Doing some Sunday dusting

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

“A Firefly Never Forgets”

(That’s an allusion to both the Marx Brothers and pachyderms, all at once.)

A Firefly never forgets, and neither does an elephant, and neither does an Olivia. I have not forgotten about the blog, and in fact lately I feel as if I have more to talk about—and more I’d like to hear from you about—than ever before.

However, Annie and I are in the process of moving, and that does tend to distract one from the important topic of zoological philosophizing.

So: Elephants never forget—and while this is in part just one of those proverbial attributions, like the wisdom of owls, there is evidence that elephants remember their dead in a way that not that many other species (that we know of) do.

Are there attributes that you think accurately characterize a certain species? Have you found butterflies to be capricious, or ravens ironic, or sparrows buffoons?

["I remember that you gave me treats..."]

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Shanthi [Sings] the Blues

I just discovered, on the National Zoo’s website, a video of Shanthi, the 36-year-old female elephant, playing the harmonica. Apparently she’s musically inclined and will play percussion with found objects, so the zookeepers presented her with other music-makers, like horns and harmonicas, and, just for fun, she composes and plays music.

This is maybe one of the coolest things that I personally have ever learned about zoo animals, and it also made me long to see (and hear) a whole elephant orchestra. Ask yourself: what would ever be more fun than that?

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Happy New Year!

[the baby African elephant
at the Indianapolis Zoo]

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Prehensile: or, If I Only Had a Trunk

The zoo’s prehensile-tailed porcupine can—as its name suggests—direct the movements of its tail with great finesse and control; it can even wrap its tail around branches and grip them. I’m not sure that it can suspend itself from anything by its tail—as some monkeys with prehensile tails can—but then, it might just prefer to do that sort of thing when there’s no one watching.

That’s pretty cool, I admit. But when it comes to prehensility, no matter how well a tail can curve and curl and cling, nothing is as magnificent a manipulator as an elephant’s trunk.

The elephants wield their impressive elongated noses with such panache that it often prompts—not just me—but various other zoo visitors (usually my friends and relatives) to echo Virginia Woolf and express a desire for a trunk of one’s own.

I don’t know that I’d want to have a trunk all the time, since it might get in the way on the bus or when drinking out of champagne flutes—but it might be fun to have for a day.

Since I suspect that by this point in the post you, readers, have either given up in bafflement at my weirdness or have been imagining just what you would do with a trunk of your own, I won’t bother to discuss the matter further; instead, I present to you a brief photo-essay on the fun to be had with trunks:

[monastic self-flagellation with bamboo]

[bucket-coiling]

[hours of fun with
brushes on sticks]

[getting at that itchy eye]

[becoming one with a tree's trunk]

And finally...

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

And That’s How We Beat The Heat, Short-Nose

It was hot in July. Really hot. So hot that my visiting friend, Adrian, and I couldn’t help but comment on the fact, repeatedly, as we walked through the zoo.

We weren’t the only ones holding this opinion of the weather, either; most of the animals, too, were considerably less than energetic.

["It's so hot."]

(Although the flamingos, cool in their pond, did find the energy to squabble and display, and the scarlet ibis had some kind of beak-clashing altercation with a roseate spoonbill, possibly over who was pinker).

Each of the two female elephants responded to the oppressive weather in her own way. One, after swinging her trunk forward and backward and through her legs in some sort of complicated, reminiscent-of-OCD pattern, splashed herself repeatedly with water,

and then crammed a trunk-full of water into her mouth.

The other elephant, who had been grazing for a while in a desultory manner, suddenly flung a clump of hay onto her head:

…And strolled on.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

The Default Sex

The problem with scientists is that they—like most people—tend to be products of their time. This is why females, from the perspective of development biology, have been referred to as the “default sex” even up through my time in college (1998-2002, if you’re wondering). Apart from the social/cultural assumptions involved—which I’ll get back to, don’t worry—the reasoning behind this is in itself flawed, but it’s based on the fact that, in humans, even if your sex chromosomes are XY rather than XX (that is, “male” rather than “female”), if you don’t have “male” gonads and/or the hormones secreted by them, your secondary sex characteristics (genitalia, aspects of physical appearance) will generally develop as female. Of course, you still won’t have female primary sex characteristics (ovaries); also, the development of any primary sex characteristics, male or female, is an “active” process that requires various signaling cascades and genes being turned on and so forth: there’s no automatic female- or male-hood.

So to call any sex the “default” is the result of conflation as well as sexism. (See, I told you I’d get back to the assumptions. Because you just know that, if male secondary characteristics developed in the absence of “female” hormones, males wouldn’t have been called the “default.” You certainly don’t see any Judeo-Christian religious leaders referring to Adam as the “default” parent-of-the-race, now do you?)

On the positive side, the terminology is changing, and one of the most common (and I think best) undergrad textbooks reflects this not just in its section on sexual development but in an appendix piece on the inherent and long-standing chauvinism of this concept. —Which is great, but is all mere preface to the real subject of my post, which is the existence of a different “default sex” in our cultural mentality.

You see, the problem with people is that they—like most scientists—tend to be products of their time. This is why they usually refer to every single animal they see as “he,” unless—and sometimes even though—the animal in question is nursing or giving birth.

You may remember that I’ve complained about this before. Unfortunately, even my vast and compelling powers of persuasion have not been enough to cause a social revolution in language use—and so, since the behavior continues, I continue to complain about it.

Why do so at this moment, you may ask? A couple of reasons: one is that, this past weekend at the zoo, I heard even more visitors than usual blithely mis-pronoun-ing a host of animals; the other is that I’ve been rereading Seeing Voices, a book by Oliver Sacks about Sign language and language acquisition in deaf and hearing people. Sacks doesn’t address the misuse of male pronouns (in fact, even he—a hero!—consistently refers to a hypothetical child as “he”)—but he does, very briefly, touch on the idea of language being the means of not just conveying but shaping our reality. So when we indelibly gender the world, unnecessarily and inaccurately—when every animal, every unidentified “I” in a story, every author without a first name, is assumed to be male—we are structuring for ourselves a reality that is pervaded by maleness, in which all visible actors are male.

[Is this elephant male? It is holding
something pink...hmm...]

What then have we told ourselves, taught ourselves, about who among us is capable, or even present? What does a little girl visiting the zoo learn when her parents tell her that every animal she sees is a he? What does a little boy learn?

The process through which embryos develop involves tremendous, almost magical, changes—proliferation and reorganization and specification—in order to create tissues and organs and structures from a simple spherical collection of cells, a ball of potential. It’s a process that’s at once remarkably resilient and incredibly fragile. The signals an embryo receives—the cues, the interactions, the feedback, the impulses—determine how, and how well, it forms. In other words, the environment in which it develops has enduring consequences. I wonder, after all the textbooks change, how much longer it will take our language to rid itself of a default sex.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

One Good Shot: Trunk Salute

After wading in and out of his pool, this young elephant felt the need to raise his trunk--in a greeting? A high-one (as opposed to a high-five)? A way to clear water out of his nostrils? (I hate when that happens when I'm swimming...) --Who knows? It seemed exuberant and fun, and, as with many elephant gestures, it made me wish I had a trunk.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

One Good Shot: Elephant Surprised by Her Shadow

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

OneGoodShot: Stretch

Just to let you know, I will be out of the country until April 25th, so whatever posts appear (having been scheduled in advance) may be a little light on text, and I certainly won't be able to respond to comments. If you're longing for more Beasts in a Populous City-ness, then take the caption contest, and encourage your friends to do the same! It will provide you with hours of entertainment and distract you from the aching void created by my absence from this website.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Tetherball for the Solo Pachyderm

Often, when the elephants are out, their main activity seems to be trying to get back into their Elephant House. They run their trunks along the doors, use branches as levers or knockers, and generally appear to be much more interested in whatever’s inside than anything that’s outside (unless there’s a lot of food; then it’s a toss-up). Today, though, the young male elephant was having a grand time with his tire tether-“ball,” running up to it and butting it back and forth with every indication of glee.


As it turns out, there are very few things that are more fun to watch than an elephant joyfully galloping towards and thwacking an enormous tire on a chain.


And I know, I know, it’s wrong to anthropomorphize—or, at least, it’s inaccurate—but I swear that he looked immensely pleased with himself after every really good hit, swinging his trunk around and strolling jauntily about the enclosure with an extra spring in his step.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

My Experience with Home-Repair Projects as Illustrated by an Elephant Playing with an “Enrichment” Item

“I have it…I have it…”



“…”


“I don’t have it.”

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

A Fine and Fancy Ramble

[a sea of turtle noses in the pond around Lemur Island]

I had a lovely time with Patti Abbott at the zoo yesterday; we spoke eruditely of books, movies, cities, climate, and history, and commiserated with one another over our partner’s/spouse’s tendency to ignore our book recommendations, sometimes for years, and then, prompted by someone else’s review, read the damn thing.

We also watched a lot of animals.

The small-clawed otters, alas, weren’t out; instead their enclosure was inhabited by a couple of guys with baseball caps, a hose, and some containers of bleach, who were cleaning out the little “stream” that runs through the otter area. (At least, I’m pretty sure they were just cleaning and weren’t part of some experimental new exhibit.) And the pandas, too, had chosen to engage in one of their two activities (eating or sleeping) somewhere away from our prying eyes.

But the flamingos were out in force (more on them this coming Friday), and so was the young elephant, who was getting used to the new, much larger elephant exhibit the zoo only opened to the public yesterday. This wide grassy plain (complete with a lovely pool) has an “elephant outpost” area at which people can watch the elephants, but it also has a lot of space in which the elephants can just roam. They’re still visible, however, from the bridge that connects the Asia Trail to the birdhouse and exhibits, and it was a lot of fun to look on from above as the young elephant walked backwards through one of the connecting gates of the exhibit (just for fun, I think), then bounced over the grass, swinging his trunk with what seemed to be exuberance, and finally headed towards the elephant outpost (much to the joy of viewers there), all the while strolling with a jaunty, rolling gait—a “swagger,” as Patti described it.

[celebratory(?) trunk-swinging]

It was a great time, in spite of people like the father who urged his kids to “keep moving” rather than spend any time observing the animals, or the many parents who told their children to “look at the monkey!” when they were pointing at orangutans. So far I’ve kept my mutterings of “They’re apes” to almost sub-vocal levels, but some day…


(I also enjoyed getting to be an unofficial guide: pointing out the more cryptic animals, like the red pandas in their tree and the greater-rhea hatchling imitating a rock; and being reasonably knowledgeable about the kori bustards, identifying the male by his size and the noise he made, a deep, resonant sound halfway between a cluck and a grunt. Patti very graciously humored me in all this—but then, since she has a three-year-old grandchild who also likes to speak with authority, I think she has some experience with that.)

We have some visitors coming into town for the weekend, too, so I look forward to more opportunities to pontificate—though I’ll do my best to tone it down for the blog.

[this orangutan is tired of being called a "monkey"]


{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

It's Too Darn Hot

[a basking boar]

Yes, I understand that it’s summer in DC; enough people have told me about the season—in what I consider to be overly smug tones, I might add—that I knew it would be hot and muggy until September. But in the past few days temperatures have reached near-record highs across the entire east coast, DC included, and I can complain if I want to, dammit: it’s really HOT.

Most of the animals at the zoo seem to feel it, too (though not all—stay tuned for more aviary reports). Only humans like me are dumb enough to deliberately wander around outside in order to look at other animals looking hot—or trying to stay cool, as in the case of this peccary (aka javelina), which decided to lie indoors where the air was cool and the light was low and I couldn’t get a decent photo of it.


Of course, if you’re an animal with a certain degree of ingenuity, and a trunk, you can also do things to make yourself cooler.


If spray doesn’t work, there’s always the total-submersion method.


And once you feel refreshed enough to get some energy back, why not engage in some water sports?


I’d write more, but I was taking those photos in full sunlight, and I think I need a cold shower. Or possibly an ice bath.