Do Elephants Jump? (31 page)
Read Do Elephants Jump? Online
Authors: David Feldman
I have a follow-up to the buffet plate question (“Why do many restaurants insist that you take a new plate every time you go through a buffet line?”) in
Astronauts
. Even in restaurants where you need to use a clean plate for a buffet, you can still refill your drinking glass at the soda dispenser. Now, even if you buy the “germs from mouth to fork to plate to serving utensil to next person” scenario, it seems
much
more likely that since you put your mouth directly onto a glass, you could easily put germs onto the little metal arm that you press to get the soda. In turn, when the next guy or girl puts his or her glass on the arm, you get the picture?”
Unfortunately, yes.
While we’re on the subject of gross dining practices, we might as well delve further into the subject of why pigs are roasted with apples in their mouths. In
How Does Aspirin Find a Headache?
we admitted we couldn’t track the origins of the practice. Jeannette Shelburne of West Hills, California, was researching Celtic mythology and found this passage in Barbara Walker’s
The Women’s Dictionary of Myths and Symbols:
Today’s Christmas pig with an apple in its mouth is the descendant of Norse Yule pig sacrifices, when the pig was offered to the gods at the turn of the year. Pigs were holy in Germanic and Irish mythology, both branches of the long-established Indo-Aryan worship of Vishnu as the boar god. The Celts associated pigs with the other world and believed them to be the most appropriate food for sacred feasts…. Magic apples of immortality or of death and rebirth are common to most Indo-European mythologies. The apples are usually dispensed by the goddess to a man, hero, ancestor, or god. The Norse goddess Idun kept all the gods alive with her magic apples.
What goes well with apples, magic or mundane? Cheese, of course! In
When Do Fish Sleep?
we noted that the only reason why American cheddar cheese is often orange is that consumers preferred the bright color. But reader Dan Chambers of Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, wrote:
Years ago, when cows were pastured, they sometimes had buttercups available as part of their diet. This gave the cheese a yellowish or orange color, and yielded a better flavor. Consumers noticed this and came to prefer the naturally colored cheese. It was a simple step to artificially color the cheese.
When we asked Dan for his source of information, he couldn’t find the newspaper article where he first read it, but found a Web site based in the Isle of Mull in Scotland where a farmer relates:
One of our prime concerns…is to make in the winter and be able to sell in the summer. Winter, do not forget, lasts longer up here — from October through March — and the winter cheeses tend to be much paler in comparison to the buttercup yellow of the summer ones.
In
What Are Hyenas Laughing At, Anyway?
we discussed why many guitar players keep long, dangling strings on their instruments. Patricia K. Larkins of Homewood, Illinois, seems to think we’re dumb, which isn’t exactly music to our ears:
I am amazed that you could find eight reasons for the length of string on a guitar and still not come close to the right one. It’s very simple: new strings stretch, and can slip off the post if they are cut too short too soon. That’s all. Some musicians are particularly heavy-handed and are always breaking strings, so their strings never get old enough to cut off. I suppose that accounts for some copycats who think you should never cut the strings, but that’s silly.
They should be cut as soon as they stop stretching because of the white noise they produce. Incidentally, a small piece of paper slipped under the strings just above the neck will reduce white noise and make your instrument sound much better.
All logical. But none of this explains the expanse of “extra” string on so many guitars, more than will ever be necessary.
Michele Myhaver’s son plays the cello, and she has often pondered the mystery of why there aren’t more left-handed string players. It’s time to change the paradigm, according to contrarian Michele:
After watching my son, a lefty, learn the cello and many other people play myriad stringed instruments, I came to the conclusion that all stringed instruments are made for left-handed people. Take into consideration that a significant number of creative people are left-handed and that musicians are creative, and I think you will begin to see my logic.
The more complicated action in playing a stringed instrument is done with the left hand (i.e., compressing the strings and vibrating them for vibrato). All the right hand is doing is busily sawing away from the bow, a much simpler and repetitive motion. My son caught on more quickly to much more complicated fingering than any of his classmates because he had more control over his left hand.
In a world where the majority is right-handed and most lefties have a chip on their shoulder about being odd man out, the assumption is that all things were developed for righties. But I think this is a case in which the lefties may have had their way from the beginning, and by switching instruments around are actually making life more difficult for themselves instead of easier.
An ingenious theory, Michele, but there’s one obvious flaw: if what you say is true, why aren’t there a disproportionately large rather than small percentage of left-handed string players?
If lefties suffer discrimination, don’t all humans compared to our “best friends”? Dogs have, well, a dog’s life, as Jeff H. Johannsen of Sunnyvale, California, wrote in response to our foray into canine dental hygiene:
Why don’t dogs get cavities? It hardly seems fair: We brush and floss two or three times a day and still we have to subject ourselves to sadistic Laurence Olivier [cool
Marathon Man
reference] impersonators while dogs eat anything that’s lying about and never get a cavity. What’s the deal?
We consulted our family veterinarian, Dr. Irwin Fletcher, and received an answer so simple and obvious we felt more than a little embarrassed.
Dogs, both male and female, have a gland that secretes a substance that is in many ways the chemical equivalent of fluoride. The gland is located directly below the anus. When your pet seems to be, er, polishing the family jewels, he is actually practicing good dental hygiene.
Our guess is that at best, the dog is multitasking, but who are we to argue about licking dogs when we have biting insects to discuss? In
What Are Hyenas Laughing At, Anyway?
we quoted entomologists who believe that mosquitoes bite some people more than others because they prefer the smell of some humans to others. Wei-Hwa Huang, a longtime correspondent from Mountain View, California, thinks he has narrowed down their preferences:
Mosquitoes seem to be more attracted to distinctly human odor. Right after a shower, when you’ve washed all that dust and grime off yourself, mosquitoes are more likely to bite you because they can detect you more. Not to advocate avoiding baths, but in the past, when I’ve been with my sister, mosquitoes have tended to bite the one of us that took a shower last.
Just what we were looking for — another excuse to give folks for
not
using soap and water. Please send all complaints to Wei-Hwa!
Another olfactory issue inspired Elliot Ofsowitz of Sarasota, Florida, to write. He read our discussion of why snakes dart out their tongues in
Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?
We mentioned that snakes use their tongues as a tool for smelling and hearing as well as tasting. Ofsowitz focuses on the olfactory and, in particular, why snakes’ tongues are forked:
Recent research and study on why most snakes have a forked tongue reveals that the snake’s tongue picks up odor particles in the air and brings them into its mouth where, on the roof of its mouth the odor particles are sampled — sort of like smelling, only more accurate and precise. The fork in the tongue allows a differentiation between odors on the left and the right, sort of a 3-D smelling.
From pests to giants, another Californian, Jason Ly, wanted to add some information about why zoo elephants are often seen rocking from side to side. At the time he wrote the letter, Ly was a research assistant in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine, College of Medicine:
This type of rocking behavior is exhibited in both animals and humans and is known as stereotypy. Stereotypy is defined as the
excessive
production of one type of motor act, or mental state, which necessarily results in repetition that is deemed as “abnormal” behavior. This can be seen as the rocking back-and-forth motion often displayed by the mentally retarded, repetitive hand waving or flapping, and repetitive vocal sounds.
One probable cause of stereotypy is confinement. Some animals confined in small enclosures develop “caged stereotypies.” These behaviors usually include rocking and locomotion, such as pacing up and down one part of the enclosure. This type of behavior can be broken by providing the animal with a big enclosure. People who reside most of their lives in institutions or within the confinement of prison exhibit a number of abnormal behaviors, many of which are repetitive. Although such behaviors are abnormal in form, this is a normal response to an abnormal environment.
Speaking of abnormal behavior, we pondered why Wayne Gretzky used to tuck in his hockey shirt. David Maxham shot us an e-mail:
The reason he tucked in his jersey, and only on one side, was so that when he was playing, the shirt wouldn’t get in the way on the side that the stick was carried. The source of information comes from the Great One himself in his autobiography.
Great? Well, isn’t it great that our Imponderable, “Why Are There No Purple Christmas Lights?” is moot? We received several purple Christmas light sightings. Based on this report from Robert Sherry of Mounds View, Minnesota, we have a feeling that our write-up in
When Did Wild Poodles Roam the Earth?
is likely to become “un-moot” sooner rather than later:
There goes another theory shot to hell. There are purple Christmas lights, whole strings of them. More likely there
were
— I don’t think they’ll return next year.
Target Stores carried strings of seventy pear lights labeled purple for this past Christmas season. Who knows if they were really purple or violet. I never saw them lit and expect very few others did, either.
The after-Christmas sale, Target had a large quantity of purple lights available and even at 50 percent off, customers were hardly loading their carts with them. Purple lights are not without some redeeming social value — humor! I saw a couple looking at them, the husband trying to persuade the wife they were a good deal. She didn’t say a word, and gave him the look — you know the one — “Am I going to have to put you in a home
already
?”
The lights didn’t appear this year. Who knows? Maybe we’ll have pink lights next year?
Now as reluctant as we are to criticize our readers, it seems to us that some of their letters have a personal agenda. Matt Leveillee wrote to us all the way from Beijing, China:
I would like a free copy of your book
How to Win at Just About Everything,
because I’m running out of snappy comebacks to stupid questions. I can’t remember ever giving up on life — giving up is for losers. So I don’t consider myself to be a loser.
I entered a contest on Easy FM, my favorite radio station, where you have to name your three favorite music superstars. If you do this, they promise you a box of Cadbury chocolates. Well, guess what? I never got any chocolates! So I wrote back to them and asked where my chocolates were. They wrote back, promising me free Wall’s ice cream. I never got the ice cream, either! I’m mad, but I still listen to Easy FM because it’s still my favorite radio station.
With this kind of loyalty to Easy FM, how can we not give Matt a free copy?
We do have a few readers who are loyal to us, though! In
How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch?
reader and musician Craig Kirkland helped us with a musical Imponderable. How did we repay his generosity? By misidentifying his instrument:
I was highly pleased to find a paragraph of my writing and an acknowledgment in the back, but my little nit is that I play viola, not cello! A minor detail, but I like to spread the gospel for my neglected and underappreciated instrument whenever possible, so of course I was a tad disappointed.
I’d love to have another violist read the book, see my contribution, and feel the rising pride that a violist did something right instead of glorifying the grunting and guttural cello. Any chance that this error could be corrected?
There sure is. But why do we get the feeling we’ll be receiving a few letters from cellists real soon?
We’re willing to risk the wrath of cellists, but there’s one group we don’t want to tangle with — librarians! Laura Mae Leach of Moreno Valley, California, wrote:
I have just finished reading
How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch?
and have enjoyed it very much, just as I have the previous books.
I do have one quibble. In your preface, you state: “Our job is to track down the mysteries of everyday life that you can’t answer by consulting reference books.” As a public librarian, I must mention that even the question “Do Penguins Have Knees?” can be answered from several books at any self-respecting library. Of course, your answers are quite a bit more fun to read than most reference books, but I wish you would not mislead your readers this way. Now that many librarians are trained to navigate the Internet, libraries are an even greater source of answers to life’s imponderable mysteries.