Learn about linguistic “laws” that also show up in nature; and how two California condors were born without fathers. Linguistic "laws" like Zipf’s law of abbreviation and Menzerath’s law also show up in biology, geography, and more by Grant Currin Jonny Thomson. (2021, October 22). The unknown linguistic laws that apply to all life. Big Think; Big Think. https://bigthink.com/life/linguistic-laws-biology/ Semple, S., Ferrer-i-Cancho, R., & Gustison, M. L. (2021). Linguistic laws in biology. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2021.08.012 Two condor chicks were born from parthenogenesis, something we've never seen before by Cameron Duke Harrison, S. (2021, October 28). California Condors Are Capable of Asexual Reproduction. Wired; WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/california-condors-are-capable-of-asexual-reproduction/ Ryder, O. A., Thomas, S., Judson, J. M., Romanov, M. N., Dandekar, S., Papp, J. C., Sidak-Loftis, L. C., Walker, K., Stalis, I. H., Mace, M., Steiner, C. C., & Chemnick, L. G. (2021). Facultative Parthenogenesis in California Condors. Journal of Heredity. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhered/esab052 San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Conservation Scientists Report First Confirmed Hatchings of Two California Condor Chicks from Unfertilized Eggs. (2021). San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. https://sandiegozoowildlifealliance.org/pr/CondorParthenogenesis The Economist. (2021, October 30). No sex please, we’re condors. The Economist; The Economist. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/10/30/no-sex-please-were-condors Zhang, S. (2021, October 28). The Atlantic. The Atlantic; theatlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/california-condors-are-capable-virgin-birth/620517/ Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about linguistic “laws” that also show up in nature; and how two California condors were born without fathers.
Linguistic "laws" like Zipf’s law of abbreviation and Menzerath’s law also show up in biology, geography, and more by Grant Currin
Two condor chicks were born from parthenogenesis, something we've never seen before by Cameron Duke
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/linguistic-laws-in-nature-and-fatherless-condor-chicks-from-parthenogenesis
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about linguistic “laws” that show up in nature; and why it’s a big deal that two California condors were born without fathers.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Linguists have noticed that some patterns show up a lot in language. These patterns are so reliable that researchers call them linguistic laws. But here’s the weird part: in a recent review paper, biologists have pointed out that some of these patterns show up beyond human language. Here are three you should know about.
The first law concerns a language’s most common words. Take the most commonly used word in English: the. This word accounts for about 7 percent of all the words that English speakers say and write. Coming in second is “of,” which accounts for about 3.5 percent of words. That means the most common word is used about twice as often as the second-most common word. A linguist named George Kingsley Zipf [ZIPF or ZIFF] noticed nearly a hundred years ago that this pattern just keeps going. “The” is used about 3 times as often as the third most-used word, “and,” and so on.
This pattern shows up in nature, too. The vocal noises and gestures that non-human animals use to communicate follow a similar distribution. The size of proteins in some systems follow the pattern, and so the distribution of plants and animals in a particular space. Weird, right?
Zipf is behind the second law, too. It’s known as Zipf’s law of abbreviation, and it states that words that are used more frequently tend to be shorter. It’s true across hundreds of human languages, including signed languages. Of the 100 most common words in English, just 2 are longer than 5 letters. And the same is true in nature. Whether you’re talking about black-capped chickadees or Formosan macaques, the most common units of communication tend to be very short. Same goes in ecology. The most common species are almost always the smallest ones.
Finally, there’s Menzerath’s [MENZ-er-iths] law, which states that the longer a word or a sentence is, the shorter its constituent parts will tend to be. For instance, hippopotamus is a mammoth word, but it’s made of very short syllables. They’re 2.4 letters, on average. Compare that to a short word, like short. Its single syllable has more than twice as many letters. This pattern also shows up in birdsong, as well as many of the ways DNA and RNA are subdivided into smaller units. Likewise, the organisms that live in a place with higher biodiversity will tend to be smaller than those that live somewhere with lower biodiversity.
What does all this mean? That’s very hard to say. The biologists behind this study suggest that looking for similarities with other linguistic laws could give us a deeper understanding of biology. As for why these similarities exist in the first place… well. That’s going to need more study.
Recently, scientists at the San Diego Zoo realized something amazing. They found that they had two male California condors born without fathers. The weirdest thing? Although this is the first time asexual reproduction has been spotted in such an endangered species, it’s nothing new. Not even for birds.
The scientists only figured this out because the birds are endangered, and that means every detail about them is recorded. Like, really endangered: in 1987, there were as few as 22 California Condors in the wild. Three decades later, there are now over 500 birds in captive breeding programs.
Programs like these aren’t simple, and they require careful bookkeeping. It’s important to record which bird is bred with which so you can minimize inbreeding as much as possible.
Because they keep blood samples from the birds in the program, researchers can analyze the birds’ DNA — for example, to perform a paternity test. That’s what researchers were doing in 2017 when they made a surprising discovery: Two birds in the program born about a decade apart lacked genes that should have come from their supposed father.
And on closer examination, the researchers found that the birds lacked genes from any father. Instead of inheriting a set of genes from each parent, they just received two identical sets. This means each of the birds came from a single parent.
In animals, this is called facultative parthenogenesis. Facultative, in this case, means that while sexual reproduction is the preferred mode, parthenogenesis, or “virgin birth,” is possible, too. Scientists have seen this in a handful of species, like komodo dragons, sharks, cobras, and yes, even other birds.
As far as we know, facultative parthenogenesis only happens when females don’t have access to mates. But that wasn’t the case here. Both female condors, or dams, were being housed with plenty of eligible bird bachelors.
The problem with parthenogenesis is that it lacks a lot of the genetic advantages of sexual reproduction. Normally, if mom passes on a bad gene, then dad might donate a good one to cover it. Because of this, parthenotes [PAR-thin-otes], as they’re called, often don’t survive long. These condors, though, survived much longer than other known avian parthenotes — around 3 and 8 years, respectively — which makes this even more remarkable.
Parthenogenesis is said to be rare, but this evidence suggests that we have no idea how rare it actually is. Parthenotes are really difficult to spot without directly observing their genes or parentage. Now that scientists know this is possible, I’m sure they’ll be looking out for more California Clone-dors in the future.
CODY: And, not to be pedantic, but… yes, we know that a parthenote is distinct from a clone, because it is not genetically identical to its parent. However, the pun still stands.
CODY: Now, let’s recap what we learned today.
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CODY: Today’s writers were Grant Currin and Cameron Duke.
ASHLEY: Curiosity Daily is distributed by Discovery.
CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!