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How did humankind tame the wolf?
CULTURELAB
Salt and battery From fainting goats to paralysis, the secrets of bioelectricity are riveting, if hard to grasp Because we lack copper wiring, electricity is transferred from cell to cell via ions. Negatively and positively charged ions of potassium, sodium and calcium move in and out of cells through dedicated channels. Explaining this in detail is not simple and Ashcroft falls back on the kind of language more often found in a biochemistry textbook. Happily, her anecdotes about the strange consequences of
The Spark of Life by Frances Ashcroft, Allen Lane/W. W. Norton, £20/$28.95
ELECTRICITY controls our bodies. Every impulse, from those that keep our hearts beating to those that move my fingers across this keyboard, is sent from brain to muscles as an electrical charge. Frances Ashcroft, a physiologist at the University of Oxford who specialises in ion channels, attempts to explain the body electric in The Spark of Life. She has a stock of good tales for the reader, but telling a “story about a special kind of protein – the ion channel” turns out to be far from easy. The science of electricity in the body is dauntingly complex.
MICHAEL BURGESS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Reviewed by Jonathan Beard
In charge: our hearts wouldn’t beat without the help of ion channels
Dog’s best friend How the Dog Became the Dog by Mark Derr, Gerald Duckworth/ Overlook, £18.99/$26.95 Reviewed by Brian Switek
HUMANS persist in trying to subdue nature, and there is perhaps no creature that we have so totally dominated as the dog. From an ancestral grey wolf stock, we have created myriad canines for seemingly every occasion – from muscular mastiffs that guard 46 | NewScientist | 30 June 2012
homes, to pugs and other breeds that have been so drastically modified that they can’t even be born without human intervention. When did the strange relationship between humans and dogs begin? According to journalist Mark Derr in How the Dog Became the Dog, prehistoric wolves had an inner pet just waiting to be drawn out by the right kind of human. Contrary to the popular notion that dogs are the descendants of trashgrubbing wolves that were friendly or naive enough to strike up an association with ancient people, Derr contends that wolves
electric currents, with disastrous disrupting these flows do help to results for anyone nearby. compensate. Take the fainting Ashcroft also tackles the goats: a defect in their chloride effects of drugs and poisons on ion channel can keep their the function of ion channels. muscles “turned on” for minutes For example, curare, a poison at a time, causing them to spasm or cramp, so the hapless creatures initially used by indigenous South Americans to induce collapse on their sides. The paralysis, works by blocking ion disorder, myotonia congenita, channels, preventing messages has a similar effect in people. Her long chapter on electric fish reaching the muscles. The way local and general anaesthetics is perhaps the most fascinating. work, however, is still mostly a Discovered in the tropics in 1800 by naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, electric “The way anaesthetics eels – actually knifefish – were the work is still mostly a mystery, despite their first animals found to produce electricity. Ashcroft explains how effective medical use” the structure of their electric mystery, despite more than a organs mirrors that of the first century of increasingly effective batteries, and how the animals build up and then discharge their medical use. Ashcroft takes us through the associated brain function, showing that even with MRI scanners we cannot pinpoint when and where in the brain anaesthetics extinguish consciousness. She provides insight into the workings of the heart, as well as pacemakers and defibrillators, and some clues to how LSD produces hallucinations. Illuminating though these passages are, Ashcroft’s aim of explaining the precise nature of how ion channels work still remains elusive. n
and Pleistocene Homo sapiens struck up a mutually beneficial relationship as soon as the two species met in prehistoric Eurasia. In time, socialised wolves that merely followed humans on hunts became what Derr calls “dogwolves”, before ultimately being modified into the various domestic breeds we know today. Derr’s narrative lopes a little lightly over the scant fossil evidence and confusing genetic trail of the earliest dogs. The difference between wolf and dog doesn’t seem so much anatomical or genetic as the result of a change in status that came with domestication, and that hasn’t
been preserved in the fossil record. Derr tries to fill in some of the substantial gaps with fictional passages of people and their canid companions through history, but these momentary distractions from what is unknown just serve to confound the book’s central question. Derr’s wandering, circuitous story of dog origins only highlights how much we have yet to learn about our curious relationship with the domesticated, carnivorous beasts we have invited into our homes. n Brian Switek is the author of Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature
Salt and battery From fainting goats to paralysis, the secrets of bioelectricity are riveting, if hard to grasp Because we lack copper wiring, electricity is transferred from cell to cell via ions. Negatively and positively charged ions of potassium, sodium and calcium move in and out of cells through dedicated channels. Explaining this in detail is not simple and Ashcroft falls back on the kind of language more often found in a biochemistry textbook. Happily, her anecdotes about the strange consequences of
The Spark of Life by Frances Ashcroft, Allen Lane/W. W. Norton, £20/$28.95
ELECTRICITY controls our bodies. Every impulse, from those that keep our hearts beating to those that move my fingers across this keyboard, is sent from brain to muscles as an electrical charge. Frances Ashcroft, a physiologist at the University of Oxford who specialises in ion channels, attempts to explain the body electric in The Spark of Life. She has a stock of good tales for the reader, but telling a “story about a special kind of protein – the ion channel” turns out to be far from easy. The science of electricity in the body is dauntingly complex.
MICHAEL BURGESS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Reviewed by Jonathan Beard
In charge: our hearts wouldn’t beat without the help of ion channels
Dog’s best friend How the Dog Became the Dog by Mark Derr, Gerald Duckworth/ Overlook, £18.99/$26.95 Reviewed by Brian Switek
HUMANS persist in trying to subdue nature, and there is perhaps no creature that we have so totally dominated as the dog. From an ancestral grey wolf stock, we have created myriad canines for seemingly every occasion – from muscular mastiffs that guard 46 | NewScientist | 30 June 2012
homes, to pugs and other breeds that have been so drastically modified that they can’t even be born without human intervention. When did the strange relationship between humans and dogs begin? According to journalist Mark Derr in How the Dog Became the Dog, prehistoric wolves had an inner pet just waiting to be drawn out by the right kind of human. Contrary to the popular notion that dogs are the descendants of trashgrubbing wolves that were friendly or naive enough to strike up an association with ancient people, Derr contends that wolves
electric currents, with disastrous disrupting these flows do help to results for anyone nearby. compensate. Take the fainting Ashcroft also tackles the goats: a defect in their chloride effects of drugs and poisons on ion channel can keep their the function of ion channels. muscles “turned on” for minutes For example, curare, a poison at a time, causing them to spasm or cramp, so the hapless creatures initially used by indigenous South Americans to induce collapse on their sides. The paralysis, works by blocking ion disorder, myotonia congenita, channels, preventing messages has a similar effect in people. Her long chapter on electric fish reaching the muscles. The way local and general anaesthetics is perhaps the most fascinating. work, however, is still mostly a Discovered in the tropics in 1800 by naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, electric “The way anaesthetics eels – actually knifefish – were the work is still mostly a mystery, despite their first animals found to produce electricity. Ashcroft explains how effective medical use” the structure of their electric mystery, despite more than a organs mirrors that of the first century of increasingly effective batteries, and how the animals build up and then discharge their medical use. Ashcroft takes us through the associated brain function, showing that even with MRI scanners we cannot pinpoint when and where in the brain anaesthetics extinguish consciousness. She provides insight into the workings of the heart, as well as pacemakers and defibrillators, and some clues to how LSD produces hallucinations. Illuminating though these passages are, Ashcroft’s aim of explaining the precise nature of how ion channels work still remains elusive. n
and Pleistocene Homo sapiens struck up a mutually beneficial relationship as soon as the two species met in prehistoric Eurasia. In time, socialised wolves that merely followed humans on hunts became what Derr calls “dogwolves”, before ultimately being modified into the various domestic breeds we know today. Derr’s narrative lopes a little lightly over the scant fossil evidence and confusing genetic trail of the earliest dogs. The difference between wolf and dog doesn’t seem so much anatomical or genetic as the result of a change in status that came with domestication, and that hasn’t
been preserved in the fossil record. Derr tries to fill in some of the substantial gaps with fictional passages of people and their canid companions through history, but these momentary distractions from what is unknown just serve to confound the book’s central question. Derr’s wandering, circuitous story of dog origins only highlights how much we have yet to learn about our curious relationship with the domesticated, carnivorous beasts we have invited into our homes. n Brian Switek is the author of Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature