There are a lot of worries about the recent outbreak of H7N9 virus in China. Want to know how it stacks up against other deadly viruses when it comes to what species it can infect, and how deadly it is?
Or course you do, and, happily, there is an infographic for that. And it should be enough to make you re-think the human relationship with pigs and chickens (click image for full size):
Via The Daily Dish comes this fascinating, but depressing, review of some of the ways in which humans have put animals to work:
On November 11, 1960, a worker named Bobby clocked in at the Houston-area factory of the Superior Furniture Manufacturing Co., pressed a button on a bedding machine, and set about wrapping the legs of the company’s new Abba Dabba Lounge Chair before placing it in a shipping box. After a while he knocked off to take a break for a favorite snack: bananas.
But that was to be expected—because Bobby was a chimpanzee…[snip]
…Disney and Superior Furniture Manufacturing alike had tapped into a long mythology of monkey labor, one that stretched back to at least 1772. It was then that John Coakley Lettsome—a British physician, abolitionist, and friend of Benjamin Franklin—claimed that Chinese tea harvesters had “monkeys to assist them.” The Chinese, another account claimed, “mock, and irritate [the monkeys], till the animals, to revenge themselves, break off the branches, and shower them down on their insulters.” Enraged monkeys splintering tea-bushes is not exactly sustainable farming, but the explanation circulated widely for the next century, receiving an incalculable boost when it was quoted under the Encyclopedia Britannica’s 1797 entry for “Tea.”
Monkey-harvesters soon even acquired the appearance of an ancient lineage. Among the waves of discoveries of Egyptian artifacts in Beni Hasan in the nineteenth century, one wall painting in the c. 1900 B.C. tomb of Khnumhotep showed a fig harvest where, as Sir John Gardner Wilkinson put it in 1837, “Monkies appear to have been trained to assist in gathering the fruit.” It’s a charming explanation that some books repeat even today, and only slightly spoiled when one closely examines the tomb-painting: the monkeys aren’t handing over the fruit at all; they’re greedily stuffing figs into their own mouths.
The author doesn’t get much into animals and entertainment, but does dip into a discussion of animal intelligence and cognition, which includes dolphins (though, in my view, he gets it totally wrong).
That aside, one especially poignant discussion involves the use by the Soviets in World War II of explosive-carrying anti-tank dogs:
Animals are deeply and immediately practical. If an illogical series of actions produces a reward, a chimpanzee will stick with that. It knows what works, but perhaps not why. It is unlikely and perhaps even incapable of thinking through the motives behind that reward, or what the activity may lead to in time. It is intelligent, but it does not cogitate much.
And cognition is an advantage that humans can ruthlessly exploit. During the Second World War, the Soviet Union resorted to training dogs to wear explosives that would detonate when they ran up to German tanks. It is unclear whether the “anti-tank dog” program succeeded, except perhaps at being horrifying. But that disgust is instructive: animals are killed all the time in war, yet we cringe at sending one to obliterate itself, oblivious to any understanding or possibility of consent. We cannot help but view it as creatures who dounderstand the motive and causation of a suicide vest.
It’s chilling, even shameful, stuff. You’d like to think our understanding of animal awareness and intelligence, and human empathy and compassion for animals, has progressed since the days of factory monkeys and suicide dogs. I think the science definitely has. But our broader culture still has a long way to go.
“The world is so much larger than I thought. I thought we went along paths—but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.”
C.S. Lewis, Perelandra
I see you. You see me. We are one.
To have “humanity” or be “humane” is supposed to connote positive meanings: caring, compassion, wisdom. But given humanity’s propensity, on both a personal and global level, for cruelty, greed, and selfishness throughout history (latest evidence here), I always thought it was appropriate to switch the meaning.
So if someone did something kind or caring, I would say “Oh, how inhumane,” because the action ran counter to how the human species often behaves. And the usual parade of short-sightedness and self-interestedness I considered “humane.”
I know it is cynical, and it was sort of a wry joke, but it also felt right given the evidence. Still, it is also true that humans, for all their flaws, are in fact capable of extraordinary and inspiring acts of love and kindness. And in this Ted Talk, Chris Abani, despite the life he has led and the things he has experienced, makes a heroic effort to reclaim for “humanity” some positive connotations by recounting small acts of courage and compassion, tying them into the transcendent concept of “ubuntu.”
For now, I will stick with my reversed concept of humanity. But it is in the stories Abani recounts (along with his humor and resilience), and the possibility that they can be contagious, that I place my hopes for the future.
Photographer Bryant Austin is out with a beautiful new book, “Beautiful Whale.”
From the publisher:
Photographer and conservationist Bryant Austin’s breathtaking photographic projectBeautiful Whale is the first of its kind: It chronicles his fearless attempts to reach out to whales as fellow sentient beings. Featuring Austin’s intimate images—some as detailed as a single haunting eye—that result from encounters based on mutual trust, Beautiful Whalecaptures the grace and intelligence of these magnificent creatures. Austin spent days at a time submerged, motionless, in the waters of remote spawning grounds waiting for humpback, sperm, and minke whales to seek him out. As oceanographer Sylvia A. Earle says in her foreword to the book, “As an ambassador from the ocean—and to the ocean—Bryant Austin is not only a source of inspiration. He is cause for hope.”
Spectacular and moving:
And calms. And restores.
Of course, you already knew that. But here is an excellent discussion of all the science behind it:
Nature restores mental functioning in the same way that food and water restore bodies. The business of everyday life — dodging traffic, making decisions and judgment calls, interacting with strangers — is depleting, and what man-made environments take away from us, nature gives back. There’s something mystical and, you might say, unscientific about this claim, but its heart actually rests in what psychologists call attention restoration theory, or ART. According to ART, urban environments are draining because they force us to direct our attention to specific tasks (e.g., avoiding the onslaught of traffic) and grab our attention dynamically, compelling us to “look here!” before telling us to instead “look over there!” These demands are draining — and they’re also absent in natural environments. Forests, streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans demand very little from us, though they’re still engaging, ever changing, and attention-grabbing. The difference between natural and urban landscapes is how they command our attention. While man-made landscapes bombard us with stimulation, their natural counterparts give us the chance to think as much or as little as we’d like, and the opportunity to replenish exhausted mental resources.
These folks must be super-healed:
Who says humans can’t come up with a workable device for cleaning plastic and garbage from the ocean? I’d say this dude, who has affixed a net to his SUP paddle, has nailed it, no?
The EnviroNet is about 10 inches long and six inches wide and temporarily attaches to any paddle using a bungee cord. It’s easy to use and doesn’t interfere with paddling. All paddleboarders have to do is fasten the net to the paddle, put a basket on their board to put the trash in and they are all set to clean up the coast.
Since inventing the EnviroNet, Captain Macias has made it his mission to pick up more trash and recruit others to help him. He even made a pledge not to cut his beard until he collected 2,200 pounds of ocean trash! Nine-inches of facial hair later (about a year in real time), he made his goal.
Just need a few million SUP-ers to adopt this thing and we might see a dent in the problem. And a lot of long beards.
The Earthist Chronicles 