The Urban Pantheist

If you haven't taken a look at Why Animals Do The Thing you should.

"We're here to yell at the bad stuff, explain the confusing bits, and pull out the cutest, coolest, most unknown content - all while putting animal behavior in its own proper context. "

This blog (mostly written by a friend of mine, full disclosure) is an exhaustively researched collection of articles, debunkings, and answered questions. I started showing it to everyone I know when it featured the best description and explanation of the Harambe debacle at Cincinnati Zoo.

There's a lot of debunking of Animal Rights Activism, explanations of pet animal behavior, and answers to questions like "why do lactating elephants appear to have human breasts?"

I was at home, Alex was visiting, we were getting ready to celebrate Jim's birthday. Alexis came home, swearing at her phone with a crazed look in her eye. It seemed that our foster puppy, getting some supportive care for a probable intestinal bug at an emergency vet hospital, had attracted some media attention. Now Alexis was being called upon to do the thing she liked least of all: talk to a large amount of people (you know, the tv watching public).

We found clean shirts and ran out the door to the vet hospital. The CBS news had come and gone already, and Fox news was there talking to a veterinarian. The vet hospital's PR guy brought us to talk to the NBC reporter.

Above you can see him holding the puppy and reading his "teaser." You won't believe where this puppy was found!

Long story short, a suspect being arrested by the police had this 2 week old puppy in his pocket. When Alexis told me the story I said, "We should name her Pocket."

( Read more... )

There are fewer than 5000 black rhinoceroses left on earth, down from several hundred thousand individuals a century ago. There are a few different subspecies, one of which, the western black rhino, was officially declared extinct last year. The remaining animals exist in scattered locations in about nine or ten African nations, many on managed conservation land. Unfortunately animals in these areas are vulnerable to poachers, who are motivated by the lucrative market in rhino horn "medicines" in Asia. (Which, it probably doesn't need to be said, are medicines only in the deluded fantasies of the afflicted.)

Each African nation manages their wildlife and ecosystems in their own way, with varying degrees of resource commitment and political will. Namibia, where about one third of the black rhino population lives, allows local communities to have some agency in managing their wildlife. Wildlife management includes hunting, both for subsistence and for sport. As in the US, one important source of conservation money is the sale of hunting licenses. Namibia, I hasten to point out, is not selling licenses for the hunting of black rhinos in order to sell their horn. However they do auction off five licenses per year to kill five individuals out of a population of a critically endangered species.

The problem is that the many of these scattered populations of black rhinos are skewed male. There are more male rhinos than are needed to sustain the population. These "extra" males compete with the females for food resources, may kill females and calfs, and one study suggest that their very presence results in lower breeding success in the population. Wildlife managers found themselves in the strange position of recommending killing some animals now to ensure more animals in the future.

Since the opportunity to legally hunt a black rhinoceros is extremely rare, the permits to do so are very valuable. They are auctioned off to the highest bidders, a process which brings the program into the public eye every so often. At the moment, there is much attention being paid to a man named Corey Knowlton, a professional hunter who has hosted hunting television shows, leads high-profile hunting trips, and has personally killed 120 species of animals in the course of them. Knowlton had the winning bid on one of the five licenses, paying $350,000 for the privilege.

Knowlton describes himself as a conservationist, and I honestly don't doubt that he is one. Faced with the criticism that he kills for the thrill of it, he replied "The thrill is knowing that we are preserving wildlife resources, not for the next generation, but for eons." The media coverage around this issue has drifted away from the ethics of the planned hunt to the death threats that Knowlton is now receiving.

I don't believe any of my friends, who with horror posted versions of this story on facebook, are the type of people who would send death threats to someone over this issue. But many of my friends are very upset about it, mainly because of the way the story was framed--as a piece of artillery in the culture war. On one side you have animal lovers and conservationists (who are not always allies--and probably wouldn't be on this issue if the conservationists were better informed) and on the other side you have hunters, who should be conservationists (and mostly are, and historically have been). The first side could be roughly called the left side of the issue, and let's call the hunters' side the right (wing) side. Left wingers are nervous about guns--not all left wingers want to restrict gun ownership, but most of the people who do definitely identify with the left wing. The right wing however has become incredibly extreme on this issue. The gun lobby and the media that are aligned with them have conjured terrible narratives about an authoritarian left wing movement to restrict all guns--this has not coincidentally resulted in the record high sales of firearms in the US.

What I'm saying is that while this issue should be considered on its conservation merits (is culling 5 individual males a good strategy for the long term sustainability of the species?) it is instead part of a left versus right circus of name calling and death threats. I lay much of the blame at the feet of my allies on the left (oh, sorry, my bias is deeply deeply liberal, did I not reveal that yet?) for cherry-picking the parts of the story that they knew would inflame the like-minded. TEXAS TROPHY HUNTER BIDS OVER A THIRD OF A MILLION DOLLARS TO KILL ENDANGERED BLACK RHINO. My reaction, as a newly outed liberal, is this: Is a high-profile auction of a hunting license really the best way to promote the protection of a critically endangered species?

In other words, the real problem here is that the conservation groups in Namibia have TERRIBLE public relations people. The Knowlton family Christmas Card from 2012 doesn't do anything to help the matter.

Here is a news story about a veterinary procedure at Franklin Park Zoo--an examination and cardiac screening of our oldest male gorilla.

The article includes this picture of the goings-on:


It's amazing how many people you can fit into a gorilla cage when you need to. Pictured are almost all my zoo hospital coworkers, my best zoo buddy Kikipuff, 3 other zookeepers, and some visiting doctors (who are the focus of the article above). Also Kitombe, the western lowland gorilla, who did great from the moment he presented his shoulder for the injection of sedative until he woke up and accepted a treat from the head vet.

Spiders lead to Mazda recall

Thanks to shellynoir for the tip!

We just took the dogs on a walk, and there's a weird haze throughout an otherwise sunny day. At Ward's Pond, it looked almost like a fog was settling on the kettle. It turns out that it's smoke from a Canadian forest fire. Or rather, fromt eh more than 50 fires burning in Quebec.

It makes me think about the connectedness of places we think of as far away. It makes me worry about the Gulf.

Edited to add: The article above reports 5 mile visibility in Boston, it's gotten to be much worse than that. Can't see the Citgo sign through the haze, which is only 3 miles away or less. Saw a lady in the store with a surgical mask on.

Edited further to add: Here's what it looks like from right by my house. @universalhub twitter feed is calling it #SmokeMonsieur. Another friend is calling it #BurnQuebecBurn.

The worst part of Sunday is that feeling that you haven't quite done everything you need to get done before work starts again and "free time" is once again whatever you can squeeze in between what you have to do every day no exception, when you are already bone tired from work and want to just mess around, like you did all Sunday. In that spirit, I shall procrastinate by reposting more "tweets of old."

WANTED at once: 500 skunk hides. KY1909

A flock of birds, miles in length, obscured the heavens like a dark cloud. Their noise was like the rush of a mighty wind. AL1887

The man, divested of his clothing and attempting to eat grass, gave an "open air" performance before being arrested.PA1904
(Did the SIM program start that long ago?)

A small rat terrier, his two right legs injured, ran past the depot on his two left legs, making very good time. NY1883

Noun LeBlue died Tuesday evening at 8 o’clock. The faith doctors asserted that he had a live snake inside of him. LA1909

English sparrows may now be killed within the city limits by any means, except firearms. Two cents per head.DC1883

Dennis Dineen is suing the ASPCA for importing sparrows which made havoc with his early vegetables last year.QC1882

A bright little lad inquired if there is a bounty on killing crows. His countenance fell upon being told there was not. PA1891

A bevy of howling dogs make the nights hideous in our town. Revenge with a double barreled shot gun would be fully justified. KS1890

The English sparrows drive away song birds. Let the boys shoot them; they make a fine pot-pie. NC1893

Music can no longer be played in Austin saloons. TX1901
(Not strictly urban nature related, but shocking nonetheless!)

The carrier pigeons were not turned loose for their long flight to Colorado due to the hazy atmosphere. MO1909

We should quit our waste of fuel and hunt for some substitute for coal,wood and oil, which are going to give out. CA1900

Free roaming cattle, mules, sheep, goats, horses, jacks and jennetts are now prohibited within Arlington city limits. TX1901

Mr. Chas. H. Junkins has gone out of the duck business, having disposed of his flock to John L. Hatch. ME1892

An old lady, about 50 years old, was attacked by an infuriated steer and tossed into the gutter. MO1875

A turtle was taken from the St. John’s River with the Spanish coat-of-arms and the date 1700 engraved upon his back. AL1880

Extremely weird advice on how to identify edible vs. poisonous mushrooms, from a culture that is neither mycophobic nor especially mycophilic, to my knowledge. Interesting article, I do not endorse it. There are no shortcuts to knowing what you are doing.

More beautiful than purple loosestrife, more toxic than a cane toad, an invasive species from the Caribbean all the way up to the coast of Massachusetts (gulp!)

The death cap mushroom. A non-native (to North America) mushroom species with genetically distinct populations in California, New York and New Jersey, Newton Massachusetts (really? so localized) and New Hampshire. Apparently it has a knack for colonizing locations named "new" something.

Identify trees like a birder. From a distance, by color, in springtime.

What you do if mushrooms grew out of the wall of your apartment? I hope you would call your landlord right away and see about getting the plumbing (or the leak on the roof--Vegas just suffered pretty major rainstorms) fixed, 'cause the water that nourished that fungus is coming from somewhere. Instead this woman called a "third party testing company" to see if her family was in any danger from the mushrooms, and then contacted the local news--who made it their top story.

"They're gross. They're disgusting. I'm horrified," said Barbara Ruz. "I almost feel scared to be at home. From school, I brought home masks to cover our faces because I was so freaked out."

This a reminder for me of the general public's attitude toward mushrooms, and how remarkable it is that I can teach a class 4 times a year on what these things are and what they do. I think if many people had their way they'd obliterate mushrooms from the face of the earth.

To be fair, the tenant did call the property manager, and the response was inadequate--they picked the mushrooms and painted over the spot, missing the essential problem: sufficient moisture in the walls of a house in the desert to grow mushrooms.

Lucky for them, they appear to me to be Coprinus mushrooms, which are usually produced by a short-living fungus that feeds on a rich, quickly exhausted food supply. What that food supply might be is another mystery that should probably be solved along with the water source issue.

I've put this video at the top of my blog posts for the ease of those who are here due to the Brookline Tab article. Hello! And welcome. You can see the images in better quality, one by one, by following this link: Muddy River Pics and scrolling back through all 278 entries if you like. There's also a Brookline tag you can follow to see what I've posted that relates to our little town.