A while ago, LabRat at Atomic Nerds started a series of posts on the evolution of sex among other things. The first was appropriately called “Shuffling Your Cards: Why Sex?” Since in science we are both mad nerds obsessed with evolutionarily odd strategies like parthenogenesis in local lizards (and the hybridization that may have started …
Tag: Central Asia
Prince Xanghui
I have seen black and white line drawings of a falconer with a tazi from Prince Xanghui’s tomb in Xian, on the far eastern end of the Silk Road. Though I used one on my letterhead, the hawk was unidentifiable. I assumed it was a Goshawk which is still flown in the area and throughout …
Further adventures of Lauren
Mostly photo- blogging this week- it’d amazing how much time maintaining some level of competence takes when you have ANYTHING else to do. But I have been sent lots of good photos and stuff from Mongolia, England, and closer to home… Lauren has been visiting nests: “This was the nest we visited in April when …
Guest Post: Jess vs the Breed Box
Regular readers may know that I have long taken a stance against closed studbook breeding registries, which I consider to be unscientific Victorian relics that are causing actual harm to “breeds” by decreasing genetic diversity. Recently a perfect example has surfaced in salukis, where “traditionalists”— ie, people who want to limit the breed’s ancestry to …
Dog Rant
The Lady With the Black Dogs (who happen to be “real” fierce staunch old- fashioned Afghans, rare today) sent me a note and a link, knowing it would provoke me and push all my buttons on genetics, bombast, and bullshit, not to mention on the kind of dog commercialism that makes AR types try to …
Lauren: Further Adventures
Lauren is winding up her “Apprentice Berkutchi” Fulbright in Mongolia by studying Cinereous vultures (Aegypius monachus) in the Gobi (these huge birds, which we saw in the Altai, are rivaled in size only by Lammergeiers in Asia). Meanwhile her young eagle shocked everyone by building a nest and laying (infertile of course) eggs. She has …
Random Doggage– Our Pups and Lineage, in Part
I need a new pic of Irbis who has two more weeks to go as a house dog but is driving me nuts as he is in full active mode. Here, to scale, is the plate that saved his leg, now one of my myriad desk chotchkes. Hard to believe it was inside his leg, …
Bek Nazar Dor
Ataika’s father Dor, a great dog belonging to our friend Andrey Kovalenko, died in his native Almaty, Kazakhstan, last week. He was sixteen. He had a good long life, and his genes live on in New Mexico, Kazakhstan, and even Scotland. But condolences to Andrey for his loss of such an old friend.
5000 Year-Old Scammer?
David Z (see below) sent us the latest on Hari Scam and and, amazingly, it is even more ridiculous than what has gone before. “Among the mixed-bag films at Tribeca this year, Thorkell Hardarson and Örn Marino Arnason’s Feathered Cocaine was arguably the most mixed. Alan Howell Parrott, an American Sikh convert, introduced falconry to …
The Parrot Bites Again
Matt Mullenix said of the line below: “Journalism: Dead.” ” Alan Parrot, one of the world’s foremost falconers…. “ Steve again: all this is in reaction to a link I couldn’t get but which I have seen plenty similar to the last few days, like this one. There has also been a lot of talk …