Are Lobsters Ambidextrous?

by David Feldman

  Rule 2: New soups are stocked at eye level. Eye level is the best placement for impulse purchasing. If you are in doubt about whether a variety is a new product, it can be identified with ease. Whenever Campbell markets a new variety of its regular “red and white” soups, the new product is given a “vignette label,” with the contents pictured on the front of the can.

  Rule 3: Cooking soups should be segregated. All these “cream of” soups should be stocked together.

  Rule 4: Eating soups are the biggest category, so poultry, beef, and vegetarian soups should be placed in separate sections. In our experience, few markets even attempt this.

  Rule 5: Ready-to-serve and dry soups should be separated from all the others.

  Campbell’s shelving plan theoretically produces the best of both worlds, allowing its soups to be organized by food type, preparation, and function, but the company’s strategy is usually foiled in practice. How can you expect grocery stores to deploy sophisticated marketing schemes when they have great difficulty bagging your order?

  Submitted by Louis Zelenka of Bainbridge, Georgia.

  Why has Swanson stopped putting vent holes on the top of its pot pies?

  The relentless rise of the microwave oven was responsible for the abolition of those vent holes. All frozen foods, including pot pies, have become popular items for the microwave.

  Swanson introduced the first microwavable double-crusted pie on the market in 1989. While developing the product, Swanson determined that the pie baked better without the vent holes.

  Joanne Marshall, of the Campbell Soup Company, told Imponderables that when a pot pie is prepared in a conventional oven, “We direct consumers to prick the top crust in order to ensure a crisp-textured pastry.” One of the side benefits of eliminating the vent holes, if not the original rationale, is that it eliminates spillage of the filling during baking.

  We’d add another reason. Even with the vent holes, fewer things are more capable of burning the roof of the mouth than the insides of a pot pie. Anything that allows the pot pie to “let off steam” can’t be all bad.

  Submitted by Randall Tada of Bellevue, Washington.

  Why do TWIX cookie bars have holes in them?

  Alas, while one company taketh away holes, another provideth them. We may have lost our beloved pot pie vents, but the folks at M&M/Mars have inserted them in their TWIX Bars.

  We assumed that the answer to this Imponderable was that the ingredients in holes were considerably less expensive then those for the cookie bar itself. The more air in the product, the bigger the product seems, and the greater the value of the product is perceived to be (Cheerios and Ivory Soap certainly haven’t suffered commercially from their airy constitutions).

  But it turns out we were paranoid. Hans Fiuczynski, external relations director of M&M/Mars, explains that the different ingredients in the TWIX cookie bar vary in their reaction to heat:

  As storage conditions in shops and in cupboards vary a bit, there is the chance that the topping on top of the cookie (such as caramel) would expand and create hairline cracks in the chocolate coating, thus allowing oxygen to enter the product. This would reduce the shelf life.

  To prevent this from happening, or at least to mitigate this effect, holes are put into the cookie so the topping can expand into the holes, internally, rather than crack the coating.

  Submitted by Corrine Levering of Highland, Michigan.

  What are those wavy marks on the bottom of Snickers bars?

  What’s with you guys? Holes in TWIXes? Wavy lines on Snickers? Don’t you know you are supposed to be scarfing, not scrutinizing, candy bars?

  We obtained Snickers specimens and found that, indeed, there were wavy marks on the bottom of each bar. The marks were not applied to the surface of the chocolate but were in the form of thin indentations, as if someone ran a needle through the epidermis of the chocolate on the bottom of the bar. To uphold our rigorous scientific principles, we also purchased a Milky Way bar. It, too, had markings on its bottom, but they formed a honeycomb pattern.

  Despondent correspondent Jennifer Martz has been begging us to get to the bottom of this Snickers Imponderable for years, so we contacted M&M/Mars once again. We feared that we were risking overexposing Hans Fiuczynski to his growing legion of fans (but don’t despair, Fiuczynski groupies—see the Letters section for Hans’s bombshell announcement about M&Ms), so we asked Marlene Marchut, external relations manager, for help.

  She unlocked the mystery of the wavy lines. Marchut explained that there are two ways of preparing commercial chocolate bars: molding and enrobing. To mold a bar, the chocolatier pours liquid chocolate into a plastic or metal mold, where it conforms to the shape of the mold. Most solid chocolate bars are molded, because the process is simple and produces a bar of uniform shape and a pleasing, glossy finish. Although bars with fillings (e.g., caramel, nougat, nuts) can be produced by molding, most commercial candy bar makers use the enrobing process (M&M/Mars enrobes all of their bars except for the new solid chocolate Dove Bar). Enrobing is more complicated:

  The process begins with a filling, which is laid in a wide band on a continuous stainless steel belt. In the case of “layered” fillings, there are two bands, one on top of the other. The wide band is then sliced into long, continuous strips and eventually cut to the desired length, forming “centers.” The actual enrobing process begins when these centers pass through a continuous curtain of liquid chocolate, which coats the top and sides of the bar. At the same time, a rotating chocolate-covered wheel beneath the mesh belt coats the base of the bar. To ensure an attractive, glossy, smooth coating, the chocolate must be at just the right temperature. The fully enrobed bar is then cooled and prepared for wrapping.

  During enrobing, the chocolate is placed on a mesh belt rather than a solid one, so that excess liquid chocolate can be collected. In order for the chocolate to harden properly, it must pass through a cooling tunnel, where the cocoa butter crystallizes.

  All fine and dandy, except for one potential problem: The liquid chocolate, once enrobed, does not transfer easily from the wire-mesh belt to the solid belt used to carry the bar through the cooling tunnel. Nothing could hold up the production line more annoyingly than splattered liquid chocolate. Mars came up with an elegant solution to clear the potential hurdle—one that coincidentally also creates the wavy lines. Marchut explains:

  The solid belt [that picks up the chocolate from the enrober and sends it through the cooling tunnel] has a pattern on its surface which helps us to “pull” the wet bar off the wire belt. The patterns create a rough, irregular surface, just as the chains on tires help pull the car over wet surfaces.

  When the chocolate bar has hardened, it is released from the patterned, solid belt as it is transferred to be wrapped. Once again, the pattern on the belt aids in the release of the bottom surface. The physics of the pattern allow the irregular surface to more easily “snap” off the belt than a completely smooth bottom, which has a tendency to create more suction.

  Not all the bars of any given brand necessarily have exactly the same pattern (although we’ve never seen an unwavy Snickers bar)—it depends upon the individual plant or enrobing line.

  From what we can tell, the folks at M&M/Mars aren’t obsessed about the aesthetic pleasure offered by the bar bottoms. They just want their chocolate to melt in your mouth, not on their assembly line.

  Submitted by Jennifer Martz of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Thanks also to Marguerite MacLeod of Braintree. Massachusetts; and Stacia Leary of Saunderstown, Rhode Island.

  What is one hearing when one hears a house “settling” or creaking?

  We like to think of a home as a bulwark, a refuge from the vicissitudes and capriciousness of the outside world. The infrastructure of a house consists of elements like beams, pillars, and foundations, words that connote steadiness, permanence, and immutability.

  But architects we talked to soon disabused us of this notion. In fact, talking to an architect abo
ut the stability of houses is a little like talking to Norman Bates about shower safety. In particular, we were startled by a book called How Buildings Work: The Natural Order of Architecture, written by Edward Allen, and passed on to us by James Cramer, executive vice-president/CEO of the American Institute of Architects. In one chapter, “Providing for Building Movement,” Allen details the many ways in which buildings move, and if we weren’t averse to clichés and bad puns, we would say that the opening rocked us to our very foundations:

  A building, even a seemingly solid, massive one, is never at rest. Its motions are usually very small ones, undetectable by the unaided eye, but most of them are of virtually irresistible force, and would tear the building to pieces if not provided for in some way.

  Allen states that in an average house, all of these components can and do move:

  1. The soil underneath the foundation buckles under the weight of the new foundation.

  2. Materials that are put in place while wet, such as mortar, concrete, and lime plaster, shrink as they harden.

  3. Some dry materials, such as gypsum plaster, tend to expand and push against adjoining elements.

  4. Most lumber used in houses is not completely dry when put in place. Wet lumber shrinks.

  5. Structural elements that carry weight loads, such as beams, pillars, and columns, deflect under the weight.

  6. Wind and earthquakes cause more “natural” deflection.

  7. Wood and concrete sag.

  8. Wood, in particular, tends to expand when exposed to high humidity and contract in dry conditions. When humidity decreases noticeably, such as when heat is put on to warm a room in winter, the wood creaks noticeably.

  9. Any material adjoining another material with different movement characteristics is in danger of scraping against another or moving away from the other, which can cause movement and noise.

  10. All of the above movements can and do cause noise, but the most common noise associated with “settling” is the actual expansion and contraction of the building. Allen explains:

  Back-and-forth movements caused by thermal and moisture effects occur constantly. A building grows measurably larger in warm weather, and smaller in cold weather. A roof, heated by the sun, grows larger in the middle of the day while the cooler walls below stay the same size. At night the roof cools and shrinks.

  And so on and so on. The architect’s planning compensates for the inevitable movement of these materials. Or at least we hope that it does. Otherwise, the creaking noises might lead us to the same fate as Janet Leigh’s in Psycho.

  Submitted by Joanne Walker of Ashland, Massachusetts. Thanks also to Dr. Emil S. Dickstein of Youngstown, Ohio.

  Why do dogs drool? And why do some dogs drool much more than other dogs?

  In order to execute a proper drool, a dog must have two weapons at its disposal: a lot of saliva and a lot of lip. Getting a dog to salivate is as easy as exposing it to food—the smell of it, the taste of it, the anticipation of it, the consumption of it—and, as Pavlov proved, to any conditioned reflexes associated with feeding.

  Drooling is simply the inability of a dog to dam the flood of saliva it manufactures. Salivation serves a useful function, helping the dog to swallow, and to lubricate the alimentary canal, the passageway from the mouth all the way through the esophagus and stomach that food must travel through before it is excreted. Individual dogs vary in their capacity to manufacture saliva, but some breeds manage to contain all saliva flow under normal conditions.

  The dog experts we consulted agreed that some breeds drool more than others. Dogs with loose lips (and we’re not talking about dogs who gossip too much), such as Saint Bernards, mastiffs, bloodhounds, and boxers, are prodigious droolers. The hanging parts of these dogs’ lips, called flews, are usually the tell-tale sign of droolers. Dog breeder Fred Lanting reminded us of the old World War II slogan “Loose flews sink ships.” Lanting says that the pushed-in faces of some breeds, such as bulldogs, create loose flews. He adds:

  Other breeds may drool because of poor breeding…. The looser and longer the lips, the more the loss of saliva outside rather than inside the throat.

  Anatomist Robert Habel, of Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, wrote Imponderables that medical problems can also cause excess drooling. Many drugs “artificially” stimulate salivation. Rabies can cause nerve damage leading to paralysis of the throat and tongue that prevents dogs from swallowing.

  Habel reports that his own coonhound “slobbers foam when he is running a trail with his nose to the ground. I think that is the effect of gravity.” He added: “Did you see the movie Turner & Hooch? You should, before you write about drooling.”

  Indeed. If you want a graduate course in drooling, drop this book and run to your local video store. We’ve heard they are doing a sequel to Turner & Hooch. It’s called Flews 2.

  Submitted by Catherine Price of New York, New York.

  Why do dogs eat cat feces? Why do they sometimes eat their own feces?

  And you thought the chapter about drooling was disgusting? Read on.

  The nasty habit of eating feces is called “coprophagia” (wasn’t that a Stephen King title?). Many puppies have a preoccupation with their own or their, pardon the expression, littermates’, feces. But many canines continue to expand their culinary horizons as they get older, and experiment with the feces of other animals. Cat feces tend to be most easily available to domestic dogs, and more readily apparent to dog owners, but dogs won’t stop with cat litter.

  Why do dogs continue to eat food that, at best, gives them bad breath, and at worst, leads to parasites and illnesses? Sometimes, undigested food can be found in animal stools. With their keen sense of smell, dogs can spot these “opportunities.”

  But more often, coprophagia is a symptom of a poor diet or nutritional deficiency. Carol Barfield, an official of the United Animal Owners Association, wrote Imponderables that her female Keeshond, Mattie, used to “clean up the cat litter box at any opportunity.” After Barfield drastically upgraded Mattie’s diet, the feces fetish disappeared almost immediately. Barfield is delighted that now she removes litter, rather than Mattie, from her cat litter box.

  Our favorite lecturer on canine topics, Fred Lanting, sent us a delightful letter on the subject of coprophagia. Although he, too, mentioned nutritional deficiencies as an explanation for this habit, he has a simpler explanation for dogs’ behavior:

  Dogs eat cat feces simply because they like the taste. Many animals eat (or at least sample) feces. They also lick urine markings to tell them something about the animal they are “researching,” but the eating of feces is more than territorial data-gathering. It’s also a gourmet delicacy—they think. Can you imagine a dog not liking ripe olives or oysters and wondering about that dumb human who’s eating bitter berries and a mollusk that looks like snot? Sounds like a Gary Larson “Far Side” anthropomorphism, doesn’t it?

  Dogs also eat the traces (droppings) of other species. They are positively addicted to rabbit “pellets,” love deer “nuggets,” horse “road apples,” etc. On the other hand, they don’t come more than a millimeter close to possum, goose, and many other droppings. They will pass up fox feces, as a rule.

  Why do they eat their own feces? Or the feces of other dogs? Lanting continues:

  If they eat dog feces, it’s due to a number of possible reasons: boredom; pancreatic insufficiency; or temperamental or hormonal problems in the dropper or droppee, depending on the details.

  Wild canids (chromosomally compatible with domestic dogs) also eat feces of other species. Sparrows feast on the undigested grain in horse feces. Dung beetles’ only raison d’être is feasting on feces. Was it Cole Porter who said, “Birds do it, worms do it, dogs and fish and maybe cats do it…”? I doubt if anyone has made a study of the catholicity of coprophagy. Usually, pet owners want to know how to stop it, not who else is doing it.

  Submitted by Nadia Norris of Saint Paul, Indiana. Thanks also to V
ince Tassinari of Van Nuys, California.

  How do they keep the water in water towers from freezing in the wintertime?

  We were on the road promoting our last tome, Do Penguins Have Knees?, and radio host Mike Rosen was asking about one of the Imponderables in the book: Why are water towers built so high? We provided our concise, prefabricated answer, sounding, we hoped, as if the study of water towers was one of our driving passions in life.

  When it came time to answer phone-in questions, and a caller asked about how they kept the water in towers from freezing, we replied with a resounding “Duh.”

  Callers soon pounced in with different theories. One caller was sure that there were heating elements in the water tower. Another swore that often water did freeze inside the tower. A third caller claimed that the constant movement of the water inside the tower kept it from freezing.

  Time to contact our water tower sources again. Who would have ever thought there would be an Imponderable about water towers in successive books?

  It turns out there isn’t a single, simple answer to this Imponderable, but most of the time the third caller got it right. SUNY Professor Peter Black, affiliated with the American Water Resources Association, told Imponderables that in all but sparsely populated agricultural areas, water inside the tower is moving all the time. He added that wood is a good insulator, and that freezing is rarely a problem.