There was a bit of a mix up over the blog carnival Tangled Bank, which was supposed to appear last week, while its organizer was swanning around the Galapagos, presumably with other things on his mind. Well it is up now, with a couple of treats. One, alas, is broken. Tangled Banks says that “insects have been selecting hotter hot peppers for some time now. Andrew Bernardin at the Evolving Mind blog points out that “Mexican Food was Not Intelligently Designed.†Alas, Andrew’s blog at Evolving Mind seems to be a bit broken. And it is neat; the heat in chillies protects them from a fungus that destroys the seeds, but is ignored by birds, who disperse the seeds. My question: do birds detect chilli heat, but fail to be put off by it? Or are they completely oblivious to its presence? I mean, could you teach a bird to distinguish seed with chilli from seed without chilli?
The other treat is GrrlScientist, who takes that gray horse paper we blogged a while ago and really goes to town on it, complete with photos, graphs, and movie allusions.