Walking Whales: The journey from land to water in eight million years by Hans Thewissen - Book Review

How Whales originated in India and conquered the Oceans!

Evolution provides countless of amazing stories as we look at how each species evolved.  But story of the whales  (which are mammals) ancestors that went from land to water about 40 to 50 million years ago beats the best of them. And in between for a few million years there were whales (much smaller off course than the ones we see now) that had legs and could walk on land as well as swim in the water!

Hans Thewissen who discovered the first ‘walking whale’ later called Ambulocetus in Pakistan in the early 1990s, tells this fantastic story in great detail. The science behind the discovery and the subsequent journey is meticulously explained and this book will be a great learning experience for any reader. Starting from what makes a whale a whale (it is the tymphanic bone in the ear), to the importance of teeth and the dental formula (just by a tooth an expert can tell you what species it belongs to!) is amazing. Other interesting facts such as the oxygen isotopes in the bones that lets you determine whether the species lived in land or water, makes the book so enjoyable to read.

Perseverance is the key to success and the author’s efforts in India and Pakistan over the last 20 years in searching for and discovering numerous fossils and his focused studies in understand the swimming, feeding, breeding activities of this species underlies that.  The deciphering of  the development of the brain, vision, hearing etc of the Ambulocetus and related species from different fossil fragments makes a large part of the book feels like a detective story. The author’s skill in explaining not only biology and paleontology, but also other domains like geology and plate tectonics is wonderful. I have not read a better explanation of plate tectonics anywhere else! The isolation of the Indian peninsula after it broke away from the Africa about 50 million years ago gave the walking whales an opportunity to evolve in isolation.

Many Indians spent considerable time worshipping their Gods in the Himalayas but instead if they had spent a fraction of that time understanding how the Himalayas were formed, they might be able to appreciate the forces of Nature better. And the story of the Whales and their journey to conquer the oceans should be inspiring to all Indians.

Early bird gets the free sex?

From: Nature - June 11, 2015

Lazy male birds pay a high price

Male songbirds that sleep late risk having their female partners mate with another male.

Mating outside of a monogamous pair in birds normally happens early in the morning. To find out if rising earlier or later would affect reproductive patterns of great tits (Parus major), Timothy Greives of North Dakota State University in Fargo and his co-workers captured male birds in Germany and implanted them with a device that releases melatonin. This hormone is generated mostly at night to set the circadian clock. Male tits that had night-time-like levels of melatonin around the clock began their daily activities on average 10 minutes later than the control group. Their nests also contained more offspring fathered by another male, suggesting that the late-rising males were less able to defend their mates.

A Well-ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev And The Shadow Of The Periodic Table - Book Review

The man and the country behind the periodic table!

The periodic table would match any other basic scientific discovery on the impact to science and most of us would have heard of Mendeleev (though we might spell it and pronounce it in many different ways). However compared to many other well known scientists like Newton or Darwin or Einstein, we would be hard pressed to recollect much additional information about Mendeleev. We would also be surprised to hear that he came out of Russia - country hardly known for its scientific prowess in the 19th century. Michael Gordin aims to set that right and shows us a full picture of Mendeleev across his life time and the life and culture of Tsarist Russia at that time period.

The author makes it clear that this is not a traditional biography. His plan is to highlight the dilemmas of a nation at the cross roads of history and the achievements of a polymath from a poor background who nevertheless achieves tremendous success (along with failures). And that makes a fantastic story. How come the Periodic table came from Russia? What were the steps that led Mendeleev on this path? How did the final table evolve? What were the other areas that Mendeleev worked on? What were the challenges that he faced? These are the questions that you will find answers to, in this book. Some of it will seem very relevant to modern times - the play of economics, politics, superstition in science and society seems to apply equally well in the 21st century.

This is a good read for anyone interested in history, culture and science. The story of a gifted individual and a great nation and the impact of fundamental transforrmatory forces on them will be difficult to forget.

A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional life among the Baboons by Robert Sapolsky - A Book Review

Exploits of a ‘hippie scientist’ in Africa

This book is supposed to be a study of the baboons in Africa by a neuroscientist. The author ‘joins’ a troop of baboons  in Kenya, gives them various names from the old testament and monitors them closely. Joining is obviously an exaggeration as the author is armed with his jeep and other accessories but more or less camps closely to the troop and tracks the activities of the troop members. The main objective of the study seems to be tracking the stress level of the male members as they pass through the various hierarchical positions in the troop. This is achieved by anesthetizing them occasionally using a blow dart gun and then taking their blood samples. He also observes the social behavior of the members including tracking ‘who is making out with who’.

Only less than 20% of the book cover the baboons while the rest is spent on various adventures of the author in different African countries, in the national parks as well as interactions with the ‘black’ natives. A typical western person’s view of African life is depicted in those descriptions if one can suffer to read through all of it. How much of these are ‘hallucinations’ and what are real is difficult to make out.

I don’t think this book merits as a science book by any standards – since very little of science (forget neuroscience) is covered. Couple of chapters (one in the beginning and one towards the end) are interesting from a view of understanding baboon group behavior. However the author hardly seems to take into account the trauma he must have been imparting on the group by walking around and darting them! He acknowledges that they would run away from him and it was an uphill task for him to get close to them, as time went along. It is a basic rule in science that the process of measuring does affect the metric that you are trying to measure – but in this case the stress level induced by the scientist would dramatically influence whatever he was trying to measure.

Maybe my criticism is unduly harsh considering that the study was done many years back and the book itself was published in 2001. Reading it in 2015, I would be looking at it from a much later perspective. But  still, it will be hard to deny the basic facts that I have highlighted and I would not recommend anyone wasting time with this book.

Tongwan City by Gao Jianqun - a book review

The Hun King and the Buddhist Monk in ancient China

The mention of a Hun King would bring the name of Attila to most people’s minds. However in Tongwan City, Gao Jianqun tells us the story of another Hun King ‘Helian Bobo’  in the same time period as Attila, who established a large empire and created a magnificent new capital city in record time in present day Mongolia. While Attila was challenging the Western civilization, Helian Bobo was rocking the foundations of the Eastern one. From a penniless orphan, Helian became an emperor in a couple of decades. And within 6 years of time and the labor of over 100,000 people, his capital - the Tongwan city was brought to life in 419 AD. Thousands of people died during its construction and they were buried in its walls.

During this time period, China and Mongolia was heavily influenced by Buddhism from India. So enamored had the Chinese Kings become with Buddhism that they sent an army to India to bring by force one of the most well known Buddhist monks of that time – Kumarajiva. It is said that over 30,000 of his followers also accompanied him to China.. Kumarajiva spent the rest of his life in China translating all the Buddhist teachings to Chinese. Though Helian Bobo and Kumarajiva do not cross paths much (except for a brief meeting once) their stories are intertwined in this tumultuous period of China and Mongolia.

The Hun lifestyle was a migratory one with the horse as their main support. Their culture and philosophies are brought to life in this book. There are not too many historical fiction books on the ancient Chinese period and hence readers will find this book provides a window to that past. The writing style is brief and crisp and different from the normal English prose that we are familiar with. However as you get into the novel, it becomes more familiar and you will enjoy the gripping story and unforgettable characters.