Why Do Pirates Love Parrots? (30 page)

W
hen we answered this Imponderable in
Are Lobsters Ambidextrous?
almost fifteen years ago, we noted that cats are much less “plastic” genetically—it was far harder to change the size and shape of cats through selective breeding than dogs. We also quoted cat fanciers who claimed that there was little demand for miniature cats.

Times have changed. While it’s sometimes hard to believe that a Saint Bernard and a Chihuahua are both from the same planet, let alone relatives, the variances between average-sized and “miniature” cats is relatively small. Perhaps the most popular of the novelty breeds is the “munchkin.” A Louisiana woman, Sandra Hochenedel, found a female cat with extremely short legs living under her truck in the early 1980s. Hochenedel discovered that the cat, whom she named Blackberry, was pregnant, and in her first and subsequent litters, Blackberry passed along the short-legged trait to about half of her offspring. Munchkins seem able to run and climb adequately, but don’t have the jumping ability of their long-legged peers. Another natural breed is the Singapura, known as a “drain cat” in its native land (they lived in the culverts of Singapore)—healthy female Singapuras grow to only four to six pounds. Several American breeders specialize in “downsizing” standard popular breeds, such as Persians and Siamese.

We aren’t yet at the stage where Paris Hilton is carrying a “teacup cat” into nightclubs, but in another fifteen years, we’re betting that a profusion of miniature cats is more likely than Paris Hilton still gracing the covers of tabloids.

E
ver since we posed this Frustable in
Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses?
, we’ve heard from readers, especially around Christmas time. A few diehards claim to love the stuff, but we will stand by the sentiments we expressed in
Do Penguins Have Knees?
: If people really liked fruitcake, wouldn’t it be offered in restaurants? One perceptive reader, Fred Steinberg, compared fruitcakes to electric knives and we responded:

One impediment has loomed over the fruitcake world, though, and has prevented fruitcakes from being marketed as a healthy treat. In its wisdom, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has classified fruitcake as a “heavy cake,” in the same category as cheesecake and pineapple upside-down cake. The suggested serving size for heavy cakes is a hefty 125 grams, more than one-quarter pound.

The problem is that packaged fruitcake marketers are unhappy having to indicate that a single serving of their product “weighs in” at 500 calories or more. The FDA argues that its job is to determine what the “amount customarily consumed” would be. While we might argue that the customary size consumed by sane Homo sapiens is zero, the fruitcake manufacturers are lobbying for one ounce, less than one-quarter of the current size. In a letter to the FDA, Geoffrey J. Crowley, president of The Ya-Hoo Baking Co., wrote:

While we would guess that the calorie count on labels is the least of the fruitcake industry’s problem expanding its market, we’ll have to agree that when we think of the words “quarter-pounder,” fruitcake isn’t what pops into our mind.

We consider ourselves to be on Verdict Watch at Imponderables Central, and will let you know the ruling on this “weighty” subject.

I
n
Do Elephants Jump?
, we observed that most snoring is caused by some form of blockage of airflow during breathing. Older folks are subject to more obstructions because as we age, the muscles in the throat and mouth become flabby and protrude, blocking airflow.

All kinds of devices have been marketed to promote increased airflow in the throat. But
BMJ
(the
British Medical Journal
), in a February 4, 2006 story, announced an unlikely savior had surfaced: the Australian didgeridoo (didgeridoos, wind instruments, date back to ancient times, and were fashioned by aboriginal Australians out of tree trunks hollowed out by termites). “AS,” a didgeridoo teacher, told researchers that some of his students reported decreased snoring and sleep apnea symptoms, and less daytime sleepiness, to boot. Swiss researchers decided to put twenty-five volunteers on a didgeridoorific regime, first learning proper playing techniques, and then practicing at least twenty minutes a day for a minimum of five times a week.

The results? Compared to a control group of Swiss deprived of didgeridoo playing, the folks who blew the didgeridoo did not experience increased sleep, but snored less, suffered less from sleep apnea, and felt considerably less sleepy during the day. And in good news for their relationships, the partners of the didgeridoo players reported that the snoring problem was ameliorated. Noticeably missing from the study, however, was any indication of how many partners were disturbed by the didgeridoo playing.

The researchers are not claiming that a musical instrument is a panacea for snoring problems, but the study indicates that the deterioration of muscles and tissues in the throat is not inevitable with aging.

J
ust about the same time we were writing the answer to this Imponderable in
Do Elephants Jump?
, the
Boston Globe
’s “The Word” columnist, Jan Freeman, was responding to the same question from a reader, who also wondered if “jimmy” had racist overtones. Like us, her research led her to Just Born, the candy company that many believe first made the candy. As we did, she also interviewed the current CEO, Russ Born, who reiterated that the confection was named after Jimmy Bartholomew, who manned the machine that manufactured the item for Just Born.

But Freeman also quoted literary critic and etymologist John Ciardi, who insisted in a 1986 National Public Radio commentary that the word “jimmies” was at least fifteen years older: “From the time I was able to run to the local ice cream store clutching my first nickel, which must have been around 1922, no ice cream cone was worth having unless it was liberally sprinkled with jimmies.”

We heard from several readers in the Boston area arguing that jimmies were given their name in Beantown and were named after the Jimmy Fund, a charity that raises money to fight cancer, especially pediatric cancer. This theory doesn’t hold water, as the Jimmy Fund started in 1948, and “jimmies” was already commonly used in the mid-Atlantic and New England areas. The confusion stems, most likely, from the fact that Brigham’s, one of Boston’s most popular ice cream purveyors, raised money for the Jimmy Fund by donating proceeds from jimmies sales to the charity. And where did Brigham’s buy its jimmies? Just Born, of course! The Jimmy Fund derived its name not from the ice cream supplement, but from its first poster boy, a twelve-year-old cancer patient, Einar Gustafson, who was rechristened “Jimmy” for fund-raising purposes.

In
Do Elephants Jump?
, we noted that we could find no legitimate reason to think that the word “jimmy” had any racist connotation, and speculated that perhaps the belief was spawned by the confection’s dark brown color. In places with both rainbow-colored and dark brown candies, the former are usually called “sprinkles” and the latter “jimmies.” What we failed to note was that especially in the late twentieth century, “jimmy” became a black slang term for penis and condom. We still have found no evidence at all that “jimmy” is at all related to Jim Crow.

But we did stumble upon another piece of jimmy trivia. In the Netherlands, jimmies liberally slathered on buttered toast are a popular item. Unlike our jimmies, the Dutch use real chocolate, and you can buy milk chocolate
hagelslag
(literally, “hailstorm”) or dark
hagelslag.
It may be yet another Imponderable why the Dutch think hail is hot dog–shaped while we think hail is cylindrical.

O
ur hero, psychologist Robert Provine, was just about the only person studying the contagiousness of yawning when we explored this Imponderable in
When Do Fish Sleep?
Provine punctured many of the myths about the causes of yawning, such as that it was caused by a lack of oxygen or an overabundance of carbon dioxide, and documented what most of us suspected—watching others yawn, listening to others yawn, thinking about yawns, and yes, reading about yawns—all lead to yawning. Yawning is as contagious as laughter or the chicken pox. We’re betting you are yawning right now. If you aren’t, a yawn will probably creep up on you before you finish this entry.

When it came time to theorize about
why
yawning is contagious, Provine could only speculate. His theory—that yawning might have been a way for primitive man to regulate the social interactions of groups living together, such as synchronizing sleep schedules in communal cave-dwellers—made a lot of sense, but it was impossible to prove.

In the last few years, though, there has been an explosion of research on yawning contagion, in particular from cognitive researchers. Drexel University psychologist Dr. Steven Platek and his team of researchers have tried to figure out what brain and neural pathways are involved in contagious yawning. They hooked up volunteers to an MRI to compare how subjects’ brain substrates behaved when exhibiting contagious yawning versus laughing and a “neutral expressive condition.” Platek and team administered several standard psychological tests, and found that those subjects who did exhibit contagious yawning showed lower levels of schizotypal symptoms and higher levels of “mental state attribution,” which Platek defines as “the ability to inferentially model the mental states of others.” Contagious yawners could recognize their own faces faster when their images were flashed on a computer monitor. Yawners also demonstrated more empathy for others.

Although their most recent study published in 2005 in
Cognitive Brain Research
isn’t exactly beach reading (“This contrast revealed significant [FDR-corrected P < 0.01] activation in bilateral posterior cingulated [BA 31] and precuneus [BA 23] and bilateral thalamus and parahippocampal gyrus [BA 30]…”), the conclusion was clear that parts of the brain definitely acted differently when yawning spontaneously. The superior face-recognition skills of the yawners might be explained by the activation of the posterior cingulate/precuneus region of the brain, which helps process our personal memories.

Platek and his colleagues hypothesize that contagious yawning may be a primitive way for us to model our behaviors after others, albeit a totally unconscious one. Certainly, other types of animals engage in this kind of modeling behavior. When one bird of a resting flock suddenly takes wing, and the others follow, it’s likely that they don’t know the cause of the threat that alarmed the first bird—but imitation is a valuable survival tactic in this case. Schizophrenics and autistics, who often lack the ability to pick up social clues and score low on empathy scales, rarely yawn contagiously. Babies, who any parent can tell you, have—to put it kindly—undeveloped powers of empathy, resist yawning contagiously.

While some psychologists are poking and prodding humans, other scientists are exploring yawning behavior in other animals. Many other species of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles yawn. But as far as we know, the chimpanzee is the only other creature that participates in human-like contagious yawning. James Anderson, a psychologist from the University of Stirling, in Scotland, along with two Japanese colleagues, showed six female adult chimpanzees videotapes of other chimps yawning as well as other videos of chimps with open mouths who were not yawning. Two of the six subjects yawned significantly more (more than double the amount) when shown yawning videos (none yawned more when seeing videos of nonyawners). Although obviously a small sample, the one-third “success” rate is in line with—and only slightly less than—the percentage of humans that Provine and Platek found were contagious yawners. In another respect, chimps proved to be like humans: Three infants were with their mothers, and none of them yawned, even though they were watching the same videos and saw their mothers yawning.

The chimp studies excite researchers in the field because none of the other primates exhibit contagious yawning, and so far, only the chimpanzee has displayed what psychologists would describe as empathetic behavior. (Primatologist Frans de Waal’s book,
Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals
is a good place to start when exploring this topic.) Who knows? Maybe some day, this research into contagious yawning might unlock the mysteries, or at least the neurological underpinning, of empathetic and cooperative behavior.

Information about yawning is exploding on the web. Although it is a French site, Le Baillement (“The Yawn”) http:baillement.com has a plethora of excellent articles in English, as well. And to view more “Gaping Maws” in the animal kingdom then you can imagine, surf thee over to http://www.gapingmaws.com/index.html.