by Lewis, Dan
BULL’S EYES
DO BULLS REALLY HATE THE COLOR RED? (NOPE.)
Modern Spanish-style bullfighting dates back to 1726. That year, a matador de toros—literally, “killer of bulls”—named Francisco Romero revolutionized the tradition. He took on the bulls on foot, unlike his predecessors who had battled the animals while on horseback. More importantly, Romero introduced some new equipment into the battlefield—a sword called an estoque, and a cape known as a muleta. As we all know, the muleta is, traditionally, red.
The bulls, on the other hand, have no idea what color it is.
For nearly 300 years, matadors have mimicked Romero’s costume. At some time during the past three centuries, the red cape became the subject of a myth: When bulls see the color red, they become irate and charge at it. The myth is so widespread that it even permeated children’s cartoons: The protagonist finds himself in the arena with a bull and (often accidentally) shows something red to the creature. This, in the cartoons, enrages the bull, putting the cartoon character’s life in peril.
But in reality, that’s not the case. People have trichromatic vision—we have three different color receptors in our eyes. Bulls have dichromatic vision; that is, they only have two color receptors. We can look at the muleta and determine that it is red. Bulls, on the other hand, can’t discern between colors well enough to recognize red.
On the August 22, 2007 episode of Mythbusters, the cast put this to the test. First, they put out red, white, and blue flags; the bull charged at each one, without any noticeably extra ire directed toward the red one. Next, the Mythbusters dressed three dummies as matadors, one in each of the three colors. The red matador met the bull’s horns last. Finally—most conclusively, too—one of the Mythbusters dressed in all red, but stayed as still as possible while two professionals, wearing blue or white, respectively, danced around the bullring. The bull ignored the red-clad Mythbuster and instead chased the dancing cowboys.
Most likely, bulls are attracted to the muletas due to the movements the matadors make with them, and not because of their color. For the most part, the red muletas are still used out of respect for tradition, but there’s a second reason. Although the bulls can’t tell that the matadors’ capes are red, the audience certainly can. When the bull wins, the muleta’s color masks the matador’s blood. With well over 500 matadors dying in bullfights since Romero reinvented bullfighting, that’s probably a good thing.
BONUS FACT
Bulls (and many other animals) only have two color receptors, but the fact that humans have three is not that amazing. Butterflies have five, and according to Nature, one species, the mantis shrimp, has at least ten—and maybe more.
BLOOD FALLS
THE ALIEN-LIKE LIFE FORMS TRAPPED IN ANTARCTICA
Travel south from New Zealand and you’ll eventually hit Antarctica. Continue inward on the southern continent and you’ll end up passing through a thirty-four-mile long Antarctic glacier known as the Taylor Glacier, named after Griffith Taylor, a geologist and Australian explorer who was one of the first people to lead exploratory expeditions of the area. Next to the Taylor Glacier is Lake Bonney, a saltwater lake trapped under an ice shelf ten to fifteen feet thick. Oozing slowly from underneath Taylor Glacier and onto Lake Bonney’s ice cover is a five-story-high frozen waterfall.
The water comes out blood red. And that isn’t even the most interesting part of what is now called Blood Falls.
Griffith Taylor discovered Blood Falls in 1911. At the time, Taylor and others believed that there was some sort of algae alive in the glacier, creating the dark-red tint in the ice. As it turned out, this isn’t the case.
Buried well below Taylor Glacier—we’re not entirely sure how far below—is a prehistoric lake, which has been trapped there, undisturbed, for an estimated 1.5 to 2 million years. The lake is entirely cut off from the rest of the Earth’s outer environment. It receives no sunlight. It has no oxygen. It has very high levels of saline (it’s a saltwater lake), sulfur, chloride, and iron. (The iron oxides cause the seepage at Blood Falls to turn red.) As one would expect, the temperature of the water hits extremely low levels; the high amount of salt is the only thing keeping the water from easily freezing.
What may seem like an inhospitable environment, though, is anything but. There’s something living in this subglacial lake, and given the lake’s seclusion, the life forms have been there for millennia. They aren’t the Loch Ness Monster or the Yeti, but according to Science magazine, multiple species of microbes live in the lake—at least a dozen and perhaps twice that. They’ve somehow survived without oxygen or any known way of producing it. The leading theory suggests that the microbes somehow use the sulfate and iron instead, but because no other known life form on Earth does this, we don’t understand how.
However, the microbes are there, which is particularly fascinating because by all rights they shouldn’t be. They’re often cited as examples as to why we can’t rule out life on places such as Mars or Jupiter’s ice-covered moon Europa; if something could survive beneath Taylor Glacier for an epoch, there could be something alive out there too.
BONUS FACT
On April 20, 1967, NASA landed a probe called the Surveyor 3 on the surface of the moon. Two and a half years later, the Apollo 12 team recovered Surveyor 3 from the moon’s surface. According to NASA, microbes from Earth—which were likely present when Surveyor 3 launched—were found present when the Apollo 12 team returned the probe to Earth. Although some people question the validity of the discovery, if it’s true, the microbes (bacteria called Streptococcus mitis) survived exposed space travel and, for that matter, a lot of time on the moon. Since the discovery of the Surveyor 3 microbes, NASA has implemented a more thorough sweep for microbes for all spaceflights in order to avoid accidentally introducing life into the universe outside of Earth’s atmosphere.
LEAVING MARKS
THE UNSOLVED, MYSTERIOUS DEATH AT THE BOTTOM OF THE EARTH
Australian-born Rodney Marks died on May 12, 2000, not far from the geographic South Pole. He had been working as an astrophysicist at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, a research facility run by the U.S. government via the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF originally concluded that Marks died due to natural causes. Six months later, and for more than a decade since, that finding has looked increasingly dubious. However, in part because of the quirks of how Antarctica is legally organized, we may never know what happened.
Marks, an accomplished researcher, was at the South Pole working on a telescope. He suffered from Tourette’s syndrome and tended to go on drinking binges in part to mask the symptoms of the condition. (Yes, there are bars in Antarctica. Several, in fact.) He was engaged to be married, and his fiancée, a woman named Sonja Walter, had taken a job at the South Pole to be with him. But on May 11, 2000, he began to feel very ill. He saw the doctor three times in the next day and a half, but it was all for naught, as no reason for his illness could be found.. About thirty-six hours after taking ill, Marks was dead.
In most cases, the police would be called in. But Antarctica isn’t owned by a single country, and although there are international treaties discussing rights and responsibilities to parts of it, many of the jurisdictional claims are unresolved. New Zealand makes a territorial claim on the area around the South Pole in which much of the U.S. presence is located. The United States does not recognize this claim, but it hasn’t objected when New Zealand applied New Zealand law to New Zealanders working for the United States in that area. Similarly, New Zealand has never objected to U.S. authorities investigating crimes committed in the area.
Six months after his death, Marks’s body was shipped to New Zealand for an autopsy (with the blessing of the United States). The coroner determined that Marks died from methanol poisoning and referred the case to the New Zealand police for further investigation. Methanol poisoning occurs, typically, when a person drinks antifreeze or Sterno in hopes of getting an effect similar to that of alcohol (that is, t
o get drunk), but the New Zealand authorities noted that Marks had access to plenty of alcohol and wouldn’t likely accidentally drink those things. Further, investigators openly doubted that Marks would have committed suicide—after all, he repeatedly sought medical treatment.
As chief investigator Detective Senior Sergeant Grant Wormald told the press, that is as far as the police work got. When New Zealand authorities tried to get information from potential witnesses or from the relevant organizations’ files, no one was willing to speak and denied that New Zealand had jurisdiction over the matter. When the U.S. Department of Justice stepped in to help, the people and organizations involved claimed the United States did not have jurisdiction either. The investigation ground to a halt in 2008, and Marks’s father told the New Zealand Herald that it was unlikely that more details would come to light.
To date, the mystery remains unsolved.
BONUS FACT
Each year, researchers place a marker in the glacial ice at the site of the geographic South Pole. Because the ice shifts over time, the marker is at a different location within the ice each year. In theory, there should be a lot of markers seemingly scattered across the Antarctic floor. However, that’s not the case—the markers are inside, on display in a museum-like environment. Well, most of the markers are on display, at least. According to a 2003 report in the Antarctic Sun (a newsletter from those stationed on the icy continent), at least one of the markers was missing and presumed stolen by the time the decision to bring them inside was made. There are no known suspects.
NO MAN’S LAND
THE ONE PIECE OF LAND NO COUNTRY OWNS
Roughly 30 percent of the Earth’s surface is land. And where there is land, there is a nation (or multiple nations) ready to claim it as its own. In fact, some of the world’s strangest disputes have been over pieces of land so small as to inspire bemused disbelief. Outside of Antarctica, almost every square foot of land is claimed by at least one nation.
Except for an 800-square-mile piece of land call Bir Tawil.
Bir Tawil sits between Egypt and Sudan. Neither country wants the land; in fact, each would be happy if the other took it. The area is landlocked and barren. The terrain is dry and mountainous and no one lives there permanently. A century ago, a tribe of nomads used the area as grazing lands, but that has long since changed. “Bir Tawil” translates to “deep water well,” a name given to the area decades ago due to the presence of a well in the region (and literally nothing else), but even that well is long gone.
But Bir Tawil’s general worthlessness is not why neither country wants it. Rather, the nations don’t want it because it would preclude them from claiming the Hala’ib Triangle, which sits to Bir Tawil’s northeast. Much larger and with fertile soil bordering the Red Sea, the triangle is claimed by both Egypt and Sudan.
The dispute over the Hala’ib Triangle dates back to two edicts, one from 1899 and another in 1902. In 1899, the United Kingdom (which controlled the area) drew the northern border of Sudan at the 22nd Parallel, a straight line stretching east to the Red Sea. Under these borders, Egypt would control the Hala’ib Triangle and Bir Tawil (as these regions are called today) would fall to Sudan. But these borders had a small flaw. A group of people living in the triangle were both geographically and culturally closer to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. It made little sense for these people to be Egyptians when they could so easily be Sudanese. To fix this, in 1902, the UK decided to draw a jagged “administrative boundary” which placed the Hala’ib Triangle under the administration of Sudan. However, for some reason, instead of starting this boundary at the 22nd Parallel and moving northeast, the British began the line south of the Parallel. In doing so, it carved out a small divot, now known as Bir Tawil, to be administered by Egypt.
Today, Egypt recognizes the straight-line 1899 border. Sudan claims the jagged 1902 border. As a result, no one wants Bir Tawil, making it the only place, other than Antarctica, unclaimed by any nation.
BONUS FACT
In October 2006, the United States passed the “Secure Fence Act of 2006,” which endeavored to build a border fence across its southwest border with Mexico. The fence, however, does not track the border exactly because a treaty between the United States and Mexico prevents development in the Rio Grande floodplain in Texas. According to Yahoo News, the Americans built some sections of the fence about a mile north of the border, placing some Texans, still technically in the United States, on the Mexican side of the fence.
GARBAGE CITY
HOW CAIRO’S GARBAGE CREATED A LOCAL ECONOMY
Cairo, the capital of Egypt, is one of the largest urban areas in the world, with over 6.5 million residents in the city itself and roughly 18 million in the greater metro area. It is like most cosmopolitan cities, except for one interesting difference: garbage.
Cairo’s municipal waste system—which handles about 9,000 tons of garbage a day—is not much of a system at all. It is, at best, an informal undertaking. The city’s municipal garbage needs are driven by a subset of the population known as the Zabbaleen (literally, “garbage people” in Egyptian Arabic), a group of mostly Coptic Christians numbering around 60–70,000 who have been the city’s de facto garbage collectors for decades. They live in a half-dozen or so communities in the outskirts of Cairo, collecting trash and refuse from virtually every street corner in the city.
Where the garbage ends up is, perhaps, the real story. The Zabbaleen collect the trash in a village named Manshiyat Naser, a slum, with stores and dwellings, avenues and roads, but without a sewer system, running water, or electricity. The streets of the village are strewn with trash. For this, the village has earned the moniker “Garbage City.”
But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At Manshiyat Naser, the Zabbaleen work their magic with the refuse of others, sorting through tons and tons of it for items that can be reused or recycled—or, in the case of food, fed to pigs. (When the swine flu made its way around the world, the Egyptian government ended that practice.) Families specialize in types of garbage and thereby are able to better pick out treasure from, well, actual trash. The results are apparently spectacular—according to a 2010 documentary about the Zabbaleen and Manshiyat Naser, as much as 80 percent of the garbage can be repurposed. For comparison’s sake, most recycling methods recover only about a quarter of items thrown away.
The Zabbaleen’s future, however, is up in the air. The culling of pigs due to the swine flu scare wreaked havoc on their economy. Combined with Egypt and Cairo’s prerevolutionary desire to become more modern and turn garbage collection into a municipal service, the Zabbaleen’s role in Cairo’s garbage economy may be on the wane.
BONUS FACT
According to Dr. Robin Nagle, anthropologist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation (it’s a part-time job), “Sanitation workers are at greater risk of on-the-job injury and on-the-job fatality than police officers or fire fighters.”
THE TRASH COLLECTORS
WHY SWEDEN IMPORTS TRASH
According to National Geographic, about 55 percent of trash generated by Americans ends up in landfills. About a third is recycled and the remaining 12.5 percent or so gets incinerated. Lowering that first number seems like a good idea for many reasons—landfills take up space, create methane gas, and can taint groundwater supplies. Garbage isn’t only a problem for the United States; other countries’ populations also create trash by the barrelful each week.
But Sweden has a totally different garbage problem. They simply don’t have enough of it.
According to a story on NPR, only about 4 percent of Swedish refuse finds its way to the landfill. That’s because, in large part, Sweden incinerates a huge percentage of its trash. In doing so, the country captures a huge amount of energy. Many parts of Sweden use something called “district heating,” a centralized system in which (in this case) garbage is burned to heat water, and that heated water is then piped to residential and commercial buildings to provide heat. By burning g
arbage, Sweden is able to produce 20 percent of its district heating needs, as well as electricity to about 250,000 homes. Almost everything is used—even medical waste. In fact, Sweden is so good at turning trash into energy that, as Public Radio International reported in the summer of 2012, the country had more need for electricity than trash available. Put bluntly, they needed more garbage.
The good thing about needing garbage? There’s usually a lot available, and others are more than willing to get rid of it. Not only that, but people—governments, in this case—will pay you to take it off their hands. So when Sweden went looking for more garbage, they found that neighboring Norway was not only willing to send some garbage Sweden’s way, but they also provided a bit of extra revenue to the Swedes.
For now. Sweden may have to look elsewhere soon (they already are, with Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, and others in their sights). Many other nations, especially those in Northern Europe, are investing in similar processes and systems—and they’ll need their trash. In April 2013, The New York Times reported that Oslo, Norway’s capital, had itself become a net importer of garbage—the city was able to heat “roughly half the city and most of its schools” by burning garbage. However, like Sweden, it ran out of trash and is now importing it from neighboring areas.