Jules Howard's Blog, page 4
July 3, 2017
Elephant 2.0. - nature's invisible information architecture
What do you see when you look at an elephant? The world’s biggest land mammal – or a giant data store, sharing information in a living, breathing network?
Elephants have such sad expressive faces that it is hard to imagine how anyone could harm them. They have drawn lips and sagging shoulders; a long, drooping demeanour; sad, knowing eyes capable of laying on the guilt. Yet, it would appear that guilt is not enough to save them. Eighty years ago there were perhaps 6 to 9 million African and Asian elephants. Today there are roughly half a million left. Day by day, they are getting closer to extinction.
Perhaps we need some new ideas. Perhaps it is time for a different perspective on why elephants need saving. Rather than their bodies, maybe it is their shared memories and experience that we might one day come to value. This is the argument that I’d like to put forward in this piece.
Elephant memories and experiences run deeper than we once thought. They can be passed around. They are almost collective.
We rightly seek to save human languages from extinction - why not the experiences and group memories of elephants?
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May 24, 2017
Why do animals go extinct? You asked Google – here’s the answer | Jules Howard
A man pulls from his pocket a futuristic, streamlined flat metallic box that has been constructed in China but filled with chemical components dug from great underground mines in what was once a vast, unspoilt South American wilderness. Looking through a glass screen, forged with heat produced from the burning of 400m-year-old fossil swampbeds, the man considers the question he would like to type into his metal box, a request that would involve it interacting remotely with an air-conditioned server room in a data centre in coastal Finland. He types the question “Why do animals go extinct?” and there is a silent pause before the universe shatters with irony into a million pieces.
Related: Why don’t people like me? You asked Google – here’s the answer | Anouchka Grose
Continue reading...May 18, 2017
Do sea monsters exist? Yes, but they go by another name … | Jules Howard
I don’t want to spoil it for you, but I guess I’ll have to. It was a whale that washed up on the Indonesian island of Seram late last week. It was never a sea monster, no matter how hard we all tried to believe or hope it might be. Although the species of whale remains unknown (DNA analysis should solve that problem in time), the big giveaways were the presence of whale jaw-bone, the baleen plates, the vertebrae, the fins, the throat pleats, the whale shape and the fact that whales live close by and have skeletons that look exactly the same as this one did. Still, why let a bit of science get in the way of a good monster story, right?
And so, within hours, a familiar narrative was playing out in the world’s media as the whale became a dead sea monster that no one could identify, a Scooby Doo mystery that could be maintained by journalists for days as long as nobody checked Twitter, where 10,000 scientists were screaming “That is clearly a whale” at each other. As such, in the news reports, the whale’s decomposing skin became “fur” and its blood became “mysterious red fluid” floating in the water. Nothing (apart from spiders and wasps) brings out the worst in journalism like a decomposing whale, it seems.
Related: UK killer whale died with extreme levels of toxic pollutants
Continue reading...April 26, 2017
Punch a shark, whistle away a bear: how to survive deadly encounters | Jules Howard
Punching sharks in the face isn’t something to be attempted lightly, but in the jaws of death it can be the best means of remaining uneaten, as this weekend’s incident involving a shark attack on a British woman attests. Here are some tips to help you remain alive should you face any other predators.
Continue reading...April 12, 2017
We must act immediately to save the Great Barrier Reef | Jules Howard
This spiralling, three-dimensional coral maze is bleached for the second year in a row, but it can recover – if we act immediately
And so it begins: the end of days. The Great Barrier Reef is bleaching for the second year in a row and now, according to the results of helicopter surveys released on Monday, it is the middle part (all 300 miles-plus of it) that is suffering the awful reef stress that comes courtesy of a warming ocean.
Continue reading...No, the Great Barrier Reef is not dead in the water. Not yet | Jules Howard
And so it begins: the end of days. The Great Barrier Reef is bleaching for the second year in a row and now, according to the results of helicopter surveys released on Monday, it is the middle part (all 300 miles-plus of it) that is suffering the awful reef stress that comes courtesy of a warming ocean.
Continue reading...March 27, 2017
Utopian thinking: Forget British Values – teach children they are apes | Jules Howard
It seemed slightly ghoulish seeing her hanging there, in a school. A framed portrait of Theresa May, looking down on the children in the school hall, watching over them Just About Managing not to shuffle their bottoms or pick their noses. At the time I thought it would be a one-off, but I have since seen her hanging in a few schools during my travels. Often she’s next to a big display emblazoned British Values – which is, as of 2014, a topic all schools must talk about with their pupils.
Reading these British Values proves interesting. In our schools, children celebrate democracy, the rule of law and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs, which are unique customs and attitudes that sum up in every way modern Britain – at least until the children go home to their parents later that day.
Related: Climate shaped the human nose, researchers say
Related: Utopian thinking: why not put children in charge of their schools? | Rachel Roberts
Continue reading...March 16, 2017
Parks and defecation: am I the only one poo-poohing this dog mess ‘strategy’? | Jules Howard
I confess that I hadn’t heard of Anne Main, the Tory MP for St Albans, until today, but I feel like I know her now. I have just watched a video of her four times in a row talking about dog faeces, so now I feel like I’ll have a hard time forgetting her.
Main took her moment in Tuesday’s Westminster debate about the issue of dog faeces masterfully, calling the practice of hanging little blue plastic bags of dog poo on branches “disgusting”, and suggesting that we should perhaps do what the Forestry Commission suggests, and get a stick and “flick” dog faeces into the undergrowth.
Continue reading...March 1, 2017
Zoos shouldn’t be jails – let’s reimagine them and enjoy animals in the wild | Jules Howard
It really is a damning report. Of more than 1,500 animals kept at Cumbria’s South Lakes Safari zoo between December 2013 and September 2016, 486 were found to have died. Emaciation, hypothermia, accidental electrocution, gastrointestinal infections, a decomposing squirrel monkey found behind a radiator, two dead snow leopards. At the same time, the zoo was hit with a £255,000 fine for health and safety breaches after one of its keepers was mauled by a Sumatran tiger.
Related: Calls for Cumbrian zoo to be shut after 486 animals die in four years
I've had moments in zoos when I have locked eyes with a captive gorilla and seen sadness or worse, utter contempt
Related: The Guardian view on zoos: respect our animal relatives | Editorial
Continue reading...January 9, 2017
Yes, let’s send home those ‘expat’ species. Starting with donkeys and rabbits | Jules Howard
Calls in the press for British ecosystems for British wildlife are ridiculous. They tell us more about readers’ attitudes than science
First, a confession. Many years ago, I worked as a press officer for a small national wildlife charity. I found this quite a challenging job at the time, not least because the creatures whose declining fortunes I was promoting were frogs and toads, and national news editors have far less interest in frogs and toads than you might imagine. For many years, while my peers in other wildlife charities garnered all sorts of front-page stories, I failed to make even a news in brief section with my stories.
But then it happened for me. There was one day, after many years trying, I hit gold. I had written a press release about some escapee North American bullfrogs breeding in the UK for the first time and there was interest in this story. Finally, after so long trying, I made a front page. It’s just that … well … I had made the front page of the British National party website. It was quite unsettling. To the BNP, these boggle-eyed unthinking expressions of amphibian diversity were a handy hook upon which they could hang their xenophobia.
Every life form alive today has a history someplace else, if you go far enough back
Related: Raccoon, mongoose and cabbage among invasive species banned from UK
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