European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 2, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10animal worlds mating game is often deadly i n the Pale summer Moonlight of Panama a solitary Frog perches on a Rock and pours Forth his yearning in throaty Heartfelt song. Across the Pond the object of his affection listens and considers the offering. So docs the hungry Bat circling overhead. The Bat gets there first. End of love Story. Then there is the male firefly of the Genus Plotinus who signals that he is in the mood by sending out flashes of Light As he cruises Meadows and Woodland Glades. A receptive Plotinus female taking her ease in the Leafy ground foliage flashes in reply and one thing leads to another. Except when the female is a firefly of a different species. A Pho Turis female often sees the signal treacherously mimics the Plotinus Flash patterns a and eats the male As he approaches. It happens fairly often in the wild. In a number of species the same traits that make a male attractive to a female May get the male in serious trouble As is the Case with some fish. Brightly coloured male guppies often Are gobbled up by larger fish such As the ferocious looking cichlid. A sexual selection As opposed to natural selection is a hot area of science a says University of Texas zoologist Alexandra l. Basolo. A Why do females prefer these traits that seem to give the males disadvantages a the seeming contradict Ion of sexual and natural selection has puzzled scientists Ever since Charles Darwin propounded his theory of organic evolution in a on the origin of species a in 1859. Darwin conjectured that Many spectacular animal features such As Peacock plumage Are aimed at attracting members of the opposite sex a even though these ornaments appear useless and sometimes counterproductive to survival. There was Little further study of sexual selection for nearly a Century partly because of scepticism about that part of Darwin a idea. During the past two decades however scientific interest has revived. A evolutionists have re examined Darwin a ideas and Are now much More impressed by their cogency a says researcher Mark Kirkpatrick of the University of Texas. Two schools of thought now dominate the debate about sexual selection. One which has been called the a Good genes school holds that females select males who Are Strong or otherwise Well adapted to their environment. Thus these Superior genes Are passed along to future generations. The competing a non adaptive school argues that some traits found attractive to females Are not necessarily useful for surviving and that these traits May be established More or less at random. One possible explanation of How non adaptive behaviour is established in a species has to do with the ability of females to detect the presence of males. Say for example a certain species sees Only within a certain Range of colors a red for example a so males that happened to be red would be selected by females because of this Bias in the sensory system. That would Lead to a hungry Bat swoops in on a Frog after picking up the lovelorn a mating Call. The passing along of the red genes to their offspring and a preference for red males. Another hypothesis holds that the process by which male traits a self destructive or not a become linked with female preferences May be entirely random. No one is certain. It All indicates that in nature there simply May be no accounting for taste. National geographic National at a glance sea Bodoc a  j is Bergen Norway size 125,181 Square Miles slightly larger than new Mexico population 4,204,000 1989 estimate main language norwegian Lappish currency Kroner $ 1 a 5.98 travel restrictions no visa required for american tourists. Overview Norway is a Long narrow country that stretches to the Arctic Circle. Most of it is a High mountainous plateau with two Lowland areas in the South which support some farming. The coast is marked by Many narrow inlets called Fords which make the full length of Norway a coast 13,200 Miles along a approximately half the distance around the world. Forty percent of the population lives in or around the capital Oslo. Its a fact Norway a Vikings were fierce fighters and Brave explorers. Their raids terrorized european neighbors from 800 to 1100, and Leif Ericson led what is believed to be the first voyage of europeans to the american Mainland around 1000. Any questions9 can computers read Handwritten messages a a computers can be pretty smart. But they Are finicky about their Reading material. The text must be neatly printed for the machines stumble Over Han printed characters. They stare and stare but cannot Tell the difference Between a 6 or c. The worse the handwriting the bigger the mistakes. But the National Institute of standards and technology has amassed a first of a kind database that contains More than a million examples of hand printed characters. The database should help designers test the performance of their machines As they struggle like a class of first graders to read hand printed letters and numbers. Making machines that read handwriting is a tantalizing goal. Banks insurance companies and government agencies for example could relegate the rather mindless Job of data entry to machines. Q How do Birds that weave nests get the first twigs or bits of grass to stay put do they work in pairs a a very few Birds actually build a Woven nest sitting on top of a Branch said Todd Culver an ornithologist in Ithaca . In most species the females build the nest alone. They usually begin either by using a Sticky substance or by finding some kind of supporting Structure. Most Start by anchoring a nest to a cup shaped space or Crotch in a tree Culver said. They then build from there weaving in new twigs and bits As they go along. Some Birds have very specialized adaptations to help them in their work Culver said. Chimney swifts for example secrete a Sticky substance sometimes called saliva that lets them attach twigs to a vertical surface like a Chimney or ventilation Shaft. Sunday september 2,1990