Plants and Animals

Lichen Spiders (Pandercetes gracilis) blend superbly with the surface characteristics of their tree. They remain strategically hidden from predatory birds and simultaneously well-positioned to ambush unsuspecting insects. Poorly disguised individuals are readily picked-off and the gene pool is progressively refined.

The close-up image (above) shows the orientation of the eight eyes; four looking down the surface of the tree, two looking back up the tree and two looking outward.

I do wonder to what extent individuals are capable of modifying their appearance to suit the tree? Likewise, to what extent are trees of suitable character chosen for their conformity with the appearance of the spider? I do know that egg-sacs are disguised by the spider through the deployment of silk of different colours, but what of the spider itself?

In the image below, a collection of lichen spiders shows an array of varied colours and patterns that suit a diversity of bark types.

Introducing the Spiny-legged Rainforest Katydid (Phricta spinosa), known colloquially as the wait-a-while cricket. It is a cryptic rainforest species with a lichen-like camouflaged colour pattern. It can grow to about 100 mm in body length.

It is mostly males that ‘sing’ through an action described as stridulation; where the ‘file’ on the underside of the left wing cover (tegmen) is rubbed against the ‘scraper’ of the opposite side. The courtship song for this species is a short, sharp zzzip.

Their antennae are exceptionally long; perhaps as much as three times the body length of the katydid. These provide specialist sensory apparatus and it is often their movement that distinguishes the animal from the stillness of neighbouring vegetation.

The auditory opening is visible in the photograph on the right foreleg at the proximal end of the tibia, but obscured on the left by the antennae.

Such is the expressed concern of National Tree Day founder John Dee. However, it is unclear whether the electrified plantation of 120 new seedlings will ensure the survival of the species from the ravages of changing climate.

Perhaps some comfort can be taken from the species’ 200-million-year evolutionary history, as interglacial warming periods have occurred throughout this lengthy period of survival.

In an ABC News article, a surprising report describes the location of the Wollemi Pines, which was found in 1994 in the Wollemi National Park, as secret and suggests that poaching and feral animals are threats from which the new seedlings will be protected through an electrified fence.

The public, however, should be able to visit this plantation, which was established to try and replicate the original colony as closely as possible.

The President of the Republic,
Palais de l’Elysée, Paris, France.

Mr. President,

In a letter dated April 25 last to the officers of the Société Protectrice des Animaux (SPA) and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Mr. Alain Auvé, Technical Advisor to Ms. Nelly Olin, then Minister of the Environment and Sustainable Development, confirmed that the President of France at that time, Mr. Jacques Chirac, intended to prohibit trade in France in products derived from seals hunted in Canada.

President Chirac wrote to me on May 10 last to confirm that he intended to do so in order to “preserve the species in a context in which there have been changes in habitat as a result of climate warming.”

However, it would appear that, despite constant amendments to Canada’s legislation and regulations on marine mammals and slaughtering techniques, despite successive reports by the Eminent Panel on Seal Management and the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, despite the precautions taken by our scientists and the enhanced compliance of our hunting methods, and despite the transparency that Canada has sought in allowing foreign observers to enter Canada during the hunting season, non-governmental organizations are manipulating information, images and the emotions of citizens and parliamentarians of all countries, particularly in Europe.

First of all, allow me to say that Canada, a signatory to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, poses no threat to seal populations. The number of Harp seals, the species most extensively hunted, has even tripled in 30 years to some 5.5 million head today. The European Commission moreover recognized our prudent management on January 26 last by refusing to act on the European Parliament’s written declaration calling for a European boycott on Canadian seal products.

Allow me to add that I have commissioned a study by the research service of the Parliament of Canada on the impact of climate change on Canada’s seal populations. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), the Arctic is highly vulnerable to climate change and will undergo major physical, ecological and economic transformations. However, climate change will have numerous positive and negative effects on the cology of seals, and the net effect on each species will be the result of a complex weighting of various effects.

Without downplaying the extent of the impact of climate disturbances on the seal population, to state that the species is in danger is an intellectual shortcut that no scientist today is taking. Not to mention the fact that all seal species, whose feeding, migratory and reproductive behaviour differs from one species to the next, will not be affected in the same way.

Mr. President, I know you are sensitive to the rational, science-based approach. In that respect, I hail the position you expressed in your letter to Brigitte Bardot on April 18 last, in which you said you wanted to ensure “that species management is henceforth conducted on a scientific basis”, adding that “the status of the conservation of species is all that counts.”

Canada bases its seal hunting quotas on government and independent scientific studies, which are available on the Web site of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and may be consulted by the general public at:
www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/seal-phoque/report-rapport_e.htm

In addition, I can only be thankful that you informed Ms. Bardot that you wanted to “put a stop to the misconception […] that hunters and fishermen do not protect nature.” Indeed, who would believe that the Acadians, Quebeckers and Inuit who live year-round in contact with the natural environment, on which their culture, community and prosperity depend, are not knowledgeable and protective of the ecosystem?

However, Mr. President, I am satisfied that this rational approach is not embraced by those who discredit Canada’s image and that the media no longer rely on environmentalists, but rather on “animalists”, that is to say animal fundamentalists.

In conclusion, I would also like to express my concerns.

First, I believe that the animalist organizations manipulate emotions for profit. The constant use of the image of the whitecoat or “baby seal”, the hunting of which has been prohibited since 1987, is one of their main weapons in maintaining artificial pity and compassion. When John Hoyt became President of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), one of the most influential animalist organizations, in 1970, it had 30,000 members and an annual budget of approximately US $500,000. The average annual revenue of the HSUS increased by US $22 million starting in 1994. In 2003, the figure rose to US $123 million. When the HSUS merged with the Fund for Animals in 2004, the group announced that it had raised US $95 million for its operating budget alone.

Second, I believe that the objective of these so-called animal defence groups is not animal protection, but ultimately to impose their moral vision of society, which is inevitably based on vegetarianism. All the Web sites of these organizations promote vegetarianism, starting with that of Ms. Bardot, which features a vegetarian cooking column. Ms. Bardot has also announced her latest crusade: the prohibition of horse meat. I would add that these organizations have moved from the field of “animal protection” to tat of “animal rights”.

The approach of the Humane Society of the United States and its allies is thus to propose another moral vision of humanity the sectarian and religious nature of which should be questioned: “To point to economic advantage is insufficient as a moral justification […],” wrote the Reverend Andrew Linzey on the subject of the seal hunt, in a document entitled “Public Morality and the Canadian Seal Hunt” published by the HSUS in 2005. Reverend Linzey, who also holds a doctorate and is a member of the Faculty of Theology at the Oxford University, added: “There is no adequate moral justification for the seal hunt.”

In this new moral order, animals have rights and, surprisingly, no duties because, as Reverend Linzey notes: “Animals are morally innocent.” In the animalists’ vision, the purity of animals contrasts with that of Man, the author of original sin, corruptor of the Garden of Eden. It is therefore not morally acceptable that Man should take life in cold blood in order to support himself. “Language about seals as a ‘resource’ is sub-ethical,” Reverend Linzey states, adding, “The instrumentalization of animals still prevails in today’s world.”

The logic in thinking that animals are equal to human beings and therefore cannot be “instrumentalized”, that is to say consumed, leads directly to this dual concept defended by the animalists of “animal-human” and “animal-non-human”. One therefore understands Ingrid Newkirk, founding president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), when she says: “Six million Jews were killed in concentration camps, but six billion chickens are killed in slaughterhouses every year.” Now that Ms. Bardot has referred to the seal hunt as “animal genocide”, we will soon be seeing the creation of “crimes against animality”.

Third, and last, these animalist groups are not known for their open-mindedness. The lawsuit that the HSUS threatened to file last spring against the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and director Raoul Jomphe for refusing to broadcast the documentary “Seals, the film”, which presented them in an unfavourable light, speaks volumes. In addition, a more radical branch of “ecoterrorists” are operating in the United States and Europe, led by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Animal Rights Militia. France was moreover fell victim to their actions on August 31 last in the deliberate contamination of Novartis products.

To my knowledge, neither HSUS nor Ms. Bardot, nor any animal rights group has condemned these acts. What is worse, PETA previously reacted as follows to the violent acts committed by the Animal Liberation Front: “We cannot condemn the Animal Liberation Front… they act courageously, risking their freedom and their careers to stop the terror inflicted every day on animals in the labs. ALF’s activities comprise an important part of today’s animal protection movement.”

Consequently, Mr. President, as you can see, defending the seal hunt is not simply a matter of defending a hunt, a culture, a way and place of life or a means of subsistence for modest populations. It also means defending the truth against manipulation and disinformation, defending the spirit of democracy and freedom from the imposition of a moral order, and defending the language of science against extremism and anthropomorphism.

On this subject, it is rumoured that you recently met with Brigitte Bardot. Following that meeting, you purportedly made a commitment to ban seal products in France by the end of the year. Allow me to doubt this information, given that Ms. Bardot, who occasionally comes back to restore her notoriety on Canada’s ice floes, is so contrary to the archetypal scientist, to the rational discourse of which you are so much in favour. In her Ottawa press conference last year, for example, Ms. Bardot addressed journalists before an enormous poster showing a walrus – not a seal – with a club in its mouth, lying and wallowing in its blood at the foot of a young child. It would be difficult to be more cartoonish, anthropomorphic or grotesque. I am therefore sure you will agree with me that Ms. Bardot’s scientific competence in these matters is probably equal to that of Sir Paul McCartney or Pamela Anderson, who also recently spoke out on this issue. I recall what you wrote to Ms. Bardot on April 18 last, in reference to the Observatoire de la faune sauvage: “If there is any difference of opinion with other institutions, it is up to the
experts to reach an agreement.”

Mr. President, the seal hunt is a sustainable activity, carried on in a sensible manner for the animal species in question, under the control of our government and scientists, by Canadians who work hard in difficult conditions, but in a manner respectful of their environment.

That is the message that I would like to send to France through you and that I have undertaken to transmit both in and outside Canada.

Mr. President, I am,
Yours sincerely,
The Honourable Céline Hervieux-Payette, P.C.
Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Quebec, Canada

Introducing another inhabitant of the Daintree rainforest, the Ogre-faced or Net-casting Spider Deinopsis subrufa is cryptically discrete in shades of brown and grey, but once detected is recognizable by its enormous posterior median eyes and 40mm long body.

According to a website examining eyes, female net-casting spiders of Australia have the largest eyes of any spider. They also have an amazing ability to capture photons (particles of light), as many as 2000 times the number absorbed by human eyes.

Perhaps their most distinguishing feature is the peculiar deployment of silk to capture prey. Using comb-like structures on the tibia of their hind legs, they construct a rectangular net from a woolen-looking, bluish-tinted silk with a 400 to 600% stretch capacity. They hold the corners of this highly elasticised net with their four front legs and then wait for prey. When prey is detected, the spider propels itself forward with blistering speed, stretching the net over and around the prey. Once captured, the prey is then secured further with silk fed from the spider’s spinnerets with the hind legs.

Spiders concern participants on nocturnal tours in the Daintree more than any other creature. Some people are completely immobilised by their fear of these fascinating animals. This is not the case with renowned artist Louise Bourgeois, who has created a nine-metre high spider as an ode to her mother, which now resides on the banks of the River Thames overlooking central London.

The US Navy used dolphins in the Gulf War. Dolphins were used to help protect the United States’ 7th Fleet during the Vietnam War. Dolphins have been used by NATO to detect mines and shells in the Baltic Sea and off Norway.

The Russians also have a program with marine mammals:

“Marine mammals can be used to protect strategic installations and in anti-terror operations, Academician Gennady Matishov, the director of the Murmansk Marine Biology Institute, told Interfax.

“In our opinion, the use of marine mammals is a very promising aspect of programs to enhance the protection of coastal installation from terror attacks and in monitoring the underwater situation. Marine animals possess a unique ability to locate underwater biological and technical objects in the environment of natural and artificial noises, and in conditions of complex seabed features,” he said

Read more here: http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/0/28.html?menu=1&id_issue=11728546

But the practice is opposed by the Cetacean Society who wrote with respect to the use of dolphins by NATO in 2001:

“The dolphins will locate with echolocation a small fraction of an estimated 80,000 mines and other munitions, and attach marker buoys for retrieval… The U.S. Navy is proud to show what the dolphins can do… [but] the Cetacean Soceity thinks it is immoral exploitation, similar to experimenting with unwitting servicemen exposed to deadly diseases. It makes us wonder sadly what we don’t hear about.”

Other animals have been used in wars. For example, 8 million horses died during WWII.

Is it justified to use animals in warfare?

Ann Novek
Sweden