The Case of the Green Turtle. An Uncensored History of a Conservation Icon by Alison Rieser

I was intrigued by the title of his book. What had been ‘censored’ that could now be revealed was my first question. Even after wading through 338 pages of pretty turgid prose I still do not know. That was my first disappointment.

I also knew well or had met a number of the protagonists in the farming vs total protection debate of the 1970s that forms a substantial part of this book (Amo, Parkes, Brongersma and Bob Bustard) and was intrigued to see what had been written about them.

The early chapters are the most informative because they indicate the size of the problem brought about by commercial turtling, especially in the USA, the Caribbean and Central America and the urgency of national and international conservation measures to decrease the killing of adults and the removal of eggs for human consumption from nesting sites. However, the book soon drops into a dry as dust description of the conferences and legal processes (with emphasis on the USA) by which the Green Turtle came to be protected, nationally and internationally. The wars, between those who really believed that turtle farming would be the eventual answer to meeting the demand from consumers of turtle products (soup, meat and leather) while reducing the pressure on wild populations and those who also really believed that total protection by prohibiting imports was the only way to preserve the species, form a significant part of the book. Unfortunately, the accounts of meetings and discussions between these groups and individuals, to my mind, are written so blandly that they fail to capture the ding-dong battles that were going on. With its concentration on blow-by-blow accounts of legal procedures in the USA (perhaps therein lies its intended readership) the cynical may be forgiven for getting the impression that any potential for wealth creation from the populations of turtles was transferred from turtlers, would-be farmers and local consumers to Washington lawyers.

The book ends suddenly around 1980. Essentially the farming protagonists were defeated by the US import ban. A two-page epilogue, entitled Supply and Demand brings matters up to date in relation to what happened to the Cayman Island farm, to those in the Torres Strait and to some of the IUCN formal procedures. And that is where this book really falls down. The question is simple: have the international measures that were argued over and enacted been effective in conserving green turtle populations? Evidence and opinion would have been welcome. However, I see that IUCN has not updated its assessment beyond 2004 and so the author would have been on her own in trying to find out. This is the 2004 IUCN view:

As a result of these designations and agreements, many of the intentional impacts directed at sea turtles have been lessened: harvest of eggs and adults has been slowed at several nesting areas through nesting beach conservation efforts and an increasing number of community-based initiatives are in place to slow the take of turtles in foraging areas. In regard to incidental take, the implementation of Turtle Excluder Devices has proved to be beneficial in some areas, primarily in the United States and South and Central America (National Research Council 1990). However, despite these advances, human impacts continue throughout the world. The lack of effective monitoring in pelagic and near-shore fisheries operations still allows substantial direct and indirect mortality, and the uncontrolled development of coastal and marine habitats threatens to destroy the supporting ecosystems of long-lived green turtles.

In some places, Green Turtles appear plentiful, the Galapagos, for example, where strict protection measures for everything are in force. The last I saw was off the southern tip of Sri Lanka in November diving as the boat approached. However, turtles are clearly and openly being exploited, often illegally, in some key areas. We saw turtle eggs for sale in the Sandakan market in Sabah, which I still call North Borneo. I see from the online editions of the local papers that the eggs are thought to be brought in by boat from the nearby Philippines and that efforts are being made to stamp the trade out.

Many of the protagonists involved in the 1970s were alive when this book was written. It would have been interesting and, I would argue, only fair to have asked them for their views as to whether they would take the same view now as they did then and whether they think the measures taken then have actually worked. A what-happened-next to the scientific programme of the Cayman farm would also have been interesting, resulting as it did in a complete breakdown in relations between Amo and Parkes, as recounted in Roger Short’s perceptive biographical memoir of Amo.

It is only fair to also ask me if I can remember what I thought then, with Amo around most days for coffee and tea or a chat in the lab (although he was strangely reticent on what was happening in the Caymans). I also heard Parkes give a couple of talks. I think I thought, along with a number of others, that the Cayman Islands team had done a good job in breeding the Green Turtle in captivity at a time when only a few species of reptile had been bred and in studying the reproductive physiology. That convinced many of us that captive breeding could succeed if needed as an emergency measure, even if the facilities needed would be both extensive and expensive.

On the key economic question of whether the farming of turtles would decrease demand from the wild or simply increase it if turtle products were to become more popular to consumers in Europe and North America, I think I was unconvinced then as I am now. In this respect, it would be interesting to know whether the farming of freshwater chelonians (‘turtles’ to Americans and ‘terrapins’ to Brits) in China, which is now said to be on a vast scale, is reducing the pressure on wild populations.

Killing the supply to the USA and Europe for turtle soup and turtle meat by prohibiting imports may well have had an effect in reducing global demand and the consumer desirability of all turtle products. But in the 1970s turtles were not the charismatic creatures that turned them into the conservation icons they are now. Television wildlife programmes must have helped but can you imagine trying to serve turtle soup or meat to those fed a television and toy marketing diet of Mutant Ninja Turtles in the 1980s.

Perhaps, then, the most telling statement is hidden in the endnotes of Rieser’s book. Archie Carr 1909-1987), the doyen of turtle biology and conservation, had originally proposed commercial farming as a conservation measure but had then turned against it:

Peter Pritchard…reported that Carr had in fact been less than friendly to former associates who condoned the killing of sea turtles…Pritchard acknowledged that Carr “was quite frank about his emotional attachment to his creatures when questioned by a newspaper reporter a month before he died in 1987: ‘I just like the look on their faces’ he replied. Pritchard believes that as Carr grew older, his emotional attachment caused him to give up eating turtle meat and opposed turtle farming. Carr simple “could not abide their killing for any reason, and broke off relationships with those who felt otherwise.”

Rieser, A. 2012. The Case of the Green Turtle. An Uncensored History of a Conservation Icon. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-1-4214-0579-7

Polge, C. 2006. Sir Alan Sterling Parkes. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 52, 263-283

Short, R.V. 1985. Emmanuel Ciprian Amoroso. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 31, 3-30

Government Committees: A Lancelot Hogben Quote

Lancelot Hogben (1895-1975) clearly loathed Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders (1886-1966), eugenicist and Director of the London School of Economics from 1937 to 1957. In his unpublished autobiography (reshaped by Adrian and Anne Hogben as Lancelot Hogben Scientific Humanist, Merlin Press, 1998) he wrote: It used to puzzle me how any one so facelessly devoid of charm and with so mediocre intellectual equipment attained such eminence. It does so no longer. 

He then continued: 

The first rung on the ladder is a place on a minor government committee. If one remains somnolently acquiescent to the pressure group in command news spreads among civil servants that one is a sound chap due yo fill a vacancy on [an]other ministerial committee, somnolently—and so on and so on.

Some things never change.

In Search of a Penguin’s Egg. Why?

Nelson Norman’s 2009 book, In Search of a Penguin’s Egg, worked its way to the top of my to-be-read pile and I found it a fascinating account of how he came to be sent, as a newly-qualified medical graduate doing his National Service, to Antarctica as a medical officer and voluntary general factotum to the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) (now the British Antarctic Survey) at Halley Bay for the antarctic winter of 1959.

As part of his research activity he was asked by Sir Raymond Priestley, an Antarctic explorer in his younger days and former vice-chancellor of the University of Birmingham who was still active with FIDS, to obtain a series of Emperor Penguin embryos at 12-hour intervals over the first ten days of incubation:

…he told me that 4 or 5 kilometres from Halley Bay, there was a rookery of emperor penguins…He told me that these birds were close to being the most primitive species of bird and possibly the embryological link in the evolutionary chain between reptiles and birds. They were thus if great scientific importance. There was an anatomist at Charing Cross Hospital who was desperate to get a precisely timed series of emperor penguin embryos at twelve-hour intervals for ten days. He stressed the importance of this and asked me to secure them…Nor did he tell me that a previous attempt had been made during Scott’s last expedition and that only one man had survived—Apsley Cherry-Garrard.

Before his departure, Norman had a half-hour meeting with Dr Glenister of Charing Cross Hospital who repeated his requirement for the timed series of preserved embryos.

By ingenuity, dedication and fortitude—but not without danger during the Antarctic winter—Norman succeeded in bringing back the series of embryos. However, the reception of his embryos in London was less than enthusiastic:

…The taxi crossing London did not crash—as had been my recurring nightmare in Antarctica—neither was the enthusiastic Dr Glenister standing on the front steps to meet me. I was informed politely but rather coldly by a secretary that he was now the Professor of Anatomy and a a very busy man. I was, therefore, invited to leave the embryos and my report with a technician and basically just to go away. I did this rather reluctantly and unhappily, and I never heard anything more from Professor Glenister though I did think that he could at least have written a short note of thanks considering what we had gone through to produce the embryos. I enquired several times over the years and was persistently told by FIDS that the embryos were being worked on…Nearly fifteen years later when I was in a position to consider the matter further and was a research director myself I went to the British Antarctic Survey (as FIDS was known by that time), expressed my concern, and asked for my embryos back saying that I would find an interested embryologist and we would work them up between us. This was agreed but when it asked for the embryos, the Survey was told that a technician had accidentally disposed of them!

What an appalling way to treat a young scientist, was my thought as I read Nelson’s account. But the reason for writing this post is to remark that this sort of treatment of young scientists and technicians was by no means uncommon. I have known individuals who have worked hard to complete a task, only for the specimens or results to be ignored for weeks, months, years and, sometimes, for ever.

So why was Nelson launched on this ultimately worthless mission? The story is well known of how Edward Wilson, chief of the scientific staff of Scott’s final (1910-1912) expedition and who died with Scott and his party, had become convinced that by studying the embryonic development of the Emperor Penguin he could follow the evolutionary transition from reptiles to birds. In 1907, in his report on the 1901-1904 expedition in which the breeding cycle of this species was discovered, he wrote: The possibility that we have in the Emperor Penguin the nearest approach to a primitive form not only of penguins but of a bird, makes the future working out of its embryology a matter of the greatest importance. It was a great disappointment to us that although we discovered their breeding ground. and although we were able to bring home a number of deserted eggs and chicks, we were not able to procure early embryos by which alone the points of particular interest can be worked out. Obtaining embryos was Wilson’s aim when he set off in 1910.

The appalling conditions endured by Wilson, Henry Bowers and Apsley Cherry-Garrard in their search for the eggs are described by Apsley-Garrard in his book, The Worst Journey in the World. Three eggs survived the six-week, 65-mile return journey from Cape Crozier. The three men also survived this part of the expedition; Wilson and Bowers then died with Scott’s party. It would appear that Cherry-Garrard’s life was wrecked by the trauma of the whole expedition and its outcome.

The enthusiasm of the Natural History Museum for the receipt of Cherry-Garrard’s eggs in 1913 was a forerunner of the enthusiasm of Glenister for the arrival Nelson’s embryos. The account in The Worst Journey in the World of his encounter with the Museum’s officialdom is an example of British jobsworths at their finest. However, the 1911 embryos were worked on, first by Dr Richard Assheton FRS, lecturer in embryology at Cambridge who died in 1915, then by Professor Cossar Ewart FRS, professor of natural history in Edinburgh, who produced a report that can only be described as kindly and, finally, 20 years after their collection, by Charles Wynford Parsons FRSE (1901-1950) of the University of Glasgow. Parsons did not pull any punches: [the eggs] have not contributed much to the understanding of the embryology of penguins.

View of the Emperor Penguin Rookery at Cape Crozier by Edward Adrian Wilson
From his report of the 1901-04 Expedition

Before moving to consider why, during the 1950s, the collection of Emperor Penguin eggs was considered to be of such importance to FIDS, what drove the enthusiasm of Wilson in the first place?

Two influences are said to have driven him. The first, which seems bizarre to the point of craziness when looked at now and perhaps even then, was the suggestion in a long paper by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Menzbier (1855-1935), professor of comparative anatomy in Moscow, that penguins had evolved separately from reptiles on a parallel evolutionary line to other birds. However, the argument that Wilson got his impetus from Menzbier does not quite stack up with his statement, The possibility that we have in the Emperor Penguin the nearest approach to a primitive form not only of penguins but of a bird. Wilson seemed to have the impression that the Emperor Penguin could be the most primitive of all birds which is not what Menzbier was arguing.

The second influence was, of course, recapitulation, the theory of Ernst Haeckel: ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. The flaws in making this idea a law of nature are so well known that I will not repeat them. However, if true, the development of the Emperor Penguin should, if it were the most primitive bird, show it passing through a reptilian stage relatively late in development. That is what Wilson was hoping the results would decide.

Encouragement along the lines of a separate descent for penguins or for the Emperor Penguin being the primitive bird did not come from the Natural History Museum. W.P Pycraft in the same volume as Wilson’s report of the 1901-1904 expedition wrote:

All that can be gleaned from fossils, then, is that penguins have probably descended from birds which possessed full powers of flight, and this probability becomes converted into a certainty when the embryological evidence comes to be examined. But the question of the precise affinities of this group must still be regarded as an unsolved problem, the intense specialisation which these birds have undergone obliterating much of the necessary evidence.

However, Pycraft was clearly thinking along Haeckelian lines when he supported the collection of more embryos:

Some day another Antarctic Expedition will be sent out, when it is to be hoped that, so far as the penguins are concerned, special efforts will be made to secure the earlier nestling stages of the King, and the latter stages of the Emperor Penguin full-grown nestlings of the latter being especially needed; while of both species the early and middle embryonic stages are wanted. Ripe embryos will add but little of real value to our knowledge, since they differ but little of course from the newly-hatched nestling, and furthermore, several examples are among the spoils of the expedition herein concerned. A few adults of both species would certainly be useful if preserved entire, in spirit, or in ice.

Although ideas, often wrong, on the evolutionary history of penguins rumbled on, the notion that the Emperor Penguin was vital for the study of the origin of birds was well and truly dead by the 1950s. Also by then recapitulation had also been effectively demolished as a doctrine. So why did Sir Raymond Priestley push the importance of collecting a series of embryos to Nelson Norman? Was FIDS in some sort of time warp with its own unchanging research agenda, locked into continuing the unfinished research of dead antarctic heroes? The cynical might be tempted to suggest that some at FIDS were looking for reasons to use the Halley Bay base and its nearby penguin colony for biological research on the use it or lose it principle of government funding. However, since most of the research there was concerned with the physical environment and FIDS was taking over Halley Bay from the Royal Society which had established it for the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58, there may have been no need for a research excuse.

The request to Nelson seemed even more strange to me when I read (not in Norman’s book) that a series of Emperor Penguin embryos (16 from the primitive streak to hatching) had been collected by Bernard Stonehouse in 1949 and described by Glenister in a letter to Nature. Without providing quantitative data, Glenister stated that early penguin embryos (others had described Gentoo and Chinstrap penguin embryos) resemble early reptilian embryos more closely than do early chick embryos. The thought also occurred to me that since the Emperor and King penguins are closely related and, then and now, included in the genus Aptenodytes, why the insistence on Emperor embryos when King Penguins were readily accessible and available in abundance on South Georgia where whaling stations were maintained until the 1960s? 

Finally, there is Professor Glenister who seemed less than keen to receive Norman’s embryos. Tony William Alphonse Glenister (1923-1998) was an embryologist at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School. He became Professor of Embryology, then of Anatomy. He was Dean of the Medical School from 1976 to 1984 and then Dean of the combined Charing Cross and Westminster school until 1989. A building is named after him at Imperial College, the final destination of these medical schools in the organisational reshuffles of the London colleges. He was President of the Anatomical Society in 1979-81; he wrote Anatomy and Physiology for Nurses.; he has 18 papers listed in PubMed, mainly on mammalian embryology. Recently, he has been identified as one of the referees who opposed the awarding of a grant to support the work of Edwards and Steptoe on human fertilization in vitro (IVF). In that he was by no means alone.

I do not know how Glenister became involved with the penguin embryos. One explanation is that he was drawn in by FIDS to work on the embryos brought back by Stonehouse. Glenister wrote a report for FIDS entitled, The Emperor penguin, Aptenodytes forsteri Gray: II Embryology. I have not seen this report but I think it is a fuller version of the letter to Nature. His work on the embryos was descriptive and I can only assume that in sending Norman for more he felt that there were gaps to be filled. Whether he then lost interest in the topic or somebody had a quiet word with him that the work was of insufficient scientific importance, whether he became bogged down in university administration or whether his role in the Territorial Army increased, I do not know. Whatever the reason there is no doubt that Norman, quite rightly, felt highly aggrieved by his reception on delivering the embryos, by the lack of contact with Glenister and, later, by their destruction.

Sadly, Nelson Norman’s and Cherry-Garrards’s experiences when they returned were not, and may still not be, uncommon. As to the wider question, of why FIDS persisted in pursuing an outdated notion (hypothesis would be too strong a word), a historian delving into the archives may be able to judge. However, such behaviour would not be unusual for a British government department or agency. Research agendas unchallenged by effective external review were alive and well into the 2000s, to my certain knowledge; some still may be.

The appraisal of Wilson’s pursuit of Emperor Penguin embryos must not detract from his and the other explorers’ achievements in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. An incredible amount of work was done in all the relevant fields of science; important discoveries emerged from each expedition. The observations and collections they made would have been arduous in a temperate environment; in an antarctic winter with temperatures as low as -61°C survival alone was a triumph.

Antarctica stands head and shoulders above anywhere else in the world I have visited. The scenery, the air, the ice, the mammals and the birds have to be seen and heard to be believed. I can see why the explorers were drawn back.

Our view back to the ship from Jougla Point, Wiencke Island, Port Lockroy in 2005. The furthest south we reached in the Lemaire Channel was still 1722 statute miles from the South Pole.

The ship is the MV Lyubov Orlova which hit the headlines recently (Ghost ship carrying cannibal rats 'may have sunk’, for example) is either drifting in the Atlantic or has sunk.

Further Reading: Links and References

The lives of the antarctic explorers are well covered by such sources as Wikipedia.

Cherry-Garrard, A. 1922. The Worst Journal in the World. Antarctic 1910-1913. London: Constable*

Dyke, G., Kaiser, G. (editors). 2011. Living Dinosaurs: The Evolutionary History of Modern Birds. West Sussex: John Wiley. ISBN: 978-0-470-65666-2

Emperor penguin egg. Natural History Museum. Note that Asshetton is misnamed as Ashton.

http://bit.ly/1kjwDpr

Francis, G. 2012. Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins. Chatto & Windus

The Guardian: The worst egg hunt in the world

http://bit.ly/1lFW3dW

Glenister

http://bit.ly/1kjxtCr

Glenister, T.W. 1953. Embryology of the emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri). Nature 171, 357.

Glenister, T.W. 1954. The Emperor penguin Aptenodytes forsteri Gray: II. Embryology. Falkland Islands Dependency Survey Scientific Reports No. 10. London: HMSO

Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_Age_of_Antarctic_Exploration

Menzbier, M. 1887. Vergleichende osteologie der pinguine in anwendung zur haupteintheilung der vogel.  Bulletin de la Société impériale des naturalistes de Moscou 1, 483-587

Norman, N. 2009. In Search of a Penguin’s Egg. Milton Keynes: AuthorHouse. ISBN: 978-1-4490-1729-3

Pycraft, W.P. 1907. III. On some points in the anatomy of the Emperor and Adélie penguins. In, National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904. Natural History Volume II. Zoology, 1—28. London: British Museum*

Wilson, E.A. 1907. II. Aves. In, National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904. Natural History Volume II. Zoology, 1-121. London: British Museum*

Wilson, E.A. (editor). 1908. National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904. Album of Photographs and Sketches. London: Royal Society*

Why the Medical Research Council refused Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe support for research on human conception in 1971

http://bit.ly/1mUViOm

* These books can be found in downloadable form using Google search

Grant Museum at University College, London: a Must-See Museum of a Museum

We managed a short visit to the Grant Museum of Zoology on a trip to London in February. The museum can only be described as excellent because it demonstrates what the teaching of zoology was like, as well as showing rare specimens of extinct animals. Based on the UCL collection that was started by Grant, the first Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in England, specimens have been added from other London institutions. The museum is now housed in the Thomas Lewis Room, the old medical school library, of the Rockefeller Building, on the corner of University Street and Gower Street.

From commonplace pickled specimens, through bones, skins and models to the thylacine dissected by Thomas Henry Huxley, there is something there not only for those who like their museums and specimens in their original state, rather than covered by trendy  ‘educational’ material that turns children away from the subject, but also the historians of science.

The only point I took issue with was the label that stated such museums had fallen from favour because of the rise of biochemistry and molecular biology. As I have pointed out earlier, it was ‘experimental biology’ that first of all pushed comparative anatomy from its importance, followed by ecology and ethology. There was some biochemistry and physiology involved in experimental biology but molecular biology came very much later.

Zoology was very different in Grant’s time at UCL, as Medawar demonstrated in Pluto’s Republic:

Biology before Darwin was almost all facts. My friend R. B. Freeman has brought to light some Victorian examination questions from our oldest English school of zoology, at University College, London. The answers called for nothing more than a voluble pouring forth of factual information…This is one (by no means the longest) of eight questions set by Professor Grant in Comparative Anatomy in February 1860:
'By what special structures are bats enabled to fly through the air? and how do the galeopitheci, the pteromys, the petaurus, and petauristae support themselves in that light element? Compare the structure of the wing of the bat with that of the bird, and with that of the extinct pterodactyl: and explain the structures by which the cobra expands its neck, and the saurian dragon flies through the atmosphere. By what structures do serpents spring from the ground, and fishes and cephalopods leap on deck from the waters? and how do flying-fishes support themselves in the air? Explain the origin, the nature, the mode of construction, and the uses of the fibrous parachutes of arachnidans and larvae, and the cocoons which envelope the young; and describe the skeletal elements which support, and the muscles which move the mesoptera and the metaptera of insects. Describe the structure, the attachments, and the principal varieties of form of the legs of insects; and compare them with the hollow articulated limbs of nereides, and the tubular feet of lumbrici. How are the muscles disposed which move the solid setae of stylaria, the cutaneous investment of ascaris, the tubular peduncle of pentalasmis, the wheels of rotifera, the feet of asterias, the mantle of medusae, and the tubular tentacles of actinae? How do entozoa effect the migrations necessary to their development and metamorphoses? how do the fixed polypifera and porifera distribute their progeny over the ocean? and lastly, how do the microscopic indestructible protozoa spread from lake to lake over the globe?'

That’s the sort of question that some decades later would have elicited the query at the end of a seminar, ‘So, what?’, or, from an external examiner to a young lecturer missing the point of examinations, ‘Is that really an honours question?’ 

The Grant Museum is a must-see for any visitor to London:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/zoology

Here are a few poor photographs (my iPhone 4 had difficulty coping with the low light):

The microscope slides look pretty modern to me

Thylacine skeleton

The Art of the Soluble: The Ignorant Are Still Getting Medawar Wrong

Just the other day I saw some ignoramus sounding off in a blog that Medawar was, by his labelling science (and the title of one of his books) as The Art of the Soluble, advising scientists to find problems that were easy to solve.

It never seems to have crossed the minds of those authors who get Medawar so wrong that the real meaning is: Science is the art of making things soluble; in other words that good scientists find solutions to difficult problems.

Sir Peter Medawar (1915-1987) in his lifetime attacked the misinterpretation of his work in the introduction to Pluto’s Republic (1982):

One or two rather malicious people whose reading of that earlier book could have gone no further than the title (“I never  seem to get any time for reading nowadays”) took it for granted that I was advocating the study of easy problems which would yield quick returns from the scientists’ investment of time. What I meant, of course, was that the art of research was the art of making difficult problems soluble by devising means of getting at them…

The same possible misinterpretation applies to the title of the British politician, R.A. Butler’s book, The Art of the Possible (1971). Politics is the art of the possible was apparently first coined in some form by Bismarck. The idea has gained currency that Bismarck and Butler were advocating the notion that politicians should only concentrate on easy (i.e. possible to enact) problems. I have no idea what point Bismarck was making but the accepted interpretation of Butler’s use of the dictum at the time his autobiography was published was that politics is the art of making things possible, otherwise it would not be an art, rather than the meaning promulgated in present times that politicians should only concern themselves with easy measures that are known to be possible. Butler’s Education Act (1944) that changed Britain completely in terms of equality of opportunity was not easy politically but he made it possible.

The elision of long phrases into aphorisms is, or was, common in British English. Those who do not understand the way the British speak or write to each other, where the emphasis is on irony, elision and allusion rather than direct statements, really have difficulty in understanding what we are saying. However, Medawar did make it completely clear what he meant—both at the time and later. There really is no excuse for getting it wrong.

Leeches in Sri Lanka: A Coincidence Shines the Light

Last November, having got drenched from a sudden tropical shower, I was sheltering with others in the party at the entrance to Sinharaja Forest Reserve in Sri Lanka (Ceylon, in old money and to stamp collectors) while eating my packed lunch. Leeches were all around us. I was watching the leeches on the edges of the path through binoculars just after the rain had stopped. I noticed that as the sun started to break through, many of the leeches in deep shade started to loop towards to the bright areas. That the leeches (a fair way from the attraction of human bodies) might be phototropic crossed my mind. A just-so story flitted across the consciousness: animals like wild boar and deer move along defined paths which are more exposed to the sun than the undergrowth, hence it would make sense to hang around light places in the hope of passing trade. While I am singularly attractive to lurking leeches (with ample evidence from Borneo and, now, Sri Lanka) and particularly inept at spotting their attachment quickly enough, my attention was soon taken by having to remove two of them that were taking an armful and a legful, respectively, and the question of leeches and light was put to the back of my mind.

Last week, I was looking up something else entirely. I was reading through J.R. Baker’s Biographical Memoir¹ and suddenly came across this:

It is certainly true that anyone who visits the wilder parts of Ceylon [Sri Lanka] is liable to be set upon by leeches, but not many people would think of sitting down at a table to play a game with them. Baker noticed that the leech is not only chemically attracted to the human body but it is also strongly phototropic. Thus a leech placed upon a table illuminated by a table lamp can be controlled in the direction of its movements by periodically changing the position of one’s seat or of the table lamp.

Baker spent the Oxford summer vacation of 1936 in Ceylon. His great-uncle was Sir Samuel Baker (1821-1893) the famous explorer of Africa, and there remained a family financial interest in a tea plantation at Nuwara Eliya. Baker, the great-uncle, had chartered a ship and taken people, animals, equipment and seed in order to found an agricultural settlement there in 1848; he stayed until 1855, leaving his brother in charge of further development, first of the farm and, later, as tea growing became established, of a tea plantation. We have been to Nuwara Eliya twice: a drive-through in 1968 and to stay in 2013. Apart from resembling a Scottish town in terms of the architectural style of the houses, the fields around Nuwara Eliya are full of typically British crops like leeks (field upon field of them) and beetroot (delicious curried). That’s all down to Baker apparently.

I was even more surprised to find in the references at the end of the Biographical Memoir, that Baker had been based at Sinharaja from the end of July to the beginning of September; his paper, describing what he did and what he saw is entitled, The Sinharaja Rain-Forest, Ceylon². He notes: 

The abundance of land-leeches (Haemadipsa zeylanica, Moquin-Tandon) greatly detracts from the pleasure of studying the Sinharaja Forest. I found it best to wear thin breeches cut like "plus-fours," stockings, boots with the tongues sewn in right up to the top, and puttees. This clothing by no means prevents leeches from penetrating to the skin of one's legs, but it greatly reduces the annoyance.

Baker included a map showing where he had camped (about 5 miles from the lodge where we stayed last year) and where he had walked. His walks had taken him along the same rough track we had walked and where I had sheltered and watched the leeches.

Here is Baker’s map of Sinharaja:

And here is a very short video of the leech in question and its acquisition of my blood:

John Randal Baker (1900-1984) was, and still is, well known for a number of different activities: the breeding season of birds in the tropics and the factors that trigger the onset of reproduction; the introduction of the terms proximate and ultimate causation; his cytological studies and textbook on the subject; his work on chemical contraception; his wars, especially with J. Brontë Gatenby, on the existence of the Golgi apparatus.

I have done a quick search to see what is now known of phototropism in leeches. Unfortunately, some people have interpreted his anecdotal findings of evidence of thermotropism; in other words, that his leeches were moving towards the heat of the lamp, but did not do proper experiments to distinguish between the two. So there we are, a small research project for somebody awaits. I can almost feel the cold light of an led torch being turned on.

1 Willmer, E.N., Brunet, P.C.J. 1985. John Randal Baker. 23 October 1900-8 June 1984. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 31, 33-63.

2 Baker, J.R. 1937. The Sinharaja rain-forest, Ceylon. Geographical Journal 89, 539-551.

Russell's Viper (Daboia russelli) in Sri Lanka

In my last post, I described how Burgess Barnett and Gwyn Macfarlane had found in the 1930s that the venom from Russell's Viper (now Daboia russelli, then called Vipera russelli) was the most effective of all those tested in clotting blood from haemophiliacs. I had never seen a Russell's Viper in the wild until last November when a juvenile decided to cross the road at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka while we were bird (and mammal) watching.

Here it is: