system damage, and local tissue damage… nasty stuff). Animal bodies, including humans, have all kinds of defenses to help prevent damage. Let’s think of these defenses as locks. They lock out the bad venom. Venoms contain substances that we can think of as keys to these locks. The keys unlock the defenses and cause harm. There are many types of locks, and many different keys. Each key works in some locks but not in others. It’s complex. Here’s an example: Neurotoxins are positively charged, so they’re attracted to negatively charged parts of receptor proteins on nerves. This way, they “unlock” the defenses of the nerves and cause damage. Well, some snakes protect themselves from their own neurotoxin by reversing the polarity of their own nerve receptors. So, their positively charged neuroreceptors repel their own positively charged toxins, thus protecting them from their own venom. Cool, huh? But this is only one example of a gazillion different locks and keys. So, sometimes, a snake can seriously harm or even kill itself by biting its own body. Also, different individual snakes of the same species can have variations in their locks and keys, which is why, in one 1932 study, scientists made a couple of black-tailed rattlesnakes bite each other, and both snakes died as a result. Usually, though, if a venomous snake accidentally bites itself, it can relax and casually slither away, saying, “I meant to do that.” Below is a venomous eyelash viper Trish and I found in Costa Rica.  Trish and I recently enjoyed a week of hiking and exploring Arizona, particularly the Sonoran Desert. When I was on a solo hike in the 23,000-acre swath of public land at Lake Pleasant north of Phoenix, I kept hearing a loud braying sound coming from the far side of a cactus-covered hill. I had heard that wild burros lived in the area, so I kept an eye on the ridge at the top of the hill, and one of the creatures soon appeared. As it stared back at me from high above, I took some photos. The "wild" burros are awesome, and I was thrilled to see them. These burros are rather famous creatures in Arizona. But I think it's important that we understand exactly what they are and where they came from (the same can be said for "wild" horses). First of all, the word "wild" usually refers to native animals. Wild burros (and horses) are not native to North America. Yeah, I know horses evolved here millions of years ago, But—after some of them migrated to Eurasia over the Bering Land Bridge—they went extinct here along with much of the other megafauna 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Burros, on the other hand, evolved originally in Africa. So, these "wild" burros are actually "feral" burros (and the same could be said for "wild" horses, which are descended from escaped domesticated horses brought here by Spanish explorers in the 1500s). The word "feral" refers to domesticated animals that have returned to the wild (after escaping or being released). The word "invasive" refers to non-native wild animals (not domesticated) that are now living where they don't belong and are doing environmental damage to the place they currently live. So are wild burros (and horses) invasive? They do actually damage the environments where they live, particularly when they get overpopulated (trampling, soil erosion, fouling the water, and competition with native wildlife). But this is where things get tricky. You see, people happen to LIKE burros (and horses). We think they're cute, beautiful, or whatever. This makes a big difference because activists form organizations to protect these particular feral species, even though the creatures are actually damaging to the environment. Near Lake Pleasant, there is a 103,000-acre area called the Lake Pleasant Herd Management Area. Yes, biologists regularly cull the herd to keep the burros from getting too overpopulated, but they still allow them to live there. Why? Because people like the burros. I doubt you'll find a lot of people campaigning to save the feral Burmese pythons in Florida. Oh... the amazing power of cuteness! Where did the wild burros come from in the first place? This species originated in Africa. As with horses, domesticated burros were introduced to the Desert Southwest of the US by Spanish explorers in the 1500s. Many of the burros in Arizona are descendants of a group of burros brought by Jesuit priest Padre Eusebion Kino to a Spanish mission near Tucson. Burros were heavily used by prospectors as pack animals during the gold rush all the way through the 1800s. Obviously, some burros escaped or were released. And because they are well adapted to desert conditions, they formed breeding populations that still thrive today. Unlike horses, wild burros do not display band or herd behavior. Instead, individual males (jacks) establish territories around a water source, and the only stable groups are females (jennies) and their foals. This is because of the scarcity of water, both in their native African habitat and in the desert southwest US. In areas where there is a lot of water, burros form larger harem groups, as horses do. There you go... more burro facts than you ever wanted to know!  Life's Great Mysteries - Wild carrots are not orange, so why are domestic carrots orange?12/17/2025 Wild carrots grow in abundance around here (in Missouri). The plant is also called Queen Anne’s lace, so perhaps you’ve heard of it or seen it along roadsides or in fields. When you pull up a wild carrot, the root (or carrot) is white or pale yellow. Let’s go back in time to examine this. Almost 5,000 years ago, people of the Persian Plateau area (today this area is Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan west of the Indus River) first started domesticating the wild carrot, and the roots changed from white and pale yellow to purple and brighter yellow. Domesticated carrots then gradually spread to other areas. It wasn’t until the 1500s when, in the Netherlands, orange carrots appeared and became popular. The first carrots with an orange hue were, of course, a result of one or more random mutations. People decided they liked the orange color, and they bred carrots selectively for even brighter orange colors. During the 1500s, the Dutch were leaders in agriculture in the area, and the orange carrots happened to grow well in the Dutch soil and climates, better than the purple and yellow varieties. Dutch merchants then sold these robust orange carrots across Europe, and orange carrots became the favorite and the norm. Okay, this is where folklore begins. Sometime later, the Netherlands selected orange as their official national color, which was derived from the House of Orange-Nassau (also known as the House of Orange), which played a central role in the government of the Netherlands. The name comes from the principality of Orange, a Dutch territory that used to be situated in the south of France. Well, the Dutch began using orange carrots to promote the nation’s national color. And at some point, a folktale arose, which stated that Dutch farmers intentionally began selectively breeding carrots to be orange in honor of William, Prince of Orange. William was a leader during the Dutch Revolt, which began in 1566 and eventually led to the Dutch Republic. Is the story true? Nope, probably not. Here’s a quote from John Stolarczyk, curator of the World Carrot Museum (seriously). “There is no documentary evidence that the Dutch invented orange carrots to honor their royal family.” Now you know the story of orange carrots. Below are wild carrots (Queen Anne's lace) and domesticated orange carrots.  |
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