I’ve been either super busy or on holiday and low on creative energy, so although I have five or so blog posts frozen in my mind, I haven’t progressed them far enough yet. To whet your appetite, they include a review of the bird book AND exhibit “The Unfeathered Bird”, a summary of our recent PeerJ paper on croc lungs (Schachner, Hutchinson and Farmer; see here and also here), a rant on optimality in biomechanics, and a summary of a new and (to us) very exciting dinosaur paper that is very-soon-to-come, and something else that I can’t remember right now but it probably is totally awesome.
But here’s an interlude to keep you stocked on freezer-related imagery. We did an annual inventory and massive cleanup (and clean-out!) of all our freezers, throwing out some 300ish chickens and other odds and ends, and finally loading all cadaveric material I have into a single database, which I’ll share here shortly! It was a long time coming, and took ~6 people about 4 exhausting hours; last year’s attempt was just a holding maneuver by comparison. Here is how it went.
Freezersaurus gut contents being sorted. A cold drizzle was falling. It was not pleasant work.
Large specimens, especially horse legs and the remnants of an ostrich hind end or two, being moved into the walk-in freezer.
Research Fellow Jeff Rankin wrangles some horse legs into their freezer. I like this photo for his knowing smile as he stands amidst horse limbs spread akimbo.
Postdoc Heather Paxton helps sort out elephant foot tendons and “predigits” in their freezer. Nice view of our long line of chest freezers in action, too.
And, as an extra reward if you made it to the end, here’s what I was doing for the past week (check out my Twitter feed for more)– seeing amazing art and architecture and food and stuff in Rome, which is just dripping with wicked anatomical portrayals (e.g. in this image; click to embiggen and oggle the classical physiques).
First, the usual consideration of statistics: wow! I never expected the blog to be this successful! I’d sort of hoped as much, but for such a niche blog it was far from guaranteed in my mind. However, the initial response was overwhelming: 4210 hits in its first month, many of them on the first day!
Since then, although the usual number of blog views are around 100-200/day, there are now 76 blog followers, and a total of ~111,000 views! According to ImpactStory and Topsy, the blog has had 48 tweets (7 of them “Influential”), 111 Facebook likes, 105 Facebook comments, and 53 Facebook shares. Nice!
The biggest day was April 27, 2012: 10,564 views– ZOWIE! That was fun. More about that below. I’m amused that my very first post only has 85 views even to this date, but it didn’t really contain much.
Visitors tended to come from browser searches (23,243 hits!), in particular hunting for images of the feet/limbs of elephants, rhinos, giraffes and other megafauna (looks like my intended purpose worked– vets and other anatomists want this rare information!). Oddly, from a few of my tweets that got listed on my blog, “deepstaria enigmatica” (remember that craze?) became one of the most common terms (214 to date!) that brings people here via the intertubez. Giraffe anatomy and patella are also major sources of search strikes. Interesting!
But don’t dismiss the power of Facebook (4,399 oggles on WIJF total) versus the somewhat surprisingly smaller impact of Twitter (2,036 pings). I say surprising because I push the blog much harder on Twitter than anywhere else, but Facebook pages like Perez’s Veterinary Anatomy (>33,000 members/likes!) have done far more than my mere ~1,300 Twitter followers can. Other blogs like the Chinleana palaeo blog (1,008 palaeo-hits here) and the ubiquitous Pharyngula (791 athe-hits) have helped a lot, too– thanks to all those bloggers and science writers who have linked to my humble little blog!!!
Who are YOU? You mostly come from the USA and UK, of course, but Japan is 3rd on my visitors ranking, followed by Canada, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands. Russia: we want more of you, too. Monaco, Nauru, Tuvalu and Liechtenstein- you as well, please! North Korea, keep trying.
So this is all great; really great. I’m rather amazed.
Definitely the blog has succeeded in what I aimed: to present the fun, awesome, curious side of anatomy in all its raw glory, using the freezer as a common theme (although I’ve felt free to deviate from purely freezer-based science when it pleases me). And it has crystallized for me just how important and powerful a single picture of anatomy can be.
That is what this post emphasizes- the pictures of the year from this blog. Enjoy the walk down morphology lane.
MOST POPULAR POSTS AND PERIODS:
Certainly the post; indeed the single photograph; that stands out for this blog is that of the elephant with its guts spilling out, from my Inside Nature’s Giants post on 13 April (so it took 2 weeks to gather momentum before the views spilled out like so many bowels). In a single day I had thousands of visitors from Boing Boing, Metafilter, Reddit, Gizmodo, io9, pinterest (which still sends me a lot of hits daily), and more! So here once again is that beastly image:
Stunning emergence of The Guts
The post even got re-discovered by Reddit (the dreaded repost), leading to another surge. 24,330 views of the blog post so far!
A distant second to the elephant guts in terms of broad popularity was the “how thick is a rhino’s skin?” image; another Reddit favourite; with 4,719 views of the post from World Rhino Day 2012:
But also the “Animal: Inside Out” review did very well here (2,338 views to date), which was quite gratifying because I did a lot of detailed but enjoyable research for that one. It continues to bring people here, long after the NHM exhibit closed (it is now at Chicago’s excellent Museum of Science & Industry), which is quite cool.
Thanks to the poll results from last week, I’ll be doing more exhibition reviews like this– see below. My favourite image from that post is this: the bull (but don’t forget the camel, either):
Great exhibit. No bullshit.
Once we’re past those top 3 pages, things settle down to numerous posts with ~1000 or less views to date– highlights include the big rhinos and giant rhinos post:
Here are a few thumbnails of the greatest hits from those posts and some others– which do you remember and why?
…and we’ll never speak of the freezer-penis again…
Of course, there were the puzzles and mysteries, too. When I think of those, the image I think of most is this one; one of the first. Remember what it is?
I’ll be defrosting some new ways to puzzle you this year.
I also featured a lot of movies here- if you want to peruse them, they’re always on my Youtube account here– >22,000 views so far; not bad. One of my favourites is this one, of a pumpkin being smashed in slow motion:
Furthermore, in terms of effort writing and researching, my very detailed post on chimeras and Jenny Hannivers and such is very memorable for me, and more recently the Freezermas series was a huge undertaking– which gave me needed breaks but also soaked up a lot of time during some intensive grant-writing!
I predict that the pangolin post, in particular, will proceed to provoke a promiscuous proportion of people to pass by this blog.
But the WIJF blog has always been about including you too, my loyal Freezerinos– what about you? Please thaw out your memories of past posts and comment below on what sticks out as your favourites and why. I’d love to hear about it!
Eggs: full of bountiful promise and symbolism for the future.
THE FROZEN TUNDRA OF THE FUTURE:
A final duty for this post, heralded by my poll earlier, is for me to peer into my frosty crystal ball and report on the future of this blog:
As promised, it will continue for a year or more; as long as I feel I have something new to say and someone to tell it to.
The poll convinced me, as I’d hoped, to venture into more reviews of museum/other exhibits that I visit locally or abroad. Now and then I’ll also tackle a new or classic paper, good or bad, that tickles my anatomical fancy, and give my perspective on it. The mysteries and puzzles will continue; I was checking in that poll to see what the enjoyment level was, and it is clearly still reasonably high. I’ll continue presenting my own research here, especially when it’s quite anatomical (stay tuned for something new and VERY exciting in a few weeks!). As I’d hoped, hardly anyone found the self-promotional aspect of this blog (presenting my own research) to need downplaying, but I think over the coming year you’ll see more diversity of what is presented in terms of current research by anyone. I welcome suggestions of cool anatomical science to cover. I will try to cover mostly postcranial anatomy, since other blogs/Facebook pages already do such a good job with cranial morphology, and postcranial is much more my expertise.
But generally I will just keep on keepin’ on with what I’ve been doing!
Examples of what’s yet to come: some close encounters with my collection of specimens– the cast of characters that populate my freezers. What exactly is there, and what are the odd things I haven’t yet even mentioned here? I’ll also just grab some specimens and thaw and dissect them for the purpose of blogging it (live-tweeting too?), and going through some of the anatomical talking points for each. And much more! You may even see Cryogenics, Yetis, or Snowball Earth come up in features touching on the theme of freezerness, general science and critical thinking.
But– IMPRESSIVE IMAGERY, again, is what WIJF is truly about. It’s what I’m about, too- I became an anatomist partly because the visually arresting nature of anatomy grabbed me and won’t let go.
Here are some NEW images to ponder. One is… unpleasant; one is more abstractly technical; but both are about the bewitching power of anatomy. The coming year will run the gamut between these extremes:
Thanks, everyone here, for helping to make blogging fun for me and for others, and for enduring my self-indulgence – especially in this post – but I hope you enjoyed a ramble through this past year in my freezers.
We are coming up on the 1 year anniversary of this blog. I’ll discuss that anniversary and do a retrospective when the time comes; I have plans…
But first: Frosty feedback time! I want to involve current blog readers in guiding where this blog goes in the future. I renewed the URL for another year, so there will at least be that much more, and probably more than 1 year, since I have plenty of ideas and energy left and am enjoying this.
Let’s let the poll do the talking – and you, too! I hope for some discussion- please, your constructive criticism and suggestions! What do you honestly want more/less of, or totally new, within reason? Maybe I haven’t thought of everything I could do. In fact, I’m sure I haven’t.
3 choices at most per user (you don’t have to use all 3), please. And I think the poll will allow new entries (“Other”) to be added (EDIT: Hmm, doesn’t work the way I thought it did. If you do click “Other”, please add a comment below explaining it. Otherwise I don’t know what “other” means… EDIT EDIT– OK, if you’ve read this far, I will find out what you put in the “Other” box (it shows up in my WordPress admin stuff) but it isn’t made publically visible- see here if curious).
If there’s something you feel strongly about, such that 1 vote just doesn’t cut the mustard, speak out in the comments below. (Sorry, no, the bad jokes and terrible puns are here to stay )
Go for it! I’ll let the poll run for a week or so. Blog lurkers, please de-lurk! I want to hear from you, too.
A short(ish) post, but to me an important one. As I’ve mentioned here before, and still mean to write a detailed post on, I’m on a 1-year Royal Society Leverhulme Trust senior research fellowship (pause to breathe… long phrase there!) to study the mechanics and evolution of the kneecap (patella) in birds. Knees are very cool, and the patella is one of the coolest parts of the knee. My fellowship is aimed at returning to my roots, i.e. my PhD research on theropod dinosaur hindlimb evolution (anatomical and functional), to focus in great detail on just the patella (this, not this).
The patella is a mysterious structure: a sesamoid bone like I’ve argued elephant predigits are, and probably the best known sesamoid, but still quite enigmatic– especially in non-humans and most particularly in non-mammals. Why did it evolve three different times, at least? What mechanical/developmental environment encourages it to form? Why don’t some species have them? Does the presence of a patella tell us anything about posture, gait, or anything else? Why did no giant dinosaurs evolve patellae?
Anyway, I now have a related PhD studentship that I need a great EU/UK-based student to apply for, and I’m casting a wide net. It’s a very, very freezer-based PhD: imagine cutting up the knees of the frozen zoo of critters that I’ve shown on this blog already, to your heart’s content! And studying fossils, and doing histology (cool imaging techniques with RVC faculty Michael Doube and Andy Pitsillides, along with bone uber-guru Alan Boyde), and conducting experiments with real animals, and computer modelling both experimental and fossil data… this PhD has it all.
Here are the details. If you know anyone in the EU/UK looking for a good PhD that seems to fit the bill very well, send them my way please!
We now return you to your regularly scheduled frozen organisms… and there is a fun post coming tomorrow!
The knee of an emu from my freezer, showing the many muscles and other tissues that connect to or surround the patella. It’s complicated, and that makes for fun science!
With the help of Heinrich Mallison of dinosaurpalaeo and his student Sebastian Marpmann (now having finished the Great Giraffe Deconstruction), I did a quick cleanup and reorganization of the big walk-in freezer we’ve all come to know and love as Freezersaurus. This had to be done because some of the big stuff was becoming a terrible obstacle to cross in order to get anything from inside; cue health-and-safety paperwork nightmares. And yes, the ice penis is now gone. End of an era…
All photos henceforth by Doktor Mallison:
Emerging from Freezersaurus; most big stuff removed (note our giraffe's metacarpus trying to escape, on right side)
The big stuff. Emus, elephant feet, too much giraffe (metacarpus continuing to sidle away), and horse legs.
Carnage remaining inside; needed to be taken out gradually and reorganized, to make more space on floor for intermittent human presence (i.e. walking in).
Elephant feet, mystery giraffe pelvis, oh my!
For ME!?!? Aww shucks, you shouldn't have. Reorganizing the small stuff on shelves. PhD student Mike Pittman makes a guest appearance, delivering crocodile vertebrae.
Sebastian poses with giraffe buddy. We emphasize the Buddy System when dealing with Freezersaurus; she is a treacherous hostess. Note that Sebastian has also cunningly halted the abscondence of the giraffe metacarpus.
Job done! Farewell Freezersaurus! You look mahvelous! Wall of archosaurs on the left; wall of synapsids on the right, and sundry giant mammals in the middle.
And so we finished, and so you’ve now had a very intimate look at Freezersaurus too! Don’t you feel lucky?
I confess to hipsterism or some other fatal disorder; I’m no Luddite but I am hesitant to jump onto popular techy trends. (Although I was writing webpages for www.ucmp.berkeley.edu as early as 1995!) Back circa 2006, I maintained I’d never board the bandwagon and sign up for Facebook, then I relented. Even into the spring of 2011, I was a staunch non-Twitterer, then I caved.
But all along, I’ve maintained I have no great idea for a blog and don’t have time to blog. So here I am. Maybe both those things are still true! But we shall see what crystalizes here…
Aside: the “frigorific” in the Links section is a real word, and refers to extreme coolness. Bear with me. I’m gonna milk the limited set of puns that this blog’s theme relates to, even if only tangentially so. Some freezer-burned puns may result.
In celebration of my first blog post, cue the thematic music! (I am aware of its photographic, not frigorific, context, and there are plenty of alternatives, but I like the celebratory tone here– please sing along while sporting hideously outdated fashion choices!)
Awright, let the Blogging Begin! Hopefully not at a glacial pace… First up: Giraffe-a-Thon! And be sure to check out the “Welcome to My Freezer” tab at the top, for important WIJF information.
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