The Freaky Trigger Top 25 Animals
16 March 2005
There is some debate as to which small monkey this actually is:
the pygmy marmoset? (caution very small indeed)
or the tarsier, voted the official world’s cutest animal in 1997 despite brazenly overdoing the big eye ‘thing’ in my rarefied view.
(Further candidates welcomed.)
Why should the WSM hold such appeal? We like monkeys because they are smart and do things which are a bit human. We like small animals because they are dainty and sweet. Hence whatever species it belongs to the world’s smallest monkey has a huge Thumbelina-style appeal. We live now in an enlightened age when nobody would be allowed to teach the WSM heartbreaking tricks with dolls furniture. THANK GOODNESS FOR THAT.
Tom in Blog 7 • 4 Comments
17 March 2005
In Doctor Doolittle And The Secret Lake Dr. D goes to a secret lake, there he talks to a giant turtle who is the only living thing who remembers the flood! This giant turtle knows the secrets of the ages (I’ve forgotten what they are exactly), it’s all very exciting.
The story captures the wonder of the giant turtle – they live a very long time, which is in itself exciting (cf. the gross anthropomorphism of books about some long-lived reptile that “witnessed the relief of Mafeking”). But also they have lived a very long time – they are a link back to our planet’s steamy, ferny reptilian past. So are crocodiles but they’ve been rebranded by humans to have new modern resonance (eating us up), which hasn’t happened to the giant turtle. Immense and slow-moving, even a young turtle has an aura of ancientness that makes them fascinating.
Tom in Blog 7 • No Comments
18 March 2005
Penguins are so great that you could easily construct a top five of penguins. So easily that even though Blogger just et the first run round of this post, I am doing it again.
5: The Emperor Penguin
Looks like a butler, yadda yadda. Falls over when planes fly overhead (no it doesn’t!) The Emperor Penguin is undoubtedly a cool looking creature and that cannot be denied. This is not the reason why it is so great however. Rather its name gives it an undeniable position in the hierachy of animals. Now I know that an Admiral Butterfly is not really equipped to command a flotilla of boats: and equally no penguin should ever be left in charge of an empire. But you do give it that extra bit of respect nevertheless. In the ice kingdom the emperor penguin is king.
4: The King Penguin
Or at least would be if it wasn’t for the king penguin.
3: Penguin Books
Certainly middle-class houses in the UK are held up almost exclusively by their stock of Penguin Books. And the man who designed the classic look, the two colour paperback hoops, was designing for fifty years on and secondhand bookshop browsing. A wonderful smell and retreat into England comes with the apwing of a vintage penguin. Of course the spoilerific introductions of Penguin classics leave a lot to be desired, but great penguins nevertheless.
2: P-p-p-pick Up a Penguin
They always say how Murray Walker and Salman Rushdie wrote some iconic ad slogans. Well I do not know who wrote “P-p-p-pick up a penguin” but odds are that is because it is such a bloody great slogan he got paid loads to stay in the business. He elevated the simple chocolate covered bourbon biscuit into the high of kiddie desire. Familial favouritism could be bought by a mere penguin save din the biscuit tin. I knew my parents did not love me because we never had penguins. They are best served from the freezer by the way.
1: The Penguin
Not Tim Burton’s rubbish version. As hilarious as the idea of a deformed baby raised in a penguin enclosure by penguins is, it does not make for a good villain. Indeed what marks The Penguin out as a Batman villain is his lack of grotesquery. He is a mobster rather than a monster. Of course Batman could beat him and his silly umbrellas in a fight. But the bemonicled baddie would never go mano et batmano. He is a fixer, a mover, a shaker and a thinker. The best kind of villain. And lest we forget, played by Burgess Meredith in the 1960′s TV show. Before you mock, that guy taught Rocky all he knew about fighting.
Pete Baran in Blog 7 • No Comments
27 March 2005
It is an insect. That looks like a stick. And the punchline of the sorely under-used joke “what’s insectile and sticky?” That would be enough for its greatness status. But the true story of the stick insect is even more unbelievable. It is a story of evolution gone wrong, and mankind making things even more difficult. Even today mankinds inadvertent meddling is endangering the long term existence of stick insects. A story which proves that they may deserve to be even higher that number twelve.
Keeping insects as pets seems a bit rubbish. But stick insects with their apparent great camouflage give the pet owner the odd “hunt the insect” moment. It also gives us a chance to marvel at the wonders of nature, evolving this perfect disguise. Little do most stick insect owners realize that the natural habitat of the stick insect is the frozen tundra of Siberia and Alaska. A habitat that barely has any sticks at all.
So why did stick insects develop such camouflage? Would you believe coincidence? You see the stick insect has some of the worst eyesight of any insect, much like a ladybird. And like a ladybird, to attract the attention of the amorous other insects it had to stand out. And in an environment without sticks, looking like a stick makes you – well – stick out.
And what does mankind do with them? Stick them in a glass tank full of sticks. To find the poor insects constantly shagging twigs because it cannot find the female insects. We may not mean to be cruel, but we are systematically destroying the Siberian Stick Insect, and the strong numbers of the Alaskan is only due to a local educational drive. Evolution turned the insect into a long, gangly stick to make it visible, and mankind hid them in a heap of twigs. Its like keep zebras in a room full of Mondrian’s. To atone for this cruelty alone, the stick insect should be in this list.
Pete Baran in Blog 7 • No Comments
29 March 2005
“It’s sheep we’re up against!” trilled the Housemartins – has there been an animal which gets a worse recent press than the humble sheep? It’s almost a rite of passage for every gimp who fancies themselves as alternative: dust off the ancient metaphor and train both your limp barrels on the bleating forces of conformity. (An example: the worst headline in music press history, Steve Sutherland’s “SCENE AND NOT HERD”.)
It was not ever thus: when the ancient astrologers named a house of the Zodiac after the noble RAM* they were not sneering at one twelth of mankind for only buying Dido CDs. The fact is that aside from the odd moment of being chased by a dog into a pen (and aside from on the telly does this even happen any more), your average sheep – non-intensively farmed sheep, anyway – has a pretty good life. Nice big woolly coat in Winter, free haircuts in Summer, all the grass they can eat, the company of friends, harmonious parent-child relationships. I would say that the inscrutable face of a sheep hides a deep zen wisdom. There is the whole ‘being eaten’ aspect but hey, you have to go sometime.
*Though frankly as constellations go Aries is even more laughable than usual – nobody is going to convince me that ancient man didn’t know a triangle when he saw one. Maybe he had the wool pulled over his eyes.
Tom in Blog 7 • No Comments
30 March 2005
Sharks, like crocodiles, have been around forever. They are the reknowned uber-predator, indeed if they had added sharks to the mix in Aliens vs Predators vs Sharks, the swimming ones would have won*. Sharks used to eat the odd T-Rex for lunch and are around today being cool and content in their evolutionary position as the anti-panda. Yes this makes them interesting creatures, BUT, does it justify quite the amount of television time they get on National Geographic TV. Of course not. The majesty of the phrase SHARK ATTACK does the justifying all by itself.
So much so that even when it is not really a shark attack at all, brer Great White can make it on to the news. Last Friday’s news, a slack affair admittedly, still had much room for this story: Man Escapes No Danger Whatsoever In Shark Attack. The story was simple. A man was on a shark watching trip, and they saw a shark. Man gets in SHARKPROOF CAGE which the shark then attacks to no avail. Man is never in danger. However, someone takes some great footage of a shark attacking a cage and its eyes rolling back in that super scary shark way. Not news in any way shape or form, but the nearest the News At Ten bongs are going to get to the Der-Der of the Jaws theme.
*If there had been any water of course, the one reason sharks do not rule the world.
Pete Baran in Blog 7 • No Comments
I never really understood the porcine reference in the name as the little beasts have much more of the rodent about them than the darling/delicious pig (and indeed they are closely related to the mole and the shrew – but not the same as porcupines, alright?). That said, hedgehogs did experience their own dalliance with the culinary world courtesy of this legendary 80s meme
– alas (sorry, I mean, fortunately) said chips were flavoured of nothing more than pork fat. Still I can think of a few out there who probably harbour secret desires to sample the spiky variant, though they’d have to catch them first.
I never believed that hedgehogs were actually as fast as the pixelated wry blue show-off of gamelore but do recall an incident a few years back when staring out at the night sky from my back door one night I heard a rustling in the bushes and a dark blur racing out from the vegetation at an alarming pace, pursued by the neighbour’s cat (not Knuckles). Also impressive is their general noisiness as they forage around your garden (fortunately this does not extend to making a fox-esque cacophony at 3am) and their alleged ‘invulnerability’ when curled up into a ball, pointy bits out – though not quite tough enough for the deadliest predator of them all, SUV MAN. Hedgehog entrails spilled out all over the road in front of your house is not a pretty sight, so if they are to continue trying to cross busy roads at night I would not be adverse to powdering their diet of insects with crushed up steroids, just to boost their chances of making it from one kerb to the other in time. But it’s probably illegal. In the meantime we can only stand back and simultaneously deplore and admire their human-like willingness to dice with death in this way. Erm, hooray?
Steve Mannion in Blog 7 • No Comments
31 March 2005
The badger is the grumpy symbol of British wildlife, earned through its position as 70s/80s TV staple. The black and white stripes of the woodland monarch remind all true Brits of long hours spent rubbing up next to Terry Nutkins in the dank proving ground of the hide. In a filmed sense.
I actually went on a badgerwatch once and it was terry-rific. It involves sitting for several hours in a felt contraption which artificially heightens your perceptions of the animal world around you, and also gets you so enormously cold and numbed that when a mammal does appear you count it as a supreme miracle: this is how cults get people involved I believe. For the badger it’s all in a night’s work – emerge from sett, rootle in undergrowth, jump over log looking for worms and grubs. (Badgers eat over 200 worms every day!). So many badgers did this exact same thing that I started to wonder if they weren’t trained badgers just going back down another hole and round again.
At Kew Gardens there is a HUMAN-SIZE BADGER SETT which I have written about before. It is terrific and has almost inexhaustible power to fascinate children. Going on the badgerwatch reminds you of what an odd little animal these miniature dog-bear-zebra things are: if it came from some exotic clime (like Australia) you wouldn’t believe in it.
Tom in Blog 7 • No Comments
Is it all getting a bit parochial around here? As in the excellent video for Midfielding by Midfield General, why should all the big sexy animals get all the screen time. Think about it, we live with pigeons, day-in, day-out and do we give them much of a second thought? Probably not, but they are remarkable creatures: if only for the disablist triumph against adversity displayed by so many of them.
The current CGI animated film Valiant posits the knowing participation of carrier pigeons during World War Two. Anyone who has seen puff pieces on the film will be aware that pigeons won medlas for valor in said war, which is only fitting being one of the few animals with a chest suitable for pinning medals on*. A quick survey of the pigeons knocking around at the moment though will surely suggest that this secret shadow war has continued to the present. Either that or the average pigeon likes to hang around in a minefield, the number of maimed and one legged pigeons there are about.
So pests they may be: but they are never in the way. Indeed their internal radar seems to sort that out (have you ever tried to kick a pigeon?) Rats of the air? Merely due to their abundance. They may say that while there are ravens in the Tower, Britain will never fall. I have another suggestion. The mere presence of pigeons illustrate the potential longevity of London. You never see a pigeons nest after all: an it is clear that they make their home in an upper dimension protecting London from strange invaders. Stop The Pigeon? Never
*See also Muttley.
Pete Baran in Blog 7 • No Comments
« Older
Newer »
It sounds like pigeon. 