Green Options

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Scientists will tell you that men have a lot to learn from the animal world in as far as the art of sex is concerned.

This fact was reinforced last week with the announcement that ecologists at the University of California, Davis had isolated scent-emitting enzymes that could be manipulated to prevent sexual activity between males and females of the Japanese beetle as a way of checking their population.

Essentially, this means that scent has been confirmed to play a major social-environmental stimuli role for sexual activity in insects and other animals, like the mammals and even human beings.

The importance of smell in relation to sex has been studied for centuries. Books like The Scent of Eros: Mysteries of Odor in Human Sexuality by James V. Kohl and Robert T. Francoeur and The Scented Ape: The Biology and Culture of Human Odour by David Michael Stoddart offer great insights into human pheromones, the sense of smell, and human sexual behavior.

Few places on Earth are as untouched as the "Crown of the Continent" — a 10-million-acre expanse of mountains, valleys and prairies in Montana and Canada. The area has sustained all the same species — including grizzlies, lynx, moose and bull trout — for at least 200 years.

Now — in one of the most significant conservation sales in history — The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land have preserved 320,000 acres of forestlands in western Montana

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Long-tailed macaques eat mostly fruit — but when resources are scarce, they’ve been known to get creative with their cuisine. When living near humans, they raid gardens and learn to beg for food. Sometimes they even steal food from inside houses.

Now, for the first time, scientists have observed long-tailed macaques fishing with their bare hands.

Top 10 Ways to Help Save Our Oceans…

Just below the water’s surface lies a magical world teeming with life and value. Coral reefs are home to 4,000 fish species and provide the world with goods and services — such as jobs, foods, medicines and storm protection — worth $375 billion annually.

But scientists estimate that 70% of all corals reefs could be lost by 2050 if current rates of destruction continue — from factors ranging from overfishing to climate change.

With my feet propped up, an open book in my lap, and the morning sun baking me in my skin like a potato, I certainly was not an intimidating presence. A young squirrel certainly did not find me so, at least, as it came scurrying up to where I sat. It would slink forward a few feet, stop and extend its nose to sniff my way, slink forward a bit more, stop and sit up on its haunches to get a better view, before finally it circled around my feet and looked inquisitively up at me repeatedly. I seriously suspected it would jump up in my lap (and kind of hoped it would!), perhaps to check out what I was reading and discuss literature with me, maybe ask for a cup of tea and something to nibble on.

But no, it finally scuttled away again, returning once more a bit later with its friend/sibling for another reconnoitering mission. It is still hanging around, eating fallen birdseed and doing various other mischievous things.

While this unusually friendly squirrel was clearly wary as it investigated the baking human, I would not say that it showed a whole lot of fear…even if it did not jump up in my lap and surely would not have let me pick it up.

Later, in a bit of synchronicity, my father told me on the phone about how friends of his had saved a baby raccoon from a tree that was being cut down. It was no more than the size of a mouse when they originally rescued it, and they were raising it as a pet. So now it was sort of like your typical rambunctious kitten or puppy, playing with toys and perfectly content interacting with its owners/rescuers. In saving the baby raccoon’s life, then, these kind people had also domesticated it (along with practicing a bit of “adoptive stewardship”), turning it from wildlife to family pet–with all the familiar behaviors.

Incidents like these where wildlife do not flee from the first sign (sight, smell, or sound) of humans always make me wonder about the nature of animals’ fear of us. I wonder if it is something instinctual, a natural reaction to us and relationship with us, something perhaps developed for survival through the ages. Maybe the ancestors of modern wildlife had bad experiences with our ancestors, who were likely looking for anything to serve as food and clothing and what have you. Maybe those animals saw one too many of their companions captured and turned into workers and/or pets, and so they learned to distrust and avoid us in order to live free.

Call me crazy, call me crude, but I have to say that there is nothing quite like the smell of cow manure.

That scent is so rich, so savory, so earthy, so pungently sweet that just one whiff seems to bury you in an olfactory pleasure dome. And if you keep basking in the aroma, you may well feel driven to grab a pitchfork, plop a straw hat on your head, stick a blade of grass in your mouth, and head on out to the fields. This is especially true on those oh-so-humid mornings in the peak of summer, when the air is so moist and dense that you almost have to put on scuba gear. But any old day is a great day for cow poop.

I confess that I am no connoisseur of creaturely caca, but I would bet that none can compare with the quality of a cow’s. Horse manure comes close, but it pushes pungency at the expense of sweetness, plus it is not very good for fertilizer. The feces of fowls is not even in the same league; it is far too acrid, not to mention slimy and sticky and all around offensive. Elephant excrement is similarly versatile (for example, it makes a great alternative source for paper), yet so far it lacks the time-tested dependability and widespread availability of cow dung; pachyderm pooh is thus still an exotic delicacy rather than a common staple. (I cannot speak to its odoriferous character, alas.) And nobody would sing paeans to dog and cat poop. Look at how tenderly people carry those telltale plastic bags when walking their dogs–usually with one arm extended as the dog pulls the leash and the other arm, hand, and pinching fingers extended as far away as possible with the bag bobbing in the air. When it comes to the felines, we have managed to train them to go potty in specified places, cover it with “fresh scent” granules, and graciously shake off anything sticking to their paws. I suppose “domestication,” in part, means proper toilet training…or “house training,” as it is called. And as for “humanure”…I am not even going there.

“Love has no bounds” is an old cliché. Everyone loves “love”–from Valentine’s Day paraphernalia to sappy greeting cards. And environmentalists say they love nature, love the Earth, love a place or animal.

Obviously, nature is often “red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson puts it.1 However, nature also has its soft-and-fuzzy side, which provides a wonderful lesson and model for how humans in general and environmentalists in particular can relate to nature. A particularly splendid example of this is animals “adopting” other animals.

I have been watching a pair of cardinals parenting a baby cowbird at my bird feeders recently. Cowbirds (like other birds, such as the cuckoo) will lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and let the foster parents do the dirty work–changing dirty diapers, wiping runny noses, feeding at all hours of the night and day. And so along with the little baby cardinals flapping flopping and squawking like mad, this little cowbird is right there with the rest getting dutifully fed by the cardinals. I am sure all pet owners can recount endless tales of cats adopting dogs, dogs adopting cats, and so on.

It has only been a fortnight or so since the polar bear was finally listed as an endangered species under the US Endangered Species Act, and already conservationists have supplied some more names for the ESA; ringed, bearded and spotted seals.

The Center for Biological Conservation was the group who filed a petition on February 17, 2005, asking that the polar bear be listed under the ESA. They have followed the landmark decision approving this petition by adding the three seals for consideration as species under threat. The “landmark” aspect of these decisions is that the polar bear was the first animal to be recognized as threatened as a direct result of climate change.

“While the polar bear may be the first Arctic species listed under the Endangered Species Act due to global warming, it will, unfortunately, not be the last,” says Shaye Wolf, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity.

I’ve always thought that many of the issues I am concerned about—the environment, human rights, peace, overconsumption, animal welfare—are all really one big issue. Everywhere I look I see countless connections between many social, political, and environmental issues. I may be involved in many separate causes, but they overlap so often that I feel that I’m really just part of one big movement. Which is why when someone asks me why I’m vegetarian, I am so overwhelmed with reasons that I don’t know where to even start explaining. The top ones are the environment, animal rights, and health, but no matter what you call them, they’re all one big issue to me.

I’m not the only one who has noticed this overlap, of course. And rarely have I encountered such a thorough examination of the connections between animal welfare and just about every other issue that concerns me than in the book Why Animals Matter by Erin E. Williams and Margo DeMello.

Editor’s note: This is the last post in the “Human Interaction with Nature” series from students in Professor Simran Sethi’s “Media and the Environment” course at the University of Kansas. Our own Adam Bowman (who’s training is in videography) created this two-part wedisode on “the current debate about how to manage a growing Grizzly Bear population in the Northern Rocky Mountains.” The webisode was originally published on Friday, May 9, 2008.