Are Lobsters Ambidextrous?

by David Feldman

  What do these two animals have in common? In the wild, they are prey rather than predators. The natural response of prey animals is to freeze when confronted with danger. Ill-equipped to fight with their stalkers, they freeze in order to avoid detection by the predator; they will run away only when they are confident that the predator has sighted them and there is no alternative. Defenseless fawns won’t even run when being attacked by cougars or other predators.

  The prey’s strategy forces the predator to flush them out, while the prey attempts to fade into its natural environment. Hunters similarly need to rouse rabbits, deer, and many birds with noises or sudden movements before the prey will reveal themselves.

  Prussin notes that in the last twelve years, to his knowledge only one of the plentiful coyotes in Yosemite National Park has been killed by an automobile, while countless deer have been mowed down. When confronted by automobile headlights, coyotes will also freeze but then, like other predators and scavengers, dart away.

  Although deer may not be genetically programmed to respond to react one way or the other to oncoming headlights, their natural predisposition dooms them from the start.

  Submitted by Michael Wille of Springhill, Florida. Thanks also to Konstantin Othmer of San Jose, California; and Meghan Walsh of Sherborn, Massachusetts.

  Frustables or the Ten Most Wanted Imponderables

  If we have heretofore dazzled you with our erudition, it’s time to confess our frustrations: ten, to be exact. These are the ten Imponderables we most wanted to answer for this book but could not. Either we couldn’t find experts qualified to answer them or we found many experts who couldn’t agree on an explanation.

  Can you help? We offer a complimentary, autographed copy of the next volume of Imponderables to the reader who supplies the best answer, or the first reader who leads to the proof that supplies the answer. And, of course, your efforts will be duly acknowledged and displayed in the book.

  We’re trying something a little different this time. The first five Frustables deal with the always Imponderable world of gender differences, Frustables many more of you than usual should have an opinion about. We often get questions from men about female psychology, and from women wondering what makes men tick. In this case, you are as expert as any psychologist. Help stamp out Frustability!

  FRUSTABLE 1: Why do women often go to the restroom together? And what are they doing in there for so long?

  It doesn’t occur to the average male to turn nature’s call into a social occasion. And why do women usually spend so much time once they are in a public bathroom? Are there saunas or video games in women’s rooms?

  FRUSTABLE 2: Why do men tend to hog remote controls and switch channels on television sets and radios much more than women?

  Research indicates that women often decide which television show is watched in the home. Yet, give a man a remote control and it is likely you won’t be watching any one show for more than fifteen seconds at a time. Why?

  FRUSTABLE 3: Why do some women kick up their legs when kissing?

  And why don’t men do it?

  FRUSTABLE 4: Women generally possess more body fat than men. So why do women tend to feel colder than men in the same environment?

  Why do men usually want to open a window before they go to bed while women want to throw on another blanket and turn on the heat?

  FRUSTABLE 5: Why is the average woman a much better dancer than the average man?

  We’re not talking about professional dancers, or even serious nightclub amateurs. At any school dance, wedding, or office party, the ineptitude of most males is on display. What accounts for the prancing gender gap?

  FRUSTABLE 6: Why do so many people put their hands up to their chins in portrait photographs?

  We’ve noticed this pose in author photographs, yearbook pictures, actors’ publicity stills, and other types of head shots. Any explanation?

  FRUSTABLE 7: Why do very few restaurants serve celery with mixed green salads?

  Of course, celery is a staple in egg, tuna, and chicken salad. But while celery is a common ingredient in home salads, one rarely encounters celery in restaurant mixed green salads. Celery is cheaper than, say, tomatoes, so why the reluctance of restaurants to use celery?

  FRUSTABLE 8: In English spelling, why does “i” come before “e” except after “c”?

  Where does this arcane rule come from?

  FRUSTABLE 9: What in the world are grocery store managers looking for when they approve personal checks?

  We have been most dissatisfied with the answers we’ve received from supermarket chains on this topic, so we’re hoping that some grocery store checkers, managers, or perspicacious customers can help us with this Frustable. To us, it seems that the manager simply peeks at the check, glances at the customer, and approves the check without really looking for anything in particular. In fact, we’ve never seen a check rejected.

  FRUSTABLE 10: Why do so many policemen wear mustaches?

  Several policemen have recently sued their department over a regulation that would ban facial hair. The complainants didn’t mind a prohibition on beards. But “Don’t take away my mustaches!” they insisted. What explains the persistent love affair between cops and upper-lip hair?

  Frustables Update

  Our Readers Respond to the Frustables First Posed in Do Penguins Have Knees?

  FRUSTABLE 1: Why do doctors have bad penmanship?

  We were inundated with response to this Frustable. No one disputed the problem. In fact, you were full of anecdotes highlighting the predicament of the poor patient or pharmacist required to read physician chicken scrawlings. Marilyn Brown of Utica, New York, says that she was once given a prescription that three separate pharmacists couldn’t read, so she had to traipse back to the doctor:

  He eyed it for a short while and inquired, “Who is the patient?” and “What’s wrong with her?” With that clue he was able to read the prescription, rewrite it, and call a pharmacy to tell them what it said.

  If physicians can’t read their own handwriting, we definitely have a problem, one that pharmacists have had to contend with for eons. In fact, Helene Ainspan, the wife of a pharmacist, told us that one of his professional journals had a monthly quiz: Copies of six actual prescriptions were printed; the pharmacists had to decipher them.

  Readers were remarkably sympathetic to the plight of doctors. From time to time, we receive queries from readers about why they have to wait so long for doctors to fulfill appointments. Once you get past the waiting room and into an examining room, it seems you have the attention of the doctor for only a short time.

  Maybe, our readers infer, doctors really are busy folks. And rushed writing leads to poor handwriting. Brian J. McGrory, a resident in orthopaedic surgery at the prestigious Mayo Clinic, sent us a neatly typed letter. But his signature was illegible; he’s going to make a fine doctor:

  Have you ever seen a training surgeon on hospital rounds as he or she tries to keep up with the attending surgeon? Have you ever not had to wait for a doctor during his or her office hours? From medical school to the day of retirement, many doctors are very busy and even harried at times. So even the neatest scribe will become less than perfect when the pressure is on.

  Many readers tried to pinpoint the exact time when doctors’ penmanship goes bad. A lot of you think it happens during those formative years, medical school. We heard from a retired medical librarian, Aileen Tannenbaum of Irvington, New Jersey:

  Many years ago, I posed this same question to an intern at our hospital. He responded that medical students scribble notes so rapidly in classes that their once legible handwriting deteriorates into an illegible scribble (only decipherable by themselves)…

  Carrie Schulz, the daughter of a physician, who calls her father’s handwriting “despicable,” says that he and his doctor friends rationalize their scribbles in the same way.

  Another popular theory was that doctors’ penmanship is poor because they are constantly wr
iting (e.g., notes on charts, preparation for insurance claims, prescriptions). Cathy Calabrese of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, notes that when she was a bank teller, she often gave customers as many as a hundred traveler’s checks to sign at one time: “No matter how carefully the signature was written on the first check, it was a scribbled mess by check number 50 or so.” Cathy believes that not only doctors but “a goodly number of executives and other extremely busy people suffer from the illegibility syndrome.” As Dr. William Voelker put it:

  It seems from medical school on, there is never enough time to get everything done, and 90 percent plus physicians are constantly rushed and in a hurry. Fast writing is usually illegible writing.

  Barth Richards of Naperville, Illinois, and several other readers, pointed to not just the time pressure of physicians but the physical constraints under which they must write: “Doctors are often writing on a clipboard or on a folder held in their hands, instead of at a desk or on a table. These are far from ideal writing conditions.”

  Several readers noted the repetitive nature of what doctors have to scribble. Dr. Rosanne A. Derango, a dentist in Bartlett, Illinois, argues that since the same medications are prescribed many times a day, the prescriptions become the equivalent of the signature written by a harried executive faced with scores of letters to sign.

  The prescriptions of a given doctor might be poorly written, but they are distinctive. Several pharmacists confirmed this. Although a particular physician’s writing may be horrible, a pharmacist familiar with that doctor can always decipher it, just as a secretary can usual decode the scribbling of his or her boss.

  Don Fallick of Davenport, Washington, hit home with the same point. He points out that anyone, “even authors,” will develop bad writing habits if forced to repeat the same thing over and over again. We plead guilty. At autograph sessions, not only does our penmanship deteriorate, but after the fiftieth book or so, we have been known to misspell our own name.

  Some readers refuse to concede that doctors’ poor penmanship is directly tied to their profession. Three such theories predominated. The most popular, by far, was a sexist (but probably true) syllogism: Most physicians are men. Most men have bad penmanship. Therefore, most physicians have bad penmanship.

  The two other theories were a little more bizarre. Our friend Marilyn Brown insists that the higher one’s IQ, the worse the penmanship. Since doctors tend to be intelligent, they have poor handwriting. Thanks, Marilyn, for the best-ever alibi for our execrable handwriting.

  Dan Butler of Los Alamitos, California, an engineer at a large organization, insists that “the higher you go in an organization, the worse the penmanship. You should see my boss’s boss’s handwriting.”

  Rosanne Derango points out that the only physician’s writing that most patients ever see is on a prescription. A few readers argued that prescriptions seem illegible not because the penmanship is necessarily poor but because patients cannot interpret the symbols properly. After a few cheap shots (“Hey, if you could make $30 for a five-minute office visit, you wouldn’t waste time with trivial things like writing!”), Bill and Mary Ellen Jelen of Akron, Ohio, make a convincing argument:

  Generally, when adults read, they do not focus in at the individual letter level. Rather than sounding words out, our brain recognizes the word and then we “read” the entire word at once.

  If you were trying to read handwriting where 20% of the words were in code, it would tend to throw you off. Medical people use lingo that is truly unique. When trying to read a prescription, the patient is facing a whole series of “foreign” words. Besides the drug name, there are all types of codes for when and how to take the drug (e.g., c [with], p [after], prn [as needed]).

  Mary Ellen is a nurse. When she was in nursing school, I used to type her papers. I tried to look for spelling and grammatical errors, but it was impossible with those medical papers. There were times that I typed a series of words and I had no clue if it was a sentence or not. I couldn’t pick out nouns, verbs, anything.

  Dentist Rosanne Derango even admitted that occasionally a doctor will intentionally make a prescription hard to read, such as when the medication is a placebo. (“Sometimes we like to keep a little bit of mystery in what we do!”)

  Obviously, there isn’t one single answer to the Frustable at hand, and we’re proud of how well our readers coped with the topic. But will we ever solve the problem? Probably not.

  Maybe there is a glimmer of hope. Reader Jim Vibber, who has been in the medical device industry for over fifteen years, reports that the American Medical Association is offering a penmanship improvement course for doctors, “with some kind of incentive to take it.” What kind of incentives could actually lure physicians to take a continuing education class in what all would concede is a less than fascinating subject? Jim answers:

  I’ve seen physicians do many things for little premiums, including sitting for an hour filling out a survey. They respond to free pens, golf balls, ice cream—the same sort of “junk” that anybody else might.

  Submitted by Allen Kahn of New York, New York. Thanks also to Carmel Nelson of West Henrietta, New York.

  A complimentary book goes to Bill and Mary Ellen Jelen, of Akron, Ohio, who were the first to propose the “demand-side” theory of physician indecipherability.

  FRUSTABLE 2: Why are salt and pepper the standard condiments on home and restaurant tables? When and where did this custom start?

  Readers didn’t get much farther than we did on this subject. Much is known about the history of salt and pepper. Sumerians ate salt-cured meats more than 5,000 years ago. Pepper didn’t spread widely into Western cultures until the sixteenth century; indeed, the search for black pepper was one of the prizes that drove explorers such as Columbus around the world.

  Salt has become a dominant condiment in almost every culture, not only for its taste but for its preservative qualities. But pepper had to displace other, more popular spices, such as clove and cinnamon, before it became salt’s main rival as a condiment.

  In her fascinating book The Rituals of Dinner, Margaret Visser details the elaborate respect with which costly salt was treated by medieval diners. Separate salt “cellars,” often made of precious silver, were placed in front of the lord and

  perhaps each of the highest ranking diners, as an “object of prestige” an indication of status. When the lord sat at what we call the “head” or the host’s short end of the table, it became customary to place a standing salt [cellar] as a marker, dividing the lord’s intimates grouped at his end of the table from those who were not quite accepted into his inner circle and who sat “below the salt.”

  We have come a long way from expensive salt dispensers to today’s plastic or glass salt and pepper shakers. Visser remarks that even today, the salt shaker is disdained in many formal dining situations.

  Matched salt and pepper shakers did not appear until the nineteenth century. Reader Bill Gerk of Burlingame, California, who attacks Frustables with a ferocity that is somewhere between commendable and obsessive-compulsive, believes that the “custom of having salt and pepper as condiments at our home and restaurant tables began no later than the matched salt and pepper sets that first appeared in the nineteenth century.” He argues that the need for salt is clear, since saltiness is, along with sweetness, bitterness, and sourness, one of the four basic tastes. Pepper just seems to be the appropriate antidote/complementary spice to saltiness. Not a smoking gun answer, perhaps, but the best we can do for now.

  Submitted by Sara VanderFliet of Cedar Grove, New Jersey. Thanks also to John G. Clark of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Joel Myerson of Helsinki, Finland.

  A complimentary book goes to Bill Gerk of Burlingame, California.

  FRUSTABLE 3: Why don’t people wear hats as much as they used to?

  Just as the popularity of the undershirt plummeted when Clark Gable took off his dress shirt in It Happened One Night to reveal a bare chest, several readers, as well as many popular pres
s accounts we have encountered, credit Jack Kennedy’s bareheaded appearances with dooming the hat. Steve Campion of Tacoma, Washington, makes this point:

  When Lincoln sported a beard, nearly every success-minded politician for fifty years grew whiskers. The president created a fashion. Likewise, when the young, thick-haired Kennedy took office, he rarely donned a hat as all his predecessors had done. His topless style killed the hat fashion.

  Clearly, Kennedy intensified the trend, but the hat was already in decline by 1960.

  Most of our readers’ hypotheses fell in two general camps: those that attributed the fall of the hat to changes in fashion and those that traced the demise of the hat to lifestyle changes.

  Fashion Theories

  1. Hairstyles. Most readers felt that modern hairstyles aren’t conducive to wearing hats, and haven’t been since the 1950s. Imagine wearing a hat over a beehive. Or Angela Davis wearing a hat over her Afro. Nancy Branson of Safety Harbor, Florida, offers her personal testimony: