Beloved elephants, cool toucans & animal activism

“People always ask me if I ever stroke her or touch her, and I don’t . . . I just feel it’s a sacred line and I don’t want to cross it. . . I feel the moment I was to reach out and touch her, it feels that I would claim ownership of her and it’s just wrong.  Because she isn’t mine.  She’s wild and she’s free . . . ” -- Dora Nightingale, founder & director of Fox Guardians (foxguardians.co.uk), referring to Faith, a wild fox who has for years visited her in her garden  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFlrcm27ALg&feature=youtu.be  

                                                                                                                                                                                     Dodo pic

Finally free from posts about bats and viruses for a while, I happily returned to elephants, the world’s largest land animals (and prominent in my pantheon of loved creatures).  But before moving on to other animal issues, a clarification, a comparison and a couple generalizations . . .

All elephants are pachyderms, but not all pachyderms are elephants -- even though I’ve seen the words used interchangeably.  “Pachydermata” is an obsolete 19th-century classification meaning thick-skinned animals.  Besides elephants, this group also included rhinos and hippos.  In fact, whales were once called sea pachyderms.

           Zimbabwe baby                      PAWS pic

Two kinds of elephants live in our world, African (the largest, with ears shaped like the African continent) and Asian (slightly smaller overall, with ears shaped like India).  African elephants have one head hump and concave backs; both sexes have tusks. Asian elephants have two head humps and convex or level backs; only  most males have tusks.

Elephants are all herbivorous, with massive legs and long trunks.  They are matrilineal herd animals.

Overall, elephants are widely viewed as one of Earth’s most intelligent animals, according to National Geographic.  “They have a highly evolved neocortex, similar to humans, great apes, and some dolphin species. They demonstrate a wide variety of behaviors associated with high intelligence, including compassion, mimicry, grief, altruism, use of tools, and self-awareness.”

Nothing more to say except . . . Save the Elephants!  (www.savetheelephants.org/)

Toucan talk

“And now for something completely different”: the toucan, a South and Central American bird with a bill that won’t quit.  My interest was prompted by a Dodo video about a toucan (too-CAN) entering a house and visiting the nursery of an expected child – seen as a good omen for the baby.

                        Toucan                Peter Cavanagh pic

But I couldn’t get over that bill: is it heavy, does it come with teeth?  Is it used as a  weapon, or what? How does the bird keep from toppling over? 

Birds can’t cool off in the ways humans can, but evolution has provided an alternative to the largest species, the Toco Toucan, whose bill, relative to its body size, is the largest of any bird in the world. It accounts for a full third of the body’s entire surface area.  It’s also laced with blood vessels and has no insulation – features that make it a great structure for getting rid of excess body heat. 

Blood pumps into the toucan’s bill all the time and as the weather heats up, the blood travels farther out and the heat escapes through the bill’s thin outer layer. With a nice breeze, the toucan can release virtually all its excess body heat, thereby staying cool even in tropical heat.

Here’s an enjoyable, colorful short video from the San Diego zoo: https://kids.sandiegozoo.org/videos/toco-toucans

Get ready, get set. . .

These shelter-at-home months have forestalled much would-be activism for animals.  But major behind-the-scenes work has continued so that plans and programs are ready once they can go live.  It’s almost that time! 

 

The Animal Protection League of New Jersey, with numbers of allies, will soon issue a call to animal advocates, urging us to jump back in on campaigns for animals.  Watch for the next post here, with the details we’ve all been waiting for.      

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