appetite that, during the lean times when no seeds are falling, when the fish must live off stored fat, could make the difference for survival.
â¢Â   â¢Â   â¢
Take away those floodplain trees, though, and survival becomes far more problematic.
Timbering, slash-and-burn agriculture, clearing away floodplain forests with the notion of pasturing cattle or planting rice or for other development projects intended to make the jungle âproductiveâ or âhabitableâ by our civilized standardsâall these represent attacks not only on the lowland tree communities but also on the fish species that feed among them. And by MichaelGouldingâs estimate, those seed- and fruit-eating species account for something like seventy-five percent of all the fish sold at markets in Manaus and other cities of the basin. Since fish are the primary source of animal protein for the human population thereânot just for canny fishermen like Lorenzo, not just for tribes like the Cofan, but throughout both backcountry and urban Amazoniaâthis whole chain of interdependence is crucial by any standard.
Remove the trees, and you can expect the fish to disappear. Kill off the fish, and likewise some of those tree species (the ones that depend on fish for dispersing their seeds) may not survive. Contrary to common misconception, the soils from which grow the Amazon jungle are very poor, and the rivers draining those soils are also therefore infertile. So the fish that spend half their lives in those rivers depend utterly on the manna that falls in the forest, and on the floods that carry them to it.
Itâs just another demonstration of what we already know. The great jungle ecosystems of Amazonia are not a symptom of the regionâs richness. They are that richness. Wreck them, and you wreck everything.
SEE NO EVIL
The Fragile Truce Between Man and Scorpion
Allow me to confess an invidious personal bias: I donât trust any animal with more than six legs and more than two eyes. No rational explanation for this, itâs just a cringe reflex from the murkiest subconscious, but there you are. Six and two. I go queasy with terror and disgust whenever confronted with a beast who flouts those magic limits. Six and two. Octopuses are suspect but acceptable. Insects, however bizarre, are fine. Snakes are among my favorite living thingsâbeautiful, sleek, unadorned, binocular. A dizzying wave of repulsion passes over me, on the other hand, at the mere glimpse of a color photograph of a tarantula. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, gack, eightâand then the legs. Am I alone or does anyone else experience this neurosis? Have you ever looked a black widow spider in the face? Poison isnât the problem; a rattlesnake has poison, yet a rattlesnake is merely handsome and dangerous. Hideousness is the problem. I know itâs subjective, I know itâs unfair. But a creature with that many legs and eyes, Judas, you just never know what it might be getting ready to do. One on one, it already has you outnumbered. Spiders are bad enough. Consider, though, the scorpion.
My own heartfelt conviction is that scorpions are perhaps the most drastically, irredeemably repulsive group of animals on theface of the Earth, even including toy poodles. Maybe thatâs part of what makes them so interesting.
Scorpions violate the six-and-two rule flagrantly: four pairs of walking legs, one pair of pincers, one pair of leg-like appendages modified to serve as jaws, another pair that are hidden beneath the abdomen like landing gear and perform some still-mysterious sensory functionâwhich makes fourteen limbs altogetherâplus anywhere from zero to twelve eyes, yipe, in most species eight, arranged in three widely spaced clusters like Cinerama cameras. The mere listing makes me sweat. And as if that werenât enough, they also carry a nasty hypodermic stinger hanging overhead on the end of
â¢Â   â¢Â   â¢
Take away those floodplain trees, though, and survival becomes far more problematic.
Timbering, slash-and-burn agriculture, clearing away floodplain forests with the notion of pasturing cattle or planting rice or for other development projects intended to make the jungle âproductiveâ or âhabitableâ by our civilized standardsâall these represent attacks not only on the lowland tree communities but also on the fish species that feed among them. And by MichaelGouldingâs estimate, those seed- and fruit-eating species account for something like seventy-five percent of all the fish sold at markets in Manaus and other cities of the basin. Since fish are the primary source of animal protein for the human population thereânot just for canny fishermen like Lorenzo, not just for tribes like the Cofan, but throughout both backcountry and urban Amazoniaâthis whole chain of interdependence is crucial by any standard.
Remove the trees, and you can expect the fish to disappear. Kill off the fish, and likewise some of those tree species (the ones that depend on fish for dispersing their seeds) may not survive. Contrary to common misconception, the soils from which grow the Amazon jungle are very poor, and the rivers draining those soils are also therefore infertile. So the fish that spend half their lives in those rivers depend utterly on the manna that falls in the forest, and on the floods that carry them to it.
Itâs just another demonstration of what we already know. The great jungle ecosystems of Amazonia are not a symptom of the regionâs richness. They are that richness. Wreck them, and you wreck everything.
SEE NO EVIL
The Fragile Truce Between Man and Scorpion
Allow me to confess an invidious personal bias: I donât trust any animal with more than six legs and more than two eyes. No rational explanation for this, itâs just a cringe reflex from the murkiest subconscious, but there you are. Six and two. I go queasy with terror and disgust whenever confronted with a beast who flouts those magic limits. Six and two. Octopuses are suspect but acceptable. Insects, however bizarre, are fine. Snakes are among my favorite living thingsâbeautiful, sleek, unadorned, binocular. A dizzying wave of repulsion passes over me, on the other hand, at the mere glimpse of a color photograph of a tarantula. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, gack, eightâand then the legs. Am I alone or does anyone else experience this neurosis? Have you ever looked a black widow spider in the face? Poison isnât the problem; a rattlesnake has poison, yet a rattlesnake is merely handsome and dangerous. Hideousness is the problem. I know itâs subjective, I know itâs unfair. But a creature with that many legs and eyes, Judas, you just never know what it might be getting ready to do. One on one, it already has you outnumbered. Spiders are bad enough. Consider, though, the scorpion.
My own heartfelt conviction is that scorpions are perhaps the most drastically, irredeemably repulsive group of animals on theface of the Earth, even including toy poodles. Maybe thatâs part of what makes them so interesting.
Scorpions violate the six-and-two rule flagrantly: four pairs of walking legs, one pair of pincers, one pair of leg-like appendages modified to serve as jaws, another pair that are hidden beneath the abdomen like landing gear and perform some still-mysterious sensory functionâwhich makes fourteen limbs altogetherâplus anywhere from zero to twelve eyes, yipe, in most species eight, arranged in three widely spaced clusters like Cinerama cameras. The mere listing makes me sweat. And as if that werenât enough, they also carry a nasty hypodermic stinger hanging overhead on the end of
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