Cool Creepy Crawlies

Jared lent me his copy of the Lonely Planet's guide to New Zealand, since I will be visiting this country after our stay in Australia has ended. While flipping through last night I came upon the "wildlife" section and promptly began reading. There were lots of entries about cute marsupials and several kinds of short, fat birds that are no good at flying or getting away from even the most inept of predators. Everything that was cool-looking was either endangered or threatened. It seemed a miracle that New Zealand had any native animals at all.

I looked in vain for an "Insects" section. Instead I was affronted with section entitled "Creepy Crawlies" that spoke of but one true insect, the weta. Putting aside the the derogatory term "Creepy Crawlies" for a moment, the embarrassingly ignorant authors of this guide did chose to highlight what is probably one of the coolest insects in New Zealand when they selected the weta.

The weta is nothing fancy to look at. There are apparently 70 species of weta in New Zealand, and none of them are pretty. They look a lot like crickets that have taken to the life of a couch potato, their brown cuticle bulging with an excess of snickers bars and pork rinds. Their large heads are armed with impressive jaws and sometimes tusks. They are not known for their good natured personalities. The weta's great claim to fame is two-fold. One - the NZ-based special-effects company responsible for a great deal of the awesomeness of Lord of the Rings movies took this humble NZ insect as its namesake, calling themselves "The Weta Workshop." This was long before anyone in the world outside of New Zealand knew what a weta was, much less its other claim to fame - one species of weta survives being frozen solid for hours at a time.

Now, being frozen at -9°C (that's 16°F) —85% of your body's water in the form of ice crystals, all of your tissues experiencing severe osmotic shrinkage— is ordinarily considered lethal. The alpine weta (Hemideina maori) takes it in stride. There is no larger insect that can withstand becoming a popsicle like this¹.

The way the alpine weta does it is not the way that we would expect. Other cold-tolerant species avoid turning into insect-sicles by infusing their blood with a sort of antifreeze. Just like the antifreeze in your radiator, proteins circulating in their bodies keep them liquid even under freezing conditions. They do this because ice crystals tend to be bad for living things the same way that putting a coke can in the freezer is bad for the coke can. As the ice crystals form, the coke (like every cell in your body) expands then explodes.

Antifreeze is a great strategy if it doesn't get too cold. But where the alpine weta lives it gets pretty chilly. So instead of preventing ice crystal formation in their bodies like many other insects, the alpine weta welcomes ice crystal formation. Their blood contains ice-nucleating agents, which act like seed crystals for the ice to start to form. The alpine weta compartmentalizes these ice-nucleating agents outside of its cells, allowing ice crystals to form slowly and at a safe distance from their sensitive cells. Thus the whole insect slowly freezes into a solid block of weta, but retains life, ready to scurry away as soon as warmer temperatures allow it to thaw.

I am not looking forward to the winter that awaits me in the southern hemisphere. It seems less terrible when I think about the alpine weta and thank God he decided to make us warm-blooded creatures. The weta withstands the shock of new challenges by welcoming change, a lesson even us endotherms could use. Nevertheless, I wouldn't like to be an alpine weta. I think I would be very un-weta-like if my body temperature sunk to that of my surrounding environment, ice crystals forming throughout my veins. I would probably thrash and shiver, breaking my fragile frozen exoskeleton instead of quietly enduring the freezing process. Though if I had to be a weta, I don't think I'd mind having a nice pair of tusks.

1. Ramløv, H., Bedford, J., Leader, J. 1992. Freezing Tolerance of the New Zealand Apline Weta, Hemideina maori Hutton (Orthoptera: Stenopelmatidae). J. Therm. Biol. 17(1): 51-54.

Photo by Flickr user Kiwi Mikex licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.

Learning the language

Yesterday I saw this fascinating article about Aussie tendencies to abbreviate. Apparently every word in Australian is subject to shortening. Some examples:

Uni = University
Barbie = Barbecue
Arvo = Afternoon
Footy = Football
Onya = Good on you or Well done
Avago = Attempt something (pronounce it, then see if you hear yourself say "Have a go")
Beaut = Beauty
Chockie = Chocolate
Lappy = Laptop
Mobie = Mobile phone
Macca's = MacDonald's
Mushie = Mushroom

You get the idea.

A researcher named Nenagh Kemp at University of Tasmania is carrying out a study on popular Australian abbreviations and the effect they have on other people when you use them. Her hypothesis is that Aussie abbreviations create a sense of informality and acceptance in conversation. Perhaps this is true.

To me it sounds very child-like, as if the entire nation of Australia speaks in a nursemaid's lilt, constantly doting on every object. What a lovely way of looking at the world - considering everything cute, worthy of a diminutive ending.

Australians even have pet-names for their least-favorite insects: Blowie means a blow fly, and Mozzie means a mosquito. Presumably this makes them more familiar and less bothersome. I wonder if I made up pet names for my irritations, they would seem less irritating.

Quirrleys = the squirrels that attack my bird feeder with kamikaze enthusiasm.
Go County County = counting innumerable microbial colonies for my research.
Dissie = the dissertation that someday will have to be finished.
Chappy = the result of being imprisoned on an airplane for nearly 24 hours.

Expect more reflections on the official language of Australia when we actually start talking to Australians. One of my goals for this trip is to hunt down and capture uniquely Australian verbage.

Crazy Good From Just Plain Crazy

As otherworldly as this landscape appears, it was photographed by Phil Hart on the shores of Gippsland Lakes in Victoria, Australia, Earth. For a few summer months in 2008/09, disappointingly terrestrial creatures called Noctiluca scintillans—bioluminescent algae—created a bright fairy-land where the shores glow with eerie turquoise and the water reacts with flashes and sparkles when touched. View his Full Gallery to see more fascinating images of this phenomenon.

No sublime phosphorescent microbes inhabit our bodies of water in central Pennsylvania. I have never seen the shores of Whipple Dam lapping with electric blue waves. I have never witnessed Spring Creek flowing with fireworks. No doubt it would be a thing to behold. Though, I'm not sure if I would pray to receive this delight. The bioluminescence photographed in 2008/09 was extraordinary in its brightness, but it arose out of extraordinary disaster.

In December 2006, brush fires covered over a million hectares of land around the rivers and streams that feed the Gippsland lakes. Come winter, severe rains flooded Gippsland in a "1 in 100-year" flood, washing nutrients from the holocaust forests into the lakes, altering the chemistry of the lakes and causing blue-green algae (frequently toxic) to bloom throughout the lakes that summer. Following so much misfortune, lake-area inhabitants wondered what new tragedy the next summer would hold.

But instead of more toxic cyanobacteria, the lakes were visited by Noctiluca scintillans, a bioluminescent alga that feeds on the other numerous algae, causing the lakes to dance with the splendor of stars.

Few wonders come without a price. The larvae of lightingbugs cower in muddy waters and eat nothing but snails for months before they are permitted to ascend to write the sky with glowing letters. Sparkling algae swarm to feed on the products of a series of unprecedented natural disasters. Would that I could remember this when I am the burned-out forest or the flooded land! Remember to look ahead, over the charred remains and the deluge to see brilliant glow of the next spectacle God has prepared.

Image by Phil Hart, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic license. Background information likewise provided by Phil Hart.

Marsupial Country

Marsupials are yet another group of bizarre creatures that populate Australia. Their young are born tiny, pink, blind, and icky, immediately departing on a grueling 15-minute trek to find nourishment from their mother's milk glands in the pouch. In the warm refugia of the pouch, the joey incubates for several months before it is presentable enough to greet the outside world. Then for several more months, the joey enjoys autonomy, able to explore on its own. Simultaneously it enjoys the option of taking it easy and riding along in its mother's pouch until it finally outgrows that convenient vehicle.

We humans find marsupials irresistibly cute. We involuntarily coo "Awwwww!" when we see the little koala pictured here. An image of a kangaroo with a little joey's head popping out of the pouch likewise carries a near-lethal dose of adorableness. Why do you suppose we get all moist-eyed for the marsupials? They are furry - this fact alone qualifies them for levels of cuteness that a reptile would gladly give his pinky claw to attain. In addition, many marsupials sport large, radar-dish ears that remind us of bunnies, which, since the "The Velveteen Rabbit" have never failed to rank in the top 10th percentile for cuteness.

But I think the thing that really ratchets up the cute for marsupials has to be the pouch. Think about it - even the word pouch makes us purse our lips, adopting the perfect position for cooing soft words or kissing small, furry noses. We think of the pouch as mother's security blanket, always there for the little joey. Difficulties abound in these bushlands, and when we tire of our trials, we too would like to be carried in a soft, warm pouch.

It is so hard to find that pouch. Life at home can be just as harrowing as life at work. Our beds are so often filled with sleeplessness rather then rest. Sometimes, God alone is our comfort.

Psalm 91 says,

"[The LORD] will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge"

I think that if the psalmist had ever laid eyes on a marsupial he would have been all over that analogy like fuzz on a wallaby.

"[The LORD] will hold you,
and in his pouch of love you will find refuge"

I might as well tell you that my first idea for the Australia blog's title was "Marsupial Country: God's Pouch of Love." It was rejected in favor of something a little less saccharine. Also less geeky. Ash and Jared, count your blessings.

Image by Flickr user Erik K Veland licensed for non-commercial use.

Old friends of a feather

In junior high I was a member of an agricultural youth organization known as 4-H. I'm not exactly sure, but I think that the four H's of 4-H meant Head, Heart, Hands, and Huge Flightless Birds. You see, my 4-H club pioneered the area of 4-H emu husbandry. For two years, I learned how to raise emus from chicks- feed them, catch them, sex them, vaccinate them, show them, and sell them. (They may look like dinosaurs, but they taste like top sirloin.) I came to love their musical booming and drumming, their dark chestnut eyes, their black curls, blue skin, and smooth, brown bifurcated feathers. They were to me like lovely exotic parrots but taller and better at running.

The nation of Australia has had a love-hate relationship with their most common native Ratite. Emus proliferate all over Australia, and sometimes they trample and eat crops. In 1932 Western Australia declared war on emus, sending men with machine guns after them. The emus won. As Australian ornithologist D. L. Serventy recorded: "The machine-gunners' dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month." Despite the tendency of irritated farmers to occasionally shoot them, emus are now, for the most part, considered important members of Australian fauna. They are now protected by law and (unofficially) the national bird of Australia.

The thing I always rather liked about the emus was their innate curiosity. Standing still for a minute in the emu enclosure rewarded you with an entire flock (or is it herd?) of emus all eager to sample your hair, your clothes, and your shoelaces as they might chance to be edible. I guess when you are nearly six feet tall and armed with six vicious claws on the end of two powerful reptilian legs, you don't expect anyone to be foolish enough to cross you. Or perhaps they are just friendly. Cast down from the skies where their bird brethren soar, emus accept that they will always be forsaken oddities and must make friends where they can. Even if those friends include someone like a gawky teenage girl with a disturbing habit of wearing flannel.


Top photo by flickr user OZinOH licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

The International Date Line of Mystery

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia"

Charles Schulz

Lately I have been pondering the mysteries of the International Date Line. At some magical moment in the evening while I'm flying over the Pacific on Monday, August 2 I will cross an imaginary line on the globe and all of a sudden it will be the same time on Tuesday, August 3. Goodbye Monday. Hello Tuesday. On my way back from New Zealand, I will leave Auckland at 1PM on Saturday, August 21 and arrive in L.A. at 6:30AM on Saturday, August 21. I will forever find the international date line a celestial wonder.

Time-travel was on everyone's mind when Magellan's voyage, having been the first to successfully circumnavigate the globe, landed in Portuguese territory on a Wednesday, while, much to their consternation, everyone there stubbornly insisted that it was Thursday. Later, Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, "being much disquieted and trobled with that care," figured out the answer and wrote it all up for Pope Adrian VI, concluding that if one sailed west, chasing the sun, the days would be a tiny bit longer and by the time you got all the way around you would have burned up a whole extra day, as Magellan's voyage had. What was Wednesday to you would be Thursday to everyone else. Pietro felt this to be very profound but resolved to "Let Philosophers more deeply discusse this matter" in the future.¹

Curiously enough, the idea of marking a line on the globe to delimit "today" and "tomorrow" was thought up long before people started circumnavigating the globe. Since the 12th century Jewish rabbis have debated the placement of such a line so that righteous Jews living in all corners of the globe could observe sabbath on the appropriate day. The question of how should one observe the sabbath when traveling over the date line on a Friday-Saturday or Saturday-Sunday transition is even more thorny.² It's lucky we travel on a Monday.

The civil date line observed by most of the world zigzags through the Pacific Ocean, careening left and right to avoid hitting land or splitting up island chains. It is placed where it is because presumably no one would want to live somewhere where it is today on one side of your home but tomorrow on the other side.

But wouldn't it be rather nice to live in just such a place? If your house was split by the date line, you could have the power of the date line always at your disposal. Anytime you were having a bad day you could just hop across the imaginary line and it would be tomorrow. Same time, just the next day. And if one sunrise wasn't good enough for you that morning, you could hop back across the imaginary line and hit "repeat." And if you made a mistake on that morning, could you get another chance to make things right? Cross the line, rewind, and do it all over again?

1. A History of the International Date Line
2. A Traveler's Guide to the International Date Line

Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License by user Jailbird.

Support Letter

Dear Friends,

Over the past couple of years, God has been putting on our hearts as a Penn State Christian Grads community a desire and vision to help each other connect deeply with Him, one another, our calling as grad students, and the mission of helping our peers do the same. We believe that as we do so, God wants us to help bring the gospel within arm’s reach of every grad student at Penn State. As big as that vision is, God seems to be inviting us to join Him in something even more.

We are writing to tell you about this new initiative for PSCG and to give you an opportunity to join with us. Last summer, Ashley Holleman had an opportunity to talk with Mike Shepski, the head of Campus Crusade’s Campus Ministry for Melbourne, Australia. Mike shared that the long-term strategic plan of the University of Melbourne is to significantly increase their ratio of graduate students to undergraduate students to 50:50. Mike is excited to partner with us, and to use our expertise and experience with graduate student ministry to help shape a graduate student ministry at University of Melbourne.

So, to investigate and (as God leads) establish an ongoing partnership with the campus ministry team at the University of Melbourne, we will be traveling to Melbourne from August 2-16, 2010. During our time there, we will meet with the campus ministry staff team, as well as faculty and grad students at the university. We hope to explore grad student and faculty culture and envision what ministry for grads and faculty might look like there. In the future, we hope that an ongoing partnership with University of Melbourne will provide all of us in PSCG an opportunity to increase our vision for the world, and to expand our understanding of how God is still moving and working in people’s lives. We also hope that this ongoing partnership will provide for many in PSCG an opportunity to grow in their walk with Christ, minister cross-culturally, speak academically in an international setting, and perhaps even pursue future career opportunities.

We are very excited to go to Australia, but we realize that we can’t go alone. Though it is just the three of us physically traveling to Australia, we want this to be a PSCG-wide effort. We would love your input before we go and we look forward to processing with you after we get back. It would be such an encouragement to us to know that you are praying for and with us.

Finally, we are trusting the Lord to put together a team of churches, family members, and friends—including our friends in PSCG—who feel led to partner with us financially to help cover the costs of the trip. These funds (totaling $2175.00 per person) will be used to cover the travel, meal, and ministry costs of the trip. Would you please prayerfully consider giving a one-time gift to help cover these expenses? To do so, you can give online at give.ccci.org/give (search for “Penn State Christian Grads”).

We look forward to sharing with you all that the Lord does in the coming weeks.

Grateful and Excited,
Tracy Conklin, Jared Lee, and Ashley Holleman

Introduction

Welcome to Above and Beyond in the Down Under, where we will be recording our adventures as we visit the city of Melbourne, Australia August 2-16, 2010.