The Nature of the Beast (according to Susan McCarthy)

It's Funny You Ask

We have been asked how to repel macaques. Or rather, we have noticed that someone arrived at this website by searching for “how to repel macaques,” which we took as a cry for help. Unfortunately, there was nothing here about how to repel macaques. Nor is there an obvious site to refer the thwarted searcher to – nothing for Macaque-B-Gone, Macaque Solutions, or Macaque Motels. (“Macaques check in, and they order six of everything on the room service menu, and they trash the suite, but they don't check out!”) We hate to disappoint people who are nice enough to read the blog, so we're trying to catch up.

There's no way to know where these macaques are. Are they the macaques who hustle tourists on the Rock of Gibraltar? (Macaca sylvanus.) Are they the crab-eating macaques who raid the nests of endangered birds on Mauritius (where fools introduced them)? (M. fascicularis,) Or are they Japanese snow monkeys again (M. fuscata), invading someone's jacuzzi. So we'll have to take a broad-based approach.

No violent methods will be recommended – most macaques are protected. We reject violence. We prefer threats of violence.

Many primates have a threat display which consists of yawning widely, showing all one's fearsome teeth. It's not just that they're bored. They yawn more when they're not alone, males yawn more than females, and teenage males start yawning all the time. Macaques yawn more if some meddlesome scientist shoots them up with androgens (steroid hormones like testosterone). In the wild, male baboons yawn less if there's another male around with better, scarier teeth.

Photograph, Ryan E. Poplin.

This is why monkeys treat us with disrespect. We have puny teeth.

So for all your macaque-repelling needs, we say Think Teeth. Try the costume supply store and the fake Dracula teeth. Go for the biggest fangs available. Flash those macaques a big toothy smile. That should make them step back. Beam at them, letting the light glint off your canines. They'll start darting their eyes around, looking for an escape route. Say, “Are you as tired as I am, my furry little friend?” and do a long, huge yawn. Watch them flee.

What if macaques invade while your back is turned, when you're at work or out of town? Try leaving a great white shark's jaw on top of the fence post. Put big Jaws posters on the wall. (Hey! Wouldn't it be cool if just as the macaque is sneaking toward your refrigerator, one of those sets of chattering wind-up teeth comes hopping out? Rig up something like that! Send us the video!)

These methods are untested. Here at The Nature of the Beast, we have no macaques to repel. But we hope, intrepid searcher, that we have given you some useful ideas.

One thing, searcher. We advise against any effort to trap your macaques. As anyone knows who has trapped unwanted mice, relocation can be extremely problematic. They say that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. If you build a better monkey trap, you'll have a trap full of furious monkeys, and the world may beat a path to your door in the form of angry mobs of animal rights defenders waving pitchforks. And showing the big teeth may not work on them.

What immortal hand or eye dare Photoshop thy fearful symmetry?

A tiger's scientific name is Panthera tigris. There are several subspecies, though not so many as there used to be, and one is the South China tiger, Panthera tigris amoyensis. It's said to be the “stem tiger,” the one from which other subspecies diverged. (Which doesn't imply that it has stayed unchanged since then.)

Sadly for the South China tiger, Mao Tse-Tung took against it in 1959, called it an enemy of the people, and instituted eradication programs. He didn't like flies or rats, either, but they resisted eradication better than tigers. “Paper tiger” is an old Chinese phrase for something that only looks scary. (Mao famously used it to describe the US and the Soviet Union.) Actually, real tigers never qualified as enemies of the people of China. The threat posed by real tigers was a paper tiger that Mao used as a propaganda device. They made great posters.

By the time the Chinese government, long after Mao, decided to preserve the magnificent South China tiger, they couldn't find any, except in zoos. It was said that a few survived. China had tiger expert Ron Tilson do a survey to tell them how many were left. The answer: zero.

The government also offered a reward for evidence of a wild South China tiger.

Not giving up, China's State Forestry Administration planned a system of tiger preserves. The idea is to set up protected areas, stock them with suitable tiger prey, and then add captive-born South China tigers from zoo stock. Programs were started to teach captive-born cubs hunting skills, one in Fujian province, one in South Africa. (Perhaps you have been told that there are no tigers in Africa. There aren't, except the ones doing junior year abroad.) The plan includes releasing tigers into preserves as part of the 2008 Olympic Games ballyhoo.

Then, last October, exciting news came that, despite Mao (and poachers), there were still wild tigers in South China. Zhou Zhenglong, a farmer and hunter in Shaanxi province, came forth with photos of a tiger in the woods, and of its footprints.

Wow! Press conference! Cash prize for Zhou!

Experts at the Shaanxi Forest Administration Bureau confirmed the pictures were authentic.  "[T]he tiger has been found again after more than 20 years." It was inspiring news.

But some people in China's internet community weren't so inspired. They pointed out certain discrepancies. Why did the tiger look so shiny? Why was its pose identical in each photo? Shaanxi officials stood by Zhou and their South China tiger. The internet investigators kept clamoring. Why did the tiger not only look exactly the same in each photo, but also, excuse us, why did it look exactly the same as this tiger poster?

Alas, it turns out that Zhou Zhenglong, that simple farmer, had employed his humble computer graphics skills, an old poster, and a fake tiger foot to produce his pictures and claim the prize. The Shaanxi forestry department backed down.

Ugh! New press conference! Jail for Zhou! Bitter references to paper tigers!

The South China tiger continues not to roam Shaanxi province, wild and free. But there are wild tigers in China. Up in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, bordering Russia, a few North China tigers roam. Their subspecies is Panthera tigris altaica, also called the Amur tiger or the Siberian tiger. They are beginning to get protection.

I'd like to see both the North and South China tigers protected. The South China tiger will first have to be reintroduced, a pathbreaking event. Since this zoo-bred population, deriving from few animals, will surely have slightly different bloodlines than the population that used to range South China, I suggest designating it a new subspecies. In honor of its history: Panthera tigris papyrus, the paper tiger.

An Inappropriate Octopus

Mike Wood is a scientist who studies salmon. He has a little remote-control submarine for observing salmon underwater, a self-propelled fish cam about the size of a slightly flattened washing machine. It was poking around the sea floor west of Vancouver Island in 2005 when it was suddenly attacked by a giant octopus.

In the video from the fish cam as it scans for salmon, the view swings slowly, swings past a Pacific giant octopus, and then swings quickly back to look at the octopus. Yikes! The octopus makes for the little sub at high speed, and reaches out to grab it by an antenna.

Wood says he was panicked by the idea of losing the uninsured little sub. What if the octopus bit it? Desperately, he throws the engine into reverse, kicking up a ferocious cloud of sea-floor debris. The screen fills with billowing clouds and flailing tentacles. Octopus and sub struggle until the octopus goes off, presumably wiping sand out of his face and planning to try again after taking a muscle-building course.

My favorite thing about this was a vocabulary sighting in a CBC News story. Jim Cosgrove, of the Royal British Columbia Museum, was asked what on earth the octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini) thought it was doing. Was it angry, curious, hungry, looking for love in one of the wrong places? “It’s certainly a mature male from what I can see in the video,” Cosgrove said. “Old octopuses become what we call senescent, or senile, reaching the end of their life. 

"And sometimes their actions are very inappropriate.”

Inappropriate. Never mind the image of octopus as senile old man cruising the ocean looking for targets to whack with his cane or ram with his wheelchair. He acted inappropriately. That is serious condemnation.

“Inappropriate” is one of those weak words which people use to camouflage their ferocity. They're used by those who have power but don’t want to seem powerful, like bureaucrats; and by those who have savagery, but don't want to seem savage, like parents.

Once upon a time “inappropriate behavior” was going out without gloves. Now it is often a psychiatric symptom. Children are expelled for inappropriate behavior. Restraining orders are granted against people who display inappropriate behavior. People are locked up and fed industrial-strength medication for inappropriate behavior. (If you think this is exaggeration, you’ve never found yourself being observed by medical personnel who don’t understand your nervous jokes and write “laughs inappropriately” on their assessment form, followed by the dread “inappropriate affect.” Me neither.)

Another camouflaged attack word is “uncomfortable.”

When a bureaucrat says he’s uncomfortable with your idea, he doesn’t mean that he is restless, twitchy, unable to keep from shifting from buttock to insincere buttock in his chair, he means that he will oppose it tooth and nail. If necessary he will have government attorneys seize your car, condemn your house, and arrest your brother on outstanding traffic warrants. (Or he may have you beaten, stabbed, and cast on the garbage heap to be eaten by jackals. Depending on the jurisdiction.) Unless you stop making him uncomfortable.

When a parent says she’s not comfortable with your lesson plan, she does not mean that she is unfamiliar with the ideas you present, doesn’t know how to fit them into her vision of a seventh-grade curriculum, and can’t stop fiddling with her hair. She means that like a tiger defending cubs, she will see you dead before you implement your plan, if she has to pour the lighter fluid on you herself.

If you do not seem to grasp what these people are saying, they may escalate. Keying your coordinates into their shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, they declare, “I’m afraid that’s simply unacceptable.”

They have issues with that. They have some concerns. They are troubled by your remarks. They never say they’ve already made up their minds. They do not say that they equate compromise with ignominious death. They never actually say no.

(I shouldn't complain about these euphemisms. That's so negative. A more positive approach would be to get new ones. Long latinate words seem to be the popular choice for disguising rage, so we’ll need a bunch of those. Inadmissible. Disproportionate. Inapplicable. Exiguous. Rudimentary.

When they give you the death stare and say your views are unacceptable, stare back. Say, “Your response is disproportionate. I think you’re inapplicable. I'm sorry for you, exiguous fool.”)

So that giant octopus was lucky that he only got a face full of seafloor sludge for acting inappropriately. Had there been any way of apprehending him he would have been taken into custody, assessed, and sent to rehab. After all, is it acceptable to have a giant octopus freely seizing research equipment? Are you comfortable with that? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate if he were, say... deep-fried?