Brian Griffith's Blog, page 5

The turn to entertaining birds

The popular shift from eating to watching birds inspired a raft of instructive books. In 1910, Gilbert H. Trafton came out with his Methods of Attracting Birds. In 1916, Neil M. Ladd published How to Make Friends with Birds. And taking the birds as his house guests, Ernest H. Baynes published his Wild Birds: How to Entertain Them (in 1915). Robins, warblers, and chickadees seemed to sense their rising popularity, finding that city dwellers greeted them with perfectly adequate birdfeed.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

Investing in live wildlife

With the skyrocketing value of tigers and pandas, China moved to keep the business going, as Sichuan and Gansu provinces linked up their panda reserves into a 10,476 square mile protected zone. The country also set up a 400-square mile Hunchun Nature Reserve along the Russia-North Korea border, and sent in volunteers to remove thousands of tiger traps that had been strewn like landmines through the forest. After that, sightings of tigers in the area rose from around five to about a hundred per year.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

"primitive zoolotry" in Egypt

By the later standards of orthodox Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, ancient Egyptian religion was nothing but primitive zoolatry. Peter Renouf denounced it (in 1879) as “one of the lowest and grossest forms of nature worship, as consisting in what is commonly called African fetishism.ˮ For ancient Egyptians, there was no creature too low, even the dung beetle, for at least some people to worship it.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

The hazards of depending on cows

Jared Diamond claims that reliance on domesticated animals has reduced the variety in our diet, lowered life expectancy, and generated maladaptive behavior by both humans and beasts. The Nuer pastoralists of Sudan agree, and they should know, as they have based their lives on cows for thousands of years. These highly experienced people report that cows have killed more humans than anything else. In ancient times, they say, humans killed the mothers of both cows and buffaloes. The buffaloes vowed to get revenge by attacking people in the bush. But the cows more cleverly plotted revenge by staying with humans in their camps and causing them to endlessly kill each other in disputes over herds, debts, bride-wealth, pasture lands, or watering holes. In the end, it will all lead to a kind of cow apocalypse, of which it is said that “They [the cattle] will be finished together with mankind, for men will die on account of cattle, and they and the cattle will cease together” War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

Domestication through friendliness

When we talk about animals being “tame,” it could simply mean that we have decent, neighborly relations, as opposed to fear-filled mutual hostility. And it’s probable that domesticating animals began with simple friendliness, as with the Russian beekeeper whose son said, “He liked bees, and they liked him. He would go to the hives without his shirt. He wasn’t afraid.ˮ
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

Evolving domestication

At this point in history, the domestication and husbandry of animals has become a furiously evolving process. And as the rapid transformations of the animals’ worlds are mainly human-imposed, the animals are evolving for adaption to us. The implications for livestock, pets, and wild animal “friends” commonly range from the horrific to the laughable.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

My tribute to Mama Ndolo's women in Kenya

The Exterminationg Angel Press published this short account from my book "The Gardens of Their Dreams." https://exterminatingangel.com/mama-n...

The kinds of subordinate creatures

In the Old World civilizations of ancient warlords and absolute monarchs, subordinate creatures fell into several categories. There were loyal servants of their masters, like the conquered peasants and domestic animals. Then there were non-subject creatures, like the people of rival states or animals in the bush, who were fair game for attack and plunder. Last and worst were enemies within the kingdom, such as traitors, rebellious minorities, criminal gangs, and animal foes of civilization.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

The occupied wilderness

With the Wild West finally won, the U.S. frontier lost its defining feature—the front line. Instead of a war that had a battlefront, now there was just one big countryside under varying degrees of occupation, resistance, or control.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

Prairie dog gardens

The plains used to hold over a billion prairie dogs, who lived in concentrated “cities.” These cities, or dog towns, took up about 12% of the whole central prairie, and these were the places of best grazing. Rather than eliminating the grass, the dog towns aerated the soil and made passageways for rain to run into the ground. The buffalo and antelope herds used to spend much of their time eating at one “gopher garden” after the next. Wherever the prairie dogs are no longer exterminated like rats, the range tends to support more plant life.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals