E2 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, AUGUST 20 , 2019
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HEALTH & SCIENCEBY LAURA GEGGELA stash of ancient amulets is
seeing the light of day, now that
archaeologists in Pompeii have
unearthed the treasures from un-
der a pile of ash dating to the
eruption of Mount Vesuvius in
A.D. 79.
The amulets are tiny and de-
tailed. One is a petite glass en-
graving of Dionysus, the Greek
god of wine, fertility and reli-
gious ecstasy. Another shows an
engraving of a dancing satyr.
Other carvings depict skulls,
phalluses, scarabs and Harpo-
crates, the Hellenistic deity of
silence and secrets, according to
the Archaeological Park of Pom-
peii, the group that made the
finding.
These amulets were probably
collected and used by a woman,
either as a type of jewelry or to
protect her from bad luck. Ar-
chaeologists are now studying
their likely symbolism to “under-
stand their meaning and func-
tion,” Massimo Osanna, the gen-
eral director at the Archaeologi-
cal Park of Pompeii, said in a
statement.
“They are objects of everyday
life in the female world and are
extraordinary because they tell
micro-stories, biographies of the
inhabitants of the city who tried
to escape the eruption,” Osanna
said.
The amulets were found in the
remains of a wooden box in one
of the rooms of the “House of the
Garden,” a site of ongoing excava-
tion at Pompeii. It’s unclear
whether the female owner of the
amulets escaped the horrific
eruption, although the majority
of residents did, as evidence
shows many people resettled in
nearby cities. If she did manage
to flee to safety, however, the
woman apparently didn’t have
time to grab her good-luck
charms, Osanna noted.
The wooden box itself had
decomposed in the nearly 2,000years since the eruption, but the
volcanic material that had sur-
rounded it maintained its rectan-
gular shape. Archaeologists
found the box’s bronze hinges, as
well as the well-preserved amu-
lets within.
Included in the ancient wom-
an’s boxed collection were two
mirrors, pieces of a necklace,
glazed ceramic ornaments and
amulets made from bronze, bone,
amber and glass. In addition, the
archaeologists found phallic-
shaped amulets, a human figure
and a handful of gems, including
a purple amethyst with a female
figure and a red carnelian with a
craftsman figure, the Archaeo-
logical Park of Pompeii reported.
The amber and glass carvings
are so well done that whoever
purchased them likely had a pret-
ty penny to spare. But if the
collector bought them for protec-
tion, it’s possible these amulets
didn’t do their intended job.
“In the same house, we discov-
ered a room with 10 victims,
including women and children,
and now we are trying to estab-
lish kinship relationships, thanks
to DNA analysis,” Osanna said.
“Perhaps the precious box be-
longed to one of these victims.
Interesting is the iconography of
objects and amulets, which in-
voke fortune, fertility and protec-
tion against bad luck.”
The amulets will soon go on
display, along with other recent
Pompeii finds, at the Palestra
Grande, in an exhibition that will
be a follow-up of “Vanity,” an
exhibition dedicated to jewels
from the Cyclades, an island
group in the Aegean Sea, Pompeii
and other nearby sites.
Although Mount Vesuvius
erupted long ago, archaeologists
continue to excavate the ruins at
Pompeii. Other recent discover-
ies there include a thermopolium
(a fast-food joint) with a sexy logo
and an ancient fresco of the
mythical Narcissus.
— Live ScienceWhat if you experienced a mag-
nitude-7.8 earthquake?
How would you get home?
What would you do once you
did?
If you live in California, you
may have to answer that question
in your lifetime. Los Angeles has a
31 percent chance within the next
30 years of experiencing a magni-
tude-7.5 earthquake, according to
the U.S. Geological Survey. Cali-
fornians have been waiting for the
quake they call “the big one” since- That was when San Francis-
co experienced an estimated mag-
nitude-7.9 temblor along the San
Andreas fault, killing more than
3,000, injuring 225,000 and lay-
ing waste to much of the city.
So what might that earthquake
look like today? “The Big One,” a
podcast from KPCC in Los Ange-
les, gives a terrifying preview of
what it could be like if a magni-
tude-7.8 earthquake hits South-
ern California.
The 10-episode series puts lis-
teners at the center of an imag-
ined catastrophe that isn’t so
imaginary. It digs deep into the
science of earthquakes and after-
shocks, asks big and scary ques-
tions about the structural integri-
ty of Los Angeles’s tallest build-
ings, and goes over how you
should prepare.
Then, it starts all over again —
this time, imagining the sobering
scenario with Angelenos who are
actually prepared.
It would be easy to come away
from “The Big One” with a mi-
graine — or a panic attack. But
Southern California Public Radio
host Jacob Margolis delivers the
frightening facts about earth-
quakes clearly and reassuringly,
and every episode ends with ac-
tionable tips for listeners.
There are plenty of resources
on the podcast’s website, too, in-
cluding a map that tells listeners
whether they live along the fault.
And just because you don’t live
in Los Angeles doesn’t mean you
shouldn’t listen.
If you’re intrigued by natural
disasters, science or just a well-
told story, consider tuning in. Af-
ter all, California isn’t the only
place where earthquakes happen
— and “The Big One” illustrates
how unprepared you might be for
a disaster of any kind.
— Erin BlakemoreSCIENCE NEWSScientists unearth tiny and detailed amulets of
deities, skulls and phalluses in ancient PompeiiSCIENCE SCANSEISMOLOGYPodcast gives chiling preview of ‘The Big One’
— a giant quake slamming Southern CaliforniaThe Big One
Earthquake podcast
the-big-one.scpr.orgBY JEREMY REHMWith two pairs of fine-tipped
tweezers and the hands of a sur-
geon, biologist Cheryl Hayashi
began dissecting the body of a
silver garden spider under her
microscope.
In just a few minutes she found
what she was seeking: hundreds
of silk glands, the organs spiders
use to make their webs. Some
looked like mashed potatoes, oth-
ers like green worms or air-filled
rubber gloves. Each lets the spi-
der produce a different type of
silk.
Some silk types can be stretchy,
others stiff. Some dissolve in wa-
ter, others repel it.
“They make so many kinds of
silk,” Hayashi said. “That’s just
what boggles my mind.”
Hayashi has collected spider
silk glands from about 50 species,
just a small dent in the more than
48,000 spider species known
worldwide. Her lab at the Ameri-
can Museum of Natural History
in New York is uncovering the
genes behind each type of silk to
create a sort of “silk library.” It’s
part of an effort to learn how
spiders make so many kinds of
silk and what allows each kind to
behave differently.
The library could become an
important storehouse of informa-
tion for designing new pesticides
and better materials for bullet-
proof vests, space gear, biode-
gradable fishing lines and even
fashionable dresses.
Hayashi has been at this for 20
years, but improved technology
only recently let scientists ana-
lyze the DNA of silk faster and
produce artificial spider silk in
bulk.
“Any function that we can think
of where you need something that
requires a lightweight material
that’s very strong, you can look to
spider silk,” Hayashi said.
Spider silks all start out the
same: a wad of goo, akin to rubber
cement or thick honey, as Hayashi
describes it. Spiders make and
stash it in a gland until they want
to use the silk. Then, a narrow
nozzle called a spigot opens. And
as the goo flows out, it morphs
into a solid silk strand that is
weaved with other strands emerg-
ing from other spigots.
Nobody knows how many
kinds of spider silks exist, but
some species can produce a vari-
ety. Orb-weaving spiders, for ex-
ample, make seven types. One has
a sticky glue to catch prey. An-
other is tough but stretchy to
absorb the impact of flying in-
sects. The spider dangles from a
third type that’s as tough as steel.
How and why silks behave in
these various ways is a puzzle, but
the secret probably lies in genes.
Finding those genes, however,
isn’t easy.
Until recently, scientists had to
first chop the glands’ DNA into
pieces and have a computer try to
put the sequence back together
like a jigsaw puzzle. That’s a
daunting task, and it’s especially
difficult for spiders, because their
genes are very long and repetitive.
It’s as if the sentence “The
quick brown fox jumps over the
lazy dog” is instead, “The quick
brown fox jumps, jumps, jumps,
jumps, jumps, jumps, jumps,jumps over the lazy dog,” said
Sarah Stellwagen from the Uni-
versity of Maryland Baltimore
County. If you have no idea what
the sentence says and have to
rebuild it from a shredded mess of
thousands of copies, how do you
know how many “jumps” to put
into it?
That’s the problem Stellwagen
faced when she recently deter-
mined the entire set of genes, and
their DNA makeup, for spider silk
glue. She had thought she could
do it fairly quickly, but it took
almost two years.
Scientists have to recover the
full gene to truly mimic natural
silk, she said. If they try to pro-
duce synthetic silk from just part
of a gene or some lab-built stunt-
ed version, “it’s not as good as
what a spider makes,” Stellwagen
said.
That’s the issue researchers
and companies have had in the
past using genetically modified
yeast, microbes and even goats tomake synthetic silk. Only last year
did a group make a small amount
that perfectly mimicked an orb-
weaving spider’s dragline silk, the
type it dangles from, using bacte-
ria.
But that was only one type of
silk from one species. Hayashi
asked, “What about the other
48,000?”
Technology has improved. Re-
searchers can now determine
genes from beginning to end
without first chopping them up.
And companies have gotten ever
closer to mass-produced synthet-
ic silks.
Now, it’s a matter of uncovering
the secrets of the potentially
thousands of other silks out there.
It’s a hard task, considering the
many spiders she has yet to study
and that some are about the size
of the period at the end of this
sentence.
“But hey, you know, we all have
goals,” she said.
— Associated PressUnweaving DNA riddles of spider silk
Research on arachnids’ webs may lead to better pesticides, bulletproof vests, space gear, even clothes
JEREMY REHM/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Silver garden spiders in the lab of Cheryl Hayashi, a biology researcher at the American Museum of
Natural History who is compiling massive data about the protein fiber spun by the creatures. Different
spider species “make so many kinds of silk,” Hayashi says. “That’s just what boggles my mind.”BY KARIN BRULLIARDThe knock on Dani Guill’s door
came in early May. It was a zoning
compliance officer, there to inves-
tigate a complaint from a neigh-
bor. Word was that a pig lived in
her Virginia Beach house, he told
her.
He wasn’t wrong. In fact, 3-
year-old, 120-pound Pumpkin has
her own bedroom and wardrobe.
She loves Honey Nut Cheerios
and acts grumpy when she
doesn’t get as much as she wants.
But unlike Guill’s dog, Pump-
kin is not allowed to reside in
Virginia Beach. City law views her
as livestock, although she is a
potbellied pig bred to be a pet.
Guill said the officer gave her 30
days to relocate the pig.
The eviction is now on hold as
two city council members, at
Guill’s urging, draft a proposal to
legalize Pumpkin and other pet
pigs in the city. Guill said seven
other owners have surfaced since
she took up the cause. “Out of the
woodwork, here come all the oth-
er pig parents,” she said.
It’s hardly an unusual munici-
pal matter. Across the nation, pet
pig owners are forcing cities and
towns to grapple with the defini-
tion of swine and reassess zoning
laws written in eras when the
divide between pets and farm ani-
mals was far starker.
In the past year, pet pig legal-
ization has been on the agenda in
Holland, Mich., Brookhaven, Ga.,
and Chatfield, Minn. — all of
which decided to allow pigs. In
Amherst, N.Y., and Eureka
Springs, Ark., officials did the op-
posite, upholding bans and call-
ing for the ouster of outlaw pigs.
Officials in other places are still
mulling what to do.
“This is a growing concern....
It’s hitting councils all over the
country,” said Mickey Schneider, a
Eureka Springs alderwoman who
pushed to change local law so that
two potbellies in the Ozarks tour-
ist town could stay. The animals
have not been expelled, and
Schneider said she’s still trying.
“These pigs are not stinky. And
they are very friendly. And they
are cute.”
The number of debates over the
animals is the result of increasing
efforts to change laws, not neces-
sarily a rise in the pet pig popula-
tion, said Kimberly Chronister, a
pig breeder who is vice president
of the American Mini Pig Associa-
tion. Although the pigs in ques-
tion are often referred to as pot-
bellied or teacup or micro, none is
likely to be accurate, she said.
Much breed mixing has occurred
since a Vietnamese potbellied pig
craze in the 1980s, and today
nearly all are hybrids that she said
should be known as “American
mini pigs.”
But they are mini only com-
pared to commercial hogs, which
can grow to well over 600 pounds.
(Esther the Wonder Pig, an Inter-
net sensation whose owners ini-
tially believed she was a “micro”
pig, tops 650.) Mini pigs usually
weigh between 60 and 150 pounds
but can reach 300, Chronister
said. Their ample size often leads
unprepared owners to abandon
them, as do zoning restrictions.
“Most city shelters are not
equipped to take a pet pig,” Chro-
nister said. Owners “really have
nowhere to turn but rescue. And
the rescues are already struggling
to maintain what they’ve got.”
The animals make good pets —
with some caveats, those who
have them said. On the upside,
they are clean and sweat-free,
quick to potty train and learn
tricks, and highly emotional and
intelligent — as smart as a 3-year-
old, owners like to say. That is also
the downside: The animals can be
mischievous and prone to tan-
trums. Pig-proofing the house is
highly recommended.
“She emptied my Tupperware
cabinet for some reason. That was
her way of saying, ‘You’ve made
me angry; now you need to get outof my way,’ ” said Megan Ander-
son, whose pig, Nugget, is in exile
at a farm outside Cleveland,
Tenn., where she lived with An-
derson until an animal control
officer showed up in May and gave
her three days to find the pig a
new home.
Anderson, a supervisor at a
center for people with intellectual
and developmental disabilities,
said she rescued Nugget from an
unfit owner when the animal was
a few weeks old. Two years later,
Nugget weighs more than 40
pounds and sits on command. “I
know if she’s upset, or wants to go
outside, or is hungry, or wants to
share my food,” Anderson said.
“You kind of learn your pig’s lan-
guage after a while.”
Anderson has since been press-
ing the city council to change the
zoning ordinance that prohibits
swine, which she acknowledges
she did not research before taking
in Nugget. “It seems so crazy,” she
said, noting that her Rottweiler
weighs more than the pig.
The issue appears to be on ice
for now. In an email, Cleveland
City Manager Joe Fivas said the
council had heard “limited public
comments” on the topic but has
had no additional discussions nor
asked city staff to prepare infor-
mation on the issue.
Chronister, whose organiza-
tion offers guidance on getting
zoning laws changed, said more
pig legalization efforts succeed
than fail. But opposition isn’t un-
common.
One pro-pig city council mem-ber in Virginia Beach, Jessica Ab-
bott, posted on Facebook last
month about her draft resolution,
which would allow pigs under a
certain size and require owners to
register them. Some followers
cheered the idea. Others won-
dered why pigs are being “fast-
tracked” when backyard hens re-
main banned in the city. Still oth-
ers said: Don’t you have more
important things to do?
“Who cares about pigs as com-
panions in Vb when we have
flooding and high taxes,” one per-
son commented.
Abbott, in a lengthy response,
pointed to her work on more tra-
ditional issues, such as flood in-
frastructure. But when constitu-
ents approach her with problems,
“I have a responsibility as a repre-
sentative to bring these topics to
the public and to then do my best
in seeking a resolution,” she
wrote.
Guill, who owns a cleaning
company and moved to Virginia
Beach from an Illinois area that
allowed Pumpkin, said she under-
stands the doubts. When her ex-
husband first proposed getting a
pig, she was skeptical, too.
“I was like, ‘We’re going to have
a pig in the house? Really? Are you
serious?’ ” she said. But Guill end-
ed up with custody of Pumpkin,
and she said she’s now deter-
mined to keep the pig. “I’m feeling
very optimistic about it.”
[email protected] More at washingtonpost.com/
animalsDANI GUILL
Pumpkin, a 3-year-old, 120-pound pig, wears a frock while taking a nap. Her owner is fighting to
change a Virginia Beach law that bans this livestock-type of animal as a pet.Towns, cities grapple with bans on pet pigs
ARNOLD GENTHE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Amid ruined buildings, survivors watch fires in downtown San
Francisco after the devastating earthquake in April 1906. The
disaster killed more than 3,000 and injured 225,000.