56 | New Scientist | 15 January 2022
leaves from the borough’s streets
as part of our annual leaf clearance
schedule,” they announced on
5 January. “Since October, the
team have collected 560 tonnes
of leaves – the equivalent to
112 adult elephants!”
Gwynneth confesses difficulty in
visualising a pile of leaves equal to
an elephant in weight. Us too, but
we reckon that, spread out thinly,
the whole lot would cover an area
about the size of Basingstoke.Pitch perfect
How much is that in football
pitches? Courtesy, in a convoluted
way, of an exchange of letters
about measurement standards
in the Financial Times drawn to
our attention by Michael Zehse,
we find ourselves consulting
the The FA Guide to Pitch and
Goalpost Dimensions for a steer.If that sounds like fun,
it is, revealing a line-up of
recommended football pitch sizes
ranging from 40 by 30 yards for
the little ’uns to 110 by 70 yards for
the fully sized. Pre-revolutionary
units still reign supreme in this
corner of Merrie Olde England.
We make that a full factor 6.4
range in football pitch sizes,
which is a satisfyingly variable
measurement standard. Just
don’t complain about shifting
the goalposts, they can be
anything from 12 to 24 feet apart.Ashes to ashes...
Congratulations to “Huntingdon
in Bloom” – the Cambridgeshire
town has received an Outstanding
commendation in the Green
Solutions category of the Royal
Horticultural Society’s Community
Awards 2021. Our thanks to Ralph
Platten for pointing out that “of
particular note is the recycling
of heat generated by the UK’s first
electric crematorium to warm a
glasshouse that will be used to
propagate and grow plants for the
town’s flowerbeds, containers and
community projects”. Charming.Elementary, again
“And finally” is a phrase that
strikes fear into the hearts of
UK TV news viewers, indicating
the imminent arrival of Whimsy.
So, and finally, Dave Hawke from
Devizes, UK, wins some form
of kudos, not just for rocking
one of the few English place
names not stressed on its first
syllable (Penzance; Carlisle;
the -hamptons; feel free to
go on your own mental journey),
but for a late-breaking reply to
our call for elementary names
(11 December 2021).
He introduces us to the Um
siblings, Ray D, Barry, (H)erbi, Ceri,
Reni, Ruby and Moly B. D., “lastly
not to forget Uncle Nick Hall”.
Thank you, Dave, although if
you’re looking for Pseudo Names,
it is Private Eye you’re after. But
frankly it’s Dry January, and
we’ll do anything for laughs. ❚a hope, Mike, not an expectation.
Elizabeth Economy is a senior
adviser at the US Department
of Commerce, he writes. Others
point out that Mark Rocket is the
chief executive of Kea Aerospace
based in New Zealand, and duck
lover Alan Gosling was named last
week as the first person known to
have contracted bird flu in the UK.
Vegetation of the Peak District
is a book passably reviewed by
Nature on publication in 1913
that remarkably appears still to
be in print, authored by C. E. Moss.
Our sincere thanks to all as ever.Big in Basingstoke
A tweet from Basingstoke and
Deane Borough Council sent in
by Gwynneth Page indicates that
we may have followers in that jewel
of northern Hampshire. “Our street
cleansing team have been sweepingBoozing hamsters
Feedback has a soft spot for
hamsters, whose hoarding and
nesting behaviours are similar
to our own. Our feeling of oneness
only increases with an article in The
Atlantic forwarded to us by Peter
Hamer: “You have no idea how
hard it is to get a hamster drunk”.
Hamsters have a high tolerance
for strong alcohol, we read, scoring
low on a special scale of falling
over sideways no matter how much
they imbibe. We wonder how the
statistics are skewed if you’re just
going round and round on a wheel
at the time, but nevertheless we add
hamsters to our pile, accumulated
over aeons, of animals that science
says can take their booze.
This list includes bonobos,
chimpanzees and bats, which is just
as well, because getting entangled
with an inebriated bat is a thought
that doesn’t bear much thinking
about. It most definitely doesn’t
include cows, horses, rampaging
elephants and the cedar waxwing
bird. Their frequent collisions with
fences and glass windows in the
Los Angeles area were shown in
2012 to be down to the fruit of the
Brazilian pepper tree fermenting in
their internal food storage pouches.
Don’t try that at home. This being
Dry January, we burrow deeper into
our extensive piling system and root
out a 1995 paper from the journal
Physiology & Behavior that we were
saving for bedding material. Entitled
“Tomato juice, chocolate drink, and
other fluids suppress volitional
drinking of alcohol in the female
Syrian golden hamster”, it provides
a way to get your hamster off the
wheel and onto the wagon: ply it
with calorie-rich hot chocolate.
We rarely say no to that, either.What’s in a name?
“I know it’s a bit early to get
up this year, but nominative
determinism won’t go away just
because you’re having a lie-in,”
writes Mike Egan from County
Meath in Ireland, ignoring the
squeaking of our treadmill. We
have only ever expressed that asGot a story for Feedback?
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