With a Little Help from My Friends

     Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark

                                       1613,  Oil on Panel

'Nature teaches beasts
         to know their friends'
       
               Shakespeare,Coriolanus

Biophilia, meaning “love of life or living systems” (Fromm 1964), refers to the natural attraction of humans to all living things. Harvard biologist (specifically, myrmecologist), E.O. Wilson popularized the term in his work, Biophilia, although the term’s meaning changed to “an innate love for nature,” a definition which suggests biophilia is genetically based.

In a subsequent book, The Biophilia Hypothesis (Kellert &Wilson 1993), several contributors examine the validity of Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis, with Wilson (1993) proposing that biophilia evolved by natural selection in a cultural context,  called  gene-culture co-evolution. Given the history of human/animal relationships, and the substantial body of evidence of a growing need for contact with nature, Wilson’s theory is not as farfetched as some would lead us to believe.

Good Vibrations: http://bit.ly/1NiWMhr

Can't Take my Ayes Off You

Aye-Aye   (Daubentonia madagascariensis)

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

               From She Walks in Beauty  1814

                    -George Gordon, Lord  Byron

The aye-aye is the world’s largest nocturnal primate. The extraordinary combination of physical features is the result of a unique evolutionary process. They have large dish-like ears that rotate independently, incisors which grow continuously like rodents, and long fingers, especially the middle one, which is used to tap on hollow logs to fish out grubs and other insects. 
 

Endemic (native to and found nowhere else) to Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world, it is the most evolutionarily distinct of all the lemurs, being the only living representative of the primate family, Daubentoniidae.  Remains have been found of another, now extinct, member of that family, estimated to be five times heavier than the aye-aye.  Scientific evidence suggests that its closest relative is the indri (Indri indri), another fascinating lemur.

Good Vibrations: http://bit.ly/1N2O108

Swingin' on a Star?

…I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

                               Robert Frost, 1916

Nature Deficit Disorder

In his landmark book, Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv defines a condition from which many children and adults today suffer-nature deficit disorder. Urbanization and the rise of technology, particularly our dependence on the latter are producing generations of ‘screen addicted’ individuals. Gone are the days where children ran outside to play after school. Instead, their attachment to computer and mobile phone screens has lured them to routines and habits which can potentially prompt antisocial behaviors and impede cognitive growth.

The Scottish Curriculum for Excellence includes outdoor learning as an essential element to a child’s education and there is a movement in the UK and elsewhere which seeks to put people, big and small, back in touch with nature. On a more positive note, research shows that growing urbanization also tends to create a need to be reconnected with wildlife & nature. 

Good Vibrations:  http://bit.ly/1UTu2nm