Flora & Fauna Archives
October 20, 2009
Posted at 8:44 AM in Flora & Fauna
In my latest foray for the Chronicle Review ("Creature Consciousness," Oct. 18, 2009), I take a look at the field of animal studies, which has taken hold in many corners of the humanities and social sciences. By animal studies I don't mean animal rights, articulated so forcefully by the likes of Peter Singer and Tom Regan. Philosophers and literary scholars working in animal studies have an agenda that might be revolutionary; they want to overturn the anthropocentric models of humanism and substitute a very different way of thinking about how human animals relate to other creatures. I also take a look at some of the ways in which historians and social scientists have approached the question(s). It's a complex and fascinating subject--and an important one, I think--and there's a lot of work out there that I didn't have space to write about. I hope you'll take a look. The story is part of a package on "the animal question"--all worth a read if you have the time and inclination.
An aside: Speaking of animal rights, I was amused to see a reader take me to task for omitting Singer from the story. An earlier draft had a paragraph that mentioned Singer and several other figures who cast a long shadow, including Regan and J.M. Coetzee; the graf was cut during edits. I didn't mind too much at the time, because the animal-studies scholars I wrote about are moving in a different direction from Singer's work, although many of them do merge animal advocacy and theory. Anyway, if you're wondering, yes, I'm aware of Singer's work, and so are the scholars profiled in the article.
A personal note: The human-animal bond (see, there I go, falling back into the humanistic trap) is on my mind this week for another reason. We had to euthanize our senior cat, Kimba, yesterday. I don't really need to tell you how powerful these attachments can be. Goodbye, friend.
December 2, 2008
Posted at 12:04 PM in Flora & Fauna
What's happened to all the acorns? The D.C. area, famous for its trees, is usually full of nuts this time of year (no jokes about Congress, please). Not this fall, the WaPo reports:
The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.
Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.
..."I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe," he said. "But this is not just not a good year for oaks. It's a zero year. There's zero production. I've never seen anything like this before."
Don't tell Jumpy and Jumpy Squirrel, who live in our backyard and are getting fat off stale bread and birdseed.
November 6, 2008
Posted at 4:12 PM in Flora & Fauna
...already unfairly maligned as suicidal, and now hit hard by climate change. The BBC reports on a new study that finds wetter winters in southern Norway, "a bleak prospect for the region's lemmings." Scientists think that the snow is no longer stable enough to provide the animals with winter shelter.
And the suicide myth?
Rather than hibernating, lemmings spend the winter living in the space between the ground and a stable layer of snow above. Dry winters would allow large numbers to survive until spring, resulting in a population explosion. On occasions, there were so many that snowploughs were deployed to clear squashed animals from roads. These years often saw Norwegian lemmings (Lemmus lemmus) having to compete hard for food. The desperate search led some to jump off high ground into water, leading to the popular - but wrong - assumption that they were prone to commit collective suicide.
Disney didn't help the cause either when, back in 1958, it forced a number of hapless lemmings off a cliff in order to get footage for the so-called documentary "White Wilderness."
I wil think twice before I use another lemming metaphor, not that I often do.
September 16, 2008
Posted at 10:25 AM in Flora & Fauna
The BBC has a thoroughly depressing (but worth reading) article on its website today about how human activity is making the oceans too noisy for dolphins and whales to communicate, with serious repercussions for their breeding-and-feeding habits. The Beeb reports on a new report from IFAW, the International Fund for Animal Welfare:
Noise generated by ships' engines and propellers, and by seismic airguns used in oil and gas exploration, produce a range of frequencies that can interfere with both these groups of species, IFAW concludes.
Its report--Ocean Noise: Turn it down--cites research showing that the effective range of blue whales' calls is only about one-tenth of what it was before the era of engine-driven commercial shipping.
Quiet down, people. We could use more peace and quiet on land, too.
(Via The Book Bench, "Leviathan Lost")
September 9, 2008
Posted at 9:42 AM in Flora & Fauna
She's an Argiope aurantia, also known as a writing spider because of the stabilimenta or zig-zag patterns the species weaves into its webs. You can see some of them in the pic.
My son spotted her on our lavender plant a few weeks ago, and she's come to be kind of a family friend. But I haven't seen her since Hurricane Hanna blew through last weekend. I hope she's okay. The lavender looks lonely without her.
August 22, 2008
Posted at 9:52 PM in Flora & Fauna
Everybody gets it wrong sometimes. (Via PlayShakespeare.com.)
