Pecan-Toucan Pie...

It's delicious, it's colorful. This Thanksgiving won't you consider devouring the flesh of another species besides Meleagris gallopavo?

The Torture Room...

(film by Danilo Parra)

Seraglio Felis...

Cat Shopping. Today we learned that dogs at the Santa Monica Animal Shelter are much happier than the cats. Strangely so. We also spent a good deal of time at over the Cat Expo at the Civic Center. Tiki themed. Beyond beyond. And to round out the day, we hit up a tiny rescue on Robertson Blvd featuring 180+ full-grown felines lounging about like odalisques in a seraglio (see short film above.) Ah the scent of wet Friskies being devoured at sunset. It's enough to make a tear duct weep. The song clip, Fantastic Cat, is by Takako Minekawa. I'm sure she wouldn't mind us borrowing it for this exposé.

Owl with identity issues....

Clever Hans the math horse...

Clever Hans, or Der Kluge Hans, was one bright German horse. Or was he? He could add, subtract, multiply, divide, work with fractions, tell time, keep track of the calendar, differentiate musical tones, and read, spell, and understand German. His owner, Wilhelm Von Osten, would ask Hans, "If the eighth day of the month comes on a Tuesday, what is the date of the following Friday?” Hans would answer by tapping his foot. Questions could be asked both orally, and in written form.

It was later discovered that Hans was picking up subtle cues from his questioners. After formal investigation in 1907, psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrated that the horse was not actually performing these mental tasks, but was watching the reaction of his human observers. Pfungst discovered the horse was responding directly to involuntary cues in the body language of the human trainer, who had the faculties to solve each problem. The trainer was entirely unaware that he was providing such cues.

In honor of Pfungst's study, the discovery been referred to as the Clever Hans effect and has continued to be important knowledge in animal cognition.

Dogs and cats are cinematic condiments...

By now we all know that many Hollywood screenwriters are practicing masochists who lay themselves at the mercy of soul-sapping studio committees with a talent for clipping the wings and de-fanging interesting material into pablum. It's as old as the medium.

Dramatic quagmires in movies are frequently rescued by the insertion of a "cute and crazy" pet. You can see the meeting: "Put a cat in there to liven things up." This is a testament to the effortless watch-ability of our animal cousins, (and a probable sign that clever contrivances aren't working). Don't get me wrong, as much as I love an animal in a movie, I can often feel the cop out, a quick fix to a complex human situation that would have been interesting to explore. A thinking person's battle was lost and covered up by fur.

(Asta from "The Awful Truth")

"Like a drill on an ingrown toenail..."

Dum dee dum... Summertime, sipping soda... What's that? !!! Oh jeez. I've been stung !!!! By what? Oh, Here it comes... Pain!!!!!! Holy mother of !%*$#ing God !!!!!!

Wasps love to climb inside a sweet soda can. But better to be stung in the mouth by a common yellow jacket than anywhere by a Pepsis Wasp a.k.a. the "Tarantula Hawk." Only one man could have described this particular venom as giving "...immediate, excruciating pain that simply shuts down one's ability to do anything, except, perhaps, scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations."

Dr. Justin O. Schmidt, an entomologist recently retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Tucson Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, has come up with a system for ranking the pain of insect stings and bites fittingly called: The Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Dr. Schmidt is a connoisseur of pain. His descriptions, based on a scale of 1 - 4, are deeply imaginative, like a vintner recalling a rare fine wines...

1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.

1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.

1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.

2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.

2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.

2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.

3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.

3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.

4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.

4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

He describes Pogonomyrmex badius (pictured above) as an average-looking ant whose bite yields "pain that might be caused by someone turning a screw into the flesh or ripping muscles and tendons." More on the science of stings here.

Waterboarding waterschmording! Apparently, the finest tortures come in small, venomous packages.

The Wise Old Mule...

A wise old mule fell into a farmer's well. Well what kind of wise mule falls into a well? An old one with cataracts you see. The farmer came in from the fields and noticed his mule in the well and his heart went out to him. But, the sympathy soon relaxed into complacency. He decided that neither the mule nor the well were worth saving. He called his workers over and instructed them to fill the well in with dirt. They did and soon the mule's back was covered with dirt. His ankles were buried. So this is how it would end thought the mule. He prepared to meet his maker, but then a new thought: what if I shake the dirt off my back and step up? With each new shovel full of dirt, the mule shook it off and stepped up. After a few hours, the old mule reached the top of the well, battered and exhausted. Still, he climbed out triumphantly before the bemused workers. He walked right passed the farmer and gave him a kind but knowing look. The mule had learned something new: What seemed like it would bury him actually gave him the strength to live. His refusal to see problems negatively, no matter how painful or distressing they were, gave him the power to rise out of his predicament. Shake it off and step up.

The farmer thought the mule burgers were a bit chewy.

Resist outrage...

IF you are outraged by the idea of an emaciated street dog being tied to the wall of an art gallery and left there to die in the name of art, you are: HUMAN. IF you are outraged by this act, and have eaten meat at any time in your life, you are: HUMAN. If you understand the hypocrisy of people being outraged at the idea of this cruel art show, but not caring about a dog dying in the street, you are: HUMAN. If you care about a dog dying in the street, but for some reason don't care as much about a person starving in the street, you are: HUMAN.

Regarding Guillermo "Habacuc" Vargas' exhibition, it has in fact, been widely reported that the dog was only tied up for a few hours and that he was fed throughout his time at the gallery. The dog is said to have escaped the gallery after one day. Still, this information is overlooked, since it threatens to assuage people's outrage.

The internet is filled with heartfelt, venomous clips insisting that the dog died, they even use images of the dog with it's head down, to imply that it is dead. No one bothered to research the reality, because the idea was so deliciously outrageous. Are you seeing what I'm seeing here?

Yes animal cruelty is wrong. Yes, people are prone to fall in love with their own outrage. Yes, dogs die in the street every day. Yes, art can lose itself up its own ass. Yes, everyone perceives things differently.

But what if the dog had died in the gallery? It would surely cast the artist and the gallery owners in an unfavorable light as exploiters of cruelty. But the waves of international outrage would have also carried a less emotional message: suffering, cruelty, and death can only outrage us if they are extracted from the shrouds of denial we place around these things.

I think one variety of successful art manages to trigger our outrage in the hope of moving us beyond it to a larger truth. The artist puts a frame around something and asks us to evaluate it from all angles. In this case you have to ask yourself is the frame around the dog or around our sliding scale of denial when it comes to acknowledging suffering, cruelty, and death.

If you like this sort of button pushing animal art, or you love hating it, can I point you in the direction of Adel Abdessemed?

Bozo the Cobra says...

"My tiny tricycle routine is worse than my bite!"

Last Hour Cat...

A cat called Oscar who lives at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, RI has a chilling knack for curling up with terminally ill patients who have between two and four hours left to live. Oscar's accuracy (currently standing at more than 25 reported instances) led the staff to institute a new and unusual protocol – once he is discovered sleeping with a patient, staff will call family members to notify them of the patient's (expected) impending death.

Breaking away...

Animals are so patient with our experiments in civilization. Even so, every now and again, an animal says, "Enough!" This is always the point where it gets interesting.

Mouse mouse...

The ancient art of taxidermy has finally entered the digital age. This intricately wired dead mouse will keep your fingers warm and your inner animal on full alert as you surf the internet.

(via Instructables)

"Woman Attacks Polar Bear"

"All of Berlin Zoo’s polar bears are safe after thwarting a home invasion on Friday. An apparently unstable woman invaded their habitat by scaling a fence, wall and line of prickly bushes. Acting quickly to prevent her from climbing ashore, an elder bear bit the woman’s arms and legs until zookeepers arrived to remove the human attacker."

(Source and the real story)

Antinaturalism...

Antinaturalism is a movement started in France that denies Nature any "sacred" status that must be preserved for its own sake. They believe that animals (epecially humans) have a right to live oppression-free and that it is OK for humans to ignore so-called Natural Law, especially in terms of eliminating predator/prey imbalances. To this end they encourage veganism in humans and, quite shockingly, in predator species as well. I'm not sure if you can train a carnivore to eat veggies, or if they're physically capable of making such a switch. I wouldn't want to be the first to offer an arugula salad to a hungry jaguar.

Seek Monkey Boners...

I'm very proud to announce a new skill set. Hunting down pictures of erect monkey penises for artists in need. I even contacted the LA Zoo to see what they could turn up... You might be shocked to learn that the mighty gorilla doesn't swing much lumber, especially when sized up against his slighter cousins: the chimp and the man. You might also take some aesthetic delight in the blue balls of the Vervet Monkey and the fire engine red member of the Proboscis Monkey. Why not? These colors exist to spike our attention and consider the fever of spring that is in the air (through the foggy lens of hot monkey sex).

("Space Monkey" by Walton Ford)

Animals defy our systems of logic...

But then again, so do many of the beliefs we hold so close to our hearts.
I recommend that people keep an antenna outside of human civilization. It can't hurt and it can only enhance the absurdity of our dominion on Earth.

Earth laughs in flowers...

Curiosity is an emotion that many animals exhibit. The appreciation of beauty is always limited to individuals regardless of their species.

White Diamond...

The scent you're in...

"Dogs read the world through their noses and write their history in urine."

- J.R. Ackerley from "My Dog Tulip"

Nulcear Fish and Chips...

Enneapterygius pusillus has found a creative way to communicate with other fish in a world dominated by blues and greens: The fish literally glows red.

A core relation...

Have a look at Robin Schwartz' wonderful Amelia's World project. It's a haunting exploration of the profound relations that can occur between a pre-society child and a host of amazing lifeforms. Robin is the newest honorary member of the Hypnogogic Zoo. With this series she takes me back to all the petting zoos of my childhood. Come to think of it, the one at the Bronx Zoo may be the place where I first hatched the notion that people weren't real. They wore masks and were probably aliens from another galaxy. I have a distinct flash of this feeling while petting a devil-eyed goat kid in overalls.

"Dogs can't wear condoms"...

...announced Pam Anderson upon hearing of the imminent slaughter of countless stray dogs in Mumbai India. Appears the mongrels are out of control and have become a public nuisance of the highest order, a charge which includes the biting of monkeys it seems. City government has decided that a mass culling program is the only way to go. The Baywatch star/animal activist doth protest, much to the chagrin of prideful Mumbaiers who don't like to be advised by such folk.

Speaking of biting monkeys on the Subcontinent, I've learned that the deputy mayor of New Delhi was recently killed by a mob of angry macaques. Pushed off his balcony. Aggressive city monkeys are indeed prone to fight, especially when they think you've got food. But in all fairness, they will always give you fair warning before ripping your arms off and using them as drumsticks on your head. Here are the signs:

"First, the animals will look at you in the eyes, open their mouths, and bare their teeth. Rhesus macaques, the aggressive monkeys that cause a lot of the trouble in Delhi, will then warn you with a grunt. Next, they might fake a lunge toward you; this often causes a victim to lose his balance. If you're still withholding food, they'll grab at your knees and legs, and put their mouths on you so that you can feel their teeth. Finally, if you still won't cooperate, they'll sink their canines into you. The study in Bali found that most macaque bites don't break the skin, but a wound could allow transmission of herpes B, which can be fatal to humans." (reported by Michelle Tsai)

So now you know. And for the record Ms. Anderson, dogs can wear condoms.

Eagles not fond of hen peckers...

...get the full story here.

News Flash: Handsome Pterosaurs Not Fit to Skim...

You know who's full-blown amazing? Dr. Mark Witton, that's who.

Access his work here. Google him elsewhere.

His pterosaurus art is alarmingly triggery. Viewing them has put goosebumps on my inner pterodactyl in ways I couldn't possibly have imagined. Mind you, these are not fantasies. These are thoroughly researched, precision renderings of these amazing giants that once filled our skies and bobbled upon our seas. The image you see here was included in a recently published peer-reviewed paper that presented research suggesting that pterosaurs such as Thalassodromeus (seen here) could not skim-feed in the manner of the skimming bird, Rynchops (also seen here). Read his ripping account of the perilous experiments that yielded these findings here.

Mark is a visionary young man with a full quiver of complementary talents - including a biting sense of humor and a dizzying sense of purpose. I'm proud to welcome his science-backed art into the humble realms of the Hypnogogic Zoo.

("Why should everything be made to look like insane escapades?" by Mark Witton)

Gyotaku fish prints...

"Gyotaku is believed to have originated during the 1800’s by Japanese fishermen as a way to preserve the memory of a prize catch. There are two basic methods of gyotaku, the indirect (kansetsu-ho) and direct (chokusetsu-ho). Indirect printing is done by covering the fish with paper or silk, which is then painted with water-based pigments using a silk-covered cotton ball called a 'tampo.' Direct printing is done by applying black sumi ink directly to the fish. Shoji paper is then pressed against the inked surface to get an exact mirror image. After the initial impression is made, watercolors add life to the printed fish."

(Above text and image: "Vermilion Rockfish, Sebastes miniatus" by Ken Okutake)

Crazy Cat People Syndrome...

CCPS is rampant in cities and towns across the globe. Could the microscopic bacteria Toxoplasma gondii be to blame? If you believe the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the answer could be Yes. Reporting on this mysterious parasite, the NY Times states that "... more than 60 million people in the United States are infected with Toxoplasma gondii, a bacteria that may migrate into their brains and alter their behavior in a way that — among other things — may leave them more likely to be eaten by cats.

The basic facts: Toxo can infect many species, but it undergoes sexual reproduction only in cat digestive tracts. Once the parasite reproduces, the cat passes it in its feces, where the next unwitting host picks it up by digesting it (intentionally or unintentionally). Then the cycle starts again. In the long run, Toxo must find its way back to a cat’s stomach to survive. So the parasite has evolved a complicated system for taking over its hosts’ brains to increase the likelihood that they’ll be eaten by cats.

How? Scientists are still figuring that out. Research conducted this year by Toxo expert Robert Sapolsky of Stanford, and also by Joanne Webster, professor of parasite epidemiology at Imperial College London, has found that Toxo actually causes rats to become attracted to the smell of cat urine.

Might Toxo explain why some humans develop an unhealthful attraction to cats and apparently become immune to the smell of their urine? And might that explain the mystery of crazy cat ladies? “That idea doesn’t seem completely crazy,” Sapolsky says. “But there’s no data supporting it.” Not yet. But Jaroslav Flegr, an evolutionary biologist at Charles University in the Czech Republic, is looking into it. He has spent years studying Toxo’s impact on human behavior. (He found, for example, that people infected with Toxo have slower reflexes and are 2.5 times as likely to get into car accidents.) He won’t have results of his study for a while and refuses to speculate. But Joanne Webster says the connection isn’t much of a stretch: “In our evolutionary past, perhaps we were eaten by cats, too,” she says."

("Le Gachot, Amoureux des Chats" by Sarah Bay Williams)

Give us a kiss love...

After a gory duel for dominance, the triumphant elephant seal bull advances, bellowing, towards his harem, where he'll seize the first available female and mate. After which he'll put on his velvet bathrobe, light a pipe, and thumb through back issues of Playboy. The articles are very good.

(photo by Yva Momatiuk and John Eastcott for National Geographic)

Zoo is not a dirty word...

My friend Brenda Posada, Director of Publications at the LA Zoo, is knee deep in the current, much publicized controversy over the new elephant enclosure being built at the zoo. A vocal group of animal activists has called for halting construction, and the city council is to vote tomorrow on the fate of the project. As of this moment, things aren't looking so good for the new exhibit.

As I have stated many times before, I believe that zoos are extremely important aspects of our urban environment. Live animals trigger something in us that bypasses our civilized selves and connects with our deepest existential core. Developing children need to experience animals, smell their smells, analyze their ways of moving and interacting. Adults need to be reminded of their essential animals selves as they wend their way through the marketplace and the imaginary world of money. And what of the animals' welfare? As we willfully destroy their natural habitats, I think it is our obligation to provide our animal cousins with quality homes that meet their individual needs. Zoos can do this.

So what's really going on with the elephant project over at the LA Zoo? Like Brenda, I believe, that animal activists have their heart in the right place, but they are failing to understand what a zoo is in 2008 and the level of care they provide.

It's true that elephants are notoriously difficult to keep in captivity. This new enclosure attempts to address these very issues. More importantly, the big question is if the enclosure isn't completed, where will Billy the Asian elephant or any other potential pachyderms go? What are the best options for the animals? Weighing all the choices, completing the enclosure is clearly the best way forward.

Please read Brenda's fine piece from the Huffington Post found here.

PS: If you are interested, please email me and I will tell you how to contact the city council to express your pro-elephant-enclosure sentiments.

Mucous Pajamas...

The rascally parrotfish is the iconoclast of the sea. For starters, it excretes sand. It's many tiny teeth scour coral reefs, breaking off chunks which are swallowed whole and broken down and released in colorful bits (and that's where Fruity Pebbles come from kids). But that's nothing compared to the fact that it can change sex at will, and will do so several times in its seven year lifespan. But wait we forgot about the pajamas! The parrotfish (clearly) needs its beauty rest, and so when it tucks itself among the crags of the reef for a nap, it secretes an all encompassing bubble of mucous which prevents its scent from attracting hungry eels while it sleeps. Mucous pajamas - now you know what to get Julian Schnabel for Christmas.

Interspecies Tango...

The whole porpoise of the military...

"Today the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case testing how far the president and his agencies can go in setting aside environmental laws in the name of national security — and how far the courts can go in intervening in such a controversy."

"At issue is the long-running dispute over the Navy's use of mid-frequency sonar in training exercises off the California coast. Environmental advocacy groups contend that federal law requires the Navy to assess the damage that could be caused to whales and dolphins and to adopt steps to minimize that damage."

Some of the dialogue among the justices...

Chief Justice Roberts: We should stop the Navy from doing this just because we think there is a likelihood they might be inflicting unneeded damage?

Justice Kendall: Yes ... the Navy cannot be the judge of its own cause. There's a limit to deference. ... The evidence is overwhelming that beaked whales are being stranded by sonar and killed. Autopsies show they are hemorrhaging and dying.

Justice Breyer: The whole purpose of the military is to hurt the environment. You go on a bombing mission — do you have to prepare an environmental impact statement?

Justice Kendall: No, of course not in combat. But here in a training exercise, the military is supposed to minimize the damage.

Full report here

Day of the condor...

Sarah and I were returning from Big Sur on the Pacific Coast Highway last week when we spotted a group of large birds on the sea side of the road, just hanging out. Were they turkeys? No. They were California Condors. Sixteen of them. Just loitering like a group of deaf old men at a sweater convention, unphased by our presence. Every now and then, one would push another off the cliff and there would be an enormous flapping of wings so large they seemed to block out the sky for an instant. We could feel the wind whipped up by those wings.

I'm not sure if you understand how strange this all was. Condors are so rare - it might as well have been sixteen pandas sitting there. Note how the guy on the right with the black head is tagged #01. He must have sold the most albums.

(photo by Paul Gachot)

Frère le Tigre...

I believe I have discovered a mad anthrozoological brother in arms and imagination in the right honorable Robert Zhao Renhui. You will marvel at his involvement in the mysterious Institute of Critical Zoologists. You will gather enthusiasm upon visiting his art collective, A Dose of Light. Like your host, Pablo Gazpachot, Robert believes "that we live admist animals in our dreams and fantasies & not in reality." Among other activities, his Medicinal Tiger project seeks "to develop tiger farms to promote the conservation of wildlife resources as a form of medicine and spectacle."

Robert, I hereby offer you and your posse residency at the Hypnogogic Zoo. We are located in Venice California USA. There is a tremendous calling for tiger farms and critical animal gazing here. The sun shines every day. The ocean sparkles. The animals are modern. The minds are ripe. Let's make something happen. Pablo Gazpachot.

(Photo from Robert Zhao Renhui's series found here)

Rats and bees to the rescue...

Trained African giant pouch rats (Cricetomys gambianus) are being used in the field to locate buried bombs and landmines, while others are using common honeybees to screen large areas for unexploded ordinance. I am happy to see animals working to help people. It seems perfectly natural. It must give them a a sense of purpose to save us from being blown to smithereens. I do fear for their insurance premiums though...

(Photo: snug little bomb sniffing bees courtesy Inscentinel)

Acridophagy...

Grasshoppers were an essential part of settling the West. A reportedly tasty and protein-rich food source. They were overly-abundant and required little effort to catch and prepare. An 1864 account of cricket collecting along the Sevier River in Utah describes an occasion when a small group quickly gathered “fifty bushels” by driving the insects into the stream with willow branches and scooping them up in carrying baskets.

According to the historical accounts, grasshoppers and crickets were usually roasted and ground, then mixed with pine seeds, baked, and eaten as cakes. Another method of preparing them is to roast great quantities of them in pits filled with embers and hot ashes. . . . When the insects are abundant, the season is one of many festivities. When prepared in this way these insects are considered very great delicacies.

Claudio is Dead...

Gorilla mother Gana carries her dead baby at the zoo in Muenster, western Germany, on Aug. 20, 2008. The baby died on Aug. 16, but can only be recovered from the enclosure once the mourning mother leaves the corpse behind, zoo spokesperson Ilona Zuehlke said.

HUMAN RIGHTS FOR APES...

In stunning contrast to the last post, and the speciest hubris of the Bush administration, comes this huge piece of news: Spanish parliament has passed a resolution stating "Non-human hominids (great apes) should have the right to life and freedom, and not be tortured." It is the first national legislation to enshrine human rights for chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos. Funny that such legislation would come from the land of bullfighting. Odder still, who's been torturing great apes in Spain to begin with? That said, an amazing, although still hierarchical, step in the direction of honoring all of our living roommates on this planet.

Thanks Ted for the article.

Sonar Wars...

The Navy says it can't perform its sonar training off the coast of Southern California if they have to shut down operations whenever there's a whale or aquatic mammal in the vicinity. As you may have heard in the news, mechanical sonar can disorient or kill several ocean species. Earlier this year a federal court barred the use of sonar "close to marine mammals." But the Navy says no way, we need to train our boys and girls to use sonar even if it's at the expense of a few fish. The Bush administration appealed the decision and the case will now go to the Supreme Court. I suppose we have the right to protect ourselves from ourselves, but to what extent does that right exclude the rights of other species?

Diving Animals...

Gene Alba claims to have the world's only SCUBA diving cat. Obviously, he's never been to Russia where this sort of thing goes on regularly. Not to mention sky diving. Actually, diving animals seem to crop up everywhere. Animal cruelty activists - on your marks...

Animal Totems (Condor)...

My brother, who works as an ecologist in Central California, came across a young California Condor sitting in a nearby tree while checking Gypsy Moth traps at Lake San Antonio. What significance should one bring to such a rare encounter? The notion of animal spirits or totems is timeless, found in ancient cultures on all continents and in many today, perhaps most notably in Native American tribes.

The condor is said to be a symbol of death and rebirth and new vision. Coincidentally (?), my brother and his wife had just attempted to rescue a puppy, which turned out to be very sick with Parvo. The dog's health declined rapidly, and eventually they had to put it to sleep - a devastating decision for them of course. I wonder if this condor is somehow connected to that event. I'm sure there are plenty of Native American's who would say "Duh!" to that. Similarly, there are equally as many men in lab coats who would say the connection is all smoke and mirrors. In which camp do you pitch your tent?

Karni Mata Temple of Rats...

Karni Mata temple is a 600-year-old Hindu temple at Deshnoke, Rajasthan, India. Karni Mata is believed to be the incarnation of Hindu goddess Durga. The peculiarity of this temple is that thousands of rats are worshipped here. The rats are seen as holy, owing to the belief that the souls of the followers of Karni Mata are in these rats and thus they must be looked after. If one of the rats is killed, it must be replaced with one made of solid gold.

via Wikipedia

Karni Mata Temple

Horseplay...

We don't generally consider the horse's sense of humor. They seem fairly serious. Or at least I thought so until I had a good look at what horseballs can do for a sober pony.

See for yourself right here


(Horses & Headgear image by Tim Flach)

"The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man."

- Richard Feynman

("Maureen Gallagher and Late-Night Feeder, 2 am, Feb. 1987" by Peter Beard)

Boombox Babies...

Baby birds brought to the British RSPCA are being cared for with CD recordings of the dawn chorus. Apparently, the ability to sing is vital for survival, and is taught by parents, so the hope is that they'll be able to pick out their own kind from the morning singing. Read all about it here.

Honing Anthropomorphism...

Here we see an "animal studies and action analysis" class underway at Disney Studios around 1940. One of the kingpins of this era was an animator called Clair Weeks, who was the son of a missionary stationed in India. According to one expert: "Weeks not only exhibited mastery of construction and posing, but also the ability to embed the spark of life that makes a drawing come alive. His technique allowed for both analytically realistic depiction and cartoony stylized caricature." This Disney-born hybrid of realism and cartooniness - the oversized, over expressive eyes and cutified skulls - of so many 20th Century animated characters was probably inevitable, but also probably responsible for several generations worth of deep confusion about the nature of animals.

(source material with nice sketches here)

Taxidermy...

Isn't it ironic that taxidermy is Greek for "moving skin"? What I love about taxidermy is the way the makers get things wrong, the elements that are slightly too expressive or just plain off. I have fond memories of long hours spent in the dark, cavernous halls of The Natural History Museum in New York, enraptured by those strange, frozen sculptures of beasts and Neanderthals going about their daily routines as if the city around them and the gawking crowds had yet to exist.

("Bjork and Polar Bear" by Jean-Baptise Mondino)

Plastic Air Bears...

Lovely Noo Yawk street art by Joshua Allen Harris. Love the way they keel over and "die" only to come right back to fully animated life. Emotional engagement with plastic bags - now that's some primo anthropomorphization.

Breaking News: Lemmings NOT Suicidal...

Despite what you may have learned from watching Disney as a kid, lemmings do not share a mass suicide compact.

OK, technically, in their annual mass migration frenzy, some (on rare occasions) do jump off steep cliffs fully convinced that they will swim to greener pastures. That doesn't always happen in the frigid oceans of northern Finland. But it's determination that is their fatal flaw, not depression.

Learn all about it here and here.

In fact, there are rumors that just maybe some of those lemmings in the Disney film were pushed for cinematic effect. No kidding!

(Leaping Lemmings knit sculpture by Aprill Newman)

Creativity...

It doesn't get any more creative than this. Reminds you how much life is really about these little shapes or forms that emerge and fight against the ravages of time and space to just to exist.

(Visuals: "Genesis" Music: "In My Room" Beach Boys)

Pachyderm love...

Elephants prefer privacy for the love-act. They will seek out woods and secret places behind huge rocks or trees or in caves. Oftentimes these huge creatures will prefer to mate in water so that the male's weight can be more easily supported. He will mount her with grace and ease and remain with her for four minutes.

Sacred Cow Samba...

A cow in India is more sacred than a hamburger in the USA. They rule the streets and the traffic. If a cow wants to lie down for a spell on a major highway, it does, and you wait. If a cow wants to eat plastic bags, it does, and then it dies - even though the government is supposed to be regulating the thickness of bags so that rag pickers will be interested in selling them for scrap (paid by weight, get it?) It's all infuriatingly magnificent! Must get to India one of these days.

Human Condition (as depicted by monkey)...

From "Animals are Beautiful People" by Jamie Uys.

Look at us: This is who we are!

Who's afraid of the big bad wolves? Not I. It goes without saying... I fully expect animals to drop their killer instincts, to shelve the "wild" act, for little old me Me ME! I expect wolves to lick my wounds, tigers to nuzzle at my neck, orcas to do back flips as I proudly walk the aisles of Trader Joes in my track suit. After all, I get animals, I'm on their side. Animals like me! I mean, they'd never do anything to hurt me, right?

People who have given up on people often resort to animals. In extreme cases, outside the realms of crazy cat ladies and ferret fanatics, the Timothy Treadwells of the world believe they have a special bond with truly dangerous creatures who can snap their necks without a thought. To some extent, I do believe that we can communicate with animals. I do believe that animals generally kill by choice not by blind impulse. That said, I generally eat chocolate by choice... We all have our slip ups.

Cruelty or Destiny?

Well looky here... now if that isn't the suavest cowboy monkey I've ever seen I'll eat my tiny Stetson. What's going on inside the minds of these animals? I'm sure that PETA would have their panties in a bunch over this, but will you look at those faces? I mean really, that's all we have to go on - two of the happiest dern critters this side of the Pecos. Granted these two probably didn't choose each other, but aren't most of the world's marriages arranged?

Lynx of note...

This commercial is based on a true story

Near death macaque walks tall

Curious Expeditions make for nice lives

Movies with misleading titles

Put the cage on the human

Place your bets

Elephant talk

Who scratched these negatives?

It's been almost a year since those squirrels were arrested for spying in Iran. You've got to wonder what's happened to them. More to the point, this photo poses an interesting question: If a squirrel could take pictures, what would it take pictures of?

The Aesthetics of Power...

Fact is, leaders and animals have some deep and weird ties... Let's face it, animals are pretty conservative at the end of the day - generally, they adore routine, understand and obey power structures, kill when they feel threatened, and don't mind lounging around throne rooms so much.

Let's look at some dictator-animal relations:

Stalin
Hitler
Mussolini
Pol Pot
Saddam

Matadora...

Elizabeth Moreno, 26, is one of three successful female bullfighters in the world. Full of potential and grace, Moreno found few allies when she decided to become a bullfighter in her hometown of Mexico City.

Pioneers of Space (Soviet Inebriation Style)...

(Первые на Луне "First on Moon" by Aleksey Fedorchenko)

The Ship Sank...

If you've not read Yann Martel's Life of Pi, find a ten year-old, a tree, and a blanket, and get going. There are many achingly cinematic scenes throughout, and the sinking of a cargo ship loaded with zoo animals during a massive sea storm certainly counts as one of them. This depiction of that event is really nice. Wish the picture were more high res, but I think you can make out the beauty and the horror of this moment. Talk about a psychic trigger!

("The Ship Sank" by Andrea Offermann")

The Lost Sheep...

If a human must be remembered for one thing and one thing alone, let it be something heartbreakingly real. Thank you Adriann Munsey. Thank you. May you find your way home...
(And thanks WF)

("Bette and Franke" by Vinoodh Matadin and Inez van Lamswerde)

Glass Frog...

Animals are very good at not letting us see what's going on inside of them. So, to show them we mean business, we've genetically engineered some see-through frogs. We may not know what your're thinking animals, but at least we can see what you had for lunch. Hah!

Jack on His Deathbed...

"Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador to the Court of Naples from 1764 to 1800, had a pet named Jack, an intelligent, mischievous monkey who liked to play tricks on humans. Hamilton was also an avid collector of classical antiquities and an expert on volcanoes who led tourists on expeditions to the rim of Mount Vesuvius. As Ford depicts, Vesuvius was erupting as Jack lay dying."

Wall label text from "Tigers of Wrath" exhibition.

("Jack on His Deathbed" by Walton Ford)

Bear necessities...

"In April near Big Bear Lake east of Los Angeles a man died when he was attacked by a grizzly bear, an animal not seen in the wild in California since 1922. Grizzlies that are here now exist solely to service Hollywood. This particular animal, a 700-pound Ursus horribilus named Rocky, was a trained movie-bear, the kind you would have seen Grizzly Adams wrestle, only now it is Will Ferrell."

Continue reading Chris Childs' piece here.

Then there's this.

(Photo from "Bear Studies" by Carlee Fernandez)

Enough killing for Madonna...

File under Meat is Murder:

"She's seen off bad-boy actors, the nation's harshest film critics and generations of young pop pretenders - but now Madonna has admitted that even she was no match for the sight of a dying pheasant. The Queen of Pop has revealed that she has given up game bird shooting after witnessing the dying moments of a bird she blasted out of the sky on her Wiltshire estate. The Material Girl admitted she was a big fan of the hobby a couple of years ago, and loved bagging pheasants at her Ashcombe Estate on the Wiltshire-Dorset border. But she killed one too many, and the moment a bird she shot died in front of her prompted the about-turn."

Again, I'm not an animal rights activist, and I think people should eat meat if they want to. I do. But I feel very strongly that people should understand exactly what meat-eating (and as a subset, hunting) means. Denial is no excuse. There's blood in every Big Mac and it's running down your chin.

(From a 2005 article found here.)

Say what?

Scientists have found that Killer whales off the US West Coast have significantly lengthened their calls to one another in the past few years. Why might that be? Because of all the noise generated by the engines of whale watching boats hounding them in a near constant flotilla.

Similarly, male nightingale's mating songs have spiked 14 decibels making them louder than a chainsaw. Why? to compete with the sounds of the city of course.

Animals are autoplastic. They adapt to our ways. Do they judge us? Are they offended by our audacity? Do they even begin to understand? Who knows? In general, I think we can say that animals are pretty cool customers - they roll with us without complaint.

(facts from Discovery Magazine Sept 2004 issue, image by Tim Flach)

Pig Kisser...

Hold it right there Dr. Freud, humanity's attraction to animals is not sexual. For those for whom it is, well, good luck...

You could say our attraction is based on fear, or more specifically, self-doubt. You could say we are made uneasy by the frustratingly ambiguous gaze of animals upon us as we flex our entitlement to the planet, and use it as a forum for mastering and multiplying something we call Civilization.

You could also say that a child, not yet indoctrinated to the ways of humanity, senses no ambiguity in the animal's gaze. Only curiosity, and perhaps, something we call Love.

You could also say that the taste for bacon is acquired at an early age.

(Never) work with animals...

W.C. Fields famously proclaimed that, "One should never work with children or animals." Presumably he was talking about the film business, which is an industry dedicated, at leas in part, to an individual's desire to make things happen exactly as they want them to. So yes, children and animals, being uncontrollable to an extent, might derive some pleasure in seeing the cinematic control freak not get what he or she wants.

I was taken by a presentation at the Academy last night about the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The great Dan Richter, aka Moonwatcher, was in the audience, and he was frequently called upon by MC Tom Hanks and special photographic effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull to shed light upon working with Stanley Kubrick in the opening Dawn of Man sequence. It was pointed out that the film was not nominated for costume design, possibly because crusty old Academy members failed to realize that those were people inside monkey suits! Yes that's right, Stanley, truly, by anyone's yardstick, the ultimate control freak, trained a group of apes to drive to the studio, hit their marks, and tell a story about a strange space monolith that whispers the secrets of evolution in their ears. Not. Actually there are real animals in the sequence. Grazing tapirs. Grasseaters are containable as long as there's grass.

With Moonwatcher in the audience, it was pointed out that Kubrick made many films of various apes, shot walking and moving about at different camera speeds. He would make Richter and his co-apes watch these films over and over. For months and months these people lived as apes, sadistically goaded by Kubrick to unlearn their natural behavior patterns and recondition themselves to act as the ape amalgams he imagined: chimps on top, gibbons on the bottom, with a dash of brutish gorilla thrown in for dramatic flair.

The un-directability and unpredictability of animals does pose some problems for traditional control freak filmmaking. Knowing this, you really must hand it to Noel Marshall for casting more than 100 giant flesh-eating cats in the lead of his demented epic Roar. To this end, and with no disrespect to Richter's amazing performance, I am somewhat dismayed by the fact that Yann Martel's book The Life of Pi is being made into a movie. Not because it will be bad, but because it has already been confirmed that they will be using a computer generated tiger. I know the animal rights folks will be happy about this, but I am a champion for the real experience of living animals. It crushes me to think of all the lost nuances and triggers, and obvious human substitutions that will occur in the "making" of this tiger.

This post could go on and on, but I'll make my point: Work with animals. Work with them.

Another direct hit Sir...

If dragons, then dragonslayers.
If agrarian society, then colonizers.
If civilization, then evolving definition of nature.


("Inopportune 2" by Cai Guo-Qiang)

Devils in Peril...

Little Sarcophilus harrisii cannot be mistaken for any other marsupial. Its spine-chilling screeches, black color, and reputed bad-temper, led the early European settlers to call it the Tasmanian Devil. Although only the size of a small dog, it can sound and look incredibly fierce. They have the biting power of a dog about three times their own weight. Sadly the devils are threatened by the bizarre and distressing Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD), which appears to be a contagious viral cancer - only one of three such cancers known. Tumours grow around the animals' faces, making it impossible for them feed; they starve to death.

Circus comes to town...

Vividly colored pelts and coats flashing by in a cacaphonous procession. Now we find momentary footings among the chaos and make these both home and laboratory. It is a celebration of skewered meats and crackling fires, striped tents and peeling paint. Yes, a persistent dizziness that borders on nausea, but one as sweetly innocent as horse shit. Also, the religious mounting and breaking down of a show, being on the road, the dappled sun, the quiet hours getting from here to there, slightly oval wheels rocking a haycart between two towns. Aching muscles and spectacular thrills that transform over and over into ecstatic waking dreams of Modern Animals.

("Mappa della Nonsforza" - "Map of What is Effortless" by Francesco Clemente)

Iron Zoo...

While we're looking at metal animals, let's take a moment to view this surreal "Iron Zoo" off I-17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff, Arizona. Here you go...

Not enough metal for you? The seemingly wooden wonders of Deborah Butterfield are mostly bronze.

Bronzed life...

Steve Worthington's bronze animals are really nice. The rabbits and the turtle tossing monkeys, and of course the mice are particularly lifelike. And here's how he does it. Quite a procedure!

David Lynch on Sparky...

Q: Do you have any pets of your own? Because you always seem to have a nice animal in your films.

DL: I used to have a dog named Sparky. A Jack Russell Terrier.

Q: He passed away?

DL: He was in “Blue Velvet.”

Q: That was the dog…

DL: …biting the water.

Q: He was a trouper.

DL: Take one.

Q: Just one take?

DL: Yeah.

Q: One-take Sparky. But you haven’t had any animals to replace him.

DL: You know, everybody’s different. But I… don’t really like animals in the house. And then you kind of fall in love with animals and you sort of design your life around that animal. And I worry about the animals. And I don’t want to worry about an animal. I want to worry about getting something done.

(Interview and Blue Velvet photo found here)

The ol' Pigskin...

Here is Louise the pig, who sports (or sported - she's taxidermy now) Louis Vuitton tattoos all over her porcine body. How wrong or right is that? Well, to get an answer from the inker, you'll have to travel to Wim Delvoye's Art Farm in China (where authorities turn a blind eye to such goings on).

The next revolution...

All those cartoons. All those stuffed dolls. All those cute greeting cards. All those billboards. All those tapestries, totem poles, trinkets, and TV shows. Listen up Homo sapiens...

We the Animals of the Planet Earth, in Order to form a more Realistic Representation, establish Awareness, insure Tranquility, provide for the Common Good, promote the Collective Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Consciousness to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Animals of Earth.

(Dont Tread on Me/Gadsden Flag borrowed and altered from here)

Thinking in Animals...

"[T]he notion of a comfortable, utopian conception of nature in which humans have unmediated access to animals and live in some kind of unproblematic harmony with them does not look like a practical way forward, either in terms of how one thinks philosophically about animals, or in terms of how, on a practical level, one might work for the improvement of their living conditions."

- Steve Baker

("The Kingdom or Evolution" (detail) by Marion Coutts)

Roar: The Movie...

If you haven't experienced this mad feline orgy, please run to your Netflix cue at once. There's really nothing else like it in film history... I guess you could roughly say it's paper-thin, warm-hearted, 70's Disney-style family dross, crossed with the unhinged chaos of Dusan Makavejev's "free cinema."

Roar apparently took eleven grueling, accident-prone years to make. Everyone involved was scarred or mauled in some way, including the young Melanie Griffith, along for the ride with her mother Tippi Hedron, wife of the madman behind this inspired mayhem: Noel Marshall. Humans, lions, tigers, tigons, ligers, leopards, pumas, and jaguars were swept away by collapsing sets, raging rivers, and deadly diseases. Watching the film, you know that life behind the scenes was a massive experiment in human-animal relations and precisely how much blood one can loose before being rendered incapable of focusing a camera.

At some level, I am wildly attracted to visionary acts of focused madness. Toss in some dangerous animals, a dopey family exposed to the Will of Nature, a couple of movie cameras, and basically, I'm a flame thrower in a fireworks factory. Seriously, this is a crazy film. Noel Marshall, if you're still with us, please do drop me a line.

(Photo: A star of Roar at the Tippi Hedron household)

Dog eat dog...

I've just discovered a fine young photographer - Isabella Rozendaal. Dutch. I really like her funny, unfussy approach - her animal subjects exude anthropomorphic charm as well as a world-weariness... "Yup, we live with the humans, we adapt, no big deal," they seem to say... You can read her academic thesis which goes into some detail on themes found here. It's in Dutch, but that shouldn't stop you, should it? Here's what she says about it:

"I've researched the way people perceive animals and the way we depict them in art, photography and pop culture. The research is as much visual as it is theoretical."

Read/browse it here.

OK Isabella, you can join the club.

Nature is Ancient...

It's bright in the middle
With a shell around it
It's called life
It goes wherever it wants to
Don't try to predict it
Then you'd offend it
It's meant to surprise
Nature is ancient
But surprises us all

- Bjork

(Photo by Thomas Barbèy)

Friends in low places...

The range of value we ascribe to various animals is astonishing. Consider the dove and the pigeon, twins separated by pigment and habitat, one exalted the other a pariah. Thank gods we don't do this to our own kind!

("Lost" by David Shrigley)

Tubular Turtles...

I used to see things in the cracks and paint drips on the wall near my bed as a child.
This clever site brought back some of those memories. These underground animals speak to a particular kind of visual anthropomorphism, the very same impulse that once inspired us to pick out constellations in the vault of the night sky.

The Czar's Pangolin...

Yes, Peter the Great had a stuffed one. Back then, even a stuffed pangolin must have sent some imaginations spiraling. For that matter, how many of us today know anything about this walking pine cone. Many believe that just looking at one can be a therapeutic experience.

Where did Peter the Great get a stuffed pangolin? He had begun to purchase extensive natural history collections during his pre-Petersburgian travels in the West, with an eye to the development of science in Russia. Albertus Seba was a wealthy Dutch apothecary, merchant and traveler whose collection of natural history objects was the largest of its kind in his day. His collection would form the nucleus of the Russian national collections in St. Petersburg after purchase by Peter. Today the collection resides in the Kunstkammer Museum located on the banks of the Neva in the center of St.Petersburg.

Cheerful Cricket...

Get yer youngins in the swing of the retro athropomorphizing groove this summer right here.

The Postmodern Animal

There is a whole universe of animal related art to be found out there. Much of it could be lovingly categorized under the heading: "Weird as Hell!" What's going on? In these progressive circles, we encounter what academics refer to as the postmodern animal as the primary subject and muse. By and large, today's artists have moved beyond focusing on anthropomorphism, or even the mysteriousness of animal consciousness. Steve Baker, the founder of The Animal Studies Group and author of The Postmodern Animal, assesses the current state of the art: "There is no symbolism or metaphor involved, nothing to keep the animal-as-other at a safe and comfortable distance, but instead a sense of the artist embracing awkward, provisional, and rather unflattering identities — getting close to the animal without worrying too much about the consequences."

This blog was originally titled Anthropomo Zoo in a nod to the Post Modern (PoMo) animal. But I quickly decided that was incorrect. While I can appreciate the efforts of these envelope pushing artists, I personally remain deeply interested in the otherness of animals, their inscrutable inner lives, what they stand for, how we use them as metaphors, and how they adapt to our civilization. Does that mean I'm interested in Modern Animals instead of Postmodern ones? Could be. I'll let the artists and the academics decide the titles for now.

(Still from the installation "Cultural Animal" by Xu Bing )

Baby Buoyant...

If this unborn horse weren't floating in amniotic fluid, it would fit in the palm of your hand, lanky legs flailing in a floppy practice trot. Land animals of extreme grace are often born awkward, slack-muscled and too flexible for their own good. Sea faring mammals, such as seals, are balletic from day one - they are never far from a weightless amniotic environment, a condition that serves them well in times of extreme drought. See for yourself.

(Photo by Tim Flach, Seal film by Per Maning)

Fleece...

Well, well, what have we here? It's a photograph of a goat stuck in a well. What else?

"Beginning now for your entertainment, a tragedy of all terrestrial animals, dire for many, but maybe not you! It is a tale of thirst and surviving imminent desiccation, set in a hole so deep, it is named well! This communal well, from time immemorial, grants powers and takes them away! Man and beast who drink its waters are domesticated! And those who don’t are banished!"

See "Fleece," the provocative movie by Andrew Johnson here.

Danger!

This beautiful animal must kill to live. Is that a part of our attraction to it? What do you experience when you look at this image of a ferocious killing machine? Terror? What if it was really in front of you? What do the safety of pictures, or cage bars, or Land Rover windows do to our perceptions of extremely dangerous animals? Does the 'law of the jungle' still echo in our veins?

The Pro-zoo camp...

Clearly, and to some extent understandably, there is a segment of the population that hates a zoo. I'm not in that clan. I think zoos offer an indispensable connection to animal life to an increasingly urban and desensitized public. This kind of contact is easily as important as art or music to a species as fundamentally creative as our own. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of autistic elephants, inbred tigers, or clinically depressed gorillas being shown off like Las Vegas showgirls. I think a lot could be done to improve the zoo experience for children, adults, and animals alike. The rules of confinement are always a slippery slope - I feel that no expense should be spared in making captive animals happy. I do, however, have some extremely controversial ideas about what that might entail. More on that to come...

Monkey Knife Fight...

Pitty the not-so-great apes, part man, part beast, never knowing when to be a gentleman or when to bite someone's face off...

Reading with lifeforms...

Reading next to an animal can offer better comprehension and feelings of well being.

TV Animals...

Wow, that's amazing! I've never seen a gorilla sell chocolate on TV before!


(Gorilla Ad, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk)

More modern animals...

Are these elephants willfully lugging Hermes bags across the plains of India? Did the photographer just luck upon this scene in the wild? Probably not. These elephants are being used as models. But unlike Kate Moss, these animals may not be reaping the full benefits of their work. That said, is it possible that they are enjoying the attention, the strange lights, the nice food, the funny, fussy people, and the sense of purpose that a being a model bestows? I'd say yes, it's possible. People can be in a rush to cry "cruelty!" when, in fact, the animals might just enjoy a little bit of human folly.

(Entire Hermes Elephant campaign here)

Animal Lego...

We look at animals and we empathize with their living-ness (or not). But there is something else in animals that draws our attention. They trigger something in us, something ancient and deeply creative. In many ways, artists and writers have inherited the shamanic tradition of adopting other creature’s characteristics, scrambling, and feeding off their mute muse-like qualities. Reinventing and layering our own desires onto other creatures is just something we do. At times it clouds our empathy with the living animal itself, which is something to be aware of. Still, art and anthropomorphization are an integral part of our human experience, so let's not discard those...

("Monkey Sphinx" from this incredible Worth 1000 gallery)

Perceiving Nature...

"Kinski always says nature is full of erotic elements. I don’t see it so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn’t see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing; I think they just screech in pain. Taking a close look at what’s around us, there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder."

- Werner Herzog, on the Amazon jungle.


("Fight Between a Tiger and a Buffalo" by Henri Rousseau)

The Horus tip...

Horus, the hawk-headed deity, is a very interesting Egyptian god whose significance to our present day world order may be underestimated. If you're following the Zeitgeist that is...

The strangeness of Octopi...

The Blue-ringed Octopus is an especially hypnotic sea creature. Their mystery transcends abstract beauty and they also receive high marks in the danger column. They are one of the most venomous animals around - their bite can cause death to an adult human in minutes. There is no known antidote. When a passionate mood strikes this cephalopod, the male grabs the female by her mantle, obscuring her vision. He transfers sperm packets by inserting his hectocotylus into her mantle cavity over and over again. It goes on from there...

("Blue-ringed Octopus" by AdamAqua)

Tiny Animals...

Everybody wants to see them... so here you go.

Picnic in the park...

Families and tourists in a London park were left shocked when a pelican picked up and swallowed a pigeon. The unusual wildlife spectacle in St James's Park was caught on camera by photographer Cathal McNaughton. He said the Eastern White pelican had the unfortunate pigeon in its beak for more than 20 minutes before swallowing it whole. A park spokesman said: "It is almost unheard of for a pelican to eat a bird.

Here's the video of course.

- via The Church Millitant

Bubble Net Feeding...

Humpback whales are social eaters. Groups assemble off the coast of Alaska, and one is chosen as the bubble-netter. The responsibility of that whale is to produce a curtain of ascending bubbles that create a wall through which the school of fish will not pass. Confused? Read all about this fascinating behavior here...

("Bubblenet Feeding" by David McMaster)

Who's watching whom?

The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium holds 7,500-cubic meters of water and features the world's largest acrylic glass panel, measuring 8.2 meters by 22.5 meters. Three whale sharks are currently on exhibit.

Happy Mother's Day...

Behind every submerged hippopotamus is a mother nosing you towards the surface.

Modern Animals...

How are we doing? Are all us animals enjoying and adapting to this ultra-modernity? All the stuff that just one of our species created and thrust upon the rest? Golly, I hope so. You'll let us know if we're doing anything that gets on your nerves or anything. Right?

So... where do we go from here?

I do believe that this little "spot" drop-kicks our discussion of anthropomorphism into a brand new arena. Here we see the age old hawking of sugar water coupled with the latest frenzy of digital technology. Someone, who can't be faulted for their lack of imagination, has some rather unusual fantasies about how wild animals get jiggy. If CG technology invites the realization of all possible visions, this commercial celebrates the sheer horror of that potential, as if to say, "Finally, I can get a hypersexualized flamingo in a thong!" To me it's is beyond creepy - it's just plain anti-life to think that animals in nature would succumb to such glitzy vapidity and shallow eroticism.

Ode to Baikal...

Here we see the taxidermied remains of Baikal, one of Pavlov's dogs on display at the Pavlov Museum in Ryazan, Russia. Note the saliva catch container and tube surgically implanted in the dog's muzzle. In studying the way in which dogs responded to certain food-related stimulus, Pavlov discovered that certain animal behaviors or responses could be conditioned. His findings would later inform the foundations of Behavioral Psychology and the practice of Behavioral Modification.

Baikal and her canine associates were important players in the evolution of 20th Century psychology. Their widely publicized contributions led to some nice and not-so-nice developments in human conditioning. Unfortunately, the phrase "Pavlov's dog" is often used in a derogatory sense implying someone who simply reacts rather than thinks when confronted with new stimulus. Wouldn't it be better to imply someone who knew and appreciated when a good meal was on its way?

Reverse Anthropomorphism...

Frans de Waal speaks of anthropodenial: a blindness to the humanlike characteristics of other animals, or the animal-like characteristics of ourselves. Surely this is a condition endured by the hunter, the politician, the whaler, the exterminator, the butcher, the fly swatter maker, the angry zoo keeper, the dog kicker... really anyone who disobeys the golden rule in dealing with animals.

De Waal emphatically states, "...what philosophers call moral sentiments can be seen in other species. In chimpanzees and other animals, you see examples of sympathy, empathy, reciprocity, a willingness to follow social rules. Dogs are a good example of a species that have and obey social rules; that's why we like them so much, even though they're large carnivores."

There is a way of organizing the human psyche - "Chainism" I call it - whereupon man sits the top of a divine power pyramid (i.e. the food chain) and exerts his superiority over anything below him, in part, owing to the oppressive fear of what does or does not sit above him.

Murders of Crows...

The New York Times reports that the crows in Japan are taking over. "With wing spans up to a yard and intimidating black beaks and sharp claws, Japan’s crows are bigger, more aggressive and downright scarier than those usually seen in North America. Attacks, though rare, do happen. Hungry crows have bloodied the faces of children while trying to steal candy from their hands. Crows have even carried away baby prairie dogs and ducklings from Tokyo zoos, city officials said."

Get the full report here...

(Publicity still from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds")

White Fox Wedding...

"When the sun is shining through the rain, the foxes have their weddings."

- Japanese proverb

What does it mean? Not much if you aren't up on your Japanese folklore.
But what does it trigger? An shower of hypnogogic imagery.


(Woodblock reproduction from Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford's "Tales of Old Japan")

Stygian escorts...

Throughout (art) history, animals have often been there to escort us along the passage from this life into the next. I would guess that this stems from the ghostly, "knowing," and otherworldly presence they exude as we charge forward with our life-o-centric, all-too-human activities.

("The Power of Death" by William Holbrook Beard)

Defining Anthropomorphism...

"The word comes from the Greek, meaning "human form," and it was the ancient Greeks who first gave the practice a bad reputation. The philosopher Xenophanes objected to Homer's poetry because it treated Zeus and the other gods as if they were people. How could we be so arrogant, Xenophanes asked, as to think that the gods should look like us? If horses could draw pictures, he suggested mockingly, they would no doubt make their gods look like horses."

- Frans de Waal

("Juliet Paints a Big One" found at Painting Horse)

Come again?

"If a lion could speak, we would not understand him."

- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

("Lion Before Storm" by Nick Brandt)

Flirting with instinct...

Animals give us permission to explore, if not live by, our instincts. They are constant reminders that there is vibrant, productive life without human intellect or emotions.

Indeed, animals are "other" and separate from us, but there's no real need to overblow or romanticize that fact. Then again, overblowing and romanticizing animals' otherness is something we do very well. It speaks to some yearning in us and therefore has its own importance and should not be squelched. Humans go wild in your leopardskins! Chimps go sapien in your summer dresses!

("Bettie and Friend" photographer unknown)

Swarming, Shoaling, Flocking...

read all about it...

(Swarm photo uncredited)
(Shoal photo by Mila Zinkova)
(Flock photo by Fayez Nureldine)

Controversial bio-art...

"Alba, the green fluorescent bunny, is an albino rabbit. This means that, since she has no skin pigment, under ordinary environmental conditions she is completely white with pink eyes. Alba is not green all the time. She only glows when illuminated with the correct light. When (and only when) illuminated with blue light (maximum excitation at 488 nm), she glows with a bright green light (maximum emission at 509 nm). She was created with EGFP, an enhanced version (i.e., a synthetic mutation) of the original wild-type green fluorescent gene found in the jellyfish Aequorea Victoria. EGFP gives about two orders of magnitude greater fluorescence in mammalian cells (including human cells) than the original jellyfish gene."

- Eduardo Kak

Or, if you prefer Jellyfish Monkeys...

("Alba - aka GFP Bunny" by Eduardo Kac)

Leave a mark...

"All primitive expression reveals the constant awareness of powerful forces, the immediate presence of terror and fear, a recognition and acceptance of the brutality of the natural world as well as the eternal insecurity of life."

- Mark Rothko

("Shark Bite" by Olly & Suzi with Greg Williams)

The defiance of birds...

Birds have a history of triggering our envy. Their ability to fly has taunted us throughout the ages. Well, recently we've shown them a thing or two about flying, so they better just stop acting so smug and start obeying our laws! Sheesh, some critters just don't know their place on the food chain.

Ingrid only wishes...

If you've been hankering for Isabella Rossellini's sexy insect films, well here they are...

Green Porno by Isabella Rossellini

Enjoy!

Life's a beach...

The phenomena of beached whales is not well understood. Of course, theories abound. Personally, I think it has to do with their sense of humor.

("Three Beached Whales" by Jan Wierix, c.1577)

Battle at Kruger...

Assuming most of you are familiar with this interspecies showdown by now, but - if the hoof fits... It appears that National Geographic TV has produced a special dedicated to this episode debuting on Mother's Day (how sweet!). I'd be curious to see how they unpack this wild footage into a show.

Animals on trial...

The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals written by Edward Payson Evans seems like a good read. It was originally published in 1906, but amazingly Kessinger Publishing has issued reprints in hard cover and paperback and you can get them on Amazon. Flipping through the online index, I see dozens of legal actions against animals that were brought to trial, most of them with religious or sexual undertones. Page 3: The Church and its tratment of noxious insects as incarnations of Satan. Page 10: A cock was burned at stake for laying eggs. Page 150: A "she-ass" was acquitted of participating in buggery ("the nameless crime") though her human buggerer was not so lucky and was put to death. Page 175: Ram banished to Siberia. And so on... "In Evans's narrative, all creatures great and small have their moment before the bench. Grasshoppers and mice; flies and cater-pillars; roosters, weevils, sheep, horses, turtle doves—each takes its turn in the dock, in many cases represented by counsel; each meets a fate in accordance with precedent, delivered by a duly appointed official," says writer Jeffrey Kastner in a Cabinet magazine article. It's a good thing our animal cousins can't get themselves organized enough to start filing proceedings against us. Can't you just picture Troels Carlsen's monkey attorney in a three piece suit gesturing solemnly to Exhibit A: a McDonald's sign proclaiming in bold yellow letters: "Billions and Billions Served"?

("Ape Savant" by Troels Carlsen)

"It has changed just for a moment"

Mark Twain once noted that "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."

Clearly he was living in the pre-CAT PRIN era.

But seriously, why is it that the anthropomorphic urge achieves such great heights of absurdity in Japan? Perhaps they have decided that since we can not understand the inner lives of animals, we should adapt their outer lives to meet our own inexplicable needs?

Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert...

The desert is not empty. However, it is vacant enough to bestow a certain weight to whatever is present. And it’s quiet. No one sneaks up on a dog in the desert. A dog can hear your car coming for several miles and will see you coming almost as far away. By the time you arrive he has developed a level of anticipation.

From 1995 to 1998 I was working on a series of photographs of isolated houses in the desert at east-end of the Morongo Valley in Southern California. As I meandered through the desert, a dog would occasionally chase my car. Sometime in 1996 I began to bring along a 35mm camera equipped with a motor drive and loaded with a fast and grainy black-and-white film. The process was simple; when I saw a dog coming toward the car I would pre-focus the camera and set the exposure. With one hand on the steering wheel, I would hold the camera out the window and expose anywhere from a few frames to a complete roll of film. I’ll admit that I was not above turning around and taking a second pass in front of a house with an enthusiastic dog.

Contemplating a dog chasing a car invites any number of metaphors and juxtapositions: culture and nature, the domestic and the wild, love and hate, joy and fear, the heroic and the idiotic. It could be viewed as a visceral and kinetic dance. Here we have two vectors and velocities, that of a dog and that of a car and, seeing that a camera will never capture reality and that a dog will never catch a car, evidence of devotion to a hopeless enterprise.


- John Divola, 2004

("Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert" by John Divola - see series here - under "2000s")

Non-ownership...

I think I could turn and live with the animals. They are so placid and self-contained;
I stand and look at them long and long and they do not whine about their condition;
they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins; not one is dissatisfied;
not one is demented with the mania of owning things.

- Walt Whitman

("Possum and Fig Newton" by Alex Schaefer)

Is it worth it?

Taxidermy-based art has been all the rage for the last few years. And with it has come raging debate in tow. Is it wrong for an artist such as Nathalia Edenmont to use the heads of dead cats and rabbits in her work? Some say yes. I'm not a fan, but we must ask ourselves: Are we in the business of censoring our artists whenever they tread on shaky ethical grounds? Is being offended a reason for keeping something from being seen? I guess the fear is that the artist willfully abuses something we generally deem sacred (i.e. life and respect for the dead), and leveraging a certain amount of shock value to assert or promote their own agenda (or career). Why should they have that right? The short answer goes: an artist is a receptacle for all emotions and experiences.

"The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life."

- Henry Miller from “An Open Letter to Surrealists Everywhere” The Cosmological Eye (1939).

("Bidibidobidiboo" by Maurizio Cattelan)

Sea changes...

Amazing sea creatures...

here


("Coconut Octopus" by Alistair Watters)

Gorilla Palm...

Staring deep into the lines of my hand I can see back to a time when the thumb was newly opposable and the moments for self-reflection were rare.

(artist unknown, more hand print art here)

Royal de Luxe...

The French mechanical marionette street theater collective, Royal de Luxe, has put together some staggeringly beautiful animal dream machines. One piece called The Sultan's Elephant or La visite du sultan des Indes sur son éléphant à voyager dans le temps (literally, "A visit from the Indian Sultan on his time-traveling elephant") had a larger than life 42 ton elephant roaming the streets of London in honor of the centenary of Jules Verne's death. In general, I take a pass on the geek wizardry of the Steam Punk movement, but this particular wind-up toy was a fine piece of work. I am also very fond of their giant squid-train which can be seen in full effect here.

("The Sultan's Elephant" by Royal de Luxe)

Appropriation of beasts by the genius Walton Ford...

O Where to begin with Walton Ford... How about the Bess Cutler Gallery in New York circa 1990? That's where my brother and I first saw his work and shared a joint aesthetic explosion that's still combusting. Ford's meticulously rendered mega-sized watercolors speak to themes of colonialism, naturalism, and more specifically, the sensationally decadent and often violent cultural history of humans and animals.

Though he has loved and thought about animals for much of his life, Ford is no latte sipping PETA-registered animal activist. He has hunted animals and been bored by their lazing in zoo enclosures. Ultimately, his work is far more personal than political. He wrestles with the imagined animal - especially as it embodies his perceptions of historical characters such as John James Audubon or Sir Richard Burton - visionary, complex people whose lives were directly related to the nature, aesthetics, and power-struggles of their day.

Ford's paintings are inspired by jolting passages he finds in forgotten old books and newspaper articles. The peculiar animal anecdote of yore is an allegorical tool he uses to trigger electrical storms in between the visual and literary poles of his imagination. The paintings ensue from these psychic tempests for us to unscramble. Each one is pregnant with information. Clues and cues and things to Google.

I love Ford's ability to capture an animal's physicality in ways that depart just slightly from a perfect biological taxonomy. His work is fueled by the enormous power of the imagined animal, the distorted report from an out-of-breath eye-witness, the nightmare, not the facts of an actual one. This feat taps the very core of this site.

You'll be seeing lots of Walton Ford round these parts. He's the official human mascot of the Hypnogogic Zoo.

(detail of "Than Hoang" by Walton Ford)

Who put the zoo in zodiac?

We did. The animal symbols of the zodiac are some of the oldest examples of anthropomorphic rendering we've got. The word itself means "circle of animals."


Our distant ancestors looked up at the chaos of space matter in the heavens and picked out constellations - cosmic connect-the-dots of unrelated stars and galaxies. The fact that nine of the twelve celestial symbols were represented as animals is a pretty good indicator of the strength of our anthropomorphic urge.

Cobras & Toddlers...

Deadly snakes and fearless babies. Now there's good television! Thing is: King cobra is ophiophagous - it feeds almost entirely on other snakes. It will only attack humans if provoked or in other extreme circumstances that threaten its survival. If not treated, a king cobra's bite can kill a person in just half an hour.

Either this snake is empathetic enough to recognize a child's innocent touch, or it has really blown its street cred... Come on Ophiophagus hannah, you don't scare us anymore with your flat head, waxy eyes, and your vaguely effeminate hissing. Until we see some cobra spit, maybe you just want to borrow my Celine Dion CDs and do some babysitting on the weekends? Venom hoarder!

Companion Species...

I'm no academic, but I do take my cross-disciplinary obsession in the fields of anthrozoology / anthropomorphism / neuroaesthetics seriously. Today, I was happy to learn from a real scholar that The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness by Donna Haraway is a book that's right up my alley. Off the bat, I like the couplet "companion species" a lot. It triggers many of the super-flammable juxtapositions that got me into these peculiar realms to begin with... OK, I know, I know... the glazed and shimmering Siegfried and Roy ain't no scholars either, and perhaps they threaten to undermine the validity of this post... In their defense, you must admit they've taken er, "significant otherness" to a whole other level.

Can I scan your zebra?

What didn't Tim Flach get right about this image? OK, in all fairness some might say it's a little obvious, but I'd rather live in a world with this photograph than one without. As the art director George Lois once observed, an image had better have an idea. Here we have several: First and foremost is the notion that mankind's "order" has become a cold, towering backdrop that looms over Nature. The zebra's visual vocabulary has been echoed in the UPC symbol, but only in the name of commercial profit. Notice how the barcode stripes show none of the individualism of the zebra's. Industrialized "bottom line" systems generally shun "interesting irregularities" and so they're shaved off in the name of a mass-produced "perfection." Walk on Equus quagga, before they slap you with a social security number and a backbreaking full time job!

("Zebra Head Down" by Tim Flach)

A monkey could do it...

The art world has always had its pretensions. Here an accomplished painter seems to be reminding his fellow artistes to simmer down a bit. We're all just animals at the end of the day.

("Monkey Painting" by Alexandre Gabriel Decamps)

Which way to Toad Hall?

Well who have we here? Why it's the irrepressible Mr. Toad from Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows. Some animal rights activists complain about such depictions of clothed animals. I say, show me a fictional toad that wasn't meant to be dressed up in the finest bespoke frippery, and I'll show you a boring toad. Animals mustn't be abused, but they also mustn't be forbidden to ignite our imaginations in fictional states.

(illustrations by E.H. Shepard)

Laughing Rats...

It begs the question: is “the rat laughed” still an anthropomorphic statement if it’s been scientifically proven that rats actually laugh? Does it force us to reconsider the most basic divisions between what is “human” and what is “animal”?

- via Open Source "New Zoology"

Without brakes...

As these bold, unstoppable brutes cascade to their demise I am reminded of the misguided power all around us. Bullet trains running off their tracks, barreling through barnyards and backyard bar-b-ques. Ionesco's Rhinoceroses recast for the American Dream.

("Buffalo Falling" by David Wojnarowicz)

Pachyderm Painting: Trick or Treat?

This one really got the troops in arms one night after dinner. "It's a trick, it's a trick!" some insisted, as though it threatened their place at the top of the food chain. Yes the flower at the end is what breaks the "illusion" but is that a dismissal of the feat itself? The thoughtful precision with which this elephant places the brush, and retraces its strokes, is clearly an act of imagination.

Would a non-captive animal be found painting itself on the Serengeti Plane? Doubtful. But even if a mahout's barbed ankhous prods the elephant on off screen, it's hard to deny the inner creativity of this creature.

Powderkeg Rainbow Ape...

This magnificent mandrill knows how deeply frustrating his Homo sapien cousins can be. He's just barely containing his fury - at least until the photo session is over. Jill Greenberg's monkey shots are really quite good. They sink in. And that's the point isn't it - Teeth! Fangs in the gray matter jolting us out of our hypno-consumer stupor and into a psychic jungle of urgent, vibrant life.

("Grr" by Jill Greenberg)

Today I was a tiger...

Let's keep a tiger-centric theme rolling with this leaping lady who knew when it was time to jump ship. The animal flees captivity, preferring the natural rhythms of the water to the gawking stares and claustrophobia of this floating vessel of civilization.

Incidentally, tigers are great swimmers. "Once, I was following a tiger in a motorboat," said Dr. Pranabes Sanyal, an Indian authority on the hero-beast Panthera tigris tigris. "Tiger was swimming faster."

(anonymous photo - Dr. Sanyal quotation courtesy of The New Yorker 4/21/08)