So you think you have troubles?
Us humans have it easy. We are surviving and thriving as a species to the point that we are destroying the only home we have.
Our impact on Earth is becoming better understood and documented. The number of people who realise we are inflicting calamitous damage is growing. Young people, in particular those who will have to heal our home after generations of grown-ups, many of whom could claim ignorance at the time of the harm being done, are becoming more vociferous and activist.
What seems miraculous is that ‒ even as we kill them and “steal” and destroy their homes ‒ anything manages to survive enormous challenges in their natural cycle from birth to death.
The couch crew cuddled up to read, The Trials of Life: A Natural History of Animal Behaviour. Some of the “trials” are truly miraculous.
The author, the inimitable (Sir) David Attenborough, needs no introduction. His work, in writing and on film, is considered as something of a sacred reference source for all that is wild.
Trials (this is an updated version) is the third in a trilogy ‒ Life on Earth and Living Planet being the first two ‒ of natural histories. All have also been filmed as TV series.
It is a wondrous, layman-friendly ride with a man whose passion for every living thing from ocean to air to land is held in each word, as he explores animal behaviour as observed in the wild.
You don’t have to know Latin or much else about nature. Curiosity is enough to get you started and then the stories will have you shaking your head in amazement and the pages flying by.
Don’t expect boring blah-di-blah statistic-like recountings of any animal’s behaviour.
Instead, learn about a bat mom’s ability to find her bat-ling among millions of others hanging from the roofs of huge, packed caves while flying in to deliver food.
Or how millions of land crabs on Christmas Island make a long land journey to turn the Indian Ocean red with their bodies and spawn as they scramble to get their future offspring from rocks covered by competing crabs into the sea, mostly into the mouths of waiting predators.
How plants have adapted smells, shapes, colours and “reproduction equipment” to attract the right animals for their pollination requirements, and how and why those specific animals use them.
There are too many utterly absorbing acts and adaptations to describe here.
Huge steps have been made in technology, allowing scientists and naturalists to film at night or under the sea or with tiny cameras in nests, hives or holes. Others have been revealed through time and dedication difficult to comprehend, like Swiss zoologist Christophe Boesch and his wife Hedwige. After four years of silent daily running or walking through forests of the Ivory Coast with a group of chimpanzees, the chimps finally became comfortable enough with their presence to ignore them and go about their wild lives uninfluenced by their observers.
The patience required to understand or record the many different animals’ journey from start to end is incredible. There truly is a whole world most of us do not see. This book is a wonderful window to look through and find a reason to save the home that belongs to everyone.
- Lindsay Slogrove is the new editor
The Independent on Saturday