Dude, where’s my viviparous archosaur?

Now, with new metriorhynchids, the latest version of Darren Naish's crocodylomorph montage:

Not where he eats but where he is eaten

Graeme Gibson writes:

The more I've read, the more I'm persuaded that -- at least with large predators -- the victim of carnivorous attack is often blessedly protected from the horror of the objective experience.

Accounts by David Livingstone (almost eaten by a lion) and Leo Tolstoy (almost eaten by a bear) suggest that once the attack is in progress the victim goes into a state in which he or she feels little pain or terror.

Gibson does not quote from an extraordinary account by the late Australian philosopher Val Plumwood, who nearly fell prey to a crocodile:

...Our final thoughts during near-death experiences can tell us much about our frameworks of subjectivity. A framework capable of sustaining action and purpose must, I think, view the world "from the inside," structured to sustain the concept of a continuing, narrative self; we remake the world in that way as our own, investing it with meaning, reconceiving it as sane, survivable, amenable to hope and resolution. The lack of fit between this subject-centered version and reality comes into play in extreme moments. In its final, frantic attempts to protect itself from the knowledge that threatens the narrative framework, the mind can instantaneously fabricate terminal doubt of extravagant proportions: This is not really happening. This is a nightmare from which I will soon awake. This desperate delusion split apart as I hit the water. In that flash, I glimpsed the world for the first time "from the outside," as a world no longer my own, an unrecognizable bleak landscape composed of raw necessity, indifferent to my life or death.

Few of those who have experienced the crocodile's death roll have lived to describe it. It is, essentially, an experience beyond words of total terror...

Pictures in old books

P Z Myers celebrates the web publication by the U.S. National Library of Medicine of several early illustrated scientific texts.

One of his favourites is an octopus from Conrad Gesner’s Historiae Animalium. I like this one of a hippo and a crocodile:

Quietus

In A Long, Melancholy Roar, Olivia Judson reflects on the role of predation by other animals on Man has had on the human psyche, observes that Man is the greatest predator on Man, and that no animal besides Man commits suicide. Here is my comment:

I think I've read that some data indicates suicide rates fall during war time. If true, this is interesting, and may be significant.

There's a remarkable account by the late Australian philosopher Val Plumwood of being attacked and almost killed by a crocodile.

Another 'wild' animal that still kills humans is the elephant. The authorities in the Indian state of Orissa report 180 deaths by trampling in the last 5 years (humans had encroached on elephant territory with mining and other operations).

One commonly reads that fewer than a dozen people are killed each year by sharks. Humans, by contrast, slaughter tens of millions of sharks each year.

I'd add that some (e.g. Richard Barry) claim that dolphins have deliberately committed suicide because they are being held captive by humans in conditions that they find unbearable. (Dolphin 'suicides' such as these may be a distinct, perhaps involuntary, phenomenon.)


In The Ecocidal Moment, Rowan Williams notes that Alastair McIntosh speaks of:

"ecocidal" patterns of consumption as addictive and self-destructive. Living like this is living at a less than properly human level – McIntosh suggests we may need therapy, what he describes as a "cultural psychotherapy" to liberate us. That liberation may or may not be enough to avert disaster. But what we do know – or should know – is that we are living inhumanly.

Inhumanely, perhaps; but all too humanly.

A mediæval beauty cure

Crocodile dung can be used to enhance a person's beauty: the excrement (or the contents of the intestines) is smeared on the face and left there until sweat washes it off.

-- The Medieval Bestiary

Eclipse of the crocodile

Crocodiles have been on the Earth for some 200m years but now, in this corner of [Southern] Africa, because of pollution and global warming caused by humans, even their ancient existence may be threatened.

-- Hamilton Wende. It sounds from the report as if deliberate extirpation of the crocs by a rapidly growing human population may also be playing a role.

Croc chow

Koobi Fora crocodiles reached up to 7.5 metres long, bigger than any living crocodile. The australopithecines who lived in the area were smaller than the Olduvai hominids so they would have had less chance against the predators.

-- from Giant crocs preyed on our ancestors.

Would a lucky australopithecine survivor have had any tips for Val Plumwood?