You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘grazing’ tag.
Cream from Cow’s Milk
Today’s bland but pretty post features a bland but pretty color—and one which traces its roots back to the beginnings of agriculture! Cream is the color of, well… cream. If one milks a grazing animal (cow, goat, sheep, camel, mare, etc…) the milkfat will rise up to the top of the bucket. Cream from grazing animals takes on a lovely pale yellow color from carotenoid pigments which occur in the chloroplasts and chromoplasts of meadow plants. This effect is greatly attenuated in processed cream from factory-farmed milk, so, if you want the original effect as appreciated by Roman and Medieval colorists, you will have to wonder up to a green mountain pasture and milk the goats yourself as though you were Heidi (eds note: please, please do not wander around unfamiliar mountain pastures and grab at the teats of strange ruminants!).
A Cream-Colored Charolais Cow
Cream was a premium source of energy, nutrients, and sustenance throughout recorded history (and a costly ingredient in the foodstuffs of the rich and privileged for just as long). Cream shows up in Homer, the Bible, Roman pastoral poems, Scandinavian sagas, and Renaissance metaphysical poetry. Throughout all of these times, the word has been used as a description of the pale yellow/off-white color.
As a renter, I have a bitterness towards the color cream: rental flats are invariably painted cream because: 1) cream does not show dirt and age as much as white; 2) the bright color still makes rooms seem spacious and bright; and 3) you can always paint over it. Yet as an artist, I love cream color! It is perfect for vestal virgins, angel wings, and abandoned human skulls lying around dragon warrens! Cream is the highlight color of flesh seen in incandescent light and it forms the shadow side of clouds on perfectly bright sunny days. Even the oil-primed Belgian linen that painters like to paint on is cream-colored.
The Guardian Angel (Guercino, oil on canvas)
Because the color strikes such a note with humankind for aesthetic and historical reasons, a great many birds and animals have it in their Latin or common names. Thanks to the ancient ties between cream and luxuriant desserts, it also has a strange double life as an aristocratic color (which belies its use on the walls of rental garrets). As I keep writing, I realize how complex my feelings are about this beautiful pastel color….
The Cream-colored Woodpecker (Celeus flavus)
Don’t expect any resolution–you will have to figure out how you feel about the multitudinous meanings and associations of cream on your own!
Diprotodon
The largest marsupial known to science is the now extinct diprotodon. Also known as the giant wombat or the rhinoceros wombat, this mighty marsupial grazer stood nearly 2 meters (6 feet) tall and stretched 3 metres (9.8 feet) from nose to tail. The animals flourished throughout much of the Pleistocene. From 1.6 million years ago until about 40,000 years ago, herds of Diprotodonts roamed across all of Australia. These giant wombats were indeed closely related to today’s wombats and koalas: jointly such creatures make up the Vombatiforme suborder Considering how formidable the bulldozer-like living wombat is, diprotodons must have indeed been like rhinoceroses and they probably occupied a similar top spot in the Australian web of life.
Unfortunately, like a substantial portion of Australia’s mega-fauna, the giant wombats disappeared shortly after humankind reached the island continent. The creatures apparently were destroyed by some combination of climate change, human hunting, and slash-and-burn land management. Aboriginal dreamtime lore makes extensive mention of a mighty furred beast called the bunyip–which has led anthropologists and paleontologists to speculate that the diprotodon has lived on in oral tradition for tens of thousands of years.
Fossil Remains of Diprotodon australis
Pronghorns
The second fastest land mammal is the pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), a delicate artiodactyl which ranges across the western wilderness of North America from Canada to the Baja deserts. Although they look similar to antelopes, pronghorns are actually the last surviving species of the family Antilocapridae. They can run at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour and (unlike impalas or cheetahs) they can run at full throttle for a fair distance.
The Range of the Pronghorn
Pronghorns are named for their forked horns—which are not antlers but true horns made of bone with a layer of keratin. They shed the hollow outer sheaths each year in late autumn and grow a new pair over the winter. Adult pronghorns stand 90 cm (three feet) high at the shoulders and weigh up to 50 kg (110 pounds). Although pronghorns can run swiftly, they are poor jumpers. Herds of pronghorns make great migratory treks across the country and face pressure from human developments and from fences (which they can’t jump over but must run under). If you are a rancher in pronghorn country you might consider putting a non-barbed strand of wire as the bottom wire on your fence.
Two Pronghorn Bucks
Pronghorns once had many close relatives. The Antilocapridae family is most closely related to giraffes but the different family members filled many of the same niches that bovids do in the old world. These animals came in an array of shapes and were widespread across North America. There were once 22 varieties of antilocapridae (which you can explore here) but they died out ten to fourteen thousand years ago when the Clovis hunters arrived and slaughtered North America’s megafauna.
The distinctive head of Osbornoceros
Sick or injured pronghorns are sometimes preyed upon by wolves, coyotes, or cougars, but when they are healthy, adult pronghorns can easily outrun all contemporary North American predators. Their blazing speed is not an evolutionary extravagance: pronghorns once needed their swiftness to escape Miracinonyx trumani, the American cheetah which could probably run nearly as quickly as the living African cheetahs. Like the avocado the pronghorn was molded to fit an ecosystem which has died out: today they are literally running from ghosts.
An American Cheetah Hunting a Pronghorrn
ferrebeekeeper 