Catfish Out of Water

A citizen interacts with "Catfish Rodeo" (Francis Moxley Zinder, and Susan Elizabeth Breining, 2003, mixed media sculpture)

In October 2003 the city of Nashville Tennessee decided to celebrate National Catfish Month (August) by asking local artists and craftspeople to make 51 catfish sculptures which were positioned around the city.  The sculptures went on display in June and were auctioned off in October.  Sponsored by the Cumberland River Compact, Greenways for Nashville, and the Parthenon Patrons Foundation, the show was meant to raise awareness concerning water quality in the Cumberland River.

Bat Cat (Dan Goostree and Paige Easter, 2003, mixed media sculpture) photo by Jan Duke

Catfish are a major theme here at Ferrebeekeeper and I am delighted at the extent to which “Catfish out of Water” captured the amazing variety and hardiness of the Siluriformes.  The name even evokes the amazing ability of the walking catfish to survive out of water (although that formidable invasive fish has fortunately not made it to Tennessee). I have only put in photos of a tiny number of the original sculptures here in order to encourage you to visit the complete gallery of catfish sculptures lovingly photographed by Jan Duke and carefully displayed and enumerated at About.com.

Cafe Catfish (Andee Rudloff and Stacey Irvin, 2003, mixed media sculpture) photo by Jan Duke

 

Herring: A Tribute to Keith Haring (Dennis Greenwell, 2003, mixed media sculpture) photo by Jan Duke

Flying Catfish (Rosemary Lab Walters, 2003, mixed media sculpture) photo by Jan Duke

Catsup (Sensored.com, 2003, mixed media sculpture)

Hooray for catfish!  May the Cumberland River always run clean and pure (except maybe for some tasty rotting food scraps for the bewhiskered critters to snack on).

Striper (Bryan Roberson, 2003, mixed media sculpture)

Musk Deer

Musk Deer

Continuing our series of posts about saber toothed mammals we come to a second family of living creatures.  Half way between the primitive chevrotains (mouse deer) and the familiar true deer (cervids) are the Moschidae, a family of small artiodactyls consisting of one genus with several similar species.  The musk deer are small delicate grazers which live in the forested mountains or alpine scrubland of Asia.  Musk deer weigh between 7 and 17 kilograms (15 and 37 lb) depending on gender, age, and species. Unlike true deer, the little creatures lack antlers, but male musk deer make up for this absence with a pair of elongated canine teeth which they use to fight for breeding rights.

Alpine Musk Deer (Moschus chrysogaster)

Like true deer, musk deer eat the tender shoots of trees and grasses, as well as berries, lichens, and mosses.  Females live in small territories of approximately 100 to 200 acres.  The territory of a dominant male will overlap several of the females’ territories.  Female musk deer give birth to a single fawn.  Musk deer are nocturnal or crepuscular.  They use their acute hearing and excellent sense of smell to flee from predators at the slightest hint of danger.

The skull of a male Siberian Musk Deer (Moschus moschiferus)

Male adult musk deer have a musk pouch located between their genitals and their umbilicus which they use to attract mates.  Unfortunately for the little saber toothed deer this pouch also attracts human hunters.  For centuries (or longer) musk has been a prized luxury good, so much so that, at times, prices have soared to $45,000/kg on the black market. The musk is said to have an incredibly complex aroma but the main notes are earthy, woody, and “animalic” (i.e. fecal).  Dried musk grain must be substantially tinctured with alcohol before it produces a perfume which is pleasant to humans.  The resultant substance however served as a mainstay of the perfume industry and as a cure-all nostrum in ayurvedic medicine until the creation of synthetic musk.  Poor musk deer from several species were nearly wiped out because of whatever mysterious power their sexual marking fluid has on humankind.

The Dwarf Musk Deer (Moschus berezovskii)

The Colors of Mardi Gras

The Flag of Mardi Gras

Today is Mardi Gras, the hedonistic final day of the carnival season!  Tomorrow, practicing Catholics take up the austere self-privations of the Lent, but today is given over to parties and spectacle.

Every year, I vow to go down to New Orleans and look for exiguously clad replacements to the smoldering Delta flame of yesteryear, but every year I end up in some gray northern office celebrating with nothing more than an unhealthy sandwich and a stack of paperwork.  This year…well the same thing happened, but at least I can celebrate the flamboyant colors of Mardi Gras–green, gold, and purple.

The official colors of Mardi Gras go back a long way.  It has been claimed that the colors were chosen in 1872 by Grand Duke Alexis Alexandrovitch Romanov, a naval officer who was on a goodwill tour of America–although it is possible that the Grand Duke, a famous bon vivant, was instead trying to describe and order a cocktail made of lemon, lime, and purple bitters (a reliable history of carnival is obscured by the mists of time and a generous fog of alcohol).  In 1892, Rex, the ceremonial king of carnival, ascribed a symbolic virtue to each color and equated them with Christian holy days. Purple represents Justice (and Lent). Gold stands for power (and Easter).  Green is symbolic of faith (and Epiphany).

Since those days the colors have become more and more pervasive and now they can be found festooned everywhere.  The beads, toys, and false coins thrown from parade floats are frequently green, gold, and purple, as are many masks, costumes, decorations, and promotional materials/goods.  The lurid colors allude obliquely to royalty and many Mardi Gras objects are additionally decorated with crowns and fleurs de lis.

Traditional King Cake

Whatever the historical or symbolic significance of the colors, I can’t help but notice their similarity to the colors of spring’s first crocuses which begin to pop up at the end of winter (especially during warm winters like this).  Like the bright Kelly green of Saint Patrick’s day, the gold, purple, and green of Mardi Gras always remind me that the seasons are changing for the better and the verdancy and fecundity of spring is right around the corner.

Health Insurance and Coercion

Contraception Experts before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Today I am uncharacteristically writing about a current social issue in American politics–the controversy over U.S. Health and Human Services mandate on contraceptive coverage which has erupted over the course of the last fortnight.

For anybody reading this from the remote future (which will be next week, considering our 24 hour news cycle), the dispute can be summarized as follows.  The current presidential administration attempted to compel religious (particularly Catholic) schools, hospitals, and charities in the United States to provide health insurance which covers contraception for their employees.  These institutions balked at this demand, claiming that the president was trampling on their freedom of religion (Catholics authorities indeed have a well-documented history of objecting to people being able to make health choices and moral decisions for themselves).  Since it is an election year, the president seems to have backed down.

Hi! I can still intrude in American politics!

There has been a great deal written about this from different political/moral/religious perspectives and it is already the subject of much posturing and political theater. Leaving aside the obvious boon which effective contraception provides for individuals and for society (and the fact that the vast majority of American women, whatever their religion, use some form of contraception), I don’t intend to write about the dust-up per se.  If the Catholic Church wishes to force women back to a benighted era of limited reproductive freedom, well, they can make that their (abusive and wrong-headed) position [although the Church has argued that these hospitals, charities, and schools are not solely religious whenever questions of public funding and government assistance have arisen].  There are ways around it, and it doesn’t seem like a long-term winning strategy.

I am troubled instead by the implicit assumptions about health insurance and healthcare which are revealed by this controversy.

The religious (and quasi-religious) organizations claim to be angry because they are forced to pay for a service which is against their conscience.  This implies that they are paying for the service!  Whatever employers claim, health insurance is really ultimately paid for by employees.  It is part of compensation. This is one of the reasons that wages have stagnated in the United States for such a long time. Our salaries are not rising because our health care costs are going up. There is a strong incentive not to leave a job which provides health insurance because an employee can not be guaranteed to find coverage elsewhere, particularly if that employee has a pre-existing condition or works in a field with limited employment options (which is pretty much every field).  Ideally all employees adversely affected by the Church’s paternalistic overreach would quit and move to new jobs.  Raise your hand if you think that is likely or even possible.

Health costs are rising precipitously while health outcomes are getting worse.  People are understandably afraid to leave their jobs in search of better options or to start businesses of their own.  The stagnation of job mobility is hurting the American economy and society as a whole.

The reason that people should be mad is not because health insurance allows Catholic institutions coercive control over the lives of people who work for them.  People should be angry because the structure of health care in this country gives all large employers an undue hold on the people who work for them.  Americans are becoming vassals of their employers thanks to perverse incentives of a broken healthcare system.

I have no answers but here's some bland clipart.

Adeniums

Ornamental Adenium Tree

The Adenium genus is made up of tiny evergreen tree from the dogbane family.  The succulent trees come from Africa where they can be found in the Sahel (the semi-arid strip running along the south of the Sahara) and similar dry scrublands down the continent to South Africa.  The most famous species is Adenium obesum, a little shrub which grows from 1 to 3 meters (3 to 9 feet) in height and bears dazzling five petaled flowers that look like glowing stars of pink, red, and white. The flowers are widely cultivated as houseplants known as the desert rose (although they are in no way closely related to true roses).  A whole group of enthusiasts hold contests to determine who can hybridize the prettiest flower or cultivate the most striking ornamental bonsai trees.

In addition to their dazzling flowers, Adenium plants are known for having bulbous interestingly-shaped caudexes.  A caudex is the woody barrel-like stem/trunk in which certain desert trees and shrubs store precious liquids. Adeniums are very lovely but their loveliness should not obscure the fact that the wild specimens survive in one of the more punishingly competitive ecosystems on Earth–where all sorts of hungry grazers are desperately looking for meals.  To survive in Africa’s scrublands, Adeniums are not only hardy plants which can live almost anywhere on very little water, they are also poisonous.  Adeniums produce a cocktail of cardiac glycosides-compounds which affect the electrophysiology of the heart. Although these molecules (and other related cardiac glycosides such as those found in the foxglove) can be therapeutic in very tiny doses for certain heart conditions, in larger doses they are poisonous and cause the heart’s rhythm to fail altogether.  Thus, a plant known to American housewives as an frou-frou ornamental houseplant is known as the source of horrifying arrow poison to many of Africa’s toughest native hunters, who use the compound to kill big game.

San hunters of the Kalahari

The Saber-Toothed Whale!

Odobenocetops as digitally rendered by the BBC for "Chased by Seamonsters"

This blog has featured posts concerning saber-toothed seals and saber-toothed marsupials but did you know that the oceans around South America once contained a saber-toothed whale?  Odobenocetops lived during the Pliocene era (around 2.5 to 5 million years ago).  Two similar species are known in the genus from fossils discovered in coastal Peru.  An early member of the dolphin superfamily, Odobenocetops was probably more closely related to narwhals and belgugas then to modern dolphins and killer whales.

Measuring only a little longer than 2 meters (6 feet) in length, Odobenocetops was remarkable (at least among whales) for its flexible neck–which could turn 90 degrees.  The powerful blunt snout of the endearing little whale suggests that it fed from beds of mollusks and other bottom dwelling shellfish, which it rasped from their shells with a muscular tongue.  Additionally, the  Odobenocetopsidae had echolocation abilities like modern dolphins–although probably not so amazingly precise, since the extinct whales’ echolocation melons were much smaller than those of living dolphins.

Odobenocetops feeding

Of course the most distinctive features of Odobenocetops were their long spiky teeth running parallel along their sides.  Scientists speculate that these tusks could have been used to seek food or as a sensory organ–like the narwhal’s sensitive tusk.  Perhaps male whales used their tusks to battle for females, like walruses do (although they seem awfully brittle for such battles).   Some males had uneven tusks.  The sole known skull of a male Odobenocetops leptodon features a right-hand tusk 1.2 m (4 ft.) long, while the left-hand tusk is only 25 cm (10 in.) long.  Since this is the only male O. leptodon skull currently known,  it is unclear whether such asymmetry was normal.

It is striking that the whales’ saber teeth were held next to the body and it makes one think that the whale did not execute many sharp turns.  A humorous but somewhat sad cartoon which I found unattributed on the web demonstrates the potential drawbacks of the Odobenocetops’ striking saber toothed design.

Aww...the poor whale...

Cupid Delivering Psyche

Cupid Delivering Psyche (Sir Edward Burne-Jones, ca. 1867, gouache on paper)

The story of Cupid and Psyche is a breathless tale of hidden identity, subservience, misplaced trust, and true love.  It is a favorite theme for western artists, particularly since it features Cupid (the capricious god of love who wreaks so much chaos in mortal life) emotionally caught in a seemingly impossible situation. Each of these three paintings by Edward Burne-Jones depicts the moment, late in the story when Cupid finally forgives Psyche (who has suffered endless woe, pain, and setbacks).  Psyche has visited the underworld and returned with a box containing divine beauty.  Warned not to open the box, she has decided to steal a pinch so that Cupid will love her despite her mortality.  Unsurprisingly the otherworldly box contains poison of infernal sleep. Cupid then intervenes directly and utilizes his divinity to rescue her from the curse.

Cupid Delivering Psyche (Sir Edward Burne-Jones, 1867, mixed media)

As a young man Edward Burne-Jones studied theology at Oxford and was anticipating a career as a minister–until his spirit was seduced by ancient poetry (really!).  He left the university without a degree and joined a brotherhood of artists and poets. He painted three nearly identical versions of this dramatic scene over the course of several years.  The first and finest from around 1867 is a gouache portrait of Maria Zambaco, a Greco-English beauty.  In 1866, Maria’s mother had commissioned Burne-Jones to paint Maria (as Psyche no less) for an entirely different picture, and the (married) Burne-Jones fell in love with the (married) Zambaco.  Their tempestuous affair destroyed both marriages and nearly led them to suicide before ending in 1869 (although it resulted in a number of gorgeous paintings—which were pilloried by the Victorian art world for portraying female sexual assertiveness in a positive light).

Cupid Delivering Psyche (Sir Edward Burne-Jones, 1871, watercolor and pastel on paper?)

Although outwardly the same, these three paintings are also subtly different.  In the last painting, from 1872, Cupid is not red and radiant but gray and diffuse (and he has lost his ever-changing wreath).  Psyche’s hair has changed color and her features have been altered.  Additionally, the sheer repetition of this same moment of divine intervention suggests that romance is a figure eight:  our arguments and passions keep repeating themselves (which is in fact what happens in the tale of Cupid and Psyche).  Lovers  relive the same moments of longing, confusion, and passion again and again and again even as the world changes like water and our lives wear out.

Sailor’s Valentines

For Saint Valentine’s Day here is a collection of “sailor’s valentines”.  These were ostensibly a form of nautical art—like scrimshaw–created by old sea dogs in the days of canvas and manilla.  On the long voyages the grizzled sailors would tenderly glue shells together in wooden (particularly octagonal cases) to give to their family and sweethearts when they returned to port.  There is something appealing about this picture–but seashells come from shore.  Additionally one wonders how much craft space sailors were allowed in the age of wind.

A counter narrative has arisen that sailors would buy these shell designs from a merchant in Barbados who was responsible for most of the early examples.  Once the idea became popular, artisans began to make the little seashell mosaics at home. To be honest, I can picture my great-grandmother at a table filled with shells and glue much more easily than I can sea Captain Haddock putting together something like this. Whatever the case, the carefully arranged shells create delicate and lovely little artworks.  Even if they were not made by sailors or given at Valentine’s Day, I am repurposing them as a valentine to all of my readers!

To reiterate: Happy Valentine’s Day!

Heliciculture

Escargot

Heliciculture is the farming of snails for human consumption (and for snail mucous used in make-up and skin cream in the Latino community). Garbage middens from prehistoric settlements contain large numbers of cooked shells–so snails have been utilized as food for a long time.  Sustained snail farming dates back at least to pre-Roman Phoenician colonies, however the ancient Romans took heliciculture and snail cooking to new levels. Romans gastronomes regarded snails as a particular delicacy and they introduced certain Mediterranean species to everywhere they conquered.  When the empire fell apart Gaul continued the Roman tradition of enjoying escargot.  Today the French alone consume 40,000 tons of snails per year.  Serious agricultural effort is required to keep up with that sort of appetite.

Snails at market

Roman heliciculture apparently involved building little islands from which the snails could not escape.  Today, however, snails are kept in carefully fenced garden plots.  A small gauge metal wall which extends into the earth is necessary to keep snail predators out (particularly mice, shrews, raccoons, skunks, and toads) while a second interior wall made of specially constructed material keeps the snails in.  A net can be added so that birds do not eat the tasty gastropods. Since pesticide and herbicide could injure the snails or the people eating them, organic greens are grown for the snails to consume.  Apparently snails operate by Tron-style rules and do not like to cross another snail’s slime path—which means that only 20 snails can be kept per square meter.  There are two principal species which are consumed as escargot. The smaller and more common Helix aspersa is also known as the “petit gris” or “escargot chagrine” whereas the larger, rarer Helix pomatia  is called the “Roman snail,” “apple snail,” or “escargot de Bourgogne”. Both of these Mediterranean species have been widely introduced around the world for agricultural purposes.  They are now endemic pests in Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, North America and southern South America (and probably elsewhere).  It’s funny to think that the snail eating your cabbages is the descendant of a snail which escaped from some long-dead hungry French chef.  I can sort of imagine the scene as a black and white early Disney cartoon with giddy jazz playing in the background.

Snail Farming

Everybody and everything seems to enjoy eating snails including…other snails.  A particular source of difficulty for snail farmers is cannibalism.  Larger snails will eat eggs and hatchlings for the calcium.  If not eaten by something, snails can live a long time.  They hibernate in winter and Helix pomatia can live up to 35 years.

Helix pomatia

Saber Toothed Marsupials?

Thylacosmilus digital illustration

I have always been fascinated by saber toothed animals.  Only a few saber toothed creatures remain in today’s world (like the estimable walruses and a few tiny saber toothed deer) but in fearsome ages past, the design was widespread.  Most readers are probably familiar with the smilodons, the magnificent saber toothed cats which hunted the megafauna of Pleistocene North and South America, however the story of the saber toothed cats intersects the story of another giant saber toothed predator which was nearly as fearsome and even stranger. Thylacosmilus was a genus of saber toothed marsupial predators which ruled South America during the Miocene and Pliocene.  Like the smilodons, Thylacosmilidae were large, agile predators which used their long fangs to slash the throats of huge prey.  Unlike Smilodons, Thylacosmilidae were marsupials which gave birth to a tiny helpless larva which they then nurtured in a pouch.

 

Thylacosmilidae (artist unknown)

The prominent teeth of Thylacosmilus were a result of convergent evolution and the creatures did not share any direct ancestors with cats since the divergence of placental and marsupial mammals (deep in the depths of the Mesozoic).  Thylacosmilus’ teeth were also different in that they continuously grew throughout the animal’s life.  The teeth were probably worn down as the predators gnawed on bones.  Additionally Thylacosmilidae possessed scabbard-like bone flanges built into its lower jaw to protect its teeth (a feature missing entirely from Smilodons).  Who knows what sort of noises Thylacosmilidae made with these peculiarly shaped mouths? For millions of years Thylacosmilidae lorded over the strange mammals of South America.  The glyptodonts (and possibly other armadillos) developed their armor to ward off the mighty beasts.  However the fickle play of tectonics undid the mighty killers.

 

Thylacosmilidae and Smilodons were not closely related (click on this picture to visit "Understanding Evolution" an excellent site where I found this helpful image)

In the beginning of the Pliocene, a land bridge joined North America and South America and suddenly the true cats arrived on what had been an island continent.  As the climate dried out, Smilodons competed directly with Thylacosmilidae. Strange new herbivores appeared to displace the old prey animals.  The Great American Interchange of long sundered mammalian lineages proved too much for the saber toothed marsupials.  Thylacosmilidae were giant and fierce but they were no match for invasive cats.

Thylacosmilus atrox (digital art by viergacht)