One Good Shot: Shake It Off

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Let’s Go Over This Again, Shall We?

There’s no denying that tigers are impressive, majestic, and quite beautiful creatures—and there are times when you even can find them doing something kind of cute, like playing with a metal keg:

However, even under such circumstances, it’s important to remember:

They are not “cute”;

They are not “kitties”;

They are scary.

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Another Caption Challenge

There are some photos that seem to cry out for a caption, be it dialogue, monologue, or narration. That’s where all of you come in.

I’m perfectly happy to blather on ad nauseam about animal behaviors (human and non-) and exciting wildlife sightings, but it would defeat the whole purpose of a blog if the entries weren’t occasionally interactive. Not that I don’t appreciate your comments on a day-to-day basis, but I don’t always take enough advantage of them. So from now on, every week or so I’ll post an image that seems particularly evocative, provocative, or absurd, and hope that you’ll make the post and the photo even better by aptly captioning it.

So, ladies, gentlemen, and all others, please have at it.

Challenge # 1:

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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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Stay Tuned

I will soon be announcing a Beasts in a Populous City caption contest and asking all of you to vote on the image to be used for captioning—but that takes a certain amount of organization and energy that I’m entirely lacking right now—so instead I’ll post a few photos that more accurately reflect, if not my mood, then certainly the kind of intrepid behavior I’m currently exhibiting.

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I’ve Gotten a Little Behind

Apologies for having fallen down on the job of posting lately, but rest assured that I will be getting back on track this week, even though the season of Solstice and Christmas and New Year’s is upon us, full of things to distract an innocent blogger from her task. But I shall remain steadfast! And, if I’m lucky, I may even be able to see and photograph some lion cubs before the new year. But I can’t promise anything; these zoo types are being ve-ry cagey about when the new cubs will be out… --Either way, there are plenty of zoo stories to tell. And tell them I shall! (Once I've gotten a little sleep and can stop writing in Epic Voice.)

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One Shot: "I said I was TIRED of Christmas carols"

[And if you're in a reading mood, for something more serious but quite important, visit this site to read "The Price of Convenience" by Susannah at "Wanderin' Weeta"]


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Happy Thanksgiving!

I’ll just moralize briefly about the fact that it’s always worth considering the plight of other species as well as our own on Thanksgiving, and thinking of what we can do to help them—be it giving money to a conservation group, planting more native wildflowers in spring, or being more careful with our resource consumption/waste disposal.

Okay, enough of that. Since Thanksgiving doesn’t have a specific visual theme (except eating), I’ll just post some images of zoo life in autumn:

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A Thousand Words

No, I’m not renouncing prose, but I’m in a less-than-literary mood at the moment, so I thought I’d share a few images that either don’t need narrative or inspire you to imagine your own.

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A Quiet Moment

For those of you suffering from post-pumpkin depression or just a little tired after a frenetic weekend, I present to you a tiger-related sequence that has nothing to do with eating anyone:

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The Proposal

One of the tigers was restless again last Friday, pacing and pacing at the edge of the water in its enclosure.

Any activity like this on the part of the large cats generates tremendous excitement in zoo visitors. Parents exhort their children to “Say, ‘Hi, kitty’!” and other dangerous phrases (“Say, ‘How long has it been since you’ve last eaten, kitty?’,” I sometimes mutter); children yell at the cats, trying to get their attention, sometimes by insulting them (again, humans: no self-preservation at all).

Some people, eyeing the half-snarling tiger with a degree of wariness that I approve of, ask uncertainly, “Can tigers swim…?” –The answer, by the way, is: yes, they can. The sides of the enclosure, however, are too high, and the electric fencing at the top too much of a deterrent, to allow the tigers to swim to freedom. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Nevertheless, I’ve always been just a little relieved that no tiger has entered the water while I’ve been watching them—and so I was surprised to hear a couple of young boys urging the tiger to “Swim! Swim!”


Now, if I had just seen a tiger gaze past the not-big-enough pool of water separating us and stare at me with a calculating expression, as if considering the value (in terms of energy expended to caloric content gained) of escaping its enclosure and eating me—I would not be so eager to encourage it in its goal. But one of the boys—driven to new, ingenious measures to convince the tiger—exclaimed, “Come on, swim! –I’ll pay you!” There was a pause as he perhaps considered, as I did, what incentive that would be for a large cat, and then he added, “I’ll pay you in chickens!”

The tiger didn’t seem too interested in taking him up on the offer. I wouldn’t have, either; there was no way a little kid like that was going to get his hands on enough chickens.

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Ho Hum

Another dreary day at the zoo… Nothing to see,


Nothing to do.


Certainly no point in staying awake, especially if there’s a sibling to sleep on...


Happy Saturday, everyone.

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I Scorn You All

Actually, I think this lion, rather than being snooty, was really lifting his head in order to scent the air--not a more comforting thought, frankly, since I'm pretty sure I was at least part of what was flavoring the air. I observed this behavior right after having passed by the tiger enclosure, where one of those restless animals had opened its mouth in what may have been a yawn but mainly looked like a very significant display of teeth. Maybe I'm reading into things, but I doubt it...


(By the way, I will have to ask you to forgive briefer and less photo-filled posts for a little while, since my primary computer is in the throes of some sort of breakdown. Hopefully it'll recover soon.)

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Humans Have No Sense of Self-Preservation

I have a cold, which means I’ve spent the last two days with this expression:

[a female howler monkey who does not,
to my knowledge, have a cold]

I’ve also been feeling less than energetic. But since I felt a bit better late this afternoon, and since the day was so beautiful, I thought I’d walk over to one of the benches in the zoo and sit in the sun, healing myself with a nice dose of late-day vitamin D. And I brought my camera with me because, well, I was going to the zoo.

As it turned out, I had to walk around for a while to find a nice patch of sun in an area that wasn’t too crowded, and on my way I had various adventures, including nearly losing my notebook forever to the area surrounding the peccary enclosure. (Luckily, the little girl who accidentally knocked my notebook over the railing—while exclaiming, “Mommy, I see a pig!”—didn’t knock it into the enclosure itself, so I was able to retrieve it, only slightly damp from having fallen into the little man-made pond.)

The sun didn’t stay in one position for long, however, so after a brief basking and rather more time spent taking peccary pictures, I headed towards the back exit. But the “Great Cats” exhibit is on the way out, and I thought I’d just stop by. There, both tigers were pacing restlessly with a lean and hungry look.


Which brings me to the title of today’s post. The statement should come as no surprise, really, given our tendency to pollute and degrade the planet we depend on, given the fact that we design weapons of mass destruction and engage in warfare. None of this smacks of any great ability to maintain our species.

—But all of that relates to groups of people, and, as any biologist will tell you, natural selection acts on individuals, not on groups. That is to say, just because you blow up a bunch of members of your species or do any number of things that may be bad for Humans as a Whole, unless they’re also bad for you, engaging in those behaviors won’t necessarily result in your genes being removed from the gene pool and the next generation.

All well and good, but I am more and more convinced that, on average, humans as individuals also have little or no sense of self-preservation. I say this after having spent a great deal of time on numerous occasions photographing pacing tigers. As was quite clear from the photos in my earlier post, tigers are scary when they pace. And yet visitors to the zoo, by and large, display no fear.


I don’t mean that they’re just engaging in bravado, trying to be flippant in the face of something terrifying. No, I mean they are not afraid. There were a couple of exceptions today: a child who, while exiting the Great Cats area, told his parents, “I’m scared of the lions,” and a kid watching the tiger who asked his mother in alarm, “Why would they have it out in the open like that?” But otherwise, people had no qualms about roaring at the tigers, meowing at the tigers, whistling at the tigers, or making—well, I guess I’d have to call them cat-calls, all extremely provoking.

[wouldn't you love to be
the tiger's keeper?]

Yes, I do understand that the tigers are in enclosures that are designed to prevent their escape, and that it is highly unlikely that anybody watching them will be mauled to death. That’s not the point. There are certain images and sounds that humans appear to be born fearing; I haven’t looked into the research on this, but I think snakes may be in there, and certain color patterns. You would think giant felines with teeth the length of your hand would be one of those built-in fear producers, and I’d imagine that, at one point, they were. But we seem to be losing that innate terror, and we don’t seem to be supplementing it with a learned fear—and I don’t think that bodes well for us as a species. Regardless of whether or not any of us are eaten by tigers, it suggests we might be killed by stupidity.

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