The Wildlife Almanac

Remembering John Thorbjarnarson

2010-02-16T15:36:00.004+05:30

June 2009: Gharial pre-SRP meeting, Delhi. Photo: Samir Whitaker

April 2008. Relaxing at our home in Chengalpattu. Photo: Janaki Lenin

June 2006: Montelimar, France. At the gharial uplisting workshop of the CSG Working Group Meeting. Photo: Janaki Lenin

April 2006: Florida Museum of Natural History. During the making of 'Supersize Crocs'. Photo: Rom Whitaker

Infosys, Mysore

2009-11-11T19:53:00.001+05:30

I’m going to depart radically from the content of the blog so far. We attended the TEDIndia: The Future Beckons conference in Mysore recently and I’ve just not been able to quell some of my thoughts.

The venue was the Infosys training campus which hosts 10,000 interns and 5000 employees at any given time. It was a little township. Security is strict in this walled compound – bags go through X-ray, serial numbers of laptops are jotted down. But it was the passing scenery, on the drive from the security area to our hotel (Infosys Hotel, of course), that made our jaws drop. One of the most stately buildings appeared to be a modern day (less stylish) version of the Vatican. We instantly (and unimaginatively) dubbed it the Vatican and we were to hear this alias used by other conference attendees repeatedly over the next week. The rest of Infosys disoriented us completely – we couldn’t tell which part of America we had stepped into, but America it was clearly. It was a characterless, sanitized and severely monitored version of suburbia, landscaped with extensive lawns, trees and flowering plants. True to the style, most of the flora were non-native species. The venue of the meeting was an enormous glass ball of a building – the multiplex. Other attendees called it the Epcot Centre and wondered sarcastically when Mickey Mouse would show up. Since I haven’t been to the Walt Disney Centre, it reminded me of something else closer home, the Matri Mandir of Auroville, a place of meditation. The contrast between the two couldn’t have been more complete. Next to the “Epcot Centre” is another glass fronted building that appears to have collapsed on its side. There was no hint of India at all and the whole place had a touch of surrealism – we were incarcerated in someone else’s fantasy world and what an unimaginative, airless world it was.

One attendee wondered when we have fantastic architects in Auroville who know the art of creating lovely buildings that are cool in summer and warm in winter, why ape America so poorly? While I wondered why not use native trees and plants that would attract butterflies, birds and other little creatures?

I read a piece in the ‘Financial Express’ which referred to the campus saying the future of India had arrived. Apparently Shashi Tharoor tweeted along similar lines. I wonder if the writer ever noticed the ever present monitors along the streets of this bizarre place. We had to walk about ten to fifteen minutes from the room to the Multiplex. Although no vehicles are allowed beyond a point, one had to follow the circuitous asphalt road when it would have been so simple to walk across the grass. But Rule # 1 of this campus: don’t walk on grass. If you did, as I watched one lady do, your ear drums are likely to get blasted by several of the monitors watching you and be told in no uncertain terms that "this is not allowed, madam." Why not create walking paths then? Rule # 2: no alcohol on campus. Clearly the gods that rule this place believe that people have to be treated like children, delineating what is not allowed but not saying what is allowed, what is to be encouraged. Perhaps the intention is to create the looks of America with the autocracy of China or Singapore. Is this the future of India? Thankfully, India is too chaotic and unruly to be tamed by such walls and rules.

We didn’t realize how oppressive the place was until we drove out of the gates and we all let out a loud cheer, regressing to rebellious teen-hood. How can anyone be creative, innovative or even reflective in this place? Perhaps these are not the qualities they seek to encourage in their employees and interns.

Dogs on farms

2009-08-18T20:32:00.002+05:30

I’m convinced that dogs are not outdoors animals. People living on farms commonly make the mistake of assuming that their dogs would thrive in all that space. Dogs probably do but this lifestyle comes with several dangers. One of the major causes of dog mortality in farms is snakebite. If they are not trained to leave snakes alone early in life, they may try to attack and get bitten. Even ones that are trained (like mine) can tread on a snake by mistake and get bitten. Since the dogs live outdoors, owners usually notice the symptoms too late and even then, aren’t quite sure what is wrong with their pets. I learnt this lesson the hard way.

For more than 10 years, my dogs lived outdoors. When any of them was under the weather, I would call the vet and she would invariably ask what the poop looked like. I never knew where the dog in question had evacuated so was never able to give a satisfactory answer on which the vet could base her diagnosis. I usually discovered stomach upsets too late and only when the dog stopped eating. And then there were ticks, motherloads of them. Guests would spend all their time pulling them out and the little terrors lost no time at all in re-colonizing. We lost a dog to a suspected cobra bite and we could do too little too late. And then three years ago, a leopard moved in and snacked on one of the others. Finally the penny dropped or I became too paranoid. Farms may be gardens of Eden but they is many a snake hiding in the foliage (snake being a metaphor for danger).

For three years now, our dogs have lived indoors and go out on "walks", no different from apartment living dogs. Now I catch every little health issue before it becomes serious, there are no ticks, I can prevent them from eating undesirable food item (like monkey poo) besides making sure that no leopard snatches them away. Unwittingly, I also solved a long standing problem – the dogs killing local wildlife.

Dogs hunt anything that runs or crawls. I maintained a log book of animals they killed – several orange-headed ground thrushes, squirrels, monitor lizards, young toddy cats, and so on. I yelled and screamed, whacked and threatened to no avail. Then I bought an electric shock collar and figured that the gizmo would solve my problem. Every time I saw the dog-being-trained look at a bird with evil intent, I punched the remote and the dog got a pulse of electric shock. The trouble was you had to be watching all the time which was practically impossible with outdoor dogs. Sometimes I’d come home to find a dog mouthing a dead bird and I’d zap him/her. Unfortunately the message they got was “never be seen with a dead bird or animal.” So the killings continued but I didn’t know who the culprit was. To be effective, I would have to zap them in the process of hunting, otherwise the message was getting garbled. Friends advised that I was going against nature and dogs could not be trained to stop hunting. I rationalized and justified the dogs’ behaviour – “they are after all confined to the garden while the wildlife have the rest of the farm.” Excuses, excuses.

Once the dogs became indoor dogs, the killing stopped. Now there are crow-pheasants, partridges, hares, porcupines and toddy cats crossing the garden during the day or night. The dogs love being indoors and close to us too. If we are in the living room, they curl up in some corner and when the action shifts to the kitchen, they move with us.

The unintended consequence of this is that the monkeys have become emboldened. They know that the dogs are indoors and there is no one to watching the garden. The only fruits of our labour that we can enjoy are citrus. So now I’m resigned to seeing tender mangoes littering the ground, big bites taken out of guavas that aren’t mature. Should anything miss the monkeys’ eyes, the sharp fruit bats get. Well, that’s what I wanted, was it not? I can’t want wildlife in the garden, and expect that they will respect my ownership of it. I've finally found a balance to keeping my beloved dogs and enjoying wildlife.

Summer heat brings out the best in our garden!

2009-06-17T20:55:00.001+05:30

The heady perfume of the flowers is finally wearing off. For weeks now, we have had a succession of trees in blossom. It started with the heavy perfume of neem in April, followed by the sweet smelling Indian laburnum. The most surprising (for me) were the Terminalias – bellerica and arjuna – their blossoms are honey-scented. This the first time that our 10 year old trees have produced flowers so profusely. Some were not even that old. Neem trees, no more than 5 feet tall, virtually babies, were flowering! Surprisingly bellerica had just finished fruiting in March and it went into flower production quickly. The jamuns are also flowering their hearts out but apparently without fragrance. The oriole babies will be in time for the glut of neem fruits and then there are jamuns to be had in August. It may be the hottest time of the year, but it is the most productive for birds, trees, and bees.

Magpie-robins see off ratsnake

2009-06-09T20:56:00.000+05:30

The sharp discordant alarm call of the magpie-robins shook me out of my morning preoccupations. “Why are the magpies calling” I yelled downstairs to Rom. A moment later, he answered, “There’s a ratsnake going for their nest.” I hurriedly grabbed the camera and binoculars and went out. Just outside the porch, between the frond stalks of a stunted coconut tree, a pair of magpie-robins have nested every summer. We knew they had fledglings as the parents had begun making frequent visits with little insects in their beaks. I walked around the tree in a wide arc, not wanting to add to the disturbance and provide anyone with undue advantage. The ratsnake was not clearly discernible among the vines dripping around the tree so there was going to be no picture. The birds dive-bombed, and pecked the ratsnake to dissuade it from exploring any further. The snake was immobile for a few moments at a stretch and I wondered if he was swallowing the fledglings. No, his head came up too soon and he continued exploring. Eventually the birds gave up on their assault and disappeared. The snake too lost interest and left the tree. I just couldn’t be sure that the fledglings were safe and just barely suppressed the desire to get a ladder and peek in. A couple of hours later, the birds were back to ferrying little insects to the nest.

Media and the gharial crisis

2008-01-26T20:08:00.000+05:30

The gharial crisis has been an opportunity to study how the media reports on a wildlife situation of which I had a ringside seat. The facts of the matter are simple: more and more gharial have been dying on a short stretch of the Chambal since the first week December 2007. Speculation has repeatedly dwelled on pollution, parasites and epidemic disease. In the absence of any new develepment (except the rising mortality figures) what are the ways a reporter can tell the story. In some cases, they merely report just that and add a reminder that a definitive cause is yet to be ascribed. But a few go further - they impute conflict and twist words to make new stories. Don't believe me? Here are the examples -

Take the AP wire which creates unnecessary conflict between conservation agencies where there was none. The reporter says that the Gharial Conservation Alliance’s (GCA) figures conflict with the Chief Wildlife Warden’s (CWW) and the actual death toll is unclear. If he had asked the GCA or the CWW further he would realize that the GCA was providing the total figure whereas the CWW of Uttar Pradesh was providing the figures for his state. The other side of the river is Madhya Pradesh where gharials are dying too. And being a wire service, it was picked up by newspapers around the world.

But the worst of the lot is Mail Today who has run 2 pieces to date – on the 22nd and 26th Jan (today). While the 22nd piece was all right, much damage was caused by today's piece. Two days ago, a WWF colleague called to say that during an interview the reporter quoted Rom as saying that the something was wrong with the blood samples taken from the captive gharial at the Morena captive breeding facility in Madhya Pradesh. Rom, however, had never said anything like that; he had said that we needed to draw blood samples from the captive gharial so we have our baseline blood values against which to compare the blood values of the diseased gharial on the Chambal. So Rom emailed her (24th Jan) clarifying the issue and adding that blood samples from the Morena gharial were not even drawn yet. But Ms Reporter steams straight on and publishes complete untruth as fact and to add insult to injury puts it within quotes.

The Forest Department is everyone's favourite whipping horse. When they do work with other agencies however, they are not creditted for it. This fragile cooperation between government authorities, NGOs, and labs is working to get to the bottom of this tragic die-off. At the best of times, these are uneasy partners and under a crisis the over-riding concern for the animals has provided a rare moment of cooperation. If the media were to poison this important camaraderie, they are doing much more harm than any good for the gharial. Besides, when all these agencies are working together, setting aside differences, why cannot the media set aside its pettiness and act responsibly? Is it so hard to be fair and balanced? Why cannot praise be given where it is due just as much as criticism?

Millipedes mating

2008-01-22T10:33:00.000+05:30

Found in the garden this morning at 10 am. I have seen millipedes mating before but have never seen the white translucent mating organ (is it?) before. You can see it about an inch below the head of the millipede, near the withered grass blade.

The 180° Separation

2008-01-13T17:04:00.000+05:30

When the Europeans arrived on the shores of America, it was a vast land teeming with animals. In their pursuit of agriculture and animal husbandry, land was cleared and wild animals destroyed. A couple of centuries later, wolves, bears, mountain lions, coyotes, bison had all been wiped out throughout most of the continent to make way for progress. During the 1900s, with the realization that these animals were in danger of extinction, large tracts of wilderness were set aside for conservation. The protected areas were devoid of humans and the wardens who policed the protected territory were focused mainly on prevention of poaching. The assumption underlying this model is that people and wildlife do not and cannot share the landscape; where one exists, the other cannot. Endangered species recovered and we pretty soon had this philosophy of conservation making inroads around the world.

In colonized countries, such as India, this Western model was imposed. However, we neither have the vast tracts of land that can be set aside for conservation nor are there forests devoid of humans. So began the process of making the entire country fit into the model – relocation of people living in forest areas. Despite Independence, we continued the colonial policy of further marginalizing an already marginalized people believing it to be in the greatest interest of beleaguered wildlife. And we have more often failed than succeeded. The amount of money and other resources thrown into achieving this has been so pitiful as to render the policy a failure.

On the flip side of the “undisturbed forests” principle is an extremely intolerant attitude to wildlife. Despite being one of the most populous nations in the world, India does not have such a violent history of wildlife extermination as the West had (tigers were declared vermin and official tiger slayers employed by the British). People have lived and continue to live in some really dangerous country. A spate of sheep-killing incidents is all that a Western nation needs to indict the suspected predator as vermin. In India, we have dangerous animals across the country living off livestock and crops. Children get killed by wolves and leopards, people get killed by crop-raiding elephants. In the absence of any management policy to deal with these situations quickly and scientifically, horrific retaliatory killings of animals occurs but by and large people have tended to be tolerant and philosophical about their loss. Ironically, instead of teaching the world a thing or two about coexistence, we are instead learning how not to live with wildlife.

A retired forester narrated an incident that occurred in Kanha in the 1950s. A tiger had killed a little boy and when the forest officials retrieved the body, the father of the son said, “Leave him there. It's only because the tiger didn't have anything else to eat that he took my son. At least let him eat so his belly is full.” The forester said it shook him to hear those terrible words just as it shook me nearly fifty years later.

If we promote the concept of inviolate forests as the only redemption of wildlife in the country, are we also not implying that the countryside is safe only if it is devoid of king cobras, leopards and wolves? Biologists have reported that our protected areas are too small, few and far between to protect our wildlife in the long term. More than half of India's leopards are found outside forests, elephants routinely raid crops and yet, we are banking perhaps too much on wedging a sharp divide between people and wildlife. Is this 180° separation what we want? Are we ready for the day when our little bits and pieces of forest are the only remaining islands of wildlife? Would we have achieved positive conservation action by such division?

A lot of conservation action has focused on educating people, and appealing to their goodwill. And yet, our politics of conservation instead focuses on eroding the traditional tolerance, a tolerance that is credited for the continued presence of much of our wildlife and forests in the 21st century. What is our answer to people who demand that all crop-raiding elephants, nilgai, and blackbuck be exterminated, that all leopards found outside forests be shot? Are frightened people justified in killing king cobras found in their houses and plantations? Do we then preach coexistence?

Stung by a scorpion

2007-10-27T16:21:00.000+05:30

About a fortnight ago, a few of us camped on a riverbank (River Denwa) near Pachmarhi. It was a scenic spot – a lovely beach that was overshadowed by a cliff face. As we lay on the sandy beach looking up at the cliff watching the evening sun cast interesting shadows, we tried to make out faces and creatures. Swiftlets were nesting, rock bee hives hung precariously (I looked nervously behind at the forest wondering if it would provide cover should a buzzard set off the bees) while pigeons strutted on bare ledges. It was a gorgeous spot – one that we had hiked down a steep slope for an hour to get to. As night fell the breeze turned cold and despite the various layers of clothing I was freezing.

That night Rom and I found a sheltered spot to sleep but the wind got through the flimsy blanket. We hadn't thought to take sleeping bags on the trip. Although it seemed like we hadn't slept, we rose feeling refreshed. We lazed on the beach, watching the sunlight change the mood of the rock wall and soon it was time to go. I was walking barefoot on the sands packing our things when I stumbled from pain. Something had jabbed me. Clutching my little toe and wondering what thorn could have scratched me so sharply, I turned around to see the poised tail and sting of a scorpion sticking out of the sand. Our field man advised stamping my foot hard on the rock a couple of times but I knew that one doesn't do anything like that with snakebite and I presumed that the logic was the same for scorpion sting. Rom scooped out the creature and it was the dreaded Mesobuthus tamulus – I have no idea what it's common name is. It's a small reddish plump scorpion that we stay clear of at home. Ironically it had got the only Tamilian in the group!

I sat down with the leg stretched out waiting for the symptoms to appear. Since it was an extremity I knew I was in no danger but I didn't want to aggravate it before a long climb up rocks back to civilization. Little children have died from this scorpion sting and an Irula snake catcher who had been stung in the armpit went into peripheral circulatory failure – he went blue. So although it was a blazing Madras summer, he was shivering cold and Rom said they had to light a fire and rub him vigorously to warm him up. In an hour, his eyes, that had rolled back, became normal and he slowly recovered.

We thought it strange that the scorpion was buried in the sand. I conjectured perhaps he was on the sand and I had stepped on him, pushing him under. I shuddered to think that anyone of us could have been stung on the face or head as we lay sleeping not very far. Slowly the pain crept up my leg – first the inner side of the shins and then the groin. I cursed myself quietly – I had been a stupid ass for not looking where I put my foot. All I can say in defense is that I had never expected to see a scorpion on a sandy beach. Rom said the pain wasn't going to climb up any higher. Half an hour later I was still in pain and couldn't put any weight on that leg. Classic symptoms of the lymphatic system being affected. There was no point in waiting any longer. I got a stick and hobbled along the river bank. The cold river made the pain worse as I crossed it. While we cleaned our feet and put on our shoes, Pradip mentioned that there was a doctor in the village. I said that he couldn't help much except prescribe painkillers. Why hadn't I said so earlier? Golu had some and I popped a pill. Within a few minutes I was much better. Then I popped another just to preempt the pain. Rom worried that I might not be able to balance on the huge boulders – he was drawing some bizarre connection between driving heavy machinery and hiking up rocks.... Anyway it wasn't a problem. By this time I could carry my rucksack and managed to scramble up to the road to the car.

Later the doctor said he would treat scorpion stings with antihistamines and painkillers. I had refused antihistamines because there was no allergic reaction. When I went to bed that night, I could not bear any pressure on it. I was surprised when I woke up the next morning – absolutely no pain or any residual discomfort. The venom had run its course and left me no worse after 24 hours. I had never been stung or bitten by anything more venomous than an ant before and this was an interesting first experience.

I mentioned the sting experience to our friend Ashok and the first question he asked was “Were you stung at the spot where you had dinner the night before?” I answered incredulously “yes.” Ashok explained that he has noticed “lots of scorpions” milling about dinner leftovers at camps. I thought may be the scorpions were hunting the insects that were feeding on the scraps. Ashok said “No,” they seemed to be scavenging like crabs. Interesting!!

Did animals foretell the tsunami?

2007-10-24T13:45:00.000+05:30

Soon after the tsunami of 2004, journalists and filmmakers asked us if we had noticed any unique animal behaviour that indicated prior knowledge of the event. We hadn’t – in fact, in an email sent out to family and friends within moments of the tsunami I wrote that the animals had been surprisingly “silent”. But news reports appeared that endowed animals – domestic, stray and wild, mammals, birds, insects – with amazing powers of premonition. Their evidence was that not many carcasses of animals were found. Fair enough. I wasn’t on the ground in any badly affected area so I’m unable to agree or disagree with that contention. Animals apparently ran up hills, into forests and away from the coast long before the tsunami hit, said many.

In Yala National Park in south-eastern Sri Lanka, one of the hardest hit places on the island, researchers who were studying elephants published a report saying that neither of the 2 elephants with satellite collars who were closest to the coast showed any unusual avoidance behaviour of the tsunami. "Our movement data suggest no flight behavior by either elephant prior to or during the tsunami’s impact. The female even moved toward the beach, not inland."As proof they attached a map plotting the movements of the elephants.

During the first week of July 2007, at least 168 blackbuck and 2 lions were washed away by flash floods in Velavadar National Park, Gujarat. If animals were capable of such extraordinary sensory perception, surely they would have moved away from the path of the water. The trouble with assessing animal behaviour in hindsight is that it is totally impossible to prove (the backbone of science). Like the elephants of Sri Lanka unless the movements of the animals are monitored prior to a major event, it is virtually impossible to prove their abilities to sense earthquakes or tsunamis. As much as the idea is charming, the jury is still out.

How ecofriendly is any mega energy production?

2007-07-21T20:37:00.001+05:30

Is large electricity production (whether mainstream or alternate) the answer? What if every building had its own power generation system - a combination of solar and wind? Apparently every house in one town in Norway has tiny windmills (the size of exhaust fans). The answers are there but requires everyone to participate. Centralized, and therefore mega, power production may never be green.

Greenpeace makes a big noise about light bulbs and promotes CFLs. Instead, what if you used clusters of LEDs. We now have powerful torches with LEDs - so why not all domestic lighting options? The solution doesn't lie is addressing production alone - you need to tackle consumption as well. Our IT corridors are lined with flashy glass fronted buildings that are so hot (in every sense of the word) that they need to be airconditioned entirely. The rooms are so badly designed that they need to be lit all day even if it is bright and sunny outside. These "modern" designs would be more appropriate for countries in the Arctic Circle but instead we have transplanted them to the tropics and then we sit back and admire our "progress" - how we match Sunnyvale building for building!

May be we just dress too much! ;-) On a normal day people dress in black/synthetic/knitted shirts/T-shirts sometimes with heavy plastic designs/synthetic salwar kameez/saris and the first thing they reach for when they enter the office is the aircon switch. It gets worse at meetings and conferences when people are dressed in black three-piece synthetic fibre suits or pullovers in this country - it's that cold inside. Or is it the other way round - the thermostat is turned up because people are dressed so?

One environmental/wildlife writer with a column in the Sunday Indian Express began her article on climate change with the complaint that the voltage was so low that her aircon wasn't working and the fan was running too slow and how hot it is getting because of climate change...and she wasn't being ironic or sarcastic (merely ignorant)!

So it seems like we are stuck to mega power projects whether we like/approve it or not. Or should we shed a few clothes and invite the wrath of Bajrang Dal/Taliban?!

The bird that uses pig mane

2007-07-20T17:00:00.000+05:30

Today we found a couple of nests more at the same spot (cited in 'The utility of animal mane"). One had an egg - an unmistakable oriental magpie-robin - bluish green egg about 2 cm long, reddish brown speckling on the broad egg, fewer on the narrow end. Magpie- robins famously use hair of all kinds - they use dog fur as a lining in my ma's house. So there ends the mystery.

Birdy Politics

2007-07-19T20:42:00.000+05:30

A month ago there were a lot of birds nesting around the house - magpie robins, treepies, orioles, drongoes and red-vented bulbuls. Sooner or later the treepies and crow pheasants finished off the eggs or babies. And so the birds went into a second bout of nesting. Some like the magpie robins nested in the same nest while others made a fresh nest in another location. When we were traveling the orioles had nested right outside our bedroom window upstairs. Without seeming to linger we kept an eye on developments until one day the eggs were gone, just like the others. They made another nest in a neighbouring tree but it was a worse location than the first. At least the first had some foliage to camouflage the nest; the second was in plain sight of every passing bird. However, we were thankful that they moved their nest as every morning their loud calls pierced into our still deep in slumber consciousness. After an occasional late night movie, there was nothing we could do to shut out that incessant calling short of shooting the bird. Anyway, the new oriole nest location was close to the drongoes' nest and together they gave notice to every passer-by, including my innocent German Shepherd, Koko.

This evening, I was taking the dogs was a walk when I registered the loud distress calls of the orioles. Rom said one of the birds sitting on the lower branch was a fledgling. It was too soon after the new nest was made and both of us remarked on the speed of growth in baby birds. The "fledgling" flew to another branch with ease - it was no baby. It was the dull greenish-yellow female. As I tried to spot the gorgeously golden yellow male bird, something else caught my eye. A long tail - was it a treepie? No, it was a beautiful male shikra, tearing into something he held with his claws. Through the binoculars I could see a pair of birds' feet sticking out from between the talons. Looking around the ground below me, I saw little greyish feathers. Glassed the nest - no movement. I waited for the bird's feet to drop so I could tell if it was a baby oriole or not. I was aghast as I watched the shikra swallow the feet one after the other! Rom suggested tracing the head. It is absolutely flat and clear below and I just could not find the head. I called the dogs to see if they could sniff it out; no success. Meal over, the shikra sat there watching the world below him, unperturbed by the dive-bombing of the orioles or my walking around below him. Just then the dronges began dive bombing the shikra too - I can't be sure what the drongoes were doing all this time but they were not in the picture. As I watched through the binoculars, one drongo flew close to the shikra, landed on a branch near him and began calling the shikra call! Was he aware what he was doing? I watched it again and again - while the shikra sat silently, the drongo would dive bomb and then do the shikra call. Attributing method and strategy to this would be too much, it was perhaps nothing more than mere coincidence.

Why did the Indus Valley civilization collapse?

2007-07-18T20:24:00.000+05:30

'Nature and the Orient' is a small pillow of a book (1036 pgs) that deals with the environmental history of South and Southeast Asia. One of the first chapters tackles the question of the collapse of the civilization. Apparently the assumption that the people of the civilization self-destructed doesn't hold. There was a wide-spread belief that the area was a marsh land covered by thick jungles before its colonizers ruined it by over-exploitation. Then came the work of McKean (I'm unable to find her full name), an archaeologist who excavated Balakot, near Harappa and concluded that the environment of Harappa was no different from what it is today. It was a great floodplain with trees such as Acacia, Prosopis, Tamarix and so on, just what you'd see if you traveled there now. Her theory is that when the Windar river changed course the people abandoned the great cities of that time. So where did they go? Did all of the Indus Valley have to pack up and leave one day because the river changed course? It doesn't make much sense.

Easter Island – genocide or ecocide?

2007-07-17T21:01:00.000+05:30

It was ecological disaster that had wiped out these civilizations, declared Jared Diamond in ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee’. The highlighted 3 civilizations – the Easter Islanders, the Anasazi in the American Southwest and Petra in the Middle East – seemed to have self-destructed by consuming natural resources unsustainably. He hinted that ecocide may have also claimed our own Indus Valley Civilization. The conclusion was that if we didn’t heed the lessons of history, we could soon wind up as dead as all the others. It is easy to think that the unsustainability of our current living standards is unparalleled in history. But it was a revelation to hear otherwise; and besides, the fate that befell these greedy suckers was just as devastating as conservationists have been foretelling. In the particular case of the Easter Islanders, Diamond says that the Rapanui cut down prodigious numbers of trees, down to the last one, to roll their mammoth sized stone carvings onto the beach. Once they had so frivolously squandered their forests, they sank to the depths of internecine warfare and cannibalism. It was a potent, seductive argument for conservation – one that I had heard predicted in the future but never as having occurred somewhere already. Conserve or be damned!

Then today we read an article on the Easter Islanders. It’s called ‘Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island’ by Terry L. Hunt published in American Scientist Vol. 94 No. 5 Sept-Oct 2006. The author is an archaeologist and she debunks the ecological disaster theory being the cause of the demise of the Islanders. First of all, she nails the colonization of the island about 400 years later than previously thought. Then, she makes a case for ecological devastation wrought by Polynesian rats, who arrived with the Polynesian colonists. The rodents ate through the nuts of the Jubaea palm preventing regeneration. This combined with deforestation, destroyed the ecology of the island but people continued to hang on in considerable numbers. The Islanders died out with the arrival of the Europeans – they were captured for slavery, new diseases towards which the islanders had no immunity decimated their numbers. Hunt concludes, “It was genocide, not ecocide, that caused the demise of the Rapanui.” Before we say "cheers" and carry on living as we did before, let me hasten to add that nobody has yet shown that the Anasazi and the others didn't die of ecological debauchery, so easy does it.

The utility of animal mane

2007-07-02T11:39:00.000+05:30

A few days ago, we found a bird's nest on our windowsill - between the air conditioner and the sill actually. Surprisingly a lot of the fibre used in its construction was made of Luppy, our pig's mane. Luppy being half-wild boar had inherited her father's hairy spinal ruff of hair. It is thick and wiry - reminscent of elephant hair. We never found out what bird had been so enterprising enough to utilize the more durable "fibre". This reminded me of an interesting incident that occurred in Mexico.

Sandesh Kadur, his friend, Ranjana, Rom and I were wandering around the Rancho Del Cielo, the Mexican cloud forest station of the Gorgass Science Foundation. At a vantage point that offered a breath-taking view of the plains below, was a sitting platform of wooden slats. Caught between the slats was the scat. Since we hadn't noticed any mammals over the last few days on the ranch except for a few rattlesnakes, slugs and hummingbirds, I was curious. The scat was old and crumbling. The animal had made a meal of a snake as there were a few scales and several insects. But the bulk of the scat comprised of long, thick hair. We wracked our brains, what was the prey animal and who was the predator? When we couldn't reach any conclusion, we approached Lorenzo, the caretaker of the property who had been born and brought up in this area.

Lorenzo dismissed it with one word, "Macho". Macho was his mule who was grazing within sight of us. That didn't explain anything and we were insistent -"see the snake scales?" we pointed to Lorenzo. Lorenzo let loose a long explanation in Spanish - he had recently trimmed Macho's luxuriant mane and a grey fox with a tummy upset obviously ate the discarded bits. Although we weren't on the trail of anything as dangerous as a jaguar whose nail-sharpening scratches we had seen earlier on several trees, it was still a bit of fascinating natural history.

The Philosophy of Animal Birth Control

2007-06-03T20:38:00.000+05:30

This is a question that's been plaguing me - why is the Animal Birth Control (ABC) made out to be such a panacea for so many of our animal related problems? Whether it is rabies, exploding stray dog population or controlling aggression in dogs so they don't kill children, the answer is always ABC. In one of those incandescent hot summer afternoon revelations, it occurred to me today that it's because it's possible. It reminds me of that irritating "jokes" - why does a dog lick his you-know-what? Because he can! Imagine trying to control an outbreak of plague and a burgeoning rat population by doing ABC? Or the number of snakebite mortality and the increasing number of snakes by ABC? Have you ever heard of it? Not even during the Surat plague scare? Now you know why!

And yet we don't hear a peep from any bleeding hearts about the often cruel ways in which we deal with our rodent issues - cracking their backs with a snap trap, poisoning them with baits and throwing the carcasses on the road to poison scavenging animals. Does anybody run a shelter for the orphaned baby rodents whose parents are exterminated? Why the discrimination? I don't expect clear answers - I'll just have to wait for another hot, bright-enough-to-hurt-your-eyes afternoons for the answer to leap out at me.

Common Indian tree frog meets a venomous centipede

2007-05-17T20:26:00.001+05:30

The centipede disappeared in a trice. I blinked. Was it possible? The large female tree frog (Polypedates maculates) who was sitting casually on the kitchen floor had gobbled up a six-inch centipede. I had been on my way to get a dustpan to scoop up the centipede in; instead I ran to fetch my camera and waited for the centipede to be puked out. I was certain it would happen and I waited and waited and waited. The frog just sat there looking very smug. I crawled up close and looked her over, no signs of anything wriggling inside her. The centipede is a ruthless predator of insects and small creatures and its venomous bite has caused many humans much pain. And yet the little frog seemed to suffer no ill effects from swallowing the venomous creature. It was done so fast that the frog didn’t pause to batter, maim or incapacitate the leggy arthropod before swallowing. I must have sat there is complete and utter disbelief for a full minute at least before I gave up on it as a no show.

Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary

2007-05-17T20:25:00.001+05:30

A leopard had killed a chital near the PWD guesthouse the previous night. She was obviously pregnant and her eyes were glazed over. She seemed almost untouched except for the telltale sign of a leopard kill - the puncture marks on her throat. The chital lay not 20 feet from a row of houses. One of the men watching us said he had heard an enormous racket at 2 am.

We had seen the leopard the previous evening before she had made her kill. We were driving back to the guesthouse at dusk when the leopard crossed the road in front of us. Exhausted by the long day on the Girwa river, I was almost asleep with my eyes open when the creature's long tail triggered the brain from its standby mode. Throughout our three days we heard stories of tigers and leopards who seemed to be weaving circles just out of our reach. There was a tiger or leopard kill every morning in front of someone's office or behind someone's house. We felt we were the only ones who were missing all the action.

Katerniaghat is the most tiger-y place I have ever been in, which is not actually saying much. I haven't visited most of the tiger hotspots as I was always on some reptilian adventure. But Katerniaghat was a happy meeting of big cats and reptiles, in the form of pythons, gharial, turtles, and mugger.

We entered Katerniaghat escorted by the genial DFO, Shri. Ramesh Pandey, who wanted to show us his patrolling tracks. Our jeeps wove around tall trees, crossed sandy streambeds until we came to an abrupt stop. Tiger pugmarks. On the side of the track several tree trunks bore the deep scratch marks of a large cat intent on sharpening its claws. Some of the marks were so high that the tiger must have been stretched full length. Thus our stay in Katerniaghat began on such an auspicious note.

The next morning we were on the river glassing the sandbanks for gharial. For 30 years the Girwa gharials have been on even keel - no ups or downs. This was pretty unique in the gharial world as the more famous Chambal Sanctuary has yoyo-ed dramatically. (More on the Chambal later).

Pairs of Brahminy ducks quack-quacked in unison as our boat sped past them. We eventually confirmed the presence of 11 male gharial although previous surveys had come up with only 5 or 6. When we approached India's border with Nepal, several people, who were walking on the forest path on our side, didn't stop running until they were safely on Nepali soil. The Nepali landscape was covered with agricultural fields with very little forest left. In stark contrast, the Indian side was forested, providing free resources for the Nepali villagers.

In January this year, a couple of gharials were photographed with fishing net tangled around their snouts. The boatman said that the gharials managed to free themselves by scratching the net with their hind feet. This time we saw more gharial with nets wrapped around their snouts. We could see no fishing taking place so where could they be finding the nets? The ready answer, of course, is the Nepalese.

But surely gharial aren't that migratory. Unless of course some degree of surreptitious fishing happens within the Sanctuary. Downriver is a huge barrage and any gharial swept below has no chance of making it back. So the answer lies somewhere upriver of the barrage - in India or Nepal.

On our drive out of Katerniaghat to Lucknow we counted 72 Red jungle fowl in 12 km. Then we began seeing the bicycle loads of firewood heading in the same direction as we were. Ramesh Pandey had clamped down on the transport of firewood by train and so this was just a trickle of what it had been before. Still, it doesn't portend a glossy future for the Sanctuary.

Are urban roads for trees?

2007-05-17T20:24:00.003+05:30

Last week a group of urban “environmentalists” protested the cutting down of some avenue trees and left the spot only after being assured that the trees would be transplanted. They were protesting that the exotic raintrees “were being removed in the name of development.” When roads are widened to accommodate the increasing numbers of vehicles, these trees have to go for the sake of human safety. There are a series of trees in Besant Avenue in Chennai that are now dangerously placed when the road was widened. The cautious motorist has to be alert to spot the “Tree Ahead” signboards. These are death traps at night when visibility is not very good. Indeed motorcyclists do lose their lives at such spots. Are we not carrying “environmentalism” too far?

Roads are for vehicles and people to get from one place to another. They are most certainly not for apartment dwelling “environmentalists” to use as their garden. Such hare-brained protests tarnish the image of the conservationist and environmentalist fighting real battles. So for heavens’ sake, please use your better judgment when raising your voice.

The Leopard Strikes Again!

2007-05-17T20:24:00.001+05:30

Early morning of 25th March I let the 2 German Shepherds out and went back to bed. Within a few minutes I sat up bolt upright on hearing an unearthly dog wail. We both rushed out thinking our 2 big dogs were killing a stray dog that has sneaked in somehow. Instead it was a leopard in our garden, about 20 feet from the house, trying to take one of the 2 dogs while the other trotted along helplessly. On seeing us the leopard dropped the dog and disappeared. The dogs wanted to attack the leopard with the newly arrived pack members – us. After making sure that the leopard wasn’t lurking anywhere in the garden we examined the dog. Her thick coat hid most of the damage and it took an hour for me to realize that she had suffered some really bad wounds. The vet arrived and stitched her up and today she’s as good as new.

My favourite bugbear these days is conservationists. As recluses we built our home close to a degraded scrub jungle. Then we proceeded to grant that jungle maximum protection, lobbying for social forestry funds, and weaning people away from the jungle. Slowly the trees emerged from the shrubs. In the meantime we integrated our garden into the forest by planting trees. Monkeys began using these as highways to attack our neighbour’s fields. With the dogs under increased protection at night, hares and civets moved into the garden en masse. So now we have the leopard’s natural prey in our garden and nothing we have done over these years makes sense.

It gets more confusing when you view what we have done from the villagers’ standpoint. Their ancestors slogged to move the forest back, and to exterminate crop-raiding animals such as pigs while we have totally undone everything within 10 years. It certainly is a true lesson in how to live with conservation and with a conservationist, how to live with predators and their prey animals.

The etymology of some botanical and zoological names –

2007-05-17T20:22:00.000+05:30

Source: Hobson-Jobson By Col. Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell

First published 1886

Anaconda – This word fro a great python, or boa, is of very obscure origin. It is now applied in scientific zoology as the specific name of a great S.American water-snake. […] We had naturally supposed the name to be S.American, and its S.American character was rather corroborated by our finding in Ramusio’s version of Pietro Martire d’Angheria such S.American names as Anacauchoa and Anacaona. Serious doubt was however thrown on the American origin of the word when we found that Mr. H.W. Bates entirely disbelieved it, and when we failed to trace the name in any older books about S. America.

In fact the oldest authority that we have met with, the famous John Ray, distinctly assigns the name, and the serpent to which the name properly belonged, to Ceylon. This occurs in his Synopsis Methodica Animalium Quadrupedum et Serpentini Generis, Lond. 1693. In this he gives a Catalogue of Indian Serpents, which he had received from his friend Dr. Tancred Robinson, and which the latter had noted e Museo Leydensi. No. 8 in this list runs as follows:- […]

Still we have the authority of Ray’s friend that Anaconda, or rather Anacondaia, was at Leyden applied as a Ceylonese name to a specimen of python. The only interpretation of this that we can offer is Tamil anai-kondra [anaikonda], “which killed an elephant”; an appellative, but not a name.

Cheenar [Chinar] - chnar, the Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) and platanus of the ancients native from Greece to Persia. It is often by English travellers in Persia miscalled sycamore from confusion with the common English tree (Acer pseudoplatanus), which English people also habitually miscall sycamore, and Scotch people miscall plane-tree! Our quotations show how old the confusion is. The tree is not a native of India, though there are fine chinars in Kashmere, and a few in old native gardens in the Punjab, introduced in the days of the Moghul emperors. The tree is the Arbre Sec of Marco Polo. Chinars of especial vastness and beauty are described by Herodotus and Pliny, by Chardin and others. At Burukdereh near Constantinople, is still known the Plane under which Godfrey of Boulogne is said to have encamped. At Tejrish, N. of Teheran, Sir H. Rawlinson tells us that he measured a great chinar which has a girth of 108 feet at 5 feet from the ground.

Cockatoo: This word is taken from the Malay Kakatuwa. According to Crawfurd the word means properly 'a vice,' or 'gripe,' but is applied to the bird. It seems probable, however, that the name, which is asserted to be the natural cry of the bird, may have come with the latter from some remoter region of the Archipelago, and the name of the tool may have been taken from the bird.

Cockroach: This objectionable insect (Blatta orientalis) is called by the Portugese cacalacca, for the reason given by Bontius below; a name adopted by the Dutch as kakerlak, and by the French as cancrelat. The Dutch also apply their term as a slang name to half-castes. But our word seems to have come from the Spanish cucaracha. The original application of this Spanish name appears to have been to a common insect found under water-vessels standing on the ground, &c. (apparently Oniscus, or woodlouse) but as cucaracha de Indias it is applied to the insect now in question.

Crocodile: This word is seldom used in India; alligator being the term almost invariably employed.

[1870. "...I have been compelled to amputate the limbs of persons seized by crocodiles (Mugger).... The Alligator (gharial) sometimes devour children...."] Chevers, Med. Jurispr. in India, 366 seq.

Dugong: The word is Malay duyung, also Javan. duyung; Macassar, ruyung. The etymology we do not know. [The word came to us from the name Dugung, used in the Philippine island of Leyte, and was popularised in its present form by Buffon in 1765.]

Durian, Dorian: Malay duren, Molucca form duriyan, from duri, 'a thorn or prickle, [and an, the common substantival ending; Mr. Skeat gives the standard Malay as duriyan or durian]; the great fruit of the tree called by botanists Durio zibethinus, D.C.

Giraffe: Fr. girafe, It. giraffa, Sp. and Port. girafa, old Sp. azorafa, and these from Ar. al-zarafa, a cameleopard.

Gour [Gaur]: H. gaur, gauri, gae. [Platts gives gaur, Skt. gaura, 'white, yelowish, reddish, pale red']. The great wild ox, Gavaeus Gaurus, Jerd.; [Bos gaurus, Blanford (Mammalia)], the same as the Bison.

1806 - "They erect strong fences, but the buffaloes generally break them down....They are far larger than common buffaloes. There is an account of a similar kind called the Gore; one distinction between it and the buffalo is the length of the hoof." - Elphinstone, in Life, i. 156.

Jackal: The Canis aureus, L., seldom seen in the daytime, unless it be fighting with vultures for carrion, but in shrieking multitudes, or rather what seem multitudes from the noise they make, entering the precincts of villages, towns, of Calcutta itself, after dark and startling the newcomer with their hideous yells. Our word is not apparently Anglo-Indian, being taken from the Turkish chakal. But the Pers. shaghal is close, and Skt. srigala, 'the howler,' is probably the first form. The common Hind. word is gidur, ['the greedy one,' Skt. gridh].

Jungle: Hind. and Mahr. jangal, from Skt. jangala (a word which occurs chiefly in medical treatises). The native word means in strictness only waste, uncultivated ground; then, such ground covered with shrubs, trees or long grass; and thence again the Anglo-Indian application is to forest, or other wild growth, rather than to the fact that it is not cultivated. A forest; a thicket; a tangled wilderness. The word seems to have passed at a rather early date into Persian, and also into use in Turkistan. From Anglo-Indian it has been adopted into French as well as in English.

Mahseer, Maseer, Masal: Hind. mahasir, mahaser, mahasaula. The name is applied to perhaps more than one of the larger species of Barbus but especially to B.Mosul of Buchanan, B.Tor, Day, B.megalepis, McLelland, found in the larger Himalayan rivers, and also in the greater perennial rivers of Madras and Bombay. It grows at its largest, to about the size of the biggest salmon, and more. It affords also the highest sport to Indian anglers; and from these circumstances haas sometimes been called, misleadingly, the 'Indian salmon.' The origin of the name Mahseer, and its proper spelling, are very doubtful. It may be Skt. maha-siras, 'big-head,' or maha-salka, 'large-scaled.' The latter is most probable, for the scales are so large that Buchanan mentions that playing cards were made from them at Dacca. Mr. H.S. Thomas suggests maha-asya, 'great mouth.'

Mango: The royal fruit of the Mangifera indica, when of good quality is one of the richest and best fruits in the world. The original of the word is Tamil man-kay or man-gay. The Portugese formed from this manga, which we have adopted as mango. The tree is wild in the forests of various parts of India; but the fruit of the wild tree is uneatable.

The word has sometimes been supposed to be Malay; but it was in fact introduced into the Archipelago, along with the fruit itself, from S. India.

The word has been taken to Madagascar, apparently by the Malayan colonists, whose language has left so large an impression there, in the precise shape mangka.

The mango is probably the fruit alluded to by Theophrastus as having caused dysentery in the army of Alexander.

The name has been carried with the fruit to Mauritius and the West Indies. Among many greater services to India the late Sir Proby Cautley diffused largely in Upper Indiathe delicious fruit of the Bombay mango, previously rare there, by creating and encouraging groves of grafts on the banks of the Ganges and Jumna canals.

Mango-bird: The popular Anglo-Indian name of the beautiful golden oriole (Oriolus aureus, jerdon). Its "loud melow whistle" from the mango-groves and other gardens, which it affects, is associated in Upper India with the invasion of the hot weather.

Markhore: Pers. mar-khor 'snake-eater.' A fine wild goat of the Western Himalaya; Capra megaceros, Hutton.

Mohwa, Mhowa, Mowa [Mahua]: Hindi mahua, mahwa, Skt. madhuka, the large oak-like tree Bassia latifolia, Roxb., also the flower of this tree from which a spirit is distilled and the spirit itself. It is said that the Mahwa flower is now largely exported to France for the manufacture of liquers. The tree, in groups, or singly, is common all over Central India in the lower lands, and, more sparsely, in the Gangetic provinces. "It abounds in the Guzerat. When the flowers are falling the Hill-men camp under the trees to collect them. And it is a common practice to sit perched in one of the trees in order to shoot the large deer which come to feed on the fallen mhowa. The timber is strong and durable." (M.-Gen. R.H. Keatinge).

Monkey-Bread Tree: The Baobab, Adansonia digitata, L. "a fantastic-looking tree with immense elephantine stem and small twisted branches, laden in the rains with large white flowers found all along the coast of Western India, but whether introduced by Mahommedans from Africa, or by ocean-currents wafting its large light fruit, full of seed, across from shore to shore, is a nice speculation. A sailor once picked up a large seedy fruit in the Indian Ocean off Bombay, and brought it to me. It was very rotten, but I planted the seeds. It turned out to be Kigelia pinnata of E.Africa, and propogated so rapidly that in a few years I introduced it all over the Bombay Presidency. The Baobab however is generally found most abundant about the old ports frequented by the early Mahommedan traders." (Sir G. Birdwood, MS.) We may add that it occurs sparsely about Allahabad, where it was introduced apparently in the Mogul time; and in the Gangetic valley as far E. as Calcutta, but always planted. There are, or were, noble specimens in the Botanic Gardens at Calcutta, and in Mr. Arthur Grote's garden in Alipur.

Mosquito: A gnat is so called in the tropics. The word is Spanish and Port. (dim. of mosca, 'a fly'), and probably came into familiar English use from the East Indies, though the earlier quotations show that it was first brought from S.America. A friend annotates here: "Arctic monsquitoes are worst of all; and the Norfolk ones (in the Broads) beat Calcutta!"

It is related of a young Scotch lady of a former generation who on her voyage to India had heard formidable, but vague accounts of this terror of the night, that on seeing an elephant for the first time, she asked: "Will you be what's called a musqueetae?"

Muckna [Makhna]: Hind. makhna, [which comes from the Skt. matkuna, 'a bug, flea, a beardless man, an elephant without tusks']. A male elephant without tusks or with only rudimentary tusks. These latter are familiar in Bengal, and still more so in Ceylon, where according to Sir S. Baker, "not more than one in 300 has tusks; they are merely provided with short grubbers, projecting generally about 3 inches from the upper jaw, and about 2 inches in diameter." (The Rifle and Hound in Ceylon) Sanderson (13 Years among the Wild Beasts of India) says: "On the Continent of India mucknas, or elephants born without tusks, are decidedly rare ... Mucknas breed in the herds, and the peculiarity is not hereditary or transmitted." This author also states that out of 51 male elephants captured by him in Mysore and Bengal only 5 were mucknas. But the definition of a makhna in Bengal is that which we have given, including those animals which possess only feminine or rudimentary tusks, the 'short grubbers' of Baker; and these latter can hardly be caled rare among domesticated elephants. This may be partially due to a preference in purchasers. The same author derives the term from mukh, 'face'; but the reason is obscure. Shakespeare and Platts give the word as also applied to 'a cock without spurs.'

c. 1780 - "An elephant born with left tooth only is reckoned sacred; with black spots in the mouth unlucky, and not saleable; the mukna or elephant born without teeth is thought the best." - Hon. R. Lindsay in Lives of the Lindsays.

Muggur [Mugger]: Hind and Mahr. magar and makar, from Skt. makara 'a sea monster'. The destructive broad-snouted crocodile of the Ganges and other Indian rivers, formerly called Crocodilus biporcatus, now apparently subdivided into several sorts or varieties.

1879 - "En route I killed two crocodiles; they are usually called alligators, but that is a misnomer. It is the mugger...these muggers kill a good many people, and have a playful way of getting under a boat, and knocking off the steersman with their tails, and then swallowing him afterwards." - Pollok, Sport, &c.

1881 - "Alligator leather attains by use a beautiful gloss, and is very durable ... and it is possible that our rivers contain a sufficient number of the two varieties of crocodile, the muggar and the garial for the tanners and leather-dressers of Cawnpore to experiment upon." - Pioneer Mail, April 26.

Mungoose [Mongoose]: This is the popular Anglo-Indian name of the Indian ichneumons, represented in the South by Mangusta Mungos (Elliot), Herpestes griseus (Geoffery) of naturalists, and in Bengal by Herpestes malaccensis. [Blanford (Mammalia) recognises eight species, the "Common Indian Mungoose" being described as Herpestes mungo.] The word is Telugu, mangisu or mungisa. In Upper India the animal is called newal, neola, or nyaul. Jerdon gives mangus however as Deccani and Mahr. word; [Platts gives it as dialectic, and very doubtfully derives it from Skt. makshu, 'moving quickly.' In Ar. it is bint'arus, 'daughter of the bridegroom,' in Egypt kitt or katt Faraun, 'Pharoah's cat (Burton, Ar. Nights].

Bluteau gives the following as a quotation from a History of Ceylon, tr. from Portugese into French, published at Paris in 1701. It is in fact the gist of an anecdote in Ribeyro.

"There are persons who cherish the animal and have it sleep with them, although it is ill-tempered, for they prefer to be bitten by a mangus to being killed by a snake."

1774 - "He (the Dharma Raja of Bhootan) has got a little lap-dog and a Mungoos, which he is very fond of." - Bogle's Diary, in Markham's Tibet.

Neelgye, Nilghau [Nilgai]: Hind. ‘blue cow’; the popular name of the great antelope. […] The proper Hind. Name of the animal is rojh (Skt. risya or rishya).

Orange: […] The word doubtless came from the Arab. naranj, which is again a form of Pers. narang, or narangi, the latter being still a common term for the orange in Hindustan. […] The native country of the orange is believed to be somewhere on the northern border of India. A wild orange, the supposed parent of the cultivated species, both sweet and bitter, occurs in Garhwal and Sikkim, as well as in the Kasia country, the valleys of which last are still abundantly productive of excellent oranges.

Palmyra: The fan palm (Borassus flabelliformis), which is very commonly cultivated in S. India and Ceylon (as it is also indeed in the Ganges valley from Farrukhabad down to the head of the Delta), and hence was called by the Portuguese par excellence, palmeira or ‘the palm-tree.’ Sir J. Hooker writes: “I believe this palm is nowhere wild in India; and have always suspected that it, like the tamarind, was introduced from Africa.”

Pangolin: Malay Pangulang, ‘the creature that rolls itself up.’ […] called in Hind. bajrkit (i.e. Skt. vajra-kita ‘adamant reptile’).

Teak: The word is Malayal. tekka, Tam. tekku. No doubt this name was adopted owing to the fact that Europeans first became acquainted with the wood in Malabar, which is still one of the two great sources of supply; Pegu being the other.

The etymology of some geographical names –

2007-05-17T20:20:00.000+05:30

Source: Hobson-Jobson By Col. Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell

First published 1886

Canara - Properly Kannada. This name has long been given to that part of the West coast which lies below the Ghauts, from Mt. Dely northward to the Goa territory and now to the two British distrits constituted out of that tract, viz. N. and S. Canara. This appropriation of the name, however, appears to be of European origin. The name, probably meaning 'black country' [Dravid. kar, 'black,' nadu, 'country'], from the black cotton soil prevailing there, was properly synonymous with Karnataka, and apparently a corruption of that word. Our quotations show that throughout the 16th century the term was applied to the country above the Ghauts, sometimes to the whole kingdom of Narsinga or Vijayanagar. Gradually, and probably owing to local application at Goa, where the natives seem to have been from the first known to the Portugese as Canarijs, a term which in the old Portugese works means the Konkani people and language of Goa, the name became appropriated to the low country on the coast between Goa and Malabar, which was subject to the kingdom in question, much in the same way that the name Carnatic came at a later date to be misapplied on the other side of the Peninsula.

The Kanara or Canarese language is spoken over a large tract above the Ghauts, and as far north aas Bidar. It is only one of several languages spoken in the British districts of Canara, and that only in a small portion, viz. near Kundapur. Tulu is the chief language in the Southern District. Kanadam occurs in the great Tanjore inscription of the 11th century.

Cochin-China: This country was called by the Malays Kuchi, and apparently also, to distinguish it from Kuchi of India (or Cochin), Kuchi-China, a term which the Portugese adopted as Cauchi-China; the Dutch and English from them. Kuchi occurs in this sense in the Malay traditions caled Sijira Malayu. In its origin this word Kuchi is no doubt a foreigner's form of the Annamite Kuu-chön (Chin. Kiu-Ching, South Chin. Kau-Chen), which was the ancient name of the province Thanh'-hoa, in which the city of Huë has been the capital since 1398.

Deccan: Hind. Dakhin, Dakkin, Dakkhan; dakkina, the Prakr. form of Skt. dakshina, ‘the South’; originally ‘on the right hand’. The Southern part of India, the Peninsula, and especially the Tableland between the Eastern and Western Ghauts. It has been often applied also, politically, to specific States in that part of India, e.g. by the Portuguese in the 16th century to the Mahommedan Kingdom of Bijapur, and in more recent times by ourselves to the State of Hyderabad. In Western India, the Deccan stands opposed to the Concan, i.e., the tableland of the interior to the maritime plain; in Upper India the Deccan stands opposed to Hindustan, i.e., roundly speaking, the country south of the Nerbudda to that north of it.

Dravidian: The Skt. term Dravida seems to have been originally the name of the Conjevaram Kingdom (4th to 11th cent. AD), but in recent times it has been used as equivalent to ‘Tamil.’ […] Dr. Caldwell proposed Dravidian as a convenient name for the S.Indian languages which belong to the Tamil family, and the cultivated members of which are Tamil, Malayalam, Canarese, Tulu, Kudagu (or Coorg), and Telugu; the uncultivated Tuda, Kota, Gond, Khond, Oraon, Rajmahali.

Hindoo Koosh [Hindu-Kush]: applied by our geographers to the whole of the Alpine range which separates the basins of the Kabul River and the Helmand from that of the Oxus. It is, as Rennell points out, properly that part of the range immediately north of Kabul, the Caucasus of the historians of Alexander, who crossed and re-crossed it somewhere not far from the longitude of that city. The real origin of the name is not known. […]

c. 1334. “Another motive for our stoppage was the fear of snow; for there is mid-way on the road a mountain called Hindu-Kush, i.e., ‘the Hindu Killer,’ because so many of the slaves, male and female, brought from India, die in the passage of this mountain, owing to the severe cold and quantity of snow.” – Ibn Batuta, iii. 84.

Hindostan. Pers. Hindustan. (a) ‘The country of the Hindus,’ India. In modern native parlance this word indicates distinctively (b) India north of the Nerbudda and exclusive of Bengal and Behar. The latter provinces are regarded as purb, and all south of the Nerbudda as Dakhan. But the word is used in older Mahommedan authors just as it is used in English school-books and atlases, viz. as (a) the equivalent of India Proper. Thus Baber says of Hindustan: “On the East, the South, and the West, it is bounded by the Ocean.”

Mount Delly: Portugese. Monte D'Eli. A mountain on the Malabar coast which forms a remarkable object from seaward, and the name of which occurs sometimes as applied to a State or City adjoining the mountain. It is prominently mentioned in all the old books on India, though strange to say the Map of India in Keith Johnstone's Royal Atlas has neither name nor indications of this famous hill. [It is shown in Constable's Hand Atlas.] It was, according to Correa, the first Indian land seen by Vasco da Gama. The name is Malayal. Eli mala, 'High Mountain.' Several erroneous explanations have however been given. A common one is that it means 'Seven Hills.' This arose with the compiler of the local Skt. Mahatmya or legend, who rendered the name Saptasaila, 'Seven Hills,' confounding eli with elu, 'seven,' which has no application. Again we shall find it explained as a 'Rat-hill'; but here eli is substituted for eli. [The Madras Gloss. gives the word as Mal. ezhimala, and explains it as 'Rat-hill,' "because infested by rats."] The position of the town and port of Ely or Hili mentionedby the older travellers is a little doubtful, but see Marco Polo, notes to Bk.III. ch. xxiv. The Ely-Maide of the Peutingerian Tables is not unlikely to be an indication of Ely.

1298. "Eli is a Kingdom towards the west, about 300 miles from Comari...There is no proper harbour in the country, but there are many rivers with good estuaries, wide and deep." Marco Polo, Bk.III ch.24.

c. 1330. "Three days journey beyond this city (Manjarur, i.e., Mangalore) there is a great hilll which projects into the sea, and is decried by travellers from afar, the promontory called Hili. Abulfeda, in Gildemeister, 185.

c. 1343. "At the end of that time we set off for Hili, where we arrived two days later. It is a large well-built town on a great bay (or estuary) which big ships enter." Ibn Batuta, iv 81.

c. 1440. "Proceeding onwards he ... arrived at two cities situatedon the sea shore, one named Pacamuria, and the other Helly." Nicolo Conti, in India in the XVth Cent. p. 6

1516. "After passing this place along the coast is the Mountain Dely, on the edge of the sea; it is a round mountain, very lofty, in the mids of low land; all the ships of the Moors and the Gentiles...sight this mountain...and make their reckoning by it." Barbosa, 149

c. 1562. "In twenty days they got sight of land, which the pilots foretold before that they saw it, this was a great mountain which is on the coast of India, in the Kingdom of Cananor, which the people of the country in their language call the mountain Dely, elly meaning 'the rat,' [A correction is made here on Lord Stanley's translation.] and they call it Mount Dely, because in this mountain there are so many rats that they could never make a village there." Correa, Three Voyages, &c., Hak. Soc. 145.

Godavery: Skt. Godavari, 'giving kine.' Whether this name of northern etymology was a corruption of some indigenous name we know not. [The Dravidian name of the river is Goday (Tel. gode, 'limit'), of which the present name is possibly a corruption.] It is remarkable how the Godavery is ignored by writers and mapmakers till a comparatively late period, with the notable exception of D. Joao de Castro, in a work, however, not published till 1843. Barros, in his trace of the coasts of the Indies, mentions Gudavarij as a place adjoining a cape of the same name (which appears in some much later charts as C.Gordewar), but takes no notice of the great river, so far as we are aware, in any part of his history. Linschoten also speaks of the Punto de Guadovaryn, but not of the river. Nor does his map show the latter, though showing the Kistna distinctly.

c. 1590. "Here (in Berar) are rivers in abundance; especially the Ganga of the Gotam, which they also call Godovari. The Ganga of Hindustan they dedicate to Mahadeo, but this Ganga to Gotam. And they tell wonderful legends of it, and pay it great adoration. It has its springs in the Sahya Hills near Trimbak, and passing through the Wilayat of Ahmadnagar, enters Berar and thence flows on to Tilingana." - Ain-i-Akbari. We may observe that the most easterly of the Delta branches of the Godavery is still called Gautami.

Malabar: The name of the sea-board country which the Arabs called the 'Pepper Coast,' the ancient Kerala of the Hindus, is not in form indigenous, but was applied, apparently, first by the Arab or Arabo-Persian mariners of the Gulf. The substantive part of the name, Malai, or the like, is doubtless indigenous; it is the Dravidian term for 'mountain' in the Sanskritized form Malaya, which is applied specifically to the southern portion of the Western Ghauts, and from which is taken the indigenous term Malayalam, distinguishing that branch of the Dravidian language in the tract which we call Malabar. This name - Male or Malai, Maliah, &c., - we find in the earlier post-classic notices of India; whilst in the great Temple inscription of Tanjore (11th century) we find the region in question called Malai-nadu (nadu, 'country'). The affix bar appears attached to it first (so far as we are aware) in the Geography of Edrisi (c.1150). This (Persian?) termination, bar, whatever be its origin, and whether or no it be connected either with the Ar. barr, 'a continent,' on the one hand, or with the Skt. vara, 'a region, a slope,' on the other, was most assuredly applied by the navigators of the Gulf to other regions which they visited besides Western India. Thus we have Zangi-bar (mod. Zanzibar), 'the country of the Blacks'; Kalah-bar, denoting apparently the coast of the Malay Peninsula; and even according to the dictionaries, Hindu-bar for India. [...] But, from the time of the Portugese discovery of the Cape route, Malavar, or Malabar, as we have it now, is the persistent form. [Mr. Logan remarks that the name is not in use in the district itself except among foreigners and English-speaking natives; the ordinary name is Malayalam or Malayam, 'the Hill Country.']

Narcondam: The name of a strange weird-looking volcanic cone, which rises, covered with forest, to a height of some 2330 feet straight out of the deep sea, to the eastward of the Andamans. One of the present writers has observed (Marco Polo, Book III. ch. 13) that in the name of Narkandam one cannot but recognise Narak, 'Hell'; perhaps Naraka-kundam, 'a pit of hell'; adding: "Can it be that in old times, but still contemporary with Hindu navigation, this volcano was active, and that some Brahmin St. Brandon recognised in it the mouth of Hell, congenial to the Rakshasas of the adjacent group" of the Andamans? We have recently received an interesting letter from Mr. F.R. Mallet of the Geological Survey of India, who has lately been on a survey of Narcondam and Barren Island. Mr. Mallet states that Narcondam is "without any crater, and has certainly been extinct for many thousand years. Barren Island, on the other hand, forms a complete amphitheatre, with high precipitous encircling walls, and the volcano has been in violent eruption within the last century. The term 'pit of hell,' therefore, while quite inapplicable to Narcondam, applies most aptly to Barren Island." Mr.Mallet suggests that there may have been some confusion between the two islands, and that the name Narcondam may have been really applicable to Barren Island. The name Barren Island is quite modern. We are told in Purdy's Or. Navigator (350) that Barren Island was called by the Portugese Ilha alta, a name which again would be much more apt for Narcondam, Barren Island being only some 800 feet high. Mr. Mallet mentions that in one of the charts of the E.I. Pilot or Oriental Navigator (1781) he finds "Narcondam according to the Portugese" is 13o 45' N. lat. and 110o 35' E. long. (from Ferro) and "Narcondam or High Island, according to the French," in 12o 50' N. lat and 110o 55' E. long. This is invaluable as showing both that there may have been some confusion between the islands, and that Ilha alta or High Island has been connected with the name of Narcondam.

Ootacamund: The word is a corruption of the Badaga name of the site of ‘Stone-house,’ the first European house erected in those hills, properly Hottaga-mand.

Papua: Malay papuwah, or sometimes puwah-puwah, meaning ‘frizzle-haired’

Stray Dog Ahimsa

2007-05-17T20:16:00.002+05:30

I find it interesting that all the Animal Welfare Organizations are quoting Mahatma Gandhi to support their case that a nation is judged by the way it treats its animals. But here is what Gandhi writes particularly on the issue of stray dogs and what needs to be done and his definition of ahimsa.

In Oct 1926, a public controversy arose when Gandhiji permitted a wealthy mill-owner from Ahmedabad to destroy about 60 dogs which were roaming around in his mill premises. Publicly answering protest letters from the local Humanitarian League against his verdict, Gandhiji wrote a series of as many as eight long articles on the issue in his weekly, 'Young India' (Oct-Dec 1926): "Perfect, erring mortals as we are, there is no course open to us but the destruction of rabid dogs. At times we may be faced with the unavoidable duty of killing even a man who is found in the act of killing people. [...] It is a thousand pities that the questions of stray dogs, etc. assume such a monstrous proportion in this sacred land of ahimsa. It is my firm conviction that we are propogating himsa in the name of ahimsa owing to our deep ignorance of this great principle...It is a sin, it should be a sin to feed stray dogs, and we should save numerous dogs if we had legislation making every stray dog liable to be shot.... Humanity is a noble attribute of the soul. It is not exhausted with saving a few dogs. Such saving may even be sinful." (Young India, 21.10.26).

"The multiplication of dogs is unnecessary. A roving dog without an owner is a danger to society and a swarm of them is a menace to its (society's) very existence...But can we take individual charge of these roving dogs? And if we cannot, can we have a pinjarapole for them? If both these things are impossible, there seems to be no alternative except to kill them...I am, therefore, strongly of opinion that, if we would practise the religion of humanity, we should have a law making it obligatory on those who would have dogs to keep them under guard, and not allow them to stray, and making all stray dogs liable to be destroyed after a certain date." (Young India, 28.10.26).

Two years later, he wrote: "Every unlicensed dog should be caught by the police and immediately handed over to the Mahajan if they have adequate provision for the maintenance of these dogs and would submit to municipal supervision as to the adequacy of such provision. Failing such provision, all stray dogs should be shot. This, in my opinion, is the most humanitarian method of dealing with the dog nuisance which everybody feels but nobody cares or dares to tackle. This laissez faire is quite in keeping with the atmosphere of general public indifference. But such indifference is itself himsa, and a votary of ahimsa cannot afford to neglect or shirk questions, be they ever so trifling, if these demand a solution in terms of ahimsa." (Young India 11.4.29)

The Freakiest Trek of my life

2007-05-17T20:16:00.001+05:30

In April 2006 my brother, sister-in-law and I went on a hike up the Santa Monica Mountains outside Los Angeles. We were on the main path and since it was a Sunday it soon became very busy with other trekkers and horse riders. Although I wasn't expecting to see anything by way of wild creatures, the complete lack of anything wild, big or small, was depressing. Late in the afternoon we decided to try a smaller path - one of the scenic ones that deviate off the main path. That’s when it began to get interesting - there were lizards here. I couldn't tell what they were, having come ill-equipped - no field guides of any kind. Little did I know that we would go trekking in LA or that there were even marginally wild places in these parts.

As we rounded a crest my brother who was ahead said, "snake, snake". It was a beautiful one - a red snake with black and white bands. I know nothing about American snakes and couldn't tell the non-venomous milksnakes from the venomous coral snakes to save my life. So I wasn't going to mess with something I couldn't positively identify. I just memorized the colour pattern and watched as the snake crossed the path and disappeared into the undergrowth.

Ten minutes later I was walking along chanting the colour sequence into memory "red, black, white" when I realized that I was wearing the snake on my T-shirt! In August 2005 we had attended the Daytona Reptile Expo where folks from the website www.kingsnake.com gave me a T-shirt with their emblem on it - a kingsnake. And that was the shirt I was wearing! I whipped around to face the others and pointed to my shirt and their jaws dropped.

Back at the apartment, my brother surfed the net to get more information on the snake we had seen. Then came a phone call from my partner, Rom Whitaker, who was then filming in Texas. I described the snake and he said "I can't believe it. You saw a Mountain Kingsnake. The California Mountain Kingsnake." "Is it special?" I wanted to know. "Very special" he said. In the meantime my brother stumbled on a site where a bloke had posted a note requesting any information on where he might find California mountain kingsnakes in the Santa Monicas and he said he had been on the look-out for the last 10 years or so.

I was leaving the next day back to Gainesville, FL and I had to call my hosts to alert them. Since they were formerly from CA, I blurted my exciting story into the phone and Harvey was as pleased as I was that I had seen a snake he had last seen as a young boy. Then he said that there were no coral snakes in CA to confuse with the non-venomous milksnakes or kingsnakes.

Now how many people have experienced something as freaky as that - first, to wear a T-shirt with the snake id, and second, make that a really, really special snake – one that makes it to herper’s life lists.

That April I was on a roll. Back in Florida, I found a whole bunch of water moccasins at Sea Horse Key. I'll save this for another post.

Pythons Galore!

2007-05-17T20:15:00.000+05:30

During the British Raj a railway line passed all the way through Katerniaghat Sanctuary right upto the River Girwa. In the early 1970s, it was deemed dangerous to wildlife and the tracks were moved to skirt the Park. Then a road was built above the swamp area by excavating dirt from either side and piling it where the road eventually came up. All this area was reclaimed by vegetation, esp., the exotic Ipomea, and it became the ideal habitat for pythons.

One of the jobs we had to do in this area was to identify the species of python – was it Indian Rock Python, Python molurus molurus or Burmese Python, Python molurus bivittatus? As we left the safety of the path and blindly blundered down the slope unable to see the ground through the 10 feet tall grass, I realized that I was small enough to be python food. Its usually too late to act on such wise thoughts. So onwards I went - first following Rom and if it was easier, I followed Bill Zeigler, our visiting friend. After a while there was no question of following anybody, both of them had forged ahead and I was left behind. They were both on either ends of a large marsh so I hedged my bets and stood in the middle. Only a few minutes passed before Rom yelled that he had a snake. Bill and I rushed as best as we could to where Rom was standing. It was a fairly large animal - about 12 feet long. Its eyes were bluish and its colours were dull - it was about to go into shed. While Rom had stood there looking around, the snake had approached him from the rear; it was curious to know what this biped creature in its territory was! Now that was a first for me - a snake investigating a human first, rather than the other way round. Rom asked me to check the species. First I had to check the suboculars. As Rom stood there struggling with the snake, Bill was getting his camera out and I looked helplessly - I didn't know what suboculars were. Rom couldn't see without his glasses which were out of reach so I had to do the best I could. There was a ring of scales around the eye but I wasn't sure if these were suboculars or infraoculars. Ok, never mind the first character, on to the second. Burmese had purple tongue. That was easy. The snake kept flicking its tongue out and it was purple. The third diagnostic was the arrowhead shaped mark on the head. This snake had a clear mark and it fulfilled yet another criteria. The last thing to check was if the head of the python had any pink. That was hard to see as the snake was going into a shed. Anyway 2 out of 4 characters matched and Rom let the snake go.

Near the area where we had been examining the python lay a large almost entire shed skin of a python. We cut out the head area alone so Rom could examine the suboculars later. Bill found the next snake and before Rom could reach him, the powerful snake had slipped through Bill's hands. The Ipomea functioned like python telegraph. The long spindly stalks leaned against each other creating a vast interconnected system on which the pythons lay basking. Should one of the stems be disturbed, the vibrations passed all the way down several yards and the pre-warned snakes slipped into the water long before we even came close. It was frustrating to first hear the crackling of the dry twigs and then the water splashing as the snake slipped in.

That evening Rom examined the piece of shed skin and confirmed that the scales I was looking at were indeed suboculars. So 3 out of 4 criteria matched. We attempted looking for more snakes the next day but were totally unsuccessful. We wanted to know if this was entirely Burmese python territory or whether both subspecies were found together. But alas, our time was up and we had other more pressing things to do.

It seemed like the right place to do a radio-tracking study of pythons - there were plenty of animals and it didn't look as if they went very far. Our friend, Ashok even thought up a mechanism for such a study - hover over the swamp in a hot air balloon and with the receiver the snakes could be tracked without ever dirtying one's feet daily. Now that's the sort of study that I would go for IF I was a biologist!

The Chambal

2007-05-17T20:13:00.001+05:30

We returned late in the evening, just after nightfall, after a whole day spent looking for gharials on the Chambal. A large group of armed guards were waiting for us at the boat landing. Rapid fire Hindi shot back and forth between our guide and the guards. My impression was that the guards were upset that we had arrived so late. They crowded into their truck and with a ceremonial pilot set off on the road to Morena. I wonder what the nightlife in these areas is like? Sadly I was too chicken to venture out. Kidnapping for ransom is a local way of making a living here.

Despite the tension of the evening, we had a fantastic day – it was a wonderful kaleidoscope of wildlife vignettes - hundreds of Bar-headed geese, Brahminy ducks, River terns and several Egyptian vultures. We visited 2 sites where gharial basked in groups of ten to fifteen - Tikirirathori and Usedghat. They were shier than mugger, jumping into the water as soon as they heard our boat. But if we maintained our distance and sat very still, the gharial would haul out and bask. But both these sites were been mined for sand and the tractors and earth moving machinery created a constant drone.

On the way back to Rajghat (the boat landing) the steep cliffs of the ravines looked like burnished gold in the setting sun. While watching the geese and ducks raid crops, we spotted a Desert fox. We watched it trot purposefully along the steep slope, feeling really lucky to have spotted such an exotic creature. Then there was the sound of skirmishing and there were 2 foxes fighting - they reared up on their hind legs and tried to get a bite of the other. The one we had been watching was the larger of the two and he prevailed over the smaller fox that ran away. A few minutes later, we came upon a jackal, an on-the-spot lesson for me in how to tell the two canids apart.

Much as the place was enjoyable, there are a few devils plaguing its peace. Sand mining is perhaps the most visible face of all the threats that gharials face in this river. But there are others that are far deadlier - lack of enforcement (UP has no guards patrolling its side of the river), fishing (not only depleted the gharial's prey but the nets drown them), turtle poaching, and agriculture (in most places crops were planted right up to the edge of the river).

But it wasn't always like this. A few years after Project Crocodile began in the 1970s, the National Chambal Sanctuary was celebrated as a jewel in the crown of croc conservation - an incredible success story. No other river had the kind of guaranteed protection Chambal enjoyed under the various bandits. There were no dams and a major 100 km stretch of it was ideal gharial habitat. Then in the late 1990s murmurs of plummeting gharial numbers shook the croc conservationists from their slumber. The population had crashed by nearly 75% between 1996 and 2006.

How does one even begin to clean this gharial central of its mafia? One police officer said that ever since sand mining became a serious business, incidents of dacoity (or banditry) have decreased. So providing alternative livelihoods to the local communities definitely holds the key to protecting the habitat.

Croc farming practiced by local villagers has been bandied about as an answer to these problems but I'm just not sure. The local people apparently are vegetarian; the fishermen come from elsewhere during the season, as do the turtle poachers. The rains have been fickle for the last few years and the poor villagers have had to rely on the river to irrigate their fields. So they have moved closer to the river. Given this situation, sand mining is an easy way of making some money. Something has to be done to enrich the villagers and I don't envy the conservationists who have been tasked with the job of wresting the river for the gharial, river dolphins and all the denizens of an increasingly shrinking riverine world.

The Leopard of Chengalpattu

2007-05-17T20:11:00.001+05:30

If you see the scrubby hills around Chengalpattu (southern outskirts of Chennai) you'll find it hard to believe that a leopard could live here but live here one does. There is no prey to speak of; the largest mammals were jackals, porcupines, bonnet macaques, hares, mongooses and civets. I suppose a leopard could make an occasional meal of any of these but it seems hardly likely that he can survive on them.

The village elders said that the last leopard in these parts was killed about 30 years ago. For the 10 years we have been residents of this village we have fantasized leopards making a coming back but little did we realize how imminent that was.

It all began in Feb 2005 when my partner claimed he heard a leopard's distinctive saw-like call one night. I was already fast asleep. Since that wasn't followed by any other news - no one else heard it or saw it, nor did we hear about livestock getting taken, we eventually forgot about it.

Then in June 2006 I lost my favourite German Shepherd. We assumed it was stolen until my parents claimed they saw a leopard like animal silhouette against the setting sky one evening. That was disquieting news and I had a driving need to get to the bottom of this. We were traveling then and couldn't do much long distance. It was the longest 2 weeks I've ever lived.

Once home, we hired a pair of sharp-sighted Irula tribals. They examined the bent fence and began rapidly following a trail into the adjacent scrub forest. They found the fully consumed remains of the dog about 300 yards from our fence. The only tracks they could find around the skeleton were of jackals. That was to cause a big confusion about the identity of the predator.

We realized right away that this was a leopard but there was no pugmark or definite sighting of it. No jackal could have killed a 45 kg male German Shepherd and then hauled it over a fence of chainlink bordered by cactii into the thorniest thicket possible. Enquiries in the nearby villages revealed a year long series of livestock being taken. Several cows had been killed while grazing in the forest and countless goats had been taken. The villagers claimed that jackals were the culprits. It seemed ludicrous to accuse those diminuitive canids of bringing down such large animals as cows but now in hind sight it might be that like us, they saw jackal footprints around the carcasses or even saw the animals runing away from the carcass as they approached. When we tentatively suggested it could be a leopard, they were quick to retort that "those" animals were not found here. It also occurred to us that superstitious villagers may not like to mention the name of a much feared animal like snakes, for instance. So things stood for a couple of months.

Then in early September, after a night of rain we found a set of clear pugmarks very near where my dog was taken. We took pictures and mailed it to a few cat biologist friends. One of the first responses we got was startling - Peter Jackson said that the pugmark was of a large leopard. We had assumed the animal was smallish as it seemed only slightly larger than our dogs' pawmarks. Sujoy Chaudhuri pored over the sizes of leopard pugmarks from other parts of India and confirmed Peter's prognosis. We thought perhaps the soft dirt had splayed and made the pugmark appear large. The layer of dirt was only about 2 to 3 inches thick; below it was the concrete floor of a demolished house. So it was very likely to be fairly accurate.

Then in mid October, a couple of days before Diwali, our caretaker was returning from shopping when he saw the head and chest of the cat on a rocky hilltop. The leopard nonchalantly watched the road as it basked in the noon day sun. The caretaker stopped to have a good look and soon a small group of people gathered. One amongst them was a Forest Ranger who eventually shooed it away. As the animal stood up, the caretaker said, it appeared "really big and really long." And so with a lot of trepidation we wonder how this leopard's story is going to progress.

To their credit the villagers didn't panic and demand that the animal be trapped right away. We just hope the animal keeps its head and doesn't get into trouble.

Watchers at the Pond - Franklin Russell

2007-05-17T20:10:00.001+05:30

This is a classic in nature writing - as much a lesson in nature as about writing. It chronicles a year in the lives of the various creatures that live around a North American pond. It sounds like a boring high school biology class but the reader is so caught up in the drama of life and death and of the changing seasons that it is un-put-down-able. Humans brought up in cities are so far removed from life that we seek to find justice, cause and resolution to death that is "senseless" and unacceptable. In reality death is "quick, bright, forgettable", he writes. It is what makes the world go around. Death feeds the living and that is its only justification. Death occurs because there was once life. This is the simple fundamental truth of all life on earth that one takes away from the book.

Mind in the Waters - ed. Joan McIntyre

2007-05-17T20:09:00.002+05:30

'Mind in the Waters' is an eclectic collection of essays, poems and stories by biologists, poets, conservationists, philosophers who celebrate the consciousness of whales and dolphins. The range of essays swings from the anatomy of a whale's brain to exploring the definition of intelligence to ethereal anecdotes of communicating with the cetaceans and a poignant plea for their conservation. By the time you have picked your way through the various writings, several parts of your brain - joyous, sad, humorous, analytical - have been exercised and the reader is forever tied with a cerebral umbilical chord to the liquid world and its inhabitants. For humans who fantasize communicating with dolphins, orcas or whales, the experiments of scientists such as John Lilly are exciting frontiers. Back in 1974 he tried to teach human language to captive dolphins; he has since moved to rhythm based music as a means of communication. Ultimately, I suspect we are all enamoured of the sea mammals because they hold a mirror to an innocence we have known in biologically remote times as well as to the origins of violence and aggression.

Song of the Dodo - David Quammen

2007-05-17T20:09:00.001+05:30

Islands are particularly prone to evolving distinct species of plants and animals and because these unique creatures live in finite bits of land held up by the sea, are easily run into extinction. David Quammen makes no apology for using scientific terms such as minimum viable population, biogeography, or population viability analysis - critical concepts to understanding ecology. For non-academic (illiterate) naturalists (like me), Quammen offers a crash course in the dynamics that influence island ecosystems interspersed with travelogues through remote jungles and meetings with eccentric researchers and conservationists. Although Quammen focusses on islands, in a world where our last remaining forests have effectively become islands, the principles he talks of apply just as appropriately. It is a disquieting book because through all the scientific jargon one cannot miss the inexorable truth - that extinction is forever. When a species goes extinct, we lose more than the animal; we lose its essential services that can unravel the entire ecosystem. To say that cloning can save species from extinction as some of our scientists (caught in the details) argue is totally missing the point.

The Future Eaters - Tim Flannery

2007-05-17T20:08:00.000+05:30

'the Future Eaters' is a chronicle of the devastation wrought by man's early colonization of Australasia. The descendants of the ecologically responsible San Bushman went on a rampage as soon as they arrived in the islands of the Pacific killing scores of species as if there was no tomorrow. And indeed for a lot of the species tomorrow never dawned; they went extinct within a few years of contact with man. Several other creatures were affected by man's actions (fire) and his fellow migrants - cats, dogs, and rats. The list of animals and birds that disappeared include moas, giant wallabies, takahe (a giant swamp hen), elephant seals, sea lions and many more. The debacle of the mysterious civilization of Easter Island that erected enormous stone carvings offers a chilling parable for what we are doing to the world today - living way beyond our means. At one time Easter Island was a lush forested island with a population of 6000 to 8000 people but by 1877 the island was bereft of any trees and was down to 111 starving souls. Its story was only recently unravelled - improbable as it sounds, trees were cut down (to the last one) to transport the giant stone carvings from the quarries to the beaches where they were propped up. When the soil eroded and the means of sustaining the exploding population dwindled, the islanders splintered into rival clans, killing and eating each other and in a final denouement, pulled down each other's statues. It sounds like science fiction, and it could well be a vision of our future if we do not heed the lessons of history.

The Lost World of the Kalahari & its sequel, The Heart of the Hunter by Laurens van der Post

2007-05-17T20:07:00.000+05:30

Both these books celebrate the lore of the San Bushman and views the natural world through their eyes. At a time when other authors were consciously white hunters (like Jim Corbett) with a paternalistic attitude towards the natives, Laurens positions himself at the feet of the San and holds them as his teachers. Not a hunter himself, he writes of the hunting prowess and frugality of the Bushman living in the harsh desert. While the hunter-writers could only talk of the hunter and the hunted as a polarized world, Laurens' poetic prose takes wing when he writes about how the San knew the animals and plants, the rocks and the stones of Africa "as they have never been known since". The Bushman's ability to anthropomorphize the characters of the various animals in their stories goes straight to the heart of the animal's essential "character". He writes with affection (and humour) about the clarity of tribal observation - of how their powers of mimicry bring the various animals to life around a desert campfire. One of the most arresting pictures in 'The Lost World' is of a San woman rescued from the desert filling just two ostrich shells with water before heading off into the glaring sands with her two children. While almost all natural history writers until then held Man apart from Nature, Laurens shows how the Bushman is a cog in the wheel of Nature, an Eden that we aspire to as naturalists.

A Bridal Snake Hotspot

2007-05-17T20:06:00.000+05:30

When we were working on the 'Snakes of India - The Field Guide' we could not source a picture of a Bridal Snake (Dryocalamus nympha) from India. Rom had last seen the species in Guindy National Park about 30 years ago and he wasn't hopeful of finding the snake readily to take pictures. So we used a picture of the species from Sri Lanka by Anslem de Silva. Within a month of printing the books, our caretaker came running one night saying a black snake with white bands crawled over him as he lay asleep and it was still in his house. We rushed over expecting to see a Krait or a Wolf Snake but instead we found the gorgeous Bridal Snake. As soon as there was enough light the next morning we had a photo session. When done, we decided to let it go in a thick hedge of palmyra trees. At the chosen spot we found the shed skin of a snake draped on the rough bark of the palm tree. We let the snake go and examined the find - it appeared that we had let the snake go in the perfect spot as the skin belonged to another Bridal Snake! I know this is hard to believe but there are witnesses who will swear to it.

A few months later I found a Bridal Snake crawling actively on the bathroom windowsill and the diminuitive Ramanella frogs, that live in the washbasin, running helter skelter. M.A.Smith, the venerable old man of Indian herpetology, says it is thought to eat geckoes. I didn't know this then or I'd have noticed what the geckoes were doing at that moment.

A few more months passed. A couple of days ago, my partner found a baby Bridal Snake in the bathroom in the middle of the night. He caught it and put it in a bucket. But the little thing had used the wet bucket's surface tension to suction his way out and escaped. My partner said that when he had tried to catch it, it had performed a visually distracting display of thrashing so the vivid bands seemed to be moving in several directions at the same time!

In the meantime Ashok Captain saw the pictures of the first snake and began to have doubts if it was indeed a nympha. He had a sneaking suspicion that it could be gracilis. He had wanted us to count scales and do all the scientifically right things just so we could be sure of its identity. So the escaped baby Bridal Snake was a lost opportunity.

Last afternoon as we were eating lunch we noticed the shed skin of a snake hanging from the rafters of our back porch. It was most likely to be a common bronzeback tree snake and we weren't paticularly curious about it. Half an hour later we were both engrossed in counting scales and examining the skin end to end. The belly scales weren't as wide as other tree-climbing snakes. That was odd. The only thing it keyed out to was the Bridal Snake and it definitely was a 13 scale row nympha, not a 15 scale row gracilis.

Perhaps what amazes us is that we seem to be in the hotspot of Bridal Snakes and it doesn't seem to be as rare as initially thought. But the one snake that went from "thought to be extinct" to common urban garden dweller is the Indian Egg-Eater!! That's a story for another day.

Skinning the Cat - Crime and Politics of the Big Cat Skin Trade

2007-05-17T20:04:00.000+05:30

Published by the EIA and WPSI, 2006

This incredible document traces the illegal and horrific trade in cat parts. It avoids getting emotional as it chronicles the trade routes, the shady characters involved and the modus operandi. The visual face of the tiger's demise is Chinese and Tibetan. The homogeneity of the Tibetan nation means the Dalai Lama's call to reject the use of wild animal parts in rituals is followed. I wonder what it would take to stop the Chinese. But to blame the consumer for the trade is unfair. The Indians have to do much more to crack down hard on the poaching and the trafficking. The situation is so grave that it would take someone high up to tighten the screws and none of the top bureaucrats in Govt has so far shown that gumption. It is hard to gauge whether the Govt. even understands the seriousness of the situation? And that perhaps is going to be the final nail in the tiger's coffin.

We could have avoided coming to this pass if we had not alienated the local people over the years in the name of conservation. We might still be able to turn this boat around but clearly the trade is far too sophisticated to hope that grassroots conservation alone will stop the extinction of the tiger. We need the govt. run machinery - policing and enforcement - to function smoothly and efficiently if we are going to bust the wildlife trade.

A worrying statement in the EIA-WPSI document is that the crime network has a lot to gain and much to lose. The law is too lenient, the judicial procedure too slow and the conviction success rate too low to dent the macabre business. The crime syndicate has basically put the Indian administration on notice and it doesn't seem as if they are even aware of it.

An Ode to an Aunty Tree

2007-05-17T20:03:00.000+05:30

Today the dead palmyra tree in which the black-rumped flameback woodpeckers and later the magpie robins raised their broods finally collapsed. No more ringside view of bird family life. The banyan tree had first strangled it - not by embracing it but by crowding out the palmyra tree's shallow roots. As soon as the tree lost its crown, the woodpeckers inspected it and drilled a hole in a day. For two years the woodpeckers frequented the tree only when it was time to have babies. They were hardly around the rest of the year. Last year however, the magpie-robins bullied the woodpeckers out of the nest hole - they bombarded and chased the original owners. Finally the little birds had a secure nest in which to raise their babies and they made good use of it by having two broods. Their attempts over the previous years had been dismal thanks to the crow-pheasants and tree-pies. And now the tree lies collapsed - an era of sheltering several species of reptiles and birds gone.