Cephalopodiatrist: The Next Generation

When you become interested in cephalopods at the age of ten, and your family and friends get wind of this strange obsession, then by the time you're thirty you've got a house full of cephalopod clothing, cephalopod kitchenware, cephalopod artwork, even cephalopod drawer handles.

But when you're the daughter of said cephalo-freak? Well, the accumulation of cephalo-gear starts before you are even born. And by the time you're two months old? Well.

My two-month-old daughter, surrounded by HER cephalopod swag.

Let me break it down for you, clockwise from the left:

1. Amazing handmade box. The baby bottle, in case you can't see it, is decorated with a robot to honor my husband.
2. Stuffed red octopus (probably Octopus rubescens, a local species.)
3. and
4. Entirely identical blue octopus puppets. Given by two entirely non-identical people who do not know each other.
5. Captain Calamari, who despite the name is clearly an octopus not a squid. Given in conjunction with Rusty the Robot (see note for #1).
6. Sew Your Own Sock Squid Kit. I forgot to include this in the original picture, so I had to take another picture and stitch them together in this incredibly skilled way.
7. Octopus counting puzzle: the eight arms are labeled 1-8, and the eyes are 0 and 9. How satisfying.
8. Octopus page of the book Squishy Turtle and Friends.
9. Incredible handmade stuffed octopus. The mantle was flipped up in this picture to show off the anatomical accuracy of the funnel. Here's a picture of it looking more like an octopus:
10. Octopus from the Fill & Spill Fishbowl.
11. Onesie decorated with Haeckel's classic octopus illustration.

At this rate, by the time my daughter is ten she will have accumulated over 600 pieces of cephalopod paraphernalia. Fortunately, by that same time (and probably much, much earlier) she will also have accumulated her own eccentricities, and her gifts will be altered accordingly.

Important Note: This will not be turning into a baby blog. Never fear. (Or--fear, if you like. Sorry, grandparents.) In fact, I have Big Plans for blog content, starting around my kid's six-month birthday in May.

Until then? Well, I have all these new toys to play with . . . 

Why Babies Aren't Actually Parasites

[Edited 10/30/12 due to existence of intraspecific parasitism; see comments.]

PSA: Babies are not parasites.

This is a parasite.

Of course, parasites have babies, and some free-living organisms have a parasitic early life stage. But the notion I seek to discredit here is that all babies are parasites of their parents and, particularly, that the human fetus is a parasite of its mother. This misconception has become distressingly common among my peers.

It distresses me because I love babies and I love parasites, so I think it's important to understand the distinction between them. In a nutshell: a parasite reduces the fitness of its host; a baby increases the fitness of its parents.

Seems pretty straightforward, right? Yet I will concede that numerous superficial similarities between babies and parasites can lead to confusion. Parasites often live inside the body of another creature, extract their nutrition from its blood, and struggle to escape attack by its immune system. That's starting to sound an awful lot like a fetus . . .

But the host-parasite relationship is one of conflict, while the mother-baby relationship is intrinsically cooperative. Consider the immunology of the two. Host and parasite are locked in an arms race: the parasite evolves ever more complex techniques of avoidance, while the host evolves ever more complex techniques of detection and attack.

Meanwhile, mother and baby cooperate to prevent immunological conflict. The site of this cooperation is the placenta--the big blob of tissue that's genetically part of the baby and physically connects baby to mom. For a long time, scientists thought of the placenta (and by extension, the fetus) as a kind of natural organ transplant. Just as in medical organ transplants, the mother's immune system would have to be suppressed to prevent it from rejecting the foreign body.

But a fascinating review paper in 2010 suggests this is the wrong way to think about pregnancy--that, in fact, the cooperative choreography between mother and child is far more sophisticated:

The trophoblast [placenta] and the maternal immune system have evolved and established a cooperative status, helping each other for the success of the pregnancy. This cooperative work involves many tasks, some of which we are just starting to unveil.

True, the placenta uses at least one trick from the world of parasites--a molecule that makes it partially invisible to mom's immune system--but it also oversees an active exchange of molecules and even cells between mother and baby. The full implications of this exchange aren't yet understood, though the mother's contributions undoubtedly protect the baby from infection, and the baby's cells may also offer health benefits to the mother.

All this isn't to deny the fact that a pregnant woman makes certain sacrifices. Notably, she gives up nutrition that could otherwise have gone to her own body. But in sharing nutrients with her offspring through the placenta and, later, milk production, a human mother has it relatively easy. Some species transfer nutrients more, um, directly.

Babies of one rather unusual sea urchin simply graze on their mother's skin to get the early nutrition they need*. And the young of certain spiders consume their mother's entire body--parental sacrifice at its most extreme!**

Then there are the jellyfish children. In some species of narcomedusae, baby jellies hang out inside their parents, slurping food out of the adults' digestive tracts. That's not so weird--I mean, think of regurgitation in birds--but then sometimes they'll go and slurp from an unrelated adult, or even from adults of another species.

The ones that stay with their parents are certainly not parasites. But the ones that feed off other adults are in murkier territory. They're certainly acting a lot more like parasites than if they'd stayed at home.

But what if it's like a "village" scenario, in which all the adults pitch in to raise all the children? Parasitism need not enter the picture; this is simply cooperative parental care. Of course, jellies do not have complex societies, so it's a rather fanciful idea. It becomes even more fanciful if you consider the baby jellies who feed from adults of a different species. It's hard to argue that those little tykes are anything but parasites.

I like the narcomedusae because they illustrate when a baby is just a baby, and when a baby becomes a parasite.

It all boils down to the fact that parent and child have a common goal: the child's survival. Host and parasite, on the other hand, have a fundamental disagreement about the desirability of the parasite's survival.

(Of course, the baby in my belly could have taken over my brain and caused me to write this manifesto.)

This is not a parasite.

* I know I learned about these sea urchins from an invertebrate zoologist who ought to know, but I can't for the life of me find the reference now. Frustrating!

** It's worth noting that parents sometimes eat their young, as well, if things don't seem to be working out--reclaiming the nutrients they invested in order to give reproduction another shot later.

Story and Truth: SCBWI Conference Redux

"Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience."

Ralph Waldo Emerson's admonition could easily have cropped up in my work as a scientist or a science writer--but instead I heard it during the very first session of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators 41st annual summer conference.

"Ah," I thought happily, as I sat in the conference room of an LA hotel. "These must be my peeps."

I've been entranced by the writing of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman ever since completing an eighth grade history project on Transcendentalism. Imagine my delight when Emerson made a second appearance just a few hours later, in a workshop by Gary Schmidt on "Layering a Character." After handing out old photographs for a character development exercise, Schmidt attributed the universally dour expressions to extremely long exposure times--then added that Emerson was uniquely able to sit smiling for his portraits.

It's not exactly a grin.

In addition to the Emerson love, over the course of the weekend I heard mad props given to such diverse inspirations as Joseph Campbell, D&D, and being a mom. During the opening ceremonies, the faculty paraded by the microphone announcing their names and a single word of inspiration. Most words were not repeated, but “serendipity” was popular; it also happens to have been the name of my first pet octopus. Definitely my peeps.

Tony DiTerlizzi--who should probably get a prize for Most Energetic Speaker of SCBWI--even quoted a scientist in his talk. “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales,” said Einstein.

Actually, that quote may be apocryphal.

But although I welcomed the sense of belonging, it was equally valuable to be reminded that every writer's path and habits are different--sometimes drastically so. For example, Schmidt never talks about his projects with anyone, ever, until they're done. He hands his wife the finished manuscript after three years. I find myself more inclined to follow Stephen King and Orson Scott Card, who consider their spouses' feedback throughout the writing process invaluable. (No, neither of them was at the conference.)

Then there's the question of reading. Many writers, including the coordinator of my weekly writing group, absolutely refuse to read others' work while in the midst of producing their own. Others find such concurrent reading crucial. I belong to the latter camp, and was gratified to learn I could pitch my tent next to the likes of Clare Vanderpool and Karen Cushman. "Read a hundred or a thousand books like the one you want to write," said Cushman.

Cushman also spoke about the importance of telling the truth to children, an exhortation that came up a few hours later in another character workshop (can you tell I'm interested in character?) by Amy Goldman Koss. But although Cushman and Koss both say, "Tell the truth," they could hardly have more divergent opinions about what that truth is.

"I haven't noticed anything getting better and I haven't seen anyone change," said Koss, explaining why she doesn't put those themes in her books. But Cushman said, "I think books ought to be hopeful." I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to deduce my own view.

"And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three . . ."

As long as I'm writing about my personal attitudes, as a lifelong meditator, I was delighted by Deborah Underwood's talk on the Power of Quiet. She opened by describing how impressively busy our bodies are even when we think we're not doing anything. “If the chemical processes in my body relied on my knowledge of chemistry," she said, "I would be quite, quite dead.”

This reflection immediately brought to mind the words of another favorite writer, Lewis Thomas (who is, alas, quite dead): “If I were informed tomorrow that I was in direct communication with my liver, and could now take over, I would become deeply depressed. . . . Nothing would save me and my liver, if I were in charge. For I am, to face the facts squarely, considerably less intelligent than my liver. I am, moreover, constitutionally unable to make hepatic decisions, and I prefer not to be obliged to, ever.”

Hunh. Somehow I've managed to illustrate a blog post about contemporary writers with nothing but pictures of dead ones.

Our body's chemical processes may not seem to have much in common with the act of writing--but then again, perhaps they do. Both work best when our active, conscious minds aren't in complete control. We have to trust that our liver knows what it's doing, and on some level perhaps we need to have the same trust in the stories we tell.

After all, as Matthew Kirby pointed out in his workshop on Narrative Structure, the Campbellian view holds that there's really only one Plot. But Stories are infinite.

Artist's Conception

Over the years, I've done plenty of in vitro invertebrate developmental biology. I'm delighted to announce that, in partnership with my husband, I've branched into in vivo vertebrate development biology. 

Between naps and nausea, I have rendered a hypothetical sketch of the F1 cross:

Science Ruins Science Fiction Again

Last month, Russian researchers struck frozen science gold--an ancient lake, buried deep under the Antarctic ice sheet. Given that Lake Vostok had been isolated for probably millions of years, the Russians were under a lot of pressure (just like the lake! because it's under a really heavy ice sheet, get it?) to protect this unspoilt environment from contamination.

But what about the possibility of contaminating ourselves with stuff from the lake? As my brother pointed out,

While this is undoubtedly an exciting moment for science, all I can think of is a science fiction story in which a bacterium discovered in a place like this causes a worldwide pandemic.

To which I replied: okay, fun concept, but totally unrealistic. Then we got to talking about parasitism and co-evolution and . . . well, let's start at the beginning.

As soon as you move into another organism, you're a symbiont. Symbionts can be beneficial or harmful; the harmful kind are called parasites. So, bacteria that live in people and make them sick are technically a kind of parasite--though people often say "parasites and bacteria" the way they used to say "animals and fish." (Yes, fish are technically and in all other ways animals.)

Now, all symbiotic relationships are products of co-evolution. The parasite evolves to survive inside the host, while the host evolves to reduce the harm done by the parasite. (There are a lot of strategies for that, by the way--from making initial infection more difficult to quarantining, expelling or killing the parasite). As the host environment becomes more hostile, the parasite evolves clever coping mechanisms, and so on.

Because of the specificity of most parasite-host relationships, it's highly improbable that a parasite could survive for millions of years without its host*. And if it did survive, it would probably do so by evolving  into such a different form that it couldn't re-infect its old host.

That's why I'm pretty confident there aren't any nasty little parasitic bacteria in Lake Vostok, waiting to pounce on us.

Okay (said my brother) but why couldn't a non-parasitic Vostokian bacterium initiate a pandemic as soon as it was exposed to people? Every relationship has to start somewhere, right?

Sure, a free-living bacterium that had never encountered humans before could theoretically find its way into an unsuspecting scientist (poor Dr. Lukin!), survive long enough to reproduce, and start a new symbiotic relationship. But the environments of Lake Vostok and the human body are radically different. A bacterium (or any other critter) is much more likely to move inside an organism if that organism's internal decor is similar to the environment it's already adapted to. The 37 °C of the human body would almost certainly kill bacteria adapted to the -3 °C of Lake Vostok.

~Tangential Musing On Evolutionary Timescales~

Even if a brand new bacterium entered a human and survived, we'd probably never know about it. As a general rule, it takes a long time for symbioses to evolve, and it's very hard to study them when they're just getting started.

Imagine a cafe full of college freshman--there's probably a lot of flirting, but none of it may ever turn into a relationship. Tracking all the potential interactions, most of which will be dead ends, would be a huge challenge. Now consider that plenty of pairs of college freshman are likely to hit it off with each other, but most biological interactions that could become symbioses are nipped in the bud when one organism kills the other.

How long would it take to evolve the sort of traits that make for a proper pandemic? I don't know, but I wonder if anyone's done any theoretical modeling of this . . .

~End Tangent~

All the really scary epidemics in human history have come about through jumps between similar environments.

Human to human is the most obvious--Europeans bringing syphilis to the New World, for example. We often use the term "first contact" to refer to the meeting of colonizers with natives, which is a bit misleading, since we also use that term in science fiction to refer to the meeting of humans and aliens. The former is fraught with peril of disease; the latter, not so much.

Humans around the globe belong to the same species and are similar enough to fall prey to the same parasites. But in most speculative cases, humans and aliens belong not only to different species, but to entirely different evolutionary histories, perhaps going back to the origins of life itself. The idea of a parasite, carefully co-evolved with its host, being able to jump across such a gap as that--well, it strains my imaginer.

But what about zoonoses? Aren't those examples of parasites jumping suddenly from one host species to another? Well, yes and no. Many parasites have co-evolved with both human and animal hosts, and require both to survive. Malaria is carried by mosquitoes, but can't complete its life cycle without humans. Other zoonotic parasites, like Toxoplasma, are stuck in an evolutionary dead end if they accidentally infect a human--they can survive but not reproduce.

The zoonoses that truly "jump" from species to species, successfully infecting and propagating through their new host, always move between similar environments. Ebola can only infect primates. Even versatile diseases like West Nile virus are restricted to vertebrates--a tiny fraction of the world's animal diversity. There's no way you're going to "catch" colony collapse disorder from a bee, or bitter crab disease from a crab.

So, let me sum up.

Likely sources of pandemics: "first contact" between groups of humans that have been isolated from each other; places where humans and other vertebrates live in close, unsanitary quarters.

Unlikely sources of pandemics: Lake Vostok, Mars.



* Modern humans (Homo sapiens) weren't even around when Lake Vostok was last connected to the rest of the world, but there were definitely early hominids.

Hourlies 2012

I forgot about it on the proper day (which also happens to be my father's birthday--Happy Birthday Dad!) and was reminded when I saw John Allison's comics. So I did it yesterday. If you want to read last year's hourlies first, go ahead, but you won't exactly miss the plot if you don't.

Another Year, Another Novel

This November was my second National Novel Writing Month, and I won again! --For the value of "winning" which is "writing fifty thousand words in thirty days." Unlike last year, however, I did not finish the story, which will probably end up in the vicinity of 80,000 words.

Also unlike last year, I had to flay myself through the last few thousand words. I felt like a wiggling kid trying to make it until the bell rings. I would force myself to write a few lines, then check my word count, then drag out another paragraph and check it again. Until finally:

Why did I have to pull words out like teeth? I wasn't tired of the plot, or the characters, or the world. On the contrary, I'm in love with them.

It's the story of four children--a Scale from the sea, a Skin from the desert, a Fur from the forest, and a Feather from the mountains--on a quest to reconcile their estranged parents, the Sky Mother and the Earth Father. While they're at it, they might be able to end slavery, defeat the pirates, and overthrow a despotic emperor--if only they can stop quarreling for five minutes.

I've been doodling these characters since high school, and I still have sketches where they're peeking out from between Modern European History vocab words. I haven't gotten tired of them in over ten years, and I didn't get tired of them in the last month. I think the problem, instead, was the worry that I hadn't done enough planning.

The more I wrote, the more I worried. I'd be in the middle of a scene, and suddenly I'd be paralyzed by the realization that I hadn't decided how Scales built their boats. Or I hadn't made consistent rules in my head for naming characters. Or I needed to put a rebel Skin camp somewhere that contradicted an earlier decision about desert geography. What to DO?

If I hadn't been in the middle of NaNoWriMo, I'd probably have stopped writing the novel and gone back to sketching maps and filling out spreadsheets. But it was November, and I had to bang out the words. And, as awful as a lot of that writing is, I'm glad that I wrote it.

Now I have fifty thousand words to rewrite, to motivate plot-knitting and world-spinning and character-sculpting. The majority of it will never be shown to anyone--be grateful!--but here's a tolerable excerpt:

 "Will you tell me a story?" Kishaio asked.

Arin snorted, scattering leaves. "Do I look like a nursemaid?"

He was hoping she would be offended, roll over and ignore him. But she looked at him steadily, and said, "It's just a story. Travelers tell each other stories, don't they?"

"Not me," he snapped.

"All right," she said, sitting up. "Do you mind if I tell one?"

He sighed. Being left alone was not an option, apparently.

Taking the Feather boy's silence for consent, Kishaio began.

*

The Earth fell in love with the Sky, and to attract her attention, he grew plants and animals, decking himself out in splendid colors, until at last she agreed to wed him. He inseminated her with the stars, and from her womb the moon were born four children. They lived with her until they grew out of childhood, and then she sent them to visit their father.

But as the children fell to earth, they were distracted by all the sights, and they decided to spend some time exploring before looking for their father. Desirous of independence and greatness, the eldest laid claim to the first land they touched--the high, majestic mountain ranges, the winds and the stones and the kingly views. "These peaks are mine," he told his siblings. "Go on, and find lands to call your own." And he spoke to a great eagle, and followed her to her eyrie, and made himself a nest.

So the remaining three walked down from the mountains, and they found themselves in thick green forests, full of cool shadows and the smell of fresh earth. The next eldest of them said, "I will take these woods for my own. Keep walking, children!" And there she met with a tall, dark stag, and ran with him through the trees, and bedded herself down in the grass.

The two youngest walked and walked, and they found many miles of forest, and many mountain ranges, but these lands were closed to them, for the winds whispered allegiance to their elder brother, and the trees owed obedience to their elder sister.

At last they came down into wide, empty lands where the sun beat fiercely down (as though their mother cried: Remember! Remember to look for your father! but they had already forgotten) and the rocks were starkly colorful, surrounded by swirling sands. The elder of the two smiled. "I like this land, little sister," he said, and when a glittering snake-queen drew her patterns in the sand, he began to follow her.

"But what place is left for me?" cried the one remaining. Her brother paused, and flicked his tongue at her kindly.

"Run over my sands, little one, and keep running. I feel that you will find the vastest kingdom of us all."

So she ran over the sands, far from the forests and the mountains, until the sand gave way to splashing water. This was not the cold alpine lakes of her eldest brother, nor yet the rustling streams of her sister. This water was wide and deep and salty, studded with specks of land like tiny jewels, and when the youngest child plunged into it, she found a paradise of fantastic creatures. The largest fish in the sea, himself like a small island, bowed to her, and offered his milt for her eggs.

And so the four Peoples of the earth were formed.

*

When Kishaio finished the tale, she lay back down and smiled at Arin.

"You're not a bad storyteller," he said grudgingly. "But it's a ridiculous account of creation. Did you make it up yourself?"

Kishaio looked surprised, and shook her head. "That's how we all tell it, in the Sea."

"It doesn't make any sense! How could they have forgotten their father when they were standing right on him?" He thumped one hand on the ground. "The children didn't have to look for the Earth Father--he welcomed them onto himself.

"He divided his country among them, giving the mountains to the eldest, the forests to the next, the sands to the third, and the sea to the youngest. The Earth was happy to have his children with him at last, and he gave them food and water, and materials to build homes with. So they were grateful to their father, and forgot their mother, far away above them.

"The Sky Mother wept with joy to see her children grown, and sorrow to have lost their love, but her tears only sank into the ground and watered their crops. She beat her sun down upon them, begging them to look up, but they only saw how the light helped their food to grow. Finally the Sky made a voice, as best she could, a wind that blew down across the land and called to her children to remember her.

"But the children's father had grown jealous, and wanted to keep them all to himself. So he took with wind of the Sky Mother's love and used it to whip up fierce waves in the sea, so the Scales grew afraid, and tied up their ships and huddled in their houses. The wind stirred up dust storms in the sand, so the Skins had to lock their doors and shut their windows and cover their faces with cloth until the dust passed. It tore down trees and branches, so the Furs ran in fear and took what shelter they could. Of the four Peoples, these three were all too afraid of what their father had done with the wind to hear their mother calling them home.

"Only the Feathers heard their mother's voice in the wind, and they spread their wings and took to the air to fly home to her. But their father pulled on them with all his strength, and they could not break free, so they soared restlessly, caught between Earth and Sky, ever longing to return to their mother but unable to do so.

"And thus do the four Peoples remain entrapped by their father's will."

Satisfied that the record had been set straight, Arin looked over at Kishaio, and saw that she had fallen asleep, her head pillowed on her folded hands, her breathing soft and even.

"You slippery little Scale," he said after a minute. "You just tricked me into telling you a story."