I love the Discovery Channel
Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 1:52 pmMale crayfish engage in ritualised fights that go through three phases, only in the last, and rarely reached, of which do they attempt to cause each other real harm. To study the effect of spectatorship on other males, researchers at Bowling Green State University set up fights with one crayfish watching. However, afterwards, far from being sharpened up for the old ultraviolence, they didn’t fight as well as crayfish who hadn’t watched a fight. The biologists-turned-Don Kings speculated that this may be because they (the crayfish, that is) pee themselves whilst viewing the combat and thus waste their fightin’ chemicals, or possibly just get confused. Moreover, a study on Australian yabby crayfish has shown that males seem to remember each other’s faces, preferring to fight opponents they’ve taken on before, presumably because they know more about them (which suggests an even greater capacity to remember stuff) - or maybe crayfish are just the kind to hold grudges. In any case, crayfish now have to go on my list of things I’ll think twice about before eating.
In other news, my poem “The Crone Meets Her Son (on a battlefield)”, published in Electric Velocipede #13, has been nominated for a Rhysling Award (short poem). Which is very unexpected, and very nice.
March 6th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
“pee themselves whilst viewing the combat and thus waste their fightin’ chemicals, or possibly just get confused. ”
I know I get confused after peeing all the time.
March 6th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Have the nominees been posted anywhere, or did they contact you directly?
March 7th, 2008 at 4:21 am
Tessa - I usually find that peeing has a mildly reductive effect on confusion… it’s like, “Right, I peed. At least that’s settled.”
John - I asked, and they say the list of nominees should be appearing on the SFPA web site (http://www.sfpoetry.com/) in about a week or so. Thanks for publishing the poem!
March 8th, 2008 at 2:49 am
Congratulations on the nomination!
March 8th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Thanks! And thanks to the person who nominated me, too. A mysterious benefactor!
March 8th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
And to think, I was about to go to that university.
March 8th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
But it looks like a cool university. You can major in crayfish sociology!