Pachyderms of Loch Ness

 

- Yes, they seem to think that I´m you!

And camelids, too! Not to mention over-sized specimens of the lutrine persuasion. I never been particularly interested in Nessie or the Loch Ness monster. In fact, the whole thing strikes me as rather silly. I mean, we´re talking about one bloody loch just south of a city with 63,000 inhabitants. Are ye telling me that a breedin´ population of please-your-soars can live there undetected for millennia?! Then, I have a fake tartan to sell you!

It´s a cultural phenomenon, no more. As proven by Karl Shuker´s entertaining article about the monster´s split personality. While a plesiosaur is the most common identification, others have been proposed. Some of them very strange! How about a long-necked seal, a gigantic tullimonstrum, an "elephant squid", an *actual* elephant, or a camelid with a plesiosaur-like head and neck (the latter seen on land?!). There´s also the mother of all otters, also seen on Ireland. Shuker doesn´t mention "a specter conjured by Aleister Crowley", but then, he´s more into the flesh-and-blood portion of the cryptozoology specter, er, spectrum.

Entertaining, I say. And probably not true either way.  

Split personality: Nessie´s strangest identities 

Life on the edge...or just another Tuesday?

 

"Wild Scandinavia: Life on the Edge" is the first part of a three-part BBC nature documentary about...wait for it...Scandinavian wildlife. It deals with the Scandinavian coasts and features the Stockholm Archipelago, the sand dunes of Jutland, Norwegian fjords and the Arctic coast. 

Perhaps good if you never seen any Scandinavian animals before, but personally, I recognized most of the species shown: the grey seal, the white-tailed eagle, killer whales, sea otters, puffins and so on. But sure, the various marine invertebrates were suitably disgusting. I don´t think I want to swim in Norwegian territorial waters! 

In a later episode, they cheat and take the viewer to Iceland and Svalbard, which are not part of Scandinavia as the term is usually understood in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. 

Could be of some interest on a boring February evening. As long as you know that the wildlife shown is far, far away... 

The real Jungle Book?

I didn´t know that "Wild Karnataka" was considered to be one of the most spectacular nature documentaries released in 2019 (or ever). In Sweden, it´s not narrated by David Attenborough, and has been retitled "Svarta panterns skog" (The forest of the Black Panther), although that particular big cat is only briefly shown. So I suppose I didn´t watch it in the right reverantial mood, lol. Indeed, the profane Swedish public service TV made an explicit connection to Bagheera from "The Jungle Book"! Interestingly, the soundtrack from the docu has been released, composed by Ricki Kej, an Indian environmentalist activist and award-winning musician who currently resides in Karnataka.

Karnataka is a state in southern India, and the documentary gives us a straightforward look at its wildlife, from the ocean to the monsoon forests. Animals featured include leopards, tigers, otters, dholes, wolves, monkeys, peacocks, crabs, and fish. And (of course) elephants! We also get to meet the myrmecophagous sloth bear, which does indeed have some similarity to Bagheera´s jolly friend Baloo. Some of the situations in "Wild Karnataka" are the opposite of what you would expect: an aggressive deer manages to chase away a pack of hungry wild dogs, while an otter family scares the living daylights out of a tiger! More typical is a leopard hunting monkeys (hint: leopards can climb trees). Personally, I wonder if the gigantic shadow cast by the elephant when seen from above is real or a special effect added later?

Perpahs I´m getting spoiled by spectacular nature documentaries, since Karnataka´s wilder sides didn´t move me *that* much, although I admit Ricki Kej´s music did give the production a certain "Hindu-Buddhist" meditative feel...

Pinnipeds are verily food

Not a pinniped 

 

I´ve read some more in "Wilderness and Political Ecology", a semi-technical scientific work edited by Charles Kay and Randy Simmons, published by the University of Utah Press in 2002. This time, I tried to digest the contribution by William R Hildebrandt and Terry L Jones, "Depletion of Prehistoric Pinniped Populations along the California and Oregon Coasts: Were Humans the Cause?". After analyzing archeological sites and later eye witness reports, the authors reach the conclusion that the answer is indeed yes. This is controversial, since the humans in question were pre-contact Native Americans (American Indians), who according to received wisdom were supposed to be deeply spiritual and live in perfect balance with Mother Nature. In reality, the coastal Native tribes hunted and killed sea lions and fur seals to such an extent that it impacted their numbers and breeding habits. 

Originally, there were pinniped rookeries (breeding colonies) on the actual coast, but after sustained Native hunting, the sea lions and fur seals abandoned the mainland and instead established themselves at offshore islands. Or left the area altogether! Natives living in areas that lacked offshore islands had to switch from hunting sea mammals to killing terrestrial game instead. In one particular area, permanent coastal settlements were abandoned as the Natives moved inland to hunt land mammals or harvest acorns, which permitted the pinnipeds to re-established rookeries along the coast. 

In areas where pinnipeds were breeding on islands to escape the human hunters, the Natives developed their technology to go after them. This included harpoons, which gradually become more sophisticated. Above all, it included the building of large canoes. This in turn led to increased stratification within the Native tribes, as only an elite could afford to invest in such an enterprise. The person owning the canoe was expected to distribute food and drink to the canoe-builders and the crew members. An 18th century Spanish explorer reported that the canoes carried a crew of about 30 people, and Native informers apparently have a tradition that the boats were about 30 feet long. The concept of private ownership seems to have developed among the Tolowa, Yurok, Hupa and Wiyot tribes. Wealthy elite families owned boats, acorn collection groves, eddies for netting fish, and shares in offshore rookeries. Native groups which concentrated on hunting terrestrial animals had less social stratification, perhaps because this could be done without the elaborate organization needed to hunt marine mammals. 

According to the "optimum foraging model" of hunter-animal interaction, hunters should take the most nutritious specimens first, regardless of whether it´s ecologically sound to do so. Cultural or religious ideas about "sacred animals" should have no power to stop this. In other words, the model predicts that Natives aren´t "natural conservationists". Hildebrandt and Jones believe that the archeological record proves the model. Native hunters seems to have primarily killed female and juvenile pinnipeds, which makes no sense if the mission is to conserve resources, but makes perfect sense if the goal of the hunt is to obtain optimum food with the smallest expenditure of energy possible. When the pinniped populations were depleted, the hunters switched to sea otters, a pelagic species which is more difficult to hunt down and kill. There is even an example of a Native group which switched to sea otters after first having depleted the elk population! The archeological record from the Channel Islands in southern California show that the pinniped population fluctuated in response to the density of human settlement. Life on these particular islands was always hard, leading many human sites to be abandoned, at which point the pinnipeds came back - once again, an inexplicable fact if you think American Indians were "natural" or "spontaneous" conservationists. 

Curiously, the ethnographic record *does* suggest that the Natives actually were conservationists. However, the authors believe that these are biased samples, showing how one particular group acted at one particular point in time. Archeology looks at the broader picture, including chronologically, and then a very different scenario emerges. Also, there is a difference between "conserving" certain plants and doing the same thing to animals. The plant species most often used as examples of Native conservation ethics are the ones that reproduce and spread most easily and swiftly, often benefitting from large scale human-induced burning. Thus, seemingly paradoxically, increased human use of such a plant can permit it to spread even faster, for instance by causal dispersal of seeds or bulbs, regardless of the ethical convictions of the humans involve. Game animals, alas, don´t follow such a pattern...

The article also points out that pinniped populations have virtually exploded during the 20th century, as large scale (Euro-American) hunting of these creatures ceased. The pinnipeds have even conquered areas where they haven´t lived historically. The most ironic fact is that some elephant seals have established themselves at coasts with archeological sites, destroying them in the process! These would be sites of Native settlement. Remove the apex predator, and soon you have pinnipeds dancing on your grave...

With that somewhat bizarre observation, I close this little blog post.  

Somewhat confusing

A review of "Whales, Dolphins and Seals: A Field Guide to the Marine Mammals of the World" by Hadoram Shirihai

This is a field guide to the marine mammals of the world. It covers all species of whales, dolphins, seals and sea cows (including species only found in freshwater). Two marine species of otters plus the polar bear have also been included.

Both the colour illustrations and the photos are excellent. Indeed, the photos, while small, are often quite stunning. Still, the book feels somewhat confused. Dozens of illustrations and photos, often of different species, are crammed into each page. Often, it's difficult to see where one species presentation ends and another begins. A species presentation might cover the bottom of one page and all of the next page.

Somebody should publish the same material, but with improved lay-out.

A tribute, not a field guide

This book is an excellent and lavishly illustrated introduction to sea-living mammals: pinnipeds, cetaceans and sea cows. The polar bear and two species of otters are also featured. I hesitate to call this a "field guide", and the authors admit in a foreword that the book is really a tribute to the mammals of the sea: "Few people who read this book will ever encounter Fraser's dolphin, the leopard seal or the African manatee". The main purpose is to give the general reader a certain feel for the sea-mammals, their life and their often threatened status. Martin Camm's colour illustrations are certainly worth the prize of the entire book. Since "Sea Mammals of the World" was published already in 1982, many of the facts presented in the book might be out of date. However, it would still make a nice addition to the library of any nature-lover. Therefore, I give it five stars.