Happy Holidays FML!
 
I've been away for the last week but got home just in time for Christmas.
I'm sure glad to be home.  Many thanks to Elizabeth who has taken my poor
handwriting and pasted in posts for me.  Thanks sweetie.  I'm going to send
a good part of Friday catching up on the past FMLs and some of my mail.
 
When I was going through my "sent mail" stuff to see the posts Elizabeth
pasted in for me, I noticed a small mistake in my "eye know" post.  My post
said ferret pupils were round.  Yes, they are when opened all the way.
However, they close down to slits (similar to a cat's) except the slits are
*horizontal* instead of vertical, a weasel trait.  This mistake occured when
Elizabeth cut and pasted my original post (written on a laptop) into my
email program.  Here is the original text:
 
"Their pupil is round (like ours)" when fully opened, and slits (like cats)
when closed down in bright light, but unlike cats, the slits are horizontal,
not vertical.  As far as I know, all mustelid eyes are fully muscled "and
they can turn their eyes independently of their head much like we do, albeit
with less range."
 
I apologize if anyone was confused by this editing blunder.  Its not
Elizabeth's fault, it is mine, because before I left, I installed a program
that increased the numbers of clipboards on my computer, but I forgot to
reset the allocated memory for them, so they were all too small to take the
entire text, requiring the clipping and pasting.  Sorry.
 
Q: "I was reading an older book on pets that was published in England and
it said ferrets were really bad pets.  Since they invented ferreting, they
should know.  Is it right?"
 
A: Of course the book was right, which is why I advocate ferrets as pets...
my goal is to ruin *everybody's* carpet.
 
Well, I'm not sure of what will be happening tomorrow, but of three things I
am quite positive; neither the Egyptians, the British, nor the Americans
domesticated ferrets or invented ferreting.  However, Britain is certainly a
stronghold of ferrets, and has been for probably more than a thousand years,
so you have to give them *some* credit.
 
The problem is not who wrote the book, but instead the book itself.  You
never said when the book was published, but my guess is it would be just at
or before the 1960s, and most likely sometime in the 1920s or so.  Nature
books of that era were mostly written by naturalists, not biologists, and
they were almost always written in a story-telling style, assigning human
characteristics to animals behaviors, then assigning human intent to those
assigned behaviors.  Here is a mild example:
 
Harper Cory 1949 "Animals of the British Isles: Mammals." Thomas Nelson and
Sons, Ltd; London.
 
pp.78: "Putoris (sic) is as repulsive as martes is attractive.  The species
is dwendling so rapidly that it is almost extinct in the British Isles, and
few country people will bewail its passing, for the polecat is, without
exception, the most destructive of all the British carnivores.  It rivals
the Canadian mink for the title of "the assassin of the night.""
 
Now, even if you don't like polecats, this passage is certainly inflamatory,
if for nothing else than its tactless support of the extinction of a
species.  It is especially poor in the regards that it ignores the position
that mustelid predators play in a healthy ecosystem, as assigns value or
worth based upon a single human writer's unsupported opinion.  Yet, with
deferrence to Cory, this was the *style* of naturalist writing, as far back
as Aristotle.  And the British are not alone in such anthropomorphizing of
species; Audubon, Earnest Thompson Seton, and even John Muir were terrible
in assigning the titles of "good" or "bad" to various animals as they saw
fit.  (As an aside, I do have to say that Cory's book has a wonderful
illustration of a polecat by Neave Parker.  It is so good that I've scanned
it, printed it on a high-quality glossy paper, then framed it for my room.)
 
Most of these early naturalists were hunters or "sportsmen" who switched
from killing scores of animals for trophy heads to killing them for skins
and skulls to be sent to museums.  They knew a lot about what the various
animals they killed did, but for the most part, they didn't know much about
the animals themselves.  Much of these biases were based on observations of
frighten or wounded animals.  Corner a frightened and wounded weasel and you
see an aggressive and vicious animal.  Watch one for an entire season, and
you see a curious and intelligent animal struggling to eat enough without
being eaten, a dedicated and loving parent, and an animal that would rather
flee than fight.  But traditional naturalists collected animals, and either
studied their skulls and skin, or studied them in human and unnatural
environments.  Really good field studies didn't take place on a regular
basis until the 1960s.  Today, most studies of animals done in human
environments are considered invalid unless you can demonstrate the same
behaviors also occur in wild populations.
 
I strongly encourage everyone to look in the old texts for information; just
keep on mind they were written with a different mind-set than today, and the
information may not be very accurate.  Every once in a while, someone will
copy part of a book I haven't seen and send it to me.  Its better than
candy, and I love it because, even if some of the writing is poor, sometimes
you find really cool stuff.  For example, Cory blew it on the polecat, but
look at what is said about the ferret:
 
pp.82: "They have become so utterly dependent on man that if they are lost
they soon die, because they do not know how to care for themselves."
 
Quote that, Ca Ca Fish and Gestapo.
 
Bob C and 20 MO Codependent Furbutts
[Posted in FML issue 2167]