Scientific killing

The [method] that is now mostly used is a technique in the Antarctic that uses sonar. Not, however, to look at the whale underneath the water. They use it as a means of scaring [it], because sonar is very loud. They did experiments and chose a frequency which kept whales so panicked, that they were at the surface for breaths more frequently than at other frequencies. So, they drive the whale along at the surface and then they fire into it.

-- Roger Payne in an interview with Yale 360. Payne says that following the 1986 moratorium the total number of whales killed world wide was 185 a year. It has climbed steadily even since, reaching 1,004 by 2009

Poetical essays on the dark gibbon

[In China] gibbons were praised for their quiet, serene nature and spiritual qualities. Elusive and rarely seen, they inhabited remote areas thought to be haunted by supernatural beings. Gibbons were considered magical animals, capable of assuming human form. Their evocative cries were associated with the eerie atmosphere of these mysterious places and inspired melancholy feelings in travellers. A famous image in Chinese poetry was of 'gibbons calling at the gorges', reflecting the fact that these animals were often heard but seldom seen among the high, woody, mist-covered cliff sides they inhabited...

Chinese paintings often associate gibbons with cranes. Gibbons' long arms and cranes' long necks indicate longevity and both creatures are appreciated for the graceful movements. A common notion was that, by linking hands, gibbons formed themselves into chains that allowed them to dangle from branches and dip drinking water from streams. Another popular image from Chinese and Japanese art depicts gibbons, sometimes linked in chains, grasping for the moon's reflection in a pool of water...The image is a parable for greed and striving for things that cannot be attained...

-- from Ape by John Sorenson


Black-crested gibbons

Echizen Kurage

An unsettling animal picture to end the week. Nomura's jellyfish (and friend):


from Ariel Schwartz: Japanese Fight Giant Jellyfish Invasion with Jellyfish-infused Space Candy via Simon Donner.

Schwartz credits Pink Tentacle, which shows something incredibly large.

カラス

A Japanese study of urban crows found that the birds dropped hard-shelled nuts in the road at traffic intersections for cars to roll over and crack. When the traffic was heavy, the crows waited for the walk signal before grabbing their snacks from the street. How can you not admire that?

The crow's ability to adapt to man-made environments - in contrast to the struggles of more fragile species - has made it one of the planet's most successful bird species. But this achievement is the source of Haupt's ambivalence: it's everyone's loss, she reminds us, if we create an environment that accommodates only tough survivor species like the crow.

-- from a review by of Deborah Blum of Crow Planet by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.

Perhaps in the long run crows, rats, cockroaches and other 'tough' species will radiate into endless new forms most beautiful.

Ocean in a box

An audioslideshow from Okinawa.

The expression of emotion in Man and...

In coming decades, [Minoru] Asada expects science will come up with a "robo species" that has learning abilities somewhere between those of a human and other primate species such as the chimpanzee.

-- from Japan child robot mimicks infant learning.