The Nature of the Beast (according to Susan McCarthy)

Do I Have to Stab Somebody Around Here to Get a Drink?

The Brooks Park community garden sits on a knobby, windy hilltop with near views of San Francisco and Daly City, and a far view of the Pacific. With a plastic watering can left for the use of gardeners, I was dreamily watering lettuce seedlings in our nano-ranch when a high-energy individual sped up and gave me a once-over. It was an hummingbird, in immature plumage, and it seemed intent, hovering a few feet away. What was on its mind?

Before the current drought, when we still ran a sprinkler in the back yard, I have seen hummingbirds  catching drops, so perhaps this bird was interested in the water. I held the can out at arm's length and tilted it so water ran from the nozzle in arcs of spray. The hummingbird zipped over, buzzing in and out of the spray. Once it opened its beak wide, maybe fifty degrees, but at other moments I guessed it was just getting water with its tongue.

We were both happy until a slightly larger hummingbird zoomed up and drove the drinking bird away. They raced off at high speed. I turned back to the lettuces until the second hummingbird, returning, also positioned itself in front of me, moving up and down. It had just a beginning fleck of an iridescent gorget at its throat, so it suppose it was a young male. Again the bird seemed to make eye contact.

Another thirsty customer? I tilted the watering can. A pause as the hummingbird hung in the air. It beelined up to the nozzle and inserted its beak into one of the holes. That seems like drinking from a hose with your mouth right on it, and you get a big drink pretty quickly that way, so I wasn't surprised when the hummingbird left a few moments later.

I'm still pondering what was on those young hummingbirds' minds. I wasn't wearing anything floral-patterned or brightly colored, so I wasn't attracting them that way. Most likely they were thirsty, saw that water was around, and came to study the situation. Perhaps as they surveyed me they wondered, “Where does the water come out of this thing?” I would bet other gardeners have been approached – maybe there's a custom of watering the hummers that I'm just finding out about.

It had the casual feel of a routine transaction. Like bumming a cigarette. “Lady. Yeah, you. Human lady. Got a drop to spare?”

Go Photograph Your Own Beeswax

On Monterey Bay, a tour boat laden with wildlife photographers spotted a sea otter. The boat headed over. When they got close enough to point their cameras at the otter, the otter pointed a camera at them. Enrique Aguirre got the shot that shows the otter with the videocamera.

As Stephanie Pappas wrote in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, “Judging by the rust and seaweed adorning the camera, the otter probably wasn't getting much good footage.”

People seem to think that the otter was just curious about this peculiar object, presumably been dropped overboard by some unlucky butterfingers. And was imitating the way people hold such objects. Cute! What a crazy picture.

When we see animals do things that are typically human, we tend to think they're copying us. Trying to be like us. I think it's more reasonable to guess that they're trying to figure out what motivates us – “what do humans get out of this?” Naturally, I like to toy with explanations which give the animals more credit—and which may be more sinister. There's a paranoiac and all too plausible possibility: They're making fun of us.

When an otter points a videocamera at people pointing videocameras, maybe what's going on is something like, “Okay, I'm the big guy in the blue windbreaker [stupid deep voice]: 'Wow, what do you think they weigh?' Now I'm the woman with the knitted hat [stupid squeaky voice]: 'My sister will be so jealous she didn't come when she sees these pictures!' Now I'm the kid [panicky voice]: 'I'M GONNA BE SICK!'” The otters all laugh so hard they submerge.

(Maybe that's not paranoid enough. Maybe they're spying on us. Maybe the seaweed on the camera is crafty camouflage. Maybe they're sneering at us right now in the Situation Room. Naah.)

There could be other instances where we suppose animals are copying us uncritically, but where we might be wrong. I'm thinking of an account I read of a satin bowerbird in a national park north of Brisbane (related by Greg Czechura of the Queensland Museum).

The males in this artistically gifted species not only build bowers, they sing, dance, and steal beautiful objects to decorate their bowers. (This keeps them too busy for tasks like building or defending nests or feeding fledglings. Freebird!) Their songs include mimicry of other birds' songs.

This particular bowerbird was putting on a show at his bower, observed by a fascinated crowd of birdwatchers. In the midst of his imitations of various local birds, a cell phone rang. All the birders started grabbing for their pockets and bags, looking for their phones.

Of course, the ringtone came from the bowerbird. Czechura thought it was pretty funny, and maybe the bird did too.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Uh huh. But what about ridicule?

We're back! We're starving!

In the summer wildfires, what would the condors do? When flames and smoke tore through their Ventana Wilderness sanctuary, how many would survive?

These California condors were raised in captivity. Some grew up in large aviaries with two-parent families, and others were fed by condor puppets and raised in condor playgroups (most unnatural for a species in which every child is an only child and neighbors never drop by for a cup of carrion). All were introduced into the wild without the benefits of the ancient condor culture, passing through release pens, decked with electronic transmitters, monitored by worried biologists.

When fire hit, the Coast Guard airlifted out seven teenaged birds and their guidance counselor (a somewhat older and more experienced bird) who were in an aviary on the sanctuary awaiting release. But 43 birds were on the loose, and no one knew how they were doing. Nor could the biologists get in to the sanctuary. Usually the birds' wild food is supplemented by government handouts of roadkilled deer and stillborn calves, but in this time of trial they had to go without. (They get dead rats too. For all I know they get government cheese.)

No venison, no beef? No worries. Instead of sticking around and hosing down their homes in a desperate attempt to save their dwellings, the condors went to the coast and had the seafood platter. They flew to Big Sur and lunched on a decayed sea lion and a dead whale. They didn't go home until the fires were out and the yellow tape was down.

They knew the terrain, because this wasn't the first time they'd been to the coast. The sanctuary is inland, but ever since the condors were reintroduced, “we noticed the birds starting to really home in on the coast more and more,” senior biologist Joe Burnett said recently at the SF Zoo. “We didn't realize the historical significance of it till we started looking thorough the notes.” There hadn't been condors in Big Sur for more than a hundred years.

The excellent to-hell-with-this-let's-go-to-the-beach survival tactics adopted by these condors show the value of exploration. These birds knew their options.

If you are ever basking on a sandy beach, or lying on the cliff at Esalen, and you are lucky enough to see a condor drifting above, looking down at you thoughtfully, think of this inspirational tale. Do not focus on the idea that a giant vulture has you in its sights. Remember, they only eat dead things. Be supportive; be safe. Wave!

A Bird for Each Shoulder

Sometimes people get sentimental about the nobility of animals. But it depends on the animal. Perhaps you saw the story of Yosuke, a pet African Grey parrot in Japan. One day he got out. As parrots do, he flew around for a few days and a few miles before landing and seeking human help. (“Free! I'm free! I can go anywhere I want! I fly, I soar! -- Hey, where am I? Where is everybody? Where's lunch? Oh no! Lost! I'm lost!)

The police picked up the bird, and an officer tried to chat, but the parrot wouldn't speak. He was deposited at a vet clinic, and after a while he opened up. “I'm Mr. Yosuke Nakamura,” he confided. He gave his address. The vet told the police, who found that yes, there was a Nakamura family at that address who had lost their bird. They said they'd been drilling Yosuke for two years on how to ID himself. (Smart. I never even thought of teaching my cockatiel, “I'm Ms. Beak-of-Steel McCarthy.”)

Mr. Nakamura contrasts with the last talking bird I read about in the news, a blue-and-gold macaw at a wildlife sanctuary in Warwickshire. Barney, formerly a lorry-driver's pet, is a classically foul-mouthed parrot who is no longer allowed to meet the public after telling “the local mayoress to f*** off.” He cursed some children. He cursed the vicar. Like Yosuke, he doesn't trust law enforcement, and told two police officers, “You can f*** off too, w******!”

Those asterisks were in the original. I am a simple natural history buff and can only guess what they stand for.

Two African Greys at the sanctuary have picked up these effective phrases from Barney. The Daily Mail reported that sanctuary owner Geoff Grewcock says the three birds sit around swearing. “It sounds like a builder's yard, with all the abuse flying about.” A fourth bird, Sunny, shrieks “Shut up!” when the cursing starts, but they ignore him.

According to the Sun, Grewcock hopes to clean up Barney's conversation by making him listen to documentaries and “posh Radio 4.” As a simple American, I can't even guess what that means Barney will be saying next.

The contrast between nasty rowdy Barney and articulate well-informed Mr. Yosuke Nakamura reminds me of a dog encounter I witnessed. On Market Street in San Francisco, a woman with a white cane was led along the sidewalk by a guide dog, a golden lab. They were near the curb when a pickup truck pulled up at a red light. Two dogs in the back of the truck glanced down, saw a dog below, and instantly began barking loudly. (“Hey! A******! Get away from our truck! Back off, flea-bus!”)

The startled guide dog, suddenly assaulted by hostile sound from above, shrank in terror. The woman with the cane knelt and put her arms around him as the dogs in the truck kept yelling. The driver of the truck looked back, saw what her dogs were doing, and started frantically banging on the back window, yelling at them to stop. Her dogs, encouraged that she was joining the ruckus, barked even harder. (They could have used a bird like Barney to ride shotgun.) Finally the light changed and the truck drove away.

The hard-working guide dog, who had devoted his life to service, stood on the sidewalk trembling. The idlers in the truck, loudmouth jerks who threatened others for the fun of it, zoomed off into the West, probably congratulating each other on effective pack-work and flinging beer bottles into the gutters.

It was a moral scene suitable for a Hogarth engraving. (Okay, I know, like I spend so much time looking at engravings. It would be perfect for Goofus and Gallant.)

The Dangerous Lives of Treeshrews

I was reading Tupai: A Field Study of Bornean Treeshrews by Louise H. Emmons because that is the kind of thing I like, and learned about the absentee maternal system found in some treeshrew species.

First I should say that treeshrews are the same as tree shrews, and the closing up of the word is probably meant to indicate that they don't really live in trees and they're not really shrews. This is a case of TC, Taxonomic Correctness, like the argument that you should call a starfish a sea star because it's not really a fish. Oh please. But a big issue about treeshrews is whether they're descended from very primitive primates and so are our distant cousins, or whether the connection goes further back so that the primates and the treeshrews are both descended from the clade Euarchonta, making them even more distant cousins. I have no opinion on this.

In the absentee maternal system the mother treeshrew builds two nests (yeah, in trees). They are far apart. She puts her babies in one and she sleeps in the other one when she's not racing around snuffling through the leaf litter and catching bugs. Every other day she secretly visits the babies, taking a different route each time, and nurses them. When she's not there the babies lie still and don't make a sound. If an intrepid wildlife biologist like Louise H. Emmons takes a baby out of the nest, it lies silently in her hand with its eyes closed.

One day when they are old enough the mother treeshrew drops by as usual, but instead of just nursing them she takes them out and shows them Borneo. Here's a bug, here's a little trail, here's what you do when you hear a scary noise -- there's another bug! Let me see you grab it! She brings them with her on her rounds and protects them while they learn the business of treeshrewing.

According to a report from the wild, the babies were "shaky" the first time they came out of the nest hole.

The reason treeshrews do this has to be that it makes it much less likely that predators will find the nest and eat the babies by observing the mother. (That's the sort of creepy trick that jays and crows do, for example.) And obviously it's very convenient for the mother treeshrew. Which makes me lean toward the idea that treeshrews aren't primates – what baby primate holds that still for that long?

Like other wildlife biologists who write books for general audiences, Louise H. Emmons tries to find a balance between the stuff working scientists mostly do, and the stuff that people are actually interested in hearing about. Most of the work of wildlife biology doesn't involve playing peekaboo with baby gorillas, swimming with whale sharks, or filming hippo hijinks. It involves data sets. Perhaps Emmons leans too far in the direction of hard science, because her best story was walled up alive in an appendix. (I read appendices so you don't have to. Or at least I skim them.)

In Appendix 1, Emmons explains why a trapping data set is incomplete.

In the January trapping period, a group of elephants went through the study area, systematically destroying man-made objects (rain gauges, signs, trail markers, etc.). They stomped on seven baited traps but interestingly did not step on one that contained a treeshrew, while flattening the two on each side (trapping in January was curtailed, and this month is excluded from most data).

The elephants spared the tiny prisoner! Of course I think they did it because they felt compassion for the treeshrew, but I realize that there is also a compelling quality to  the explanation that they did it because they didn't want to get their feet sticky.

Behold this child

My sister took this photograph. It shows Sky, a Thoroughbred mare, and her first foal. The foal's about 5 minutes old.

Because it was her first foal, Sky had no idea what was happening when she went into labor. First she felt bad, and then she felt really bad, and it hurt a lot, and it went on and on. That's a big foal, and labor was difficult. The foal got stuck twice, even with two people pulling on it.

In the picture, Sky is astonished and thrilled. A baby! There's a baby! It's her baby! Sky, like a lot of mares, always liked foals, but could never get her hands on one, so to speak. Their mothers wouldn't let other mares near them until they were older.

My sister, Dr. Sarah McCarthy, is an equine veterinarian, and she helped me decode Sky's expression. That wide eye means just what you think. It's true Sky's glancing at the camera, but that's not why her eye's so big. She's wide-eyed with amazement. A child of her own has magically appeared in front of her (and just as she was getting over the worst colic ever). As described in Becoming A Tiger, some first-time mare mothers have been known to get up from the straw and walk away, not having any idea that there's a baby horse in the vicinity. My sister knows of cases where a mare has to be grabbed as she walks away, led back, and shown the foal she'd just given birth to. Wow! Look, a baby! Wow!

Sky's ears are straight up, which shows excitement and attention. Her neck is stretched out in eagerness. Also, and this is harder for a non-horse person like me to notice, Sky's lips are protruded and her nostrils are flared, as she drinks in the delightful smell of her new child. She's beside herself with joy and surprise.

I met Sky's chestnut filly when she was 5 days old, racing around, doing little kicks and leaps, followed every moment by the still rapturous but much calmer Sky.

Next time Sky goes into labor, she may suspect what's coming. My sister tells me that Rosie, one of her other horses, had definitely figured it out by the time of her 3rd foal. Alerted by a 3 a.m. phone call that Rosie's water had broken, she went down to the stall. As soon as Rosie saw my sister she began to nicker tenderly as a mare does to a foal. It was as if a woman in labor greeted her obstetrician's arrival by saying, “Oh, who's the best little baby in the world?”

[This photograph is copyright by Sarah McCarthy and may not be used without her permission. You may not, for example, put it up on a LOL cats site, with the horse on the left captioned I CAN HAZ FOAL? and the horse on the right captioned CALL ME CHEEZBURGER.]