Category: Animals

Song of Khepri

May 30, 2014

Scarabaeus.sacer.-.calwer.20.11
In the beginning the beginning began
In the becoming the becoming became
I have come into being in the coming of my being
as I came into being in beginning time

To the ancient Egyptians, the animating force Khepri was best exemplified by the scarab, also known as the Dung Beetle. This little critter descends on the scat of herbivores in droves to consume undigested nutrients. To consume a meal in peace, the scarab pats a piece of dung into a ball and rolls the scat some distance away, sometimes hiding the trophy in an underground niche. The Dung Beetle lays her eggs in concealed dung balls, which the larvae subsist on. The young adult emerges from the dung ball seemingly self-created.

By pushing his large dung ball over the sand the scarab illustrated to the Egyptians the force pushing the sun across the sky in the daytime, then pushing the sun under the earth through the night. The scarab was not merely a symbol of this force, named Khepri, but an incarnation of a pervasive presence which manifested through this insect in a pure form.

This scarab pectoral is from Tutankhamun's tomb. Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbera.
This scarab pectoral is from Tutankhamun’s tomb. Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbera.
Egyptians wore scarab jewelry and carried scarab amulets. The deceased often had a scarab ornament resting over the heart. Egyptians saw the heart as the seat of consciousness in the body and believed it was paramount to meet death in a pure state of heart. Scarabs themselves were sometimes entombed in the little scarab sarcophagi.

The hymn above is from a rather obscure third century papyrus called “Knowing the Modes of Ra” and is part of the Egyptian Hermetic tradition. This is my own interpretation – I won’t call it a translation because I don’t read hieroglyph. The original goes

Kheper-i kheper kheperu kheper-kuy n kheperu m khepra kheperu m sep tepy.

I first heard this in 1987 at the Isis Oasis in Geyserville, California and it has always stayed with me. More information can be found in a book called Eternal Egypt: Ancient Rituals for a Modern World by Richard J. Reidy and at the website for a group called House of Keperu.

Blue Jay Communique

May 16, 2014

Photo Amos Oliver Doyle
Photo Amos Oliver Doyle

The jarring cry of the Blue Jay echoes in my skull like a radio song repeating itself in an endless loop. It’s like this every spring, when the Jays return to roost in the cedar outside my meditation room window. The only thing to do is to meditate on the Jay.

Many birders don’t like Blue Jays. They complain that Jays chase smaller birds away from feeders. Blue Jays can mimic hawks with surprising verisimilitude, making it more difficult to identify birds in the field. Suburbanites find the Blue Jay’s typical cry loud, harsh, and raucous. Homeowners do not appreciate the Blue Jay’s penchant for chipping away house paint, a behavior more characteristic of Blue Jays residing in the Northeast, where sparse sources of organic calcium make calcium-rich paint attractive from a nutritional standpoint. Setting out large numbers of chicken eggs will extinguish this behavior, but this will mean more Blue Jays hanging around your property. I myself don’t mind Blue Jays hanging around. I find it difficult to feel rancor toward any creature so handsome, which has probably been my undoing in life.

Photo Ken Thomas
Photo Ken Thomas
When humans and animals find ourselves in conflict, it’s usually because we have some sort of commonality. In the case of the Blue Jay, it’s a commonality of habitat. Blue Jays like open areas at the edge of woodlands, and suburban tracts, farmlands, and even large yards within forested regions meet this requirement. People who put out birdseed are calling the Jay, even though the seed is meant for the nice birds who play well with others. Objections to the aggressive territorial behavior of the Jay are interesting, considering humans are the most territorial species on the planet. Another way of looking at this behavior is to see the Jay clearing other birds off the window stage so we can pay more attention to him. His distinctive coloring, pushy behavior, and loud voice say “Listen to me! I’m important!”

A territorial inclination is not the only trait we share with the Blue Jay. We plan ahead and stockpile food reserves, going to great lengths to secure our supply. The Jay needs sufficient provisions to last the winter, which is the motivation behind the apparent greediness that some object to. The Blue Jay carries seeds in an esophageal or “gular” pouch, and he is very sneaky and creative in secreting his cache. There are many “trickster” qualities to this bird. As mentioned before, he mimics other birds, especially hawks, and his Red Shouldered Hawk imitation is particularly fine. Actually the Blue Jay has a varied collection of calls, which can make identification difficult. Differentiation between male and female birds can also be challenging. All Blue Jays have subtle differences in pattern, but both sexes look similar, except when they don’t. Occasionally the female will be slightly more drab in color, but this cannot be depended on.

Photo Frank Miles
Photo Frank Miles
Migration is another area where the Blue Jay mystifies those who try to study him. Blue Jays tend to be permanent inhabitants throughout their range, but some Blue Jays migrate; yet not all of them migrate from the same area, and the ones who migrate one year may decide to overwinter the next. There is doubtless a logical explanation for this puzzling behavior, but humans have been unable to discern it. Another Blue Jay behavior in the trickster category is theft. Jays steal from humans and from other animals. Squirrels do not bother to cache acorns when they hear Jays in the vicinity, because they expect to be robbed. In the context of criminality, it’s interesting that Jays are sometimes called jaybirds, while the pejorative “J-bird” (short for jailbird) is used to denote a person who has been incarcerated.

Trickster behavior teaches us discernment. The Jay’s mimicry and variety of calls make us sharpen our ears and our memories. Blue Jays themselves are masters of discernment, as the paint chipping example shows. A major component of this bird’s diet is acorns, and while Blue Jays receive nourishment from a nice bug infested acorn, they know enough not to store a weevily acorn for winter consumption, and they are able to discern with high accuracy whether an acorn has been compromised. Oak trees are more dependent on Blue Jays than on squirrels for disbursement, since a Blue Jay can carry an acorn a mile or two away.

Photo Dawn.
Photo Dawn.
Blue Jays are members of the Corvide family, which includes not only other Jays but also Magpies, Crows and Ravens. Like Crows, Blue Jays are intelligent, curious, and full of surprises. Whether they find us similarly baffling cannot be known, but Corvides study humans more closely then we study them, and consequently they have our behaviors better catalogued.

Ravens and Crows frequently appear in myth to impart oracular insight to the plot. In the ancient art of augury a Crow or Raven appearance held important significance. As a fellow Corvide, the Blue Jay can be seen as a herald, especially since the wild Jay is more talkative and has a greater range of sounds. Blue is the color associated with the throat chakra, which strengthens the link with prophecy. However, the blue coloration means that the Jay does not carry a shadow symbolism like the inward seeking Raven or Crow. The Blue Jay is more extroverted.

The Blue Jay’s messages cannot be catalogued for symbolic reference—the cries are too voluminous for that—but he’s definitely got information to unload. He is alert, interested in his environment, and more perceptive than you or I. We can dismiss him as noisy, pushy, and common, but these are the very qualities that call out for our attention. The Blue Jay knows his business—and everyone else’s, too.
Photo Manjith Kainickara.
Photo Manjith Kainickara.


Sources:

Bessette, Alan E. et al. Birds of the Adirondacks: A Field Guide. Utica, NY: North Country Books, 1993.

Hilton Jr., B. “Boisterous Blue Jays.” Hilton Pond Center. http://www.hiltonpond.org/ArticleJayBlueMain.html.

Marzluff, John M. and Tony Angell. In the Company of Crows and Ravens. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.

Seriously Science. “The Blue Jays are Coming! Hide Yo Kids, Hide Yo Nuts!” Discover Magazine. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2014/05/07/blue-jays-coming-hide-kids-hide-nuts/.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Blue Jay.” http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/blue_jay/lifehistory.

Jumping Spiders and Jellyfish Eyes

May 9, 2014


So inevitable was the development of vision among motile creatures that it has developed along two different evolutionary pathways: the brain in vertebrates and the epidermis in invertebrates. That’s right, the skin. Among the more primitive jellyfishes, the eyes are raised patches of cells, called eyespots. These eyes cannot form images but can detect the direction light is coming from. The surface of the entire jellyfish appears to be photosensitive, sensing light even when the eyespots are covered.

This is a Moon Jelly (Aurelia aurita). The primitive eyespots are along the edge of the creature, small protrusions where the rim puckers. Look closely. Photo by CarbonNYC.
This is a Moon Jelly (Aurelia aurita). The primitive eyespots are along the edge of the creature, small protrusions where the rim puckers. Look closely. Photo by CarbonNYC.


While the vision of the jellyfish is limited, the octopus has eyes that can form images close up and at a distance, changing the focus of its lens by a combination of muscles and internal eye pressure. The octopus adjusts its pupil size for bright or dim light and can detect the direction scattered underwater light rays are traveling. Octopus vision is limited to the blue-green spectrum of light, which corresponds to the underwater environment, and octopus vision is less refined than that of vertebrates, allowing the creature to recognize filled shapes but not outlines. The octopus is an intelligent creature, capable of learning and detecting patterns, and so it is a favorite subject for research.
Starfish see from eyes at the bottoms of their feet. Photo Andre-Philippe D. Picard.
Starfish see from eyes at the bottoms of their feet. Photo Andre-Philippe D. Picard.


The invertebrate eye reaches its apotheosis in certain arthropods, and the Jumping Spider is a prime example. While Cave Spiders are completely blind and spiders who stay home on their webs have limited acuity, the hunting spiders have exceptional vision. The tiny Jumping Spider, only about a quarter of an inch in diameter, has four pairs of eyes, each with a specialized function. The large central forward facing pair has sharp vision within its limited field. The Jumping Spider has no lens to accommodate objects near and far, but the other eyes mitigate this problem to some extent. Another pair of forward facing eyes judges distance, and both pairs on either side of the head detect motion, with one of the side pair also having wide angle vision, giving the Jumping Spider the ability to see at almost 360°. If the Jumping Spider needs to see an object clearly, it jumps within range. Jumping Spiders have excellent color vision, seeing into the ultraviolet range. The hunting spiders communicate in courtship through visual cues, and another hunting spider, the Wolf Spider, waves his legs in code for the female, in a kind of spider semaphore.


A good view of Jumping Spider eyes. One of the peripheral pair is rudimentary and hard to see, but six of the eyes are clear. Photo Niky81.
A good view of Jumping Spider eyes. One of the peripheral pair is rudimentary and hard to see, but six of the eyes are clear. Photo Niky81.


If the invertebrate has a brain, the eyes do communicate with that brain, but the eyes of invertebrates are different from vertebrates in structure. Reflecting evolution from the epidermal tissues, invertebrate eyes connect to different parts of the brain, and more visual processing is done in the eye itself. Vertebrate eyes, as extensions of the brain, process more visual information in the brain. Invertebrates truly see the world in different way than humans.


Source

Sinclair, Sandra. How Animals See: Other Visions of Our World. New York: Facts on File, 1985.


Postscript

In the course of my research I discovered that “Jellyfish Eyes” is the name of a 2013 film by Takashi Murakami currently being screened at indie art theatres around the USA. I chose the title of this post before realizing this, as I was truly interested in actual jellyfish eyes. I may be the first to point out that the eyes on these “jellyfish” creatures are in no way anatomically correct. Alas, few sci-fi artists care about such things. Here is the trailer.

Ianuaria, Celtic Goddess of Music

May 2, 2014

The Turtle Dove. Painting by Sophie Gengembre Anderson 1823-1903.
The Turtle Dove. Painting by Sophie Gengembre Anderson 1823-1903.

Her name sounds like “January,” and this Celtic goddess may well have been syncretized with the Roman god Janus after whom the month is named. Her shrine was located near Beire-le-Chatel in Burgundy, France.

Richard Stillwell notes that the sanctuary’s “Walls were razed,” which is another way of saying that the Christians were particularly thorough in their destruction of this temple complex. From the multiple pieces of statues among the rubble, it looks like many deities were worshiped, and that the walls were erected to partition outdoor shrines.

There are two intact inscriptions, one to Ianauria and another to the Matrones. Ianauria’s dedication depicts a curly-haired child playing the pipes. Votive offerings to a Celtic equivalent of the Roman god Mars were often statues of children holding doves. The Celtic Mars deity is unrelated to the martial aspect of Roman Mars, and could possibly be related to Mars as a nurturing bird deity. See my earlier article on Mars as the Roman woodpecker god.

There were at least four large doves at the Beire-le-Chatel complex. The Celts, like the people in the pre-Indo-European cultures they assimilated, were primarily animal worshipers, with anthropomorphism of animal deities a by-product of Greco-Roman influence. Continental Celts probably worshiped a dove deity that became romanized as Mars or a feminine version of Janus. Since Turtledoves are usually conceptualized in pairs, it’s interesting that the god Mars is the father of twins and Janus has two faces. Note from the video below that the simple turr turr turr of the Turtledove would be easy to replicate on even a primitive flute.


Sources

Green, Miranda. Animals in Celtic Life and Myth. London: Routledge, 1992.

Stillwell, Richard. The Princeton Encylopedia of Classical Sites. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976. Accessed at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0006:entry=beire-le-chatel


Ipnops

April 25, 2014

Ipnops murrayi
Ipnops murrayi
According to the literature Ipnops is the only vertebrate in which both the eyes and the optic nerves are completely missing. The present investigation has however shown, beyond doubt, that the peculiar organs on the head of Ipnops, which are generally held to be phosphorescent organs, are in reality modified eyes.–O. Munk. “The Eyes of Ipnops Murrayi”

Vision is important to nearly all animals, so much so that only animals who live in caves with no source of light are completely blind. Even bats, who rely primarily on echolocation for orienting themselves and finding prey, have some vision.

In the deepest depths of the ocean, where no light can penetrate, fish use a biological flashlight. Called bioluminescence, this cool light, usually in the blue-green spectrum, is manufactured by marine bacteria and resides in the gut of the fish. It is believed that the fish have some control over this light, which is used to hunt, lure prey, attract a mate, or aid in coordination of the school.

One of the strange fishes at the bottom of the sea is the ipnops. Like most bottom dwelling fish the ipnops’s eyes are on the top of its head, not on the sides, and these are round tubular eyes poking out of a flat head with transparent bones. Quoting from Wikipedia “The purpose of these structures is debated — they are light-sensitive and may serve to detect bioluminescent prey; it has also been proposed that the organs themselves may be luminescent and act as lures.” The ipnops lives in the very darkest regions of the sea, from the bathypelagic to the abyssopelagic or abyssal zone. Truly these animals reside in the abyss.

I have not had the occasion to use ipnops magically, but I think they may have some interesting, if specialized, applications. For one thing, “ipnops” sounds like a magical word. This would be a good animal to call on energetically when you find yourself “in so deep” that you cannot “see your way.”
Ipnops agassizii. Photo R.B. Reyes.
Ipnops agassizii. Photo R.B. Reyes.



Sources

Munk, O. “The Eyes of Ipnops Murrayi.” Copenhagen: Institute for Comparative Anatomy and Zoological Technique, 1878.

Sinclair, Sandra. How Animals See: Other Visions of Our World. New York: Facts on File, 1985.

Wikipedia, Ipnops.

http://media.eol.org/content/2009/05/19/16/68617_orig.jpg (Photo R. B. Reyes) Ipnops Agassizii

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Ipnops.JPG/640px-Ipnops.JPG Ipnops Murrayi

Human and Animal Vision

April 18, 2014


It turns out that humans are highly anthropocentric in how we conceive of vision. The measures that we use tend to be areas where problems in human vision arise: focusing at distant and close range, seeing at night, depth perception, field of vision, and colorblindness. We don’t factor in things that most humans can do easily, such as recognize patterns, and we also don’t think about things we can’t do at all, such as recognize the source of diffuse light.

Here is a list of factors that vision entails (which may not be complete):


Ability to detect light (this is the core function of vision)

Ability to locate the source of diffuse light (polarization)

Ability to see in low light

Ability to see in bright light

Sensitivity to changes in contrast

Ability to see colors

Range of color vision

Ability to distinguish hues within a narrow band of color

Depth perception

Detection of movement

Ability to see stationary objects

Field of vision (including ability to see up and down as well as on a 360 degree plane)

Focusing ability (including speed of focus on near and far objects)

Ability to detect images at great distances

Clarity of vision at far and close range (accommodation)

Ability to detect shapes, both solid and outline

Ability to recognize patterns

Rapidity of image formation (analogous to frames per second in a camera)

Clarity of underwater vision

Ability to detect images below the surface of the water from above (and vice versa)

Ability to compensate for idiosyncrasies in refraction (closely related to the factor above)

Ability to compensate for movement (self locomotion as well as movement in the environment)

Formation of a single image versus split vision

Capacity for visual organs to withstand environmental challenges such as cold, pressure, and debris


I have not been able to find information comparing abilities to see and interpret auras.

So which animal has the best vision? I was a few chapters into this book before I realized what a silly question this is. Each animal has a type of vision perfectly adapted to its environmental niche. No eye or set of eyes can function in all areas extraordinarily well, because there are a few areas that are mutually exclusive and so it’s a choice between specialization or compromise. If I did have to pick the animal with the best vision, however, it would be any member of the ape family, including humans. No doubt many will not believe me and will dismiss this as more anthropocentricism. I say this because while there are animals who outperform us in every area of vision, except perhaps pattern recognition, our eyes function competently in a wide range of environments and circumstances. Our eyes do little that is spectacular but almost everything well. This is probably the main reason we have adapted to so many environments around the globe.


Source

Sinclair, Sandra. How Animals See: Other Visions of Our World. New York: Facts on File, 1985.

Photo credits: Eagle–Vtornet; Chimpanzee–Thomas Lersch

How Animals See

April 11, 2014


Most of us intuitively understand that other animals do not see the world the way we humans do, and we like to imagine how things look from their point of view. It turns out that the ways of seeing are more intricate and varied than we realize.

I am returning this week to a favorite topic of mine: vision. Over the next several weeks I will be sharing insights gleaned from my perusal of an out-of-print book, How Animals See: Other Visions of Our World, by Sandra Sinclair. This book examines eyesight in a wide range of creatures, from insects to mammals, sea dwellers to migrating birds.

I did not realize when I picked up this book how unique it is, really one-of-a-kind. Since it was published in 1985 the other books on the subject have been children’s books, which is par for the course. Books on the really interesting topics seem to be written for kids, not grownups. Lack of interest may not be the primary factor here, however. The subject matter is difficult, so much so that biologists and others who study in this area use words and concepts that most people have only a fuzzy understanding of. Sinclair spent years researching her material under the mentorship of Dr. Dean Yeager of The State University of New York College of Optometry, and Dr. Yaeger writes in his foreword that even he was forced to read outside his areas of expertise in order to assist with the project. This seems to be the kind of book that only a very bright journalist with generous assistance from experts could make comprehensible to the lay reader. Even so, I do not think I would have been able to understand this material had I not already read some basic books about human eyesight such as Relearning to See by Thomas Quackenbush, which I wrote about last year.

I have tried unsuccessfully to find a more up to date version of Sinclair’s work. I have found only two books that are close: a 2012 book called How Animals See the World: Comparative Behavior, Biology, and Evolution of Vision by Olga F. Lazareva et al and Animal Eyes by Michael F. Land and Dan-Eric Nilsson. The blurb at Goodreads boasts that How Animals See the World “…contains 26 chapters written by world-leading experts” and calls it “An exhaustive work in range and depth, … a valuable resource for advanced students and researchers in areas of cognitive psychology, perception and cognitive neuroscience, as well as researchers in the visual sciences.” Animal Eyes is billed by the publisher as “…a comparative account of all known types of eye in the animal kingdom, outlining their structure and function with an emphasis on the nature of the optical systems and the physical principles involved in image formation.” Both rather dense sounding texts assume a solid knowledge base in the visual sciences, which makes me appreciate Sinclair’s work all the more. I have to say, however, that I found even this book a stretch.

Over the next few months, look forward to juicy bits of trivia about some very weird ways of seeing.


Source

Sinclair, Sandra. How Anmals See: Other Visions of Our World. New York: Facts on File, 1985.

Eagle and Ratatosk

February 28, 2014


More to come in a few weeks on cuisine in Mesopotamia: food and the dead, feasting with the gods and a few other topics. A diversion this week for something too wonderful to pass up.

Post by TV6 & FOX UP.



I don’t know if people remember the essay I wrote on Ratatosk, the Red Scoundrel for Return to Mago blog. In Germanic lore Ratatosk scampers up and down the world tree carrying insults between Nidhogg, the serpent-dragon who nibbles the roots of the tree, and a giant eagle (unnamed as far as we know) who lives in the top branches. Anyway, I found a photo of it! This really is happening, still.