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| American and European badgers |
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| American and European robins |
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| American and European red squirrels |
This is just a gestalt impression that I can't begin to quantify or explain, so I'm hoping I'm not the only one who sees it -- but, doesn't there seem to be a common "style" underlying the three American species (on the left), and another, quite different style manifested in the European ones (on the right)? It's as if two artists with very different souls had each been commissioned to paint a badger, a robin, and a red squirrel. Seeing the "Americanness" of the one set and the "Europeanness" of the other is as easy -- and as hard to explain -- as distinguishing a Titian from a Rembrandt.
(I remember once looking at a brochure from a local museum, advertising a Chagall exhibition. Of the pictures featured in the brochure, one immediately stood out as vastly superior to the others and made me think that maybe Chagall wasn't as crappy an artist as I had always thought. It turned out to be a Picasso.)
Something similar can be said for the "Africanness" of African animals, the "Asianness" of Asian ones, and so on. On a smaller geographic scale, I am continually amazed at how consistently Japanese birds look Japanese; observing a new-to-me bird in Taiwan, I can almost always accurately guess whether or not it is also found in Japan.
Although comparisons, like the American-European ones above, make regional styles easier to see, they can also be recognized without comparison. My first sense that there was something ineffably American about American animals came from looking at a picture similar to this one.
Just as Rembrandt and Titian, and even Picasso and Chagall, are all part of a larger style called "European art," which is quite distinct from, say, Chinese art -- so I sometimes feel that I can sense a common "Earth" style underlying all the animals in the world, even though I obviously have no other set of animals to compare them too. The planetary spirit of Earth may be harder to see, for lack of contrast, than the regional spirits of various countries and continents, but it is no less real.
11 comments:
@Wm - Or to put is another way, for those of Europeam descent, European flora and fauna and landscape are "better" (spiritually) than those of other places! (What Englishman - even after 400 years is New England - could prefer an American "robin"?!)
If some (certainly not all) nations are beings, then the beingness does not inhere in the people alone, but in the landscape, plants and animals, skies and much else. Insofar as someone is 'of' a nation or place, they will presumably have a spontaneous and deep connection with the geography and biology of that place, in that they united by the same person-nature.
It is a variant of Barfield's insight that all reality is perspectival - we participate in the creation of reality.
I must admit that the European animals seem "right" to me even though I grew up in America and have never set foot in Europe. The European badger, in particular, strikes me as an almost magical-looking creature, certainly not something I would say of its American cousin.
It may even be true that the reason I was first struck by the Americanness of American fauna was that I was subconsciously comparing them to a racial memory of their European counterparts or something like that.
Interesting post and comments. I was reminded of a Margaret Atwood poem that would fit into this topic quite nicely:
The animals in that country
In that country the animals
have the faces of people:
the ceremonial
cats possessing the streets
the fox run
politely to earth, the huntsmen
standing around him, fixed
in their tapestry of manners
the bull, embroidered
with blood and given
an elegant death, trumpets, his name
stamped on him, heraldic brand
because
(when he rolled
on the sand, sword in his heart, the teeth
in his blue mouth were human)
he is really a man
even the wolves, holding resonant
conversations in their
forests thickened with legend.
In this country the animals
have the faces of
animals.
Their eyes
flash once in car headlights
and are gone.
Their deaths are not elegant.
They have the faces of
no-one.
I should add that when one thinks of people who lived in North America for a long time -- the Algonquins, the Sioux, and all the others -- it is the American animals that seem right for them and the European ones that would be out of place.
@Wm - The moose is the archetypal North American animal, I think. There is something deeply absurd about Europeans hunting moose for sport; compared with Indians for food etc.
I would like to agree, but the moose is also found throughout northern Europe and Asia, where it is known as the elk. (The American "elk" is an entirely different species, a close relative of the red deer.) Although it is classified as a New World deer, it has apparently been in the Old World for a very long time, as it is portrayed in Paleolithic cave art there. (Checking Wikipedia, I find that the "New World deer" are actually thought to have originated in central Asia. Go figure.)
I would say the Most American Animal is the bison ("buffalo"), of which the European animal that dares to call itself a bison is a vastly inferior knock-off. (Its true European counterpart was the late aurochs.)
Haha I've noticed this phenomenon as well. Materialists would attribute the differences to evolution, though I also see something artistic (rather than just scientific) about the different animal "styles," similar to architectural styles that give urban areas unique character. The European animals do look prettier, but I grew up in North America, so those ones seem "right" to me -- though the European ones don't seem "wrong" either.
EDF, of course evolution explains the bare fact that each American species looks different from its European counterpart -- but I can't imagine any evolutionary explanation for the apparent consistency of local "style," cutting across taxonomic groups and ecological niches.
Of course any attempt at a "scientific" explanation would have to begin with quantifying the observed pattern, however imperfectly -- perhaps not as impossible as it seems. After all, if it comes to that, I suppose that the difference between a Titian and a Rembrandt could be partially expressed in measurable terms and a computer could be trained to distinguish the one artist's work from the other's.
One striking difference between Britain and the US, is that the badger, which is the size of a smallish dog and harmless to humans - is the apex predator; because all our large predators (bears, wolves big cats etc) have long since been eliminated.
(Except for large domestic dogs, I suppose - these are by far the most dangerous British carnivores.)
This leads to a further striking difference relating to forests. In New England, there has been massive spontaneous and (in practice) unstoppable re-forestation since the middle 19th century, when much of the landscape was cleared.
In Britain, there is very seldom reforestation unless by considerable effort and planning. The North of England, Scotland and Wales is covered by treeless moors and hills (coated with grass, heather or bracken; because unprotected trees are eaten when saplings - mostly by rabbits and sheep, who have no predators.
Bruce, what about foxes? Don't they eat rabbits? I believe they will kill lambs as well.
@Wm - Foxes are scared of badgers - so I put them in that order. Both foxes and badgers will eat rabbits, but can't catch them (or, hardly ever). Plenty of things can eat rabbits and lambs, but not in sufficient numbers given the rabbits ability to breed, and the fact that people aren't allowed to kill sheep.
(A sheep jumped out in front of our car on an unfenced but public road (a major A road with a speed limit of 60 mph) near to Hadrian's wall, in the way that sheep sometimes do; and we were legally obliged to report this death by visiting a police station within 24 hours. The farmer did not have to pay for the damage his sheep did to our car, which was significant.)
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