Lions and Tigers and Bears

But mainly bears. It was painfully hot this past long weekend, so my intended brisk afternoon walk through the zoo became a painful stumbling crawl through the areas nearest to the entrance, which means I saw some alpacas busily browsing, the monkeys and spoonbills munching on snacks, and the spectacled bear cubs, who are pretty huge by now but are still pretty darn cute—at least to me.


And that got me thinking. The lion cubs were cute, too, and even now that they’re so big and adult-looking, they have a certain charm. But even when the lion cubs were very little, it was clear they were lions—big scary predators full of snarls and hunger and teeth.

The bears, on the other hand… They just seem so much cuddlier than the lions. It’s not that I don’t think they could crush my head or anything—and, in fact, one of the cubs was gnawing on a bone when I arrived at their enclosure—but still, it was gnawing in a cute way!


This isn’t my reaction to all bears, mind you—polar bears and grizzlies scare the hell out of me. So what is it about these guys that seems so—if not harmless—then unthreatening?

I think it has to be the absence of what, for lack of a better term, I’ll call predatory intensity. Maybe it’s because these bears are omnivores rather than carnivores that they’ve lost that hunter’s focus: the tight grip on the bone, the sharp, electric gaze that follows whatever can be perceived as prey.


These guys were missing that the whole time I watched them, whether they were gnawing on bones or trundling over to sniff the handfuls of fruit and veggies that a keeper tossed them from on high like favors thrown from a Mardi Gras float (but with less panache).


There’s a nonchalance about these bears that’s nothing like the piercing intensity of lions’ attention or the chilling, slightly psychotic glare of tigers.

Instead, they go after a piece of pear, or climb into a mulberry tree to satisfy their sweet tooth, or get distracted by whatever’s around them.

I’m not saying I’d jump in the exhibit and try to pet them, but, let's face it: no creature that stops and smells the daisies is going to win the Intimidating Animal Award. The Endearing Animal Award, on the other hand...

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Wild Wildlife: Are You a Good Bug or a Bad Bug?

“Why, I’m not a bug at all!”

In fact, this is some kind of bug, but I have no idea what kind it is, nor whether its designs on this daisy are benign or malevolent. It’s very photogenic, though, so until/unless someone tells me otherwise, I’ll call it a good bug.

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Flamingo Friday: Portraits

(Of necessity, there are a fair number of profiles...)

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Food (for Thought)

I had been planning to write a substantive, thoughtful sort of post today, but what with allergies, the weather, and a bout of mild (but not mild enough) insomnia, I just don’t have the energy to be all that interesting. So instead I’ll post a few photos from the weekend, when the zoo’s pandas were eating bamboo with their typical gusto.


I do admire that about the pandas. I mean, they have to eat a lot of bamboo: unlike other herbivores, like goats and cows with their complex, multiple stomachs and suite of helpful cellulose-breaking-down bacteria, pandas have a pretty inefficient digestive system (much like ours), and so they have to eat an enormous amount of bamboo in order to absorb enough nutrients from their food of choice. Their diet isn’t composed exclusively of the stuff (according to the zoo’s website, in the wild it also includes “occasional small rodents or musk deer fawns,” which I find a little disturbing to contemplate), but the vast majority of their meals is in fact bamboo.


Now, if this were my fate, I think I might become kind of…well, tired of bamboo. I might be a little blasé about receiving the newest batch of stems; I might yawn a bit as I faced my breakfast, or lunch, or dinner. Not so the pandas.


Each time I see them eating, they look as if they’re doing what they love most in the world—their expression, each time, seems to say, “Bamboo! My favorite!” Each time, they chomp away in what appears to be absolute bliss.

You have to admire—perhaps even envy—that kind of gustatory delight.

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An Unsolved Mystery

A couple of weeks ago, Patti Abbot asked me if I knew what little black bird could have been herding the flamingos at the Detroit Zoo. I had no idea, and still don’t (small black birds could be starlings or grackles, but why/how would they herd anybody?)—but I now have a mystery of my own to ask about.

A few days ago, Lucy the orangutan was hanging out on the tower leading up to the O-Line and chewing meditatively on something. I took some pictures, and I still don’t know what this something is.


I don’t think it’s food; it looks more like some sort of rubber toy, or one of those nubbly-soled sandals that are supposed to massage your feet—but I just don’t know.

Any ideas? Is it a toy? A rare, exotic tuber? A bath accessory? A secret weapon? You tell me.

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One Good Shot: Your Gaze Is Preying on Me

The lion cubs aren’t so little anymore—in fact, they’re kind of huge—and the buffoonish antics of their semi-coordinated childhood are giving way to the lithe movements of growing predators. This is not to say that they don’t still tumble over each other from time to time, but now their growls over bones are more serious warnings than excuses to jump on each other. And when this cub heard something—a bird, a chipmunk, a child’s squeal? Who knows—and looked up from its food, I was pretty certain that it was still thinking in terms of meals, be they pre-prepared or still in motion.

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Flamingo Friday: Other Words that Start with F

As I’ve mentioned, it’s courtship time for the flamingos, a time when even the no-longer-flamingelehs make an effort to strut their stuff:


I’ve seen a lot of wing salutes and wing flapping at the zoo these past months, but it’s only more recently that I’ve observed...other activities.

For one thing, the flamingos seem much more interested in being close, and one flamingo will follow the object of its affection with a surprisingly quiet, but no less intense, persistence.


Because these flamingos are interested in being really close. Really close. Take this pair, for example:




It’s impressive, and a little hard to parse, isn’t it? I try not to think too much about the mechanics of the flamingo Act in Action.

But what I find particularly interesting is that both of these birds have bands on their left legs. And as far as I can recall, the banding is done by sex: right leg if you’re male, left leg if you’re female. So both of these birds (unless there’s been a change in the zoo’s program) are female.

I could, of course, now begin a lengthy discussion on the observations of same-sex mating in a variety of animal species and the various “reasons” for it (including the fact that the very concept of heterosexuality is a human construction imagined and developed within the past couple of centuries)—but instead, I will merely say: Heheheheh.

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One Good Shot: Elephant Surprised by Her Shadow

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Close-Ups: A Brief Meditation

I went to college in Oberlin, OH, so I’ve learned to appreciate microcosms.

Whether it’s a tidepool crammed with periwinkles or a gnawed-on nut teeming with ants or a flower with its own world of water, there’s something to appreciate in all the little crevices of life that we barely notice.


That’s another reason why I like cameras: they force you to see things you might never have noticed on your own if you were only interested in walking briskly through the park or along the beach or past the garden.


They make you feel privileged—and a little smug—for having caught something. And they make you feel humble as you wonder how much else you’ve missed.

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Not-So-Wild-Wildlife, Leiden

More proof that cats will sleep anywhere:

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Danse Medusae

I studied marine biology, and so I know that jellyfish are not intellectually sophisticated. In fact, they have no intellect at all, since they lack brains entirely. They do have a “nerve net” of interconnected cells, and some have cells that relate to sensory abilities like sight—of a sort—and smell and touch, but that’s as much as you’ll get; no jellyfish is going to compose this century’s Mrs. Dalloway. Maybe an American Idol spin-off, but that’s about it.

Jellyfish also, as far as I’m aware, don’t really have any sort of social network or group behaviors. That is, they do occasionally travel in vast swarms (some of which are becoming more prevalent as a result of global warming—see this pop-sci briefing or this scientific review for more details)—but they’re not doing things with each other so much as alongside one another. As far as modern science can judge, they don’t have love affairs or jealousies, grand ambitions or dark schemes.


So there’s absolutely no reason why they should have this aura of mystery, the grace of a dedicated and passionate ballet dancer, the suggestion of ghostly wistfulness like a phantom returning from the afterlife to visit a lost love or right a wrong.

Their relatives, anemones and coral, beautiful as they can be, don’t prompt these leaps of the heart or inspire imaginings of an internal, emotional life worthy of Tchaikovsky. Is it their gauzy, drifting movement that does it, that convinces us they must be buoyed by a delight in their own delicacy, by the joy of floating dreamily on the currents?


It’s the only explanation I can come up with. But I have to admit that I haven’t thought about it in too much depth; I’m too busy taking pleasure in their movements, and the thoughts they conjure, myself.

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Flamingo Friday: Two Reactions to the Same Phenomenon

When they aren’t billing each other, putting on courtship displays, preening, feeding, or mating, the flamingos at the zoo are usually sleeping in typical tall-bird style—that is, upright on one leg, all grouped together like a big flock of pink-and-orange popsicles. The sheer number of them engaged in synchronized dozing is pretty impressive, as is their balance: they’re like a whole yard-full of lawn decorations, but with their heads tucked in.

The mother of a family of zoo visitors who passed by the enclosure during a flock-wide nap immediately recognized a photo opportunity. She waved her kids in front of the exhibit, whipped out her camera, and, peering through the viewfinder, ordered, “Okay, everybody on one leg.”

Later, another little group passed by the dozing flamingos and had a different response. A young woman stared at the birds for a moment and exclaimed, “They look like stomachs!”

And, you know, I’d never thought about it before…but they kind of do.

It just goes to show, you can learn something new every day.

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The Temminck’s Tragopan Tries out His Mating Display

Wistful expression…


Check.

Horns…


Check.

Amazing wattle that comes out of nowhere…



Check.

(For more on the tragopan, and why it does this, see my post Desire Under the Aviary).

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The Snails of Cassis

(Does this entry have much of a point or theme, or is it simply an excuse to post more pictures from our travels? You decide.)

Cassis, France, is a little port town on the Mediterranean, set among rugged, pine-topped cliffs leading into the sea, whose color varies from a deep, wine-dark blue to the sort of unnatural, piercingly clear azure that seems only believable in gemstones or glass.


We saw a lot more vistas than we did wildlife in Cassis, but it was a surprisingly good spot for snail sightings. I found some sea snails (intertidal snails, to be precise) tucked into the crevices of rocks that were being buffeted by enthusiastic waves of the returning tide:

[aren't they cute?]

I also found a larger periwinkle, which I temporarily displaced in order to photograph. I know, I know—I shouldn’t traumatize gastropods just to take their picture—but look at the beautifully patterned and colored shell, and the texture on it like woven strands of rope or twirled embroidery thread, and tell me what I did was wrong:


We even ended up seeing a couple of land snails hunkered down against the dry midday heat. One was on a sycamore, of which there are many in Cassis:

[yes, this tree is growing through an awning.]

The other was on a pot outside our hotel, being surprisingly aesthetic:


—But then, it was France, and they’re good at being aesthetic there.

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