Welcome! And, How to Turn a Handsy Man into an Umbrella
YMMV.
Hello, friends!
Some people will know that back in the twenty-teens I had a blog called Inkfish. I wrote articles about science news, built up a readership and gradually laid the groundwork to make this kind of writing my actual job.
Today, that career is so successful that I want to see what it feels like to write for free again. Just kidding! I mean, the newsletter will be free. But my goal this time is about staying connected with readers. If you subscribe, you’ll get short biweekly updates in your inbox about what I’ve been writing, without having to navigate the fragmented and shouty universe of social media.
What sorts of things have I been writing? Some science things, some silly things. I’ve been working hard this year and last on a book about the evolution of caretaking. Currently titled The Creatures’ Guide to Caring, the book will introduce you to devoted parents throughout the animal kingdom and explore what their biology reveals about our own evolutionary story.
I can’t wait to share it with everyone. But, as Piggy says to Gerald in Waiting Is Not Easy!: “You will have to.” My publication date with Viking is still TBD. Subscribers to this newsletter will get updates about the book when I have them, along with details about whatever else I’m writing and working on.
To sweeten the deal, or possibly out of habit, I’m also going to include a little tidbit of animal science. It’s an advice column, except the question is made up. Yes, this is just a contrivance to keep us all entertained.
What I’ve Been Writing
I published two pieces in the New York Times this month that both have fun video:
These Gibbons Dance Like Someone Is Watching The headline I suggested was “These Gibbons Dance Like Somebody’s Watching,” a play on “dance like nobody’s watching,” but I guess the copy desk didn’t like that.
Punching Octopuses Lead Fish on Hunting Parties This time I fully expected my suggested headline (“In Interspecies Hunting Parties, This Octopus is the Sea-E-O”) to be rejected, which it was.
Dear Inkfish
(Journalistic scruples compel me to remind you that I made this question up!)
Dear Inkfish,
I need help coping with my partner’s possessive behavior. When we’re out in public, he clings to me nonstop, like he’s trying to show everyone I’m his property. We live in a warm climate, and the heat is making his behavior extra annoying.
—Hot and Bothered
Dear Bothered,
Maybe you can borrow a trick from desert locusts that live in the Sahara! Yes, these are the same locusts as in “a plague of.” They can be low-key, solitary insects, minding their own business. But at high densities, they undergo a personality change, like children at the playground who hear the ice-cream truck: they suddenly form ravenous, frenzied swarms that leave a trail of destruction.
As females of many species can tell you, men are their own kind of plague. The male locusts are big on “mate guarding.” This is a polite term for climbing onto their partner’s back and riding her around for a while, so that no other male can fertilize her eggs.
Females generally lay eggs at night, taking advantage of cooler temperatures to bury their eggs in the sand. Some locust moms, though, lay eggs during the day, when the ground is more than 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Whether or not that’s hot enough to fry an egg, it ought to be hot enough to fry a bug. But scientists discovered that egg-laying females survive these temperatures by using the males who are riding on their backs as parasols.
Female locusts oriented their bodies parallel to the sun’s rays. This kept them in the shade of their possessive partners, and kept their bodies at a manageable temperature. (The males, by not touching the ground, also stayed cool enough to not cook.)
If your partner can’t get it through his thick exoskeleton that you need more personal space, maybe you can have him move a little to the left?
