Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and it looks like my
quarantine will last for two more weeks rather than just one. Ah well, this is
life – you keep your hopes up and you get disappointed for certain; what next?
Let us get back to Dixon and his ‘Zoology of the Future’. This
may be the best-known Dixon book, and the most popular, but right now let us
focus on its’ more literary aspects, to wit – its’ semi-nihilism. In the first
part – the one that talks about the wildlife of temperate woodlands – we learn that
not just humanity died out, but also its’ domestic animals as well as deer.
Here we have an echo of a more U.K.-style reality: the wildlife of Great
Britain has gone noticeably to smaller animals, usually not much bigger than a
red fox or a European badger; any species of a physically bigger beast usually
needs human assistance to survive – in a zoo, a nature preserve, etc. Fair
enough, but it should be noted that outside of U.K., especially in North
America, but also in the mainland Old World – the picture is not so grim…
Pause.
That is actually one of the Achilles heels’ of Dougal’s
universes: they are so visibly… custom-made. Can rabbits evolve to replace
deer, llamas, and so on? Yes, but it is very unlikely: they live and reproduce
in burrows; their young are born blind and helpless, unlike the young of the
ungulates…and of their closest cousins the hares. No offence to the members of
team Rabbit, but if ungulates would die out, my money is on the team Hare to
replace them instead… Pause.
The ungulates actually have not died out; aside from some ‘old-fashioned’
species on some specialized island, the world of the ‘Zoology of the Future’
also features ‘hornheads’ and ‘gigantolopes’. Question: how did the rabbits
(and/or hares) get the opportunity to evolve into ungulates and the like if the
ungulates were right there instead?
…The same goes for the carnivorous mammals. There are
various predatory descendants of rats – but there are also ‘true’ carnivorous
mammals, (fissipeds), and while some do live on islands, (for example, the
descendants of the mongooses live on South America, which is an island
continent once more in the future), some of them don’t – they live right on the
mainland, alongside giant carnivorous rats (Eurasia?), carnivorous primates (Africa),
and so on. Is that possible? Yes, but in that case, the end result shouldn’t be
too different from what we have right now – ‘true’ carnivorous mammals
dominate, while carnivorous rodents, insectivores, and etc. just scurry in the
undergrowth instead, decidedly not
their equals. But-?
But nothing. If ‘The New Dinosaurs’ are actually a very
educational book, the ‘Zoology of the Future’ aimed more to shock and awe, and
given how we discuss it still decades after it was released, then it had
certainly succeeded at that. Here, I just wanted to point out that it got faint
echoes of Jules Verne’s ‘Time Traveller’ novel instead – remember it? The main
character, a contemporary of the author, goes to a far-off future and discovers
that the humanity had split into two species – the eloi and the morlocks, and
the rest of the wildlife apparently died-out… Pause.
…Yes, unlike Verne’s novel in question, Dixon’s ‘Zoology of
the Future’ has no humans…and its’ apes are decidedly odd: they are carnivores
of the African savanna…and they got tails. How and why apes lost their tails in
our RL past – is another story, but lose it they did completely, and so, it is
evolutionarily and anatomically impossible for them to have it back. Pause.
Here is the thing. In many ways, Dixon’s beasts from the ‘Zoology
of the Future’, are not quite natural or realistic, but they are still very
enjoyable, (the night stalkers or whatever the giant carnivorous flying bats of
the Batavia Island aside). For many people, they were THE introduction to the
world of speculative zoology, (me included), and so they should be treated with
respect!
Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!
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