INFLUENZA CRYSTALS Breakthrough in Research
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
INFLUENZA CRYSTALS Breakthrough in Research JOURNEY TO THE STARS Expedition to remote PNG PORTLAND'S VISITOR The Pygmy Right Whale PITURI An indigenous intoxicant THE KESTREL Australia's smallest falcon SPRING 1987 VOL. 22 NO. 6 THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM Focussed on marine life that inhabits the waters around° Australia south of 30 S, the book covers every group of living creatures ffiat live in this �on: sponges, cnidanans, worms, sea mosses, austaceans, molluscs, echinoderms, sea squirl'S, and mammals. With over two hundred different species from the prlnd.� marine groups, Australian Sea Life IS Neville Coleman more than just a reference book. It offers everyone a rare orportuni!f,to see a variety o marine life forms which, to most of us, are a mystery. Neville Coleman , author of Australian° Sea Fishes North of 30 and Australian0 Sea Fishes South of 30 , is one of Australia's foremost underwater explorers and photographers. Australian Revelations Natural History EDITORIAL Published by t's hard to believe that there are summer in Portland Harbour, Vic The Australian Museum Trust still parts of the world where the toria (see p. 266). News spread and 6-8 College Street, fauna is virtually unknown. The ardent volunteers and scientists en Sydney, N.S.W. 2000 StarI Mountain peaks in Papua New abled the first-ever study at close Phone: (02) 339 8111 Trust President: Robyn Williams Guinea were such a place until range of this little-known species. Museum Director: Desmond Griffin recently, when a joint expedition As a species, humans appear from the Australian Museum and the virtually unconquerable. We can Papua ew Guinea Division of EDITOR scale mountains, study whales, and Fiona Doig Wildlife explored this remote area to alter genetic pathways (see QQC p. SCIENTIFIC EDITOR study its vertebrate fauna (see p. 271 ). Yet something as small as the Georgina Hickey, B.Sc. 244). Expeditions like this cover influenza virus is the scourge of west CIRCULATION rugged terrain: they demand not only ern industrial society; a bout of 'flu John McIntosh amazing stamina but considerable can weaken the strongest individual. ART DIRECTION financial support. The Ok Tedi However, new breakthroughs in the Watch This! Design Mining Co. Ltd generously provided fight against this virus are being made TYPESETTING that support. Such assistance is to be now. Some spectacular photos of in Love Computer Typesetting Pty Ltd acknowledged-it benefits the fluenza crystals and the search for a FILM WORK South Sea International Press Ltd environment in the long term. cure to this virus are presented in PRINTING Support also arrived swiftly when Photoart (p. 276). RodenPrint Pty Ltd a Pygmy Right Whale sojourned last -Fiona Doig, Editor ADVERTISING Jean Barnet (02) 939 6263 Contents (02) 339 8234 Journey to the Stars 244 Tim Flannery SUBSCRIPTIONS Annual subscription (4 issues) Dinkum or Decoy? The Dilemma 250 Within Australia $A 16.00 of a Flower Wasp Other Countries $A20.00 Babs and Bert Wells Two-year subscription (8 issues) Within Australia $A30.00 Pituri: Tracing the Trade Routes 257 Other Countries $A36.00 of an Indigenous Intoxicant Tim Low For renewal or new subscription please Portland's Chance Encounter 266 forward credit card authority or cheque made payable to: with a Pygmy Right Whale The Australian Museum Andrew Arnold P.O. Box A285 Sydney South The Kestrel: Australia's 284 N.S.W. 2000, Australia Smallest Falcon Subscribers from other countries please Penny and Jerry Olsen note that money must be paid in Australian currency. FORUM All material appearing in Australian Natural History is copyright. Cockatoos: Pests nor Pets 254 Reproduction in whole or in part is not de la Motte and Graeme Phipps permitted without written authorisation from the Editor. .D FOODS Opinions expressed by the authors are their own and do not necessarily Succulents for Supper 262 represent the policies or views of the Tim Low Australian Museum. The Editor welcomes articles or RARE & ENDANGERED photographs in any field of Australian Philip Island Hibiscus 274 natural history. eil Hermes PHOTOART Published 1987 Influenza Crystals 276 ISSN-0004-9840 Graeme Laver Front Cover REGULAR FEATURES These fantastic crystals of anti Letters 242 bodies complexed with influenza Robyn Williams 264 neuraminidase from a pilot whale Poster Article 265 may well lead the way to a vaccine Quips, Quotes & Curios 271 for the 'flu. See Photoart, p. 276. Vincent Serventy 280 Books 282 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY 241 LETTERS \1edia, tvh\.Jt, ,\1t'thod� and ,�uck Rubber Doubt of Australia's image abroad. Surely we should avoid I read your very interest such a cultural cringe, and ing journal each quarter make decisions on the and must compliment you basis of data (Grigg's article on its preparation. The on kangaroo culling, ANH texts and photographs are vol. 21 no. 4, 1984 and, of unusually high standard more recently, vol. 22 no. and I learn more from ANH 5, 1987), and our beliefs "'U,J than I do from any other about the ways animals 0z < journal, including inter should be used, rather than X U,J national ones in my own by the desire for a good ...J< media image in foreign U,J profession! lJ"' I found the article A Tea eyes. We should make our 0 U,J tillating Titbit in the QQC own moral judgments. lJ -Rod Power section of ANH (vol. 22 Many placental mammals (particularly wild ungulates Macquarie University no.4, 1987) professionally and domestic cows) consume the efforts of their repro interesting and I wondered duction, stopping just short of their tasty offspring. Ewes, if Geoff Smith uses a natural Another Man's Poison however, rarely need to bite the umbilical cord. rubber compound (as op posed to a synthetic rub When I was a boy, my the older members of a be self-defeating for an ani ber) which comes in either father pointed out to me species feeding to a con mal to engage in the effort dry or latex form. If he does, that, in terms of protein in siderable extent upon the involved in reproduction it could well be that we take, no food could be more numerous smaller and then to consume the have a mutual interest and more appropriate than the members (which have fed products thereof, but we perhaps the inclusion of flesh of one's own species, on other species). This is ef may nevertheless marvel at the article in our inter since it provides the appro fectively the situation the delicate inhibitory national journal Rubber priate amino acids in just among Saltwater Croco mechanisms that permit a Developments may result the right proportions. As a diles in the rivers of north female mammal to eat her in stimulating interest in the professional soldier whose ern Australia, where a min afterbirth and to nibble use of specialty teats. If he job was to kill other hu ority of large animals eat a along the umbilical cord does not, it could be that mans when ordered to do high proportion of the until just short of her the use of natural rubber, so, he asked, like James F. young adults. equally tasty offspring. We with its better tear resis Weiner (A H vol. 22 no.4, Cannibalism can also should not be surprised tance, could be a means of 1987), what is our objec occur early in a life history: that the inhibition some improving his product with tion to cannibalism. As a there are some larval in times fails in domesticated regards to durability. zoologist, I look at the sects that eat each other (so mammals or that, in nature, -R.A. Billett question slightly differently that only one member of a eating a litter may be an ap Malaysian Rubber Bureau and ask why cannibalism is brood survives) or that propriate response to a lack (Australia) so rare in the animal king hatch inside the mother's of food for the mother. Eat Melbourne, Vic. dom. body and consume her ing of 'excess' juveniles can be a population control Geoff Smith does, in First of all, exclusive flesh. Cannibalism is also measure, as in the African fact, use natural rubber (not cannibalism is impossible. not uncommon among tad synthetic) for his specialty Because of the necessary poles or hatchling reptiles. Lion, but there has never teats and a copy of Mr Bil inefficiencies of metab The significant limitation is been much support for lett's letter has been for olism, a population of car that, on simple thermodyn Jonathon Swift's (1729) warded to him. Due to the nivores requires a self-per amic grounds, cannibalism proposal to reduce poverty patent conditions, the petuating population of cannot extend beyond in England and Ireland by exact composition of the food animals (a 'standing some individuals at some fattening the children of rubber used cannot be crop'), the combined mass stage of the life history. the poor for consumption publicly disclosed. of which is at least ten times It is instructive to con at the tables of the rich. -C.H. the combined mass of the sider the multitudinous in On the whole it makes predators. Thus, a species stances where the oppor good sense (in evolutionary Trial by Media that suddenly became tunity for cannibalism is not terms) for members of a completely cannibalistic taken up. This includes all species not to eat each Robyn Williams (ANH would be able to have no �nstances of adults that care other. The benefit of canni vol. 22 no. 4, 1987) says, more than one great binge for their eggs or young, in balism is slight except in approvir;igly, that a recent before disappearing from cluding such tempting situ very special circumstances decision about the level of the face of the Earth.