Interlude--Another Natural History Quote of the Day--Letters FromAlabama

Fritillary on Blanket Flower 1 Copyright, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

I'll finish my review of Pleasurable Kingdom in my next post (with a more modern plot twist). Meanwhile, here's a plot twist to the story of animals and pleasure and science and natural history. Letters From Alabama was originally published in 1859. Yes, that's the same year as Darwin's Origin of Species, and quite some time after Descartes wrote his crap.

Food for thought on a day when you've probably already eaten too much.

Philip Henry Gosse was a young naturalist from England when he went to Alabama to teach school. He left after eight months, disgusted with slavery. The following is from p. 149 of the 1983 reprint:

"An eye accustomed to only the small and generally inconspicuous butterflies of our own country, the Pontiae, the Vanessae, and Hipparchiae, can hardly picture to itself the gaiety of the air which swarms with large and brilliant-hued Swallowtails, and other patrician tribes, some of which, in the extent and volume of their wings, may be compared to large bats. These occur, too, not by solitary and straggling individuals: in glancing over a blossomed field or prairie-knoll, we may see hundreds, including, perhaps, more than a dozen species, besides moths, flies, and other insects.

When contemplating such a scene thus thronged with life, I have been pleased to think of the very vast amount of happines that is aggregated there. I take it as an undoubted fact, that among the inferior creatures, except when suffering actual pain, life is enjoyment; the mere exercise of the bodily organs, and the gratification of the bodily appetites, is the highest pleasure of which they are capable: for as Spenser says--

'What more of happiness can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with liberty?'
Fate of the Butterfly

To look then on the multitudes of beings assembled in so circumscribed a spot, all pursuing pleasure, and all doubtless attaining their end, each one with an individual perception and consciousness of enjoyment, --what a grand idea does it give of the tender mercy of God, as a God of providence!

Let us extend the idea:-- there are about one hundred thousand species of insects known*; let your mind try to guess at the number of individuals of each species in the whole earth, (perhaps if you count the clouds of musquitos and gnats that issue from a single marsh, in a single night, it may assist you in the conjecture,) think of the other, less populous orders of animals, fishes, mollusks, testacea, animacules, &c., &c., reduce them to individuals, and you may have some distant approximation to one idea of Him, who "openeth His hand and satisfieth the desire of every living thing."EVERY LIVING THING! I have often thought that no one can appreciate the grandeur, the sublimity, of this sentiment of the Psalmist, like the devout naturalist."

*There are now over one million insect species known.

Belated Mini-Review of Balcombe's Pleasurable Kingdom and thoughts onNo Kill--Part 1

George rolling on grass, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

Jonathan Balcombe published Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good back in 2006, but I only just got around to reading it. Clifford bought it for me. I have to admit to experiencing mixed feelings upon first holding this book in my hands, and not because of what Balcombe wrote--I recommend this book highly to any animal-lover, armchair natural-historian or biologist--no, my trepidation and annoyance was due to the presence of a forward by Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation, and apparently mentor to Ingrid Newkirk, founder and president of PETA, and a puff by Wayne Pacelle of HSUS. I had to wonder at Balcombe's taste.

I began by reading the foreward. Singer begins with an anecdote about dolphins surfing (not suffering), and goes on to say, "Despite such experiences--and growing up with a cat who certainly showed she liked being stroked--my focus has always been on animals' capacity to suffer, from the time I started thinking seriously about the ethics of how we treat them." He goes on to say, "But with all this emphasis on animal suffering, I and many others in the animal movement have neglected animals' capacity to enjoy their lives. Fortunately Jonathan Balcombe's book has restored the balance." I think that this book is excellent, thought-provoking, informative and an enjoyable read. I do not think that it has magically restored balance to the animal movement, and I offer as evidence the continued opposition to the No Kill movement of groups such as PETA and HSUS and of their respective leaders in particular.

Singer is clearly primarily interested in animals raised for food and for laboratory research. He does not mention the millions killed in shelters each year. I really wish that he had. He wrote about his cat. Pets are the animals whose capacity to enjoy life is most readily experienced , observed and shared by most people. Do Singer and others regard the tragic killing of millions of shelter pets as mere 'collateral damage' in their greater quest for a more perfect world? Most people with pets don't need to read a book to know that their dog or cat has the capacity to experience pleasure and the ability to seek it out. American 'shelters' deprive millions of animals of these things annually, and for no other reasons than laziness and adherence to entrenched and regressive views. The majority of these animals are not inevitably or irretrievably suffering. They're jsut homeless. They have the capacity to enjoy life. Singer could have said something about this. He maybe almost did. But he didn't. I'm disappointed in that, but he indicated a little chink in the old Benthamite armor. Suffering isn't the only thing. There is a whole 'nother facet to the lives of animals--pleasure. Hallellujah for that.

Balcombe begins the book with an exploration of how animals' capacity to experience pleasure is adaptive in the Darwinian sense, and how it is changing how we view animal minds and how animals are portrayed in the media.

For now, I'll leave you with a quote from the book:

"The mass media often perpetuate the stereotype that life is harsh and joyless for wild creatures. An article on Norwegian polar bears poisoned by toxic pollutants 'migrating' from industrial regions in the south describes the 'brutal, unforgiving' surroundings. 'From the moment of birth--even conception--animals here struggle against the odds. Most polar bears die before their first birthday.' It is sad that not all polar bears grow into adults, and a shame that humans are making things worse. And yet, a six month old polar bear has been suckled and nurtured by a protective mother, has experienced over 100 sunrises and sunsets, and probably hasn't bemoaned the transience of life. Most lives, even shortened ones, are probably better lived than not lived at all."

George, the dog in the picture above, is experiencing the pleasure of being alive. A few months ago, he was a skinny little guy on death row at a high-kill shelter in Georgia. He is part of the fortunate minority from that shelter. Most end up as rotting corpses in the county landfill, and that is unacceptable. He was lucky, but luck should have nothing to do with it.

Quote of the Day--Origins of Nature's Beauty

"How can we explain the fact that animals which consistently try to remain hidden, or to repel others by their aspect, so often appear attractive, or even beautiful to us, which is the opposite of what we might expect? Should we not more often find them severely plain or repulsive, as some of them are? However, the elements of beauty--form, color, pattern and texture--are not absent from creatures that try to hide, to warn, or to repel. Feathers have such a pleasing texture that birds are seldom ugly. We enjoy the bright colors that so often proclaim unpalatability or venom. The pigments that color the exposed surfaces of animals tend to be deposited in definite patterns rather than at random. Fear need not diminish our enjoyment of cryptically or aposematically colored organisms, for most are not harmful; they ask only to be permitted to live in peace. When we add to all this our pleasure in using our eyes, recognizing forms and patterns, it is not difficult to understand why creatures that shun observation, or warn that they should not be molested, so often attract us by their beauty."
--A.F. Skutch, in his 1992 collection of essays Origins of Nature's Beauty (pp. 27-28)
This is the first of a series of interesting, usually natural history quotes I plan to post from time to time. Enjoy!

Dead Pit Bull Neuters Ed Sayres!

I'm pretty sick and tired of the lurid headlines about 'pit bulls' (many of which are about dogs that are not in fact 'pit bulls'), but this is one I'd actually like to see.

The picture at left is from the Facebook page of No Kill Now. It shows the abused pit bull Oreo just a few minutes before her execution. Her executioners were none other than the ASPCA, headed up by Ed Sayres.

Like many people, I don't see an irredeemably aggressive dog in this picture. Or this one. Or for that matter, this one. Nor do I see anyone wearing body armor. All the people in these pictures look pretty darned defenseless. Were they or the photographers in any danger? I doubt it.

I look at that expressive face and I see a dog uncertain about her future. She's been through a lot in her short life, thrown six stories and survived. The time leading up to that event had to be confusing, and undoubtedly psychologically painful. What kept her going? I think of her as a puppy, loved and cared for by her mother. In these pictures, she still has a puppy's face. She looks like she's wondering what will happen next.

These bipedal ones, you have to watch them, you never know what they will do next. They're unpredictable.

She has an open, inquisitive face, the face of an intelligent and soulful animal whose innate tendency is towards joy. She still has that face in these pictures, despite what she's been through--her mother's love, the warmth of her littermates, the carefree play of puppies, the terrifying rage of her 'owner', the incomprehensible hell of being pitched off of a roof, the moments in midair, the incredible pain of hitting pavement, the crunch of breaking bones, the awful cry she made upon impact, a sound so awful that you feel it in your bones, the people crowding around her, the ride in the back of a van, the veterinarian, anesthesia and surgery, waking up, her front legs in casts, her broken rib pinned, the kennel, the way sound reverberates off of the hard surfaces, the smells, the people. Always people, lots of them. They come and they go. They mutter things in a language she doesn't understand. Can she trust any of them? Hitting the ground after being launched into midair with rocket fuel of rage knocked the wind out of her. It knocked out some innocence too. She's wise to these shifty primates, that makes it hard for her to trust again, even though she wants to. She must choose wisely. Choosing poorly would be too much.

She's a terrier, she's nobody's fool. She knows that trust, once blasted away, has to be earned back. Some things can be accomplished on a tightly prescribed schedule, but working through trauma is not one of them. That takes time. It takes patience. And it takes trustworthiness. Dogs can smell b.s.

The ASPCA is wealthy. It is evidently not patient. It is not trustworthy. An organization's actions and persona reflect that of its leadership. Ed Sayres makes half a million dollars a year as the head of the ASPCA. He is evidently neither patient nor trustworthy. I must also conclude that he lacks empathy for people and animals, and therefore has no business heading an organization whose stated mission is to protect animals, a mission that is fundamentally based on empathy and the human-animal bond. There was no excuse for killing Oreo in the face of a qualified sanctuary ready and willing to take her. Where a true leader in the humane movement would have shown empathy, humility and cooperation, he had nothing to offer but spitefulness and self-serving tripe.

He has to go.

Oreo is dead.

Long live Oreo.

Turtle God Lives

The picture shows a softshell turtle, not a sea turtle as claimed in the article. I'd love to know the real story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091110/od_nm/us_turtle_odd

October ground Skink (Scincella lateralis) and Other Finds on A Walk

October ground Skink (Scincella lateralis), originally uploaded by Turtelle.

This little Ground Skink skittered across the dirt road we were walking on the other day. One thing I like about Georgia is herps and other "cold-blooded" critters being active this late in the year (well, not the ticks and chiggers and fire ants). Other finds along this walk are pictured below...

Another view of the skink:

A little Stinkpot, spotted by our dog:

A faded Buckeye perched on some gone-to seed member of the Asteraceae in a meadow that was teeming (by my standards) with butterflies:

Green Anole on Yellowing Tulip Tree Leaf

Green Anole on Yellowing Tulip Tree Leaf, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

I think that Kermit the frog was actually based on a Green Anole (Anolis carolinensis). Jim Henson grew up in Mississippi, so he certainly had the opportunity to observe these winsome and entertaining insectivores. They're still active and I have seen quite a few this weekend, incuding a tiny hatchling. They are found in the wild throughout the Southeast, as well as in pet shops elsewhere. These animals remain relatively common due to their tolerance for human-caused disturbance (up to a point). There is some evidence that the introduced Brown Anole (Anolis sagrei) may negatively impact their populations. They are a common species that I would like to see stay common.

White Morpho

White Morpho, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

This image of Morpho polyphemus is popular on my Flickr site. People seem to like how he (or she--I can't tell) appears to be looking at the camera, though that makes me think of the Far Side cartoon of the last thing a fly ever sees (one of Gary Larsen's trademark overweight women wearing cat-eye glasses and weilding a fly swatter, repeated as innumerable octagon-shaped tiles) only the view is me and my Pentax.

I think that this particular individual has somewhat crumpled wings, like it didn't emerge quite right. In the butterfly house there aren't any predators, so the butterfly's lifespan is probably unaffected.

EBT Nest With NINE Eggs!

Read about it here, complete with video of hatchlings! Amazing!

Owl Butterfly on tree Trunk Close Up

Owl Butterfly on tree Trunk Close Up, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

Another photo from the butterfly house at Callaway Gardens. I believe the species is Caligo memnon. Insect eyes are so inscrutable. What do they see?

Heliconius sp.

Heliconius sp., originally uploaded by Turtelle.

Went to the Callaway Gardens butterfly house last week. I'm not sure what species this is other than that it is some type of longwing. It didn't match any of the species in the little guides that were provided. A couple of butterflies seemed to be obsessed with laying eggs on my camera, which was pretty strange. I wonder if these butterfly houses are allowed to provide them with their appropriate host plants. I'm pretty sure that they have to buy chrysales from licensed dealers and it may be illegal to breed exotic butterflies, so not providing host plants would prevent successful breeding.

Its great to be able to observe so many individuals of species I wouldn't otherwise see. Photographing them is still a challenge, even though they are in captivity, but not quite as difficult as photographing them in the wild. It was Blue Morpho Month, but I'm not sure that I got any Blue Morpho pictures. I got numerous photos of what I think are Owl Butterflies, a species that looks somewhat similar, and is even blue on the dorsal surface, but I'm no lepidopterist...

Chomper Meditating

Another cat portrait with the 90mm. I hope to try it out on turtles and butterflies over the next couple of days.

Xavier

Xavier, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

The Tamron 90mm macro arrived today and I was testing its other use--portraiture. Nice, sharp lens. Very smooth. I haven't seen evidence of the chromatic aberration that plagues my other lenses. The colors are very good and the length is good. I can get very close to flowers. I will try some butterfly and box turtle photography with it soon.

Beautyberry

Beautyberry, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

The beautyberries are coloring up, starting with those low on the branches. I wasn't expecting to tsee this just yet. They are food for migrating birds, so fall migration is not far away. I haven't seen another fruit quite this color. This is another experiment withthe old 5omm manual lens. The pictures have a different feel than do my newer zooms, which is probably due to this lens opening up to f/2, but maybe something else is going on as well...

Sunflower Close-Up

Sunflower Close-Up, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

An extreme close-up with limited color palette and depth-of field. A very few characteristics o this flower are emphasized--the yellowness and the tiny florets in the center of the disc...

Lady Mantis Bathing

Lady Mantis Bathing, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

Actually, this picture should be entitled "Dude Looks Like a Lady Mantis Bathing" because the mantis is a male, based on his slim build and long antennae, I am told. He lived in a butterfly bush in the backyard for a couple of weeks and I photographed him many times. He didn't seem to go after butterflies, though, preferring to hang out low on the bush most of the time. I frightened him away one day by trying to move him higher up near one of the flowers for a picture. He flew off to a nearby holly bush and then a maple tree where I lost track of him. He was very tolerant of photography as long as I didn't try to pick him up. When I did, he decided that I was a predator and that location was no longer safe. I haven't seen him since. His flight was quite spectacular. The Asian painters really got it right back in the day. I howerver diodn't manage to get ny pictures of him flying.

Passion Vine on Fence

Passion Vine on Fence copy, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

Here's a photo of passion vine (Passiflora incarnata) growing on a fence wire at Fairywood Thicket Farms. This Georgia wildflower seems fantastically, gratuitously complex, but then what in nature isn't? For some reason, this flower just makes you notice unexpected beauty and complexity. Missionaries were taken with it and attached religious symbolism to the various floral parts, using the flower as a teaching tool to spread Christianity. To caterpillars of fritillary butterflies, it is their host plant, and they make an interesting juxtapsoition with their food, all black and red and spiky and hungry, then they pupate into gratuitously beautiful chrysales and emerge as black and orange butterflies studded with pearly spots. They flit through the sunlight and nectar on zinnias and verbena and most any other flower. The fruits of this plant are hollow and rather tangy. I suppose the hollowness is how they got the name 'maypops', though May would be very early for them around here.

Ernest

Ernest, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

I dusted off my old 50mm 'normal' lens, circa 1983. Pentax says that the new digital SLRs are back-compatible with their old manual lenses from the film era and even with the screw-mount ones, provided an adapter is used. Of course, just mounting an old lens on a new camera won't make it autofocus or communicate things like f-stop to the camera's computer, but with a couple of adjsutments outlined in the Pentax manual and the Magic Lantern guide, the lens worked just fine, though compared to my zoom lenses, it is tiny. Focusing is completely manual and only the center focus point is available with this lens. Focusing is slower than it is when using the manual setting with the newer lenses for some reason. Since there is no split screen, I have to rely on the focus alert and it sometimes allows the focus to over-and under-shoot the mark a couple of times before accepting it. Still, this lens lends itself to candid and hand-held shooting a lot more than do the larger zooms, including the one that covers 50mm. Having f2 available is great for available light photography, and Pentax's shake reduction is in the camera where it belongs, so it applies even to this lens, enabling sharp hand-held photography at 1/30 second.
This is Ernest, who I raised from the time she was 11 days old. Yes, she. I can't sex kittens to save myself, and by the time I figured it out, I'd already named her. It doesn't even seem strange to me.

Hawkmoth on Butterfly Bush

Hawkmoth on Butterfly Bush, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

I'm not sure why I like this picture. Maybe its the lighting. The hawkmoth is blurred by motion, but it is very difficult to freeze their motion even in bright light. This animal, whose scientific name I still have to look up, is nectaring at a butterfly bush. The y can be mistaken for hummingbirds for their appearance and behavior. The larvae are called hornworms. It amazes me that a caterpillar can turn into something like this.

Hibiscus With Green Lynx Spider

Hibiscus with green spider 2 copy, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

I took this photo yesterday, immediately after a rain shower. The spider is a green lynx spider Peucetia viridans (Hentz). Now that I am becoming a more proficient and prolific photographer, I will try to post the "Photo of the Day" to this blog, which I have been neglecting in favor of Flickr. Here I will post more extensive information on the natural history of my photographic subjects, and the story behind each picture. This particular picture is an example of how macro photography enables you to notice things you would ordinarily overlook. I have a particular affinity for things ordinarily overlooked, and in general, I think I'm a pretty good observer, but I didn't even see this spider when I first took the picture. I was photographing the hibiscus and only noticed the spider whan I reviewed the images a few minutes later on the LCD screen. I would have liked to photograph the spider against the red petals, but then he probably positioned himself on the green sepal deliberately, so I didn't try to interfere. These spiders are known for preying on insects regarded as both harmful and desirable. They even make a habit of eating wasps and other stinging insects.

Disappearing Box Turtles

I stumbled across this blog post. Its a few years old, but when you're dealing with animals capable of living 160+ years in the wild, a few years isn't that long. I'm not exaggerating when I say 160+ years old. It's actually been documented. The pictures here are of Boxie, a local celebrity in her hometown in Massachusetts. Every once in a while, somebody finds her and it makes the local news. As you can see, she's had initials and dates carved into her plastron (something that is painful for the turtle, as the shell is made of living tissue, so don't do it yourself). Unlike many other turtles with initials and dates carved into their plastra, the second round of carving was documented in letters, giving it credibility. The first two young men to carve their initials and dates into her were killed in a war a few years afterwards. The next person to carve his initials recognized those of the two fallen soldiers, and wrote a letter to their families. These pictures were taken in 2005(not by me).

The war the two soldiers died in?

That would be the Civil War. Although it shows the wear of years, you can still make out the year '1861'. In order for these carvings to have been made, she had to have been full grown at the time, something which would take 15-20 years in Massachusetts, so at a minimum, her hatchdate would have been sometime in the 1840s, possibly sooner.

She hasn't had an easy life, yet keeps plodding on.

Respect your elders.


Thanks to Sandy Barnett for the photos and the story of Boxie.

Convergent Evolution?!

Fun With Camera RAW

This image was originally taken with an inexpensive 5MP Kodak point-and-shoot. I liked the composition, but the image had problems. I tried various fixes in PSE7 and in Picture Window, but then read that it was possible to open a JPEG in Camera RAW of PSE7 and to manipulate it there. This strategy seemed to yield the best fix so far. Others looked garish. The window screen is a necessary but problematic part of the picture. It evidently threw the original exposure off quite a lot.

The two predators watching each other in this picture are Xavier the Maine Coon cat, and Broken Claw the praying mantis who hung around the backyard garden area almost two years ago. Her missing left claw made her easy to recognize, but didn't appear to shorten her life span. She was at least 4" long. Insects grow big in the South (more on that when I post on Hercules (a.k.a. Rhinoceros) Beetles). Mantids are catlike in a variety of ways, from the shape of their heads to their behavior--watching and grooming, for example.

Here is the original image as it came out of the Kodak:

Learning Photoshop

I've been learning to use image editing software, experimenting with Photoshop Elements 7 and with a trial version of Picture Window. These two images illustrate the dramatic improvements that you can make to an image with a little effort in PSE 7. On the right is the image as it came out of the camera, with only a watermark added. On the left is the same image with some sharpening and adjustments to contrast and color saturation. I think its pretty dramatic. The picture still needs some work in terms of noise reduction. I took it soon after I got my new Pentax and I was still very early on in the digital learning curve and shot it at a high ISO.

I'll be posting on my turtle telemetry soon. Meanwhile, here's a great blog post on the wonders of modern radiotelemetry and its use in wildlife research.

P.S. I had forgotten to mention it initially, but when I was taking this picture, I'd been interested in the butterfly. Only after a minute or so, did I even notice the little mantis observing both of us. He (she?) was probably too small to take on this butterfly, though I could be wrong. In any case he didn't try, just watched. Most predators probably just watch most of the time, just noticing what is going on around them.

The image starts to tell a story.

Happy World Turtle Day!

Happy World Turtle Day! Over the next couple of days, I will be releasing my first transmittered turtles and re-starting the blog after it's hiatus over the past couple of semesters. Check back for photos of the transmittered turtles and random bits of Georgia natural history.