inkbluesky

 Tiny Mexican porpoise near extinct from fish nets

The vaquita, a tiny stubby-nosed porpoise found only in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, is on the brink of extinction as more die each year in fishing nets than are being born, biologists say.

A drop in vaquita numbers to as few as 150 from around 600 at the start of the decade could see the famously shy animal go the same way as the Chinese river dolphin, which was declared all but extinct in 2006.

Unlike the yangtze (Chinese river dolphin) maybe this time action will be taken quickly enough to save them. The Chinese government did nothing despite warnings from it’s own scientist. While the Mexican government is spending about ten million dollars this year for conservation efforts, it is difficult to be optimistic with only 150 individuals left. That is not much of a breeding pool. I sympathize with the fishermen that need to make a living, but the continued use of old style gill nets is a large culprit in the  fight to save the vaquita.

jalapenos

East and West Part Ways in Test of Facial Expressions

How do you know how someone is feeling? For people in Western societies, it is usually easy: look at the person’s face.

But for people from Japan and other Eastern societies, a new study finds, it may be more complex — having to do not only with evaluating the other person’s face but also with gauging the mood of others who might be around.

[  ]…The Western students did not much change their assessment of a character’s mood no matter what was happening with the other characters. But for most of the Japanese participants, it made a measurable difference. If the figure in the center had a happy face but those in the background were sad or angry, they tended to give the happy figure a lower score. If everyone was happy, they gave the figure in the center a higher one.

Self conscientious is a relatively recent phenomenon in human psychological evolution. I’ve read estimates that western Europeans didn’t develop anything resembling modern self conscientiousness until perhaps the beginning of the Renaissance. I wonder if the way Japanese observers see the individual’s emotional state in relation to the group is a further evolution of modern self conscientiousness or a type of retention of pre 1400s sensibilities where the individual only saw themselves as a member of a village or church.