A Fallacy, Naturally

Volcanic eruptions must be good, right?

If I could reverse one trend in the year ahead, it would be the use of the word "natural" in advertising. Our legal system spent too many resources in 2012 wrestling with whether products like Sobe® lifewater® or Dreyer's ice cream could legally claim to be "all natural" (the lifewater suite was dismissed, the Dreyer's suit was allowed to continue).
   Even if we could agree on what is natural, all-natural, unnatural or not-in-the-least-bit-natural, nothing can be ascertained from such information. British philosopher Julian Baggini says "There is no factual reason to suppose that what is natural is good (or at least better) and what is unnatural is bad (or at least worse)."
   The idea that chemicals are artificial and necessarily bad is absurd. Everything including our own bodies are made of the same basic building blocks. Living things, both plant and animal, require the same ~30 elements to live and be healthy. We would be much better served by reading the calorie and fat content of that ice cream instead of trying to figure out if the chocolate is natural.
   Most biologists denounce an appeal to nature (also known as a naturalistic fallacy) because they want to describe the natural world honestly, without extracting morals about how we ought to behave. Canadian psychologist Steven Pinker explains "If birds and beasts engage in adultery, infanticide, cannibalism, it must be OK. The moralistic fallacy is that what is good is found in nature. It lies behind the bad science in nature-documentary voiceovers: lions are mercy-killers of the weak and sick, mice feel no pain when cats eat them, dung beetles recycle dung to benefit the ecosystem and so on. It also lies behind the romantic belief that humans cannot harbor desires to kill, rape, lie, or steal because that would be too depressing or reactionary." I could not agree more.
   Maybe I'm just more sensitive to crass marketing than most—I don't know. It could be because I work in the industry, so bad marketing hits a nerve with me. Or maybe it just bothers me that these sort of tactics work so well—a sign of a generally uneducated public, at least as far as science is concerned. I borrow from the Irish comedian Dara O Briain: "Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you." 
   Don't even get me started on what marketers have done with the word "organic".

The Black Swallower

The Black Swallower is a deep sea fish notable for its ability to swallow fish much larger than itself. It lives in tropical and subtropical waters, in the pelagic zone at a depth of 700 to 2,745 meters below sea level. This unusual fish is small—none longer than 25 cm in length have been found. As their name suggests, they are black in color. They have an unusual jaw—the lower jaw extends past the upper and their single row of teeth interlock when they close their mouth to create an eating trap. 

   When the Black Swallower preys, it eats its victim whole. It has a distensible stomach that can hold prey twice its own length and ten times its own body mass. Its hinged jaw has the capability of surrounding prey much larger than the Black Swallower’s head. As the Swallower eats, it starts at the tail and slowly walks its jaws up the fish’s body until fully consumed. But that it eats its prey like a some sort of aquatic python is a matter of supposition as nobody has ever observed the Black Swallower alive.

   Scientists don’t get to see these creatures in action, only as the result of a deathly case of indigestion. Usually the Swallower will bite off more than it can chew and swallow a fish so big that it can’t digest the whole thing. After a few days its meal starts to decompose and release gasses that get trapped inside the creature. Like a balloon, the extra buoyancy brings the fish to the surface where it can be collected and observed. 

In 2007, this Black Swallower was found having bitten off
more than it could chew—an 89-cm long snake mackerel.

   In 2007, a local Cayman Islands fisherman found a Black Swallower that had risen to the surface. In its stomach was a fish called a snake mackerel that was more than four times its own body length. This particular Swallower, at 19 cm in length, had eaten a fish that was over 86 cm long! Could this be where the saying “Never bit off more than you can chew.” came from?!