The Art & Philosophy of Bonsai

in Art, Nature, Philosophy | January 9th, 2020

We all know what to think of when we hear the term bon­sai: dwarf trees. Or so Shi­nobu Noza­ki titled his book, the very first major pub­li­ca­tion on the sub­ject in Eng­lish. Dwarf Trees came out in the 1930s, not long after the Japan­ese art of bon­sai start­ed draw­ing seri­ous inter­na­tion­al atten­tion. But the art itself goes back as far as the sixth cen­tu­ry, when Japan­ese embassy employ­ees and stu­dents of Bud­dhism return­ing from sojourns in Chi­na brought back all the lat­est things Chi­nese, includ­ing plants grow­ing in con­tain­ers. By six or sev­en cen­turies lat­er, as scrolls show us today, Japan had tak­en that hor­ti­cul­tur­al tech­nique and refined it into a prac­tice based on not just minia­tur­iza­tion but pro­por­tion, asym­me­try, poignan­cy, and era­sure of the artist’s traces, one that pro­duces the kind of trees-in-minia­ture we rec­og­nize as art­works, and even mas­ter­works, today.

It hard­ly needs say­ing that bon­sai trees don’t take shape by them­selves. As the name, which means “tray plant­i­ng” (盆栽), sug­gests, a work of bon­sai must begin by plant­i­ng a spec­i­men in a small con­tain­er. From then on, it demands dai­ly atten­tion in not just the pro­vi­sion of the prop­er amounts of water and sun­light but also care­ful trim­ming and adjust­ment with trim­mers, hooks, wire, and every­thing else in the bon­sai cul­ti­va­tor’s sur­pris­ing­ly large suite of tools.

You can see a Japan­ese mas­ter of the art named Chi­ako Yamamo­to in action in “Bon­sai: The End­less Rit­u­al,” the BBC Earth Unplugged video at the top of the post. “Shap­ing nature in this way demands ever­last­ing devo­tion with­out the prospect of com­ple­tion,” says its nar­ra­tor, a point under­scored by one bon­sai under Yamamo­to’s care, orig­i­nal­ly plant­ed by her grand­fa­ther over a cen­tu­ry ago.

You’ll find even old­er bon­sai at the Nation­al Bon­sai Muse­um at the U.S. Nation­al Arbore­tum in Wash­ing­ton D.C. In the video “Bon­sai Will Make You a Bet­ter Per­son,” cura­tor Jack Sus­tic — an Amer­i­can first exposed to bon­sai in the mil­i­tary, while sta­tioned in Korea — shows off a Japan­ese white pine “in train­ing” since the year 1625. That unusu­al ter­mi­nol­o­gy reflects the fact that no work of bon­sai even attains a state of com­plete­ness. “They’re always grow­ing,” say Sus­tic. “They’re always chang­ing. It’s nev­er a fin­ished art­work.” In Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s “Amer­i­can Shokunin” just above, the tit­u­lar bon­sai cul­ti­va­tor (shokunin has a mean­ing sim­i­lar to “crafts­man” or “arti­san”), Japan-trained, Ore­gon-based Ryan Neil, expands on what bon­sai teach­es: not just how to artis­ti­cal­ly grow small trees that resem­ble big ones, but what it takes to com­mune with nature and attain mas­tery.

“A mas­ter is some­body who, every sin­gle day, tries to pur­sue per­fec­tion at their cho­sen endeav­or,” says Neil. “A mas­ter does­n’t retire. A mas­ter does­n’t stop. They do it until they’re dead.” And as a work of bon­sai lit­er­al­ly out­lives its cre­ator, the pur­suit con­tin­ues long after they’re dead. The bon­sai mas­ter must be aware of the aes­thet­ic and philo­soph­i­cal val­ues held by the gen­er­a­tions who came before them as well as the gen­er­a­tions that will come after. Wabi sabi, as bon­sai prac­ti­tion­er Pam Woythal defines it, is “the Japan­ese art of find­ing beau­ty in imper­fec­tion and pro­fun­di­ty in nature, of accept­ing the nat­ur­al cycle of growth, decay, and death.” Shibu­mi (or in its adjec­ti­val form shibui) is, in the words of I Am Bon­sai’s Jonathan Rodriguez, “the sim­ple sub­tle details of the sub­ject,” man­i­fest for exam­ple in “the appar­ent sim­ple tex­ture that bal­ances sim­plic­i­ty and com­plex­i­ty.” Looked at cor­rect­ly, a bon­sai tree — leaves, branch­es, pot, and all — reminds us of the impor­tant ele­ments of life and the impor­tant ele­ments of art, and of the fact that those ele­ments aren’t as far apart as we assume.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

Kintsu­gi: The Cen­turies-Old Japan­ese Craft of Repair­ing Pot­tery with Gold & Find­ing Beau­ty in Bro­ken Things

The Philo­soph­i­cal Appre­ci­a­tion of Rocks in Chi­na & Japan: A Short Intro­duc­tion to an Ancient Tra­di­tion

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How to Find Silence in a Noisy World

in Life, Nature | November 1st, 2019

“Take a walk at night,” wrote avant-garde com­pos­er Pauline Oliv­eros in her 1974 “Son­ic Med­i­ta­tions,” a set of instruc­tions for what she called deep lis­ten­ing. “Walk so silent­ly that the bot­tom of your feet become ears.” Lis­ten­ing to silence opens up rich new worlds of sound. It can be a life-chang­ing expe­ri­ence.

“It’s hard to imag­ine that a sound can trans­form some­one’s life, but it hap­pened to me,” says acoustic ecol­o­gist Gor­don Hemp­ton in the short 360-degree doc­u­men­tary above, “How to Find Silence in a Noisy World.” Hemp­ton learned to walk silent­ly while car­ry­ing a micro­phone, doc­u­ment­ing his lis­ten­ing jour­ney through remote places like the Hoh Rain­for­est in Wash­ing­ton state, con­sid­ered one of the qui­etest places in North Amer­i­ca.

“By hold­ing a micro­phone, I became a bet­ter lis­ten­er. I learned that the micro­phone doesn’t lis­ten for what’s impor­tant, it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t inter­fere.” The micro­phone, that is, has no ego. Record­ed and ampli­fied, the silence of the Hoh becomes cacoph­o­ny, or a sym­pho­ny, depend­ing on how we describe it. Maybe any descrip­tion gets in the way of lis­ten­ing. “Just lis­ten,” says Hemp­ton. “Silence is the poet­ics of space. What it means to be in a place… Silence isn’t the absence of some­thing, but the pres­ence of every­thing

If silence is full of sound, why might we crave it when we’re stressed? Because we are bom­bard­ed by noise pol­lu­tion, “sounds that have noth­ing to do with the nat­ur­al acoustic sys­tem.” These sounds have been encroach­ing on places like the Hoh Rain­for­est for many decades, and Hemp­ton has doc­u­ment­ed their incur­sion over the past 30 years, build­ing a col­lec­tion of over 100 record­ings “equipped with a 3‑D micro­phone sys­tem that repli­cates human hear­ing,” notes Brain Pick­ings.

“Ema­nat­ing from his col­lec­tion… is the idea that ‘there is a fun­da­men­tal fre­quen­cy for each habitat’—a tonal qual­i­ty that shapes the sense of place and qual­i­ty of pres­ence.” Hempton’s work com­ple­ments the nature record­ings of Bernie Krause, for­mer musi­cian turned renowned expert on nat­ur­al sound, whose the­o­ry of bio­pho­ny describes how nat­ur­al sounds work togeth­er to fill in the spec­trum, each one estab­lish­ing its own spe­cif­ic band­width so as not to drown out the oth­ers.

Nat­ur­al sounds cre­ate a kind of self-reg­u­lat­ing har­mo­ny. In order to ful­ly inhab­it the space we’re in, we must be able to hear them. But as the record­ings made by Hemp­ton and Krause show us, humans have a unique abil­i­ty to feel our­selves deeply immersed in oth­er places, too, by lis­ten­ing to record­ings of their silences. Hemp­ton implies that record­ings may soon be all we have left.

“Silence,” he says, “is on the verge of extinc­tion. There is not one place left on plan­et Earth that is set aside and off lim­its to noise pol­lu­tion.” It inter­feres with the cycles of mat­ing ani­mals, dis­rupts call and response pat­terns ecosys­tems use to coor­di­nate them­selves. Silence is part of a glob­al biofeed­back sys­tem, telling us to qui­et down, slow down, and become part of all that’s hap­pen­ing around us. We ignore it to our great detri­ment.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Record­ings: World & Clas­si­cal Music, Inter­views, Nature Sounds & More

Free: Down­load the Sub­lime Sights & Sounds of Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Behold the New York City Street Tree Map: An Interactive Map That Catalogues the 700,000 Trees Shading the Streets of New York City

in Data, Environment, Maps, Nature | October 23rd, 2019

It may sound odd, but one of the things I miss most about liv­ing in New York City is the abil­i­ty to hop on a bus or train, or walk a few blocks from home, and end up loung­ing in a for­est, the cacoph­o­ny of traf­fic reduced to a dim hum, squir­rels bound­ing around, birds twit­ter­ing away above. Such urban respites are plen­ti­ful in NYC thanks to its 10,542 acres of forest­ed land, “about half as much as the Con­ga­ree Swamp in South Car­oli­na,” notes James Bar­ron at The New York Times, in one of the most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed urban areas in the coun­try.

“Most of the city’s for­est is deep in parks”—in Cen­tral Park, of course, and also Prospect Park and River­side, and dozens of small­er oases, and the lush Botan­i­cal Gar­dens in the Bronx. The city’s forests are sub­ject to the usu­al pres­sures oth­er wood­ed areas face: cli­mate change, inva­sive species, etc.

They are also depen­dent on a well-fund­ed Parks Depart­ment and non­prof­its like the Nat­ur­al Areas Con­ser­van­cy for the preser­va­tion and upkeep not only of the large parks but of the trees that shade city streets in all five bor­oughs.

Luck­i­ly, the city and non­prof­it groups have been work­ing togeth­er to plan for what the conservancy’s senior ecol­o­gist, Helen For­gione, calls “future forests,” using big data to map out the best paths for urban wood­land. The NYC Parks depart­ment has been busy com­pil­ing fig­ures, and you can find all of their tree stats at the New York City Street Tree Map, which “brings New York City’s urban for­est to your fin­ger­tips. For the first time,” the Parks depart­ment writes, “you have access to infor­ma­tion about every street tree in New York City.”

Large forest­ed parks on the inter­ac­tive map appear as flat green fields—the depart­ment has not count­ed each indi­vid­ual tree in Cen­tral Park. But the map gives us fine, gran­u­lar detail when it comes to street trees, allow­ing users to zoom in to every inter­sec­tion and click on col­ored dots that rep­re­sent each tree, for exam­ple lin­ing Avenue D in the East Vil­lage or Flat­bush Avenue in Brook­lyn. You can search spe­cif­ic loca­tions or comb through city­wide sta­tis­tics for the big pic­ture. At the time of this writ­ing, the project has mapped 694,249 trees, much of that work under­tak­en by vol­un­teers in the TreesCount! 2015 ini­tia­tive.

There are many more trees yet to map, and the department’s forestry team updates the site dai­ly. Out of 234 species iden­ti­fied, the most com­mon is the Lon­don Plan­e­tree, rep­re­sent­ing 12% of the trees on the map. Oth­er pop­u­lar species include the Lit­tle­leaf Lin­den, Nor­way Maple, Pin Oak, and Ginko. Some oth­er stats show the eco­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of urban trees, includ­ing the amount of ener­gy con­served (667,590,884 kWh, or $84,279,933.06) and amount of car­bon diox­ide reduced (612,100 tons).

Vis­it the New York City Street Tree Map for the full, vir­tu­al tour of the city’s trees, and marvel—if you haven’t expe­ri­enced the city’s vibrant tree life firsthand—at just how green the empire city’s streets real­ly are.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

New York City: A Social His­to­ry (A Free Online Course from N.Y.U.) 

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Chill Out to 70 Hours of Oceanscape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth

in Biology, Environment, Life, Nature, Science, Television | October 18th, 2019

Those who har­bor a deep-seat­ed fear of the water may want to look for oth­er meth­ods of stress relief than BBC Earth’s relax­ing 10-hour video loops, but every­one else is encour­aged to take a dip in these stun­ning nat­ur­al worlds, pre­sent­ed with­out com­men­tary or back­ground music.

All sev­en 10-hour playlists are salt-water based: coral reefs, coast­lines, deep ocean, open ocean, frozen seas, ocean sur­faces, and sea forests.

As in most com­pelling nature doc­u­men­taries, non-human crea­tures loom large, but unlike such BBC Earth offer­ings as Creepi­est Insect Moments or Ants Attack Ter­mite Mounds, there’s a benign, live-and-let-live vibe to the pro­ceed­ings.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the pho­tog­ra­phy is breath­tak­ing, and the uses of these marathon-length por­traits are man­i­fold: med­i­ta­tion tool, sleep aid, child soother, social media decom­pres­sor, trav­el­ogue, and—less calmingly—call to action.

Sci­ence tells us that many of these life forms, and the ocean in which they dwell, are in seri­ous dan­ger, thanks to decades of human dis­re­gard for the envi­ron­ment. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to immerse our­selves in what we stand to lose while it’s still pos­si­ble to do some­thing about it.

If that thought seems too depress­ing, there’s also strong sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that nature doc­u­men­taries such as these pro­mote increased feel­ings of well­be­ing

What are you wait­ing for?

Click here to trav­el the oceans with polar bears, jel­ly­fish, dol­phins, sea­hors­es, bright­ly col­ored trop­i­cal fish and oth­er crea­tures of the deep, com­pli­ments of BBC’s Earth’s Ocean­scapes playlists.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch­ing Nature Doc­u­men­taries Can Pro­duce “Real Hap­pi­ness,” Finds a Study from the BBC and UC-Berke­ley

Bob Odenkirk & Errol Mor­ris Cre­ate Comedic Shorts to Help You Take Action Against Glob­al Warm­ing: Watch Them Online

Do Octopi Dream? An Aston­ish­ing Nature Doc­u­men­tary Sug­gests They Do

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watching Nature Documentaries Can Produce “Real Happiness,” Finds a Study from the BBC and UC-Berkeley

in Environment, Nature, Science, Television | October 15th, 2019

Hol­ly­wood sci­ence fic­tion films imag­ine future humans in worlds that are no longer green, or nev­er were—from Soy­lent Green’s dying Earth to that of Inter­stel­lar. And from Soy­lent Green to Ad Astra, humans in the future expe­ri­ence plant and ani­mal life as sim­u­la­tions on a screen, in hyper­re­al pho­tog­ra­phy and video meant to paci­fy and com­fort. Maybe we live in that world already, to some extent, with apoc­a­lyp­tic films and sci­ence fic­tion express­ing a col­lec­tive mourn­ing for the extinc­tions brought on by cli­mate change.

“Over the course of my lifetime—I’m 46,” writes Wash­ing­ton Post art crit­ic Sebas­t­ian Smee, “the plan­et has lost more than half of its wildlife pop­u­la­tions, accord­ing to the World Wildlife Fund.” Sure­ly this brute fact explains the immense pop­u­lar­i­ty of high pro­duc­tion-val­ue nature doc­u­men­taries, the anti­dote to apoc­a­lyp­tic futur­ism. They have become “block­buster events,” argues Ed Yong at The Atlantic, with fan­doms as fierce as any.

Viewed “from the per­spec­tive of the future,” writes Smee, nature doc­u­men­taries “are great art. Maybe the great­est of our time.” But can view­ing film and pho­tographs of nature pro­duce in us the feel­ings of awe and won­der that poets, artists, and philoso­phers have described feel­ing in actu­al nature for cen­turies? BBC Earth, pro­duc­er of sev­er­al major block­buster nature doc­u­men­tary series, under­took some psy­cho­log­i­cal research to find out, part­ner­ing with researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley.

The team exam­ined the effects of watch­ing the BBC’s Plan­et Earth II doc­u­men­tary series rel­a­tive to oth­er kinds of pro­grams. “It is a deep human intu­ition that view­ing nature and being in nature is good for the mind and body,” they write in the study, titled “Explor­ing the Emo­tion­al State of ‘Real Hap­pi­ness.’” (Socio­bi­ol­o­gist E.O. Wil­son coined the term “bio­phil­ia” to describe the evolved pref­er­ence for nat­ur­al beau­ty.) Does screen­time equal phys­i­cal time spent out­doors? Not exact­ly, but nature doc­u­men­taries can low­er stress lev­els and, yes, pro­duce feel­ings of “real hap­pi­ness.”

There have been sev­er­al pre­vi­ous such stud­ies. The authors cite one in which a few min­utes of the orig­i­nal series Plan­et Earth “led peo­ple, com­pared to con­trol par­tic­i­pants, to feel 45.6% more awe and 31.4% more grat­i­tude, but no shifts in feel­ings of neg­a­tive emo­tions such as fear and sad­ness.” The Plan­et Earth II study may be the largest of its kind, with almost 3,500 par­tic­i­pants in the U.S., around a thou­sand in the U.K., India, and Aus­tralia, each, and around 500 in both South Africa and Sin­ga­pore for a total of approx­i­mate­ly 7,500 view­ers.

Par­tic­i­pants across a range of age groups, from 16 to 55 and over, were shown short clips of a vari­ety of TV pro­grams, includ­ing clips from Plan­et Earth II. They were sur­veyed on an array of emo­tion­al respons­es before and after each view­ing. The study also mea­sured stress lev­els using the Per­ceived Stress Scale (PSS), and used a facial map­ping tech­nol­o­gy called CrowdE­mo­tion to track phys­i­cal respons­es. The researchers aggre­gat­ed the data and con­trolled for pop­u­la­tion size in each coun­try.

The find­ings are fas­ci­nat­ing. Across the scale, Plan­et Earth II clips gen­er­at­ed more feel­ings of hap­pi­ness and awe, with clips from news and enter­tain­ment shows caus­ing more fear. In most of the study’s mea­sures, these good feel­ings peaked high­est at the low­er demo­graph­ic age range of 16–24. Younger view­ers showed greater pos­i­tive emo­tion­al respons­es in facial map­ping and sur­vey data, a fact con­sis­tent with BBC rat­ings data show­ing that 16–34 year-olds make up around 41% of the audi­ence share for Plan­et Earth II.

“This younger group,” note the authors, “was more like­ly to expe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive shifts in emo­tion.” They also start­ed out, before view­ing the clips, with sig­nif­i­cant­ly more envi­ron­men­tal anx­i­ety, scor­ing high­ly on the stress scale. 71% described them­selves as “extreme­ly wor­ried about the state of the world’s envi­ron­ment and what it will mean for my future.” A small­er per­cent­age showed the low­est lev­el of agree­ment with the state­ment “I reg­u­lar­ly get out­side and enjoy spend­ing time with nature.”

For near­ly all of the study’s view­ers, nature doc­u­men­taries seemed to pro­duce at least fleet­ing feel­ings of “real hap­pi­ness.” For many, they may also be a way of coun­ter­ing fears of the future, and com­pen­sat­ing in advance for a loss of the nat­ur­al beau­ty that remains. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the study did not mea­sure the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants who viewed Plan­et Earth II and oth­er “block­buster” nature doc­u­men­taries as a call to action against envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion. Maybe that’s a sub­ject for anoth­er study. Read the full Plan­et Earth II study results here. And if you’re feel­ing stressed, watch thir­ty min­utes of “Visu­al Sound­scapes,” pre­sent­ed by Plan­et Earth II, above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

Becom­ing: A Short Time­lapse Film Shows a Sin­gle Cell Mor­ph­ing Into a Com­plete, Com­plex Liv­ing Organ­ism

Do Octopi Dream? An Aston­ish­ing Nature Doc­u­men­tary Sug­gests They Do

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Download 435 High Resolution Images from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of America

in Art, Biology, Nature | October 11th, 2019

In our expe­ri­ence, bird lovers fall into two gen­er­al cat­e­gories:

Keen­ly obser­vant cat­a­loguers like John James Audubon …

And those of us who can­not resist assign­ing anthro­po­mor­phic per­son­al­i­ties and behav­iors to the 435 stars of Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca, a stun­ning col­lec­tion of prints from life-size water­col­ors he pro­duced between 1827 and 1838.

Our sus­pi­cions have lit­tle to do with biol­o­gy, but rather, a cer­tain zesti­ness of expres­sion, an overem­phat­ic beak, a droll gleam in the eye.

The Audubon Society’s new­ly redesigned web­site abounds with trea­sure for those in either camp:

Free high res down­loads of all 435 plates.

Mp3s of each specimen’s call.

And vin­tage com­men­tary that effec­tive­ly splits the dif­fer­ence between sci­ence and the unin­ten­tion­al­ly humor­ous locu­tions of anoth­er age.

Take for instance, the Bur­row­ing Owl, as described by self-taught nat­u­ral­ist Thomas Say (1787–1834):

It is delight­ful, dur­ing fine weath­er, to see these live­ly lit­tle crea­tures sport­ing about the entrance of their bur­rows, which are always kept in the neat­est repair, and are often inhab­it­ed by sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als. When alarmed, they imme­di­ate­ly take refuge in their sub­ter­ranean cham­bers; or, if the dread­ed dan­ger be not imme­di­ate­ly impend­ing, they stand near the brink of the entrance, brave­ly bark­ing and flour­ish­ing their tails, or else sit erect to recon­noitre the move­ments of the ene­my.

The notes of ornithol­o­gist John Kirk Townsend (1809 – 1851) sug­gest that not every­one was as tak­en with the species as Say (who was, in all fair­ness, the father of Amer­i­can ento­mol­o­gy):

Noth­ing can be more unpleas­ant than the bag­ging of this species, on account of the fleas with which their plumage swarms, and which in all prob­a­bil­i­ty have been left in the bur­row by the Bad­ger or Mar­mot, at the time it was aban­doned by these ani­mals. I know of no oth­er bird infest­ed by that kind of ver­min. 

The Com­mon Gallinule, above, sug­gests that there’s often more to these birds than meets the eye. His some­what sheep­ish look­ing coun­te­nance belies the red hot love life Audubon recounts:

… the man­i­fes­ta­tions of their ama­to­ry propen­si­ty were quite remark­able. The male birds court­ed the females, both on the land and on the water; they fre­quent­ly spread out their tail like a fan, and moved round each oth­er, emit­ting a mur­mur­ing sound for some sec­onds. The female would after­wards walk to the water’s edge, stand in the water up to her breast, and receive the caress­es of the male, who imme­di­ate­ly after would strut on the water before her, jerk­ing with rapid­i­ty his spread tail for awhile, after which they would both resume their ordi­nary occu­pa­tions.

Being that we are firm­ly plant­ed in the sec­ond type of bird lover’s camp, this ornitho­log­i­cal cor­nu­copia main­ly serves to whet our appetite for more Falseknees, self-described bird nerd Joshua Bark­man’s beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered web­com­ic.

Yes, Audubon’s Indi­go Bird, aka Petit Pape­bleu, “an active and live­ly lit­tle fel­low” who “pos­sess­es much ele­gance in his shape, and also a cer­tain degree of firm­ness in his make” was sep­a­rat­ed by a cen­tu­ry or so from “Mood Indi­go”—we pre­sume that’s the tune stuck in Barkman’s bird’s head—but he does look rather pre­oc­cu­pied, no?

Pos­si­bly just think­ing of meal­worms…

Explore Audubon’s Birds of Amer­i­ca by chrono­log­i­cal or alpha­bet­i­cal order, or by state, and down­load them all for free here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

Mod­ernist Bird­hous­es Inspired by Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright and Joseph Eich­ler

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 7 for her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Free: Download the Sublime Sights & Sounds of Yellowstone National Park

in Biology, Life, Nature | October 10th, 2019

Moments before writ­ing these words I was feel­ing a lit­tle stressed—a not uncom­mon expe­ri­ence for most every­one these days. Then I watched the 25-sec­ond video of a bighorn sheep, above, and some­thing hap­pened. Not an epiphany or moment of Zen. Just a momen­tary sus­pen­sion of human woe as the ani­mal silent­ly munched, a crea­ture so unlike myself and yet so moti­vat­ed by the same basic needs.

How much bet­ter to observe the sheep first­hand, in its home at Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park? But per­haps we can, through our com­put­ers, touch into a lit­tle of the rem­e­dy Oliv­er Sacks sug­gest­ed for our mod­ern trau­mas. Nature gives us “sense of deep time,” the neu­rol­o­gist wrote, which “brings a deep peace with it, a detach­ment from the timescale, the urgen­cies of dai­ly life… a pro­found sense of being at home, a sort of com­pan­ion­ship with the earth.”

Research has found that watch­ing nature doc­u­men­taries can bring on real con­tent­ment, con­firm­ing what mil­lions of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic devo­tees already know. Now, at the Nation­al Park Service’s site, you can immerse your­self in vir­tu­al vis­its with not only our silent bighorn sheep friend, but the song of a moun­tain blue­bird, or cho­rus­es of howl­ing wolves. The audio library con­tains dozens more such melo­di­ous and haunt­ing sounds from Yellowstone’s bio­pho­ny.

The video library is replete with not only short clips of ani­mals doing what ani­mals do, but also video tours like that above, in which we learn how park rangers cap­ture and han­dle bison in their con­ser­va­tion efforts at the park. Then there are stun­ning land­scape videos like that below of Low­er Falls viewed from Look­out Point in the spring of 2017, with sooth­ing nat­ur­al white noise from the rush­ing water and blow­ing wind.

All of this con­tent is avail­able for down­load and free for any­one to use. Remix the sounds of falling snow, gey­sers, and moun­tain lions; make as many nature gifs as you desire. As you do, bear in mind that while humans might great­ly benefit—both psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly and culturally—from the dig­i­tal preser­va­tion of the nat­ur­al world, the true pur­pose may be to help us under­stand why we need to step back and pre­serve the real thing.

Just above see a (non­down­load­able) video from Yel­low­stone on the impor­tance of lis­ten­ing to and con­serv­ing the land’s nat­ur­al soundscapes—a fea­ture of the world that best thrives in the near absence of human involve­ment.

Enter the sound library here, and the video library here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness & Awe

The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Record­ings: World & Clas­si­cal Music, Inter­views, Nature Sounds & More

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Do Octopi Dream? An Astonishing Nature Documentary Suggests They Do

in Biology, Nature | October 7th, 2019

With regard to the sleep­ing and wak­ing of ani­mals, all crea­tures that are red-blood­ed and pro­vid­ed with legs give sen­si­ble proof that they go to sleep and that they wak­en up from sleep; for, as a mat­ter of fact, all ani­mals that are fur­nished with eye­lids shut them up when they go to sleep. 

Fur­ther­more, it would appear that not only do men dream, but hors­es also, and dogs, and oxen; aye, and sheep, and goats, and all vivip­a­rous quadrupeds; and dogs show their dream­ing by bark­ing in their sleep. With regard to oviparous ani­mals we can­not be sure that they dream, but most undoubt­ed­ly they sleep. 

And the same may be said of water ani­mals, such as fish­es, mol­luscs, crus­taceans, to wit craw­fish and the like. These ani­mals sleep with­out doubt, although their sleep is of very short dura­tion. The proof of their sleep­ing can­not be got from the con­di­tion of their eyes-for none of these crea­tures are fur­nished with eyelids—but can be obtained only from their motion­less repose.

-Aris­to­tle, The His­to­ry of Ani­mals, Book IV, Part 10,350 B.C.E

2,369 years lat­er, Marine Biol­o­gist David Scheel, a pro­fes­sor at Alas­ka Pacif­ic Uni­ver­si­ty, wit­nessed a star­tling event, above, that allowed him to expand on Aristotle’s obser­va­tions, at least as far as eight-armed cephalo­pod mollusks—or octopi—are con­cerned

Appar­ent­ly, they dream.

Scheel, whose spe­cial­ties include preda­tor-prey ecol­o­gy and cephalo­pod biol­o­gy, is afford­ed an above-aver­age amount of qual­i­ty time with these alien ani­mals, cour­tesy of Hei­di, an octo­pus cyanea (or day octo­pus) who inhab­its a large tank of salt water in his liv­ing room.

Scheel’s usu­al beat is cold water species such as the giant Pacif­ic octo­pus. Hei­di, who earned her name by shy­ly stick­ing to the far­thest recess­es of her arti­fi­cial envi­ron­ment upon arrival, belongs to a warmer water species who are active dur­ing the day. Very active. Once she real­ized that Scheel and his 16-year-old daugh­ter, Lau­rel, were instru­ments of food deliv­ery, she came out of her shell, so to speak.

The hours she keeps affords her plen­ty of stim­u­lat­ing play­time with Lau­rel, who’s thrilled to have an ani­mal pal who’s less ambiva­lent than her pet gold­fish and out­door rab­bit.

Mean­while, the co-hous­ing arrange­ment pro­vides Pro­fes­sor Scheel with an inti­ma­cy that’s impos­si­ble to achieve in the lab.

He was not expect­ing the aston­ish­ing noc­tur­nal behav­ior he record­ed, above, for the hour-long PBS Nature doc­u­men­tary Octo­pus: Mak­ing Con­tact.

As Hei­di slept, she changed col­ors, rapid­ly cycling through pat­terns that cor­re­spond to her hunt­ing prac­tices. Scheel walks view­ers through:

So, here she’s asleep, she sees a crab, and her col­or starts to change a lit­tle bit.

Then she turns all dark.

Octo­pus­es will do that when they leave the bot­tom.

This is a cam­ou­flage, like she’s just sub­dued a crab and now she’s going to sit there and eat it and she does­n’t want any­one to notice her.

It’s a very unusu­al behav­ior to see the col­or come and go on her man­tel like that.

I mean, just to be able to see all the dif­fer­ent col­or pat­terns just flash­ing, one after anoth­er.

You don’t usu­al­ly see that when an ani­mal is sleep­ing.

This real­ly is fas­ci­nat­ing.

But, yeah, if she’s dream­ing, that’s the dream.

As dreams go, the nar­ra­tive Scheel sup­plies for Hei­di seems extreme­ly mun­dane. Per­haps some­where out on a coral reef, anoth­er octo­pus cyanea is dream­ing she’s trapped inside a small glass room, feast­ing on eas­i­ly got­ten crab and occa­sion­al­ly crawl­ing up a teenaged human’s arm.

Watch the full episode for free through Octo­ber 31 here.

via Laugh­ing Squid/This is Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent with an Octo­pus on His Head: Kick­start The Veep­to­pus Book

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness & Awe

Envi­ron­ment & Nat­ur­al Resources: Free Online Cours­es 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC tonight, Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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