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Spare Parts Page 20

by Carol Ann Rinzler

5. “10 Strangest Animals in the Rainforest,” Conservation Institute, June 15, 2015,, http://www.conservationistinstitute.org/10-strangest-animals-in-the-rainforest/

  6. “15 Unusual Prehistoric Creatures,” ListVerse, http://listverse.com/2009/10/05/15-unusual-prehistoric-creatures/

  7. “Microraptor,” McGill School Of Computer Science, http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/link-suggestion/wpcd_2008-09_augmented/wp/m/Microraptor.htm

  8. “Bestiary, Fabulous Beast, Men, Spirits,” Theoi Project, http://www.theoi.com/Bestiary.html

  9. Langley, Liz, “Weird Animal Question of the Week: How Do Dogs Talk With Their Tails?” National Geographic, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141107-dogs-animals-pets-communication-tails-science/

  10. Siniscalchi, M., et al., “Seeing Left- or Right-Asymmetric Tail Wagging Produces Different Emotional Responses in Dogs,” Current Biology, October 31, 2013, at https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/wag-dog-when-left-vs-right-matters

  11. “Five-legged kangaroo? Telling the tale of a kangaroo’s tail.” ScienceDaily, July 1, 2014, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140701193308.htm

  12. Ehrlich, Paul R., Dobkin, David S., Wheye, Daryl, “Sexual Selection,” https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Sexual_Selection.html

  13. “Tale of the Peacock,” Evolution Library, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/6/l_016_09.html

  14. “Survival of the Fittest,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest

  15. Griffin, Julia, “Why are peacock tail feathers so enchanting?” PBS Newshour, April 29, 2016, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/why-are-peacock-tail-feathers-so-enchanting/

  16. “How Bear Lost His Tail,” Native American Lore Index, http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore22.html

  17. “Animals With No Tail,” Hub Pages, http://hubpages.com/animals/Animals-Without-Tailsm Updated on October 15, 2015

  18. “Caesarian section,” The Bulldog Information Library, http://www.bulldoginformation.com/caesarean-section.html

  19. Broughton, Amy L., “Cropping and Docking: A Discussion of the Controversy and the Role of Law in Preventing Unnecessary Cosmetic Surgery on Dogs, Animal Legal & Historical Center,” Michigan State University College of Law, https://www.animallaw.info/article/cropping-and-docking-discussion-controversy-and-role-law-preventing-unnecessary-cosmetic

  20. The table diagraming this relationship is in Chapter 6, “Feathers and Fur.”

  21. “Protist,” YourDictionary, http://www.yourdictionary.com/protist#S4Tt18DYrKK3cWh1.99

  22. “Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919),” University of California, Museum of Paleontology, http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/haeckel.html

  23. “George Romanes,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Romanes

  24. “ Of the more than 65,000 living species of chordates, about half are bony fish of the class Osteichthyes [ fish whose skeletons are composed primarily of bone tissue rather than cartilage]. The world’s largest and fastest animals, the blue whale and peregrine falcon, respectively, are chordates, as are humans.” “Chordate,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chordate

  25. “Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919),” University of California, Museum of Paleontology, http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/haeckel.html

  26. Miller, Steven, “Webbed Toes,” Footvitals.com, http://www.footvitals.com/toes/webbed-toes.html

  27. Sahney, Sarda, “Why does my baby have a tail?” Science 2.0, http://www.science20.com/fish_feet/why_does_my_baby_have_a_tail

  28. Hasso, Sean M., Ferguson, Mark W.J., Fallon, John F., Harris, Matthew P., “The Development of Archosaurian First-Generation Teeth in a Chicken Mutant,” Cell, http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(06)00064-9

  29. Louchart, Antoine, Viriot, Laurent, “From snout to beak the loss of teeth in birds,” Researchgate.net, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51705217_From_snout_to_beak_the_loss_of_teeth_in_birds_Trends_Ecol_Evol

  30. Adams, J., Shaw, K. (2008) “Atavism: embryology, development and evolution,” Nature Education 1(1):131, http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/atavism-embryology-development-and-evolution-843

  31. Ledley, F.D., “Evolution and the Human Tail: A Case Report,” New England Journal of Medicine, 306 no. 20 (1982): 1212–1215

  32. Dao, Anh H., Netsky, Martin G., “Human Tails and Pseudotails,” Human Pathology, 15(5): 449-453 [May 1984

  33. Spiegelmann, Roberto, Schinder, Edgardo, Mintz, Mordejai, Blakstein, Alexander, “The human tail: a benign stigma,” Journal of Neurosurgery, 1985, 63: 461-462

  34. Sarmasi, A.H., Showkat, H.I., Mir, S.F., Ahmad, S.R., Bhat, A.R., Kirmani, A.R., Human born with a tail: A case report,” South African Journal of Child Health, February 2013, 7 (1), www.ajol.info/index.php/sajchh/article/download/87951/77594www.ajol.info/index.php/sajchh/article/download/87951/77594

  35. Lu, Frank L., Wang, Pen-Jung, Teng, Ru-Jeng, Tsou Yau, Kuo-Inn, “The Human Tail,” Pediatric Neurology, September 1998, 19 (3), Pages 230–233, http://www.pedneur.com/article/S0887-8994(98)00046-0/pdf

  36. Luskin, Casey, “Another Icon of Evolution: The Darwinian Myth of Human Tails,” Casey Luskin/Evolution News & Views, May 22, 2014, http://www.discovery.org/a/23041

  37. Sarmasi, A.H., op. cit.

  38. “Discovery of a Race of Human Beings with Tails (1873) and Mr. Jones’s Account of a Race of Human Beings with Tails, Discovered by Him in the Interior of New Guinea (1875),” E.W. Cole, http://www.erbzine.com/mag18/tails.htm

  39. “Edward Coles,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_William_Cole

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  In The Body in Time (1978), Harvard Biologist Kenneth Jon Rose explored, as the dust jacket says, “the complex interplay between the functions of our bodies and time from the beating of the ultimate time machine—the heart—in a developing fetus to the decay of the body after death.” Sometimes the time is short, such as the two-to-fifteen seconds it takes for an itch in the nose to build toward a sneeze. Sometimes it is exponentially longer, with the body’s problems linked to birthdays and season. While Rose did not zero in on the putative human tail, he did write that there seemed to be “a seasonal trend in the birth of malformed children. Children born with spina bifida, a problem where the spinal cord is exposed” are most likely to arrive in winter. Rose’s 1970s observation was confirmed thirty-seven years later by researchers from the National Institutes of Health, some of whom theorized in 2015 that a virus may play a role.

  4. Ear Rings

  1. “Ancient Egypt The Mythology—Ear,” http://www.egyptianmyths.net/ear.htm

  2. “Egyptian, Classical, Ancient, Near Eastern Art:Ear,” Brooklyn Museum, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/185794/Ear

  3. “Van Goghs Ohr: Paul Gauguin und der Pakt des Schweigens” (“Van Gogh’s Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence”), 2009, cited in Gopnik, Adam, Van Gogh’s Ear, The New Yorker, January 4, 2010, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/01/04/van-goghs-ear

  4. For 129 years after Van Gogh’s dramatic moment, historians puzzled over the name of the woman to whom he handed the amputated ear. Then, in the summer of 2016, Bernadette Murphy, author of the best-selling Zen and the Art of Knitting, published Van Gogh’s Ear: The True Story. Murphy identified the recipient as young woman in a Paris brothel but kept her promise to the family not to reveal her name. The Art Newspaper, not being party to the promise, followed the clues in Murphy’s book to discover Gabrielle Berlatier, a farmer’s daughter who had been bitten by a rabid dog and then come to Paris to be treated at the Institut Pasteur with the new rabies vaccine. To pay for the expensive travel and treatment, Berlatier worked first as a cleaner at the Café de la Gare, which Van Gogh frequented, and then, as Murphy notes, being too young to be a registered prostitute, worked as a maid in the brothel where Van Gogh did his ear in and handed it to her. It was not a time in her life that Berlatier chose to remember: “[T]he innocent victim of a rabid d
og and the temporarily deranged artist within the same year, later married and lived well into old age—keeping her traumatic encounter with Van Gogh a secret.” Bailey, Martin, “Name of mystery woman who received Van Gogh’s ear revealed for first time,” The Art Newspaper, July 20, 2016, http://theartnewspaper.com/news/news/name-of-mystery-woman-who-recieved-van-gogh-s-ear-revealed-for-first-time/

  5. Minkel, J.R., “Origin Of The Ear. Once, it was more of a nose,” Discover Magazine, May 28, 2006.

  6. Like fish, many insects have no ears. The praying mantis has one, located under its belly just in front of its legs. This ear cannot tell which direction a sound comes from, but it can detect the noise produced by approaching predators, enabling the bug to maneuver in midair to avoid being trapped and eaten. Bats use a similar stratagem, echolation, emiting sound that bounces off walls and other objects in the environment, a phenomenon known as biological or bio- sonar.

  7. “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres”: “All Gaul is divided into three parts , one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third,” the first sentence in Julius Caesar’s De Bello Gallico (The Gallic Wars).

  8. The word tragus comes from the Greek tragos meaning a male goat. In this case it stands for the clump of hair, similar to a male goat’s beard that sometimes grows on the male human ear, a patch of our body hair, about which more in Chapter 6, “Feathers and Fur.”

  9. “Earwax: A New Frontier of Human Odor Information,” Monell Center, February 12, 2014, http://www.monell.org/news/news_releases/earwax_odors

  10. McNamee, David, “Earwax contains ethnicity-specific data, according to a new study,” MNT, February 13, 2014, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/272626.php

  11. Beesley, J, Johnatty, S.E., Chen, X., Spurdle, A.B., Peterlongo, P., Barile, M., Pensotti, V., Manoukian, S., Radice, P., “No evidence for an association between the earwax-associated polymorphism in ABCC11 and breast cancer risk in Caucasian women,” Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, February 2011, 126(1):235-9

  12. Hain, Timothy C., “Ear Muscle Anatomy,” Dizziness-and-Balance, http://www.dizziness-and-balance.com/anatomy/ear/ema.html

  13. Artists and writers translate our world for the lay eye and ear. Sometimes the results are terrifying, as in Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, an image adapted from the faces of Peruvian mummies (Chapter 1). But more often they are as utterly delightful as this poem about the ear from The Human ear: its Identification and Physiognomy. You may rightfully challenge the validity of Ellis’s contemporary facts, particularly her reliance on the then-current “science” of what looks suspiciously like phrenology, but there is no denying the charm of the father and daughter as they discuss the ear and how it hears a bell and she delivers, in one word, her considered opinion of his explanation. Gibbergosh, indeed.

  The Philosopher and Her Father

  A sound came booming through the air,

  “What is that sound ?” quoth I.

  My blue-eyed pet, with golden hair,

  Made answer, presently,

  “Papa, you know it very well

  That sound— it is Saint Pancras’ Bell.”

  My own Louise, put down the cat,

  And come and stand by me ;

  I’m sad to hear you talk like that,

  Where’s your philosophy

  That sound — attend to what I tell —

  That sound was not Saint Pancras’ Bell.

  Sound is the name the sage selects

  For the concluding term

  Of a long series of effects

  Of which the blow’s the germ.

  The following brief analysis

  Shows the interpolations, Miss.

  The blow, which when the clapper slips

  Falls on your friend the Bell,

  Changes its circle to ellipse

  (A word you’d better spell).

  And then comes elasticity,

  Bestoring what it used to be.

  Nay, making it a little more,

  The circle shifts about

  As much as it shrunk in before

  The Bell, you see, swells out ;

  And so a new ellipse is made

  (You’re not attending, I’m afraid).

  This change of form disturbs the air.

  Which in its turn behaves

  In like elastic fashion there,

  Creating waves on waves ;

  Which press each other outward, dear.

  Until the outmost finds your ear.

  Within that ear the surgeons find

  A tympanum or drum,

  Which has a little bone behind, —

  Malleus it’s called by some ;

  But those not proud of Latin Grammar

  Humbly translate it as the hammer.

  The wave’s vibrations this transmits

  On to the incus bone

  (Incus means anvil, which it hits),

  And this transfers the tone

  To the small os orbiculare,

  The tiniest bone that people carry.

  The stapes next — the name recalls

  A stirrup’s form, my daughter —

  Joins three half-circular canals.

  Each fill’d with limpid water ;

  Their curious lining, you’ll observe,

  Made of the auditory nerve.

  This vibrates next — and then we find

  The mystic work is crown’d;

  For then my daughter’s gentle Mind

  See what a host of causes swell

  To make up what you call “the Bell.”

  Awhile she paused, my bright Louise,

  And pondered on the case;

  Then, settling that he meant to tease.

  She slapped her father’s face.

  “You bad old man, to sit and tell

  Such gibbergosh about a Bell.”

  https://archive.org/details/humanearitsiden00elligoog or https://archive.org/stream/humanearitsiden00elligoog/humanearitsiden00elligoog_djvu.txt

  14. McDonald, John, “Darwin’s tubercle: The myth,” Myths of Human Genetics, http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mytheartubercle.html

  15. “Darwin’s Tubercle,” Wikipedia.com, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_tubercle

  16. The Descent of Man, Chapter 1, Darwin Online.com, http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=1&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=

  17. Ibid.

  18. McDonald, John H., “Attached earlobe: The myth,” Myths of Human Genetics, University of Delaware, http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mythearlobe.html

  19. Ibid.

  20. “Earlobe,” Wikipedia.com, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earlobe#cite_note-7

  21. Das, D.D., Dutta, M.N., “A note on earlobe attachment among the Thado Kukis and Kabui Nagas of Manipur,” Anthropologist, 2000, 2 (4), 263-264, http://krepublishers.com/02-Journals/T-Anth/Anth-02-0-000-000-2000-Web/ANTH-02-04-207-2000-Abst-PDF/ANTH-02-04-263-2000.pdf

  22. Patile, Anupma, “Malformations of the external ear,” www.The Fetus.net, 2001-01-02-16 http://www.sonoworld.com/Fetus/page.aspx?id=205

  23. A second, very rare, genetic disorder, Donohue syndrome, first identified in 1948 by Canadian pathologist William L. Donohue, is also linked to elfin features such as nostrils that flare and ears set low on the head.

  24. Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man, op. cit.

  25. There are monkeys everywhere around the globe, but those native to Asia and Africa, such as baboons and macaques, are called “Old World” monkeys; those native to the Americas, “New World” monkeys. While the two groups are all primates, they differ in several ways. For example, New World monkeys such as the London Zoo’s Ateles beelzebuth use their tails as grasping “hands”; Old World monkeys don’t. Old World monkey have two premolars; New World monkeys, three. Both have ears, often pointed, but the New World monkeys’ tympanic membrane is joined to the outer ear by a bone ring, while the New World monkeys’ connects with a
bone tube you can actually see on the side of the skull. “New World, Old World Monkeys: Comparisons,” Cabrillo.edu, http://www.cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/monkeycomparisons.html

  26. “Stahl ear deformity associated with Finlay-Marks syndrome,” http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Stahl+ear+deformity+associated+with+Finlay-Marks+syndrome.-a0230865717

  27. “The full text of The human ear; its identification and physiognomy” is at InternetArchive.org, https://archive.org/stream/humanearitsiden00elligoog/humanearitsiden00elligoog_djvu.txt

  28. Niemitz, C., Nibbrig, M., Zacher, V., “Human ears grow throughout the entire lifetime according to complicated and sexually dimorphic patterns—conclusions from a cross-sectional analysis,” Anthropologischer Anzeiger, December 2007, 65(4):391-413, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18196763

  29. “Ears: The New Fingerprints?” Yale Scientific, May 12, 2011, http://www.yalescientific.org/2011/05/ears-the-new-fingerprints/

  30. Some sources list as many as 11. Zerin, Michael, Van Allen, Margot I., Smith, David, W., “Intrinsic Auricular Muscles and Auricular Form,” Pediatrics, January 1982, 69:1, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/69/1/91?variant=abstract&sso=1&sso_redirect_count=1&nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR%3a+No+local+token

  31. Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man, op.cit.

  32. Viegas, Jennifer, “Ear wiggling mechanism unmasked,” Discovery, http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1647353.htm

  33. Borel, Brooke, ”Why can some people wiggle their ears?” LiveScience, March 30, 2012, http://www.livescience.com/33809-wiggle-ears.html

  34. “No, You Can’t: World Record Ideas That Didn’t Cut it,” NPR All Things Considered, October 27, 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/10/27/141760624/no-you-cant-world-record-ideas-that-didn’t-cut-it

  35. Viegas, Jennifer, op. cit.

  36. Miller, Jerome J., “Neuroplasticity in normal and brain injured patients: potential relevance of ear wiggling locus of control and cortical projections,” Medical Hypotheses, December 2014, 83(6):838-43, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306987714003995

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