Showing posts with label Animals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Animals. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
"The Secret Life of Lobsters" - Trevor Corson & Mark Kurlansky "The Big Oyster: A Molluscular History of New York"
Friday, November 11, 2011
"Kraken" Wendy Williams
I had been meaning to read “Kraken: The Curious, Exciting and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid” ever since I first saw it. But it after reading Sy Montgomery’s brilliant article on octupuses for Orion magazine and seeing Wendy Williams book listed as a suggested reading I had to order it right away.
And it is an amazing book. Packed with astounding information on these amazing cephalopods (and also octuposes and cuttlefish) that will make anyone realize just how incredible they are. While their physiology is so alien-like (three hearts, blue blood, capable on changing color) scientists have also found incredible similarities with human beings namely in the structure of their eyes and neurons. It was truly startling to learn of the many medical breakthroughs that have been based on research carried out on squid. Future treatments for diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s will most likely owe something to these animals.
And yet they remain enigmas – do they think or communicate in ways we might fathom? Or did their brain structure and invertebrate body (not to mention their marine environment) cause them to evolve a relationship with the world and each other that our brains, so tightly wound inside our skulls will never be able to glimpse? It seems indisputable that there is “something” there, even if we try to stay away from loaded terms such as intelligence and conscience.
“Kraken” will fascinate anyone interested in natural history, science, animals and the sea. Wendy Williams has written a book that has not only a perfect rhythm but also a perfect length – and doesn’t shy away from the fact that there is still so much we don’t know about squid (and also doesn’t hide the immense amount of squid dissection needed for scientific research- which is the “slightly disturbing” part, I guess).
Any reader, even acquainted only with cephalopods in the form of lunch, will come away with a newfound respect for these creatures and maybe more importantly, a desire to know more.
And it is an amazing book. Packed with astounding information on these amazing cephalopods (and also octuposes and cuttlefish) that will make anyone realize just how incredible they are. While their physiology is so alien-like (three hearts, blue blood, capable on changing color) scientists have also found incredible similarities with human beings namely in the structure of their eyes and neurons. It was truly startling to learn of the many medical breakthroughs that have been based on research carried out on squid. Future treatments for diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s will most likely owe something to these animals.
And yet they remain enigmas – do they think or communicate in ways we might fathom? Or did their brain structure and invertebrate body (not to mention their marine environment) cause them to evolve a relationship with the world and each other that our brains, so tightly wound inside our skulls will never be able to glimpse? It seems indisputable that there is “something” there, even if we try to stay away from loaded terms such as intelligence and conscience.
“Kraken” will fascinate anyone interested in natural history, science, animals and the sea. Wendy Williams has written a book that has not only a perfect rhythm but also a perfect length – and doesn’t shy away from the fact that there is still so much we don’t know about squid (and also doesn’t hide the immense amount of squid dissection needed for scientific research- which is the “slightly disturbing” part, I guess).
Any reader, even acquainted only with cephalopods in the form of lunch, will come away with a newfound respect for these creatures and maybe more importantly, a desire to know more.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
"Feel Better Little Buddy" Julia Segal
I guess "Feel Better Little Buddy: Animals with casts" is primarily aimed at children who have broken a leg or arm and need reassurance that a cast does not make you a monster, or something. But most people who get the book are probably pet-cute-junkies such as myself.
Just what is this obsession with charming animals sporting hats, or casts and quizzical looks? A symptom of end-of-days malaise? Misdirected brooding instinct? A side effect of enormous cupcake consumption?
Oh well, I'm sure some harried grad student is about to drop a Phd on the "Semiotics of Cute: Childlessness, Infantilization and Recession", that will shed light on this enigmatic phenomenon.
Monday, October 17, 2011
"Bird-keeping and Birdcages: A History" Sonia Roberts
A quaint little book, “Bird-keeping and Birdcages: A History” was published in 1972, and is probably more interesting for its black and white illustrations and photos than for its historical research. Excluding the first chapter which deals with “The Ancient World” and travels from biblical times to the medieval age in about five pages and the second “Renaissance Exoticism and After” which has some titbit information on western European countries, Sonia Roberts' book mainly deals with British history and the rise of its bird fancy - and is more assured of its facts when it does so -, especially concerning small species such as canaries and, later, budgies.The rest of the world and its “simple societies” are taken care of with a mention on the first page.
However, this book provides a series of interesting vignettes on bird-keeping from Ancient Egypt to our days and is the only book I know of that also addresses the evolution of bird-cages and aviaries and understands that they can be important cultural and artistic objects on their own.
I do wish someone would write a revised and updated version of this History, taking into account archaeological and documentary evidence from the last forty years. After all, I feel Roberts makes an interesting point when she states: “it is reasonable to claim that caged birds were man’s first true pets, for although the dog and cat predate the cage bird as companions of man, they were originally co-opted as assistants in hunting and vermin control respectively”.
Are you there Tim Birkhead, Marina Belozerskaya and Louise Robbins?
However, this book provides a series of interesting vignettes on bird-keeping from Ancient Egypt to our days and is the only book I know of that also addresses the evolution of bird-cages and aviaries and understands that they can be important cultural and artistic objects on their own.
I do wish someone would write a revised and updated version of this History, taking into account archaeological and documentary evidence from the last forty years. After all, I feel Roberts makes an interesting point when she states: “it is reasonable to claim that caged birds were man’s first true pets, for although the dog and cat predate the cage bird as companions of man, they were originally co-opted as assistants in hunting and vermin control respectively”.
Are you there Tim Birkhead, Marina Belozerskaya and Louise Robbins?
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
"Leviathan or, The Whale" - Philip Hoare
“Leviathan” is a whale of a book. Ah. Obvious I know, but it is four hundred something pages long. Impossible not to think Philip Hoare was going for some sort of “whose is longest” contest with the mythical whale book “Moby-Dick”. Unfortunately, length does not equal reading pleasure and Leviathan proved to be a somewhat frustrating experience.
Whales might be the closest thing to aliens living right here on Earth. Their sheer size makes them incomprehensible. Their longevity doesn’t much help either. Their mysterious communications skills hint at a complex mind, wholly foreign to our terrestrial understanding. Not only do they move through a fantastic realm of deep waters but they also cover amazing distances, yet they surface, to breathe through lungs and share our mammalian heritage.
“Leviathan” started on a promising note of personal narrative. However it soon lost me in subsequent chapters. Halfway through I was close to giving up on the book, but decided to read the last two chapters where the author goes to the Portuguese islands of the Azores to track its whaling history and provide closure to his fear of deep waters by swimming with whales. I was hooked again. This is what it’s about. This was what the book should have been about all along: the fear and fascination these giants elicit.
I went back and found the second half of the book much more pleasant, now focused in British whaling history, Antarctic exploration, the shift from the economical to the scientific exploration of whales, the first efforts to protect them and the politic and economic factors that combined to hinder it.
So, what was it about the first half of the book that made me dislike it? In two words: Herman Melville. It felt like Hoare was paralysed by the spectrum of “Moby-Dick” and its author, constantly compelled to refer back to it and dwelling altogether too much in Melville’s biography. As the author himself explains, “Moby Dick” might be about a whale but it’s about a lot of other things – chiefly about writing a great masterpiece capable of paying homage to the pessimistic worldview of Nathaniel Hawthorne with whom Melville became supremely infatuated.
Plainly put, to start a contemporary book on whales taking Melville as a guide felt unoriginal. The chapters where the author tours ancient whaling ports of New England felt dead on the water, and taking into mind that later in the book Hoare goes back to the history of whaling at a much earlier date (in Europe) it felt like the chronology was wrong. Why start in the middle?
The other problem I had with “Leviathan” is that there is too much of it. Look, you know that scene in “Wonderboys” where the Katie Holmes’s character has just read Professor Tripp’s mammoth of a book and says “I could be wrong, but it sort of reads in places like you didn't make any choices. At all.” Not that I’m saying Philip Hoare wrote this “under the influence” but I could hear the book crying for an iron-fisted editor. There are so many little pieces of information and little conducting line to guide the reader along – it’s more like fighting against drowning at times. For instance, Percy Stammwitz, a character deserving of his own biography, appears in chapter III, as the author makes an historical detour of a few pages through the building of the huge whale model in London’s Natural History Museum. How I’m I supposed to remember him two hundred pages and some hundreds of different historical episodes, characters and facts later, as the author picks up his story again, now to follow his travels as he collected specimens worldwide for the museum?
There is an large interlude about Henry David Thoreau, in which his interest in whales is chronicled, the point of which is a connection between the beach he once walked and whale fossils discovered in the same place, seemingly an introduction to the palaeontology of whales, but actually not, because the author only spends a few paragraphs on the subject before going on to the next thing: myths of sea serpents. Do you get the picture? Ok, if you look hard enough there are references to whales everywhere (but you don’t need to cram every single one in the book, dude). We get it; but to say “Walden” is “a corollary to Moby-Dick” stinks of trying too hard to prove a point.
It almost feels as though there are several books here, all jumbled up. One about the history of commercial whaling, another about the whale as object of scientific study and later, conservation icon and a final one about the natural history of the animal, strictly speaking (which is definitely the shorter part). Now, all of these might be combined of course, but in Leviathan somehow it didn’t really come together. And to top it all, there is the personal narrative of the author, which starts the book in such an auspicious note but, somewhat like a whale, surfaces seldom and then erupts, unexpectedly into a two page detailed account of the author’s mother’s death. I felt embarrassed to, without warning, be plunged into a deeply intimate moment. I can’t imagine why Hoare felt it belonged in these pages.
To be fair, from chapter IX onwards I did feel a renewed cohesion in the book (but maybe influenced by the fact that I had read the final chapters first). In the end there was a lot of interesting bits of information but the reading of “Leviathan” was more of a trial than anything else. I wouldn’t say she blows (get it? hilarious) but either you’re completely nuts about whaling or you should probably sit this one out.
Whales might be the closest thing to aliens living right here on Earth. Their sheer size makes them incomprehensible. Their longevity doesn’t much help either. Their mysterious communications skills hint at a complex mind, wholly foreign to our terrestrial understanding. Not only do they move through a fantastic realm of deep waters but they also cover amazing distances, yet they surface, to breathe through lungs and share our mammalian heritage.
“Leviathan” started on a promising note of personal narrative. However it soon lost me in subsequent chapters. Halfway through I was close to giving up on the book, but decided to read the last two chapters where the author goes to the Portuguese islands of the Azores to track its whaling history and provide closure to his fear of deep waters by swimming with whales. I was hooked again. This is what it’s about. This was what the book should have been about all along: the fear and fascination these giants elicit.
I went back and found the second half of the book much more pleasant, now focused in British whaling history, Antarctic exploration, the shift from the economical to the scientific exploration of whales, the first efforts to protect them and the politic and economic factors that combined to hinder it.
So, what was it about the first half of the book that made me dislike it? In two words: Herman Melville. It felt like Hoare was paralysed by the spectrum of “Moby-Dick” and its author, constantly compelled to refer back to it and dwelling altogether too much in Melville’s biography. As the author himself explains, “Moby Dick” might be about a whale but it’s about a lot of other things – chiefly about writing a great masterpiece capable of paying homage to the pessimistic worldview of Nathaniel Hawthorne with whom Melville became supremely infatuated.
Plainly put, to start a contemporary book on whales taking Melville as a guide felt unoriginal. The chapters where the author tours ancient whaling ports of New England felt dead on the water, and taking into mind that later in the book Hoare goes back to the history of whaling at a much earlier date (in Europe) it felt like the chronology was wrong. Why start in the middle?
The other problem I had with “Leviathan” is that there is too much of it. Look, you know that scene in “Wonderboys” where the Katie Holmes’s character has just read Professor Tripp’s mammoth of a book and says “I could be wrong, but it sort of reads in places like you didn't make any choices. At all.” Not that I’m saying Philip Hoare wrote this “under the influence” but I could hear the book crying for an iron-fisted editor. There are so many little pieces of information and little conducting line to guide the reader along – it’s more like fighting against drowning at times. For instance, Percy Stammwitz, a character deserving of his own biography, appears in chapter III, as the author makes an historical detour of a few pages through the building of the huge whale model in London’s Natural History Museum. How I’m I supposed to remember him two hundred pages and some hundreds of different historical episodes, characters and facts later, as the author picks up his story again, now to follow his travels as he collected specimens worldwide for the museum?
There is an large interlude about Henry David Thoreau, in which his interest in whales is chronicled, the point of which is a connection between the beach he once walked and whale fossils discovered in the same place, seemingly an introduction to the palaeontology of whales, but actually not, because the author only spends a few paragraphs on the subject before going on to the next thing: myths of sea serpents. Do you get the picture? Ok, if you look hard enough there are references to whales everywhere (but you don’t need to cram every single one in the book, dude). We get it; but to say “Walden” is “a corollary to Moby-Dick” stinks of trying too hard to prove a point.
It almost feels as though there are several books here, all jumbled up. One about the history of commercial whaling, another about the whale as object of scientific study and later, conservation icon and a final one about the natural history of the animal, strictly speaking (which is definitely the shorter part). Now, all of these might be combined of course, but in Leviathan somehow it didn’t really come together. And to top it all, there is the personal narrative of the author, which starts the book in such an auspicious note but, somewhat like a whale, surfaces seldom and then erupts, unexpectedly into a two page detailed account of the author’s mother’s death. I felt embarrassed to, without warning, be plunged into a deeply intimate moment. I can’t imagine why Hoare felt it belonged in these pages.
To be fair, from chapter IX onwards I did feel a renewed cohesion in the book (but maybe influenced by the fact that I had read the final chapters first). In the end there was a lot of interesting bits of information but the reading of “Leviathan” was more of a trial than anything else. I wouldn’t say she blows (get it? hilarious) but either you’re completely nuts about whaling or you should probably sit this one out.
Monday, September 13, 2010
A Prickly Affair: The Charm of the Hedgehog – Hugh Warwick
Why do we think of hedgehogs as “cute”? I mean, they are not soft or cuddly and they rather tend to smell (since I have never met one face to face, I have to take the author’s word for it – and I do). But somehow they just evoke the warmth and comfort of a toasty home while it’s cold outside. Maybe it’s the hibernation thing.
In my case I think I can trace it to a 1980s children’s book about a little elf girl named Victoria Plum and a hedgehog (“Victoria and the Prickly Hedgehog”), and according to author children’s books are key to the “cut-ification” of an animal that for centuries was considered little more than a pest. In fact, the one particular book the author believes changed the public image of hedgehogs in Britain (and the world) is Beatrix Potter’s 1905 “The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle”, whose title character is a hedgehog washerwoman.
“A Prickly Affair” follows Warwick’s personal history with hedgehogs which starts with an academic assignment and grows into a long term serious relationship not only with the prickly critters but also with the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.
We follow the author as he tracks hedgehogs on freezing nights, shares hedgehog lore and history and gets involved with hedgehog protection because, incredibly, there are some people who (wait for it, wait for it…) do not like hedgehogs! And those people who happen to be bird lovers (who really do tend to get a little hysterical and would probably exterminate every cat, ferret, hedgehog etc in the world if they could manage) would rather shoot (yes, shoot!) hedgies than find out if they even have anything to do with the dwindling bird populations.
I also was very curious about reading this book to find out whether the author, who loves the critters, had any as pets and what he thought about keeping them as pets. Now, I was never going to have one, because I will never feed a living thing to a living thing (and hedgies need their bugs) but I keep seeing them in pet sites and was genuinely curious. I knew the pet hedgehogs commonly kept are of the African variety but I didn’t know what that meant (they are smaller and don’t smell as much). I now believe Hugh Warwick is on a mission to keep us all from pet hedgehog ownership and his cunning plan is delineated in the chapter “A Brief Interlude at the International Hedgehog Olympic games”: by exposing the reader to excesses of devoted (to put it euphemistically) hedgie ownership, the author has pretty much insured that his readers will never keep a hedgehog as a pet (can you guess which country is the host of said games?).
This book sort of spoiled my vacation reading list because I read it first and knew I hadn’t brought along anything else I would enjoy as much, so that was a problem. But I forgive it because not only was it the highlight of my summer reading it also has the cutest little hedgehog illustrations.
In my case I think I can trace it to a 1980s children’s book about a little elf girl named Victoria Plum and a hedgehog (“Victoria and the Prickly Hedgehog”), and according to author children’s books are key to the “cut-ification” of an animal that for centuries was considered little more than a pest. In fact, the one particular book the author believes changed the public image of hedgehogs in Britain (and the world) is Beatrix Potter’s 1905 “The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle”, whose title character is a hedgehog washerwoman.
“A Prickly Affair” follows Warwick’s personal history with hedgehogs which starts with an academic assignment and grows into a long term serious relationship not only with the prickly critters but also with the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.
We follow the author as he tracks hedgehogs on freezing nights, shares hedgehog lore and history and gets involved with hedgehog protection because, incredibly, there are some people who (wait for it, wait for it…) do not like hedgehogs! And those people who happen to be bird lovers (who really do tend to get a little hysterical and would probably exterminate every cat, ferret, hedgehog etc in the world if they could manage) would rather shoot (yes, shoot!) hedgies than find out if they even have anything to do with the dwindling bird populations.
I also was very curious about reading this book to find out whether the author, who loves the critters, had any as pets and what he thought about keeping them as pets. Now, I was never going to have one, because I will never feed a living thing to a living thing (and hedgies need their bugs) but I keep seeing them in pet sites and was genuinely curious. I knew the pet hedgehogs commonly kept are of the African variety but I didn’t know what that meant (they are smaller and don’t smell as much). I now believe Hugh Warwick is on a mission to keep us all from pet hedgehog ownership and his cunning plan is delineated in the chapter “A Brief Interlude at the International Hedgehog Olympic games”: by exposing the reader to excesses of devoted (to put it euphemistically) hedgie ownership, the author has pretty much insured that his readers will never keep a hedgehog as a pet (can you guess which country is the host of said games?).
This book sort of spoiled my vacation reading list because I read it first and knew I hadn’t brought along anything else I would enjoy as much, so that was a problem. But I forgive it because not only was it the highlight of my summer reading it also has the cutest little hedgehog illustrations.
Three Books on Tortoises
Timothy; or; Notes of an Abject Reptile: a novel – Verlyn Klinkenborg
Lonesome George: The Life and Times of a Conservation Icon – Henry Nichols
Timothy the Tortoise: The Remarkable Story of the Nation’s Oldest Pet
It all started with Klinkenborg’s book: I must have bought it some two years back and started reading it some five times. Each time I gave up in the very first pages. Then one day I started it and read the whole thing. Oh, it’s a difficult book all right. It doesn’t give you an inch. You have to pry it open, re-read passages constantly, use the glossary (which I only noticed was there half-way through) and even gasp! use the dictionary, only to not find what you were looking for.
But, it’s a beautiful book. Ethereal, a philosophical dissertation, a study of Man and its incomprehensible ways by an animal considered by most unthinking, slow, stupid.
Our guide is a tortoise named Timothy, an actual, historical character (his shell is kept in London’s Natural History Museum). Gilbert White, British naturalist of the XVIII Century famous for his “The Natural History of Selborne” in which he chronicles the natural cycles of his home county, adopted the Greek tortoise Timothy after his owner passed away. A man so in tune with every bird migration and sprouting bud, seems to have been less loving and observant of his unusual pet - his is the expression “abject reptile”.
Here, however, Klinkenborg decides to give voice to Timothy and allow him to write his own “Natural History of Selbourne”. More an anthropologist than a natural historian, for he is a foreigner and both weather and custom feel out of place to him. Well, actually, more of an alien creature, for he is condemned to a life a solitude without ever meeting one of his kind. Condemned also, because of his longevity, to witness death often.
For Timothy the frailty of human skin which must be clothed and then housed is a source of wonder, maybe even some scorn: we are beings naturally unfit to live in Nature and must make up for it by our wits: “No creature excels the human in matters of nidification”.
“Notes…” is a very rewarding book, but I think you have to be in the right mood to enjoy it. It is very contemplative in tone with a lot of XVIII century rural vocabulary, and I believe most readers will probably have to make an initial effort to pierce its outer carapace. However, inside lies a very wise, friendly beast whose company will almost certainly improve our condition.
“Lonesome George” is the kind of book I love. Centered in the creature that has been labeled “the rarest animal in the world” it digresses into conservation, cloning, the politics of tourism vs conservation vs local economy and of course, Darwin, for George lives in the Galápagos Islands.
He is the last known Geochelone nigra abingdoni or Pinta Island Tortoise, first discovered in 1971, and the book traces both efforts to find out for sure if George really is lonesome, (he may not be) as well as various strategies to attempt procreation (with turtles of nearby islands of similar genetic make-up) which have not yielded results until now.
How did turtles even get to the Galápagos? And why are there so many different species? Did they arrive at different times or spread later through the islands? How has human hand influenced the distribution and extermination of turtles in the islands? Can individual animals like Lonesome George really make a difference in conservation efforts by influencing public opinion? What are some near-extinct species that have come back from the brink of annihilation and what were the techniques used by scientists to accomplish this? And can havens of biodiversity like the Galápagos really find balance between being scientific stations for (mostly) foreign scientists, tourist destinations for (let’s face it) the wealthy and a place where economic survival is possible for native inhabitants?
These are some of the questions Henry Nicholls explores and really, how can you not be interested in finding out the answers?
I got “Timothy the Tortoise” because it was cheap and well, I was in a tortoise kind of place. While it doesn’t really focus solely on its protagonist, I did find the book an enjoyable read. Timothy (so named after Gilbert White’s Timothy) serves as the guide to the British aristocratic Courtenay family as the author follows the genealogical tree using Timothy’s keeper’s and recounts of important family events and memories of the tortoise.
Because it actually chronicles an epoch when British aristocracy and its way of life became redundant I found it quite interesting, though really, there isn’t much turtle lore here.
On a quirky end note, both Timothy’s were actually found out to be females…
But, it’s a beautiful book. Ethereal, a philosophical dissertation, a study of Man and its incomprehensible ways by an animal considered by most unthinking, slow, stupid.
Our guide is a tortoise named Timothy, an actual, historical character (his shell is kept in London’s Natural History Museum). Gilbert White, British naturalist of the XVIII Century famous for his “The Natural History of Selborne” in which he chronicles the natural cycles of his home county, adopted the Greek tortoise Timothy after his owner passed away. A man so in tune with every bird migration and sprouting bud, seems to have been less loving and observant of his unusual pet - his is the expression “abject reptile”.
Here, however, Klinkenborg decides to give voice to Timothy and allow him to write his own “Natural History of Selbourne”. More an anthropologist than a natural historian, for he is a foreigner and both weather and custom feel out of place to him. Well, actually, more of an alien creature, for he is condemned to a life a solitude without ever meeting one of his kind. Condemned also, because of his longevity, to witness death often.
For Timothy the frailty of human skin which must be clothed and then housed is a source of wonder, maybe even some scorn: we are beings naturally unfit to live in Nature and must make up for it by our wits: “No creature excels the human in matters of nidification”.
“Notes…” is a very rewarding book, but I think you have to be in the right mood to enjoy it. It is very contemplative in tone with a lot of XVIII century rural vocabulary, and I believe most readers will probably have to make an initial effort to pierce its outer carapace. However, inside lies a very wise, friendly beast whose company will almost certainly improve our condition.
“Lonesome George” is the kind of book I love. Centered in the creature that has been labeled “the rarest animal in the world” it digresses into conservation, cloning, the politics of tourism vs conservation vs local economy and of course, Darwin, for George lives in the Galápagos Islands.
He is the last known Geochelone nigra abingdoni or Pinta Island Tortoise, first discovered in 1971, and the book traces both efforts to find out for sure if George really is lonesome, (he may not be) as well as various strategies to attempt procreation (with turtles of nearby islands of similar genetic make-up) which have not yielded results until now.
How did turtles even get to the Galápagos? And why are there so many different species? Did they arrive at different times or spread later through the islands? How has human hand influenced the distribution and extermination of turtles in the islands? Can individual animals like Lonesome George really make a difference in conservation efforts by influencing public opinion? What are some near-extinct species that have come back from the brink of annihilation and what were the techniques used by scientists to accomplish this? And can havens of biodiversity like the Galápagos really find balance between being scientific stations for (mostly) foreign scientists, tourist destinations for (let’s face it) the wealthy and a place where economic survival is possible for native inhabitants?
These are some of the questions Henry Nicholls explores and really, how can you not be interested in finding out the answers?
I got “Timothy the Tortoise” because it was cheap and well, I was in a tortoise kind of place. While it doesn’t really focus solely on its protagonist, I did find the book an enjoyable read. Timothy (so named after Gilbert White’s Timothy) serves as the guide to the British aristocratic Courtenay family as the author follows the genealogical tree using Timothy’s keeper’s and recounts of important family events and memories of the tortoise.
Because it actually chronicles an epoch when British aristocracy and its way of life became redundant I found it quite interesting, though really, there isn’t much turtle lore here.
On a quirky end note, both Timothy’s were actually found out to be females…
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Amy Stewart "The Earth Moved"
"The Earth Moved: on the remarkable achievements of earthworms"
Leave it to Amy Stewart to write a book about earthworms that is actually a page turner. Taking her cue from a famous worm-lover, Evolution dad, Darwin, Stewart explores the natural history of worms: what are they exactly, how do they work, what do they do and how they do it.
Interviews with worm scientists (oligochaetologists) involved in different projects (taxonomy, for instance, since many earthworm species are yet unnamed and undescribed; their impact on ecosystems that evolved without worms; their possible role in waste management; and their quantifiable benefits in crop yield, for instance) are interspersed with tales of the author’s worm compost bin and vegetable garden.
More and more it amazes me how our very survival in this planet is intimately tied with creatures we don’t think much about and some of us even find repulsive. While large animals, predators and herbivores alike, are the poster children of conservation movements everywhere we are more intimately connected with insects – I find that humbling and somewhat magical.
The scientists Stewart interviews have a common tale of underfunding and little interest. No-one cares that you might want to devote your life wholeheartedly to worms and that they in turn, have many secrets to unravel or that agricultural fields rich in worms are many times more productive than the ones without. Pandas they are not.
And yet, according to Amy Stewart worms are probably the perfect pet. While I’m not completely sold on that one, “The Earth Moved” did convince me they are fascinating, mysterious and if not exactly beautiful, at least kind of cute.
Leave it to Amy Stewart to write a book about earthworms that is actually a page turner. Taking her cue from a famous worm-lover, Evolution dad, Darwin, Stewart explores the natural history of worms: what are they exactly, how do they work, what do they do and how they do it.
Interviews with worm scientists (oligochaetologists) involved in different projects (taxonomy, for instance, since many earthworm species are yet unnamed and undescribed; their impact on ecosystems that evolved without worms; their possible role in waste management; and their quantifiable benefits in crop yield, for instance) are interspersed with tales of the author’s worm compost bin and vegetable garden.
More and more it amazes me how our very survival in this planet is intimately tied with creatures we don’t think much about and some of us even find repulsive. While large animals, predators and herbivores alike, are the poster children of conservation movements everywhere we are more intimately connected with insects – I find that humbling and somewhat magical.
The scientists Stewart interviews have a common tale of underfunding and little interest. No-one cares that you might want to devote your life wholeheartedly to worms and that they in turn, have many secrets to unravel or that agricultural fields rich in worms are many times more productive than the ones without. Pandas they are not.
And yet, according to Amy Stewart worms are probably the perfect pet. While I’m not completely sold on that one, “The Earth Moved” did convince me they are fascinating, mysterious and if not exactly beautiful, at least kind of cute.
Holley Bishop "Robbing the Bees"
"Robbing the Bees: A biography of honey, the sweet liquid gold that seduced the world"
“Robbing the Bees” divides its pages between a modern day bee-keeping operation in Florida and a world history of bee-keeping.
In apiculturalist Smiley, Holley Bishop seems to have found the perfect guide into the world of commercial bee-keeping. A competent businessman who is also deeply entranced with his charges and finds that the best part of the job is the constant learning experience.
Accompanying the season of tupelo honey, the book is as close to a documentary as you can find on the written page. From the first tentative blossoms, the placing of the hives in the fields, until the sales calls, the reader gets a complete tour of contemporary honey gathering. There is also a quick tour of a truly gigantic honey venture where bee-keepers send excess production that gets used into cereals, candy and the like.
Along the way, Bishop presents a history of apiculture from Stone Age to our days. It was very interesting to learn that the hive, as we know it is actually a recent invention (XIX century) and that for the most, our experience of honey gathering was dangerous, even life-threatening (as it still is in some regions).
There are tales of scrumptious recipes using honey (the ancient Greeks were particular fans), honey used as currency in various civilizations, a chapter on that mind blogging substance that is wax and the many uses it was put to. My favorite was probably the chapter on the medicinal (and cosmetic) uses of honey.
And yet, great as this book was, it seems to have let me far from satisfied as far as honeybees go. This is not in the least “Robbing the Bees” fault – but the more I read about these mysterious insects, the more my curiosity stirs. Bishop’s book left me hungry for more, which is a recommendation by any account.
“Robbing the Bees” divides its pages between a modern day bee-keeping operation in Florida and a world history of bee-keeping.
In apiculturalist Smiley, Holley Bishop seems to have found the perfect guide into the world of commercial bee-keeping. A competent businessman who is also deeply entranced with his charges and finds that the best part of the job is the constant learning experience.
Accompanying the season of tupelo honey, the book is as close to a documentary as you can find on the written page. From the first tentative blossoms, the placing of the hives in the fields, until the sales calls, the reader gets a complete tour of contemporary honey gathering. There is also a quick tour of a truly gigantic honey venture where bee-keepers send excess production that gets used into cereals, candy and the like.
Along the way, Bishop presents a history of apiculture from Stone Age to our days. It was very interesting to learn that the hive, as we know it is actually a recent invention (XIX century) and that for the most, our experience of honey gathering was dangerous, even life-threatening (as it still is in some regions).
There are tales of scrumptious recipes using honey (the ancient Greeks were particular fans), honey used as currency in various civilizations, a chapter on that mind blogging substance that is wax and the many uses it was put to. My favorite was probably the chapter on the medicinal (and cosmetic) uses of honey.
And yet, great as this book was, it seems to have let me far from satisfied as far as honeybees go. This is not in the least “Robbing the Bees” fault – but the more I read about these mysterious insects, the more my curiosity stirs. Bishop’s book left me hungry for more, which is a recommendation by any account.
Stephen Budiansky "The Nature of Horses"
"The Nature of Horses: their evolution, intelligence & behaviour"
Just like his books on cats and dogs, Budiansky’s “The Nature of Horses” follows the same path: it explores their evolution, intelligence and behaviour (hey, just like it says in the sub-title!).
As with his previous books I was more interested in the natural history and the history of domestication, and somewhat bored by the chapters on intelligence testing. The physiology part didn’t much stir me either. Now, the thing is, I don’t know how much of it is related to my personal history with horses which is exactly…non-existent.
I think I’ve ridden a horse the grand total of…once. It seemed incredibly tall (and I’m not crazy about heights) and impossible to control.
But like everyone else I was not immune to the cultural image of the horse, having grown up reading a lot of cowboy themed comics and watching them portrayed in television and film as ultimate symbols of freedom, beauty and grace.
I have toyed with the idea of horse-riding lessons a couple of times and at the same time it always seemed like such an exploitative past-time (and watching a bunch of kids taking classes didn’t much help either – poor ponies). The bit, in particular, has always seemed like an incredibly cruel gadget.
In this sense, Budiansky didn’t exactly put my fears at ease. The “domestication” of horses was brutal business and most ancient riding gear worked by enforcing physical pain. Not for nothing each horse, even today, must be “broken” before it can be ridden. Horses are not born with a wish to carry us on their backs, but they are born social animals that respond to hierarchy and are good at learning. Of these natural inclinations, humans have been able to extract great advantages.
Another thing I’ve always disliked about equestrianism is that it is the domain of the wealthy. Of course it is, Budiansky explains, and has always been. Horses have, from the first connections with man, been tied both with war and wealth – symbols of power, dominance and status, a connection deepened with the establishment of the first equestrian games.
It all made me feel somewhat sorry for horses, forced to go to war for millennia, then to carry unbearable loads and finally unbearable brats. And made to play polo and race…uhg it’s too sad. I hereby foreswear horse riding forever.
Just like his books on cats and dogs, Budiansky’s “The Nature of Horses” follows the same path: it explores their evolution, intelligence and behaviour (hey, just like it says in the sub-title!).
As with his previous books I was more interested in the natural history and the history of domestication, and somewhat bored by the chapters on intelligence testing. The physiology part didn’t much stir me either. Now, the thing is, I don’t know how much of it is related to my personal history with horses which is exactly…non-existent.
I think I’ve ridden a horse the grand total of…once. It seemed incredibly tall (and I’m not crazy about heights) and impossible to control.
But like everyone else I was not immune to the cultural image of the horse, having grown up reading a lot of cowboy themed comics and watching them portrayed in television and film as ultimate symbols of freedom, beauty and grace.
I have toyed with the idea of horse-riding lessons a couple of times and at the same time it always seemed like such an exploitative past-time (and watching a bunch of kids taking classes didn’t much help either – poor ponies). The bit, in particular, has always seemed like an incredibly cruel gadget.
In this sense, Budiansky didn’t exactly put my fears at ease. The “domestication” of horses was brutal business and most ancient riding gear worked by enforcing physical pain. Not for nothing each horse, even today, must be “broken” before it can be ridden. Horses are not born with a wish to carry us on their backs, but they are born social animals that respond to hierarchy and are good at learning. Of these natural inclinations, humans have been able to extract great advantages.
Another thing I’ve always disliked about equestrianism is that it is the domain of the wealthy. Of course it is, Budiansky explains, and has always been. Horses have, from the first connections with man, been tied both with war and wealth – symbols of power, dominance and status, a connection deepened with the establishment of the first equestrian games.
It all made me feel somewhat sorry for horses, forced to go to war for millennia, then to carry unbearable loads and finally unbearable brats. And made to play polo and race…uhg it’s too sad. I hereby foreswear horse riding forever.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum "A World Without Bees"
Just what is up with the vanishing honeybees?
The mysterious ailment with the X-files worthy name of “Colony Collapse Disorder” has scientists stumped since the spring of 2007 when American bee-keepers opened their hives to find a whole lot of nothing. Pretty soon European bees were disappearing too.
“A World Without Bees” is a fascinating, if unsettling book, which for some reason, I really didn’t get into when I first got it, a couple of years back.
I opened it again recently and became enthralled – sometimes you have to pick up a book at the right moment, I guess.
Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum have put together a very readable, detailed and interesting overview of CCD, that is also an exposé of modern agricultural practices and our very civilization’s dependence on bees.
Think I’m exaggerating? Well, consider that bees are responsible for pollinating something like 70% of crops: everything from most fruits and vegetables to cotton, needed for clothing manufacture, and coffee, not to mention most crops used as animal feed. No more bees = no more steak, milk, etc. Scary, hum?
In “A World Without Bees” several usual suspects are carefully looked over: monoculture techniques of growing crops, the massive transport of beehives to sites, viruses old and new, pesticides, climate change.
Even if scientists have yet to understand the mechanisms at work in the mysterious disappearance of honeybees one thing is made clear by the surprising picture painted by Benjamin and McCallum: agriculture these days is sounding more and more like a soil form of fois-gras production. We can’t expect to keep up it up without something going very wrong. For all intents and purposes it seems it already has.
A great book.
The mysterious ailment with the X-files worthy name of “Colony Collapse Disorder” has scientists stumped since the spring of 2007 when American bee-keepers opened their hives to find a whole lot of nothing. Pretty soon European bees were disappearing too.
“A World Without Bees” is a fascinating, if unsettling book, which for some reason, I really didn’t get into when I first got it, a couple of years back.
I opened it again recently and became enthralled – sometimes you have to pick up a book at the right moment, I guess.
Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum have put together a very readable, detailed and interesting overview of CCD, that is also an exposé of modern agricultural practices and our very civilization’s dependence on bees.
Think I’m exaggerating? Well, consider that bees are responsible for pollinating something like 70% of crops: everything from most fruits and vegetables to cotton, needed for clothing manufacture, and coffee, not to mention most crops used as animal feed. No more bees = no more steak, milk, etc. Scary, hum?
In “A World Without Bees” several usual suspects are carefully looked over: monoculture techniques of growing crops, the massive transport of beehives to sites, viruses old and new, pesticides, climate change.
Even if scientists have yet to understand the mechanisms at work in the mysterious disappearance of honeybees one thing is made clear by the surprising picture painted by Benjamin and McCallum: agriculture these days is sounding more and more like a soil form of fois-gras production. We can’t expect to keep up it up without something going very wrong. For all intents and purposes it seems it already has.
A great book.
Jeffrey Masson "The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats"
Another recommendation from DogEar Diary", I enjoyed reading about Masson’s adventures with his five cats.
Trained in psychiatry and a militant vegan Jeffrey Masson always has his own way of telling animal tales. While “The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats” may not shed much light on the behavior of cats, except to reinforce, once again, how deeply alien they are to us humans and simultaneously how fascinating, it is a wonderful read for the scenery alone.
Living on a beach house in New Zealand, surrounded by rain forest with five cats (kittens, really) allowed to fully express their natures, come and go, seek human company when they wish, cavort on the beach…it’s a wonderful holiday book even if it does get one slightly jealous…
Konrad Lorenz once wrote that it’s a magical thing having a cat that you take walks with (more pointedly that allows you to join his walks). For most of us it might be as close to having a connection with a wild animal as it gets…
However, as in “Dogs Never Lie About Love” there was one thing that nagged at me: in the beginning of both books the author seems to “collect” animals from shelter and breeders with the clearly stated purpose of “studying” them. Then in this book we find out that the dogs and cats of “Dogs…” were all given up. While none were abandoned I have to admit I have a problem with this. The author says it was because he and his wife had to move a lot during a couple of years, but it just seems like carelessness from someone who makes a career out of being an animal rights spokesperson…doesn’t it?
Trained in psychiatry and a militant vegan Jeffrey Masson always has his own way of telling animal tales. While “The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats” may not shed much light on the behavior of cats, except to reinforce, once again, how deeply alien they are to us humans and simultaneously how fascinating, it is a wonderful read for the scenery alone.
Living on a beach house in New Zealand, surrounded by rain forest with five cats (kittens, really) allowed to fully express their natures, come and go, seek human company when they wish, cavort on the beach…it’s a wonderful holiday book even if it does get one slightly jealous…
Konrad Lorenz once wrote that it’s a magical thing having a cat that you take walks with (more pointedly that allows you to join his walks). For most of us it might be as close to having a connection with a wild animal as it gets…
However, as in “Dogs Never Lie About Love” there was one thing that nagged at me: in the beginning of both books the author seems to “collect” animals from shelter and breeders with the clearly stated purpose of “studying” them. Then in this book we find out that the dogs and cats of “Dogs…” were all given up. While none were abandoned I have to admit I have a problem with this. The author says it was because he and his wife had to move a lot during a couple of years, but it just seems like carelessness from someone who makes a career out of being an animal rights spokesperson…doesn’t it?
Stephen Budiansky "The Truth About Dogs"
I didn’t enjoy Stephen Budiansky’s book on dogs as much as I did his cat one. Maybe, as Laura Miller refers in a scathing dog and cat book review, “while most human-dog bonds are fairly similar, there seems to be so much variety in cat owners' relationships to their pets -- every cat is a custom job”. But dog books somehow can never avoid the subject of “leadership” which is a concept that in animal relations, as in life, never fails to annoy me.
This is undoubtedly why my dogs are such brats (and why I was the worst substitute teacher in the world). I can’t tell people what to do, much less 10 year olds or dogs. I don’t get why they don’t do their own thing without constantly causing mayhem.
Anyway, back to “The Truth About Dogs”. The beginning was hilarious and highly promising. Like me, Budiansky has some qualms with the prevailing western cultural image of dogs: “unconditional love”? “best friend”?
“Dogs take from the rich, they take from the poor, and they keep it all. They lie on top of the air-conditioning vent in the summer, they curl up in front of the fireplace in winter, they commit outrages upon our property too varied and unspeakable to name. They decide when we may go to bed at night and when we must rise in the morning, where we may go on vacation and for how long, whom we may invite over to dinner, and how we should decorate our living rooms. They steal the very bread from our plates.”
So true.
Even though one passage is titled “Dogs aren’t wolves”, Budiansky actually spends most of the book using wolf behavior as a way to make sense of dog behavior. Most dog books, since Konrad Lorenz do this, so it didn’t feel very surprising. As in his cat book my favorite parts dealt with history (although there is little cultural history here; on that subject, the fascinating “Lost History of the Canine Race” is unsurpassable) and my least favorite with intelligent testing.
I did learn something, however: wimps make awful dog owners. If you are not willing to assert dominance (and occasionally, physical dominance) over your dog, she will probably develop all sorts of undesirable behaviors not to mention outright aggression.
So here I was, thinking what a coincidence it is that I always end up with super independent, stubborn dogs when all along, I’m the problem in the relationship (I also fall in another dangerous category according to Budiansky: owners who desperately want their dogs to love them)…
It might sound as if I’m being ironic, but it was actually pretty insightful, not to mention the first time I read about it in such unapologetic terms (and to give credit where it is due, my husband had already alluded to my general disinclination to discipline as a problem).
All around, a good dog book for those who haven’t read too many already. I’m reading his book on horses now (both of these a kind heads-up from Jeane at “DogEar Diary” so stay tuned…
This is undoubtedly why my dogs are such brats (and why I was the worst substitute teacher in the world). I can’t tell people what to do, much less 10 year olds or dogs. I don’t get why they don’t do their own thing without constantly causing mayhem.
Anyway, back to “The Truth About Dogs”. The beginning was hilarious and highly promising. Like me, Budiansky has some qualms with the prevailing western cultural image of dogs: “unconditional love”? “best friend”?
“Dogs take from the rich, they take from the poor, and they keep it all. They lie on top of the air-conditioning vent in the summer, they curl up in front of the fireplace in winter, they commit outrages upon our property too varied and unspeakable to name. They decide when we may go to bed at night and when we must rise in the morning, where we may go on vacation and for how long, whom we may invite over to dinner, and how we should decorate our living rooms. They steal the very bread from our plates.”
So true.
Even though one passage is titled “Dogs aren’t wolves”, Budiansky actually spends most of the book using wolf behavior as a way to make sense of dog behavior. Most dog books, since Konrad Lorenz do this, so it didn’t feel very surprising. As in his cat book my favorite parts dealt with history (although there is little cultural history here; on that subject, the fascinating “Lost History of the Canine Race” is unsurpassable) and my least favorite with intelligent testing.
I did learn something, however: wimps make awful dog owners. If you are not willing to assert dominance (and occasionally, physical dominance) over your dog, she will probably develop all sorts of undesirable behaviors not to mention outright aggression.
So here I was, thinking what a coincidence it is that I always end up with super independent, stubborn dogs when all along, I’m the problem in the relationship (I also fall in another dangerous category according to Budiansky: owners who desperately want their dogs to love them)…
It might sound as if I’m being ironic, but it was actually pretty insightful, not to mention the first time I read about it in such unapologetic terms (and to give credit where it is due, my husband had already alluded to my general disinclination to discipline as a problem).
All around, a good dog book for those who haven’t read too many already. I’m reading his book on horses now (both of these a kind heads-up from Jeane at “DogEar Diary” so stay tuned…
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Stephen Budiansky "The Character of Cats"
I started this book not expecting to learn anything new. After all, as far as the natural history of cats is concerned I’ve read my fair share: “The Tribe of Tiger” by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, “The Cat Who Came in From the Cold” by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson as well as various other non-fictions, memoirs etc. But I couldn’t very well resist the cover or the fact that it was cheap, even if I wasn’t expecting anything earth shattering.
However, Stephen Budiansky’s take on cats proved above and beyond anything I have previously read on felines: it provided a lot of new information as well as putting to rest some often repeated cultural myths about cats. I’d have to say this is the ultimate cat book.
For instance, Budiansky puts aside any notion of looking at cats as little “big cats” which is often the way they are portrayed: “The big cats branched off from the evolutionary line that led to the domestic cat some 9 million years ago; by way of comparison, that was several million years before the chimpanzee and human lineages diverged.” For instance some big cats, such as lions, are social animals while the ancestors of our domestic cats are solitary animals, to name just important difference.
As far as domestication, the author also provides some fascinating insights. Can we even call the cat domesticated? An “exploited captive” is the expression Budiansky considers more correct to describe them (as well as camels, asian elephants and a few other species). Domestication, he argues, is a process that may well have been initiated by the animals themselves, sensing some clear benefits in associating with humans, rather than the planned, organized endeavor we often imagine; the cat however, might fit this latter idealization:
“In a very nice paradox, it is those species such as the cat, which have changed the least, that are actually most likely to have been deliberately captured and bred by man from the start.”
Certainly the cat’s physiology seems immune to the kind of noticeable changes that separate most domestic animals from their wild counterparts."
As far as cultural history goes Budiansky does a great job of reminding the reader that our relationships with animals are complex things: he deftly deconstructs Ancient Egypt as the supreme cat heaven, as well as the Middle Ages as the ultimate cat hell.
There are chapters on cat colonization based on color (a subject Sue Hubbell refers in her “Shrinking the Cat”, as well as some extensive information on cat body language and intelligence. This section was a bit uncomfortable as it relates a load of tests performed in laboratories (no discernible cruelty, mind you, but you get to wonder how do they measure electric stimuli on the brain and that sort of thing). Bottom line is: cats are intelligent, but mostly in ways that our singularly human view of the world is not well equipped to identify.
The author then tackles behavior issues that are probably closer to home for most cat owners such as spraying and aggression.
I particular liked the last section on indoor vs outdoor cats: once again I felt Budiansky provided a novel point of view:
“And even if outdoor cats do not cause extinctions or other irreversible impacts on biodiversity, they certainly cause much pain and suffering to the billions of individual animals they kill. That fact alone poses something of an ethical challenge to the humane justification for maintaining and feeding large colonies of feral cats.”
Now, I know of a few people who would probably be angry at this statement (and for the record I contribute to organizations with Trap-Neuter-Release programs), but I don’t think it can be denied that it is certainly a valid point…And there is this nugget to chew on:
“Yet ultimately, the goals of both the keep-all-cats-indoors zealots and the feed-and-protect-feral-cats zealots are probably unattainable. Many feral cats probably elude trapping, and indeed the net effect of trap-alter-release programs in the long run may be simply to create a powerful selective force in favor of an even wilier and nastier population of feral cats, since those are the ones who will be left to reproduce.”
Yikes!
Now excuse me while I go shop for his books on dogs and horses.
However, Stephen Budiansky’s take on cats proved above and beyond anything I have previously read on felines: it provided a lot of new information as well as putting to rest some often repeated cultural myths about cats. I’d have to say this is the ultimate cat book.
For instance, Budiansky puts aside any notion of looking at cats as little “big cats” which is often the way they are portrayed: “The big cats branched off from the evolutionary line that led to the domestic cat some 9 million years ago; by way of comparison, that was several million years before the chimpanzee and human lineages diverged.” For instance some big cats, such as lions, are social animals while the ancestors of our domestic cats are solitary animals, to name just important difference.
As far as domestication, the author also provides some fascinating insights. Can we even call the cat domesticated? An “exploited captive” is the expression Budiansky considers more correct to describe them (as well as camels, asian elephants and a few other species). Domestication, he argues, is a process that may well have been initiated by the animals themselves, sensing some clear benefits in associating with humans, rather than the planned, organized endeavor we often imagine; the cat however, might fit this latter idealization:
“In a very nice paradox, it is those species such as the cat, which have changed the least, that are actually most likely to have been deliberately captured and bred by man from the start.”
Certainly the cat’s physiology seems immune to the kind of noticeable changes that separate most domestic animals from their wild counterparts."
As far as cultural history goes Budiansky does a great job of reminding the reader that our relationships with animals are complex things: he deftly deconstructs Ancient Egypt as the supreme cat heaven, as well as the Middle Ages as the ultimate cat hell.
There are chapters on cat colonization based on color (a subject Sue Hubbell refers in her “Shrinking the Cat”, as well as some extensive information on cat body language and intelligence. This section was a bit uncomfortable as it relates a load of tests performed in laboratories (no discernible cruelty, mind you, but you get to wonder how do they measure electric stimuli on the brain and that sort of thing). Bottom line is: cats are intelligent, but mostly in ways that our singularly human view of the world is not well equipped to identify.
The author then tackles behavior issues that are probably closer to home for most cat owners such as spraying and aggression.
I particular liked the last section on indoor vs outdoor cats: once again I felt Budiansky provided a novel point of view:
“And even if outdoor cats do not cause extinctions or other irreversible impacts on biodiversity, they certainly cause much pain and suffering to the billions of individual animals they kill. That fact alone poses something of an ethical challenge to the humane justification for maintaining and feeding large colonies of feral cats.”
Now, I know of a few people who would probably be angry at this statement (and for the record I contribute to organizations with Trap-Neuter-Release programs), but I don’t think it can be denied that it is certainly a valid point…And there is this nugget to chew on:
“Yet ultimately, the goals of both the keep-all-cats-indoors zealots and the feed-and-protect-feral-cats zealots are probably unattainable. Many feral cats probably elude trapping, and indeed the net effect of trap-alter-release programs in the long run may be simply to create a powerful selective force in favor of an even wilier and nastier population of feral cats, since those are the ones who will be left to reproduce.”
Yikes!
Now excuse me while I go shop for his books on dogs and horses.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Nina Malkin "An Unlikely Cat Lady"
As Megan McMorris noted on the introduction to “Cat Women”, girls tend to be apologetic about cat ownership these days. Decades of “cat lady” syndrome has given kitties a bad name, and if you happen to have more than two, well…be afraid, be very afraid…
But just as knitting is now cool (it is, right?) so can cats make a fearless comeback. If they become the symbol of independent ladies everywhere instead of the icon of sad spinsterhood, it will probably have something to do with books such as an “Unlikely Cat Lady”. Malkin, drops contemporary cultural references like she just doesn’t care, is way funny, a hard-core urbanite and she watches out for hardcore cats: feral cats.
Already the proud owner of two indoor, spoiled kitties, Malkin started noticing the strays around her neighbourhood. From noticing to caring, to doing something about it, it wasn’t but a few small steps. Next thing you know, TNR (trap, neuter, release) became a mantra to this Brooklyn native after a litter of stray kittens entered her backyard and her heart.
Caring for ferals is, of course, heartbreaking stuff. Cats suck at being grateful - and they are not smart about safety either. They vanish, get sick, get themselves into dangerous places, obviously not doubting for a single moment that you will risk life and limbs to save them (did I mention all the money you spend neutering the ingrates?). “An Unlikely Cat Lady” chronicles a year of joy and sadness, and also of the author’s discovery of a growing community devoted to the care of feral cats. It’s exactly the sort of book I read compulsively and enjoy immensely.
Stanley Coren theorized in his “Why We Love The Dogs We Do” that cat people (meaning people that prefer cats and would not live with a dog even if they could) have a very different psychological makeup compared to dog people (which to him are people living with dogs, preferring dogs, but who wouldn’t mind a cat if they could). I’ve always been a little skeptic about that, but I have to say I’m more ambiguous about cats than any other animal. I still haven’t quite figured out whether I like them. As pets I mean.
I feel sad for cats that live decades cooped up in apartments. But I hate that cats, even well fed, kill birds if they get a chance.
Ferals are a loaded issue as far as animal rights go. Some people would have them all euthanized. Even if fed and neutered they might still cause an impact in wild-life. Worse, most well-meaning old ladies tend to feed them (or pigeons) and not think much about any future issues.
But cats, I think, have stumbled into the most perfect evolutionary gimmick: kittens. Oh, I love puppies…and bunnies and birds, and hamsters, and chinchillas…but there is nothing in this world as adorable as a kitten. I know it. You know it. Cats know it. Their future is secure.
But just as knitting is now cool (it is, right?) so can cats make a fearless comeback. If they become the symbol of independent ladies everywhere instead of the icon of sad spinsterhood, it will probably have something to do with books such as an “Unlikely Cat Lady”. Malkin, drops contemporary cultural references like she just doesn’t care, is way funny, a hard-core urbanite and she watches out for hardcore cats: feral cats.
Already the proud owner of two indoor, spoiled kitties, Malkin started noticing the strays around her neighbourhood. From noticing to caring, to doing something about it, it wasn’t but a few small steps. Next thing you know, TNR (trap, neuter, release) became a mantra to this Brooklyn native after a litter of stray kittens entered her backyard and her heart.
Caring for ferals is, of course, heartbreaking stuff. Cats suck at being grateful - and they are not smart about safety either. They vanish, get sick, get themselves into dangerous places, obviously not doubting for a single moment that you will risk life and limbs to save them (did I mention all the money you spend neutering the ingrates?). “An Unlikely Cat Lady” chronicles a year of joy and sadness, and also of the author’s discovery of a growing community devoted to the care of feral cats. It’s exactly the sort of book I read compulsively and enjoy immensely.
Stanley Coren theorized in his “Why We Love The Dogs We Do” that cat people (meaning people that prefer cats and would not live with a dog even if they could) have a very different psychological makeup compared to dog people (which to him are people living with dogs, preferring dogs, but who wouldn’t mind a cat if they could). I’ve always been a little skeptic about that, but I have to say I’m more ambiguous about cats than any other animal. I still haven’t quite figured out whether I like them. As pets I mean.
I feel sad for cats that live decades cooped up in apartments. But I hate that cats, even well fed, kill birds if they get a chance.
Ferals are a loaded issue as far as animal rights go. Some people would have them all euthanized. Even if fed and neutered they might still cause an impact in wild-life. Worse, most well-meaning old ladies tend to feed them (or pigeons) and not think much about any future issues.
But cats, I think, have stumbled into the most perfect evolutionary gimmick: kittens. Oh, I love puppies…and bunnies and birds, and hamsters, and chinchillas…but there is nothing in this world as adorable as a kitten. I know it. You know it. Cats know it. Their future is secure.
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Sue Hubbell "A Country Year" & Olivia Gentile "Life-List"
“A Country Year” is a small book, but I took my time reading it. It’s a memoir, but also something of a manifesto, about being a woman, going back to the land, paying attention to things most of us deem too small to pay attention to.
Like bees. In her place in the Ozarks Hubbell carved a meager wage out of honeybees – fascinating and sensitive creatures that they are, they sure make a human sweat in order to harvest their honey. Luckily, it’s not a 9 to 5 job. It leaves whole months open to contemplation and meditation: listening to classical music on public radio, reading poetry, taking your time to really observe a small bug or bird.
Through Hubbell’s eyes insects become truly fascinating – and it certainly helps that she comes from a family of entomologists who can answer most of her interrogations. She makes bugs and their habits seem so exotic yet eerily intelligent, that the chapters on her dogs and cat almost make them sound a little dull (ah! Who could have thought it!), compared with the minutely orchestrated hierarchy of honeybee society, or the fascinating abilities of moths.
“A Country Year” is not (only) about insects, of course. At its core, it’s about building a new life and a whole new set of abilities at a time in life when people (and most certainly women) are supposed to be settled down. It’s about being open and sensitive enough to pay attention to the rhythms that surround you: in the Ozarks not only nature, but also people have their own special rhythm. Hubbell respects it, allowing a conversation to run its slow course, or a request to be, eventually, answered.
It struck me as one of those coincidences that the book I read next was “Life-List” by Olivia Gentile. Chronicling the escalating obsession of bird-watcher Phoebe Snetsinger with sighting 8.000 of the world’s recognized bird species; it is somewhat of an almost diametrical opposite of Hubbell’s meditative, soothing book.
Yet there are parallels (the most curious of which, the fact that Snetsinger also owned, for a time, a farm in the Ozarks, of which she quickly grew bored): “Life-List” is also about a middle-aged woman carving a new life for herself, even though the path Phoebe Snetsinger followed could not have been more different.
Diagnosed with cancer in her late forties and given one year to live, Snetsinger decided to live that year to the fullest, engaging in the activity which gave her most pleasure – international bird-watching. When at the end of that year she wasn’t dead (and would soon be in remission) bird-watching travels seem to have taken the form of a talisman, or an antidote, in her mind: it was as if she believed that, while she was on the road adding species to her list, death couldn’t touch her. And for many years, facts seemed to bear her out. Fallen by the wayside were relationships with some of her four children and especially with her estranged husband.
“Life-List” is the sort of biography that begs an opinion: was Snetsinger a selfish woman, obsessed with counting birds to the point shutting her children out? Or was she a woman who, deprived of the intellectual career her mind craved and instead home-bound with four children for most of her adult life, took her death sentence and built a stimulating and exciting life out of it?
An obsessive she certainly was, and probably the worst companion in the world for Hubbell’s down-home country ramblings, which is where I feel drawn to wander myself – however, who could deny that the years following Snetsinger’s cancer diagnose were her happiest? If it’s about building a life, hammer in hand, smashing through other’s preconceived notions of what is “proper” and “normal”, both women deserve recognition.
As far as books go “A Country Year” will certainly be re-read again, while “Life-List” left me with many doubts about the true nature of its subject.
Like bees. In her place in the Ozarks Hubbell carved a meager wage out of honeybees – fascinating and sensitive creatures that they are, they sure make a human sweat in order to harvest their honey. Luckily, it’s not a 9 to 5 job. It leaves whole months open to contemplation and meditation: listening to classical music on public radio, reading poetry, taking your time to really observe a small bug or bird.
Through Hubbell’s eyes insects become truly fascinating – and it certainly helps that she comes from a family of entomologists who can answer most of her interrogations. She makes bugs and their habits seem so exotic yet eerily intelligent, that the chapters on her dogs and cat almost make them sound a little dull (ah! Who could have thought it!), compared with the minutely orchestrated hierarchy of honeybee society, or the fascinating abilities of moths.
“A Country Year” is not (only) about insects, of course. At its core, it’s about building a new life and a whole new set of abilities at a time in life when people (and most certainly women) are supposed to be settled down. It’s about being open and sensitive enough to pay attention to the rhythms that surround you: in the Ozarks not only nature, but also people have their own special rhythm. Hubbell respects it, allowing a conversation to run its slow course, or a request to be, eventually, answered.
It struck me as one of those coincidences that the book I read next was “Life-List” by Olivia Gentile. Chronicling the escalating obsession of bird-watcher Phoebe Snetsinger with sighting 8.000 of the world’s recognized bird species; it is somewhat of an almost diametrical opposite of Hubbell’s meditative, soothing book.
Yet there are parallels (the most curious of which, the fact that Snetsinger also owned, for a time, a farm in the Ozarks, of which she quickly grew bored): “Life-List” is also about a middle-aged woman carving a new life for herself, even though the path Phoebe Snetsinger followed could not have been more different.
Diagnosed with cancer in her late forties and given one year to live, Snetsinger decided to live that year to the fullest, engaging in the activity which gave her most pleasure – international bird-watching. When at the end of that year she wasn’t dead (and would soon be in remission) bird-watching travels seem to have taken the form of a talisman, or an antidote, in her mind: it was as if she believed that, while she was on the road adding species to her list, death couldn’t touch her. And for many years, facts seemed to bear her out. Fallen by the wayside were relationships with some of her four children and especially with her estranged husband.
“Life-List” is the sort of biography that begs an opinion: was Snetsinger a selfish woman, obsessed with counting birds to the point shutting her children out? Or was she a woman who, deprived of the intellectual career her mind craved and instead home-bound with four children for most of her adult life, took her death sentence and built a stimulating and exciting life out of it?
An obsessive she certainly was, and probably the worst companion in the world for Hubbell’s down-home country ramblings, which is where I feel drawn to wander myself – however, who could deny that the years following Snetsinger’s cancer diagnose were her happiest? If it’s about building a life, hammer in hand, smashing through other’s preconceived notions of what is “proper” and “normal”, both women deserve recognition.
As far as books go “A Country Year” will certainly be re-read again, while “Life-List” left me with many doubts about the true nature of its subject.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
"The Lizard King" Bryan Christy
“The Lizard King” is just one of those books. It’s such a thrill to read, such a joy-ride but, at the same time, so hard to describe, it leaves you gushing like a barely coherent idiot. I actually said to my husband “you have to read this”. I do that maybe twice a year. Almost always it’s a fiction or crime book.
Well, “difficult to describe” is not exactly the truth, the subtitle, after all, pretty much says it all: “The True Crimes and Passions of the World’s Greatest Reptile Smugglers”. What it doesn’t say is how apt Bryan Christy is as a writer, somehow straddling the news reporting and true-crime genres in order to provide something that has the excitement of under-cover journalism, provides the thrill of a mystery novel and elicits the compulsive reading of the best fiction.
Some years ago, I actually caught a few minutes of the BBC documentary “Animal Smugglers” Christy mentions. I then met for the first time, some of the protagonists of this book. I was fascinated to say the least, about exotic animal smuggling. Reptile contraband is even more enthralling to me because, while I can understand the fascination of owning an endangered parrot, for instance, I’ll be damned if I can understand why people go to the lengths they do to get a snake or lizard.
This of course, tells of nothing except of my own naïveté, for, as Christy demonstrates the answer is money. It will come as no surprise to the more cynical to find out that most high-end smugglers don’t particularly like the animals they smuggle and might as well (and often do) dabble in gun and drug running.
Well, “difficult to describe” is not exactly the truth, the subtitle, after all, pretty much says it all: “The True Crimes and Passions of the World’s Greatest Reptile Smugglers”. What it doesn’t say is how apt Bryan Christy is as a writer, somehow straddling the news reporting and true-crime genres in order to provide something that has the excitement of under-cover journalism, provides the thrill of a mystery novel and elicits the compulsive reading of the best fiction.
Some years ago, I actually caught a few minutes of the BBC documentary “Animal Smugglers” Christy mentions. I then met for the first time, some of the protagonists of this book. I was fascinated to say the least, about exotic animal smuggling. Reptile contraband is even more enthralling to me because, while I can understand the fascination of owning an endangered parrot, for instance, I’ll be damned if I can understand why people go to the lengths they do to get a snake or lizard.
This of course, tells of nothing except of my own naïveté, for, as Christy demonstrates the answer is money. It will come as no surprise to the more cynical to find out that most high-end smugglers don’t particularly like the animals they smuggle and might as well (and often do) dabble in gun and drug running.
Christy’s tale is a sort of octopus whose head is represented by the Soprano-like smuggling family, the Von Nostrand’s. Family members are presented with a deft brush, painting their childhood, family relations, first steps in the business (most criminal characters in the book seem to have begun their careers remarkably early). The tentacles are manifold, from business competitors, to the various branches of law enforcement involved in years of investigation, all rendered in a truthful yet sympathetic manner.
Then there is Chip Bepler, a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Look at his name. It seems fictional, so obviously the name of a good-guy, a stand-up guy, the kind of cop that never abuses his power, respects his opponents, is polite in the middle of a police raid – which is, it turns out, exactly the kind of guy, Christy meets behind the name. The perfect antithesis for the Van Nostrand’s (particularly Jr’s) brash, irate, over-the-top personalities.
Actually, the problem with reviewing “The Lizard King” is the same as with a crime novel: you cannot give too much away, without stealing the next reader’s pleasure. And not only do I not want to give anything away plot-wise, I also don’t want to delve too much into the more journalistic end of the book – the facts on reptile smuggling – which will also surprise any reader.
Suffice it to say that you will get an extremely satisfying climax and not one, but two, great conclusions: one takes place in the court-room, the other in a cemetery. And that’s too much said, already. Anyway, the ending, is hardly the best reason for reading “The Lizard King”. It’s everything leading up to it.
Somewhere between Eric Hansen’s “Orchid Fever” and Grisham’s “The Pelican Brief” stands this absolutely feverish, compulsive, dynamite stick of a book. I really cannot recommend it highly enough.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Dogs & Cats in their Gardens
By Page Dickey
Lovely photography books that explore the place of cats and dogs in our gardens. Well, not "our" gardens - these are rather on the grand side...
There is a little text with each entry that introduces gardeners, pets and describes the landscape. I couldn't help noticing that the majority of cats arrived as strays or were adopted as kittens while most dog were bought purebreds...how fortunate for the kitties!
If there is such a thing as reincarnation I would not mind coming back as one of these lucky cats or dogs!
Monday, April 19, 2010
"Shrinking the Cat" - Sue Hubbell
“Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes” is a great little book that attempts to address cultural hysteria about genetic manipulation by means of a very interesting history lesson.
Taking four specific examples of plant and animal species (or strains or breeds) that have been created by humans – meaning selectively bred to achieve certain desirable qualities such as colour, taste, quantity – Sue Hubbell makes her case that humans are born “tinkerers”. Long before we knew, or could imagine, the mechanisms involved, we were already changing our reality: choosing certain species and destroying others, “improving” and nurturing crops and animals that were useful or struck our fancy, often altering them so radically that, after centuries (or millennia) of human interference there is sometimes little resemblance between human manipulated species and their wild progenitors.
(As a side reference, I learned in the “Guinea Pig Handbook” that cavies had been domesticated some three thousand years prior to the arrival of Europeans in America – they diverged so much from their wild “cousins” through artificial selection that, to this day, scientists have been unable to definitely pinpoint the cavy’s wild progenitor – it is believed that it probably went extinct.)
Taking the specific examples of corn, silkworms, cats and apples – all of them continually altered by humans – Hubbell always asks in each particular tale of genetic manipulation (for that is undoubtedly what happened): “If little green men were to swoop down and kidnap all of humanity in their spaceships [would] our descendants – brought back to the planet after five thousand years of good behaviour (…) find”…corn, apples, silkworms and cats as we know them?
The answer is definitely not – for we have created them and they depend on us to propagate and reproduce. Corn, for instance, and silkworms, have been altered to the point that they would not be able to reproduce without human assistance (neither would enormous cows and pigs which are now routinely artificially inseminated – and French bulldogs that cannot deliver the big-headed puppies without c-sections).
Cats are, of course, survivors, and would probably still be around. Of course no snub nosed Persians or hairless Sphinxes would last for long without human protection. Cat colour would probably be less diverse and exotic, too. One of the most fascinating passages connects coloru and pattern propagation with human commercial routes, referring to an academic study which found increased numbers of orange cats in cities with large ports and along rivers with increased commercial activity.
Apple trees are hardy plants, native to central Asia. They are naturally so diverse in colour, texture and flavour (with a majority of not very tasty ones) that it almost seems a crime we have reduced the species to the bland, gigantic red ones. Did you know there are apples that are naturally white? Most wild apples are small and gnarled and once in a while there is one that produces incredible fruits.
This is what we do: we create conformity in some species, incentivize diversity in other. We created tens of cat breeds, but are hard pressed to find an exciting apple in the market. We like to change things, see what happens when we cross different breeds, take them out of their place and grow them elsewhere, propagate something just because we like its colour or because it gives more fruit.
If there is one decidedly human characteristic, Hubbell argues, is that we like to change things around us, mix it up just to see what happens. And it’s nothing new either – with whatever crude tools and little knowledge it possessed, mankind has been doing it, it seems, forever.
We now can reach “inside” species and alter them directly in their matrix – but it’s not that surprising. “Shrinking the Cat” shows that we’ve been dreaming of this almost since we first opened our eyes and looked around.
Taking four specific examples of plant and animal species (or strains or breeds) that have been created by humans – meaning selectively bred to achieve certain desirable qualities such as colour, taste, quantity – Sue Hubbell makes her case that humans are born “tinkerers”. Long before we knew, or could imagine, the mechanisms involved, we were already changing our reality: choosing certain species and destroying others, “improving” and nurturing crops and animals that were useful or struck our fancy, often altering them so radically that, after centuries (or millennia) of human interference there is sometimes little resemblance between human manipulated species and their wild progenitors.
(As a side reference, I learned in the “Guinea Pig Handbook” that cavies had been domesticated some three thousand years prior to the arrival of Europeans in America – they diverged so much from their wild “cousins” through artificial selection that, to this day, scientists have been unable to definitely pinpoint the cavy’s wild progenitor – it is believed that it probably went extinct.)
Taking the specific examples of corn, silkworms, cats and apples – all of them continually altered by humans – Hubbell always asks in each particular tale of genetic manipulation (for that is undoubtedly what happened): “If little green men were to swoop down and kidnap all of humanity in their spaceships [would] our descendants – brought back to the planet after five thousand years of good behaviour (…) find”…corn, apples, silkworms and cats as we know them?
The answer is definitely not – for we have created them and they depend on us to propagate and reproduce. Corn, for instance, and silkworms, have been altered to the point that they would not be able to reproduce without human assistance (neither would enormous cows and pigs which are now routinely artificially inseminated – and French bulldogs that cannot deliver the big-headed puppies without c-sections).
Cats are, of course, survivors, and would probably still be around. Of course no snub nosed Persians or hairless Sphinxes would last for long without human protection. Cat colour would probably be less diverse and exotic, too. One of the most fascinating passages connects coloru and pattern propagation with human commercial routes, referring to an academic study which found increased numbers of orange cats in cities with large ports and along rivers with increased commercial activity.
Apple trees are hardy plants, native to central Asia. They are naturally so diverse in colour, texture and flavour (with a majority of not very tasty ones) that it almost seems a crime we have reduced the species to the bland, gigantic red ones. Did you know there are apples that are naturally white? Most wild apples are small and gnarled and once in a while there is one that produces incredible fruits.
This is what we do: we create conformity in some species, incentivize diversity in other. We created tens of cat breeds, but are hard pressed to find an exciting apple in the market. We like to change things, see what happens when we cross different breeds, take them out of their place and grow them elsewhere, propagate something just because we like its colour or because it gives more fruit.
If there is one decidedly human characteristic, Hubbell argues, is that we like to change things around us, mix it up just to see what happens. And it’s nothing new either – with whatever crude tools and little knowledge it possessed, mankind has been doing it, it seems, forever.
We now can reach “inside” species and alter them directly in their matrix – but it’s not that surprising. “Shrinking the Cat” shows that we’ve been dreaming of this almost since we first opened our eyes and looked around.
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