halloween

October 14, 2020 by carnegiemnh

The Jack-O-Lantern’s Origins

It’s dark out. The wind blows through the branches, bringing a chill that isn’t necessarily due to the temperature. Suddenly you find yourself hyper aware of every sound around you, and you start as you realize you see a pair of eyes glowing at you…until you realize it’s a jack-o-lantern. Happy Halloween, indeed.

You may be wonder how jack-o-lanterns became so popular, or why we carve them out of pumpkins. To know the origins of jack-o-lanterns, we have to go all the way back across the Atlantic to the fens, or marshes, of rural Ireland. In the early 1600’s, the legend of a shadowy figure began to arise known as Stingy Jack (Jack the Smith, Drunk Jack, Flakey Jack, and other names are also in the folklore and can be used interchangeably).

The most popular version of the tale involves Jack first tricking the Devil into changing his form, then trapping him in his transfigured state. Jack then offered the Devil out of the deal in exchange for not taking his soul for a long time. Some longer versions of the story have the Devil being tricked 3 or 4 different times.

Eventually though, time caught up with Jack and he was unable to trick the Devil again. Stingy Jack was sentenced to roam the Earth for all eternity with nothing but an ember given to him by the Devil to light his way.

There is also other folklore from this time surrounding what’s known as ignis fatuus, or false fire. False fire is an actual occurrence— scientifically, ignis fatuss, is known as marsh gas and occurs during the spontaneous ignition of methane created by decaying plant matter in marshes or swampy areas. These two legends began to intertwine—when many people in the moors of the British Isles saw the naturally occurring marsh gas, they attributed to Stingy Jack.

Many people in those areas also continued the Gaelic celebration of Samhain, with its rituals of going from house to house in search of food and drink (these are the origins Trick or Treating). As it was naturally dark in pre-industrial revolution Ireland, many would carve turnips, potatoes or other root vegetables and add coals or candles to create makeshift lanterns to help guide those celebrating. Occasionally these would be carved with faces, a tradition that continues to this day in Britain and Ireland.

The waves of immigrants created by the Great Potato Famine of the 1840’s. As with most immigrants also had a role in traditional jack-o-lanterns. They arrived in America to celebrate Halloween and were able to find a very particular new world crop that was much larger and easier to carve than their root vegetables of home; the winter squash, the most famous of which is a pumpkin. (There are also several French recipes for a pumpkin soup that suggest carving pumpkins for decoration as early as the 1760’s).

Pumpkins themselves were introduced by the Indigenous Peoples to Europeans as early as the 1600’s, when tales of Jack first began to be told. Several cultures mixed together in celebration of Halloween, creating the iconic pumpkin faces we still know today.

Andrew Huntley is a Gallery Experience Presenter in CMNH’s Lifelong Learning Department. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Booseum: Vampires!

Vampires, creatures of folklore that feed on the lifeforce of the living, have long fascinated us. Many cultures have their own version of how vampires behave and are repelled by many different things. Modern vampires in movies, TV shows, and books have some similar main characteristics—let’s explore some interesting or common beliefs about vampires and where they may have come from.

Garlic

It’s a common belief that garlic repels vampires, but did you know that some of that belief is grounded in fact? Garlic, specifically the chemical compound allicin inside garlic, is a powerful antibiotic. Some European beliefs around vampires stated they were created by a disease of the blood, so a powerful antibiotic would “kill” a vampire.

An actual disorder of the blood, porphyria, may also be an origin for this belief: porphyria can cause those who suffer from it to look pale and even make their teeth look bigger because their gums shrink. Garlic makes these symptoms worse, so people with porphyria would often avoid it—making others around them believe they were vampires.

Mirrors

Vampires avoiding mirrors is a more recent belief— the first known reference to this is from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which was published in 1897. But why wouldn’t a vampire show a reflection?

There are a few reasons that this belief may exist. Mirrors were traditionally backed with silver (and some still are today). Silver was commonly believed to repel evil spirits, possibly because it has antimicrobial properties; so, much like garlic, the healing properties may be what was supposed to scare off a vampire.

Another reason that suspected vampires may have avoided mirrors is because of the changes to their appearance from diseases commonly confused with vampirism, porphyria and rabies. People afflicted with these diseases may have avoided looking in a mirror for that reason, causing others to assume that “vampires” avoid mirrors.

Counting

Why does Count von Count, a vampire, teach us how to count on Sesame Street? It comes from a European belief that vampires are compelled to count spilled seeds or grains. Some Slavic coastal towns also believed that vampires would count the holes in a fishing net. It was common practice to scatter seeds outside the entrances to a home (or drape fishing nets over them). Some Chinese myths say that a vampire must count every grain if they come across a bag of rice. A vampire would stop to count, delaying them until sun-up, and we all know that vampires don’t do well in sunlight.

A common seed used was mustard seed, which was also known as eye of newt!

Now that we’ve learned a little about fictional vampires, let’s explore some real-world vampires!

Vampire Ground Finch

The Galapagos Islands are home to many unique and unusual species, so the vampire ground finch fits in well. This species of sharp-beaked finch lives on Darwin and Wolf Islands, and like most other finches it feeds primarily on seeds. However, seeds can sometimes be a limited resource, so vampire ground finches supplement their diet by eating small amounts of nutrient-rich blood from Nazca or blue-footed boobies.

It is believed that this behavior developed because the finches were first eating ticks from the bodies of other birds, which steadily transitioned into them eating small amounts of blood. Believe it or not, the other birds don’t seem to mind the vampire ground finches doing this, and don’t try to stop them!

Vampire Bats

There are three species of bats that survive by exclusively feeding on the blood of other animals- the common vampire bat, the hairy-legged vampire bat, and the white-winged vampire bat. All three species are found in Central and South America.

Like other bats, they hunt at night and rely on echolocation to find their prey, which is typically sleeping livestock, like cows. Vampire bats use their sharp teeth to make a little cut and then lap up the blood. It doesn’t hurt the animal they’re feeding from, in fact most animals don’t even notice it happening and stay asleep! These bats occasionally try to feed off humans, but it is very rare.

Mosquitos & Ticks

We’ve all felt the aftermath of an itchy mosquito bite! Mosquitos feed on blood from humans and other animals, but it’s only female mosquitos that eat blood. Female mosquitos need the protein from blood to produce eggs, and male mosquitos don’t so they feed on plant nectar.

Ticks drink the blood of both warm and cold-blooded animals, latching on and feeding slowly over several days. They can fast for a long time between meals, but do need to feed on blood as they progress through the stages of their life cycle.

Neither mosquitos nor ticks (or any other blood eating insects) eat enough blood to be dangerous to humans. The biggest danger is that these insects can carry diseases, so make sure to properly care for and clean any insect bites, and see a doctor if necessary!

Jo Tauber is the Gallery Experience Coordinator for CMNH’s Life Long Learning Department, as well as the official Registrar for the Living Collection. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Is this what they call overkill? Toxin and venom in the herp world

preserved frog specimen — Figure 1. *Bufo japonicus*. The large glands behind the eyes are called parotid glands, and are a source of toxins in toads. Additionally, all of the bumps you see all over the body are glands that produce skin toxins. Image credit: Stevie Kennedy-Gold.

I recently participated in a Zoom event for Museum members focused on toxins and venom in the natural world. Mason Heberling, Assistant Curator of Botany, and Ainsley Seago, Associate Curator of Invertebrate Zoology, spoke about how the organisms they study produce toxins, and how these chemicals impact their environments and other organisms around them. As an ecologist focused on impacts of climate and land use change, I don’t consider myself an expert on toxins and venoms in amphibians and reptiles, but researching my portion of the joint presentation reminded me once again why herps are the best.

First, a refresher: toxins are poisons, and they have to be consumed or encountered (touched) by an organism to do harm. For example, many frogs produce toxins in their skin, but you would have to either consume that frog or touch its skin for the toxin to do you any harm. Most frogs don’t produce toxins strong enough to hurt humans, though a few notable exceptions exist. Some species of poison dart frogs have skin toxins strong enough that if you touched them and then touched your eyes, nose, or mouth, or if you had a cut on your hand, you could indeed become very ill and perhaps die. Venom, on the other hand, is a toxin that one organism can inject into another. Typically, we think of snakes when we think of injectable toxins. Many snake species have venom glands that produce toxins, and they can forcibly inject that toxin into their prey. The action, which can occur in a flash, involves the use of fangs to puncture the skin, and muscles surrounding the venom gland to force the toxin out along the fang and into the other organism.

preserved frog specimen, two preserved snake specimens, and two specimen jars — Figure 2. *Bufo japonicus* and *Rhabdophis tigrinus*. *Rhabdophis* are one of the only snakes that are both venomous and toxic. They sequester toxins from the toads they eat into a gland called the nuchal crest. Image credit: Stevie Kennedy-Gold.

Most people tend to think of amphibians as toxic and snakes as venomous. This is true, but it turns out that snakes aren’t the only venomous reptiles, and amazingly two frogs are known to be venomous. Gila monsters (Helodermatidae) and water monitors (Varanidae) produce venom, but their venom glands are in their lower jaws (unlike snakes whose venom glands are in their upper jaws), and they lack the muscles to forcibly inject that toxin the way snakes do. Instead, the act of chewing on their prey causes their jaw motion to work the venom toward their grooved teeth, which then enables the venom to be injected through the bite wound. Using a very different delivery system, two frogs in the family Hylidae (tree frogs from the Americas) have very spiny skulls. Their skin produces toxins, and by “head-butting” another organism, they can effectively inject that toxin into another organism. This unusual delivery system technically makes them both toxic (the toxin can be transferred to you if you touch their skin) and venomous (they can inject that toxin into you).

two preserved snake specimens and one specimen jar — Figure 3. *Rhabdophis tigrinus*. If you look closely at the back of the neck just behind the head on the snake on the left, you can see a slightly raised bit of skin, which is the nuchal crest used to store toxins sequestered from toads. Image credit: Stevie Kennedy-Gold.

One of the most surprising things I learned is that there are snakes that are both toxic and venomous, and these are snakes I see frequently in the field. The genus Rhabdophis is common across South and Southeast Asia, and have long been known to be venomous. What I didn’t know is that in addition to making their own venom, they sequester toxins from their prey, and store it in a gland on the back of their neck called a nuchal crest. Rhabdophis feed on toads, which are toxic, and the snakes are able to sequester that toxin, rather than being adversely affected by it. Interestingly, scientists have shown that Rhabdophis tigrinus are toxic only where their range overlaps with Bufo japonicus, a highly toxic toad—so on some islands of Japan the snakes are toxic, while on other islands they are not.

preserved toad specimen — Figure 4. *Bufo japonicus* with its many toxin glands! Image credit: Stevie Kennedy-Gold.

There are numerous other interesting adaptations involving toxin and venom in the herp world—tweet me (@JenASheridan) if you want to learn more!

Jennifer Sheridan is Assistant Curator in the Section of Amphibians and Reptiles at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Early Bats: Ancient Origins of a Halloween Icon

Specimen Carnegie Museum (CM) 62641, the holotypic, or name-bearing, right dentary (lower jaw bone) of the tiny fossil bat *Honrovits tsuwape* in lingual (= internal) view, still partially encased in ~50-million-year-old rock of the Wind River Formation of west-central Wyoming. Note the length of the scale bar, only 1 cm (less than half an inch)!

Did you know that bats have been around for at least 55 million years? In 1992, several fossils in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History collection, including the lower jaw bone shown above, were described as representing a new genus and species of ancient bat, Honrovits tsuwape—Shoshone for “bat” and “ghost,” respectively—by a team that included two former curators in the museum’s Section of Vertebrate Paleontology, Christopher Beard and Leonard Krishtalka, both now of the University of Kansas. Honrovits dates to the early part of the Eocene Epoch of the Cenozoic Era (the ‘Age of Mammals’), about 50 million years ago, and is a member of a now-extinct bat group called the Onychonycteridae.

Replica of a beautifully preserved fossil skeleton of *Onychonycteris finneyi*, a close relative of Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s own Eocene-aged bat Honrovits tsuwape, on display at Fossil Butte National Monument in Wyoming. Photo by Matthew Dillon.

Interestingly, Honrovits shares dental characteristics with a mammal group known as insectivores, which includes today’s hedgehogs, shrews, and moles, and in that sense, it differs from the condition in most other bats. However, bat teeth possess distinctive diagnostic features, so although Honrovits is known only from a few tooth-bearing jaw bones and a skull fragment, there’s no doubt that the diminutive beast was indeed an early bat. The fragmentary nature of its fossils means that we don’t know for sure what Honrovits looked like in life, though it’s a good bet that it bore a close resemblance to other onychonycterid bats, such as Onychonycteris finneyi, which is known from exquisitely preserved skeletons (such as the one shown above).

Flesh reconstruction of the ~50-million-year-old bat *Onychonycteris finneyi*. There’s an excellent chance that Honrovits tsuwape would have looked like this. Art by Nobu Tamura.

The incompleteness of the Honrovits fossils is, unfortunately, the norm rather than the exception when it comes to prehistoric bats. Fossils of these creatures are exceedingly rare because most bats have very small, light skeletons and achieve their greatest diversity and abundance in areas that have low potential for fossil preservation, such as tropical forests. Occasionally, complete skeletons such as those of Onychonycteris are found, but not nearly as often as fragments.

So, this autumn, if you happen to catch a glimpse of a bat silhouetted against the evening sky, acrobatically wheeling and plunging in pursuit of flying insects, pause and reflect on the history of these extraordinary flying mammals whose ancestry dates nearly to the time of the dinosaurs.

Linsly Church is a Curatorial Assistant in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

How Do You Preserve a Giant Pumpkin?

giant pumpkin being moved with a forklift

A few years ago, I came across a dilemma that I wasn’t sure how to resolve. The Section of Botany was given permission to preserve, for the scientific collection, part of the giant pumpkin that was in the exhibition, We Are Nature: Living in the Anthropocene. This was an intriguing offer. I just wasn’t sure how to go about it. Preserving any large fruits or plant parts can be a real challenge. Plant materials must be dried before they rot, and the process must happen at a temperature low enough to prevent the material from being cooked. The normal procedure of putting a plant or plant part into a plant press and drying it with warm dry air was not really an option; at least not for a 2,090-pound pumpkin that wouldn’t even fit in my car, let alone my plant press.

Pumpkins are a type of squash, but trying to literally squash one to dry it seemed a bit daunting. The farmers who grew this giant pumpkin were more than willing to give us whatever parts of the pumpkin we wanted to preserve, and they were even willing to help with cutting them from the pumpkin. We decided on trying to keep the unique parts of the pumpkin, like the stem and the blossom end (bottom). We also saved some of the inner tissue and a few seeds. The seeds on a pumpkin this large are a prize commodity. If a pumpkin from which seeds are properly harvested was a champion, as this one was, each seed could sell for $30 to upwards of $50. It was very generous of the farmers to allow us to have some of these seeds for our collection.

dried pieces of a pumpkin on an herbarium sheet

Pumpkin farmers keep close tabs on the genetics of these giants and actively work at growing larger pumpkins. You can actually find family tree information for this very pumpkin online if you search for it. Who knows how large mankind will eventually enable pumpkins to grow? The plants that grow these large squashes (the Cucurbita maxima variety known as ‘Atlantic Giant’) are a variety of the same species that produce Hubbard Squash. This species, which was originally from South America, has become one of the more diverse domesticated plants.

Giant pumpkins have been a focal point of imagination and literature for some time. Think of Cinderella. There are several variants on the Cinderella tale going back hundreds of years that involve large squash. Back when these stories were written though, it was a fantasy to think there actually could be a pumpkin that a person could fit inside.

Now that we are using QR codes on our herbarium labels, it’s easy to add photographs to plant specimen records. I wish we had thought to do this before the massive pumpkin was cut up. Maybe I will go back and add a QR code to the label, so the actual pumpkin can be seen again in its full glory. What we have in the collection now are bits and pieces, mere remnants of the gentle giant that grew 45-50 pounds per day in 2017.

Getting back to my original question, how do you preserve a giant pumpkin? I guess the answer is a little bit at a time!

More on this giant pumpkin:

Sasquatch Squash

Giant Pumpkin Seed Harvest

Collected on This Day: November 25, 2017

Bonnie Isaac is the Collection Manager in the Section of Botany. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

October 7, 2020 by carnegiemnh

Halloween and Birds

Birds, being the happy creatures they are, don’t seem to me to connect with Halloween. Sure, death scenes in old movies, or exaggerated depictions of nighttime itself, are often populated with vultures, owls and corvids (crows and ravens), but Halloween itself, not so much. About the only “scary” term I can think of relating to birds is the group popularly referred to as “GOATSUCKERS.”

Early stories about goatsuckers can be credited to Aristotle and Pliny over 2000 years ago. Rumors about a group of birds now classified Caprimulgids, indicated they would suck the milk out of goats, and afterwards the goats would go blind. Of course, the stories are false, but the persistence the common group name might very well continue to frighten young children.

The 70 species of Caprimulgids remain saddled with a Family name, and in some cases a Genus name, that translates from Latin, “capra” for nanny goat, and “mulgēre” to milk, as “milker of goats,” or considering how a bird might attempt such a feat, “goatsucker.”

taxidermy mount of whip-poor-will — Image credit: Pat McShea

The family Caprimulgidae is a nocturnal group of birds referred to as nightjars or nighthawks that live worldwide except in New Zealand and on some islands in Oceania. In Pennsylvania the only birds of this group seen routinely are the Common Nighthawk and the Whip-poor-will, and both species are declining in numbers. Both are insectivorous birds with what appears to be small mouths that can actually open extremely wide to swallow insects in flight. The sounds of Whip-poor-wills can be haunting to those unfamiliar with them. For an image of the bird and a recording of their distinctive sound click this YouTube link.

taxidermy mount of common nighthawk — Image credit: Pat McShea

The CMNH Section of Birds collection, with nearly 207,000 records, includes only three “goatsuckers” collected on Halloween. Two are Pauraques (Nyctidromus albicollis yucatanensis) from Veracruz, Mexico collected in 1963, and a single Common Nighthawk (Chordeiles minor minor) found dead by former Amphibian and Reptiles Curator Jack McCoy in Schenley Park on Halloween night 1989. Migration should have happened long before that date – in fact this fall Pittsburgh’s estimated peak occurred September 14, when an estimated flight of 50,000 birds of various species passed overhead overnight.

Stephen Rogers is Collection Manager in the Section of Birds at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

The Jack-O-Lantern’s Origins

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