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.

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

in Libraries, Nature | June 16th, 2020

“The two things I love most are nov­els and birds,” said Jonathan Franzen in a Guardian pro­file not long ago. “They’re both in trou­ble, and I want to advo­cate for both of them.” Chances are that even that famous­ly inter­net-averse nov­el­ist-turned-bird­watch­er would enjoy the online attrac­tion called The Bird Library, “where the need to feed meets the need to read.” Its live Youtube stream shows the goings-on of a tiny library built espe­cial­ly for our feath­ered friends. “Perched in a back­yard in the city of Char­lottesville,” writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Claire Voon, “it is the pas­sion project of librar­i­an Rebec­ca Flow­ers and wood­work­er Kevin Cwali­na, who brought togeth­er their skills and inter­ests to show­case the lives of their back­yard birds.”

Recent vis­i­tors, Voon adds, “have includ­ed a strik­ing rose-breast­ed gros­beak, a car­di­nal that looks like it’s vap­ing, and a trio of mourn­ing doves seem­ing­ly caught in a seri­ous meet­ing.” The Bird Library’s web site offers an archive of images cap­tur­ing the insti­tu­tion’s wee reg­u­lars, all accom­pa­nied by enliven­ing cap­tions. (“Why did the bird go to the library?” “He was look­ing for book­worms.”)

Just as year-round bird­watch­ing brings plea­sures dis­tinct from more casu­al ver­sions of the pur­suit, year-round view­ing of The Bird Library makes for a deep­er appre­ci­a­tion not just of the vari­ety of species rep­re­sent­ed among its patrons — the cre­ators have count­ed 20 so far — but for the sea­son­al changes in the space’s decor, espe­cial­ly around Christ­mas­time.

As long­time view­ers know, this isn’t the orig­i­nal Bird Library. “In late 2018 we demol­ished the old Bird Library and start­ed design and devel­op­ment of a new and improved Bird Library 2.0! Com­plete with a large con­crete base for increased capac­i­ty and a big­ger cir­cu­la­tion desk capa­ble of feed­ing all our guests all day long.” Just as libraries for humans need occa­sion­al ren­o­va­tion, so, it seems, do libraries for birds — a con­cept that could soon expand out­side Vir­ginia. “Cwali­na hopes to even­tu­al­ly pub­lish an open-access plan for a sim­i­lar bird library, so that oth­er bird­ers can build their own ver­sions,” reports Voon. And a bird-lov­ing 21st-cen­tu­ry Andrew Carnegie steps for­ward to ensure their archi­tec­tur­al respectabil­i­ty, might we sug­gest going with mod­ernism?

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mod­ernist Bird­hous­es Inspired by Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright and Joseph Eich­ler

Free Enter­tain­ment for Cats and Dogs: Videos of Birds, Squir­rels & Oth­er Thrills

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

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

RIP Todd Bol, Founder of the Lit­tle Free Library Move­ment: He Leaves Behind 75,000 Small Libraries That Pro­mote Read­ing World­wide

McDonald’s Opens a Tiny Restau­rant — and It’s Only for Bees

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.

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David Lynch Recounts His Surreal Dream of Being a German Solider Dying on D‑Day

in Current Affairs, Film, History, Nature | June 8th, 2020

Some of last week’s major head­lines:

Police forcibly remove a large num­ber of peace­able pro­tes­tors from the area in front of a Wash­ing­ton DC church, so a 73-year-old white man can be pho­tographed stand­ing there alone, hold­ing a prop bible.

An unarmed 75-year-old white man approach­es a Buf­fa­lo police offi­cer at a protest and is shoved so force­ful­ly that he cracks his skull open, lying uncon­scious and bleed­ing as mem­bers of the force step past him with­out offer­ing assis­tance. But first the weath­er, as per­ceived by a 74-year-old white man peer­ing out the win­dow of his stu­dio of his Hol­ly­wood Hills home (one of three), pri­or to shar­ing a dream in which he is a Ger­man sol­dier dying on D‑Day….

What makes this news­wor­thy?

The date and the iden­ti­ty of the self-appoint­ed weath­er­man, film­mak­er David Lynch.

For the record, June 6, 2020 start­ed out cloudy and a bit chilly. The hope just off Mul­hol­land Dri­ve was for increased “gold­en sun­shine” in the after­noon.

(One does won­der how much time this ama­teur spends out­doors.)

76 years ear­li­er, an absolute­ly accu­rate weath­er fore­cast was essen­tial for the Allied Inva­sion of France. Mul­ti­ple mete­o­ro­log­i­cal teams con­tributed obser­va­tions and exper­tise to ensure that con­di­tions would be right, or right enough, for the inva­sion Gen­er­al Dwight D. Eisen­how­er envi­sioned.

As author William Bryant Logan details in Air: The Rest­less Shaper of the World:

In the end the Allies won the day because in order to pre­dict the weath­er, they act­ed like the weath­er. Com­pet­ing groups jos­tled and maneu­vered, each try­ing to pres­sure the oth­ers into accept­ing their point of view. In just the same way, the high- and low-pres­sure cells fought and spun into one anoth­er over the Atlantic. The fore­cast­ers rein­forced their own ideas, and none of their ideas was the win­ner,  just as each gyre and each cen­ter of low and high pres­sure pressed against the oth­ers, squeez­ing out the future among them. The Ger­mans, on the oth­er hand, believ­ing that they could con­quer uncer­tain­ty by fiat, declared that weath­er and peo­ple would con­form to their assump­tions. They were proved wrong. The Allies appeared on the beach­es of Nor­mandy, just like a sur­prise storm.

Lynch’s D‑Day anniver­sary report for Los Ange­les was his 27th, part of a dai­ly project launched with­out expla­na­tion on May 11.

His emo­tion­al weath­er seems to run cool. He relays his his­toric life or death uncon­scious encounter (it involves a machine gun) in much the same tone that he uses for report­ing on South­ern California’s pleas­ant late spring tem­per­a­tures. For the record, Lynch was born 593 days after D‑Day, and has no plans for a WWII feature—or any oth­er big screen project—in the fore­see­able future.

In a vis­it with The Guardian’s Rory Car­roll, he expressed how tele­vi­sion has become the medi­um best suit­ed to the sort of long and twist‑y nar­ra­tives he finds compelling—like art, life, and rein­car­na­tion:

Life is a short trip but always con­tin­u­ing. We’ll all meet again. In enlight­en­ment you real­ize what you tru­ly are and go into immor­tal­i­ty. You don’t ever have to die after that.

So maybe he real­ly was a luck­less 16-year-old Ger­man sol­dier…

One whose cur­rent incarnation’s foun­da­tion cre­at­ed a fund to pro­vide no-cost Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion instruc­tion to vet­er­ans as a way of cop­ing with Post-Trau­mat­ic Stress. Lynch named the fund in hon­or of Jer­ry Yellin, a fel­low TM prac­ti­tion­er and peace activist who, as an Amer­i­can fight­er pilot, flew the final com­bat mis­sion of World War II on August 14, 1945.

Sub­scribe to Lynch’s YouTube chan­nel to stay abreast of his dai­ly weath­er reports, like the install­ment from June 3, below, which finds him voic­ing his sup­port for Black Lives Mat­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Cre­ates Dai­ly Weath­er Reports for Los Ange­les: How the Film­mak­er Pass­es Time in Quar­an­tine

David Lynch Releas­es an Ani­mat­ed Film Online: Watch Fire (Pozar)

David Lynch Teach­es an Online Course on Film & Cre­ativ­i­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her dai­ly art-in-iso­la­tion project is close­ly tied to the weath­er in New York City.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Soothing, Uplifting Resources for Parents & Caregivers Stressed by the COVID-19 Crisis

in Film, Life, Music, Nature | March 20th, 2020

When COVID-19 closed schools and shut­tered the­aters and con­cert venues, response was swift.

Stars rang­ing from the Cincin­nati zoo’s hip­po Fiona to Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miran­da leapt to share free con­tent with sud­den­ly home­bound view­ers.

Coldplay’s front­man, Chris Mar­tin, sep­a­rat­ed from his band­mates by inter­na­tion­al bor­ders, played a mini gig at home, as did coun­try star Kei­th Urban, with his wife, Nicole Kid­man, lurk­ing in the back­ground.

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Deb­bie Allen got peo­ple off the couch with free dance class­es on Insta­gram.

Audi­ble pledged to pro­vide free audio­books for lit­tle kids and teens for the dura­tion.

An embar­rass­ment of rich­es for those whose expe­ri­ence of COVID-19 is some­where between extend­ed snow day and stay­ca­tion…

But what about care­givers who sud­den­ly find them­selves pro­vid­ing 24–7 care for elders with demen­tia, or neu­ro-atyp­i­cal adult chil­dren whose upend­ed rou­tine is wreak­ing hav­oc on their emo­tions?

“I know peo­ple are hap­py that the schools have closed but I just lost crit­i­cal work­day hours and if/when day hab clos­es I will have to take low-paid med­ical leave AND we will not have any breaks from care­giv­ing some­one with 24–7 needs and aggres­sive, loud behav­iors. I feel com­plete­ly defeat­ed,” one friend writes.

24 hours lat­er:

We just lost day hab, effec­tive tomor­row. My mes­sages for in-home ser­vices haven’t been returned yet. Full on pan­ic mode.

What can we do to help light­en those loads when we’re barred from phys­i­cal inter­ac­tion, or enter­ing each other’s homes?

We combed through our archive, with an eye toward the most sooth­ing, uplift­ing con­tent, appro­pri­ate for all ages, start­ing with pianist Paul Bar­ton’s clas­si­cal con­certs for ele­phants in Kan­chanaburi, Thai­land, above.

Calm­ing videos:

Hours of sooth­ing  nature footage from the BBC.

Com­muters in New­castle’s Hay­mar­ket Bus Sta­tion Play­ing Beethoven 

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour’s Musi­cal Take on Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Guid­ed Imagery Med­i­ta­tion from Johns Hop­kins All Children’s Hos­pi­tal

Four clas­sic per­for­mances from the “Father of Bossa Nova” João Gilber­to

The Insects’ Christ­mas, a 1913: Stop Motion  Ani­ma­tion

Mul­ti­ple sea­sons of Bob Ross!

60+ Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

Home­made Amer­i­can Music, a 1980 doc­u­men­tary on rur­al south­east­ern tra­di­tion­al music and musi­cians

Win­sor McKay’s Ger­tie the Dinosaur

Calm­ing Music and Audio:

Metal­li­ca, REM, Led Zep­pelin & Queen Sung in the Style of Gre­go­ri­an Chant

18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Weight­less, the most relax­ing song ever made

Calm­ing Piano, Jazz & Harp Cov­ers of Music from Hayao Miyaza­ki Films

240 Hours of Relax­ing, Sleep-Induc­ing Sounds from Sci-Fi Video Games: From Blade Run­ner to Star Wars

Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release

We’ve also got a trove of free col­or­ing books and pages, though care­givers should vet the con­tent before shar­ing it with some­one who’s like­ly to be dis­turbed by med­ical illus­tra­tion and images of medieval demons…

Read­ers, if you know a resource that might buy care­givers and their agi­tat­ed, house­bound charges a bit of peace, please add it in the com­ments below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ther­a­peu­tic Ben­e­fits of Ambi­ent Music: Sci­ence Shows How It Eas­es Chron­ic Anx­i­ety, Phys­i­cal Pain, and ICU-Relat­ed Trau­ma

Free Guid­ed Imagery Record­ings Help Kids Cope with Pain, Stress & Anx­i­ety

Chill Out to 70 Hours of Ocean­scape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth

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

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6 Minute Reprieve From the World’s Troubles, Courtesy of Tilda Swinton, Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, and Five Springer Spaniels

in K-12, Life, Music, Nature, Opera | March 19th, 2020

This video of Til­da Swin­ton’s Springer Spaniels cavort­ing in pas­toral Scot­land to a Han­del aria per­formed by coun­tertenor Antho­ny Roth Costan­zo won’t cure what ails you, but it is def­i­nite­ly good med­i­cine.

Swin­ton and her part­ner, artist San­dro Kopp, filmed the beau­ti­ful beasts in such a way as to high­light their dog­gy exu­ber­ance, whether mov­ing as a pack or tak­ing a solo turn.

The title of the aria, “Rompo i Lac­ci,” from the sec­ond act of Flavio, trans­lates to “I break the laces,” and there’s no mis­tak­ing the joy Rosy, Dora, Louis, Dot, and Snow­bear take in being off the leash.

Flash­backs to their roly­poly pup­py selves are cute, but it’s the feath­ery ears and tails of the adult dogs that steal the show as they bound around beach and field.

The film­mak­ers get a lot of mileage from their stars’ lolling pink tongues and will­ing­ness to vig­or­ous­ly launch them­selves toward any out of frame treat.

We’ve nev­er seen a ten­nis ball achieve such beau­ty.

There’s also some fun to be had in spe­cial effects where­in the dogs are dou­bled by a mir­ror effect and lat­er, when one of them turns into a canine Rorschach blot.

The video was orig­i­nal­ly screened as part of Costan­zo’s mul­ti-media Glass Han­del instal­la­tion for Opera Philadel­phia, an explo­ration into how opera can make the hairs on the back of our neck stand up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

How a Philip Glass Opera Gets Made: An Inside Look

Til­da Swin­ton Recites Poem by Rumi While Reek­ing of Vetiv­er, Heliotrope & Musk

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

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

in Archives, Art, Nature | February 11th, 2020

You may have heard of “plant blind­ness,” a con­di­tion defined about 20 years ago that has start­ed to get more press in recent years. As its name sug­gests, it refers to an inabil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy or even notice the many plant species around us in our every­day lives. Some have con­nect­ed it to a poten­tial­ly more wide­spread afflic­tion they call “nature deficit dis­or­der,” which is also just what it sounds like: a set of impair­ments brought on by insuf­fi­cient expo­sure to the nat­ur­al world. One might also draw a line from these con­cepts to our atti­tudes about cli­mate change, or to our ever-less-inter­rupt­ed immer­sion in the dig­i­tal world. But if any part of that dig­i­tal world can open our eyes to nature once again, it’s the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library (present also on Flickr and Insta­gram.)

Pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its vast archive of two mil­lion illus­tra­tions of the nat­ur­al world, the BHL has received more cov­er­age this year for the more than 150,000 it’s made avail­able for copy­right-free down­load. Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Hakim Bishara quotes Hen­ry David Thore­au — “We need the ton­ic of wild­ness. We can nev­er get enough of nature” — before writ­ing of how thrilled Thore­au would have been by the exis­tence of such a resource for images of nature.

These images include “ani­mal sketch­es, his­tor­i­cal dia­grams, botan­i­cal stud­ies, and sci­en­tif­ic research col­lect­ed from hun­dreds of thou­sands of jour­nals and libraries across the world,” some dat­ing to the 15th cen­tu­ry. He high­lights “Joseph Wolf’s 19th-cen­tu­ry book Zoo­log­i­cal Sketch­es, con­tain­ing about 100 lith­o­graphs depict­ing wild ani­mals in London’s Regent’s Park” and “water­col­ors depict­ing flow­ers indige­nous to the Hawai­ian islands” as well as “an 1833 DIY Taxidermist’s Man­u­al.”

As Smithsonian.com’s There­sa Machemer notes, “The prac­tice of cre­at­ing detailed illus­tra­tions of flo­ra and fau­na, whether to doc­u­ment an expe­di­tion or a med­ical prac­tice, gained pop­u­lar­i­ty well before pho­tog­ra­phy was up to the task.” Hence such ambi­tious projects as the Unit­ed States gov­ern­men­t’s com­mis­sion­ing, in 1866, of water­col­or paint­ings depict­ing every fruit known to man. But even today, “an illus­tra­tion can offer more clar­i­ty than a pho­to­graph,” as you’ll find when you zoom in on any of the BHL’s high-res­o­lu­tion illus­tra­tions. Accord­ing to the BHL, “a world­wide con­sor­tium of nat­ur­al his­to­ry, botan­i­cal, research, and nation­al libraries,” its mis­sion is to pro­vide “access to the world’s col­lec­tive knowl­edge about bio­di­ver­si­ty,” in order to help researchers “doc­u­ment Earth’s species and under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of swift­ly-chang­ing ecosys­tems in the midst of a major extinc­tion cri­sis and wide­spread cli­mate change.” But by reveal­ing how our pre­de­ces­sors saw nature, it can also help all of us see nature again. Access the illus­tra­tions here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

In 1886, the US Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sioned 7,500 Water­col­or Paint­ings of Every Known Fruit in the World: Down­load Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness & Awe

A Shaz­am for Nature: A New Free App Helps You Iden­ti­fy Plants, Ani­mals & Oth­er Denizens of the Nat­ur­al World

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

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 or on Face­book.

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How Humans Domesticated Cats (Twice)

in Biology, History, Nature, Travel | January 27th, 2020

Depend­ing on how you feel about cats, the feline sit­u­a­tion on the island of Cyprus is either the stuff of a delight­ful children’s sto­ry or a hor­ror film to be avoid­ed at all cost.

Despite being sur­round­ed on all sides by water, the cat pop­u­la­tion—an esti­mat­ed 1.5 mil­lion—cur­rent­ly out­num­bers human res­i­dents. The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty are fer­al, though as we learn in the above episode of PBS’ EONS, they, too, can be con­sid­ered domes­ti­cat­ed. Like the oth­er 600,000,000-some liv­ing mem­bers of Felis Catus on plan­et Earth—which is to say the type of beast we asso­ciate with lit­ter­box­es, laser point­ers, and Ten­der Vittles—they are descend­ed from a sin­gle sub­species of African wild­cat, Felis Sil­vestris Lybi­ca.

While there’s no sin­gle nar­ra­tive explain­ing how cats came to dom­i­nate Cyprus, the sto­ry of their glob­al domes­ti­ca­tion is not an uncom­mon one:

An ancient effi­cien­cy expert real­ized that herd­ing cats was a much bet­ter use of time than hunt­ing them, and the idea quick­ly spread to neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Kid­ding. There’s no such thing as herd­ing cats (though there is a Chica­go-based cat cir­cus, whose founder moti­vates her skate­board-rid­ing, bar­rel-rolling, high-wire-walk­ing stars with pos­i­tive rein­force­ment…)

Instead, cats took a com­men­sal path to domes­ti­ca­tion, lured by their bel­lies and cel­e­brat­ed curios­i­ty.

Ol’ Felis (Felix!) Sil­vestris (Suf­ferin’ Suc­co­tash!) Lybi­ca couldn’t help notic­ing how human set­tle­ments boast­ed gen­er­ous sup­plies of food, includ­ing large num­bers of tasty mice and oth­er rodents attract­ed by the grain stores.

Her inad­ver­tent human hosts grew to val­ue her pest con­trol capa­bil­i­ties, and cul­ti­vat­ed the rela­tion­ship… or at the very least, refrained from devour­ing every cat that wan­dered into camp.

Even­tu­al­ly, things got to the point where one 5600-year-old spec­i­men from north­west­ern Chi­na was revealed to have died with more mil­let than mouse meat in its system—a pet in both name and pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment.

Chow chow chow.

Inter­est­ing­ly, while today’s house cats’ gene pool leads back to that one sub-species of wild mack­er­el-tab­by, it’s impos­si­ble to iso­late domes­ti­ca­tion to a sin­gle time and place.

Both arche­o­log­i­cal evi­dence and genome analy­sis sup­port the idea that cats were domes­ti­cat­ed both 10,000 years ago in South­west Asia… and then again in Egypt 6500 years lat­er.

At some point, a human and cat trav­eled togeth­er to Cyprus and the rest is his­to­ry, an Inter­net sen­sa­tion and an if you can’t beat em, join em tourist attrac­tion.

Such high end island hotels as Pissouri’s Colum­bia Beach Resort and TUI Sen­satori Resort Atlanti­ca Aphrodite Hills in Paphos have start­ed cater­ing to the ever-swelling num­bers of unin­vit­ed, four-legged locals with a robust reg­i­men of health­care, shel­ter, and food, served in feline-spe­cif­ic tav­er­nas.

An island char­i­ty known as Cat P.A.W.S. (Pro­tect­ing Ani­mals With­out Shel­ter) appeals to vis­i­tors for dona­tions to defray the cost of neu­ter­ing the mas­sive fer­al pop­u­la­tion.

Some­times they even man­age to send a fur­ry Cyprus native off to a new home with a for­eign hol­i­day­mak­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

A New Pho­to Book Doc­u­ments the Won­der­ful Home­made Cat Lad­ders of Switzer­land

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York, The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Art & Philosophy of Bonsai

in Art, Nature, Philosophy | January 9th, 2020

We all know what to think of when we hear the term bon­sai: dwarf trees. Or so Shi­nobu Noza­ki titled his book, the very first major pub­li­ca­tion on the sub­ject in Eng­lish. Dwarf Trees came out in the 1930s, not long after the Japan­ese art of bon­sai start­ed draw­ing seri­ous inter­na­tion­al atten­tion. But the art itself goes back as far as the sixth cen­tu­ry, when Japan­ese embassy employ­ees and stu­dents of Bud­dhism return­ing from sojourns in Chi­na brought back all the lat­est things Chi­nese, includ­ing plants grow­ing in con­tain­ers. By six or sev­en cen­turies lat­er, as scrolls show us today, Japan had tak­en that hor­ti­cul­tur­al tech­nique and refined it into a prac­tice based on not just minia­tur­iza­tion but pro­por­tion, asym­me­try, poignan­cy, and era­sure of the artist’s traces, one that pro­duces the kind of trees-in-minia­ture we rec­og­nize as art­works, and even mas­ter­works, today.

It hard­ly needs say­ing that bon­sai trees don’t take shape by them­selves. As the name, which means “tray plant­i­ng” (盆栽), sug­gests, a work of bon­sai must begin by plant­i­ng a spec­i­men in a small con­tain­er. From then on, it demands dai­ly atten­tion in not just the pro­vi­sion of the prop­er amounts of water and sun­light but also care­ful trim­ming and adjust­ment with trim­mers, hooks, wire, and every­thing else in the bon­sai cul­ti­va­tor’s sur­pris­ing­ly large suite of tools.

You can see a Japan­ese mas­ter of the art named Chi­ako Yamamo­to in action in “Bon­sai: The End­less Rit­u­al,” the BBC Earth Unplugged video at the top of the post. “Shap­ing nature in this way demands ever­last­ing devo­tion with­out the prospect of com­ple­tion,” says its nar­ra­tor, a point under­scored by one bon­sai under Yamamo­to’s care, orig­i­nal­ly plant­ed by her grand­fa­ther over a cen­tu­ry ago.

You’ll find even old­er bon­sai at the Nation­al Bon­sai Muse­um at the U.S. Nation­al Arbore­tum in Wash­ing­ton D.C. In the video “Bon­sai Will Make You a Bet­ter Per­son,” cura­tor Jack Sus­tic — an Amer­i­can first exposed to bon­sai in the mil­i­tary, while sta­tioned in Korea — shows off a Japan­ese white pine “in train­ing” since the year 1625. That unusu­al ter­mi­nol­o­gy reflects the fact that no work of bon­sai even attains a state of com­plete­ness. “They’re always grow­ing,” say Sus­tic. “They’re always chang­ing. It’s nev­er a fin­ished art­work.” In Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s “Amer­i­can Shokunin” just above, the tit­u­lar bon­sai cul­ti­va­tor (shokunin has a mean­ing sim­i­lar to “crafts­man” or “arti­san”), Japan-trained, Ore­gon-based Ryan Neil, expands on what bon­sai teach­es: not just how to artis­ti­cal­ly grow small trees that resem­ble big ones, but what it takes to com­mune with nature and attain mas­tery.

“A mas­ter is some­body who, every sin­gle day, tries to pur­sue per­fec­tion at their cho­sen endeav­or,” says Neil. “A mas­ter does­n’t retire. A mas­ter does­n’t stop. They do it until they’re dead.” And as a work of bon­sai lit­er­al­ly out­lives its cre­ator, the pur­suit con­tin­ues long after they’re dead. The bon­sai mas­ter must be aware of the aes­thet­ic and philo­soph­i­cal val­ues held by the gen­er­a­tions who came before them as well as the gen­er­a­tions that will come after. Wabi sabi, as bon­sai prac­ti­tion­er Pam Woythal defines it, is “the Japan­ese art of find­ing beau­ty in imper­fec­tion and pro­fun­di­ty in nature, of accept­ing the nat­ur­al cycle of growth, decay, and death.” Shibu­mi (or in its adjec­ti­val form shibui) is, in the words of I Am Bon­sai’s Jonathan Rodriguez, “the sim­ple sub­tle details of the sub­ject,” man­i­fest for exam­ple in “the appar­ent sim­ple tex­ture that bal­ances sim­plic­i­ty and com­plex­i­ty.” Looked at cor­rect­ly, a bon­sai tree — leaves, branch­es, pot, and all — reminds us of the impor­tant ele­ments of life and the impor­tant ele­ments of art, and of the fact that those ele­ments aren’t as far apart as we assume.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Kintsu­gi: The Cen­turies-Old Japan­ese Craft of Repair­ing Pot­tery with Gold & Find­ing Beau­ty in Bro­ken Things

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

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

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

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

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 or on Face­book.

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