Endlings: Przewalski's horse and Genghis Khan - Nov 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about BB ‘Endlings’ once more. This week’s animal – the Przewalski’s horse.

Now, last week’s episode, about the Thylacine, (aka the Tasmanian wolf), was rather lacklustre; this week’s episode is something else because of two points. One is that the Thylacine and the Przewalski’s wild horseserve as foils to each other – both were captured for the zoos, but while that served just as an extra cause of extinction for the Thylacine, for the Przewalski’s horse it was a salvation – the species was able to survive its’ extinction in the wild In the zoos, and those zoo animals served as the initial breeding stock for the rewilding program. Only, as BB points out, returning a formerly extinct (in the wild) animal into the wild is only the beginning, much more management lies ahead. This just might be a subtle criticism to such programs, as Colossal, who appear to do exactly that… once they get to it, of course. When that happens is another question, but BB is gearing up to be prepared already.

That said, the point that BB brings up in this week’s episode is a good one – humans are still the dominant force on the planet, many things happen on Earth with their involvement, and living space is one of them. Namely: to survive in the wild, the Przewalski’s horses need a certain ecosystem, and without human help that would be impossible. Moreover, to achieve this ecosystem, to accommodate the Przewalski’s wild horses, a certain amount of land had to be given up to them, land that could be used otherwise, by other species, including humans. In Mongolia, In case of the Przewalski’s horse, this came true. In other cases, it might not have, and as BB point out, PR and aesthetics (and national pride) were very important, if not crucial, in achieving this – and we come to the second point.

Genghis Khan. One of Earth history’s lynchpins. In this week’s historical anecdote, he, supposedly, saw some of the wild Przewalski’s horses in his day and age, but his horse was spooked by them, and did not approach them. Good for the horses! GK was one of the most formidable and ruthless leaders in human history, and his take on nature was to organize giant, organized (sorry about the repetition), hunts, that took their toll on nature, including wild horses, most likely. Yes, the scale with modern hunting is not comparable, but hunting alone does not cover all of the extinctions on this planet…

Back to Przewalski’s horses and Thylacines, another reason why the latter perished while the former did not… yes, because an Australian marsupial had a worse time surviving in old time zoos than an Asian placental mammal. However, the fact that horses have an entirely different PR than wolves (or anything wolf-related) do, also served a fact. Humans – especially those of the West, of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant (initial) origin wanted to save Przewalski’s horses, and so they did, while the Thylacine… while with the Thylacine, it was the other way, and so the Thylacine is gone, extinct, at least officially… Real life sucks, remember?

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Phaedra and Natalie Haynes

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So, let us talk about Ms. Haynes and her book ‘Pandora’s Jar’ once more, or, more specifically, about the Phaedra entry.

Now, who is Phaedra? Ariadne’s younger sister, who did marry Theseus and it cost all of them dearly. More generally, she is a one-story character – she is here to mess Theseus’ established family, to cause the death of his son Hippolytus from Theseus’ previous relationship, and that is it. She is done and gone… but Ms. Hayes is not.

By now, people are beginning to accept/realize officially that in some aspects, women are not different from men; they have had a piece of the power pie for a few decades now, and the world has not become a better place. Sure, it is all the fault of men, no doubt, but even KK’s Netflix series, ‘All’s Fair’, was unable to sell itself on this premise. Maybe all is the fault of men, but the society did not care, and ‘All’s Fair’ is a failure rather than a success.

Ms. Haynes takes a somewhat different approach than KK and the rest of the K-clan; her fiction (like ‘Stone Blind’ and ‘1000 Ships’) often portrait women as a part of an all-encompassing sisterhood; almost all of them can get along, regardless of the meddling men, but her language is smooth and politically correct and detached; almost emotionless, (more Athena than Medusa) and easily forgettable.

‘PJ’ is largely like this too, even though it is non-fiction; some of the women discussed in this essay collection, such as Clytemnestra and Medea, are ambiguous, but Ms. Haynes is not ruffled, she deals with them as they come along. Then there is Phaedra, and unexpectedly Ms. Haynes’ tone shifts – now she is quite loud and driven and makes her point clearly: Phaedra is not wicked or a liar, (not really); the men who proclaim her so are the true villains and misogynists; just look at their treatment of Hades and Persephone!

…What Hades and Persephone have to do with Phaedra and co.? Here is the thing. Each entry in ‘PJ’ goes as follows: first Ms. Haynes retells the story of each female character (using info that is easily found on Wiki or Google), then she lists and/or re-tells one or another famous ancient play where this character starred; then she talks (or re-tells) a more modern adaptation of the play; and then she discusses some of the artwork – ancient or otherwise – that also feature this character. Pause.

More precisely, a lot of information Ms. Haynes tells us is either available in public domains, or she is just re-telling one or another ancient play (or modern movie, etc.), in her own words. Not quite the champion that girl power needs. She is better than KK who just has beautiful aesthetics covering up an empty void, but then again, it is KK. Anyone is better than she is.

The ‘Phaedra’ entry, meanwhile, is not too different from the other entries; the complication here is that there is not a lot of information about Phaedra, unlike, say, Medea or Penelope, so Ms. Haynes spends a lot of time discussing, first, the fate of Hades and Persephone, and then re-telling the Euripides’ play ‘Hippolytus’.

Again, this is not unique; a big amount of the ‘Eurydice’ chapter is given to Admetus and Alcestis; there is not a lot to tell about Eurydice either, and Ms. Haynes was paid by page, or was commissioned to write a set number of pages (and about a certain list of characters), so she had to improvise. She did, but she was nowhere as fired up about Eurydice as she was about Phaedra. Maybe something about Phaedra’s situation hit Ms. Haynes close to home? Who knows, we will never do.

As for Phaedra’s story per se… For a start, the main trio of characters are not exactly human. Theseus is the demigod son of Poseidon, of course, and his son Hippolytus is Poseidon’s grandson, true, but his mother was an Amazon.

The Amazons were liminal figures In the Greco-Roman culture; they dwelled in the space between RL and fiction. The meetings of Greeks and Romans with women of other cultures – Scythians, Celts, Teutons, who did not believe, or could not afford, the Greco-Roman sexual-social segregation inspired them. See, this way of life is taxing on both men and women – women have no independence and are completely dependent on men (a humiliating position), while men have to carry out all of the financial strain of their family – a position that is not much better. Therefore, it is safe to say, that in the ancient times sexism and misogyny were features of the elite – the lower classes could not afford them and so they were not as sexist or misogynist as their superiors, who ignored them. Pause. What about the Amazons?

The Amazons did not fit into this worldview at all – they distorted or challenged it. Their kingdom was a kingdom of women who were the ones in charge, the politicians, the warriors, and so on, and the men were subservient, if they were there at all. If the Amazons were cats, frogs, or something similar, it would not be a problem, but the Amazons were humans and that what made the Greeks (and the Romans, and the other Europeans) so angry: here was an alternate society that worked. Of course, it was also a work of fiction, and so the ancient authors had no problem in sending various male heroes, such as Heracles and Theseus, against the Amazons, and defeat them, even though the Amazons were supernaturally strong and supernaturally beautiful – no glory in defeating a land full of homely women, now is there?

Of course, sometimes it went the other way around – after Theseus married his Amazon lover, and the pair had had Hippolytus, the Amazons got their act together to invade Greece and besiege Athens, all in proper, military manner. The Amazons have to be formidable and competent, or else there is no glory in defeating them, you know? Only, in this case, the victory came with an unexpected cost – Theseus’ own Amazon wife died, leaving behind a son, Hippolytus, who was slightly more than an ordinary puny mortal – this is why Aphrodite became so peeved when Hippolytus threw his lot with Artemis, not with her.

However, this is also why she has to be subtle – Hippolytus is also the grandson of Poseidon, and everyone on Olympus treated the earth-shaking god-king of the sea gently, (except for Zeus – but he does not feature here, so let us bypass him). The direct approach wouldn’t work here – there was a chance, no matter how slim, that Aphrodite’s meddling would get back to Poseidon, who might decide to come over to Aphrodite’s home one night with his trident, his crown, and a pack of condoms to do onto her what he did onto Medusa, since Aphrodite’s meddling with Theseus and Hippolytus gave him a legitimate opening and who can resist the goddess of Love? Therefore, Aphrodite went with the roundabout option via Phaedra.

Phaedra is a one-story character, but she is also a member of the Cretan royal house. Her father is Minos … whether or not the same Minos who was the son of Zeus and Europa is open to debate, but Phaedra still has the blood of Zeus on her father’s side, and her mother’s Pasiphae, the queen of Crete, the daughter of Helios and a sea nymph, a demigoddess who was able to get intimate with Poseidon’s white bull and bear the Minotaur. A daughter of such a woman (and a man), you would think that Hippolytus would have no chance against her, but Hippolytus did not succumb, and rejected his stepmother, (whose age in regards to him is unknown); he did not bring shame onto his father’s home – and died.

Phaedra left a note accusing Hippolytus of raping her, and committed suicide. Theseus invoked Poseidon and cursed Hippolytus, proclaiming that his son should die. He is the asshole here, not Phaedra or Hippolytus, and Poseidon, who granted his wish, is barely better – of all the gods that could have issue with sexual abuse he is in the far end of the line…

Regardless, a bull of sea – maybe the same one who fathered the Minotaur, cough, came from the sea and caused Hippolytus to perish from a chariot crash. The truth about Phaedra's lie was revealed too late. The scene was set for Theseus’ further (and final) fall from grace. How Hippolytus and Phaedra fare on the other side is unknown. What is left?

…The pointedly partisan stance of Ms. Haynes on the story – she is normally not like this, but pointedly fair and neutral, this is why her fiction is quite forgettable. Yes, the women are in general good and better than the men are, but some men are also decent fellows – and this approach takes the bite from her bark, makes her fiction, well, into fiction… as in fan fiction, written about ancient Greek (and Roman) myths. She is trying to revolutionize the world’s view about via re-telling of the ancient classical myths. She gets accolades for that, but no lasting impact, it looks like. Pity, if she was more as how she was in ‘Phaedra’ and less like how she is via ‘Stone Blind’ or ‘1000 ships’, she might have actually succeeded. Instead, she is more successful than KK was, but only just. The patriarchy – or rather, the patrilinage – will go on. Real life sucks, you know?

Well, this is it for now – see you all soon!

Endlings: Thylacine (and the Gorgon) - Nov 10

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about Ms. Haynes’ Medusa-based novel? Pause

In truth, I wanted to talk about BB/Endlings ‘Thylacine’ episode, but not unlike what we had with the Florida panther last month, BB/Endlings found their stride: it is dutiful retelling of Wikipedia articles, including the Thylacine one. When the ‘Wild Kratts’ cartoon series had the titular characters travel back in time to see the Thylacine and its’ extinction, it was actually a more derived take – and ‘Wild Kratts’ is a children’s cartoon!.. Where were we?

Here is the thing. Ms. Haynes positions herself as a progressive person, she talks about the Greek myths from a more feminist/feminine P.O.V., but…

…but these days (mid-2020s) it might not be enough. Obviously, kudos to her for not talking smack about other mythological writers, but it does make her essays – about Helen, Medusa, the Amazons – feel rather flat and one-dimensional: they are dutiful retellings of the depictions of the mythical women in the modern or post-Medieval art, writing and sometimes in other media, such as TV series. There also dutiful retellings of the myths of the mythical women in question; they are broken by sarcastic comments (that do not amount to anything and serve to better depict Ms. Haynes as a person), by rhetorical questions (that are not usually followed up), and by the like. One can imagine Ms. Haynes as, say, a university or a college teacher, who is delivering lectures to her class, engaging them in discussion and conversation, trying to make them think about her subject, and largely forgetting about them once they graduate and leave her class behind. There will always be exceptions, of course, but usually the effort behind those exceptions will come from the other people, not her. Ms. Haynes non-fiction book, ‘Pandora’s Jar’, has the same feeling. It is quite informative, of course, but not particularly progressive – or ‘progressive’; in a Protestant/post-Protestant world of the modern Western culture, this can make the difference between eternity (remembrance) and oblivion…

As for her fiction books… ‘A Thousand Ships’ is based on various Greek (and Roman?) plays about what happened during the last days of the Trojan War and what happened after, including the Odyssey and a few other chapters. Here, Ms. Haynes tries something different, such as Penelope’s personal development, but-

-but what can you do, if you are writing a novel (or another piece) based on someone else’s story, such as the Greek literary works and folk myths, and not your own? Most often, one out of the three: you can dutifully retell the myth such as it is, (Mr. Pullman did in his book of the Greek myths), you can write something that is entirely your own, (aka your own work, which can be argued pro and contra, but it’s yours), or you can re-tell the original story (for example Perseus’ and Medusa’s) with just a few different tweaks ‘behind the scenes’, a sort of crypto-history, put otherwise. In addition, this is how Ms. Haynes’ novels feel like – dutiful re-telling of the traditional myths, with a few comments – sarcastic, poignant, etc., it doesn’t matter – scattered here and there; they don’t amount to anything but to make her novels stand out from the rest and make them more sellable. It is not a bad strategy, it certainly is sensible, but, again, it makes her books, novels and otherwise, a one-hit wonder, forgettable quite easily.

… ‘Stone Blind’ is the telling of Medusa, Perseus, and Athena; Ms. Haynes is being sympathetic towards Medusa, making Perseus a coward, and the decapitated head of the Gorgon eventually petrify Athena, who thus finds peace in death. This is actually quite clever, but the mild, respectful, (and sometimes sarcastic) language of the novel wears away any controversial bits, making the readers of ‘Stone Blind’ feel stone cold towards the novel’s characters. The Gorgons are not bad. Athena is cold. Perseus is a coward, apparently. So on, but currently there is plenty of fan works that drive the same point home; in ‘Thousand Ships’ Ms. Haynes made Penny the Amazon queen suicidal – that is something else, but we’ll talk about it some other time. What about ‘Endlings’?

Same thing that goes down with Ms. Haynes, really. The first episode, about the passenger pigeons was intriguing and thought provoking because there was talk about bringing the avian back (and we talked about it). The second was also interesting, because of the silphium’s ambiguity, (and we talked about it too). However, the next episode – the Florida panther – and this episode – the Thylacine – are straightforward: the pumas are dying out in Florida because (insert your reason here), and the Thylacine is gone because (insert your reason here II). Maybe it disappeared in the second half of the 20^th century, not the first, but it is still gone, and it cannot be brought back (because humans don’t want to, apparently – is it so much harder to bring back the Thylacine than the dire wolf or the giant moa?). Aye, ‘Endlings’ are supposed to be sad – but sad because of the inevitable extinction, not because they are just that depressive and simply-made… Ah well, this is real life. It sucks, remember?

…Well, this is it for now, see you all soon!

Helen

 Something quite different: a short drabble about queen Helen of Sparta, (because real life still sucks):

The pearly glow never faded. Not at dawn, not in the echoing halls, not even in the deepest, darkest corners of Olympus. Helen, the woman who launched a thousand ships, was perpetually bathed in it. It was the light of her perfection, a gift… or perhaps a curse, depending on the day.

She was, as the gods intended, a masterpiece frozen in time. Her skin, alabaster smooth; her eyes, a startling violet; her lips, eternally curved in a serene, almost ethereal smile. The ultimate objet d'art. And utterly, desperately, bored.

She drifted through the eternal gardens, the nectarine scent of the ambrosia blossoms doing little to alleviate the ennui that gnawed at her divine existence. The gods admired her, of course. They paid her lip service, told her tales of her legendary beauty. But they didn't see her. They saw the idea of her. The tragedy, the catalyst. Not Helen herself.

Her thoughts, as they often did, drifted to Penelope. Penelope of Ithaca. Her cousin. Penelope, who wasn’t blessed (or burdened) with such blinding beauty. Penelope, whose face, Helen remembered, bore the marks of worry lines and the soft creases around her eyes that came from years of laughter and, yes, tears.

Penelope, who aged.

Helen closed her eyes. She remembered a childhood visit to Ithaca. Penelope, already a woman, tending her olive groves. The earthy scent of the oil, the calloused hands that held Helen’s own smooth, pampered ones. Helen had been captivated by Penelope’s quiet strength, her unwavering loyalty.

Now, in her eternal state, Helen understood.

Penelope’s story, though not as loudly sung, was ultimately more resonant. A husband lost, presumed dead. Years spent fending off aggressive suitors with cunning and weaving. A love story sustained by hope and fidelity.

Helen had been a prize, a pawn in a game played by kings and gods. Penelope had been a fortress, a steadfast beacon in a tempestuous sea.

Sometimes, staring at her own flawless reflection in the still waters of the nymph's pool, Helen would whisper a silent wish: to trade the eternal prison of her perfect beauty for one single day in Penelope's weathered, yet infinitely more fulfilling, shoes. To feel the sun on her face, the earth beneath her feet, and the embrace of a love earned, not decreed. A day filled with the imperfections that made life, and Penelope's life especially, so beautifully real.

So, what do you think?

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So, let us talk about Ms. Haynes’ book, ‘Pandora’s Jar’, (PJ) instead. Released in 2020, this is a series of essays about the state of women in the Greek myths, and-

-And let us first call a dog a dog – the Greeks (and the Romans) treated their women quite badly, they established the foundations of the more modern misogyny in their ancient times.

Let us elaborate. On one level – biological and anatomical, humans have two sexes that are anatomically very different, to say nothing of the entire issue of pregnancy and childbirth. But when it comes to society and politics, men and women are not so different; since the 1990s, I think, women are playing an increasingly larger role in the global politics, business, and the like…and the human society hasn’t improved/changed too much – when it comes to values and morals, men and women aren’t so different at all. Natalie Haynes?

Ms. Haynes is trying to champion the female cause – her PJ is all about the injustice that the ancient Greeks (and Romans) did to the female characters in their myths, legends, and so on. That is quite so, Ms. Haynes did a great job in PJ, but… this fact is already admitted by plenty of people, she hasn’t quite discovered anything new, uncovered something previously unknown; rather, she dutifully re-told what already was established, while working in the sufficiently safe territory – the Greek-Roman myths, who offend no one and are a part of the Western culture these days.

The language of Ms. Haynes in PJ is specific also – it is professional, weighted and measured, with sources and outsources, footnotes and endnotes, references and insights… It is the language of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, not of Medusa, who was a being of emotion instead.

Pause. Since we are talking about the obvious and the established by now, let us call out Medusa for what she was (also) – a goddess of death, the embodiment of death… Her head is the head of a corpse; her petrifying gaze is the killing gaze, no more, no less… By going after her head, Perseus goes into the Underworld, into the Afterlife – no wonder he needed the help of the Olympians, Hermes and Athena, to succeed… The feud between Athena and Medusa is probably a later addition, when Medusa was re-cast as a priestess of Athena, who was violated by Poseidon, and Athena transformed/killed her on top of the sexual abuse… Fun… Natalie Haynes?

Ms. Haynes dutifully discussed Medusa’s plight in PJ (2020) and later on in her own fictive novel, ‘Medusa’s Story’ (2024). In the latter, she added her own twists and tweaks, but the basic story is the old one; feel free to read it for yourselves to decide on your own; Medusa (and to a lesser extent) her sisters became celebrities only to succumb to obscurity once more… Pause.

No, seriously, Medusa, her sisters, Perseus, Athena, etc. – they were never real, not in the way they are depicted in the stories at any rate. However, the world runs on stories, and Medusa and Perseus’ story used to be good, (still probably is), but now it is well established, rather worn, and people are not influenced by it as they were before. Fame and celebrity is fleeting, and after fame often comes obscurity, as the movie ‘Amadeus’ showed. Medusa is not like Mozart’s nemesis (in ‘Amadeus’), but not unlike him, she was first made famous as a symbol of a strong, independent woman, and now she is no longer needed.

Elaborating. Throughout the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, Medusa was often used as a feminist icon, but now the feminist movement itself changed. Therefore, Medusa is quietly slipping into obscurity once more, alongside Perseus, Andromeda, and so on. Athena, of course, is doing better, as she is a goddess who figures in many stories, but still…

The difference between gods and demigods is that the gods pop up in many stories, especially if there is a beautiful woman (or a handsome man) involved. Demigods and heroes, (regardless of their gender), usually have only one story to themselves, and once it is done, it is done. Oh, it can be retold, but it is still the same old story, unless you do the Riordan treatment and tell an entirely new one, (but not even Mr. Riordan changed the Medusa and Perseus story) – but that has pratfalls of its own…

Moreover, it is a different story altogether, and we will talk another time about it. For now let’s just point out that Ms. Haynes is trying to dutifully retell the old stories while pretending that she is telling something cutting-edge new (she isn’t), and be done for it. If you disagree with my statement about it, I am ready to listen.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

 

Endlings: Florida Panther - Oct 28

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, which is why I wanted to talk about Riordan and Oshiro’s ‘Court of the Dead’ novel (CoD), when I realized that it was not that different from the Florida panthers. Say what?

This week, ‘Bizarre Beasts’ released the episode about the Florida panthers – the wild cats, not the sports’ team and, again, it is a straightforward retelling of the Wiki page, plus an audio quote of Ms. Betty Osceola, an important person among the Miccosukee Native Americans. She is talking, to nobody’s surprise, about the Florida puma, and-

-And, yes, the obligatory statement: the North American ‘panther’ is another name for the puma, Puma concolor; it is only a distant relative to the ‘true’ panthers – the jaguar and the leopard; its’ closest relatives are the cheetah and the jaguarondi, a little-known wild cat that doesn’t look anything like the jaguar. Pause.

…All cats resemble one another; the differences between a tiger, a puma, a bobcat, and a housecat are mainly due to their sizes; there are few specialists as there are among the bovids, for example, or the rodents. This allows the felines to be very successful carnivores, and the puma is one of them; it is still the top feline carnivore in North America west of Mississippi. In the east, it is another story, as only the state of Florida still has any in the wild. This group of pumas was shrinking fast, due to inbreeding, so the U.S. government brought several pumas from Texas to fix this – and they did. But because the Florida wild themselves are shrinking, the pumas there are still dying-out and people need to fix this situation – just watch the BB episode for yourself. Stop.

So, here is the situation – after the series’ premiere that talked about the potential recreation of the passenger pigeon (done by a completely different narrator), and the dodgy episode about the dodgy silphium plant, BB hit its stride – the Florida panther episode is straightforward and simple, with nary a problem; it is delivered in a touching, poignant manner that is supposed to resonate with its’ audience – and perhaps it does. Only, is it enough to make the latter care enough to do something, to be affected by the BB delivery? That is the question.

On the other hand, we have ‘The Court of the Dead’ novel, where Will and Nico (a homosexual WASP couple) team-up with Frank and Hazel (a heterosexual POC couple) to help many monsters who don’t want to be evil, defeat a group of villains that are quite reminiscent for J-Ro’s Ministry of Magic in her HP books. These days she is keeping quiet (for her own reasons), but Mr. Riordan is going full speed ahead!..

Of course, he might not have a choice – when he stopped featuring sexual minorities and the like in his YA novels (‘The Trials of Apollo’ series), the price for his books fell to a flat $10-$15 dollars a book, that is very cheap by modern standards, and perhaps even a financial loss. Therefore, if Mr. Riordan wants to stay in the green (and work for Disney), he has to toe the party line, and if not, then just look at Gina Carano – she did not, and so she is gone.

Therefore, again, Mr. Riordan continues to release progressive and forwards-facing books; the problem here is that the society may not care; these days, the Americans are highly individualistic, and care only about what they think; a book, no matter how well-written, is not enough on its’ own to change their opinion – you need federal support to do so. In the U.S. In particular, this is a chancy and an unlikely thing to have or to manifest, and so that is that. ‘The Court of the Dead’ remains an inert, almost impotent, almost pointless and unrequired YA novel that does not do anything, or does not affect anyone, just as the ‘Endlings’ series of BB do – or don’t do. Sad, isn’t it? That is real life, however. It sucks.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

 

Endlings: Silphium - Oct 21

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the silphium plant instead. Pause.

This is a somewhat different topic from my usual discussions, so, firstly, what was the silphium plant, beyond the obvious? The honest answer may surprise you: no one knows. It died out fully, presumably, during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, and it was supposed to be a spice that improved the taste of food and an aphrodisiac.

What could it have been? Jonathan Drori in his book “Around the world with 80 plants” calls it a plant of the Ferula genus, but others suggest the genus Thapsia instead; still others proclaim that silphium was not a plant in the Ferula genus, but rather asafoetida, latex gum, made from the roots of such plants. Pause.

The depictions of this plant exist, but they are stylized, and do not fully match the depictions of the extant Ferula & Thapsia plants; that would not be wrong, as silphium could have been its’ own species, but as Ms. Suta at BB pointed out, the depictions of silphium overall show it having stems and leaves of one plant, flowers of another, and fruits of yet a third, making it something of a chimera, then… Wait, what?

The word ‘Chimera’ has several meanings, but we’re interested in the most well-known: a Greek imaginary monster, so ridiculous that it could not have existed for real, as it had a leonine head, a caprine body, and a serpentine tail. Not even the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that the Chimera was ever real, and neither are its’ descendants, ‘lesser chimeras’, the children of human imagination.

Silphium, unfortunately for some, seems to share the Chimera’s baseline traits: a mixture of features of different species, though plant, not animal. This is important, as while people usually know plenty of animal species, the species of plants are more obscure, and one often needs a lot of botanical experience to differentiate between, say, an American basswood, a European linden, and a cultivar of either one of them. You can say: “This beast looks like a tiger, but it is not a tiger, because it has [insert traits here]”, and even complete homebodies will identify it correctly as a lion, a leopard, or even a jaguar. However, if you say “This plant looks like a fennel, but it is not a fennel, because…” then identifying it becomes much harder, because of the obvious. In addition, people said that “silphium looks like a Persian herb, but it is not the same because it tastes differently”, eh?

Gastronomy, now, is something else. People also say “The sauce for the goose is the sauce for the gander”, but people had different tastes in food since the Stone Age, and food preparation is an important variable, too. The Persian Ferula species might have tasted worse than the Libyan silphium did, or it might not have been. Pause.

…Libya is a reason why I have paused, too – you know what else Libya is associated with? The “Odyssey” – Homer put his Lotus-eaters and their Lotus tree there. Like silphium, people argued about the identity of the Lotus tree for a while now; there are several RL plant species that fit the identity of this mythical plant, but not entirely, just as it is with silphium.

Could silphium been a myth, just like how the vegetable lamb and the unicorn are? Technically yes, but there are plenty of evidence that it did exist, right? Nero received the last stalk of it, (what he did with It is another matter entirely), and The Julius Caesar supposedly had much more in his treasury, but the problem with such declarations that by now they are just historical anecdotes, where separating fact from fiction is simply hard. JC might have really had ‘1500 pounds of laser’ in his treasury, or he might not have – now it is hard to tell.

(Silphium is also called laser or laserwort, but the plants of the genera Laser & Laserpitium are not related to it at all. Fun!)

These days, of course, separating truth from fake news can be done easily enough, but in the Ancient period? Not so much, and silphium’s obscurity made it worse. Even the reasons of its’ extinction are conflicting: Johnathan Drori proclaimed that it was the overharvesting, but Ms. Suta at BB suggests that overgrazing and the desertification that follows were to blame instead.

Now, since we’re talking about ‘Bizarre Beasts’, listen – BB does not do wholesale cheating, but it can alter its performance accordingly; the ‘Endlings’ premiere, the passenger pigeon episode, was done grandly, with a guest speaker, and the BB staff sending out tiny plastic pigeons afterwards. The silphium episode, on the other hand, was much more subdued and restrained; Ms. Suta moved on quickly enough to talk about the general ‘extinction is bad and why’ topic, and the episode was about 10 minutes long, almost 30% shorter than the passenger pigeon piece. Why?

Because BB did their research and realized that underneath all the historical anecdotes and culinary discussions might be a chimera – a plant that never was as it was described; it existed – it might still exist – in another way entirely, but the way Pliny and friends described? It never been.

Finally, getting back to the silphium’s extinction – could it have been saved? (If it was a real Libyan plant?) Again, we get more ambiguity – Drori suggests that silphium was very hard to move and translocate, but…

On one hand, this sort of operation is hard to do, even now – only a few years ago people tried to introduce African cheetahs to India; the Indian government was difficult, (and when the cheetahs were introduced, they died out in India quite quickly). In addition, when it comes to translocating just some of India’s only Asiatic lions, (they live in the Gir forest; from the genetic P.O.V., they are a part of the leonine subspecies that live in West and Central Africa), India flat-out refused. Things could have gone in any way, but then the Donald’s government partially alienated Modi’s India, it turned from the U.S. to RF and CPR, so now the West are not bothering India with their rewilding projects, lest it gets worse. Bully, and yes, translocating silphium from Libya to other countries might have been just as hard, but on the other hand, the Roman republic/empire of that time was much less concerned about PR; if there was silphium in Libya, and it was profitable, they would have done something about the status quo – but they did not. Maybe because there really wasn’t anything profitable in Libya, not even silphium? Until time machines become available to the public, we will never know.

For now, however, this is it. See you all soon!

Endlings: Passenger Pigeon - Oct 14

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about ‘Endlings’, the Bizarre Beasts’ (BB) not-a-spin-off, instead. This episode’s topic – the passenger pigeon.

Some time ago, BB produced a promoting video of this event, where two women, Ms. Suta and Ms. Green, painted/colored a bunch of small plastic pigeon models and discussed the passenger pigeon’s Wikipedia article. It was not quite a scam, but it felt almost like one. This time, it is different – a completely new narrator, (and of a male gender too) discussed the passenger pigeon, why it died out and if it can be brought back.

…No, Colossal Biosciences (CB) are not behind it; this time, it is a different company, who claims that it will bring the passenger pigeon back, (in a manner of speaking) by 2032. Right now, it is October 2025. This means, that the company (Let’s call it RR), puts a ‘time stamp’ on its’ rewilding project – in 6 slash 7 years, few people can remember about RRs’ promise to bring the passenger pigeon back if RR chooses to go for the obscure approach… Interesting, and kind of suspicious.

The actual process of ‘bringing back the passenger pigeon’ is not too different from how CB plans to bring back the giant moa: CB plans to accomplish their project by combining the DNA of the emu and one of the tinamou species, while RR plans to combine the DNA of the passenger pigeon (it can be recovered, apparently), with that of its’ closest relative – the band-tailed pigeon – and inject the combo into the rock pigeon’s eggs…

As we discussed in the past, a tinamou-emu hybrid do not make a moa, especially a giant one. As for the pigeons, the passenger pigeon was a part of the Columbinae subfamily, the typical pigeons and doves in layperson’s terms, but it had its’ own genus and kept to itself; since at its’ peak the passenger pigeon numbered in millions, this was easy.

The band-tailed pigeon, meanwhile, belongs to the American pigeon genus that consists of 17 species, all of which are more closely related to each other than to the other birds, so what makes the band-tailed pigeon so special in regards to the passenger pigeon? The video does not tell us.

This brings us back to the passenger pigeon. It stood out from the rest of its’ pigeon and dove cousins by, well, the obvious. It lived and bred in bulk. It fed in bulk. It was usually in motion, looking for new food sources, (mostly grains, nuts, fruits, and the like). It was much more aerodynamic than many other pigeons – and it did not seek human cities to live in, unlike some other pigeons and doves. Pause.

…You take – intentionally or unintentionally – those features away, and the result is not a passenger pigeon, but some other bird. Pause.

There is no indication that RR intends to do this, but their process has the passenger pigeon DNA combined with the band-tailed pigeon’s, and perhaps the rock dove’s as well. There is no indication that the passenger pigeon’s DNA will be dominant, but if it will be…

…If the passenger pigeon DNA will be dominant, then the new bird will try to live like the extinct passenger pigeon did, which includes breeding and living in bulk. Will the 2030s North America be able to sustain this kind of population? Probably not without some massive landscape rewilding. Will the American society and government be willing to do this sort of massive landscape rewilding instead of building new urban centres? Probably not. And without large tracts of wild North American woodland, the new passenger pigeon will die out again, that’s the bottom line, unless…

…Unless it is being recreated not for rewilding purposes but for commercial ones, in which case the enthusiasm and the support for RR’s passenger pigeon project will drop. Listen, pigeons may not be as thoroughly domesticated as ducks and chickens, but they are domesticated and bred – for good looks, for mail carrier service, and for flesh and feathers too; we do not need another pigeon species/breed/GMO in the mix.

Let us pause and take a deep breath. The RR passenger pigeon project comes with options. It may work and we will have the new passenger pigeon – but we will not be ready for it and it will die out. It may sort of work, and will have a new genetically modified pigeon, which may act like the passenger pigeon, or not, for both the band-tailed and the rock pigeons belong to different genera than the passenger pigeon did, and both act – and look, and are built – differently from the passenger pigeon. Alternatively, the RR project will just fizzle out in the next 6-7 years, and we will have no new pigeon for our troubles.

Sigh. The narrator at ‘Endlings’ himself was rather sceptical of the passenger pigeon project; he tried his best to sell it to the audience, but he couldn’t fully do it. (The fact that he knew that most of us would forget about this video by the end of the week probably played a role too). The details of successfully bringing the passenger pigeon back to the U.S. are too many and he did not appear to have all of the answers – RR did not give it to him. Stop.

So, in conclusion. CB’s rewilding projects are exuberant and showy, but they do put CB into the spotlight, and CB cannot weasel out of this too easily. RR’s approach, on the other hand, allows them to do exactly that, and it is not an improvement over CB’s approach, sadly…  Looks like the rewilding projects/concepts/etc. in the West are in for some bad times…

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Marvel Zombies - Oct 4

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Jane Goodall is dead. Let us talk about something else – say, the now released Marvel™ Zombies?

Yeah, no. Marvel™ Zombies is not bad, but-

-But, first, again, it is a comb-over. Alongside the F4 film, set in an entirely different universe, Disney/MCU released ‘Ironheart’, the adventures of Riri Williams, and it was bad. Politically incorrect as well, and Disney, in all of its’ incarnations, including Marvel, hates this. Therefore, it released ‘The Eyes of Wakanda’, another online miniseries, and they were not bad, just rushed, as we have discussed earlier. Consequently, once the dust settled, and the bad taste of ‘Ironheart’ vanished, Disney/MCU released Marvel™ Zombies, a spin-off of the previously released ‘What if?’ a Marvel universe where everything is as bad as possible, and oh, all that angst! …Somehow, Disney/MCU are in no hurry to get rid of them, and how does this mini-series end? Why, it is with Riri Williams! Pause.

Disney can be stubborn and sneaky – or so it thinks. In the SW universe, the ‘Sequel Trilogy’ (movies 7-9) and how Disney/SW handled them, fractured the SW fan base and caused a lot of damage to the franchise, and what did Disney/SW do? Release ‘The Mandalorian’ series, which were a hit (despite their own problems, cough), and the S3 season of the series? (‘The Book of Boba Fett’ does not count), showed how the SW of the sixth film’s finale became the SW of the seventh film’s premiere. The fan base realized this clearly enough, and the reactions were mixed. Disney/SW did not despair, and are releasing a feature film sequel to the now-finished series in the near with a trailer that is clearly showing that the Empire (aka the First Order) is coming back. How that film will go we will have to wait and see. So how does this connect to Disney/Marvel?

Just as Disney used – or tried to use – ‘The Mandalorian’ to fix the fans’ issues with the Disney SW vision, it seems to be trying to use Marvel™ Zombies to fix the fans’ issue as to how they view Riri ‘Ironheart’ Williams. In SW, ‘The Mandalorian’ did not quite work as how Disney thought it would work, and in Marvel, the same thing can be said about Zombies: they probably will not work as to how Disney wanted them to work. Riri Williams is still disliked by the fans.

Unlike ‘The Mandalorian’, of course, the Marvel fans can easily dismiss Marvel™ Zombies – they are not part of MCU, but an alternate universe, not unlike the 2025-F4 film. In this case, of course, not unlike the AAA series (remember Aggie-poo?) Marvel™ Zombies become just a waste of Disney/Marvel time and resources that would be better used in other means. Ah well, Disney – in all of its’ branches and affiliations always did have more money than common sense… Real life is still worse – just look at the Philippines and their earthquake… Oh, wait, they were overlooked in favor of the Donald’s latest rant – but that is another story…

For now, though, this is it – see you all soon!

CB and the dodo bird - Sep 19

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and CB (i.e. Colossal Biosciences, if someone is confused), is intent on making it worse, apparently.

With the grey/dire wolves, they actually have something: three grey wolf puppies (Arctic wolf subspecies, most likely), with some biological & anatomical modifications that are supposed to make them more like the extinct dire wolves. Lately, the news of those three are rare, hopefully, then, they have not died on CB’s watch.

With the moa birds, CB ignored the fact that we still have samples of the moa birds’ skins, feathers, and the like, and proclaimed that they will hybridize the Australian emu with the South American tinamous, and release the new hybrids into the New Zealand wilds. This movie is of a dubious legality, but the fact that there is no guarantee that the resulting hybrid ratites will be viable supersedes that. Therefore, lately, the commotion around the would-be revived moa birds is dying down, and CB’s celebrity sponsors, such as Sir Peter Jackson, (who made the ‘Hobbit’ and LotR movie trilogies), are keeping quiet.

Now, (September 2025), CB is launching yet another proclamation: they recovered some sort of primeval pigeon gene that will allow them to recreate the dodo. CB just needs chicken eggs. Pause.

The dodo were pigeons. They were very specialized pigeons, they had their own subtribe, and their closest relative was the solitaire, another specialized flightless species that died in the 17^th century as well. Their closest living relatives belong to the pigeon tribe Raphini, whose members are relatively big and bulky, especially for flying birds.

…The Columbidae birds (pigeons, doves, etc.) come in two main varieties: sleek and streamlined, or big and bulky. The dodo and the solitaire were two extremes of the second variety, but their living relatives, such as the Nicobar pigeon and the crowned pigeons, also tend to be heavyset, though nowhere as extreme as their extinct kin was. Where do the chickens enter?

Nowhere, that is the thing. Chickens are gamebirds, members of the Galliformes order, completely separate from the aforementioned pigeons, doves and co.; the chicken and the pigeon may look superficially similar to each other, but they are just as closely related as the red fox and the hedgehog – i.e. not at all aside from the most basic ties. To use chicken eggs (and genes?) to bring back the dodo is about as logical as using elephants to bring back the Smilodon.

As for the primeval pigeon genes/genomes/etc. …The name alone is rather unfortunate and populistic – and also vague and generalized. CB gives no concrete guarantee that using this technique will bring back the dodo precisely and not something else entirely. A creation of a brand-new pigeon species, flightless or not, would be exciting, but it would not be re-wilding, not really. Rather, it would be playing God with life (with birds, to be more specific), and that is something else. Of course, whether CB would go this course, and not just take the sponsors’ money and run, is another question…

So, to recap: in a matter of years, in less than a decade, CB went from something respectable to half-frauds and half-madmen, who have done science in general, and rewilding in particular, a bad service indeed. To make matters even worse for them, there is no real source of dodo DNA – a head and a leg is all that remained of a rather enchanting RL species; pity that it could not co-exist with humans and their companions, (such as domestic pigs turned feral, and rats). CB – or anyone else – just would not be able to acquire dodo genes at all, and what they are offering instead may just suffer from a bad, populist name, or perhaps CB is just pulling a completely banal, ordinary, con. The future will show. Real life seriously sucks, sometimes.

This is it for now – see you all soon!

 

'Anaconda'-2025 movie trailer - Sep 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, (mostly), so let us talk about the trailer to the 2025’s ‘Anaconda’ movie instead.

The original ‘Anaconda’ franchise was about people who came to the South American jungle for various reasons, and most of them would be eaten by an oversized anaconda (one or several) during the run time of the films, (there are several). Therefore, what makes this franchise better than the ‘Coyotes’ (remember them)?

The movies of the ‘Anaconda’ franchise, (including the one coming up in 2025), do not take themselves seriously and are not going for realism (or social commentary) the way that ‘Coyotes’ (and ‘Death of a Unicorn’) do. Even the trailer shows that the movie is going to be ridiculous and hilarious in a good way, and the completely unreal anaconda is a part of it.

The green anaconda might be the biggest modern snake; only the reticulated python of the Asian tropics might be able to match it; and the king cobra, of course, is always worth a mention, but the king cobra is a venomous snake among its’ other qualities, while the anacondas are constrictors.

‘Anacondas’ are used as a plural because ‘anaconda’ is a name of a genus of constrictor snakes, also known as the water boas. Just how many species of anaconda there actually are, is debated; two are known for sure – the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) and the yellow (Eunectes notaeus) are confirmed and recognized; the rest are up to debate, (and one is a fossil species anyhow, which just makes everything more complex).

Usually, the people talk about ‘THE anaconda’, or, more precisely, the bigger and more massive green anaconda of Brazil, Peru, French Guiana, Suriname and Bolivia; the smaller yellow anaconda lives mainly more to the east (the two species do co-exist in Brazil), and the rest of the anaconda clan do not matter right now. What matters is that the green anaconda can be big and impressive, yet it is nowhere near the size of the mythical snake monsters that haunt the West imagination ever since the Europeans began to colonize South America. The South American rainforest is larger than life even now, so naturally it has to be inhabited by larger than life monsters. The Native Americans of South America agreed, but their monsters are much less realistic than the oversized anaconda of the European colonists and their descendants is, so let us put them aside too.

Besides the CGI Titanoboa wannabe, the trailer shows the cast handling (and accidentally killing) some other non-venomous snake, probably a boa constrictor. When put face to face, the boa is much slimmer and smaller than the green anaconda is, but like all the constrictor snakes, it has a mouthful of hook-like, needle-sharp, backwards pointing teeth, and it can deliver very painful and bloody bites too, so it should never be taken for granted.

…The cast go to the American tropics with a ‘movie budget’ under 10 000 dollars. Again, there is no realism; they want to make an ‘indie film’ (a movie within a movie – that is quite clever, in fact); so why not go to Florida, (or perhaps California) is unknown. As RL shows, there are plenty of escaped pythons, (some of which are quite large), in Florida, so an anaconda would fit in as well, but no – it is South America or bust. Anything else?

Just that after their boa is lost (it falls in the water, where the piranhas get it, or the boat propeller does, or something), the cast go into the rainforest to find a replacement snake. Suspension of disbelief and all, but the way they were doing it would have resulted in them finding a venomous snake instead, most likely, and most of the South American venomous snakes are pit vipers, too. Just think rattlesnakes without the rattles, really. (In all of South America lives a single rattlesnake species – all the rest are natives of North America instead). A bite from anyone of them would have been bad – period. In a certain light, the cast of the ‘Anaconda’-2025 are lucky that the snake they confronted was a non-venomous type.

And again, given just how unrealistic this movie’s snake monster is, it just as well could have been a giant bear, (the spectacled bear of South America is not as large as the brown bear is, but it can kill adult livestock with blows of its’ paws), or even a horde of orcs – why not? How is a kaiju-sized snake more realistic than a horde of orcs?

It is not, but the cast make it work. Even in the trailer, they are clearly having fun and are not careening all over the place as ‘Coyotes’ script (and cast) do. ‘Anaconda’-2025 does not have any ‘special’ message as the other film does, but I daresay that it will be more enjoyable and fun to watch than ‘Coyotes’ will be.

…And as for ‘Marvel™ Zombies’, coming to the viewers on Sep 24, 2025? Looks as if they are designed to cover up for the ‘Eyes of Wakanda’ just as the ‘Eyes’ did for ‘Ironheart’. Again: ‘Ironheart’ was bad, perhaps not as bad as Disney’s ‘Snow White’ remake, but still bad, hitting all the right notes in all the wrong ways. For Disney, MCU, and the rest, good relationships with Afro-Americans are important, so they covered-up (and replaced) ‘Ironheart’ with ‘Eyes’.

However, ‘Eyes’ themselves were something of a rushed job, and people have felt it. Disney/MCU do not like confrontations, so they are using ‘Zombies’ to cover-up ‘Eyes’. ‘Zombies’ themselves, of course, are strongly reminiscent of ‘Game of Thrones’ series finale, when the heroes of Westeros found themselves confronting the Night King and his cohorts, including the walking dead – but let’s wait until Sep 24, 2025, to see the ‘Marvel™ Zombies for ourselves first).

…And yes, in early 2000s, ‘Animal Face-Off’ had a ‘jaguar vs. anaconda’ episode where the anaconda won. Sadly, it is only slightly more realistic than the upcoming ‘Anaconda’-2025 film will be, so let us discuss it some other time.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

'Coyotes' the moviie trailer - Sep 9

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but then I watched the trailer for the upcoming 2025 ‘Coyotes’ movie and realize that Hollywood can suck even worse. Let us discuss.

First, why wolves are known to be man-eaters (in the past, however distant), and coyotes are not? Frankly because they do not have the strength. A grey wolf (not to be confused with several other canine/lupine species) and a coyote look superficially similar, but the wolf is much more formidable.

A coyote – on average – is about 1 m in length, (without the tail) and weighs about 16 kg. A grey wolf, on the other hand, is about 1.5 m in length (also without the tail) and weighs about 60 kg. Most of this weight comes from muscle, and a wolf’s skull and jaws are wider and stronger than those of the coyote are; a coyote is more of a precise strike carnivore, and a grey wolf aims for greater mass damage instead.

Again, how do carnivorous mammals kill? In general, (there are always exceptions), they either go for a precise strike (on the throat, more rarely on the muzzle or even the skull), or, conversely, they bite and tear – tear off pieces of flesh, live… You need physical strength in both of these scenarios, of course, but the second one requires a much stronger bite, and a much stronger (and durable) body to handle such rough hunting. Lions, spotted hyenas, and grey wolves have it, and they all hunt big prey – African buffalo, antelopes, and deer (including the elk and sometimes the moose), in case of the wolves.

By contrast, the jackal and the red fox, the coyote and the striped & brown hyena do not normally hunt big animals; they prefer to scavenge, or to eat smaller prey, such as rodents, rabbits, and hares. The hyenas, true, have a more powerful bite than their canine counterparts do, but they are still at half the size of the spotted hyena, and in general defer to it, when they encounter it.

The ancestor of the more successful spotted hyena drove the ancestors of the striped and brown hyenas into the African deserts, and sort of forced the ancestor of the aardwolf to become an obligate insectivore – but we digress.

…Only not, for in North America the relationship between grey wolves and coyotes isn’t unlike that of… lions and spotted hyenas, for example, only more one-sided: the wolves’ tower over their coyote cousins, they are much stronger and heavier than the coyotes are, and they hunt in large packs, while coyotes hunt in pairs or alone. There is footage – from the Yellowstone Park – of wolves killing coyotes in packs. One on one, a wolf might let a coyote be; a wolf pack will make short work of it.

Enter humans. They drove the grey wolf to extinction in the North American East, and in the West its’ population is still reduced. The coyote adapted and flourished alongside humans, (as did the raccoon and the red fox)… but there were no cases of attacks on humans by any of them, (unless rabies or a similar factor was involved). The coyote may look like a wolf, generally, but unlike the wolf, it is not mentally wired to tackle prey as big as an adult human being… Enter the coydog.

It is exactly what it sounds like – it is a hybrid of a domestic dog, (either intentionally or a feral animal), and a coyote. Just like its’ bigger cousin the wolfdog, this hybrid seems to be quite fertile, (but then again, the question if the domestic dog an independent species, a subspecies of the grey wolf, or just a domesticated wolf with artificially derived physical differences is still open), and is doing well enough in North America.

The American coyote is not known to be a man-eater. The Australian dingo, (again, either a domestic dog turned wild, a separate species, a subspecies, or something else entirely), is. In addition, unlike the coyote it hunts in packs, as the grey wolf – or the feral populations of the domestic dog – do. More succinctly, the dingo is not as big as the grey wolf is, but it can be dangerous to people, and sometimes, it is.

Now, in North America, we get cases of domestic dogs interbreeding with grey wolves and especially coyotes – and unlike them, domestic dogs are not afraid of humans. Oh, they are peoples’ best friends, but with a metaphorical switch, they can be their worst enemies instead. When they attack, the results are bad and often deadly for the humans. You put in coyote, let alone grey wolf DNA into the mix, and the result is worse – but where does it leave the upcoming ‘Coyotes’ movie?

‘Coyotes’ apparently aims to be a social satire or something else, not unlike how ‘The Death of a Unicorn’ was. (Remember that sad pile of horse apples?) Fair enough, and the script is intentionally screwy and unrealistic – but the poor coyotes. Moreover, my point is that if they renamed the film ‘Coydogs’, and had not purebred coyotes, but coyote-feral dog crossbreeds, it would have worked just as well, and been more accurate, so there is that. The movie cast and crew decided that that would be too much effort, so we will probably end up with some anti-coyote hysteria, something that we do not really need right now – but it is real life. It sucks.

This is it for now – see you all soon!

Hyenas (and Zombies) - Sep 08

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, therefore I was going to talk about the upcoming Marvel™ Zombies special, but then Textbooks Travels YouTube channel presented a video about five hyena species, including the one new species, and I had to watch – hyenas are some of my favorite animals, you know?

Anyhow, after going through about 30 minutes of video footage of the various hyena, team TT finally reached the supposed new species in question – and it is the aardwolf. Pause.

Here is the thing. There are four modern species of hyena, and they are all specialists in their unique ways, all are different from each other in various different ways. In case of the aardwolf, it is the smallest and the weakest hyena species, one that is specialized in feeding on ants and termites, it is an unassuming and nocturnal animal, most people in Africa (especially the not-tourists) are ignoring or just unaware of it, and for the rest of the world, the situation is not much better. That is one.

Two is that there are two aardwolf subspecies. Pause.

Let us backtrack a bit. Out of the four modern hyena species, the spotted and the brown hyenas are monotypic; there is just one species of each without any greater genetic variation. With the striped hyena and the aardwolf, the situation is different. The striped hyena has up to five subspecies, but they all differ from each other mostly by where they live – from northern Africa (the Sahara desert) to Middle East, to Central Asia, to India, (mostly the north-east – like its’ sister species the brown hyena, the striped hyena is primarily a desert dweller/specialist). The aardwolf is less extreme, but it too has two subspecies – one in east Africa and the second in the south Africa – that have some minor physical differences, and thus they are two separate subspecies – but they differ from each other primarily by where they live. Team TT took this concept and proclaimed that no, the two populations are two different species of the aardwolf (aka two different hyena species), but so far there’s no consensus on that, so I’m going to call out them (him) and say that their proclamation about there being five hyena species in the modern world is wrong. Anything else?

…The aardwolf really got the short end of the stick in the TT hyena video – it had the least amount of footage & screen time, it had to share with the bat-eared fox. The two are not related at all, the hyenas are part of the cat half of the mammal carnivore family tree, and the wild dogs are the more ancient clan out of the two. That is part of the reason as to why wild dogs are found all over the world these days, (excluding Antarctica), while the hyenas are not. Just like some of their cat cousins, they tried to imitate the dogs, to try to beat them at their own game – and outside of Africa, they failed. The spotted hyena is as a formidable a pack hunter as any dog, but it is savannah animal, unlike the brown and striped hyenas (or the big cats such as the lion and the leopard); it does not do well in the desert, it cannot cross the Sahara into Eurasia. The brow hyena, of course, is hemmed in by the two oceans on one hand, and it does not enter the savannah, because there it would be outcompeted by the local predators/scavengers before it reached the African east (where Africa is connected to Eurasia). The striped hyena is already there, of course, but it is half the size and muscle of the spotted hyena and just like the brown hyena, it is a desert specialist and does not enter more fertile areas, (such as the Southeast Asian jungles, for example). In addition, the aardwolf is an insectivore, it feeds on insects and as long as they are plentiful, (and they are), it is happy. So is the bat-eared fox, of course, but we are talking hyenas here, not foxes and other wild dogs.

…The point here is that without humans being in the picture, the hyenas are doing just fine, even though about 87.5% of their global population is in Africa. By living there, they avoid competing for food resources with the wild dogs, and thus both them and the wild canines are satisfied.

In addition, where does it leave the Marvel™ zombies? In their own part of MCU multiverse, of course – they were introduced In Marvel’s™ now finished ‘What if?’ animated series, and it will be somewhat interesting to see as to how Earth-89521 will deal with the undead threat. The hyenas, in fact, should be of little help there – the aardwolf is an insectivore and does not eat carrion to begin with, the spotted hyena prefers to hunt live prey, and the brown and the striped hyenas, while scavengers, are nowhere as formidable as it is. Therefore, the humans of that dimension will have to defeat the zombies one way or another, mostly by themselves – and we will have to wait until September 24, 2025 to see how it plays out…

Well, this is it for now, see you all soon.

Eyes of Wakanda - Aug 18

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the ‘Eyes of Wakanda’… Pause.

Well, first let me admit that, apparently, I got it wrong – the video of Ms. Sarah and Ms. Aimee painting plastic pigeon figurines wasn’t the Kickstarter, more like a special feature to motivate the financing of the Kickstarter, or whatever… Fair enough, but listen: LN openly admits that her YouTube channel is a business venture, she is in for money – and she shares money with her underlings and coworkers. Have to respect her for her openness and honesty, if nothing else, (and there is much more).

BB, on the other hand… are largely similar, but are not as successful as LN is. In part, this is because they’re a part of PBS, and PBS overall is suffering due to the Donald’s meddling in the American world, (real life sucks, remember?), but still, the sight of Ms. Sarah and Ms. Aimee just painting tiny pigeons while muttering some facts about the pigeons from the Internet… just no…

In addition, speaking of facts, what about the ‘Eyes’? Yes, they are a work of fiction, but in the episode 1x02, they went after the ‘Iliad’, and…

Yes, true, there was a Troy in RL, and there possibly was a Trojan War in RL too, but so far, we have no idea what actually went down, so we have to accept Homer’s version as canon, which makes ‘Iliad’ & ‘Odyssey’ about as real as MCU. Moreover, Achilles, Odysseus, and co. are a part of Marvel comics – and been so for a while, nothing new here, but, again, what is with the disrespect? The second episode of ‘Eyes’ plays fast and loose with the ‘Iliad’, so it will ruffle some feathers – it ruffled mine, which is why I am writing about the ‘Eyes’ more than 2 weeks after it had aired. Pause.

Taking a breath and starting anew. In many ways, the ‘Eyes’ are clichéd and banal. In the first episode, Noni is the maverick who makes the right in choice in saving Wakanda from… what? Exposure? The Lion did not care about it, he wanted to rule outside of it, but because Wakanda had a PR problem even in the 1260 BC or so, the Dora Milaje sent Noni to bring the Lion to heel – she caused him to die instead, but, hey, she recovered the artefacts, so yay! She becomes a War Dog instead.

That is one of Wakanda’s flaws – it is isolationist, it wants to stay largely isolated, it comes down hard on those, who disagree with it, yet when those dissidents leave and start their own thing, the Wakandan government (well, the royal family) short-circuits and does its’ best to bring those dissidents to heel or just kill them. MCU and co. deal with this problem by making such renegades evil, but still, it is not one of Wakanda’s best aspects.

Back to the ‘Eyes’… sigh. The Lion was a variant Killmonger from the first Black Panther film, and the final episode actually sets up the first Black Panther film, to a certain extent. The Lion wasn’t a bad character, but as a villain? He fell flat.

In addition, in the second, ‘Iliad’ episode, we have B’Kai, who joined the Greek army to retrieve a Wakandan amulet, and he does. He also lets Helen run away with Paris-

Helen never escaped with Paris; Paris died awhile before Odysseus came up with the Trojan Horse, and Helen would eventually return home with her legal husband, Menelaus. Helen of Troy, in fact, is partially a romantic heroine from the knightly stories of later days, and partially – a modern femme fatale, but we digress.

I don’t want to discuss all the ways how much did the ‘Eyes’ mess with the ‘Iliad’, I’ll just point out that Memnon/B’Kai isn’t from Homer – he is from Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’; he was an Egyptian, or an Ethiopian, general, sent to help the Trojans. He was also the son of Eos, or Aurora, the goddess of Dawn. He went against Achilles, died, and his entourage became birds. Sigh. If the bigwigs in MCU wanted to, they could have made quite a story about the Wakandan meddling the Trojan War and remained much more true to the original classical sources as well.

As for the last two episode of the ‘Eyes’… Pause. The first two episodes were connected to each other via the character of Noni and the plot continuity; the last two episodes were much more detached from each other and the first two. Were there supposed to be more episodes of ‘Eyes’ than just four? Did some rushed editing had to take place? Disney/MCU are not telling…

Anyhow, the third episode feels like a filler – the south meets the east, that sort of thing, Wakanda meets the K’un Lun, eh? It does not amount to anything… and the final episode mostly just sets-up the first Black Panther movie. Fun!

Only not, as B’Kai, for example, reminded me of Grant Ward, who betrayed his new friends for duty. Only because B’Kai’s duty was to Wakanda, not to Hydra, he is a protagonist, rather than an antagonist instead. MCU really does its’ best to recycle the old ideas in new ways, but maybe it should just go with outright new ideas instead? It worked for the new F4 film…

There is one more aspect to the ‘Eyes’, however – the African/Afro-American one. As the ‘Black Panther’ films showed, they are MCU’s Afro-Futurism reps, and for Disney/MCU, political correctness in regards to the Africans/Afro-Americans is a very big deal.

Unfortunately, before the ‘Eyes’, MCU’s latest depiction of Afro-Americans came from ‘Ironheart’ – I’m talking about Riri here. In the BP2 film, she was… average. In ‘Ironheart’, MCU did not know what to do with her, and it showed – she made Sony’s Kraven look good. Also – competent and coherent, (the movie, not the main character). Something had to be done, so MCU quickly made, or remade, the ‘Eyes’, and used them to cover up ‘Ironheart’ as the latest MCU bit that features people of color. The ‘Eyes’ do a better job of it than ‘Ironheart’ did, but then again, almost anything would – ‘Ironheart’ set the bar this low, and the ‘Eyes’ still feel like a rushed job that MCU doesn’t really needs, you know? Ah well, Disney/MCU have a better idea of what MCU/its’ audience needs than MCU’s actual viewers do no doubt… That is real life for you. It sucks. Just look at the Donald, Putin, and the Alaska story – but we will discuss that another time…

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

 

Bizarre Beasts: Pasenger Pigeon - August 09

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but I spent an hour of my life listening to Ms. Sarah Suta and friend discuss – among other things, but primarily that – the life and the extinction of the passenger pigeon. (It happened in 1914 – spoiler alert!) Therefore, let us talk about this bird.

The passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, evolved about 5.33 MYA – that is a couple of million years before the appearance of the Australopithecus primates in Africa, and unlike them, the pigeon lived only in North America. Despite being, well, a pigeon, it did not look much like the feral pigeon/rock dove that is found in the cities worldwide – rather it looked more like a mourning dove, for example: it was relatively slick, streamlined, and with a long tail. A body shape adapted for long distance travel, put otherwise.

Off topic: the doves and pigeons are more varied than people realize it, but they can be sorted into two baseline groups: slender and bulky. The dodo was an extreme case, but the other members of its’ ‘tribe’, the Raphini, are also big and bulky, as far as flying birds go; on the other hand, the passenger pigeon was a member of the Columbini tribe, and just its’ relatives, it flew just fine; in fact…

…In fact, the life and the ecology of the passenger pigeon was defined by flight: it was a migratory bird, travelling the North American continent to avoid winter and to find food. Like the other pigeons and doves, this bird was primarily herbivorous, and ate fruits and berries, as well as grains, cereals, and seeds: food that is easily digestible and found mostly on the trees. That is important, again, because unlike the homebody dodos, the passenger pigeons were migrants. What next?

The passenger pigeon’s migratory lifestyle was its’ defining feature: for centuries, the native North Americans had the humongous flocks of those birds as a part of life. Did they eat the pigeon? Yes, obviously, but their hunting weapons were… simple enough for the natives to be incapable to dent the great flocks, plus the passenger pigeons were rather adapted to co-existing with the non-too-friendly native North American humans, so they were able to handle it. Then the European settlers arrived. Everything changed.

Native North Americans lived in a homeostasis with nature, they conceived themselves to be a part of it, and adjusted their attitudes, and lifestyles, accordingly. The Europeans never had this idea, and adjusted the natural world to suit their needs. In case of the passenger pigeon, it meant that the European settlers began to kill and eat them in bulk; in a matter of decades, (say, from 1850s to 1900s), the great flocks of the passenger pigeons were gone.

Could the settlers and their American descendants have co-existed with the passenger pigeons? Not how, say, Colossal Biosciences would deliver this idea: the great flocks of those migratory birds did decimate the crops of fruits, and grain fields, and the like, and they would return time and again, making farming, such as it was, hardly possible. Instead, the passenger pigeons would have to be managed, (think modern forestry), maybe domesticated, maybe not. People have domesticated pigeons, obviously¸ but they were the ‘Old World pigeons’ that belonged to an entirely different genus from the passenger pigeon, (it had no immediate relatives, BTW), plus those pigeons were domesticated to be served as messengers and mail carriers – at first; the elaborate domestic breeds that don’t look like pigeons and certainly don’t appear to be able to function in the wild came later, when the need in carrier pigeons began to decrease. (However, some still exist even today). Whether the passenger pigeon could have been domesticated and managed as the modern ‘domestic’ pigeon was, is unknown.

The modern ‘domestic’ pigeon has a stable feral population, but unlike the extinct passenger pigeon, it has a broader diet and much smaller flocks, and it has larger egg clutches and/or reproductive rates: the passenger pigeon’s population was so huge and so stable, at first, that the passenger pigeons managed their population growth slowly: they could afford to take ‘hits’ that would hurt the populations of their less numerous cousins. The passenger pigeons were even able to survive the depredations of the colonists and their descendants – at first, and then they did not.

The Americans did try to preserve and/or to manage the last passenger pigeon populations in the U.S., for various reasons – but they failed. In the 1890s-1900s the concept of nature conservation was too new to be successful, plus the perpetually migrating, (ok, almost perpetually migrating, but still), were not the easiest birds to manage. Now, in the modern times, the situation is different, (technically speaking), but the idea of bringing back the passenger pigeon is not being discussed, at least not in public.

Why? Aside from the practical point of view – the passenger pigeon was perfectly edible to humans – the birds were more colorful, beautiful, and natural than the modern RL feral pigeon/rock dove is. They can fit into the modern world more easily than the dire wolf and the moa birds. They are also easier to manage than the dire wolf and the moa birds, and – easier to create, perhaps? Colossal Biosciences are ‘recreating’ the moa by modifying the tinamou with emu genes, or vice versa. Whatever hybrid will emerge, if it is viable and non-sterile, it still will not be a moa.

…Of course, with a ‘recreated’ passenger pigeon it will be the same situation: it will not be the original passenger pigeon species that died out by WWI; it will be something entirely new. However, it will be easier to pass the bird as the ‘recreated passenger pigeon’ and it will be easier to manage. However, no – CB has focused itself on the moa and the dire wolf (and whatever else it is doing behind the scenes). Sad, really.

…But not as sad as me watching a pair of young women painting miniature plastic figurines of apparent passenger pigeons for an hour, (that’s how long they painted, not how long I watched), while quietly discussing the abovementioned info about the bird. They have read the Wikipedia article about it and that is it. They had a private conversation about it, painted some plastic, and put it into the livestream. Oh, and there was a Kickstarter involved that had people send Sarah, Aimee, and friends money for Sarah and Aimee to do the above. Suddenly, Lindsey Nikole does not seem to be so mercenary anymore, and the CB – not such frauds.

That, however, is a story for another time. See you all soon!