The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design

by Wendy Northcutt

  The genes that determine amino-acid metabolism explain why we are able to digest more dietary proteins, and also lend a clue as to what may have resulted when this newfound digestive ability triggered changes in other proteins. Findings published by the RIKEN Genomic Sciences Centre in Japan support the hypothesis that certain proteins (for example, those affecting brain tissue) may have been genetically altered over time by our change to a more carnivorous diet. As man began chemically altering his food by cooking it and adding other proteins to his diet, such as dairy and legumes, further changes in human proteins may have been triggered, resulting in modern humans.

  Another discovery was made by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. A gene known as ASPM was isolated. Mutations in ASPM affect the size of the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain most closely associated with our “humanity.” This protein is much more complex in human form than in apes, and might be a key factor in the evolution of the large human brain.

  Clark speculated that genes connected with the sense of hearing might also have contributed to the divergence between humans and chimpanzees, and that these genes may be at the root of human language and communicative ability. He concluded, “Perhaps some of the genes that enable humans to understand speech [involve] not only the brain, but also hearing.”

  One such gene, alpha-tectorin, determines the makeup of the tectorial membrane of the inner ear. It is known that mutations in this gene cause congenital deafness in humans; perhaps the fine-tuning of alpha-tectorin millions of years ago enabled early humans to understand more complex speech. The difficulty in training chimpanzees to understand human language suggests that perhaps their hearing isn’t quite as acute as our own. Our advanced ability to communicate—very much a part of our humanity—may all be due to a gene acting upon an obscure ear protein!

  Clark warns, however, that the biological differences between humans and chimpanzees are not necessarily the result of one or even many particular genes, but the hypotheses raised by his experiment certainly merit further study.

  Seemingly minor differences in our genetic makeup have resulted in two very different critters, and science is only now beginning to sort it all out. There are yet other differences. Chimpanzees are more genetically diverse than humans; among humans, those living in Africa are more genetically diverse than non-Africans. One theory is that all humans living today sprang from a single female ancestor living in Africa some two hundred thousand years ago. This theory is based not on nuclear DNA, but on mitochondrial DNA. This is another story for another day, but we can be sure that the 1 percent difference between humans and chimpanzees is more astonishing than the 99 percent similarity.

  So go ahead and ask a brother chimp if he can spare a banana…chances are he’ll have no idea what you’re talking about!

  References:

  Cornell News, December 18, 2003

  University of Chicago Hospitals article, “Human Brain Still Evolving,” September 8, 2005

  Wikipedia.com, article on “Mitochondrial Eve”

  Wildman et al. “Genomics in Humans and Chimpanzees”

  Now that we’ve developed a fellow feel for the apes, enjoy these stories about other members of the animal kingdom that have the misfortune to share the planet with Homo sapiens clueless.

  DARWIN AWARD: MINING FOR ELEPHANTS

  Confirmed by Darwin

  15 FEBRUARY 2005, ZIMBABWE

  The elephants were trampling Christian’s maize field, which he had planted on an elephant trail of long standing. He had to find a way to fight back! Fortunately, there was an old minefield nearby, on the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border. Christian figured a few land mines planted around his field would soon teach the elephants a lesson they would never forget.

  Christian may have gotten the idea of using the mines from a couple of incidents that had recently transpired. A local resident had been injured after picking up a land mine while herding cattle the week before. A week before that, another Rushinga man had lost part of his leg after stepping on a land mine. The other villagers saw the writing on the wall, and avoided the mines.

  But Christian realized they were just what he needed. Clearly, these mines could cause great damage to an elephant! He dug up five that had been exposed by recent heavy rains. And as he carried them home, the unstable mines detonated, killing Christian instantly.

  The total number of elephants injured? Zero.

  Reference: Zimbabwe Herald

  DARWIN AWARD: SNAKE MAN

  Confirmed by Darwin

  19 MARCH 2004, SI SA KET PROVINCE, THAILAND

  During his snake-handling performance, Boonreung the “Snake Man” was bitten on the right elbow by a deadly mamba. While a lesser mortal might have rushed to a doctor for a dose of antivenin, the daring thirty-four-year-old had his own treatment method: He downed a shot of whiskey and some herbal medicine. But alcohol and herbs are not generally recognized as effective against snakebites. It was on with the show—until paralysis gradually took hold, and he collapsed.

  At this point, he was unable to speak, and thus raised no objections as bystanders took him to Praibung Hospital. But it was too late. The poison had spread throughout his body, and he died the same day. Ironically, Boonreung is immortalized in the Guinness Book of World Records for having spent seven days in a roomful of venomous snakes in 1998.

  Reference: AP Asia

  * * *

  The mamba’s bite was described by Jack Seale, owner of a snake and animal park near Johannesburg, as “a pure neurotoxin—it gives you a buzz.” The victim becomes lightheaded, tingly, and warm. “It’s a lovely feeling,” says Seale. A single bite can deliver four hundred milligrams of paralyzing venom; a mere ten milligrams can be fatal to a human. When Seale was bitten, his treatment consisted of injections of antivenin, cortisone, and adrenalin, which helped him survive long enough to be hooked up to a heart-lung machine. After a week of dialysis and blood transfusions, he could finally wiggle a single finger. (“Black Mamba!” International Wildlife, Nov/Dec 1996.)

  * * *

  DARWIN AWARD: ELEPHANT TAIL

  Confirmed by Darwin

  28 JANUARY 2005, PENDANG, THAILAND

  It’s no secret that elephants are big. Elephants eat hundreds of pounds of food a day just to maintain their weight. Indian elephants are nine feet tall at the shoulder. They’re so powerful that in Southeast Asia, males are used to haul massive tree trunks with their three-foot tusks, work performed by heavy equipment in other countries.

  It’s also no secret that teasing an animal makes it mad. Teasing an animal that can carry a tree with its tusks may not be a good idea. Yet that was the very idea that formed in Prawat’s head when he saw a herd of five performing elephants chained to trees outside a Buddhist temple.

  While the owner waited inside for an entertainment permit, Prawat, a fifty-year-old rubber-tapper, offered sugar cane to one of the ever-hungry elephants…then pulled it away. Then he did it again. And again. And again.

  The game was great fun for Prawat, but the elephant quickly tired of it. The last time Prawat withdrew the treat, the elephant swung his massive tusks and gored him through the stomach. Prawat died on the way to the hospital. The elephant got his treat.

  Reference: The Star (Kuala Lumpur)

  DARWIN AWARD: “HAZARD BEFELL HIM”

  Confirmed by Darwin

  27 MARCH 1981, INDIANA

  Late one March evening, Bruce awoke at the foot of a utility pole in the woods, his dog asleep by his side and a crispy, dead raccoon nearby. Bruce was alarmed to discover “severe burns on his forearms, hands, and genitals, necessitating their amputation.”

  What happened? The details came out in court, when Bruce sued the utility company for removing him from the gene pool.

  He had been out coon hunting when his dog caught the scent and chased a raccoon up a power pole. The raccoon perched on a glass insulator. Bruce was prepared for just such an event. He strapped his trusty steel pole climbers to his boots
, and made his way up the pole….

  The court found Bruce contributory negligent, stating succinctly, “It [is] clear that, in climbing the utility pole, slapping and squalling at the raccoon, thereby agitating it when it was perilously close to charged wires, Bruce should have appreciated the hazard that ultimately befell him.”

  Reference: 1986 Ind. App. LEXIS 3134

  DARWIN AWARD: CHICKEN TO GO

  Confirmed by Darwin

  3 OCTOBER 2004, ROMANIA

  Radu, sixty-seven, lived in a formerly peaceful village near Galati. But lately Radu couldn’t get any sleep, all because of a single noisy chicken. Night after night he dreamed of wringing its neck, or even better, chopping its head off and eating it. One night, he finally had enough. He roused himself from bed and headed out to the yard in his underwear, determined to bring silence to his home.

  The sleep-deprived villager grabbed that noisy chicken by the neck and chopped its head right off. Only then did he realize that he had confused his own penis for the chicken’s neck. While Radu stood stunned by his folly, his dog rushed over and gobbled up the treat.

  He was rushed to the hospital, bleeding heavily. Doctors sewed up the wound and pronounced him out of danger. He is also in no danger of reproducing.

  Reference: Reuters

  DARWIN AWARD: A HONEY OF A BUZZ

  Confirmed by Darwin

  SEPTEMBER 2003, MEXICO

  An unidentified sixty-year-old Escobedo man was still thirsty after drinking what most would consider “too much alcohol.” He stumbled toward a nearby beehive, hoping to follow the beer with a bit of honey.

  He thought the bees would surely share. Instead, they obeyed a Darwinian signal bred into them for millennia. More than a thousand noble fighters gave their all, sacrificed their stingers and their lives to protect the hive. The man, quite reasonably, responded with terminal anaphylactic shock.

  A hospital spokesman disputed the theory that bees had killed him, attributing his demise to “the stupid things drunken people do,” and pointing out that he was otherwise healthy and would have enjoyed a long life. “The combination was lethal.”

  Reference: ananova.com

  “Bees don’t kill people, people kill bees.”

  HONORABLE MENTION: KILLS BUGS DEAD

  Confirmed by Darwin

  29 APRIL 2004, WEST VIRGINIA

  Ed, sixty-three, had trouble with termites at home. He had heard that natural gas was dangerous, and figured it would be a good, low-cost way to fumigate his house. So he shut the doors and windows, turned on the gas, and spent the night in a nearby camper trailer with his wife. The next morning he stepped out of the trailer, took a breath of the crisp, cool air, and strode over to his house.

  When he opened the door, the slight spark from the latch ignited the cloud of natural gas that had accumulated in his home. The force of the explosion blew him off the porch and into a nearby creek, knocked out the town’s telephones and electricity, and blew the doors off a church. It rattled windows and nerves six miles away.

  Ed was evacuated by helicopter to the burn unit at Cabell Huntington Hospital. His house was uninsured. It is presumed that the fumigation was effective.

  Reference: West Virginia Metro News

  HONORABLE MENTION: PARROT HUNTER

  Confirmed by Darwin

  10 APRIL 1999, FLORIDA

  Bruce, eighteen, wanted a unique gift for his girlfriend, who worked as a babysitter for a neighbor’s children. The neighbor thought that a Quaker parrot would be a perfect present. The beautiful green birds with gray bellies grow a foot long, counting their tails, and are worth more than $100. That was expensive, but the neighbor figured they could get a baby parrot for free…if they caught it.

  Nothing stirs a man’s blood like the thrill of the hunt. Armed with a long metal pole, Bruce set out with the neighbor and his fifteen-year-old son to reconnoiter the nesting spot of the elusive Quaker parrot. The intrepid trio may have overlooked the fact that they were trespassing on private property, and that the property was owned by Florida Power. But it is unlikely that they failed to notice that the nests in question were inside a six-foot fence topped with three rows of barbed wire, surrounding an electric substation. This 230,000-volt transformer was peppered with signs saying, DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE and NO TRESPASSING.

  The hunters overcame those obstacles and entered the parrot sanctuary, where about sixty colorful birds fluttered around their large, multistory stick nests. Fortunately one of the nests was situated on a transformer low enough to interest a hunter with a seven-foot metal pole. Bruce poked at the nest hoping to dislodge a hatchling, and fifteen thousand volts of electricity found their way down the pole, through his body, and into the ground.

  Bruce suffered second-and third-degree burns over 50 percent of his body. The neighbor suffered minor burns between his ankles and knees. His son was not injured.

  “That’s just a little hobby they have,” said the neighbor’s wife. “They like to go looking for those little baby Quaker parrots. I’m not saying [they were] right, but this was an accident.” And all this came from an innocent question about a birthday present at a Saturday hamburger cookout!

  Reference: St. Petersburg Times

  HONORABLE MENTION: EEL ENEMA

  Confirmed by Darwin

  LATE 2003, HONG KONG

  An unidentified fifty-year-old entered the accident and emergency department of a local hospital complaining of abdominal pain. The doctor’s examination revealed peritonitis, an inflammation of the abdomen. Wondering what had caused this problem, doctors ordered an X-ray and spotted what appeared to be an eel inside his colon! Could an eel be the source of his pain?

  Yes, the man admitted, there was an eel inside him. He had been suffering from constipation, he told the dubious medical staff, and thought that inserting an eel into his rectum would relieve it.

  The man was rushed to the operating room, where an emergency laparoscopy disclosed that a nineteen-inch eel was biting the side of his colon. The eel also had also taken a bite out of his rectum wall in transit, so to speak. After surgeons removed the animal and reconstructed the rectum, the man’s pain and constipation were both cured. He was discharged from the hospital a week later.

  Reference: Surgery, January 2004, v. 135, p. 110

  HONORABLE MENTION: WARM SNAKES

  Confirmed by Darwin

  4 APRIL 1983, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Gaboon vipers are large, aggressive, ill-tempered, and among the most venomous snakes in the world. Despite these characteristics, they are normally sedentary. So it was not difficult for Lazarus, who had a penchant for snakes, to purloin two from the National Zoo. He shoved them into a plastic garbage bag, where they remained, quite docile, until Lazarus boarded a warm city bus. When the snakes warmed up, they awakened from their lethargy and realized how undesirable their new accommodations were. Naturally, they decided to move. Our sixteen-year-old herpetologist was bitten when one of the vipers ripped its fangs through the plastic bag.

  * * *

  Viper venoms are hemotoxic (act on the blood) as compared to the neurotoxic venoms of elapids (cobras and adders). The viper family has three subfamilies: the mountain viper Azemiopinae, the true viper Viperinae, and the pit viper Crotalinae. They are found worldwide.

  Introduction to Herpetology, 3rd ed.,

  Goin, Goin, and Zug, pp. 333–36.

  * * *

  He landed in the hospital, where antivenin serum was administered until he regained his senses. The purloined vipers were taken to the basement of the zoo’s reptile house, where they were treated to a week of stress-free observation.

  Reference: Washington Post

  HONORABLE MENTION: WADES WITH SHARKS

  Confirmed by Darwin

  10 APRIL 2002, BAHAMAS

  “Anatomy of a Shark Bite”

  It might sound dumb to throw bloody chum into the waters of Walker’s Cay, where dangerous bull sharks congregate, and then wade among the sharks in a
Speedo while they’re in the midst of a feeding frenzy. But not to “Unbiteable Erich” of Switzerland, a reputed expert in the body language of sharks.

  The scientist believed that sharks can sense fear, and that his mastery of his heartbeat through yoga techniques made sharks regard him as a fellow predator, not fearful prey. Other shark experts advocate dressing in a black wetsuit, hood, and gloves to cover skin that resembles pale-colored prey in murky waters, but not Erich. He had “waded with sharks” for years. And this Wednesday, a video crew was prepared to tape him throwing fish into the water to attract bull sharks, then wading into the sea with bare legs to observe their body language.