lions | The Casual Blog

October 25, 2024

More on our South African safari and new discoveries on birds and plants

I finally finished going through the thousands of pictures I took during our South Africa safari, and found a few more I wanted to share.

During the safari, we saw animals doing many of the things we know they have to do, like eating, drinking, bathing, teaching their young, and mating. We didn’t see any actual kills, but we did see several big cats feeding on recent kills. I debated whether to share photographs of those, since it’s unavoidably sad, and perhaps upsetting, to deal with the death of a beautiful creature like an impala. But I also see an element of beauty in the predator and his or her success.

The lions, leopards, and cheetahs must kill to survive and to feed their young. It’s just the way they’re made. It turns out that it’s quite difficult for them to hunt successfully, and they often fail. Grazing animals are highly sensitive to predator risks, and most of them are, when healthy, either faster or stronger than their predators. On this trip, we watched a hidden lion lie in ambush for lengthy periods hoping, unsuccessfully, for an unwary zebra or impala.

The grazing animals that the big cats catch are generally the old, young, or ill. In fact, their hunting is important for the health of the grazing herds. It keeps diseases in check and prevents overpopulation and overgrazing that would lead to more death. Nature generally manages to keep things remarkably well balanced among predators, prey, and plants, when there isn’t human interference.

There’s a vast amount that we do not know about nature, which is exciting, in a way: there’s so much more to learn. This week the New Yorker had a lively and interesting piece by Rivka Galchen about what scientists are learning about bird song.

I’ve been interested in bird song for many years, but mainly as a way to identify birds that won’t allow themselves to be seen. From watching flocks of big birds like tundra swans and Canada geese, I’d come to suspect that their vocalizations allowed them to coordinate their travels together. Now researchers are confirming the suspicion that their sounds have a lot of communicative content.

Scientists have long recognized that birds make specific alarm calls, and are learning that some of those calls differentiate the threats of, say, a hawk or a snake. It turns out that bird parents make sounds while incubating their eggs that the developing baby bird learns. We’re learning that bird communication is more complex than we thought, which indicates that their intelligence is more complex than we thought.

With fall arriving, it’s gotten a bit chilly for me to have my morning tea on our deck, but when it’s mild I like to sit out there as the sun is rising and listen to the birds. I’ve been using the Merlin app to identify calls and songs I don’t already know. The app has gotten a lot better over the last couple of years, and is almost always accurate, at least as to the birds I’m familiar with.

Speaking of the natural world, I’m in the midst of a remarkable book about plants: The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, by Zoe Schlanger. Schlanger has reviewed the scientific literature and interviewed leading botany experts researching how plants sense the world and deal with their environments. Her style is friendly and approachable, and her content is at times mind blowing.

It turns out that plants are much more proactive than we used to think. There are species that modify their chemistry in response to predators to make themselves less appetizing. There are ones that send out chemical signals to warn others of their kind of particular predators. Some even send out chemical signals to summon insects that will prey upon the plants’ enemies.

There is considerable evidence that plants respond to touch. Some researchers have found that they respond to certain sounds, which we might call hearing. They modify their behavior to avoid threats and to improve their nutrition. The puzzle is that they lack a clear hearing organ, like an ear, or a centralized interpretive organ, like a brain. How they do it is yet to be discovered.

But it’s hard to avoid the thought that plants are in some sense conscious. Schlanger recognizes that the idea of plant intelligence is still controversial in the botanical science world, and gives credit to scientists for being cautious and careful. In this time of great anxiety about the human world of politics and war, her new book is a welcome reminder that, quite apart from humans, the world has been and continues to be full of wonders.

October 14, 2024

Our safari in South Africa

Last week Sally and I got back from a two-week safari trip to South Africa. The travel was grueling, but it was fantastic to see so many animals living there. I took thousands of photos and haven’t had time to look through them all. But I’ve taken a quick pass through the first few days’ worth, and found some I wanted to share, along with some thoughts related to the trip.

Nature is amazingly creative! Seeing such a variety of its creations up close was, for me, a kind of religious experience – maybe a Taoist one. It highlighted the fascinating web of relationships between animals, plants, microbes, soil, and water. Over time, evolution keeps coming up with new designs and new solutions. In a time of a lot of human misery and confusion, time in the South African bush helped me take a longer and more hopeful view.

I especially enjoyed watching the animals’ relationships with their families and others. Some species, like elephants, are very social, and seem to enjoy being with their families and herds. An important part of their lives is working together to find nourishment and take care of the young ones.

On this trip I was seeing the animals more as individuals, rather than just representatives of a species. I started to see some differences in their personalities, such as that some were more wary than others. Some like to be clean, and others less so. Some of them were clearly curious about us humans, a species they might never have seen before.

We traveled with a small group of wildlife photographers organized and led by my friend Jennifer Hadley with Noelle van Muiden. We spent five nights in the Timbavati Game Reserve, which is just to the northeast of Kruger National Park, and five nights in Mandikwe Game Reserve just south of Botswana. Our Timbavati camp, Bataleur, was extremely comfortable, and Mandikwe Hills was truly luxurious. We had friendly service and fine food.

Best of all, there were big animals all around us. We had numerous good views of the so-called big five (elephants, lions, leopards, rhinoceros, and buffalo) and many others just as remarkable, including cheetahs, giraffes, impalas, kudus, zebras, ostriches, warthogs, and wildebeests.

Our days began when it was still dark. After a quick snack, at 5:00 a.m. we loaded our gear and ourselves onto a big Toyota Land Cruiser. The vehicle was topless, with three rows of bench seats behind the driver and a seat on the hood for our tracker.

On the cold mornings, we stayed warm with blankets and hot water bottles. When it warmed up, the blankets were useful for protecting our cameras from the dust. We rode along over bumpy roads, and sometimes rugged off-road areas, for extended periods.

Our game drives generally started off heading towards an area where a rare species like a cheetah or rhino had recently been sighted. But en route we almost always came across other interesting big things, like elephants and giraffes, or smaller ones, like hyenas and mongoose. Sometimes we were quite close to the animals. We took most of our photographs from inside the vehicle, but we also did a bit of trekking.

When we were on foot, Noelle gave us some lessons in tracking, and did some actual tracking to locate lions, rhinos, and other creatures. I had recently read The Tracker, by Tom Brown, and learned a bit about tracking as a skill set, but still, it was impressive to see Noelle and our tracker agreeing on estimates of the time the animals had passed and what they were likely up to.

There are no bathrooms out in the bush, but there are limitless places to go when the need arises. Once, after I’d stepped behind a tree, I heard Noelle say I should hurry along. I took the time needed to do what I had to do, then returned to the vehicle. It turned out I’d been about 25 yards from a sleeping lion. Fortunately, he’d kept on sleeping.

We normally returned to camp in the late morning to eat and relax, and then went out again in mid-afternoon. At times we would sit and watch sleeping predators for a while in hopes they would get up, or exotic nesting birds in hopes they would fly. We also enjoyed sitting at watering holes as various creatures came by to have a drink.

The variety and beauty of the different animals continues to amaze me, as does the variety of complex systems within the ecosystem. Every creature plays a role, whether it be spreading seeds, consuming dead creatures, or culling the herds. The game reserves are a reminder of what is possible when humans give some room and respect to other species.

Unfortunately, we’ve taken over much of the habitat that non-human animals once lived on, and animal populations continue to fall worldwide. Per a new report from the World Wildlife Fund, over the past 50 years animal populations have declined by 73 percent. The full Living Planet Report is available here.

This decline has cascading effects. According to the chief scientist of the World Wildlife Fund, “Vertebrate populations underpin ecosystem health and the services we get from ecosystems like stable climate, abundant and clean water, healthy soils to grow food, productive fisheries that supply people with protein…. If you have that kind of decline in vertebrate populations around the globe, you’re going to have troubles supporting and sustaining human health and well-being over time.”

The terrible loss of animals has a number of causes, but a major one is loss of habitat when wild areas are used to produce grain for animals raised as food for humans. About 40 percent of habitable land is used for such purposes. The report notes that one simple thing we can do to mitigate this problem is to eat less meat.

One last note: this week I was cheered to learn that the Nobel Peace Prize went to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors that has worked to raise awareness of the horrors of nuclear weapons. The Washington Post reported on this here.

Somehow we’ve gotten used to the possibility that civilization could be destroyed in a few minutes with the enormous nuclear weapons currently deployed, and just don’t think about it. Indeed, in the US, almost none of us know that we’re currently in the process of spending hundreds of billions on new nuclear weapons and facilities. See this NY Times report.

This issue is not on the political discussion agenda, and it should be. To me, arms racing and rolling the dice on nuclear annihilation seems crazy, and it seems like simple sanity to work for arms control as a high priority. Of course, others apparently disagree, but surely we should talk about it.

April 28, 2023

Traveling to Africa, and getting back

Last week I was in St. Augustine, Florida, at the annual Birding and Photo Fest. I took a lot of pictures of the big birds at the Alligator Farm rookery, and will be sorting through those and sharing a few soon.

But first, I wanted to pass along a few more pictures from our March safari adventure in Botswana. Even though it was only a few weeks ago, it’s hard for me to believe all these animals are really there! So much of the earth has been taken over by humans, and there are only a few places where other animals still live their lives as they did long ago. Africa is really special in that way. It was a joy and a privilege to be there, and I look forward to going again.

However, the air travel to and from was far from pleasurable. To get there, we were scheduled to fly United from Raleigh to Washington to Newark to Cape Town. But our first flight was delayed, and the tight connection in Washington meant we had to change everything. We eventually got from Raleigh to Washington to Munich (overnight, with a ten hour layover in Munich), and then (after another overnight flight) to Cape Town. We were quite fried when we got to Cape Town, but the morning was sunny and mild, and our room at Noah House was charming. We slept for a couple of hours, and then went to find the Red Line bus stop for a little tour of the city.

On the way, we got scammed out of two credit cards. I’d like to think that things would not have unfolded so badly if I’d had my normal wits about me, but anyhow, I didn’t, and they did.

As we walked down the city street, a well-spoken man stopped us and said that they were shooting a movie on the street, and we needed to walk on another street. I’d seen movies being made on the streets of New York, so this didn’t strike me as particularly strange. As we were discussing this, another local man came up, and said he had the same problem. The first man pointed him in the direction he needed to go, and told us we should follow along.

We followed along around the corner and into a convenience store, where the fellow there said we needed to get a document. To do this, we needed to put our credit card in the credit card reader. We hesitated, but another man said there was no charge, and this was a normal requirement.

The credit card reader didn’t seem to be working, and one of the fellows offered to “help.” Then we tried a second card, which disappeared in the machine. Someone said that the machine was slow, and it would come out in a minute. After three minutes, I realized something was definitely wrong. The men in the store were gone.

Then a young woman appeared in the store. She said the men were scam artists, and they made her stay in the back of the store.

We were confused and shaken, but realized that one of the men was skilled at sleight of hand, and had made our cards disappear. Sally urged me to call the banks straight away, and I did. In the few minutes it took to get to the fraud departments, the scammers wracked up almost $40 thousand in charges.

We were not held accountable for the charges, which was good. And once we’d settled down, we were grateful that we hadn’t been held up at gunpoint or physically assaulted. Fortunately, we had one more credit card to use on the trip. Things could have been worse. But it was a rocky start. The one positive I took away was a dose of humility, and more sympathy for others who make big errors of judgment.

Our travel within South Africa and Botswana, by buses, airplanes, and boats, all went smoothly, but returning to the U.S. was brutal. Although I’d picked aisle seats when booking through the Chase travel service, United put us in center seats all the way back. Our route again involved a long layover, this time in Newark, trying to get to Washington, and then, finally, to Raleigh. We waited the better part of an hour at RDU to get our bags. Total door-to-door travel time: 43 hours.

But for all that, I’m so glad we did it, and already starting to think of our next trip there. We learned a lot about the animals, but there’s so much more to learn. Spending time with them also helps our thinking about other dimensions – the communities of big animals, the relationships between communities, their relationships with other forms of life, and our relationships with all of these.

September 12, 2022

Wildebeests in various states, querying MAGA, doubting Artemis, and getting curious about animal communication

Wildebeests in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

Working through the big pile of my pictures from Tanzania has been absorbing, but also exhausting. I’ve been trying to remember how things looked, and figuring out how to interpret the images. In the process, I’ve been learning new things about my processing software – Lightroom, Photoshop, and Topaz AI products.

One of our prime objectives in Tanzania was to see some of the large herds of wildebeests that annually cross the Mara River. It’s challenging to convey the power and raw beauty of these crossings, but I tried. I also am sharing some photos of large predators. Warning: there is a picture of lions on a recently killed zebra that might not be suitable for all readers.

Artificial intelligence is once again a buzzword, but let me just say first, the new versions of Topaz DeNoise AI and Sharpen AI are amazing. There are clearly important advances going on in AI, which could soon surpass our ability to understand them, if they haven’t already. It’s far from impossible that our intelligent software could go from helpful to dangerous, if it hasn’t already.

It’s surprising that tech journalists ordinarily focus on the question of if AI can equal human intelligence. It has already equaled or surpassed what humans can do in some domains (playing complex games, using correct grammar) and is rapidly moving into areas we’ve thought of as artistic (composing music, making paintings, writing fiction). But people continue to believe there is some unique and valuable quality in human thinking that can never be equaled. However that may be, we have no shortage of evidence that human thinking has some systematic glitches.

A prime example: MAGA Republicans, who have decided to believe and/or promote a wild and enormous lie – that Trump was not defeated in the last election, but was rather the victim of a vast fraudulent conspiracy. There are, of course, Republicans who understand that this is nonsense and continue to support American democracy. But most of those traditional Republicans have become very quiet, and acquiesced in the takeover of the GOP by the Trump faction.

So what is wrong with MAGA folks? Of course, there are many individual stories, but the big drivers seem to be fear of the Others (those with different skin tones, religions, languages, genders, etc.), loss of traditional status (relative to the Others and to the wealthy), bewilderment and frustration at changing social norms, and economic anxiety. Whatever the causes, there are clearly strong feelings causing MAGA folks to detach themselves from ordinary reality and swear allegiance to a comical-but-dangerous charlatan.

One thing that struck me recently which I’m trying to keep in mind: almost no one thinks they are a bad person, or doing things for an evil reason. Almost everyone thinks they are a good person, or at least, no worse than average. MAGA believers are no exception. They view their principles as well aligned with all that is right and good.

In this sense, MAGA people mean well. As individuals, they may have many good qualities, and like all sentient beings, they are entitled to affection and respect. But as aggregated political actors, they have gone off the deep end, and threaten us with disaster.

For quite a while after the election, I expected the MAGA fever to break and our normal far-from-perfect politics to resume. But recently it’s gotten worse. Republican leaders and candidates vie to stake out the most extreme positions favored by the MAGA element, and some are promoting violence against political enemies and even civil war. This is definitely not American politics as usual.

As President Biden recently pointed out, most Americans do not share this mindset, and it’s still possible we can avoid joining the league of repressive authoritarian nations. The question is not whether MAGA Republicans will change: they are, at least for now, fully committed to the end of fair elections, equal rights, and other key features of our democracy. The question is whether those who thought they could safely be ignored will wake up and passionately oppose them in the coming elections.

As if that weren’t enough to worry about! But, with apologies, I’m going to give one more timely example of what looks to me like a mass delusion. My excuse is that since it recently became a big news story, I haven’t noticed anyone else raising the issue of its essential craziness. I’m referring to the Artemis Project, which, we’re told, is a vital effort to put people back on the moon. As of this writing, two much-hyped launch attempts have been canceled for technical reasons.

I’m a longtime fan of science and technology, including the amazing new Webb space telescope, and was as excited as anyone at the first moon landing in 1969. But I felt no great sorrow after we discontinued the Apollo program in 1972. We’d been there and done that. Even then, it wasn’t clear whether anything of lasting value had been accomplished.

As the years passed without more moon missions, I thought perhaps the lesson had quietly sunk in that the billions of dollars spent on going to the moon (around $25B) could have been used better – perhaps on climate change mitigation, preventing species’ extinction, improving health care, education etc. (the list of underfunded serious projects is long). Then, out of the blue (at least to me), came Artemis – which has already cost $41 billion, and is expected to eventually cost $93 billion.

This is a lot of money, even by U.S. government budget standards. You might suppose that it involves cutting edge technology employed for some vital purpose. But no, not really. The rocket technology is decades old, and not even close to state of the art. And as best I can tell, no one is even trying to argue that it is likely to achieve important scientific advances.

The accounts I’ve heard refer vaguely to the possibility that Artemis is a step towards setting up colonies on the moon, which would be a step towards colonies on Mars. Perhaps there’s hope that a few corporations can make good money extracting valuable minerals, and a worry that Earth will become uninhabitable. Thanks to Artemis, a few ultrawealthy folks might try to mount rockets and flee the planet, as in the underappreciated dark comedy Don’t Look Up.

Anyhow, the whole idea is ridiculous. No matter how badly we spoil the Earth, it’s unlikely to ever get more desolate than the moon, or Mars.

Is there any other possible justification for this bizarre project? It could well be driven by corporate welfare for big military contractors and the legalized corruption of our political funding process. And of course, there is always the combination of nationalism and chauvinism that wants to be or at least seem superior to other peoples and nations.

Anyhow, Artemis looks to be yet another example of how our minds’ reasoning powers can fail on a mass basis – thinking we’re creating something to be proud of when we’re actually wasting precious resources, money, and time. At this point, despite the huge costs and repeated failures to launch, junking the project is not on the table for political discussion.

Still, this fiasco could do one positive thing: make us feel a little more conscious and humble about the flaws in our reasoning powers. Even our smartest rocket scientists, physicists, and philosophers can lose their bearings. As our teachers used to say, we need to double check our work.

On a more cheerful tech note, the NY Times’s Emily Anthes reports that scientists are using deep learning and other technologies to start decoding the communications of various non-human animals. Various programs are looking at creatures like rodents, lemurs, and whales, and discovering that social groups even have different dialects.

Some of us have long suspected that there’s a lot of communication going on among non-human animals, and wondered why more humans haven’t been more curious about those interchanges. The received wisdom has been that only humans have language, which was one of the questionable ideas used to justify domination and cruel exploitation of all other animals. Maybe the latest AI will help us understand animals differently.

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