In our infinite arrogance, we take our fellow mammals for granted…
When I was taken to Sea world as a child the entire experience was saddening to me. I mean, I did have fun, like any child would while watching spinning dolphins and jumping whales, but I remember being so sad. When we were waiting for the Shamu show to start, I apparently had taken off (I used to run away a lot as a kid, not really run away but I would adventure off.) My aunt says she turns around and sees me right around a slide-out area— which is a platform submerged about a foot into water; I was standing on the edge looking in the deep part of the water. Luckily for me a gentleman had spotted me and swooped me up before I fell into the water. The only thing that used to separate the public from the tank was only a chain that said “Do Not Enter”, which means absolutely nothing to a kid who can’t read. When we were leaving I remember there was a long hallway with windows on both sides where you could walk and you’d be able to see the whales below, I have no idea if it is still there or not, but I remember looking at one of the whales and all it was doing was swimming back and forth and back and forth and I, being like 5, ran up and down the hallway with it. I felt SO SAD! I was five years old at Sea world and I just wanted to cry! I remember asking my Grandma about the whales and why they were so sad.
Orcas are one of those things when you see in the flesh you’re almost taken a back by the sheer beauty of the natural world and at the same time you realize how fucked up humanity is sometimes for trying to contain such an amazing creature.
Elephant using giant typewriter- New York World’s Fair, 1940.
An elephant using an oversized typewriter is the cutest thing I have ever seen in my entire life.
Belle the hippo during the siege of Leningrad, 1943.
“Belle survived the war thanks to her caretaker, Yevdokia Dashina. In 1941 water was turned off throughout the city and Belle’s pool was empty, so her skin began to dry out and crack. Every day, Dashina would drag a 40-liter barrel of water from the Neva river and rub the suffering hippo with camphor oil. Eventually, Belle’s skin healed and she was able to hide underwater through the air raids.” (Source)
*In this case, none of the zoo animals were eaten, but some, like Betty the elephant, died during the air strikes (sad picture warning!) Most of the cats and rats were indeed eaten, unfortunately.
*An adult hippo night should receive from 36 to 40 kg of feed. But during the blockade she ate 4-6 kg of a mixture of herbs, vegetables and press cake, adding there 30 kg filings, just to fill her stomach. (The zoo workers also shared their rations with the animals.) If you see this picture of Belle from 1935 you can tell that she lost a lot of weight. So she probably didn’t have “enough to eat”, but enough not to starve to death.
Feeding polar bears from a tank; ca. 1950
“There’s a good bear, now go and maim those Nazis on this other side of this hill.”
This is quite possibly the most Russian photograph ever taken.
Polar bears look really freaking cute, but they’re the only animal that actively predates on humans.
Wolves will give it a long and hard thought about whether they want to attack humans. Polar bears? Nope. If they see you, and you can’t protect yourself or seek shelter, you’re dead.
The Life And Times Of The MGM Lion.
One glorious hair toss of that mane and you’ve got yourself a L’Oréal advert.
Pioneers of Alaska posing for a photo in the mid 1940s
That fellow on the right is a looker. Definitely fits the stereotypical Alaskan man image – handsome, big, strong, outdoorsy. His hands look quite large to me, though it may just be that the two fellows next to him are average sized.
Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) in cage. Lincoln Park Zoo. 1900
I can only imagine how difficult it was to get that guy there without tranquilizers etc. (Perhaps a large net?)
Wild Gaur
Herbivorous megafauna are typically imagined as a group that includes elephants, rhinoceros, and giraffes. However, one of the most spectacular examples of megafauna is a bovine from India. At 3 meters (10 ft) tall, the gaur is a truly gargantuan beast, and the world’s largest wild cow species. This massive creature with truly formidable horns crashes through Indian forests and fields, and sometimes invades gardens. While it’s a threatened species due to poaching and habitat loss, it’s a match for most threats and weighs up to 1,600 kilograms(3,500 lbs). Among the megafauna that crash and devour their way through tropical vegetation, only the elephants, rhinoceros, and giraffes are bigger or taller. The gaur is more docile than African buffalo, but human fatalities do occur now and then. In one case, a gaur was attacked by a tiger. The gaur responded by literally snapping the tiger in half.
BP Oil Spill:
“The sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours …For this, for everything, we are out of tune.”
Currently in the Gulf of Mexico, the most toxic pollutants known to man are being sprayed to disperse one of the most toxic pollutants known to man; unleashed as a result of man’s fallibility, in a near-global addiction to consumerism – it must be an environmental apocalypse now. One dispersant Corexit 9500, is four times as toxic as oil, and also disrupts the reproductive systems of organisms.
Attempting to capture the images, the lens appeared less than clear, then I realized it was not the lens, but the tears streaming down my face, in response to witnessing overwhelming minutes of beauty beyond imagination. Suddenly, was a certainty of feeling blessed, to understand poet John Gillespie Magee’s words : “…in the sunlit silence, put out my hand, and touched the face of God.” Fifty dolphin have so far, been reported found dead. Experts estimate only one tenth of species which die will be washed up. The full toll of big oil’s “collateral damage”, now, previously and in the future, will likely never be known.
Bird species of the region include albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters, frigatebirds, cormorants, gannets, boobies, gulls, terns and skimmers. With temperatures of one hundred degrees and birds becoming oil covered, experts warn they are boiling, alive. The thick, tarry oil, absorbs the heat.
The many turtle species lay their eggs on or near the beach where they were born. Conservationists are removing eggs to unpolluted shores hundreds of miles away, where hopefully they will survive but another extraordinary natural miracle will have been severed. Four hundred and thirty two turtles have been found dead since April.
The Gulf’s Loggerhead turtle’s hatchlings follow the light of the moon to reach the ocean and swim to safety, away from land’s predators, when they emerge from the egg. For the tiny moon followers, the ocean itself has become their ultimate predator.
I hope to be remembered for my atrocities! 
