QUESTION: Why do we shed tears and get a runny nose when we're upset?
ANSWER: It's bad enough being emotionally distraught, but then our face responds to the crisis by unleashing liquids of varying viscosities in a sudden and mortifying MucusFest. Is there some higher function being served here? Isn't there a better way to exhibit distress? Like maybe having our eyeballs go SPROING and fly out of their sockets on bedsprings?First, let's describe as graphically as is editorially possible what happens when your nose "runs." Your basic mucus has suddenly been watered down, thinned out, and so it flows. Where'd the water come from? Is there a secret Water Gland in the nasal cavity? Could it be cerebrospinal fluid leaking out of your brain? No. It's tears. The tears flow into your nose from your eyes, through a hidden passageway similar to the auxiliary drain that is supposed to keep a bathtub from overflowing. Here's the technical data from Dr. Phillip Waggoner, a professor of anatomy at the University of Miami:
"If you look real closely at the end of your eyelid nearest your nose, you'll see a tiny little hole. That's called the puncta lacrimalia. It drains into the lacrimal canaliculi."
Which any fool knows is the hidden passageway into the nose. This is for real.
So why are there tears in the first place? We should note that tears come in three varieties. "Basal tears" are secreted constantly and keep the eyeball lubricated. "Reflex tears" are what you get when you are poked in the eye, or cut up a gaseous onion. "Emotional tears" are provoked by messages from the brain stem, the command center of human emotion. The first two types have an obvious prophylactic/therapeutic function. Not the third type. Those sobs are still mysterious.
True, crying releases tension, but there's no reason tears have to be involved. A baby less than 3 months old will cry without tears.
It seems most likely that tears have evolved among humans as a communication technique. Social species, like Homo sapiens, require and exploit all manner of signals. Gushing tears send a dramatic message that can, for example, break Dad's will and yield numerous exciting toys.
Still, it seems strange that humans are the only land animals, social or otherwise, that weep. To find another weeping creature we have to look at the marine world, where seals and sea otters have been observed in crying jags when stressed out. Our nearest relatives, the apes, show signs of sadness and grief, but like the Kennedys they don't cry. Why not? Desmond Morris speculates in "Bodywatching" that apes don't cry because the tears would be largely invisible on their hairy cheeks. Only on the smooth-skinned human can the tears glisten and send their message. Not the most convincing argument we've ever heard, but it'll have to do for now.
So kids, if your parents scold you for crying, here's your response: "Crying is an adaptive trait that separates humans from the apes."
That'll show 'em.
QUESTION: Why do lemmings commit suicide by marching into the sea?
ANSWER: They don't. Lemming suicide is an old myth perpetuated by writers needing an analogy for man's self-destructive tendency in the nuclear age. Also there's a big lie told by Disney, as we shall explain.
A lemming is a rodent that lives in the Arctic. It is cuddlier than your average rat. Downright cute.
Every four or five years there is a "lemming year" in which the creatures propagate so dramatically they swarm the countryside by the hundreds of millions. In the lemming year of 1974, the normal lemming population of 22,000 in the district of Hardanger, Norway, swelled to 125 million. There are distasteful consequences of such population explosions. It is impossible to travel by car or train. The roads and rails are too slippery with squashed lemming viscera to permit traction.
With that many lemmings roaming around, accidents happen, particularly along the steep fjords of Norway. They fall in the water. Sometimes in batches. "When you have thousands and thousands of small animals running together, they just don't see the water or the cliff," zoologist and lemming expert Arne Semb-Johansson of Oslo University told the Reuters news agency in 1987.
Why does the population explode? In the Arctic, where the food chain is extremely simple, wild fluctuations in population are found in the few species that can survive in such a climate. Lemmings breed much more rapidly than any of their predators, such as weasels and foxes. They are baby factories. They hit puberty in about two weeks. The mating itself takes only a couple of seconds, but they do it repeatedly, many times in an hour, and 21 days later the female drops a litter. Within another couple of hours - hours! - she's ready to mate again. Soon the babies have babies. The numbers increase exponentially.
There's something in the grass that makes the critters libidinous, says University of Utah biologist Norman Negus. The chemical is 6-methoxybenzoxazolinone, and it is found in new, green grass shoots. It jazzes up the endocrine system of the rodents.
Most people probably would not know about lemming suicide were it not for the 1958 Disney film "White Wilderness." It shows lemmings hurling themselves off a cliff to their deaths. Great footage! But faked, apparently.
Negus says a friend of his, a biologist named Tom McHugh, was a photographer on the film and admitted that the lemming scene was staged. The creatures were captured in northern Canada, shipped to a filming site far away, and herded off a cliff to their deaths, as the cameras rolled. Only later did McHugh learn that lemming suicide is a myth. He was dreadfully sorry for what he had done, Negus says.
The photographer is deceased, so we couldn't ask him directly if the story is true. We did check with the Disney film archives in Burbank. Tom McHugh is indeed listed as a photographer for "White Wilderness." A publicity book for the movie states, "The dramatic pageant reveals the greatest mystery of the northland: The `suicidal' migration of the lemming. Countless multitudes of the little furry creatures go headlong into the sea, over every obstacle, in a blind and pitiable frenzy induced by overcrowding."
And by documentary filmmakers.
Do you have questions? Arguments? Documentation? Newly unearthed religious scrolls? Send all to "Why Things Are" World Headquarters, c/o Tropic Magazine, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132.