So, ear’s the explanation!
QUESTION Why do some dog breeds have floppy ears?
THE great scientist Charles Darwin himself pondered on this question, and noticed a tendency for domesticated animals – not just dogs – to have floppier ears than their wild counterparts.
In his famous work On The Origin Of Species, he wrote: ‘Not a single domestic animal can be named which has not in some country drooping ears.’
He observed that the ‘incapacity to erect the ears is certainly in some manner the result of domestication’, and also said that the hypothesis that ‘the drooping is due to the disuse of the muscles of the ear, from the animals being seldom alarmed by danger, seems probable’.
Dog breeds with floppier ears include beagles, cocker spaniels, basset hounds and dachshunds. This is a contrast with their closest wild relatives, wolves, which have pointy ears.
Floppy ears are just one trait linked with ‘domestication syndrome’ in animals – with others including shorter snouts and paler fur. Many scientists believe the explanation for this lies in the animals’ ‘neural crest cells’.
These cells affect almost every aspect of an animal’s development, including how much adrenaline they produce.
Animals with fewer neural crest cells produce less adrenaline – and so are friendlier and more suitable for domestication.
As such, when humans began breeding dogs to suit their needs, they honed in on animals with characteristics linked to having fewer neural crest cells.
Scientists believe this lower neural crest cell count affects other parts of the dogs’ bodies, like their ears, which have become floppier as a result of thousands of years of selective breeding.
Natasha O’Neill, Belfast.
QUESTION How many different ways are there to make change for €1 (for example, 2 x 50c is one)?
THERE are 4,562... This may seem a surprisingly large number, but there are ten ways to split €1 into 50c, 20c, and 10c, and then many more ways to split each of those into smaller coins, so the numbers explode. In mathematics, this is an ‘integer partitioning’ problem, and there is a known equation for calculating the answer, but it is horrendously difficult to write out, let alone solve.
Ken Wood, Newport, Gwent.
QUESTION Does the name Gateshead refer to a particular gate?
GATESHEAD was originally noted by The Venerable Bede, an 8th-century monk and scholar, as Ad Caprae Caput, meaning ‘at the goat’s head’ in Latin. In the early middle ages, the area was known as Gatesheued, or goat’s head, a headland with many wild goats.
A second theory is that the English town was at the head of an important road or ‘gate’ from the south located at the point where the road reached the River Tyne.
The town’s coat of arms featured a goat’s head. In 1974 the old Gateshead council was incorporated into a new metropolitan borough, with a new symbol made up of a portcullis and helmet.
There was once a Goats Inn near the river, so for most Gateshead folk, the goat theory is the one that stands the test of time.
It’s nice to think, though, that the town could be regarded as the gateway from England’s south to the great city of Newcastle – both in the past and present.
QUESTION North American Inuit peoples once ate pemmican as a survival food. How was this made?
THE word pemmican is derived from the Cree word pimikan, meaning rendered grease. The Cree are a North American indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, and are one of the country’s largest First Nations.
The food’s preparation involved drying and pulverising lean meat, typically buffalo, but caribou, elk or deer were also used.
This was then mixed with melted fat and sometimes dried berries. It was cooled, cut into cakes and sewn into hide bags.
Pemmican was a high-protein, high-energy food that could be stored for half a year and shipped with ease to hunters.
It was famously unpalatable to Western explorers.
William Francis Butler, an Irish 19th-century British army officer, writer, and adventurer, recounted his adventures in Canada in The Great Lone Land (1872).
He thoroughly disliked pemmican but understood its utility.
He gave the following recipe: ‘It can be made from the flesh of any animal, but it is nearly altogether composed of buffalo meat; the meat is first cut into slices, then dried either by fire or in the sun, and then pounded or beaten out into a thick flaky substance; in this state, it is put into a large bag made from the hide of the animal, the dry pulp being soldered down into a hard solid mass by melted fat being poured over it.’ Jacob Allen, Ross-on-Wye, Hereford.
QUESTION What are the best examples of ‘back slang’ used by Victorian criminals?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, I used to work at a wet fish shop in Dalston, London, that was owned by the brother of the film director Alfred Hitchcock.
Fish that wasn’t as fresh as it could be was referred to by us as ‘DLO’ rather than old.
Roy Smith, Romsey, Hampshire. Is there a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Irish Daily Mail, DMG Media, Two Haddington Buildings, 20-38 Haddington Road, Dublin 4, D04 HE94. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles. legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.