My Husband & Other Animals

by Janaki Lenin

They are so named because they resemble the elastic bands that held stockings up in the old days. Individually, they are nondescript, but collectively they are a phenomenon. It was spring in Manitoba, Canada, and we were witnessing the emergence of the largest concentration of snakes anywhere in the world. By the end of the first day, I saw squirming snakes even when my eyes were closed.

For the last eight months, the snakes had brumated (similar to hibernation) deep underground, and I thought food would be their highest priority. No, being males, they had sex on their little minds. That may be because once they disperse across the countryside looking for frogs and snails, it’s harder to find a mate. It’s so much easier to hang around the dens and wait for the females to appear. Just like the scene outside some women’s colleges.

Invariably, droves of males emerge first while the larger females come out in little groups. When she makes an appearance, several males jump on her, all at the same time, and within seconds she is buried under a mass of wriggling sex-starved maniacs. How’s the poor, barely awake, harassed gal to choose a mate amongst the horde? Somehow, she does.

Adding a risqué note to this mating orgy were the transvestites. Males identify females by their scent. Intriguingly, some boy snakes give off an ‘I am a girl, come-hither’ perfume. What possible advantage could they gain by this subterfuge? Did they tire out the competition by sending them into a courtsh...

Two scientists, Rick Shine and Robert Mason, figured that the transvestites did not gain any sexual mileage. When males emerge from the dens, they are cold and slow, but basking in the sun is like offering oneself on a platter to predators. By mimicking females, the cold males are immediately enveloped by warm, amorous males. Not only do the transvestites absorb heat from their suitors but by being buried under a pile of them, they are als...

If transvestism is a survival advantage, doesn’t it make sense for all males to act like females? They do. For the first two days after coming out of b...

Vidya Athreya, a researcher, collared the leopard with a GPS transmitter before he was released 60 kms away at the foot of Malshej Ghats. For the next year, the collar would send text messages of the cat’s whereabouts. That was how Ajoba became the first subject of a research project on farmland leopards.

Ajoba was a scientific pioneer, one who showed us that leopards are not jumpy, nervous animals, lashing out at humans at the slightest provocation. Despite the distance, speeding vehicles on highways, trains thundering along railways lines, and humans everywhere, he displayed a confident determination and an unerring sense of direction.

Two and a half years later, on the night of 1 December 2011, a leopard was found dead, the victim of an accident, on the high-traffic Ghodbunder Road, about 12 kms from Nagla. Perhaps he misjudged the speed of the vehicle or been blinded by its headlights. Had there been an underpass to avoid crossing the treacherous road, he might still be alive. As is normal practice these days, the officials scanned him for a micro-chip. It read 00006CBD68F. Ajoba.

In 1984, he was surveying crocs in the Rouffaer River, and Korodesi was the staging point. A couple of Christian missionary organizations operated the only conveyance service. There were no roads, cars, motorbikes, trains or any other means of surface transport in the interior. Villages along major rivers could be reached by boat; to go anywhere else, one needed to fly. Every major village had an airstrip for single engine planes.

IRIAN MUMU Serves: 100 Preparation time: 6 hours Ingredients: 100 kg meat (flying foxes, pythons, cassowaries, megapodes, wallabies, pigs, anything that moves), smoked and dried, or fresh and bloody, it doesn’t matter. 100 kg vegetables (yams, tubers, squashes, pandanus fruit, raw green bananas, water weeds, greens) Salt optional Method: Dig three huge pits in the ground, six feet deep and eight feet wide, and line them with banana leaves. Then start an enormous fire nearby. Haul about 200 boulders (about half to one kilo in weight each) from the nearest riverbank and throw them into the flames. Once the rocks are molten hot, pile all the meat into the leaf-lined pits. Then layer with vegetables. Wrap the whole lot with more banana leaves. Ferry the hot river boulders one by one from the fire and stack them atop the leaves. The local way of doing this is to bring the ends of a length of green stick together and snap the hinge end. Grasp each boulder firmly between the two lengths, like using a nutcracker. Caution: the round rocks drop frequently. Ignore the many burns to feet, legs and hands.

Cover the pits with earth firmly. Cook for eight to nine hours. Bon appétit! By evening the hot steaming mumu was opened and a feast followed. Rom dug into the sweet potatoes and the meat. There was even a Christmas cake – made of grubs. Large sago palm trees were chopped down for their pith, a staple in the local people’s diet. Capricorn beetles laid eggs in the rotting stumps, and soon there were hundreds of plump, juicy white grubs, a much sought-after delicacy in these parts. Rom didn’t care enough for the cake to write down the recipe.

At the dining table, I asked Rom, ‘Don’t you need to suture the croc up? How is the nose going to attach itself?’ ‘Crocs have remarkable healing powers,’ he answered.

About five years ago, Mark Merchant, a biochemist at McNeese State University in Louisiana, demonstrated what croc people had suspected for a long time. When a range of deadly pathogens, including HIV and West Nile virus, were introduced, antibodies in alligator blood destroyed them.

Rom picked it up. He wanted to check if this was an Indian or a Burmese rock python. They are both the same species but with a few differences. Rom ordered, ‘Check the suboculars.’ I looked at the ring of scales around the eye in bewilderment. Rom was having a hard time controlling a squirming 12-foot snake, so I was on my own. I looked for other distinguishing characteristics.

The python had a clear arrowhead marking on the top of its head, the tongue was blue-black and the face had no hint of pink. All signs of a Burmese rock python. When Rom released it, it shot through the thicket with a speed that belied its bulk.

Plants, like other living beings, don’t want to be eaten. Even if they can’t run away from their predators, they are far from helpless. Some acacias draft ants to fight their battles. They secrete sweet-tasting sap to encourage the insects to take up residence in their branches. Should a herbivore attack the tree, the bite-happy creatures mount a formidable defence and chase the animal away.

In the ninth century, Ethiopian shepherds noticed their flocks acting unusually frisky after eating wild red berries in the highlands. Those plants were domesticated and coffee is now cultivated in 80 countries. Today, it is said to be the most traded commodity after crude oil.

Every year, 400 billion cups of the beverage are drunk by people seeking a caffeine fix. Others prefer caffeinated tea or soft drinks for the same reason – to attain a heightened state of alertness. Ironically, the cup we drink to refresh ourselves when our energies flag is an alkaloid produced by plants to put to sleep insects that have designs on their seeds. In other words, we are addicted to an insecticide that evolved to paralyze and kill.

Caffeine affects even insect predators dramatically. In the late 1990s, scientists at NASA illustrated the effects of various drugs on the web-spinning abilities of spiders. The eight-legged creature fared disastrously under the influence of caffeine. It strung a few threads in a chaotic, random pattern that bore little resemblance to a web it would have spun under normal circumstances....

A lot of humans are addicted to caffeine but many more are addicted to tobacco. The nicotine found in the leaves is another powerful neurotoxic insecticide. Besides protecting themselves, the plants have another use for the drug. Their nectar is tainted with it, but they are not trying to poison their pollinators; that would be self-destructive. The plants want them to be brief and move on, and the nicotine discourages insects from drinking long and deep. So the pollinators have to visit more plants to get a full meal. In doing so, they traffic pollen among many plants increasing their genetic diversity. And the insects are apparently hooked to the nicotine. In experiments, they demonstrated their...

With increasing drug-resistance in many parts of the world, artemisin, a compound isolated from a Chinese plant, is the current life-saver.

The seeds of the beautiful glory-lily, Tamil Nadu’s state flower, are used to treat gout and may have anti-cancer properties.

Besides, plants are known pest-repellents. Rom’s mom inter-planted marigolds with tomatoes to keep the latter free of bugs. Neem is another widely used pesticide.

two-inch-long, slender, green, hairless caterpillars of a moth voraciously strip every bitter-tasting leaf from neem saplings.

caterpillars of three moths and a butterfly species are known pests of neem,...

Caterpillars are slow-moving and easy pickings for predators. Like the plants on which they survive, several sprout a formidable array of irritating hairs and sharp spines. The most lethal of them all are the hairy L...

A few naked caterpillars accumulate plant alkaloids in their own soft bodies, becoming a dangerous meal for any bird looking f...

In the deserts of the New World, cacti may be one of the few sources of hydration for animals. Most plants have sharp thorns or spines to protect their succulent bodies. But the peyote cactus appears to have traded prickliness for a powerful psychedelic alkaloid, mescaline. There is no known peyote predator except man in search of visions. Some suspect soma, the Indian elixir of immortality, ‘creator of the Gods’, to be a plant, although its identity remains shrouded in mystery.

I learnt it may be the potassium and phosphorus in the coffee grounds that makes them luxuriant. Too much caffeine may be bad and my ferns are likely to grow with renewed vigour if I hold back the drug. Well, at least they won’t go into caffeine withdrawal. Or will they?

Today, 11-year-old Luppy lives in solitary contentment, watching the goings-on in the farm, grunting at newcomers and presenting her belly for a scratch. And my reputation in the family as that-girl-who-loves-dirty-pigs is sealed.