Why Chili Peppers Bring a Tear to Your Eye: It's the Fungus

There are myriad things for which we should be grateful to the kingdom Fungi. Without them, our forests would be brimming with kindling, all of our bread would be crackers, and we'd have no adult beverages with which to drown our sorrows and make us feel witty and attractive when other elements of nature and nurture haven't conspired to truly make us so. Some of them provide the raw material for anti-cancer drugs and antibiotics, and ongoing research shows certain fungi to be promising possibilities to produce biofuels and extract various toxins from the ground.

Now we learn that there's one more thing for which we have to thank even pathogenic fungi. Without them, Mexican and Indian food would be bland. New research supports the hypothesis that chili peppers spice up our lives because they evolved a chemical weapon in order to combat fungi that would otherwise have digested their seeds.

Self-Defense: Why Chili Peppers Pack Heat
By Andrea Thompson

Chilies, like other fruits, use sugars and lipids to attract birds and other hungry animals that will eat them and eventually scatter their seeds in the process.

But fungi and plant-feeding insects, which puncture chilies' outer skin and allow the fungi to invade, can also try to get in on the meal. Working together, they can destroy a fruit's seeds before it gets a chance to reproduce...

Chilies have evolved a pungent solution to this problem: They produce chemicals called capsaicinoids that protect them from fungal attack by dramatically slowing microbial growth. The capsaicinoids also produce the tear-inducing heat associated with the spicy fruit, though this doesn't bother hungry birds.

"Capsaicin doesn't stop the dispersal of seeds because birds don't sense the pain and so they continue to eat peppers, but the fungus that kills pepper seeds is quite sensitive to this chemical," Tewksbury said.

He added that the chilies' spicy defense mechanism is "a great example of the power of natural selection..."

Plants that lived in areas where fungal attacks were common also produced higher levels of capsaicinoids. But plants that lived in less dangerous areas were as mild as a bell pepper, the researchers found...

I know from personal observation that some mammals aren't bothered by capsaicinoids, too. In particular, I know that raccoons have no problem dealing with the compounds that make we humans cry. I've watched them eat Indian food that I couldn't eat myself because of the overwhelming, mouth-searing chili content. This makes some sense; the peppers' seeds can pass through the digestive tract of a mammal for dispersal just as they do through that of a bird.

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Happy Birthday Hyphoid Logic

This blog has turned one year old today. Time flies; it seems like only days since I left LiveJournal and bounced around a couple of similar "social network" sites before landing here. I was still in Tallahassee at that time. I'm a long way from there now, both in terms of geography and life in general. A lot has changed.

I still miss the raccoons; who wouldn't miss a face like this:

Thanks to the folks who read this little blog. I haven't exactly gone overboard trying to promote it, so I'm glad that you found it and have stuck around. It's a moderately successful endeavor that gets noticed by the big blogs every so often and that's just fine with me. The next year, as far as I know, will continue in the same vein as the last. I'll ponder this and that and someone will read and the world keeps spinning 'round.

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How Does One Humanely Stomp a Baby Raccoon to Death?

I'm not a vegetarian, let alone a PETA activist. I have no problem at all with people who hunt and fish, killing humanely and eating what they take while acting in compliance with wildlife management. That's all fine; I can easily see the value in it. On the other hand, there's this:

Students kill, cook, eat baby raccoon in class

A controversy is brewing at Columbus High School over the treatment of a baby raccoon.

“They started stepping and stomping on it, joking they’re tenderizing the animal,” Police Chief Danny Jackson. “They skinned that raccoon, cooked it and ate it..."

It happened during a wildlife management class in which students were encouraged to harvest and prep wildlife to be cooked out back and consumed.

“From what I understand, they bring the animals in dead. But these two didn’t. They brought it in alive,” Jackson said.

Jackson says they then beat the animal to death in front of stunned classmates.

According to the superintendent, it wasn’t supposed to happen that way.

He said a substitute teacher was in the class that day and simply didn’t know any better...

But 11 News has learned there will be no criminal charges against the two students involved because most of the witnesses have said the animal died quickly.

“And so the suffering was minimal,” Jackson said...

The substitute teacher didn't know any better than to allow students to beat and stomp an animal to death in the classroom in front of "stunned classmates?" That's an excuse? I hope this idiot's drool-cup didn't overfill too quickly during his stint. How exactly does one not know any better than to allow high school students to stomp a baby animal to death in a classroom?

The suffering was minimal? Yeah, it's hard to see how one could incur less suffering than by stomping an animal into a linoleum floor. One couldn't, say, shoot the poor thing and get it over with before the poor thing knew what was going on. That's why veterinarians routinely beat untreatably sick domestic animals to death with baseball bats when putting them down; the suffering is so much less than giving them a barbiturate injection.

I don't know who these kids parents are or what kind of town this is, but stomping a baby raccoon to death — let alone doing it in front of a bunch of other people while laughing about it — sounds like prosecutable animal cruelty to me. It's too bad we don't get their names; these boys clearly have a bright future ahead of them full of newspaper headlines containing words like "bloody" and "brutal." How will I know it's them when they take their first perp walks on "America's Most Shocking Police Videos?"

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Watching Raccoons Eat

Want to watch raccoons over teh intarweb for awhile? In response to my last entry, I received a link to Raccoon Cam. It's not the same as being there, but it's still pretty cool.

Alas, I can't find the command link "Give them a cookie" anywhere on the site.

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Parrots and Raccoons

LL and I watched The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill this evening. It's one of those movies I've been meaning to see for a long time and just haven't gotten around to it until now. It's a very warm-hearted movie and it was fun to see some very familiar places in San Francisco again. It seems like ages since I lived there, even though it's only been about six years now. I never saw the parrots myself, though, although I'm pretty sure I did cross paths with Mark Bittner a couple of times in a coffee shop.

Still, that's not the main thing that the movie brought to mind for me. Seeing Bittner with the parrots made me think about the raccoons I became friendly with in Tallahassee over the course of nearly three years. I miss having them around and interacting with them a great deal.

We're just coming up on four months since we arrived here in Worcester, which is strange considering how easily this place has become home. In many ways, it feels like I've been living here for a long time, particularly now that I have a routine and a place for hunting mushrooms. I don't even get lost much anymore.

I do miss the raccoons, though. I know that most people think of them as vermin, as problems, and as potential rabies carriers and the like. To LL and I, though, they became very much a part of our lives. Every so often, we still talk about them, particularly when we throw away table scraps. We never did that when we were living at Hobbiton; we'd always put them out for the raccoons. We bought cookies for them and hung out with them practically every night. We saw a couple of generations of cubs grow up and established a good deal of mutual trust with them. Seeing the film brought that back to mind; the relationship we had with those animals wasn't terribly different from the one portrayed between Bittner and the parrots in the film.

We don't have anything like that here. Circumstances are very different now. There's something unique about the experience of becoming friendly with wild animals, though, especially when it's the result of a long process. Maybe we'll live someday in a place where we can form such a relationship again.

I haven't slept in almost twenty-four hours now, so perhaps I'm feeling more emotional about it than I usually would. I hope the pack of monsters is doing alright, though. I hope that nobody moved into the house we lived in in Tallahassee; the place was literally falling apart by the time we left. The landlord almost never made repairs, resulting in faulty wiring (always fun in a wooden house) and a hole in the bathroom ceiling and generally dangerous conditions. If any poor slobs did move into the place, though, I hope they were kind to the raccoons that would show up a half-dozen strong, sometimes more, on their deck and stare through the sliding glass doors. At best, I hope the new occupants got the message and became friendly with the animals, too. It's a worthwhile thing to do so. At the very least, though, I hope that the new residents weren't a cruel lot who did the raccoons harm.

I don't suppose I'll ever know. Raccoons are notoriously bad about keeping in touch.

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Woo Wars

Police: Witch put dead animal at doorways of psychics' shops
2 charged in raccoon mutilation

By Bruno Matarazzo Jr.
THE SALEM NEWS (SALEM, Mass.)

SALEM, Mass. —

A self-styled high priestess of Salem witches was one of two people that police arrested Tuesday for beheading and mutilating a dead raccoon and leaving it at the doorways of two downtown businesses.

Sharon R. Graham, 46, and Fredrick L. Purtz, 22, both of Salem, will be arraigned Wednesday in Salem District Court on charges including littering and malicious destruction of property for the May 27 incidents that spooked city residents and worried local witches, who feared the mutilations would sully their image...

I just have to chime in here... this is sullying the images of people who pitch woo like aura photography and crystal gazing. There's something of a sad commentary here.

Martinez said she suspects that the remains of the raccoon were left on her doorstep, and the doorstep of Angelica of the Angels on Central Avenue, because Martinez sought changes in the city’s psychic-licensing ordinance.

Martinez said she and other downtown psychics asked for the changes to limit the number of soothsayers who come to the city during the Halloween season. The interloping clairvoyants, she said, take business away from her shop and others that operate year-round.

“It has been a big problem, and I discussed it with a city councilor and (the city) began to make changes in the ordinance, and this (harassment) is probably a result,” Martinez said.

But the ordinance approved by the City Council doesn’t limit the number of psychics...

According to police, a day before the mutilated remains were found downtown, Graham and a man, though not Purtz, found a dead raccoon on Fort Avenue.

They took the dead animal back to Graham’s apartment, cut the raccoon open and beheaded it, according to the police report.

A day later, Graham and Purtz placed the remains into two bags and left the halves of the nocturnal critter on the businesses’ doorsteps, police said.

Graham and Purtz each face charges of littering and malicious destruction of property. Graham faces an additional charge of witness intimidation for threatening Watson not to report the incident to police, according to the police report...

In an old advertisement for the Web site PsychicsForHire.com, Graham touted her clairvoyance and ability to “dig up skeletons in the closet.”

Graham, who called herself a high priestess of the Salem Witches, charged a rate of $3.99 per minute for her services.

You know, I'm not sure how much I can add to this. It reminds me of my own embarrassingly foolish days involevd with the "occult community" and the many "magical wars" that went on therein.

As much as anything, though, one has to wonder where people get it into their heads to do these kinds of things. Obviously, no note was left with the mutilated animal to explain why the thing was being left. That opens up the possibility that the "witches" did this not as a threat but as a curse/spell/hex/etc. I don't know that for certain, but this is the kind of thing that goes on in such "magical wars," and I see no reason to rule out the possibility. A reasonable person would then ask, "Why would anyone think that leaving bags of mutilated raccoon on somebody's doorstep could have an effect upon them other than the obvious ones?"

That's a really good question, but the hypothetical querent is rational. We certainly can't assume that's the case with those who perpetrated the act, themselves "high priestesses" and "witches" and adherents to magical thinking which, by definition, is not rational. Nor can we assume rationality of the psychics who were targeted, particularly if they believe in the superstition that they peddle.

This is where woo leads when it gets nasty, in essence. It could be worse; the woo used in this case is far less harmful than, say, a shotgun blast... but rationality flying out the window could lead there as well. In this case, however, it didn't. It was expressed in a form as ineffectual as the products of magical thought in general. In this case, that's a good thing.

On the other hand, imagine walking into your doctor's office and telling him about your sharp chest pains and being told to swing a dead cat over your head in a graveyard at midnight. Why not? If one can buy into crystal gazing and aura photography and homeopathy and raccoon viscera in paper bags, one should certainly be comfortable with such a treatment. There's every bit as much evidence for the effectiveness of dead cat swinging in treating heart disease as there is for all of those other things.

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First Baby Raccoons of the Season, and Probably Our Last

At 6:45 this morning, LL and I saw the first of this year's baby raccoons. It was Little Mama who brought them by. She has three magnificently cute cubs. They didn't come up on the deck and so I didn't get pictures of them; they instead huddled in a pile at the base of the hickory tree about fifteen feet away. They did eventually approach the deck but couldn't figure out how to climb up, so they instead called their mother back. The call of baby raccoons is hard to describe; it's a sort of cooing noise combined with the sound of a sad puppy. Little Mama responded instantly, and LL and I watched as the lot of them trundled back into the brush.

There are few things in the world cuter than baby raccoons, I have decided. Think kittens with bushy, ringed tails and wearing black bandit masks with fur that looks like its charged with static electricity and you've got the general idea.

I'm glad that we got to see them, though it prompted a comment shared by LL and I about how sad we are that we won't get to watch them grow up as we have the cubs of the last two seasons. We leave here in just five more days, today included. Despite their being wild animals — a fact that we do keep in mind in our daily interactions with the beasts — the raccoons have become like extended family. Some of them have learned a few words, including "cookie." We've watched two generations grow up and while we don't come in physical contact with them (one should not pet wild animals for any number of reasons), we've spent a good deal of time interacting in every other way. It's sad to think that after Saturday, these many wild creatures with whom we have established mutual trust will no longer be part of our lives.

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'Coon Cam

What a face!

Littlefluff was the runt of her litter last year. She's about half the size of the other raccoons her age. She's also incredibly hyperactive and loves to play with her food.

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Another Great Mystery Solved

We've all wondered how a raccoon would eat a hardboiled egg. It's been one of the burning questions plaguing mankind since the dawn of time.

I am happy to report that this is a puzzle no longer. Recent research, conducted about 10 minutes ago, reveals the mysterious and sublime process.

The raccoon first turns the egg upright and holds it around the middle. It then bites the little end off the egg and shoves its claws inside, just under the shell, thereafter pulling the egg apart lengthwise. Its then a simple matter to hunch down, use one paw to hold onto the shell, and scrape the good parts out with its teeth.

Having watched raccoons eagerly devour chicken bones on a number of occasions, I would have thought they'd eat the shell, too. Apparently not; this subject, at least, was quite nimble and hardly ate any of it but got nearly all of the egg white.

I wonder if I can publish this.

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Massachusetts Musings

LL receiving a bunch of maps and info about Massachusetts in the mail today. Technically, they were addressed to Tycho, but he's unlikely to read any of it. It's marketing stuff, sure... and it worked. Looking over the book of events and attractions generated a bit of excitement. We also pinpointed the place we'll be living on the map of Worcester, and it seems quite a good location. There are a couple of old cemeteries nearby (I'm a historic cemetery buff), restaurants, etc. The MBTA station is either a long walk or short bus ride away, and that can take us to either Boston or Providence and points in between. There's so much there that will be accessible to us, much more than there is now. We're seriously looking forward to the change of venues.

Planning for the move is going well enough. Our car needs work, of course. A tune-up, a couple of new tires, and the brakes are all necessities, as is replacing the left tail light, which decided to go out yesterday. On the other hand, I've now raised about $2000 in eBay sales and, if all goes well, I've found a buyer for the balance of my book collection, and that would bring in better than $4500 more. We'd be in very good shape indeed if that works out, so my fingers are crossed. LL will be getting a couple of paychecks from teaching and her graduate assistantship, too. Everything is going to work out fine, I think. The plan is that LL will drive the car and I'll drive the truck. We'll each have a set of directions and drive about 400 miles each day, meeting at a motel at the end. We'll have cell phones to keep in touch should any problems arise.

I wish we could take a couple of the raccoons with us. We're going to miss them a great deal. Strange as it may sound, we've gotten to be good friends over the past two years. We've gotten used to their company. There's at least one here starting at 2:00 every afternoon until about 7:00 the next morning. It's going to be odd not having them around anymore.

But... wow, Boston. We can take a train to Fenway and root for the Yankees when they're in town. I guess I'd better make sure my insurance is paid up before that!

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Things to Do Around the House

While I'm waiting for school to start, I've taken up little projects around the house. For example, I'm teaching this raccoon to sing opera:

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