This edited article about William Brodie originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 697 published on 24 May 1975.

William Brodie, the real-life Jekyll and Hyde

The young ladies in the drawing-room could not stop talking about the handsome and prosperous bachelor who was coming to tea.

“What a wonderful husband he would make,” they said to each other. “He’s bound to marry soon. I wonder which one of us it will be?”

“Quiet!” said the girl keeping lookout at the window. “He’s knocking at the front door now. He’s dressed all in white – just like a saint.”

And saintly was just how William Brodie appeared to the wealthy merchants he mixed with in Edinburgh society. A bachelor of temperate habits, a city councillor, a skilful cabinet-maker and carpenter, he seemed faultless. The only thing held against him was his shyness and modesty that made him a difficult person to really know.

“He’s certainly polite and charming,” the girls of Edinburgh would say to their mothers. “But he seems a little too perfect. It is as if he is trying to hide something from us.”

They little guessed then that William Brodie was hiding plenty from them. Just what it was emerged in 1788 when Brodie – then forty-eight and still unmarried – was tried and executed at Tolbooth Prison as the leader of a gang of vicious underworld burglars who had long terrorized the city.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about the sense of taste originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 691 published on 12 April 1975.

The candy floss seller at the fairground

Since the earliest times, people have pandered to their sense of taste. Taste is one of the five senses – the others are sight, touch, smell and hearing.

Yet in spite of the thousands of differently flavoured dishes prepared by cooks and chefs, our organ of taste, the tongue, can detect only four kinds of taste!

These are the four tastes we call salty, sour, sweet and bitter. All other so-called tastes are just flavours made by combining two or more of the real tastes.

Scattered over the top surface of your tongue are more than 15,000 tiny taste buds or cells, which are connected to the brain by nerves. When your tongue comes into contact with anything you eat, the food has a chemical action on the buds and causes them to send “taste messages” to the brain.

There are four kinds of taste buds: one kind for salty flavours, one for sour flavours, one for sweetness and one for bitterness.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about baboons originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 687 published on 15 March 1975.

Baboons

Like most members of the monkey and ape families, baboons are very sociable, and are, incidentally, among the closest of man’s relations. Individual baboons belong to a family and each family is a member of a larger tribe or troop. The average troop has about eighty animals living closely together, usually in rocky country or grassland with tall clumps of trees. They forage during the day for seeds, bulbs, berries, grass etc., but if food is short, they will eat insects or make organised raids near villages to steal fruit, grain and eggs.

Each family consists of an adult male who is the undisputed chief, his harem of four or five females, two or three younger males and the baboon babies. One of the oldest dominant males will also take command of the tribe when danger threatens or when they move to a new territory.

Baboon societies have a definite order of rank which affects most of their activities and which results in a well-organised community, where everyone knows his place.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about life originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 686 published on 8 March 1975.

A robot helps to save life by Wilf Hardy

What is life? Most scientists today admit that they do not know the answer to this question, although they know a great deal about the way in which plants, animals and human beings behave.

If a drop of pond water is examined through a microscope, we see things which move around and things which do not move at all. Many of us might assume that the moving things we can see are alive.

For a very long time, the words animate and inanimate were used to distinguish things that were alive from the things that were not. These words come from the Latin verb animare which means “to set into motion” or accelerate. In fact, the word animal has similar origins. Even in the times of the Romans, there was quite a natural association between life and motion.

Yet few of us today would say that things which move must be alive. Things which seem to move of their own accord, like the modern electronic robots which can fly a plane, or the guided missiles which can “home” on to their target, are not alive.

For anything to be alive, it obviously must have other properties beyond the ability to move around.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Van Gogh originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 668 published on 2 November 1974.

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was one of the greatest and most revolutionary artists in the world. He was born on March 30, 1853, the eldest of six children, at Groot Zunder in Holland.

Van Gogh began work in a firm of art dealers and at the age of 24 he decided to devote his life to religion. After becoming a volunteer preacher among the miners of Belgium he soon realised that he was not suited to the life and it was at this time that he turned to painting.

Between the years 1884 and 1890 he produced about 700 drawings and 800 oil paintings, only one of which was sold in his own lifetime. Van Gogh was always desperately poor, but his faith in the urgency of what he was doing, and the encouragement he received from his younger brother, Theo, kept him going.

The letters which Vincent wrote to Theo give a brilliant insight in to the painter’s aims and beliefs. His Collected Correspondence is not only a great autobiographical record, but is also recognised as great literature.

Van Gogh painted three types of subject: still life, landscape, and figure, all of them interrelated by Van Gogh’s interest in the peasants’ daily life, the hardships they endured, and the countryside they worked on.

In 1888 Van Gogh rented a house in Arles where, for two months, he worked with another famous artist, Gaugin. Relations between the two soon deteriorated and on Christmas Eve that year, Van Gogh cut off part of his left ear, having broken under the strain of his nerves. At the end of April, 1889, he asked to be ‘temporarily shut up’ in the asylum at St Remy de Provence so that he could work under supervision.

Feelings of guilt at his dependence on his brother, despair of ever overcoming his loneliness or of being cured of his mental depressions drove Van Gogh in deep despair to commit suicide in July 1890.

Virtually unknown at the time of his death, the name of Van Gogh is now famous throughout the world. His reputation has never ceased to grow and the influence he exerted on the development of modern painting, on artists like Picasso and Matisse cannot be overestimated.

This edited article about Sergei Rachmaninoff originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 1027 published on 14 November 1981.

Sergei Rachmaninoff playing the piano, by Andrew Howat

Some of the great composers have been the sons of musicians and from their earliest years there was little doubt about what profession they themselves were going to follow. Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms were all children of musicians. It is not surprising therefore that they followed in their fathers’ footsteps.

Sergei Rachmaninoff was different. His father had been an army officer and his mother was the daughter of a general, so that if he had followed family tradition young Sergei would have gone into the army.

But it was not to be, for his father was not very good at handling money and wasted a great deal of his capital on gambling and risky investments. So the family lost most of the land which it had once owned.

Fortunately, young Sergei showed early evidence of musical talent and this was spotted by his cousin, who was himself a pianist and conductor of some note. If his family background did little to help him musically, his music teacher certainly did, for he was extremely strict.

As anyone who has studied the piano knows, it is an instrument which requires constant practice especially of rather repetitive things such as scales and exercises. The young Sergei Rachmaninoff was usually at the piano at six in the morning to begin his practice.

But all this hard work had good results, for he managed to acquire a skill at the keyboard which was to last through his adult years. In his lifetime he was rather better known as a performer than as a composer.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about guide dogs for the blind originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 995 published on 4 April 1981.

A guide dog becomes friend and guide to the sight-impaired

As he hurried through the hospital grounds, the German doctor was concerned. The year was 1916 and the First World War was at its height. Many soldiers had returned from the battle zones badly wounded.

Among them were a number who had lost their sight, and the doctor had been walking in the grounds with one of them together with the doctor’s Alsatian dog. The trio had been strolling together when the doctor had been summoned to the wards. He warned the soldier that he would not be long, and left him. Now he was wondering whether the soldier had avoided bumping into any obstacles in the grounds.

Once he came in sight of the man, the doctor saw that he need not have worried. The man, holding firmly on to the animal’s lead, was being led quite naturally around obstacles.

The sight of the pair cooperating successfully in this way made the doctor wonder to what extent a dog could be trained to lead a blind person to his destination. Blind people usually relied upon another human to take them safely through the busy streets and on trains and buses. How useful it would be if dogs could be trained to do this, he thought.

Inspired by this idea, the doctor began training dogs for this purpose, and his efforts were very successful. In 1923, an organisation was set up in the German city of Potsdam to take over this work.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about animal behaviour originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 992 published on 14 March 1981.

Cygnets learn through imprintings, which is by imitating movement as they follow the mother swan. Picture by J Chalkley

It was a great achievement when, probably in your second year, you stood upright and hesitantly took your first few steps. You had been trying to walk for several months. You learned how to crawl and use your complicated system of muscles. Finally came the most difficult lesson of all, standing on two feet and walking.

However, walking comes more quickly to members of the animal kingdom. A few minutes after a foal is born, the frail little creature makes a few jerky movements, staggers up on its four spindly legs and then walks almost perfectly. The foal has not been taught to walk, but has done so by instinct.

Biologists are not certain how animal instincts – or built-in skills – are acquired. Experiments have proved that complicated actions can be learnt by animals in a comparatively short time. Trained animals performing tricks in circuses are familiar sights. Your own dog will learn to obey orders and a trained dog can become an invaluable guide and companion for a blind person.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about animal behaviour originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 971 published on 18 October 1980.

Wasps have manners

“Where are your manners?” How many times has each child heard that question in his or her life? We are made to think that if we did not religiously say the magic words “Please” and “Thank you” every time we speak, the earth would mysteriously open up and engulf us. Yet there is a reason for good manners.

If we lived alone on a desert island, there would be no one to open doors for, no one to give up your seat for, and no one to smile at. But we do not live in isolation. Our species, the human species, flocks together, and we therefore have to invent ways of getting on with each other. Manners are the rules by which we live – the normal, everyday pattern of behaviour. Good manners are the icing on top.

Humans are not alone in this kind of social behaviour. Throughout the animal kingdom there are examples of highly organised patterns of behaviour. Ants are a superb example: each ant has its own part to play – one may contribute towards the cultivation of food for the rest of the colony, while another will stand guard, ready to defend the hill from attack.

Every now and then an animal, bird or even an almost brainless insect behaves in an extraordinary manner: it seems to go out of its way to please another. This can only be described as good manners.

Wasps, surprisingly enough, have been regularly seen to act with perfect politeness to each other. In one experiment, a box was assembled around an existing nest. One side of the box was made of glass, to enable the wasps to be watched. It soon became clear that the wasps had one unbreakable rule – KEEP TO THE LEFT. This prevented any confusion and bustle leading to and from the nest. All incoming wasps went to one side, those on the way out kept to the other.

The zoologist who was observing them speculated that, as the passage leading to the nest was only just wide enough for two unladen wasps to enter and pass each other, collisions would almost certainly occur. To his amazement, they did not: the returning wasps, loaded up with carcases of flies or pellets of wood pulp, took up most of the passageway. The outgoing wasps would give way to them, walking up the vertical wall of the tunnel and thus providing ample room for their loaded colleagues.

The wasps’ good manners were impeccable. Apart from having good regard for traffic routes and congestion, they never showed any signs of irritation or aggression towards the others in their overcrowded nest.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about animal behaviour originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 970 published on 11 October 1980.

A bull elephant guarding female and young elephants, by Bob Hersey

When a human baby is born today, it is surrounded with all the trappings of modern science. Every form of assistance is available to give a helping hand both at the birth and afterwards. In the animal world, too, there are creatures which act as midwives, whose role is to assist at the actual birth, nursemaids or minders. In many species, help, during birth and after, is almost as efficient and caring as that found in the human world.

It is amongst the largest land animals, elephants, that we find some of the most advanced forms of caring. It is very unusual for a female elephant in the wild to give birth alone. Usually the cow elephant retires into the bush accompanied by one or two females, who give her constant support.

There are many examples. Twenty years ago, Commander Lefevre, in charge of an elephant training station in Zaire, watched as three elephants disappeared into the bush. He followed them and witnessed a remarkable scene. For two hours the accompanying elephants comforted the pregnant cow as she heaved back and forth. Finally the baby elephant began to emerge. The commander watched as one of the “midwives”, realising that the cow-elephant was tired, helped by placing her trunk around the baby elephant and pulled it into the world.

One of the most unusual observations of this kind relates how two men were travelling through Tanganyika during World War One when they came across a group of elephants some 40 metres ahead. A cow elephant was lying on the ground in the process of giving birth; around her stood four young bulls, as if protecting her.

The men sounded their horn and immediately one of the bulls came aggressively towards the car. The pair retreated to the safety of a small hill from which they watched as the bull elephant lifted the car in the air with his trunk and let it drop with a sickening thud. He then walked around the car and bashed his head against the bonnet. He rejoined the group just as the baby elephant was born. The mother eventually rose to her feet and walked away with the calf following; the four young bulls brought up the rear.

It is commonly thought that birth in the animal world is far less traumatic than among humans. This is far from true: animals need as much help and comfort when giving birth as human mothers do. If animals are left to deal with the situation alone, the results can often prove fatal.

It is the practice amongst domestic cows to help when one of their herd is giving birth. This may only be due to curiosity, but this curiosity inevitably leads to something more positive. When the baby calf is born, the other females help to lick it clean. The mother eventually rises and drives them away in a jealous rage. The attendant cows, however, have provided protection for the young until the mother was able to stand. She in turn was forced more rapidly to her feet, so reducing the chances of any neglect of the new born calf.

Read the rest of this article »