Why Humans Are Obsessed with Cats

in Biology, History, K-12, Life, Nature, Science | December 4th, 2020

A house cat is not real­ly a fur baby, but it is some­thing rather more remark­able: a tiny con­quis­ta­dor with the whole plan­et at its feet —Abi­gail Tuck­er

As part of its Annals of Obses­sion video series, The New York­er invit­ed sci­ence jour­nal­ist Abi­gail Tuck­er, author of The Lion in the Liv­ing Room, to reflect on “how felines took over the Inter­net, our homes, and our lives.”

It goes with­out say­ing that cats and humans have co-exist­ed for a very long time.

Most of us are acquaint­ed with the high regard in which Ancient Egyp­tians held Felis catus.

And we may know some­thing of their sea­far­ing his­to­ry, begin­ning with the Vikings and con­tin­u­ing on through Unsink­able Sam and oth­er cel­e­brat­ed ship’s cats.

An over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of us have spent the last decade or so glued to online exam­ples of their antics—rid­ing robot vac­u­ums, react­ing with ter­ror to cucum­bers, and pounc­ing on humans, some of whom have had the temer­i­ty to write and record voiceovers that sug­gest they have insight as to what goes on inside a cat’s hat. (As if!)

It’s grat­i­fy­ing to hear Tuck­er echo what cat lovers have long sus­pect­ed (and embla­zoned on t‑shirts, cof­fee mugs, and dec­o­ra­tive pillows)—the cats, not the own­ers, are the ones run­ning the show.

For­give us. Dogs have own­ers. Cats have staff.

Cats took a com­men­sal path to domes­ti­ca­tion, moti­vat­ed, then as now, by the food they knew to be stored in our set­tle­ments.

Tuck­er describes it as a series of cat con­trolled takeovers—a process of arti­fi­cial selec­tion, under­tak­en on the cats’ own ini­tia­tive:

House cats are supreme­ly adapt­able. They can live any­where and, while they must have plen­ty of pro­tein, they eat prac­ti­cal­ly any­thing that moves, from pel­i­cans to crick­ets, and many things that don’t, like hot dogs. (Some of their imper­iled feline rel­a­tives, by con­trast, are adapt­ed to hunt only a rare species of chin­chilla.) House cats can tweak their sleep­ing sched­ules and social lives. They can breed like crazy.

In cer­tain ways the house cat’s rise is trag­ic, for the same forces that favor them have destroyed many oth­er crea­tures. House cats are car­pet­bag­gers, arriv­istes, and they’re among the most trans­for­ma­tive invaders the world has ever seen—except for Homo sapi­ens, of course. It’s no coin­ci­dence that when they show up in ecosys­tems, lions and oth­er megafau­na are usu­al­ly on their way out.

Aloof as many of their num­ber may be, cats have engi­neered things in such a way as to be phys­i­cal­ly irre­sistible to most humans:

Their big heads and big eyes are so cute!

Their fur is so soft!

We can car­ry them around!

Dress them in doll clothes (some­times)!

Their cries mim­ic the cries of hun­gry human babies, and elic­it a sim­i­lar response from their human care­givers.

We may not love lit­ter box duty, but with 1 in 3 humans infect­ed by Tox­o­plas­ma gondii, we’ll like­ly be teth­ered to them for all eter­ni­ty.

For bet­ter or worse, we love them. And so do dog lovers. They just don’t know it yet.

But do not ever imag­ine that the feel­ing is rec­i­p­ro­cal.

They’re arch­car­ni­vores who can­not open their own cans. As Tuck­er wry­ly observes:

I think it’s fair to say that we are obsessed and they are not.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

GPS Track­ing Reveals the Secret Lives of Out­door Cats

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

How Humans Domes­ti­cat­ed Cats (Twice)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She loves cats, but most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

The Meticulous, Elegant Illustrations of the Nature Observed in England’s Countryside

in Art, Books, Nature | November 5th, 2020

If you hap­pen to have grown up in the Eng­lish coun­try­side, you prob­a­bly retain a cer­tain sen­si­tiv­i­ty to and affin­i­ty for nature. This can express itself in any num­ber of ways, most often by a com­pul­sion to gar­den, no mat­ter how urban the set­ting in which you now live. But Jo Brown has shown how to base a career on it: an artist and illus­tra­tor — and “bird­er wildlif­er mush­roomer,” accord­ing to her Twit­ter bio — she has long kept a “nature jour­nal” doc­u­ment­ing the flo­ra and fau­na encoun­tered in the coun­try­side around her home in Devon.

“At the end of April 2019, Jo post­ed a video of her jour­nal so far on Twit­ter,” says her web site. “It went viral and her fol­low­ers jumped from 9K fol­low­ers to 20K fol­low­ers in two days.” A glance at any giv­en page reveals what so impressed them. “Each page of Brown’s note­book con­tains a pen and col­ored pen­cil draw­ing that begins at the pages’ edges, appear­ing to grow from the cor­ner or across the paper,” writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert.

“Some­times cap­tured through close-ups that mim­ic sci­en­tif­ic illus­tra­tions, the del­i­cate ren­der­ings depict the detail of a buff-tailed bumblebee’s fuzzy tor­so and the red ten­drils of a round-leaved sun­dew. Brown notes the com­mon and Latin names for each species and com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics, in addi­tion to where and when she spot­ted it.”

In oth­er words, the nature jour­nal show­cas­es at once its cre­ator’s keen eye, well-trained hand, and for­mi­da­ble knowl­edge of the nat­ur­al world. It also stands as a prime exam­ple of the art of note­book­ing.

 

Using to its fullest advan­tage her ruled Mole­sk­ine note­book (the brand of choice for those invest­ed in doing their jot­ting and sketch­ing on the go for a cou­ple of decades now), Brown effec­tive­ly deliv­ers a mas­ter class in the vivid, leg­i­ble, and ele­gant — dare we say organ­ic? — orga­ni­za­tion of both visu­al and tex­tu­al infor­ma­tion in the space of a small page.

You can take a clos­er look at how she does it on her web site as well as her feeds on both Twit­ter and Insta­gram. More recent­ly, her jour­nal has been pub­lished in book form as Secrets of a Devon Wood. Few nature-lovers, per­haps, can equal Jo Brown as an artist, but every­one can enjoy the glo­ri­ous­ly var­ied realm of life that sur­rounds them just as much as she does. “All that’s required,” she says, “is a lit­tle patience and qui­et obser­va­tion.”

via Kot­tke/Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al World Free to Down­load

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy

Japan­ese Artist Has Drawn Every Meal He’s Eat­en for 32 Years: Behold the Deli­cious Illus­tra­tions of Itsuo Kobayashi

The Sketch­book Project Presents Online 24,000 Sketch­books, Cre­at­ed by Artists from 135 Coun­tries

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Daisugi, the 600-Year-Old Japanese Technique of Growing Trees Out of Other Trees, Creating Perfectly Straight Lumber

in Architecture, History, Nature | October 23rd, 2020

Image by Wrath of Gnon

We’ve all admired the ele­gance of Japan’s tra­di­tion­al styles of archi­tec­ture. Their devel­op­ment required the kind of ded­i­cat­ed crafts­man­ship that takes gen­er­a­tions to cul­ti­vate — but also, more prac­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, no small amount of wood. By the 15th cen­tu­ry, Japan already faced a short­age of seedlings, as well as land on which to prop­er­ly cul­ti­vate the trees in the first place. Neces­si­ty being the moth­er of inven­tion, this led to the cre­ation of an inge­nious solu­tion: daisu­gi, the grow­ing of addi­tion­al trees, in effect, out of exist­ing trees — cre­at­ing, in oth­er words, a kind of giant bon­sai.

“Writ­ten as 台杉 and lit­er­al­ly mean­ing plat­form cedar, the tech­nique result­ed in a tree that resem­bled an open palm with mul­ti­ple trees grow­ing out if it, per­fect­ly ver­ti­cal,” writes Spoon and Tam­ago’s John­ny Wald­man. “Done right, the tech­nique can pre­vent defor­esta­tion and result in per­fect­ly round and straight tim­ber known as taru­ki, which are used in the roofs of Japan­ese tea­hous­es.”

These tea­hous­es are still promi­nent in Kyoto, a city still known for its tra­di­tion­al cul­tur­al her­itage, and not coin­ci­den­tal­ly where daisu­gi first devel­oped. “It’s said that it was Kyoto’s pre­em­i­nent tea mas­ter, Sen-no-rikyu, who demand­ed per­fec­tion in the Kitaya­ma cedar dur­ing the 16th cen­tu­ry,” writes My Mod­ern Met’s Jes­si­ca Stew­art.

At the time “a form of very straight and styl­ized sukiya-zukuri archi­tec­ture was high fash­ion, but there sim­ply weren’t near­ly enough raw mate­ri­als to build these homes for every noble or samu­rai who want­ed one,” says a thread by Twit­ter account Wrath of Gnon, which includes these and oth­er pho­tos of daisu­gi in action. “Hence this clever solu­tion of using bon­sai tech­niques on trees.” Aes­thet­ics aside — as far aside as they ever get in Japan, at any rate — “the lum­ber pro­duced in this method is 140% as flex­i­ble as stan­dard cedar and 200% as dense/strong,” mak­ing it “absolute­ly per­fect for rafters and roof tim­ber.” And not only is daisu­gi’s prod­uct straight, slen­der, and typhoon-resis­tant, it’s mar­veled at around the world 600 years lat­er. Of how many forestry tech­niques can we say the same?

via Spoon and Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art & Phi­los­o­phy of Bon­sai

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

The Philo­soph­i­cal Appre­ci­a­tion of Rocks in Chi­na & Japan: A Short Intro­duc­tion to an Ancient Tra­di­tion

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

The Social Lives of Trees: Sci­ence Reveals How Trees Mys­te­ri­ous­ly Talk to Each Oth­er, Work Togeth­er & Form Nur­tur­ing Fam­i­lies

A Dig­i­tal Ani­ma­tion Com­pares the Size of Trees: From the 3‑Inch Bon­sai, to the 300-Foot Sequoia

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

GPS Tracking Reveals the Secret Lives of Outdoor Cats

in Data, K-12, Maps, Nature, Science, Technology | October 2nd, 2020

We track sharks, rhi­no, and bears, so why not Boo Boo Kit­ty, Peanut, and Pump­kin?

The Long Island feline res­i­dents volunteered—or more accu­rate­ly, were volunteered—by their human com­pan­ions to par­tic­i­pate in a domes­tic cat move­ment study as part of the inter­na­tion­al Cat Track­er project.

Each beast was out­fit­ted with a GPS track­er-enhanced har­ness, which they wore for a week.

(Many cat own­ers will find that alone some­thing of an achieve­ment.)

In total, almost a thou­sand house­holds in four coun­tries took part—the Unit­ed States, New Zealand, Aus­tralia, and the UK.

Sci­en­tists were par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed to learn the degree of may­hem these cher­ished pets were vis­it­ing on sur­round­ing wildlife in their off hours.

Any­one who’s been left a present of a fresh­ly mur­dered baby bun­ny, mole, or wing­less bat can prob­a­bly guess.

It’s a con­sid­er­able amount, though by and large the domes­ti­cat­ed par­tic­i­pants stuck close to home, rarely trav­el­ing more than two foot­ball fields away from the com­forts of their own yards. The impulse to keep the food bowl with­in easy range con­fines their hunt­ing activ­i­ties to a fair­ly tight area. Woe to the field mice who set up shop there.

Their move­ments also revealed the per­il they put them­selves in, cross­ing high­ways, roads, and park­ing lots. Researcher Hei­dy Kikil­lus, who tracked cats in New Zealand, report­ed that a num­ber of her group’s sub­jects wound up in a fatal encounter with a vehi­cle.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, gen­der, age, and geog­ra­phy play a part in how far a cat roams, with males, younger ani­mals, and coun­try dwellers cov­er­ing more ground. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, those who have not been neutered or spayed tend to have a freer range too.

“With­out the moti­va­tions of food and sex, most cats seem con­tent to be home­bod­ies,” zool­o­gist Roland Kays, one of the US Project lead­ers, not­ed.

Amer­i­can cit­i­zen sci­en­tists who’d like to enroll their cat can find infor­ma­tion and the nec­es­sary forms on the Cat Track­er web­site.

The cat-less and those with indoor cats can enjoy pho­tos of select par­tic­i­pants and explore their tracks here.

And what bet­ter fall craft than a DIY cat track­ing GPS har­ness?

via Nation­al Geo­graph­ic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

How Humans Domes­ti­cat­ed Cats (Twice)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Sounds of the Forest: A Free Audio Archive Gathers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World

in Life, Nature | September 11th, 2020

Some of my fond­est mem­o­ries are of hik­ing the Olympic Nation­al For­est in Wash­ing­ton State and the forests of the Shenan­doah Val­ley in Vir­ginia, seek­ing the kind of silence one can only find in busy ecosys­tems full of birds, insects, wood­land crea­tures, rustling leaves, etc. This expe­ri­ence can be trans­for­ma­tive, a full immer­sion in what acoustic ecol­o­gist Gor­don Hemp­ton calls a “nat­ur­al acoustic sys­tem,” the end­less inter­play of calls and respons­es that evolved to har­mo­nize over mil­len­nia.

Trag­i­cal­ly, human noise pol­lu­tion encroach­es on the acoustic space of such refuges, and cli­mate change may irrev­o­ca­bly alter their nature. But they will be pre­served, in dig­i­tal record­ings at least, thanks in part to the efforts of a project called Sounds of the For­est, which has been doc­u­ment­ing the preg­nant silences of forests around the world and has so far col­lect­ed audio files from six con­ti­nents, with west­ern Europe most heav­i­ly rep­re­sent­ed.

The Sounds of the For­est library, acces­si­ble via its inter­ac­tive map or Sound­cloud page, “will form an open source library,” the project announces, “to be used by any­one to lis­ten to and cre­ate from.”

Nature lovers can con­tribute their own record­ings, help­ing to fill in the many remain­ing areas on the map with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion. “Vis­it a wood­land,” the project rec­om­mends, “recharge under the canopy and record your sounds of the for­est.” The site gives spe­cif­ic instruc­tions for how to upload audio file sub­mis­sions.

Sounds of the For­est came out of the annu­al Tim­ber Fes­ti­val, an inter­na­tion­al gath­er­ing in the UK’s Nation­al For­est, which is the “bold­est envi­ron­men­tal­ly-led regen­er­a­tion project: the cre­ation of England’s first new for­est in a thou­sand years… an imag­i­na­tive and ambi­tious state­ment of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment.” When the pan­dem­ic scut­tled plans for an in-per­son 2020 Tim­ber Fes­ti­val, orga­niz­ers con­ceived of the sound files as a way to bring the world togeth­er in a vir­tu­al for­est gath­er­ing. They are also for­ag­ing mate­r­i­al for next year’s fest, in which “select­ed artists will be respond­ing to the sounds that are gath­ered, cre­at­ing music, audio, art­work or some­thing else incred­i­ble.”

If you can’t make it to Tim­ber Fes­ti­val 2021 next sum­mer, or to your for­est refuge of choice this autumn, you can still immerse your­self in the restora­tive sounds of forests world­wide. Open the sound map, click on a file, close your eyes, and imag­ine your­self in Nel­son Lakes Nation­al Park in New Zealand, Yasuni Nation­al Park at night in Ecuador, or Chernyaevsky For­est in Rus­sia. Expe­ri­enc­ing the busy silences of nature brings us back to ourselves—or to the ancient parts of our­selves that once also har­mo­nized with the nat­ur­al world.

 

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Find Silence in a Noisy World

The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Record­ings: World & Clas­si­cal Music, Inter­views, Nature Sounds & More

Free: Down­load the Sub­lime Sights & Sounds of Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

A Beautiful 1897 Illustrated Book Shows How Flowers Become Art Nouveau Designs

in Architecture, Art, Books, Design, Nature | August 28th, 2020

The art of draw­ing is not the art of observ­ing forms and objects alone, it is not mere mim­ic­ry of these objects; it is the art of know­ing how far and where­in, and with what just lim­i­ta­tions, those forms and objects can be repro­duced in a pic­ture, or in a dec­o­ra­tive work. — Eugène Gras­set, 1896

Flow­ers loomed large in Art Nou­veau, from the volup­tuous flo­ral head­pieces that crowned Alphonse Mucha’s female fig­ures to the stained glass ros­es favored by archi­tect Charles Ren­nie Mack­in­tosh.

Graph­ic design­er Eugène Gras­set’s 1897 book, Plants and Their Appli­ca­tion to Orna­ment, vivid­ly demon­strates the ways in which nature was dis­tilled into pop­u­lar dec­o­ra­tive motifs at the end of the 19th-cen­tu­ry.

 

Twen­ty-four flow­er­ing plants were select­ed for con­sid­er­a­tion, from hum­ble spec­i­mens like dan­de­lions and this­tle to such Art Nou­veau heavy hit­ters as pop­pies and iris­es.

Each flower is rep­re­sent­ed by a real­is­tic botan­i­cal study, with two addi­tion­al col­or plates in which its form is flat­tened out and mined for its dec­o­ra­tive, styl­is­tic ele­ments.

 

The plates were ren­dered by Grasset’s stu­dents at the Ă‰cole GuĂ©rin, young artists whom he had “for­bid­den to con­de­scend to the art of base and servile imi­ta­tion”:

The art of draw­ing is not the art of observ­ing forms and objects alone, it is not mere mim­ic­ry of these objects; it is the art of know­ing how far and where­in, and with what just lim­i­ta­tions, those forms and objects can be repro­duced in a pic­ture, or in a dec­o­ra­tive work.

He also expect­ed stu­dents to hone their pow­ers of obser­va­tion through intense study of the organ­ic struc­tures that would pro­vide their inspi­ra­tion, becom­ing inti­mate­ly acquaint­ed with the char­ac­ter of petal, leaf, and stem:

Beau­ti­ful lines are the foun­da­tion of all beau­ty. In a work of art, what­ev­er it be, appar­ent or hid­den sym­me­try is the vis­i­ble or secret cause of the plea­sure we feel. Every­thing that is cre­at­ed must have some rep­e­ti­tion in its parts to be under­stood, retained in the mem­o­ry, and per­ceived as a whole

When it came to adorn­ing house­hold imple­ments such as vas­es and plates, Gras­set insist­ed that dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments exist in har­mo­ny with their hosts, snip­ing that any artist who would dis­tort form with ill con­sid­ered flour­ish­es should make a bas-relief instead.

Thus­ly do chrysan­the­mum stems pro­vide log­i­cal-look­ing bal­last for a chan­de­lier, and a dandelion’s curved leaves hug the con­tours of a table leg.

Gras­set’s best known stu­dent, Mau­rice Pil­lard Verneuil, whose career spanned Art Nou­veau to Art Deco, absorbed and artic­u­lat­ed the master’s teach­ings:

 

It is no longer the nature (artists) see that they rep­re­sent, that they tran­scribe, but the nature that they aspire to see; nature more per­fect and more beau­ti­ful and of which they have the inte­ri­or vision.

 

View Eugène Grasset’s Plants and Their Appli­ca­tion to Orna­ment as part of the New York Pub­lic Library’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions here. Or find illus­tra­tions at Raw­Pix­el.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

His­toric Man­u­script Filled with Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Cuban Flow­ers & Plants Is Now Online (1826 )

Beau­ti­ful Hand-Col­ored Japan­ese Flow­ers Cre­at­ed by the Pio­neer­ing Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ogawa Kazu­masa (1896)

Dis­cov­er Emi­ly Dickinson’s Herbar­i­um: A Beau­ti­ful Dig­i­tal Edi­tion of the Poet’s Col­lec­tion of Pressed Plants & Flow­ers Is Now Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear the Sound Of Endangered Birds Get Turned Into Electronic Music

in Biology, Current Affairs, Music, Nature, Travel | July 27th, 2020

Bird-watch­ing is hav­ing a moment, thanks to the pan­dem­ic.

As non-essen­tial work­ers adjust­ed to spend­ing more time at home, their ears adjust­ed to the increas­ing­ly non-for­eign sound of bird­song out­side their win­dows.

Those sweet tweets are no doubt large­ly respon­si­ble for the record break­ing turnout at this year’s Glob­al Big Day, the Cor­nell Lab of Ornithol­o­gy’s annu­al bird­ing event, held ear­li­er this spring.

50,000 par­tic­i­pants logged 2.1 mil­lion indi­vid­ual obser­va­tions, and 6,479 species.

Appar­ent­ly, there are even more birds in this world than there are sour­dough starters…

…though for the imme­di­ate future, civic-mind­ed bird­watch­ers will be con­fin­ing their obser­va­tions to the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty, as a mat­ter of pub­lic health.

We look for­ward to the day when bird enthu­si­asts resid­ing out­side of Belize, Mex­i­co, or Guatemala can again trav­el to the Yucatán Penin­su­la in hopes of a face-to-face encounter with the Black Cat Bird.

Til then, the ani­mat­ed video above, in which a Black Cat­bird unwit­ting­ly duets with Belize’s Gar­i­fu­na Col­lec­tive, makes a sooth­ing place hold­er.

The cat­bird and the col­lec­tive appear along with nine oth­er elec­tron­ic musi­cian / endan­gered native bird teams on the fundrais­ing album, A Guide to the Bird­song of Mex­i­co, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca & the Caribbean.

A Black-cheeked Ant-Tan­ag­er joins NILLO, a pro­duc­er and DJ from Cos­ta Rica who draws musi­cal inspi­ra­tion from the trib­al com­mu­ni­ties around him.

Siete Catorce, a pro­duc­er who helped pop­u­lar­ize the pop­u­lar bor­der genre known as rui­dosĂłn—a mix of cumbia and pre­his­pan­ic trib­al sounds—is paired with a Yel­low-head­ed Par­rot.

Jor­dan “Time Cow” Chung of Equiknoxx seam­less­ly inte­grates a Jamaican Black­bird into his unique brand of organ­ic, exper­i­men­tal dance­hall.

The album fol­lows 2015’s Guide to the Bird­song of South Amer­i­ca, and as with its pre­de­ces­sor, 100% of the prof­its will be donat­ed to region­al orga­ni­za­tions focused on birds and con­ser­va­tion—Birds Caribbean, La Aso­ciaciĂłn Orni­tolĂłg­i­ca de Cos­ta Rica, and Mexico’s Fun­da­cion TXORI.

Birds, as the project’s founder, Robin Perkins, told Gizmodo’s Earth­er, are the most musi­cal ani­mals in the world:

There’s some­thing real­ly nice about focus­ing on endan­gered species and songs that are dis­ap­pear­ing and not being pre­served and to use music to raise aware­ness about the species. I believe music has a big pow­er for social activism and social change and for envi­ron­men­tal change.

Lis­ten to A Guide to the Bird­song of Mex­i­co, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca & the Caribbean for free on Spo­ti­fy.

Buy the album or indi­vid­ual tracks on Band­camp to ben­e­fit the char­i­ties above.

Robin Perkins’ lim­it­ed edi­tion prints of the fea­tured birds also ben­e­fit the bird-focused region­al char­i­ties and can be pur­chased here.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

The Bird Library: A Library Built Espe­cial­ly for Our Fine Feath­ered Friends

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Down­load 435 High Res­o­lu­tion Images from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Explore Flowcharts That Japanese Aquariums Use to Document the Romantic Lives of Penguins

in Nature | July 15th, 2020

In recent years, view­ers the world over have been binge-watch­ing a Japan­ese real­i­ty show called Ter­race House. The New York­er’s Troy Pat­ter­son describes its for­mat thus: “Three men and three women move into an ele­gant pad for a spell, while oth­er­wise con­duct­ing their lives as usu­al. The mem­bers of the cast are above aver­age in their cam­era-readi­ness and their civil­i­ty, and in no oth­er dis­cernible way.” Fueled not by the self-pro­mo­tion­al show­boat­ing and ginned-up resent­ment that have become con­ven­tions of Ter­race House’s West­ern pre­de­ces­sors, “the show’s slow-burn­ing action is sparked by the hon­est fric­tion of minor per­son­al­i­ty flaws and con­flict­ing per­son­al needs,” mak­ing it “clos­er to a nature doc­u­men­tary than to the exploita­tion films that one has come to expect from real­i­ty tele­vi­sion.”

If view­ing human beings the way we’re used to view­ing nature can give us such sat­is­fac­tion, how about view­ing nature the way we’re used to view­ing human beings? Japan, as John­ny Wald­man reports at Spoon and Tam­a­go, has led the way in both rever­sals: “Two aquar­i­ums in Japan, Kyoto Aquar­i­um and Sum­i­da Aquar­i­um, keep obses­sive tabs on their pen­guins and main­tain an updat­ed flow­chart that visu­al­izes all their pen­guin dra­ma.”

Wald­man quotes Japan-based researcher Oliv­er Jia as tweet­ing the fact that “Pen­guin dra­ma actu­al­ly isn’t total­ly unex­pect­ed. They’re known to be vicious ani­mals who cheat on their part­ners and steal oth­er’s chil­dren. So basi­cal­ly, your aver­age day in Los Ange­les” — the cra­dle, one might add, of the real­i­ty-TV indus­try.

Though the lives of pen­guins may, in the eyes of the aquar­i­um-vis­it­ing lay­man, appear to con­sist entire­ly of swim­ming, eat­ing fish, and stand­ing around, the ani­mals’ “roman­tic escapades are fair­ly easy to observe,” at least accord­ing to Wald­man’s trans­la­tion of the pen­guin care­tak­ers at the Sum­i­da Aquar­i­um. “Wing-flap­ping is a sign of affec­tion and cou­ples can be seen groom­ing each oth­er. Pen­guins who are get­ting over a break-up will often refuse to eat.” This is the kind of obser­va­tion­al data that inform the inten­sive­ly detailed (and cute­ness-opti­mized) pen­guin-rela­tion­ship dia­grams seen here, high-res­o­lu­tion ver­sions of which you can down­load from the Kyoto Aquar­i­um and Sum­i­da Aquar­i­um’s web sites. Now that Ter­race House has come to an end, per­haps the time has come on Japan­ese real­i­ty tele­vi­sion for a bit of non-human dra­ma.

via Spoon and Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Act of Love: A Strange, Won­der­ful Visu­al Dic­tio­nary of Ani­mal Courtship

See Pen­guins Wear­ing Tiny “Pen­guin Books” Sweaters, Knit­ted by the Old­est Man in Aus­tralia

Japan­ese Design­er Cre­ates Incred­i­bly Detailed & Real­is­tic Maps of a City That Doesn’t Exist

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Japan­ese Folk­lore Mon­sters Is Now Open

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

Meet Con­go the Chimp, London’s Sen­sa­tion­al 1950s Abstract Painter

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast