#wildlife division

[phoenixcatch7]

Bingqiu is so funny to me like,,, you have sexy man turned into an idea of a tumblr sexyman and uh, some guy that watches instagram reels bc “he could never be a TikTok user”

Asdfghjkl that's exactly what they are. No wonder they're so popular on tumblr XD. Sqq is that one reddit user who swears every week that he's leaving this toxic hole for good and you know you'll find him mere hours later arguing pedantry on some incredibly niche sub reddit.

And he's somehow gay married to a guy who underwent an irl sans verse swap with his evil version. Who is his 'I can fix him' blorbo. His poor little meow meow. Lbh would have an aesthetic tradwife account, you know the ones where there's some scandal about them actually being insanely rich and in some weird marriage? That's him. His recording room that looks like an offshoot of a small cosy traditional cottage is actually a renovated spare room in his palace quarters.

They're that one meme about their braincells cancelling each other out. They're so stupid I love them.

Thanks for the ask :D!

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[probablyasocialecologist]

Ant colonies seem the perfect natural instance of a social system governed by division of labour. All known species of ants – now about 14,000 – live in colonies. An ant colony consists of one or more reproductive females, called ‘queens’, who lay the eggs. All the rest of the ants, the ones you see walking around, are sterile female ‘workers’, daughters of the queen and the males with whom she mated. In the 1970s, the biologist E O Wilson set the agenda for research on ants by extolling the virtues of division of labour. He freely used metaphors from human society to describe a colony as a ‘factory within a fortress’. In this metaphor, each ant is programmed to carry out its appointed task. Some ants feed the larvae; while others go out to get food. Using a term that refers to ascribed social positions in Hindu society, Wilson called an ant’s task its ‘caste’. The idea was that an ant’s task is fixed. The implication was that the workers in an ant colony, all sisters or half-sisters, are divided into naturally fixed groups, and genetically programmed to perform a particular task. This perspective is depicted in the movie Antz (1998): a harried bureaucrat stamps each larva as a soldier or forager. Thus each ant’s role is unalterable destiny, much like the handsome and intelligent Alphas and the semi-moronic Epsilons of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1931). We know now that ants do not perform as specialised factory workers. Instead ants switch tasks. An ant’s role changes as it grows older and as changing conditions shift the colony’s needs. An ant that feeds the larvae one week might go out to get food the next. Yet in an ant colony, no one is in charge or tells another what to do. So what determines which ant does which task, and when ants switch roles? The colony is not a monarchy. The queen merely lays the eggs. Like many natural systems without central control, ant societies are in fact organised not by division of labour but by a distributed process, in which an ant’s social role is a response to interactions with other ants. In brief encounters, ants use their antennae to smell one another, or to detect a chemical that another ant has recently deposited. Taken in the aggregate, these simple interactions between ants allow colonies to adjust the numbers performing each task and to respond to the changing world. This social coordination occurs without any individual ant making any assessment of what needs to be done.

[therealmackenson10]

Early morning sweat session. I saw two large iguanas and a snake. “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”- MLK

[townpostin]

PETA and Forest Officials Rescue Protected Tortoises in Jamshedpur

Two Indian star tortoises seized from pet shop in joint operation PETA India and Dhalbhum Forest Division rescued two protected Indian star tortoises from an illegal sale at a Jamshedpur pet shop. JAMSHEDPUR – Following a tip-off, PETA India and the Dhalbhum Forest Division jointly rescued two Indian star tortoises from illegal sale at a Jamshedpur pet shop. The rescued tortoises are protected…

[suchananewsblog]

How the tribal settlements in Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary are reviving cultivation of millets and endemic crops through Punarjeevanam scheme

“Ragi dish Korangatti is had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Accompanying it could be a curry made of greens that are in season or a non-vegetarian dish. Beans, pumpkin and amaranthus are some of the greens that we normally cook dinner. Anchovy, crab curry and meat are additionally served as sides,” explains M Chandran, a member of the Muduvan tribe from Thayyannankudy settlement underneath…

[nonasuch]

here is a concept: time travel cop, fish & wildlife division

most of their job is dealing with the kinds of assholes who think black market tiger cubs are a great idea right up until someone gets mauled, except these are even bigger assholes with black market Smilodon cubs that they are even less equipped to care for

this is the most straightforward and therefore relatively headache-free part of their job, because it’s the same “put that thing back where it came from or so help me” song and dance every time

it’s also significantly less depressing than the trophy hunters who don’t even want an alive extinct animal. those are extra annoying because you have to undo the time travel that let them kill that poor Megatherium or thylacine or anklyosaur or whatever, and it’s always so much extra paperwork.

and those people suck, definitely, and have fully earned a stint in Time Jail. no question. but they still do not create anywhere near as much work as the obsessive hobbyists with their exhaustively careful best practices and worryingly good track-covering. also, weirdly, it’s almost always birds with them?

like. the guys who will flagrantly abuse Time Law to bird-nap breeding pairs just long enough to raise one clutch of eggs apiece, and return them seamlessly to their spots on the timeline. who are so determined to keep their pet (ha) projects going that no one even realizes what they’re doing until they have an entire stable breeding population of passenger pigeons up and running. who are now the reason that reps from six different zoos are about to start throwing hands right in front of you over who gets dibs.

those guys cause the most paperwork. and half the time they’re snapped up by the same zoo or wildlife preserve that gets their colony of ivory-billed woodpeckers or Carolina parakeets or — once, very memorably — giant fucking South Island moa, and they never even spend a day in Time Jail.

[headspace-hotel]

There's a plentiful supply of nature and ecology writers that criticize "Anthropocentrism" and tell readers that we shouldn't consider ourselves more important than other life forms, and then they write things that are like "We evolved to live in Nature in a Natural environment...Long ago humans lived as hunter-gatherers instead of farming and domesticating animals...But when civilization was created, man unnaturally subjugated and modified plants and animals...Bringing them under human control for his own benefit...Man replaces natural ecosystems with artificially created "post-natural" environments...Now humans live in an unnatural environment that is separated from Nature...and i'm like buddy. do you even hear yourself

Since I have access to a bigger library now, I've explored "deep ecology" and "green anarchism" and "Biocentrism" a bit more and what i've seen is still kinda silly. The writers have very thoughtful theory and philosophy of diverse subjects relating to morality, society, power, and liberation, but...they just don't know very much about Nature.

I mean several things by that: first, they're not clear on the boring, practical details of things like food systems and the way construction alters ecosystems, second, they don't try to clearly define what "nature" is, and third, they act like "nature" has a clear definition anyway.

Now nature is pretty much undefinable anyway, a couple possible definitions are "all things that exist, have existed, or are possible in the universe" and "the thing that a forest has that a parking lot doesn't." You can say "biodiversity," but every space has biodiversity, and it's not clear how much biodiversity a space is "supposed" to have, we're just going on vibes. And the vibes are right, in a way; I visited an old-growth forest and it was DIFFERENT than any place i'd ever been in a way that is hard to describe. A flourishing, biodiverse ecosystem is different than a parking lot, a lawn, a monoculture field of corn. They say it's good for your health to be "in nature." What does that mean? At what point does a place become "nature?" How many trees does it have to have?

Something that is so painful to me is when people write "Human activities" as a cause of biodiversity loss. This is an act of cowardice. WHICH human activities? Name them.

A lot of nature and ecology writings treat humans like they have an anti-biodiversity force field that emanates from them. They write like lands on Earth are each contested between two inversely proportional forces, "Nature" and "Humans."

Without any more information, this is ethereal bullshit on par with crystals having energies. I am totally perplexed at the lack of curiosity about the specific causes and details of "human impacts." The division of habitats by so many roads and relentless speeding of cars with no way for wildlife to cross...the dumping of massive amounts of poison into soils and water...the wounding and disturbance of topsoil...these are the "human activities," but we can imagine a world without such destruction, and we can create that world.

Too many essays and papers talking about Nature non-specifically, an Idea of Nature, a Concept that everyone just intuitively knows. Nature is...you know...wildness! and trees! and...well, you know, NATURE!

And we do know! When we step out into the parking lot surrounded by low, squarish buildings and blaring signs and the stink of car exhaust, we know that something is very wrong with this place! Even we find these horrible un-places harsh and unwelcoming.

But it is very hard to imagine something different, because the other type of place, the place that is beautiful and soothes the spirit and is full of life, is by definition the place where humans only go to visit, the complete opposite and inverse of a place where humans work and live! Wherever humans live, shop, eat, fulfill their daily needs, that place is Not Nature.

The huge mistake, is that we believe that it is necessary to have places that are Not Nature. We believe that for humans to exist, areas must be set aside where the very concept of Nature is utterly obliterated.

From this imaginary and dismal point of view, we have to carefully confine our own lives to places that are utterly poisoned, sterilized, made into a hostile wasteland, and leave all the rest of the living biosphere to itself in pristine preserves.

And in this imaginary and dismal point of view, the one that divides Earth into Nature and Humans, it is okay to poison and to sterilize and to destroy, because humans must live SOMEWHERE, therefore Nature must be utterly excluded from at least SOME of Earth.

BUT...WHAT IF EVERYWHERE IS NATURE? What if the dandelions in the cracks of the pavement, the lichens growing on the park bench, the wildflowers on the side of the road, the sparrows in the parking lot—what if they are all Nature just as much as anything else? What if they too are sacred? What if it is our responsibility to see the connectedness of all life and to care for all ecosystems, however broken and hurt they may be?

What if Nature is not distant and abstract, untouched in some pristine place, but always reaching out, digging into the crumbled concrete and gravel and compacted ground, clawing to return to us and bring us back home?

It does not take away from the value of the old-growth forest or the unplowed prairie if we open our eyes and see even the scraggliest patch of overgrown weeds for the powerful manifestation of Nature it truly is.

Nature is not a place or a thing. Nature is the Movement, the Endless Happening, constantly alive throughout all life, the way of all things being family, the way of all things taking care of each other, the way of all life being constantly transformed through one another. You breathe the breath of the trees of your home, you drink the water of the streams of your home, you eat the sunlight that falls on your home, grown in the soil where all things go to be transformed through death into a new form of life, fed by the mycorrhizal network, pollinated by the bees, wasps, flies, and moths, nourished by the bone, blood and manure of beasts, and ultimately the fertile river valleys where agriculture first began, were replenished by the rich silt that washed down the river, which came from the forests in the mountains that shed their leaves to make a feast for a million decomposing critters, which is how the rich soil is made.

In this way they all take care of you, and in return you are asked to Live—to take care of them in return, to live as part of the great family of everything alive, to live, to live

What are human activities...? Deforestation? Mining? Spraying pesticides? Building housing developments? But is that all? Are we inherently a "bad" and "destructive" species, or is our ability to acquire and pass down knowledge, use tools and novel behaviors, alter our surroundings, shape ecosystems, adapt our lifestyles almost infinitely, and persist in almost any environment, simply incredibly powerful for good or for evil?

First of all, what better way to demonstrate a contrast to anthropocentrism...than to compare the impact of humans alone to the impact of an ENTIRE KINGDOM OF LIFE, the fungi????? Of course all of Fungi are more important than one single species??? Wtf?!?!?

But also, we should not convince ourselves of our own insignificance and worthlessness to the biosphere, because in the same way that individual self-loathing can be a way to avoid the hard work of loving oneself and advocating for the love one deserves, collective self-loathing as a species is a way of avoiding the responsibility we have to other life forms.

How can this author not think of a single role Humans play in the ecosystem?? What species plants trees, saves seeds, documents rare plants, rescues injured animals and heals them, raises orphaned chicks, manages controlled burns, digs ponds, thoughtfully harvests in anticipation of future seasons, mercifully culls in understanding of suffering that cannot be fixed? What species writes a new chapter in the genome of the American Chestnut so it can be saved from extinction? What species mends the broken kakapo egg with sticky tape? What species addresses their own habitat with that fondest name of Home?

[antiqueanimals]

Trapping and Conservation Manual: 3rd edition. 1985. Alberta Energy and Natural Resources: Fish and Wildlife Division.

Internet Archive

[plethoraworldatlas]

Oregon’s gray wolf population did not increase last year due in part to a large number of wolves killed by people, causing concern among conservationists and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife officials.

The latest Annual Wolf Report found the population remained steady at 178 wolves, marking the first time in eight years that their numbers didn’t increase. Typically, the population has grown by 6% a year. Among the 36 wolf deaths in 2023, 33 were caused by people. The state sanctioned the killing of 16 wolves following livestock deaths and 12 were killed illegally, the report said. 

“The amount of poaching and other suspicious deaths is alarming, impacts our conservation goals and could affect our ability to manage wolves in Oregon,” Bernadette Graham-Hudson, the agency’s wildlife division administrator, said in a news release.

[mindblowingscience]

A new peer-reviewed study from researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington; the University of Nevada, Reno; Mokwon University in Daejeon, Korea; and Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi shows the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill of 2010 affected wildlife and their habitat much more than previously understood. The work is published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin. "Overall, we found the area of deep-sea floor affected by the DWH spill was significantly larger than previously thought," said Masoud Rostami, an author of the study and assistant professor of instruction in UTA's Division of Data Science.

Continue Reading.

[blueboybot]

Ecto Infection: Part 1

Where ectoplasm acts like a sort of infection and those who had brushes with death have it worse.

The bats are no exception.

_______________

Day: 22nd

Month: June

Year: [REDACTED]

The following video you are about to watch was recorded by Dr. [REDACTED] of our research division from group Alpha which was stationed in the location Amity Park Illinois.

We at the Ghost Investigation Ward (G.I.W) advise you to know that these videos are not to be shared with any outside party unless given any permission to do so. Any Information which has been leaked without our consent will result in immediate termination.

_________

"Hello, my name is Dr. [REDACTED] and today I will be going over what me and my team have so far discovered."

*click*

"A few months ago the GIW discovered a huge spike in spectural energy emitting from a small space located in Illionois, we managed to pin down the location as Amity Park and sent troops to scout out the area to see what we could find. Upon our arrival it was clear to see that ectoplasm was abundant, further test showed that not only was it in the air but everywhere, from the water, earth, plants and even wildlife. It was clear that decontamination would not be easy but we are nothing but determined when it comes to our jobs."

*click*

"You already know this by now but ectoplasm appears in places most frequent in death or sometimes, in very rare cases, a portal will open up which it will then proceed to leak into our plane of existence."

"Under any other circumstances ectoplasm would be considered harmless but in large quantities its effects on our world could be dangerous and down right catastrophic, which brings us to the next topic."

*click*

"When large amounts of ectoplasm is introduce to an area the environment begins to warp, changing the land into something more than it should be. This also extends to any wildlife in the ecosystem. I will now show you some of the footage we have gathered."

*click*

A camera is powered on and begins recording with full charge. A small crew that consisted of three armed guards and two scientist march through the area will full caution. Leaves and twigs crunch beneath their feet, each step as careful as the next one.

The camera glitched.

The crew were now near a lake which was much bigger than it should be. A long board walk ventured out far until stopping when it was twenty steps far out. The two scientist got to work collecting sample of the water and soil, while the guards did their jobs.

After some time one of the guards broke off and began walking the board walk while the camera followed, heavy boots making the planks of wood underneath him speak against their will. His walk ended when he was on the last plank, tiltiing their head down to stare at the water.

And then they froze...

Not a single movement or sound could be heard, it was as if all noise just cease to exist. The camera got closer to where the guard was, the quality of the video getting glitchy and a bit staticky as it panned down and captured what the guard was seeing.

There. Right there in the dark waters were a dozen fish like figures, all eyes slightly glowing and looking at the guard.

With anticipation.

With hunger.

The sound of another gaurd calling to them was all that was needed to kickstart the chase.

The gaurd turned on their heel and began to ran back, the camera followed, missing the moment a dark figure leapt out of the water and chomped off an entire plank of wood.

They kept running.

They ducked as a dark shadow leapt from the side hoping to knock them down into the water.

They kept running.

They jumped into the air as jaws filled with rows of sharp needle like teeth came from below to try and take a bite.

They kept running.

All that could be heard behind them was splashed and the sound of wood breaking from whatever was in the water taking bites out of the board walk.

Eventually the guard was able to make it to land where they rejoined the rest of their party and left the area.

*click*

"As you have just witnessed ectoplasm infects the living and turns them into something monsterous. Those 'fish' were just some low leveled infected, dangerous to us still but not as dangerous as some of the other things we have encountered."

"It is important to know that just because something looks harmless you should never underestimate it, this is a lesson some members of our team had unfortunately learned a little too late."

*click*

The camera showed a different group of people, this time ten in total. Three scientist and seven guards entered a building, although the outside resembled any regular abandoned apartment the inside looked well cleaned and managed, as if people still lived here.

Somewhere along the way the group decided to spilt up with each scientist getting two guards and the remaining guards the front and back entrance.

A scream pierced through the air.

The camera which was recording the scientist inspect a strange plant captured the moment the trio jumped at the sound. They all exited the room, running downstairs only to find that both guards who were guarding the entrances were gone and all that was left were their protective armor.

Another scream tore through the air, this time coming from above where the group had just been, followed by echoes of curses before everything went silent again.

At this point it seemed the rest of them decided to leave but before they could open the door a tuft of vines covered the door. The camera panned up to a view of more vines, that hadn't been there before, now covering the ceilling.

One by one everyone was pulled into it. Yelling and screaming for help that they were never going to get.

Silence was returned to the building once again.

*click*

"That was a level two threat. When we recieved a distress signal more troops were sent out to the building and all they came back with was the drone with that recording. Despite our loses we were able to discover new knowledge about Amity. It is now known that certain buildings are alive and act as a sort of venus flytrap, crafted specifically to ensnare any human foolish enough to wander through its openings."

"The next anomoly on our list is a level–...It– Something's not– ....Oh God..."

An alarm could be heard going off, the video gltiching and audio distorting.

"It's here–..."

The video and audio continued to grow more staticky and distorted as some sort of black ooze bled from a corner of the room. It pooled onto the floor quickly, trapping the doctor who tried mercilessly to get out.

Suddenly a hand reached out of the ooze but there was no flesh covering it, it contined to pull itself out revealing its form.

A black skeleton watched the doctor struggle with no eyes.

"STAY AWAY! NOO،!"

*click*

_____________

Upcoming Chapter: The Residents

[wachinyeya]

https://www.wlwt.com/article/fishers-colonizing-ohio-after-being-eradicated-from-state/60117483

https://ohiodnr.gov/discover-and-learn/safety-conservation/about-ODNR/news/biologists-find-potential-evidence-of-reproduction-of-fishers-in-ohio#:~:text=A%20fisher%20is%20a%20forest,day%20fisher%20sighting%20was%20confirmed

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Wildlife confirmed that a female fisher, a mammal that was collected as roadkill in Ashtabula County in February 2023, was pregnant. Although that fisher did not successfully give birth, the results are a sign that fishers are returning to Ohio.

A fisher is a forest-dwelling carnivorous mammal in the weasel family. Fishers were extirpated from Ohio in the mid-1800s. In 2013, Ohio’s first modern-day fisher sighting was confirmed. Since then, there have been 40 confirmed fisher observations across nine northeast Ohio counties (Ashtabula, Columbiana, Geauga, Trumbull, Mahoning, Lake, Jefferson, Harrison, and Tuscarawas). Two-thirds of those sightings occurred in the last three years. Fishers are moving westward from established populations in Pennsylvania and naturally coming back to Ohio.

Fishers, such as the one here on a trail camera, have been confirmed in nine northeast Ohio counties through verified sightings. The fisher is a medium-sized mammal related to river otters and weasels.

[gallusrostromegalus]

What kind of wildlife is around in the Spirit World/Realm? The show had riding boars and river fish that I can remember, and if they grow things then the right kinds of little bees and gnats must be Around, but Just Those don't make for a full healthy environment, right?

We don't see a lot of animals in canon because animals are rarely a problem that shinigami have to deal with but some notes:

Thylacalines are not extinct in the spirit world! Actually, it's kind of a problem- Thylacalines will ONLY reincarnate as Thylacalines, and since there are none on earth, the entire peak population of them lives in the southern Rukongai. This is a problem unique to Thylacalines, as most extinct animals will reincarnate as other extant animals or humans or whatever, but nope. Not these assholes. Furthermore, killing a thylacaline in spirit world just makes it respawn elsewhere in the spirit world, as it was and with it's memory intact and those motherfuckers hold GRUDGES. They're also not native to any of the places the human souls in Soul society come from so nobody has a damn clue what they're doing here. Well, they know what they're doing- Mostly eating anything that will fit in their mouths and occasionally mauling people who don't respect their personal space- but why they're doing that HERE is unclear.

The Migratory Bird Act of Year 1066 was established shortly after the Seki-Seki stone wall and spirit barrier surrounding the Seireitei was established, and within the week, catastrophic numbers of birds died flying into the invisible barrier. The act was actually spearheaded by Yamamoto, who was immensely distraught by the unintentional carnage, and had to actually threaten the Central 46 with bodily harm to get them to legally change the Kido spell on the barrier to only block Sapient Souls and let the birds come and go as they please. It was a landmark legal case that established the soul society's remarkably robust environmental protections, and the Central 46's policy of isolation from the Shinigami, which would prove disastrously fatal to the organization almost 1,000 years later.

Many creatures we have on earth exist in Spirit world, but at massive Scale and varying degrees of intelligence. The Nago Boar was a wild boar of average porcine intelligence, but spectacular scale- 15 feet tall at the shoulder and many tons in weight. It was an infamous monster that made the Nago region borderline uninhabitable from it's rampages. It was one of the rare animals that became the problem for the Shinigami, who tried in vain to kill the beast for the better part of two centuries but unlike a Hollow who acts on instinct and has a very breakable mask, the boar was quite cunning and ended up with three zanpaktou lodged in it's cranium to no ill effect before the Gotei-13 decided to just pay the remaining farmers to leave in 1219. It was slain by a hired swordsman protecting a geological survey in 1308, and the battle was immortalized in the Epic Multi-scene Screen Painting "The Slaying of The Nago Boar" by Minami Zasso, who was working as a surveyor and illustrator when he witnessed the event firsthand. The swordsman in the painting is unnamed, but there is a persistent rumor that the distinctive facial scar of the unnamed swordsman matches that of Eleventh Division Captain Zaraki Kenpachi, but that would mean the man is at least 700, more likely over 1000 years old! Surely not!

The Eleventh Division has another peculiar association with an animal of ridiculous scale. In 1272, the annual "Ranking Day" tournament (in which the members of the 11th division and anyone bold enough to take part would battle for ranked positions in the division- including the right to be captain) took place outside the Seireitei in a relatively isolated area of the rukongai because 1271's Ranking Day had turned into an outright riot that destroyed part of the city. The commotion and blooshed attracted the attention of a supernaturally large Monitor Lizard, who joined the fray without hesitation, and devoured the 4th Kenpachi. Having met the requirements of "Defeat the standing captian in combat in front of 200 witnesses", and because nobody was brave enough to remove the captain's haori from where the lizard had become entangled in it, Tokagero Kenpachi was named the 5th captain of the 11th division. Tokagero Kenpachi remained captain of the 11th division for an astounding 234 years, the longest reign of any Kenpachi, and via highly suggestive hissing and occasionally eating people she disagreed with, lead several important reforms within the division like "Pants Required" and "No showing up to work drunk" and "instituting the first 5-day work week and successful labor strike in Soul Society" though that last one was mostly the work of her long-suffering lieutenant, but her apparent taste for strikebreakers certainly helped the cause. Tokagero Kenpachi was lost in the infamous Tonsure Riots of 1606 when she vanished down an open manhole cover and into the sewers. No body was ever recovered, and her wherabouts remain unknown to this day.

[someone-will-remember-us]

More than three centuries after she made a perilous transatlantic voyage to study butterflies, a rare copy of the hand-coloured masterwork by the great naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian is returning to Amsterdam.

The Rijksmuseum, which holds more than half-a-million books on art and history, last week announced it had acquired a rare first-edition copy of Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname (Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium), described as a high point of 18th-century book production when the Dutch Republic was “the bookshop of the world”.

More than half-a-metre tall and illustrated with 60 richly coloured plates, Metamorphosis revealed to a wider public the transformation of tropical insects from egg to adult.

Merian and her daughters produced about 200 copies from 1705, but today only an estimated 67 remain, and few with colour illustrations.

“It’s one of the most fascinating books in natural history that we know,” Alex Alsemgeest, curator of library collections at the Rijksmuseum, told the Observer. Also “quite exceptional”, he said, was that Merian took the entire book production process “into her own hands”, from the voyage to Suriname to the commercialisation of the work, which was sold to merchants and scientists across Europe.

With its beautiful, sometimes disturbing images, rendered with pinpoint precision, Metamorphosis is a work of art and scientific scholarship, from a time when there was no rigid division between disciplines. It is also part of the story of Dutch colonialism. Merian recorded the local names of plants and insects she studied. In contrast to other European naturalists, she credited local people with helping her discover the colony’s wildlife, although didn’t name individuals.

Finally, there is the fascinating life of Merian herself. As a 52-year-old divorcee, she embarked on a self-funded voyage to Suriname in 1699, driven by relentless curiosity about the lives of insects.

Born in Frankfurt, Merian learned to paint in her artist stepfather’s workshop, and became fascinated by silkworms, moths and butterflies. She married one of her stepfather’s apprentices and had two daughters. Ensconced in a comfortable life in Nuremberg, she bred and sketched caterpillars, publishing celebrated books about the plants and insects around her.

At this time, many people still believed that insects spontaneously generated in the dirt. While Merian was not the first to show the transformation from egg, through larva and pupa, to adult insect, “her artistic talents helped to bring this message to a wider audience” Alsemgeest said.

Described by the late historian Natalie Zemon Davis as “curious, wilful” and “a harder person to pin down” than other notable contemporaries, Merian left her husband to join a strict Protestant sect in Friesland, before eventually setting up a business in Amsterdam.

It was in the Dutch city she discovered in cabinets the vivid butterflies of Suriname, a Dutch colony until 1975, on the northern coast of South America. Having moved there with her younger daughter, Dorothea, she criticised Dutch settlers who only cared for sugar, ignoring the fertile potential of the soil for other crops.

While she wrote little about human behaviour, Merian noted the cruelty meted out to enslaved women. In a passage about a plant that induced abortions, she described them telling her that abortions would mean their children could be born free in their own country.

Her book depicted the beauty and savagery of the natural world, as well as some wincingly realistic creepy-crawlies. The first image shows cockroaches crawling over an unripened pineapple, a fruit then celebrated in Europe as a status symbol. In another illustration, a tarantula attacks a hummingbird. Merian is credited with giving the creature its Dutch name, vogelspin, meaning “bird-spider”.

Her image would be dismissed as a fantasy. Alsemgeest said: “In the 18th century, people responded: ‘that’s what you get when you send a woman to tropical places. She probably made that up’”. But scientists later confirmed her findings, he added.

The spider plate, he said, was a very good example of how Merian worked. “She was a really good observer.”

[townpostin]

Jamshedpur Forest Division Continues Raids in Daltonganj; Three Arrested

Forest officials uncover more animal skins and forest products; smugglers reveal plans to send leopard skin to China via Myanmar. Jamshedpur Forest Division’s team has arrested three individuals in Daltonganj as part of their ongoing crackdown on wildlife smuggling. JAMSHEDPUR – Forest department raids in Daltonganj have led to the arrest of three people and seizure of more animal skins. The…