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)