Category Archives: wild kingdom

Squirrel Wars

The feature article in the NY Times Magazine this week is titled “The Squirrel Wars.” It’s about the efforts to rid the U.K. of non-native gray squirrels, who are a threat to the native red squirrel population.

The situation has now reached a crisis point: there are only an estimated 160,000 red squirrels left in Britain, whereas there are more than 2 million grays. Without human intervention, reds could be gone from England in 10 years. The red squirrel is a national icon, and the British government is trying hard to save it. Deliberately killing a red squirrel or disturbing its nest, called a drey, is a crime. Last year the government set up more than a dozen refuges for red squirrels in the north of England. The country’s National Lottery granted £626,000 to a group called Save Our Squirrels to run the reserves. Save Our Squirrels, or S.O.S., is a who’s who of British conservation organizations, among them the Mammals Trust and Natural England. It has a toll-free number for reporting sightings of grays and reds and works to raise public awareness of the red’s plight.

The piece is as focuses on the efforts of one nascent group, the Red Squirrel Protection Partnership, as well as summarizing the social history of the red squirrel in the U.K.

But over time the red squirrel became beloved in Britain. It supplanted the realm’s old icon, the lion, as the symbol of a gentler, more evolved nation. There was Squirrel Nutkin, Potter’s irreverent playful red, and also Tufty Fluffytail, the Safety Squirrel, a public-service creation whose warnings about danger on the road began in the early 1950s and lasted until the ’80s. As the red rose in popularity, the gray sank in public esteem. Potter’s attempt to follow up Squirrel Nutkin with a story about a gray squirrel, Timmy Tiptoes, did not achieve the same success. In 1922, a government permanent secretary was quoted in The Times of London calling grays “sneaking, thieving, fascinating little alien villains.”

I almost missed the article entirely, which would have been funny since it’s not just an article about problematic squirrels, it’s an article about problematic squirrels written by a neighbor.

biopiracy and baby talk

[tag]Biopiracy[/tag] is the creation of biological agents from indigenous sources, without compensation to the people or government with traditional ownership over that resource. Disputes over who “owns” a resource are endless, and the pharmaceutical companies often offer up the reasoning that a tribe or other indigenous group has no concept of ownership, therefore the sap, venom, or other matter in question is the property of all humanity. Or they argue that they act in the interests of the Greater Good. Or there’s a lot of mumbo-jumbo about intellectual property/patent law until everyone falls into a hypnotic stupor. Usually, it’s some combination of the three.

There’s a long history of biopiracy in [tag]Brazil[/tag], and there’s a full-scale effort to end the exploitation of the rain forest. In combatting this problem many (most?) in the scientific community feel that the Brazilian Government has gone too far. The latest outrage: the arrest of primatologist [tag]Marc van Roosmalen[/tag].

The New York Times reports:

Marc van Roosmalen is a world-renowned primatologist whose research in the Amazon has led to the discovery of five species of monkeys and a new primate genus. But precisely because of that work, Dr. van Roosmalen was recently sentenced to nearly 16 years in prison and jailed in Manaus, Brazil.

[read the whole article]

It’s not all about the [tag]monkey[/tag] – there’s a great picture of a green palm viper (a species whose venom was pirated) accompanying the story.

But speaking of monkeys, University of Chicago researchers report in Ethology that Rhesus monkeys use “baby-talk” vocalizations with young monkeys. Ethology is an obscenely expensive scholarly journal, but you can read a summary of the work on the National Geographic News site.

Incidentally, right alongside the articles about biopiracy, the National Geographic site serves up ads trying to sell me Hoodia products. Hoodia has sparked especially contentious debate in recent years.

The [tag]BBC[/tag] ran a 4 part series in 2004, Pills, Patients and Profits that included a segment on the controversies over the development of Hoodia as a mass-market weight-loss drug. Although it’s a few years out of date, the issues the series raises are still alive and kicking.

squirrel feeder

Yesterday, we put a finch feeder in front of the kitchen window. It took the finches no time at all to make themselves at home.

So cute and little and yellow.

It took my arch-nemesis less than a day to figure out how to use the hollyhock-support twine as a sling.

squirrel1

squirrel2


Today, we moved the finch feeder.

More on monkeys

I’m super-lazy this morning and so have no humorous commentary to add, not that [tag]JunglePete[/tag]’s post on monkey diapers requires humorous commentary:

When diapering a monkey, the most important thing is to cut a hole for the tail. Clean the dirty monkey butt, feed the tail through the new diaper hole and slide the diaper up the tail to the monkey’s bottom. The rest is just like diapering a baby. And I would know. I diapered a baby once (and two monkeys and one ape for that matter.)

Anyone that knows me knows that my parents ran the Florida Monkey Sanctuary from 1968-1988 in Venice, Florida where this diapering lesson came in handy. One of the most often asked questions then was “where do you get monkey diapers”? You don’t. You make them using preemie diapers. And for apes who have no tails, plain old diapers work fine.

[you really should read the rest of the post]

The serious business of monkey

“Monkey to Join Swat Team.”

The Mesa (Arizona) Police Department has hired a capuchin monkey, which is cool and all, but I just had to send the article to my mom because it contains this sentence:

Since 1979, capuchin monkeys have been trained as companions for quadriplegics, performing daily tasks such as serving food, opening and closing doors, turning lights on and off, and retrieving objects and brushing hair.

Brother and I have suggested she raise helper monkeys so often (because look how well we turned out) that any phrase that even starts with an “h” sound makes her twitch.