Igor Shulman, 1959-
The Keeper of Knowledge, 2022, oil on canvas, 69.9x49.8 cm
memento mori
@tenposike
just a little scrapbook where i reblog posts on the topic of death and posts that celebrate life and history. no original content. content warning for death, possibly unreality and occaisonally outdated language
Only thing getting me through today is the thought of Starred Egyptian Tomb Ceilings
also the english are weird about folk culture. we are. we've relegated our folk dances and music to the zone of esoteric nerd shit that only weirdos do, and then we go looking for esoterica in the non-english parts of our heritage because we don't think we've got any of it of our own
Okay actually this is really interesting. So one of the main reasons we have so much embarrassment about our folk traditions is actually the Great Depression. There was a lot before it: the Victorian antiquarians being their usual selves, the loss of huge numbers of dancers (who tended to be young men) on the battlefields of WWI, the general movement of fashion and fad, but one of the things that really killed off traditions was monetising it.
Clog dancers particularly used to draw massive crowds. There were competitions all over the world, and performers were among the biggest stars of the variety stage. But clog dancing is easy to set up. "If you whistle the tune, I'll fit the steps in" as one dancer once said. This meant that during the Depression, it became fairly common to see talented, competition winning dancers on street corners, trying to earn some money.
It became so stigmatised by this association that dancers stuffed their prize medal belts in the loft and forgot about them, and wouldn't even talk about them to children and grandchildren.
We owe the survival of our traditions to men like William Kimber, Cecil Sharpe, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and to the work of Maude Karpeles, who taught the dances to her Esperance Club girls in London and took the traditions around the world again. What we have now is a revival and a survival, and we wouldn't have any of it without a few dedicated nerds who collected and preserved what they could before it was all lost in war and economic decline.
It was also World War I.
Take for example Molly dancing, the traditional dances of East Anglia. This was primarily danced by plough boys - with the joke being that in the winter when everything was frozen and there was nothing to plough they would come and dance in people's gardens until they paid them to go away.
Then a whole generation of plough boys went off to war and didn't come home. Molly as a living tradition died with WWI and had to be (and has been) revived from written and oral testimonies of those who remember watching the dances when they were kids.
Folk music, dance, song, they were all primarily working class traditions, shared during work, around hearthsides, in pubs. These are the people who are hit hardest by war and economic hardship.
The impact was also particularly brutal where the hammer fell heaviest because of the Pals Batallions. The theory at the start of the war was that If you made up units of men who already knew each other, they'd support each other better. They made up the Pals, young men who grew up together, fought together, and then died together.
If the figures I've seen are right, Bradford saw 1 in 60 of the city's entire population killed or wounded on the first day of the Somme. Basically in the space of an hour. A generation of young men. Adderbury Morris Men had six dancers and a musician in 1914, and only one of them returned. He never danced or played again.
They learned from the Somme. For one thing, they didn't send 18 year olds to the front until the Spring Offensive of 1918, when they lowered the minimum age from 19 to 18 and a half. But traditions died in the trenches.
If you're interested in the survival of morris dancing, I highly recommend The Way Of The Morris. It's a beautiful and deeply moving film. Available through the BFI and apparently on Prime: https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-way-of-the-morris-2010-online
Alligator Body Language and You, or: How To Know When An Alligator On Social Media is Being Stressed for Views
Alligators are wild animals. Despite the idiotic claims of animal abusers like Jay Brewer, they cannot be domesticated, which means they are always going to react on the same natural instincts they've had for millions of years. Habituated, yes. Tamed, yes. Trained, definitely. Crocodilians can form bonds with people- they're social and quite intelligent. They can solve problems, use tools, and they're actually quite playful. Alligators are also really good at communicating how they're feeling, but to somebody who doesn't spend much time around them, their body language can be a bit mystifying. And it doesn't help when social media influencers are saying shit like this:
That is not what a happy gator looks like.
That's a terrified, furious gator who isn't attacking because the ogre handling her has her in a chokehold. She's doing everything she can to express her displeasure, and he's lying about it because he knows his audience doesn't even know how to think critically about what he's doing. He knows that because his audience doesn't know anything about these animals, he can get away with it. This I think is why I hate him so much- he deliberately miseducates his audience. He knows what he's doing is factually inaccurate, he just doesn't care because attention means more to him than anything else in the world.
Let's change that! Here are two really important lessons for understanding alligator body language on social media.
Lesson 1: Alligators Don't Smile (in fact, most animals don't)
So what's going on in this video? Jay Brewer is aggressively choking his white alligator Coconut while scrubbing algae off of her with a toothbrush. And make no mistake, he is digging into the creature's throat while she is visibly distressed. He claims she's happy- but she's not. He is willfully misrepresenting what this animal is feeling. That's a problem, because people... well, we actually kind of suck at reading other species' body language. The reason for this is that we tend to overlay our own responses on their physical cues, and that's a problem. For example, let's look at an animal with a really similar face to ours, the chimpanzee. Check out Ama's toothy grin!
Wait, no. That's not a happy smile. That's a threat display. When a chimpanzee "smiles," it's either terrified and doing a fear grimace, or it's showing you its teeth because it intends on using them in your face.
How about a dog? Look at my smiling, happy puppy!
Oh wait no, this is a picture of Ryder when he was super overwhelmed by noise and people during a holiday party. He'd hopped up in my sister's lap to get away from stuff that was happening on the floor and was panting quite heavily. See the tension in the corners of his mouth and his eyes? A lot of the time when a dog "smiles," the smile isn't happy. It's stress! Why Animals Do The Thing has a nice writeup about that, but the point is, our body language is not the same as other species. And for reptiles, body language is wildly different.
For instance, look at these two alligators. Pretty cute, right? Look at 'em, they're posing for a Christmas card or something! How do you think they're feeling?
Well, I'll tell you how the normal one is feeling. He's annoyed! Why is he annoyed? Because the albino just rolled up, pushed another gator off the platform, and is trying to push this guy, too. I know this because I actually saw it happen. It was pretty funny, not gonna lie. He's not gaping all the way, but he was hissing- you can actually see him getting annoyed in the sequence I took right before this shot. Look at him in this first shot here- he's just relaxing, and you can see he isn't gaping even a little bit.
By the end, he's expressing displeasure, but not enough to actually do anything about it. He's annoyed, but he's comfy and that's where one of the best basking areas is, so he'll put up with it.
Reptiles open their mouths wide for a lot of reasons, but never because they are actively enjoying a sensation. Unless they're eating. No reptile smiles- they can't. They don't even have moveable lips. If a reptile is gaping, it's doing so because:
- It is doing a threat display.
- It is making certain vocalizations, all of which are threats. Alligators are one of the rare reptiles that do regularly vocalize, but most of their calls aren't made with a wide open mouth.
- It is about to bite something delicious or somebody stupid. Check out this video- virtually all of the gaping here is anticipatory because these trained gators know darn well that the bowl is full of delicious snacks. (I have some issues with Florida's Wildest, but the man knows how to train a gator AND he is honest about explaining what they're doing and why, and all of his animals are healthy and well-cared for, and he doesn't put the public or his staff at risk- just himself.)
- It's too hot and it has opened its mouth to vent some of that heat and thermoregulate. This is the main reason why alligators will often have their mouths part of the way open, but sometimes they'll open all the way for thermoregulation. This is what a thermoregulatory gape looks like- usually it's not all the way open, kinda more like < rather than V, but you can't say that 100% of the time. Additionally, a thermoregulatory gape... typically happens when it's hot out. If they're inside, maybe they've been under their basking light for too long. Heat's the dominant factor, is what I'm getting at.
There is another reason that a captive crocodilian might be gaping, and that's because it's doing so on command. Some places have their gators trained to gape on cue, like St. Augustine Alligator Farm and other good zoos. They have the animals do this in presentations that are genuinely educational. They ask the animals to open their mouths so that they can show off their teeth and demonstrate how their tongues seal off the back of their mouth. They'll also do it as part of routine healthcare, because looking at their teeth is important.
In this case, the animals aren't gaping because they're stressed, they're gaping because they know they're gonna get a piece of chicken or fish if they do it. And what's more, they're doing it on cue. They have a specific command or signal that tells them to open wide. It's not an instinctive response to a situation. It's trained. If the animal provides the behavior after a cue, the situation is much less likely to be negatively impactful.
It's also important to remember that there's a difference between a partially open mouth and a gape! As discussed above, alligators will often have their mouths a little bit open just to maintain temperature homeostasis. It helps them stay comfy, temperature-wise. These guys are all doing thermoregulatory open-mouthed behavior- that slight open and relaxed body posture is a dead giveaway. (That and it's the hottest spot in the enclosure.)
Lesson 2: A Happy Gator Is A Chill Gator
So if alligators don't smile or have facial expressions other than the :V that typically signifies distress, how else can you tell how they're feeling? One way is stillness. See, alligators subscribe to the philosophy of if it sucks... hit da bricks.
Basically, if they hate it, they'll leave. Unless, y'know, somebody has their meaty claws digging into their throat or is otherwise restraining them. (Restraint isn't always bad, btw. Sometimes the animal is going through a medical thing or needs to be restrained for their safety- which a responsible educator will explain.)
Let's look at a very similar scenario, in which a captive alligator is getting his back scrubbed.
As you can see, it's quite different. First, he's not being restrained at all. Second, look at how relaxed he is! He's just chilling there vibing! He could simply get up and leave if he wanted to, because he's not being held. Towards the end of the video, as he lifts his head, you can see that his respiratory rate is very even as his throat flutters a bit. I'm not sure what this facility is, so I can't comment on care/general ethics, but like. In this specific case, this is an alligator enjoying being scrubbed! And you can tell because he's not doing anything. A happy gator is content to be doing what they're doing.
Why Should I Listen To You?
Now, you should ask yourself, why should you listen to me? Why should you trust me, who does not own an alligator, versus Jay Brewer, who owns several?
Well, first off, there's no profit for me in telling you that what you're seeing on social media is in fact not what you're being told you're seeing. I'm not getting paid to do this. That's the thing with people who make social media content. The big names aren't doing it just for fun. They're doing it for money. Whether that's profit through partnerships or sponsorships, or getting more people to visit their facilities, or ad revenue, you can't ignore the factor of money. And this is NOT a bad thing, because it allows educators to do what they're passionate about! People deserve to be paid for the work that they do!
But the problem starts when you chase the algorithm instead of actually educating. A "smiling" alligator gets the views, and if people don't know enough to know better, it keeps getting the views. People love unconventional animal stories and they want those animals to be happy- but the inability to even know where to start with critically evaluating these posts really hinders the ability to spread real information. Like, this post will probably get a couple hundred notes, but that video of Coconut being scrubbed had almost 400,000 likes when I took that screenshot. Think about how many eyeballs that's reached by now. What I'm saying here is that it's just... really important to think critically about who you're getting your information from. What do dissenters say in the comments? What do other professionals say? You won't find a single herpetologist that has anything good to say about Prehistoric Pets, I can tell you that right now.
Another reason you can trust me is that my sources are not "just trust me bro," or "years of experience pretending my pet shop where animals come to die is a real zoo." Instead, here are my primary sources for my information on alligator behavior:
- Dragon Songs: Love and Adventure among Crocodiles, Alligators, and Other Dinosaur Relations- Vladimir Dinets
- The Secret Social Lives of Reptiles- J. Sean Doody, Vladimir Dinets, Gordon M. Burghardt
- Social Behavior Deficiencies in Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Z Walsh, H Olson, M Clendening, A Rycyk
- Social Displays of the American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)- Kent Vliet
- Social Signals and Behaviors of Adult Alligators and Crocodiles- Leslie Garrick, Jeffery Lang
- Never smile at a crocodile: Gaping behaviour in the Nile crocodile at Ndumo Game Reserve, South Africa- Cormac Price, Mohamed Ezat, Céline Hanzen, Colleen Downs (this one's Nile crocs, not American alligators, but it's really useful for modeling an understanding of gape behaviors and proximity)
- Thermoregulatory Behavior of Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Cheryl S. Asa, Gary D. London, Ronald R. Goellner, Norman Haskell, Glenn Roberts, Crispen Wilson
- Unprovoked Mouth Gaping Behavior in Extant Crocodylia- Noah J. Carl, Heather A. Stewart, Jenny S. Paul
Thank you for reading! Here's a very happy wild alligator from Sanibel for your trouble.
A good writeup on crocodilian body language, with sources. @kaijutegu knows her shit and is my go-to resource for reptilian behavior questions.
Morgiana (1972) dir. by Juraj Herz.
my favourite lesbian poems:
- joan larkin, want
- kitty tsui, breathless
- donna allegra, stilled life
- suniti namjoshi, i give her the rose
- elizabeth bishop, insomnia
- jackie kay, her
- karen brodine, driving home
- dorothy allison, a woman like the ocean
- stacey waite, fixing my voice
- becky birtha, how i became a lesbian
- kristin chang, a postcolonial portrait of the girl loving a girl
- deborah a. miranda, marriage proposal
- janice gould, blackbirds
- adrienne rich, paul becker to clara westhoff
- adrienne rich, twenty-one love poems
- natalie diaz, these hands, if not gods
- natalie diaz, if I should come upon your house lonely in the west texas desert
- natalie diaz, i watch her eat the apple
- sappho 31, trans carson
- sappho 16
- chrystos, crooning
- carol ann duffy, warming her pearls
- tamai tobayashi, for lola
- leah horlick, levitating
- mita radhakrishnan, self-love or i love myself when i am laughing and when i am eating pussy
- mary coleridge, the witch
a lil bit emotional about how "nostalgia" originally meant longing across a displacement in space but in common parlance it refers to longing across a displacement in time... you don't go away from home and miss it, you stay where you are and time passes and home just disappears
