How I lost my wifi and learnt to live without it (before it came back to me)

Image from www.techradar.com

Part 1: Shock and terror

The one year warranty on  my shiny, sleek and awesome Toshiba Ultrabook had just expired. Two days after that, I unplugged my laptop from the LAN cable in office and put it in ‘hibernate’ as usual. I came home and switched it on, hoping to connect to the wifi at home. But there was nothing. All it did was show me a LAN icon with a big red cross over it. I fiddled around a bit and did what all experienced techies do to computers to repair them – Shutdown and Restart. Nothing doing.

The wifi + Bluetooth flash card (F12 in my case) just stopped working. Pressing it elicited no response, although all the other flashcards for brightness, volume, touchpad etc. worked fine.

In addition to this, even the orange wifi light would not come on. Incredibly, even the wireless network adapters were missing from the device manager listing. This was getting more and more curious.

Part 2: Futile efforts

I tried re-installing the drivers from various sources so that now I have almost 14 different installation files for wifi adapters. Nothing worked. It was time to call for help.

I called up the Toshiba - India online service center tech guys. Over two days, 12 hours and way too much ‘music on hold’,  I spoke to 5 different people who all suggested five different things, most of which I had already tried. Nothing worked. Finally, the sixth tech guy on the phone threw his hands up and played an ace! He told me that I have a hardware problem and that I should bring it to the service center. This did not sound good at all. I cursed my luck and marveled at the fact that barely two days after my warranty expired, I would now have to visit the service center. This meant not just backing up all my data and getting ready for a reformat, but also a bill that would have me living on peanuts for the next few months. There was no way I was going to go to the service center, and there was no way this could be a hardware problem (In spite of my brother’s insane theory that something inside must have been affected by the large magnets in the massive woofer speaker on my work table!!)

Part 3: The miracle

All this time, the internet was working fine with a LAN cable. It was only the wifi and BT that was missing. I had deadlines to meet and decided to postpone the reinstallation by a week during which I tried to get a complete backup and finish my work. In between, there were two huge system updates. I missed my wifi, having to lug around the laptop and wrestle with those stiff unyielding LAN cables that limited my freedom. Atleast I was getting some work done I thought. It could be worse.

And then, the miracle happened.

Just the way it had left, one fine day the wifi and bluetooth just started working!! Everything was fine. It was almost as if nothing had happened at all and all this was a dream. I wasn't complaining, but I felt angry and relieved at the same time - angry at the incompetence of the tech guys on call trying to push me into the 'service center trap' while relief that I did not have to spend a single penny to repair something that repaired by itself!

Honestly, the only thing that I can think of is probably those system updates, one of which was massive. It must have been that. So, I guess, my advice to people with a similar problem is that if you have the option, then do wait and try and get the latest system updates, as installing specific driver updates doesn't always seem to work!

Acer Perspire One!

Modern technology

Owes ecology

An apology.

-- Alan M. Eddison---

In light of recent developments with my Acer Aspire One, I think modern technology owes a bit more than an apology to ecology and ecologists like me. To state that I’ve been having problems with my mini laptop (apparently they are called ‘netbooks’) would be like saying that nuclear weapons can kill people.

For the last month, I’ve been walking around in a daze trying to figure out how a three month old laptop can go from hero to villain with speeds that belie its 1Gig RAM. What makes matters worse is that I had recommended it to half a dozen ecologist friends of mine who immediately went ahead and bought it. This post is not just a rant, it’s also a warning to all those who are planning to buy the Aspire One about the potential problems. And I’m not going to give you the regular review shit about how the screen is small, resolution is less and keyboard is cramped.

After purchasing it in December, I was feeling pretty good about its light weight and extreme portability. I was able to carry it around wherever I went in a small backpack and seemed ideal for the life of a travelling ecologist. In the middle of a survey for slow loris in the state of Meghalaya in northeast India I would constantly congratulate myself on the money well spent. I was feeling too smug and I should have seen the writing on the wall right then.

The first signs of trouble started in the most unlikeliest of places. Cherrapunji. It has to be one of the most scenic and pleasant places in India. It’s the kind of place where you don’t really expect anything to go wrong, least of all the lean, mean light machine in your backpack. On the 12th of March it just stopped working. Rebooting was of no use. The screen was dead and although the indicator LED’s came on, the computer display for all practical purposes was dead. 

A few days later I was back in Shillong and frantically searching the Acer forums and discussion groups on the net for a clue. Many people reported it and there didn’t seem to be any solution. The discussion threads died without a satisfactory answer. The only Acer service centre happened to be in Guwahati, a hot dusty hellhole that some people call the gateway to northeast India. Personally I think there couldn’t be a worse advertisement for the northeast than Guwahati. However, that was where I was headed. 

On a hunch, I called up my friend Vivek in Bangalore, the only person to have bought this computer before me. And sure enough, I hit the jackpot. The same thing had happened to him a few weeks back! So what was the solution? Apparently all it needed was a BIOS update which any service centre would be able to provide in 10 minutes. Could it really be that simple? So why hadn’t all these jokers on the forums never said anything about it? This was an important lesson. Never believe all you read in the forums, or rather don’t expect them to solve your problems always. I decided to keep this nugget of information to myself and see what the service centre guys would come up with. As expected, the lone service guy slowly moved his right hand up to scratch his head in the classic sign of “ I don’t have a clue”. I decided I had proved my point and didn’t fancy having to spend the night in Guwahati. I gave him my BIOS update trump card. It was like a bulb went on somewhere inside his head. “Oh!”. It took exactly ten minutes just like Vivek had promised and the comp was up and running. 

“Phew! Close shave!” I kept repeating on the bus back to cool Shillong. Little did I know..

A few weeks passed. Meanwhile all the photographs and data from the survey had been transferred to the computer. I should also mention that I had meanwhile committed the most basic mistake of all computer users. I hadn’t partitioned my hard disk and was relying on pure luck to see me through whatever challenges (read crashes) that technology had in store for me. In the euphoria of having come out through a near death experience (not mine, the computer) I began to feel it was indestructible.

And then came 10th April. The survey in Meghalaya had just ended. I was sitting in Shillong with two colleagues at the forest rest house. The computer was playing some music when a particularly good song came along in the playlist. Now most people who have seen this computer would know that the speakers are next to useless because of their tiny size and tinny noise. Yet the public demanded a higher volume. I turned it up to the maximum volume and went out. Five minutes later when I came back the computer was dead again.

That was the start of another hellish journey. No matter what we did it refused to start up and would continue to reboot just as it reached the windows ‘loading’ screen. No amount of F8’s, ‘last known configuration’  ‘safe mode’ or ‘DOS mode’ helped. It just would not start.

So, it was back to Guwahati again. This time even Vivek didn’t have an answer. There was no time to check the internet. Pulse and heartbeats were rising fast. I just had to get to the rundown service centre first. 

The service centre guy like all service centre guys had one answer to all computer solutions. Reinstall Windows. Of course, he didn’t have a clue what had happened in the first case. I had all my survey data in there and there was no way I was going to let him obliterate any slim chances I had of recovering that. I spent five hours with him trying to persuade him to retrieve the data. In all fairness, he tried whatever he could (which wasn’t much). Then came the deciding moment. What was to be done? I decided I was going to take my chances and asked him to leave it alone. I wanted to get back to Bangalore (the ‘IT city’) and hopefully find someone more competent. I still couldn’t believe that two and half months of hard work would go poof just like that.

It was then that I started searching the net for information on such problems. Apparently in the last one month many people all over the world had the same problem with this computer and nobody had a clue why. All of them had had to reformat their disks and have everything reinstalled. Then came the crazy explanations. Apparently the Aspire One crashes if you play U2’s “Hold me thrill me kiss me” loudly claimed some people. Some said, not just that, other U2 songs too. Then someone else discovered even other songs by other artists (not necessarily non Irish) could bring it on. It was funny for the guys on the forum, while for me it was a life-and-death thing. Some techie guys suggested this intriguing possibility – computer body too small, right speaker too close to hard disk, loud volume creates vibrations and magnetic field disturbances. Hence hard disk crashes!! (read story here) 

This seemed like one cruel unending joke.

Finally I decided to hand the computer over to Karthik, colleague and friend who was on his way to Bangalore the next day. Then what followed were tense phone conversations as Karthik investigated all the so-called ‘hardware data retrievers’ some of whom apparently specialised in ‘disaster recovery’. Under normal circumstances I would have found these terms enough fodder for some famous jokes and put-downs. I really don’t think much of hardware guys. As if to justify my faith in them, two guys who tried their stuff on the computer surrendered with their hands in the air. The third guy was smarter. He claimed he could do it for 2,500 bucks. That reminded me why I hated them.   

The situation seemed pretty hopeless now. I was still not in Bangalore and there was no point in harassing poor Karthik anymore. I told him to ditch the search and sit back till I got there. One day later I get up in the morning to see a missed call from Karthik at 1245 in the morning. I call him back and he gives me those four wonderful words “Hey, I did it”. He did it! What he had done in a brainwave was to load the open source Operating System Ubuntu from an external drive and managed to get the computer running. Once in, he could see all the stuff I wanted and simply copied them onto another external drive. I was so happy and relieved; I had no idea what to say.

I know it’s going to be tough to get anything out of Acer for all the harassment I had to go through for no fault of mine, but I want to make sure all of the Acer Aspire One users read this and take note. Serious shit could happen and you’d better be ready. If you’re stuck with an Aspire One, preparedness should be second nature and backup should be your middle name.    

The ebu gogo of Flores - an unfinished story

The locals knew of them as the ebu gogo, the 'grandmother who eats everything'. At first glance, it appeared to be one of those countless cryptozoological stories of mythical animals. "Probably a large macaque that was mistaken as a human" said the scientists.
In 1998 a team led by Michael Morwood of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia discovered crude stone implements and then followed it up by discovering LB1 (alternatively known as Flo, Hobbit etc.) the skeletal remains in the Liang Bua (LB) limestone caves of the remote island of Flores (see map and picture below) in the Indonesian archipelago. Subsequently, that cave revealed the existence of the skeletons of seven more of these 'hobbits', named because of their exceptionally small body size and height (see pic below).

It was one of the most electrifying findings in anthropology and started one of the most fiercely contested scientific debates over the origins of the little people of Flores. The owner of the bones seemed to have existed as recently as 12,000 years ago, something unimaginable for a primitive hominin, all of which were believed to have been extinct at least 24,000 years back.
One of the greatest mysteries of the modern world finally seems to be showing signs of resolution with the publication of the most recent study by Karen Baab and her colleagues at the Stony Brook University in the Journal of Human Evolution (Jan, 2009). The study addresses the primary bone (couldn’t resist the pun!) of contention among the two camps of scientists and concurs with the initial paper of Morwood which assigns the hobbits the status of a new species altogether - the Homo floresiensis. The opposing camp has vehemently protested this species status claiming that the skeletons were nothing more than pygmy Homo sapiens with microcephaly. What is of interest is the number of scientific papers in respected scientific journals that have gone back and forth proving and disproving the acceptance of this new species. And it hasn't been short of controversies too!
Looking at the immense volume of scientific literature starting from 2004, I have tried to simplify matters by summarising the findings for each year subsequent to the initial announcement of the find in Nature. The studies are colour coded green (agreeing with the hobbit being a new species) and orange (disagreeing on the species status):

2004
Brown, P.; Sutikna, T., Morwood, M. J., Soejono, R. P., Jatmiko, Wayhu Saptomo, E. & Rokus Awe Due . "A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia". Nature 431: 1055

Morwood, M. J.; Soejono, R. P., Roberts, R. G., Sutikna, T., Turney, C. S. M., Westaway, K. E., Rink, W. J., Zhao, J.- X., van den Bergh, G. D., Rokus Awe Due, Hobbs, D. R., Moore, M. W., Bird, M. I. & Fifield, L. K. "Archaeology and age of a new hominin from Flores in eastern Indonesia".Nature 431: 1087–1091.

Letter to Sunday Mail from M. Henneberg of the University of Adelaide, Australia on October 31st, three days after Nature report attributing the reduced head size to microcephaly
2005"Technical Comments: Comment on "The Brain of LB1, Homo floresiensis"". Science. 2005-10-14

Morwood, M. J.; Brown, P., Jatmiko, Sutikna, T., Wahyu Saptomo, E., Westaway, K. E., Rokus Awe Due, Roberts, R. G., Maeda, T., Wasisto, S. & Djubiantono, T. (2005-10-13). "Further evidence for small-bodied hominins from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia". Nature 437: 1012–1017

Falk, D.; Hildebolt, C., Smith, K., Morwood, M. J., Sutikna, T., Brown, P., Jatmiko, Wayhu Saptomo, E., Brunsden, B. & Prior, F. (2005). "The Brain of LB1, Homo floresiensis". Science 308 (5719): 242.
2005 was an important year. The first scientific publication challenging Morwood's findings appeared in the form of the technical comments in Science. Till then it was restricted to letters in newspapers and articles in magazines. Dean Falk published her comprehensive study supporting the species status based on a brain pan. It was also the year when the controversy turned ugly with the shenanigans of Teuku Jacob of the Gadja Mada University in Yogyakarta, Java. Jacob was not in the team that made the initial discovery in Liang Bua. However, even before he published scientifically, he was already parroting the 'microcephaly' idea of Henneberg. November, 2004 Jacob had all the delicate skeletal specimens moved from the Indonesian Centre for Archaeology to his own laboratory without the permission of the Centre's Directors. He eventually had to return them after an outcry from other scientists, who knew of his reputation for restricting scientific access to fossils. But by then, the damage was done. Portions of the skeletons were severely damaged with two leg bones completely missing.

2006
Jacob, T.; Indriati, E., Soejono, R. P., Hsu, K., Frayer, D. W., Eckhardt, R. B., Kuperavage, A. J., Thorne, A. & Henneberg, M. (September 5, 2006). "Pygmoid Australomelanesian Homo sapiens skeletal remains from Liang Bua, Flores: Population affinities and pathological abnormalities". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 103: 13421–13426

Martin, R. D.; MacLarnon, A. M., Phillips, J. L., Dussubieux, L., Williams, P. R. & Dobyns, W. B. (May 19, 2006). "Comment on "The Brain of LB1, Homo floresiensis"". Science 312 (5776): 999

Falk, D.; Hildebolt, C., Smith, K., Morwood, M.J., Sutikna, T., Jatmiko, Wayhu Saptomo, E., Brunsden, B. & Prior, F. (2006). "Response to Comment on "The Brain of LB1, Homo floresiensis"". Science 312: 999c.

Argue, D.; Donlon, D., Groves, C. & Wright, R. (October 2006). "Homo floresiensis: Microcephalic, pygmoid, Australopithecus, or Homo?". Journal of Human Evolution 51: 360–374.

Dean Falk's paper continued to generate debate in the form of 'comments' and 'response to comments' from both camps. Jacob finally published along with various scientists from Australia and United States who attributed virtually everything in the skeletons to 'pathological abnormalities'. Debbie Argue compared the skull of LB1 to various microcephalic skulls and concluded that it indeed deserved the new species status.

2007
Falk, D.; Hildebolt, C.; Smith, K.; Morwood, M.J.; Sutikna, T.; Others, (2007). "Brain shape in human microcephalics and Homo floresiensis". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (7): 2513

Tocheri, M.W.; Orr, C.M.; Larson, S.G.; Sutikna, T.; Others, (2007). "The Primitive Wrist of Homo floresiensis and Its Implications for Hominin Evolution". Science317 (5845): 1743.

Larson SG, Jungers WL, Morwood MJ, et al (2007). "Homo floresiensis and the evolution of the hominin shoulder". J. Hum. Evol. 53 (6): 718–31.
Hershkovitz I, Kornreich L, Laron Z (2007). "Comparative skeletal features between Homo floresiensis and patients with primary growth hormone insensitivity (Laron Syndrome)". Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 134 (2): 198–208.
The important publications that added to the voices supporting the new species view were Tocheri et al. and Larson et al. Tocheri compared the wrist bones and concluded that it was very similar to African apes and early hominin-like wrist rather than modern humans and Neanderthals. Larson et al. found similar results for the shoulder bones. This proved that the hobbits were much more likely to be a new species rather than deformed modern humans.

2008
Lyras GA, Dermitzakis DM, Van Der Geer AAE, Van der Geer SB, De Vos J. 2008. The origin of Homo floresiensis and its relation to evolutionary processes under isolation. Anthropological Science. Published online 1 August 2008.
Hershkovitz I, Kornreich L, Laron Z (2007). "Comparative skeletal features between Homo floresiensis and patients with primary growth hormone insensitivity (Laron Syndrome)". Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 134 (2): 198–208.

Obendorf, P.J.; Oxnard, C.E.; Kefford , C.E. (June 7, 2008). "Are the small human-like fossils found on Flores human endemic cretins?". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B Biological Sciences (Online: Royal Society) 275 (1640): 1287-1296.
Lyras study confirmed what Debbie Argue had found by comparing the 3D-morphometrics of a number of microcephalic human skulls with the LB1 skulls. The LB1 skull morphometry was significantly different from microcephalic human skulls. Hershkowitz suggested that the hobbits were in fact afflicted by a hormonal disease called the Laron Syndrome. Similarly, Obendorf et al. proposed that the hobbits were actually born without a functional thyroid, leading to something called 'Cretinism' (and all this time I thought cretin was a swear word!). However the latter two theories didn’t seem to have too many takers.

2009
Baab, K and K. P. McNulty (2009). Size, shape, and asymmetry in fossil hominins: The status of the LB1 cranium based on 3D morphometric analyses. Journal of Human Evolution.
The latest in the series, this paper by Karen Baab looks at 3D morphometrics of the LB1 skull in much the same way as Lyras and Argue. Dr. Baab and colleagues collected 3D landmark data on the LB1 skull and a large sample of fossils representing other extinct hominin species, as well as a comparative sample of modern humans and apes. They performed several analyses of different regions of the skulls. Taken together, these analyses indicated that the LB1 skull shape is that of a scaled down Homo fossil and not a scaled down modern human.
So, is this finally the end? That’s anybody's guess, but as Karen Baab herself remarks, she recognizes that the controversy as to the evolutionary origins of Homo floresiensis will continue, perhaps without an answer.

Updated: 18/08/2014

Was that last paragraph above prophetic or not? So now, after all this time, it seems like the Flores human is not a new species at all. It was just the microcephalic skull of an individual with Downs Syndrome! If you look at my review above, there have been researchers who have come to similar conclusions earlier. How could a peer reviewed paper that announces something as dramatic as a new species of Homo fall so flat? Serious questions need to be raised on the review process for a start.
For the time being, here are some links to the popular articles on the new discoveries as well as the original paper:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140804151510.htm
http://phys.org/news/2014-08-flores-bones-features-syndrome-hobbit.html
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/07/31/1407382111.abstract?sid=b742aa82-5bcd-46cd-a8a3-59b72dec61b2

Worst jobs in science - almost there!

Popular Science magazine did a highly imaginative story recently  on the so-called 'worst jobs in science'. I thought it was a pretty interesting choice of the ten different  and varied jobs, guaranteeing a huge variety of physical and mental discomfort. I must say I was very impressed to know that I pretty much made the list in three different categories. Here they are : Triage Biologist, Monkey sex observer (I swear I'm not making this up!) and Leech researcher.

Personally I think the whole concept of a triage biologist (someone who chooses one species to conserve over another) has very little basis in logic. Supposedly mooted recently by Stanford University biologist Terry Root, who has worked with the IPCC, it wont win too many admirers among passionate conservationists. It is in fact more of an economist's way of looking at the

 threats to biodiversity on Earth.  The most basic problem is that we still don’t have the knowledge or the competence to start prioritising species based on their exact roles in the multitude of complicated ecosystems. Hell, we still haven't even a clue about the number of different species that exist on this planet and still talk of picking and choosing species we want to keep alive while the rest are to be obliterated off the face of time forever!!

Number two - monkey sex observer! Oh I've done my share of that with macaques. The reason why I don’t qualify is that unlike some primatologists, I wasn’t watching ONLY for the alpha male's thrusts and orgasmic grimaces. Its hardly as 'yuck' as the article makes it out to be. 

Number three - Leech researcher. If you a re a biologist and you work anywhere in the Western Ghats or northeast India, it doesn’t matter what researcher you are, the leeches are gonna get you anyway. Yeah, the slimy buggers are everywhere, black, yellow, green, striped, big small, medium, massive, itch inducing, sore inducing, you name it, they are everywhere. Umm.. yes, I didn’t have to be a leech researcher to gather the bloody evidence!

Just in case you're wondering about the other seven jobs, here they are:

Theoretical Physicist

Vermin Handler

Lone Fossil Ranger

Hurricane Hunter

Medical Waste Burner

Experimental Taphonomist

Mars Simulator Crew

Capricious hair and disappearing Yetis - how the Goral lost its range!

So, the Yeti (mande burung) hair turned out to be from a goat. Everyone knows that by now. Just a case of false alarm, huh? It was just a dear old Goral (Nemorhaedus goral) who was having a bad hair day. Dipu Marak got his five minutes of fame, the officials of the Meghalaya Forest Department are heaving a sigh of relief and the media circus will move on elsewhere for fresh meat (during the peak of the circus, some Hindi news channels even proclaimed that people in Meghalaya were so terrified of the mande burung that nobody dares venture out of their homes after nightfall!). Okkay so is everybody accounted for? Umm.. not quite… There is a certain Ian Redmond, the 'ape expert' who was heading the investigation of the hairs.

This is what he had to say :

"Nevertheless, the DNA test is an interesting result because the reported location where this sample was collected is way south of the published distribution maps of the Goral species, which is said to live between 1,000 to 4,000 metres up in the Himalayas.

Perhaps we have a more modest discovery - extending the known range of the goral rather than confirming the existence of the lowland yeti,"

Sorry Ian, but that is complete nonsense. There is published scientific information on the fauna of this region and it clearly states that the Brown Goral (Nemorhaedus goral hodgsoni), one of the three subspecies of the Himalayan Goral is found in Meghalaya. Among others, one publication by the Wildlife Institute of India, my former institute is even available on the net. It is locally known as chon.gipa matrong. I have sighted it myself and just a couple of weeks back one was killed near a village by some hunters.

So where DID Ian get his 'known range'? Unfortunately, the figure of 1,000 - 4,000 metres appears to have been lifted verbatim off some mammal encyclopaedia or some such ready-reference guide. One such guide is the Grzimek series on world fauna. The section on Bovids which contains information on the Himalayan Goral provides the same figure. These are excellent books, but unfortunately the information in them is frequently outdated. The maps are even worse, and the so-called 'distribution range' diagrams (see picture below) are nothing more than artistic squiggles based on pure conjecture. On the other hand, the maps produced by the Wildlife Institute of India is mostly based on actual field research, making them relatively more accurate. Even the Meghalaya Forest Department has produced management plans for the two protected areas in question - Nokrek and Balpakram which record the Goral among the fauna.

Can you possibly believe that a senior scientist investigating Indo-Malayan fauna would not conduct an exhaustive search for scientific literature, but rather depend on some 'big name' generalized account? It defies logic when such statements are made and even reported by the BBC.

I would like to believe that he was just plain lazy and never bothered searching, because if he did find them and discarded them, that would establish a common but unfortunate phenomenon - scientific racism. It happens all the time, ask any scientist from the third world and they will tell you how it shows up regularly in the form of missing references to key papers.

A last point. Note how Ian refers to the 'lowland yeti'. So, we can safely assume he has already analysed the hairs of the 'highland yeti'. And mapped its 'known range'. Wonder what goat that is !!

------------------------------------

Links:

Wildlife Institute of India

Mande burung, the Indian Bigfoot

Ballet dancing flies and the freedom of scientific research

DISCOVER magazine is one of the best reads on the latest happenings in the world of science and technology. There are always a range of interesting articles on their website. Here’s a recent headline: ‘Researchers crack the case of why flies are so hard to swat’. The story went on to describe how a recent scientific paper in Current Biology by biologist Michael Dickinson found the reasons why swatting flies was so difficult (with the help of high speed video photography). Apparently, the flies performed ‘an elegant little ballet with their legs’ before positioning their centre of mass above their two middle legs which are used to jump away from the direction of the threat - read, your swatter! Oh yes, they do all this within 100 milliseconds, which would be considerably faster than the movement of your fly swatter. Michael Dickinson has more to say. Trying to be helpful, he suggests ways to literally ‘beat’ the fly and increase your chances of swatting it into pulp. He suggests that the ‘right way’ to swat a fly is not to aim AT them, because they are extremely good at anticipating where your blow will land (and presumably do their shuffle dance before pushing away). No, the way to successfully swatting a fly is to aim slightly ahead of the fly’s starting position, so that its you doing the anticipation, not the pesky Dipteran. So, there it was.. Another victory for humans and one less mystery in the world. Is that it? Ermm.. Not quite.
When this article was posted on the DISCOVER website, the first comment submitted on this story by readers was by someone called Jackie. Here it is, word for word, caps for caps..
“I AM TRULY PLEASED THAT WE LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE KIDS ARE GOING HUNGRY, GAS IS 50.00 A GALLON, AND OUR SOLDIERS ARE DYING FOR NO REASON (THEY’RE NOT PROTECTING MY FREEDOM, THEY’RE CLEANING UP IRAQ’S MESS ON MY DIME) AND SCIENTISTS ARE GETTING GRANTS FOR THIS CRAP. I AM A BETTER PERSON, NOW, FOR KNOWING WHY A FLY IS SMARTER AND MORE SPRY THAN I. THANK YOU.”
Jackie was apparently, not having a great day and decided to take it out on the helpful Dr. Dickinson. But really, what followed after that comment of hers was unique. When I last checked, there were fifteen comments after that and 12 of those ripped Jackie apart for disregarding the scientific and evolutionary importance of this discovery and confusing scientific research fund allocation with rising costs of living and US foreign policy. The message seemed to be - leave the scientists alone!
But, Jackie is not an isolated phenomenon. I have lost count of the people who have expressed displeasure at the so-called ‘useless research’ of scientists, especially that in the field of biological sciences. In India, we even have heads of state lecturing research institutions to pursue more of ‘applied research’. Having started my career as a biologist with behavioural research on wild primates, I know how difficult it was to make people understand the significance of concepts such as cognition, theory of mind, deception, and the evolution of intelligence in primates. The general response would be on the lines of “ What? Is that ALL you do? Watch monkeys all day? And you get paid for this?!”. This was the cue for me to produce one of my earnest smiles and attempt to launch into an explanation of the importance of understanding our ancestors behaviour to gain a better understanding of the complexities of how humans evolved to become the most intelligent species on this planet. And the most petulant. But, they were long gone.

Meghalaya’s Yeti: The mande burung – the inside story from a wildlife biologist in Meghalaya

If you still haven’t heard of the media frenzy over the recent ‘discovery’ of the ‘Indian Yeti’ or the ‘cousin of Bigfoot’ in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya, just read on because I KNOW what I’m talking about. And if you are one of those few who don’t know what or who Bigfoot and the Yeti are.. well.. then I guess you can just stop reading and move on to whatever the hell you were doing !

The internet has been abuzz in the last few weeks with stories of an ‘ape-like creature’ in the mountains of the Garo Hills of Meghalaya. Stories of the repeated sightings, kidnapping of humans, fossilised footprints, nest building and even video clips kept doing the rounds. Much of these stories started after an adventurous BBC reporter, Alastair Lawson landed up in Tura in the West Garo Hills and filed this story . Before you could say ‘scientific enquiry’, the paranormal addicts were out and the blogs and websites were having a field day. How am I any different you ask? Okay, fine since you ask.. I live in the Garo Hills and am a wildlife biologist by profession. Its my job to know this stuff !!
The latest news on this is that during his trip to the Garo Hills, Mr. Lawson was handed over a few strands of hair allegedly belonging to the mande burung. The hair was taken to the UK (probably in contravention of the Wildlife Protection Act and the Biodiversity Act!) and an initial visual inspection of hair structure was done with microscopes which proved inconclusive and could not identify which animal the hair came from. This isn’t surprising as positive identification of hair source based only on microscopy is not possible for many species, especially not by somebody in the UK unfamiliar with Indo Malayan fauna! Now, they say, the hair samples are being sent to the Oxford Brookes University for DNA extraction and fingerprinting. That should be able to identify the general taxonomic category of the owner of those strands if such an animal does not exist. If not, we’ll know soon enough. So its make or break time!

Now, first the basics… Reports of hominoid cryptids (slang for cryptozoological animal, cryptozoology itself means the study of mythical or legendary animals whose existence is disputed or unsubstantiated such as the Yeti and the Lochness monster) are not new. They have been reported from each and every continent (except maybe Antarctica). The Yeti and the Bigfoot are just two of the most famous ones, the former because of Sir Edmund Hillary’s claim to have seen footprints in the snow on the way to Mt. Everest and the latter … well just because its American!!

In reality similar creatures have been reported with great accuracy and frequency especially from parts of China and all of southeast Asia (example Yeren of China, Nguoi Rung of Vietnam, Bir Sindic of Myanmar, Hantu sakai of Malaysia and many more). Northeastern India (where the Garo Hills is present) lying next to southeast Asia shares enormous ethnic, cultural and ecological similarities. Together, they also comprise the Indo Malayan biodiversity hotspot. Is it any surprise then, that stories of such creatures are common here?

Okay so what about this creature? First, lets get the orthography right because BBC and Mr Lawson really screwed up on that. In the Garo language the creature is called mande (man) burung/buring (forest) which is self explanatory and not mande barung as reported by the BBC. Locals have always known about this creature, a 3m tall and 300 kilograms black and grey ape-like animal. The sudden renewal of interest seems to have been the handiwork of the Achik Tourism Society, an organisation run by a few hardcore believers.
Or maybe it isn’t that simple.
You have to admit they are creating the perfect advertising campaign to attract the Yeti, Sasquatch and Bigfoot crowd to remote Garo Hills. Money does talk Mr. Dipu Marak, doesn’t it?

Oh, you’re still reading. That proves you have an open mind and are willing to believe (albeit with a pinch of salt) the testimony of local eyewitnesses. Here is a sample. Well if you discount some of the really crazy stories like a man being kidnapped by a female mande burung, being kept in a nest for three days and being forcibly suckled with “bitter and sour tasting milk”, most of the other stories have a great deal of uniformity at least in the description of the creature. The region where it is reported from, the Nokrek Biosphere Reserve and the Balpakram National Park are both truly remote areas. Steep and rocky mountains, gorges, thick tropical jungles and vast network of underground caves formed because of the limestone deposits make it unusually difficult to traverse. I haven’t seen tougher terrain anywhere else in the northeast. It’s not easy to completely discount the existence of an unknown animal in such surroundings.

Mistaking animals for such creatures are not uncommon and have happened before. In many cases it has turned out to be a bear. The footprints of a bear too are eerily similar to that of human or hominid footprints. In this area of the Garo Hills, the two species of bears that are found are the Asiatic Black Bear (Ursus thibetanus) and the Malayan Sun Bear (Helarctos malayanus). Of them, the former is larger and could be mistaken for a creature of this sort.

There is however an even more intriguing possibility. It could be one of the last surviving members of the prehistoric giant ape Gigantopithecus blackii, remains of which were found in China and Vietnam and is thought to have been geographically distributed across southeast Asia. There are other ancient hominids of the same nature which were thought to have roamed across southeast Asia and India not very long back. They are Meganthropus palaeojavanicus and Pithecanthropus erectus (later known as Homo erectus, the Java Man). Pithecanthropus was announced in 1894 and was initially thought to be the ‘missing link’. Either way, this isn’t the end of the story. And something tells me even if the DNA tests show that those strands of hair belong to a bear or a serow, some people will still keep searching. I am one of them.

Links:

Gigantopithecus blackii

Blog entry on mande burung and Garo hills by me