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Down with turtles

The fabled dominance of the hare by the tortoise has an underground counterpart of sorts in a look at turtles and elephants in times gone by. The elephants came out on top in a 2014 study called . But turtles hog all the attention in a new report called .

The two works serve as reminders that some old conjectures and beliefs really do stand atop shards of physical evidence. Myths, philosophies and Terry Pratchett鈥檚 Discworld novels say that Earth rests on the back of a turtle, or maybe a stack of turtles, or perhaps some elephants on a stack of one or more turtles.

Turtle touters Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, Amy Waterson and colleagues published their 鈥�100 million years鈥� report in the journal Current Biology in 2022. It supports the supposition that it is turtles lots of the way (if not all the way) down.

The 鈥渇eet of elephants鈥� study, by Evangelos Vlachos, gives evidence that it isn鈥檛 just turtles. Turtles and elephants are both turning up, down there below the surface of our world. Bits and pieces beneath Greece, Vlachos explains, show that 鈥渕edium-sized to giant tortoises are found together with the proboscideans, in the humid environment of Epanomi [during the Pliocene] and the savannah-like environment of Axios valley [during the Late Miocene]鈥�.

The 2022 report warns that Greek turtles now living above the surface 鈥渨ill experience increases in both temperature and aridity over the coming century鈥�. It hazards no predictions for deep-subterranean turtles or elephants.

The man and his pea

The recent unearthing of the body of Gregor Mendel, so that modern scientists could analyse the DNA of the person who founded the science of genetics, makes possible a spectacular comparison, of man to pea. Mendel is , noticing characteristics that seemed to be passed from parents to their offspring.

艩谩rka Posp铆拧ilov谩 and her colleagues at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic laid out details of how they meddled with Mendel in several studies, one of which is called .

Thanks to them, it now becomes possible, and conceivably enlightening, to compare the DNA of Mendel with that of a pea plant. The plant鈥檚 genome was , for all to see, in 2019 in the journal Nature Genetics. Should you want to do your own digging, the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics offers a tutorial called

There remains the question: Why did Posp铆拧ilov谩鈥檚 team want to analyse Mendel鈥檚 DNA? At a glance, it appears to be an example of Everest research. Everest research is done simply because the object of interest 鈥渋s there鈥�. Comparing Mendel鈥檚 DNA with that of a pea 鈥� should you choose to do it 鈥� would put a cherry on top of Mendel on top of a pea plant on top of Everest.

Although biologists treasure Mendel for his biological research, others treasure him for other reasons, some of which involve treasure. Reason magazine 鈥� slogan 鈥渇ree minds and free markets鈥� 鈥� published an essay a few weeks ago. The title: .

Hard to swallow

鈥淭here have been few reports of ingestion of bottlecaps worldwide.鈥� With that subtle statement, Mattis Bertlich, Friedrich Ihler, Jan Sommerlath Sohns, Martin Canis and Bernhard Weiss introduce a real-life detective story, told by the investigators themselves in the of the medical journal Dysphagia. Thanks to reader Friedrich von B眉low for alerting Feedback to this yarn.

The story began, from the narrators鈥� point of view, when they 鈥渘oted a peculiar cumulation of esophageal impaction of bottlecaps, particularly in [the context of] fraternity drinking rituals鈥�. The six investigators are medical professionals affiliated with institutions in G枚ttingen, Germany, a town noted for its university community. To begin the search for clues, they probed the wilds of a local database that harbours radiology records.

Kronkorken 鈥� the German term for bottlecap 鈥� was the key that unlocked the stash of evidence that confirmed their suspicions. Looking for this in the records turned up 14 cases of bottlecap ingestion within a 10-year period, with the ingestors all young men, all in G枚ttingen and all involved with fraternities. This contrasts with only six bottlecap ingestion cases, over a 30-year span, that the detectives managed to find when searching international medical databases.

Twelve of the 14 G枚ttingen cases admitted knowing that a bottlecap had entered their body. The investigators remark on a curious pattern: 鈥淚nterestingly, in all imaging findings, the bottlecap has nearly the same alignment in space, flat parallel to the spine.鈥� They don鈥檛 speculate as to the whys or the therefores of that fact.

Capping their literary effort at its nether end, the authors offer a tidy warning: 鈥淭his highlights the considerable dangers of excessive drinking rituals, as they are 鈥� to this very day 鈥� practised in fraternities, drinking societies and likewise.鈥�

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