Pursuing praxis

I was just there for a couple weeks, mainly for work, so I didn’t get out and about extensively. But I did enjoy sampling the food, art and culture in close proximity to my lodging in an inexhaustive way. Here’s my list of places I’d like to return to:

Food establishments, in no particular order

Fork - Tapas bar where you get four bites of yum on a plate. The butternut squash deserved better, but the eggplant ("aubergine") and chocolate cake were spectacular.
Khaya Nyama - Game (and non-game) meat restaurant; get the zebra!! It’s delicious! Or, if you chicken out, get springbok or ostrich.
The Showroom Cafe - at the Grand Daddy Hotel. The 80% flourless brownie deserves to have a planetoid named after it. It is THAT amazing. The tea selection, salad, and ostrich burger were also commendable.
The Quarter: Gourmet Bunny Chow - I can’t really explain. I don’t even know if bunnies were on the menu. Just go and see. I was very happy with my gemsbok sausage and chutney.
News Cafe - Smoked salmon and CBS for breakfast!
Cafe Mozart - Civilization, any way you like it, for breakfast.
Royal Eatery - Inventive, yummy, beautiful, healthy salads, among many other wonderful creations, including thick milkshakes.
Rcaffe - Excellent museli, excellent waitstaff, excellent internet connection.

Other establishments of note

The African Portrait Art Gallery. The art on the website isn’t nearly as great as the stuff in the store. Go in an be intrigued, captivated, impressed, uplifted, happy.   http://www.theafricanportrait.co.za/main.php

Table Mountain cable car ride. http://www.smartguide.co.za/tablemountain/smartguide.swf

Medical Morphology Museum - I didn’t go (missed connection), but I totally wanted to. At Stellenbosch University.
http://sun025.sun.ac.za/portal/page/portal/Health_Sciences/English/Departments/Biomedical_Sciences/Anatomy_Histology/museum

Dear US Government,

Please stop sacrificing us.

Sincerely,

The US Public

–

"U.S. rules of engagement prevent the Americans using their vastly superior fighting power to engage the pirates if there is any danger to civilians."

From http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30162572/from/ET/

I haven’t taken a logic class, but it seems to me that this policy actually promotes the taking of American hostages by the most criminally-minded sort of people, particularly by those who don’t stand a chance against the US military. Far from being a policy of protecting American civilians, it would seem to be a myopic policy that actually endangers more American civilians as soon as it is implemented.

Today, I’m glad I wasn’t able to take that Navy full-ride to college. Sigh. I’d have trouble sitting by twiddling my thumbs, watching some RAGAMUFFINS IN A STALLED DINGHY WITH NO SUPPLIES best the US Navy, thereby encouraging every sea-faring cockroach to take a swipe at anything bearing an American flag. COME ON!!

I have an idea. The Navy should chuck a dozen SEALs into the water with SCUBA gear and the toys of their choice, with a single, simple mission: Do whatever it takes to bring back the American civilian alive. Hell, a couple shark outfits and pocket-knives would probably do the trick in their capable hands, while sending a message to other pirates considering attacking US ships.

Metaphorically speaking, that is, today. But I did make the dishes rattle on the other side of the room :o).

Today I had one of my best-ever runs through Rachmaninoff’s C# Minor Prelude  - particularly that furious rush down the keyboard of the dueling triplets of chords. I nailed it so hard and so surprisingly easily that I was able to mentally step back and almost passively watch myself about half-way through it. Schmoley, it was impressive!

How did I do it, and why today? Two things contributed, I think, though I’m not sure exactly how they did. First: I warmed up for upwards of an hour, going through almost every exercise (of the 21 that I do in Hanon’s The Virtuoso Pianist) at least twice, some probably close to 10 times. For as abysmally-little as I have played in the last two years, I was stunned that I didn’t get fatigued from the exercises alone. The extensor muscles in my forearms only burned a couple of times. Amazing. Inexplicable.

Second: I wasn’t concentrating on the piece fully when I played it. In fact, I was simultaneously thinking about a conversation I had had with a friend about him learning to play Rachmaninoff, and what advice I would give him. I have the prelude memorized, at this point, primarily in terms of kinetics (movements, positions and spatial relationships) and sounds. Merely thinking of the sound that I want brings to mind, instantaneously and effortlessly, the feeling of what I have to physically do to get it, and the impetus to do it. I feel it the way you anticipate the next step of a dance you can dance in your sleep - you don’t think of specific steps or muscle contractions, just where you want to go, what you want to emphasize, how you want it to feel. If I think of the actual notes themselves, my hands utterly forget what they’re supposed to do, my playing comes to a screeching halt and the whole thing falls apart into a million pieces. (I’m not saying other pianists, especially ones far better than me, have this particular trouble; it might be a function of how I learn - or don’t learn - a given piece.)

Anatomically (to the extent I have my neuroanatomy correct - and it’s one of my weakest areas of knowledge of anatomy at the moment), I think I’m partially disengaging my frontal lobes, which are responsible for self-conscious, deliberate, analytical thought, and giving most of the responsibility over to my cerebellum, which is responsible for muscle memory, body-space awareness, learned-but-habituated movements, and the like.

Because of this, playing piano strikes me very much like writing or speaking. First, you have to know a lot about your subject matter. But once you do, you can just hold an idea, perspective or point in your mind and the words to express it just flow. If you thought self-consciously about each word, or tried to double-check every phrase as you wrote it, your mind would jam up and nothing would come out. The more you focused on a particular word, the more you would lose sight of the whole idea to be expressed, thereby losing the ability to decide which word is best, and the whole venture crumbles before any words hit the paper. But if you keep a single, general idea confidently in mind, words just pour out - and sometimes beautifully (and sometimes not). Only when it’s out can you see what you’ve got, what needs work, what you’re fuzzy on, etc.

Playing piano is like that, once I know a piece inside and out. As soon as I reflect on it, critique it in real-time, or especially if I think of any of the concrete mechanics of it (specific notes, where exactly my hands must go), I have given up expressing it at that moment, and cannot. But so long as the sound that I want, the total picture I am aiming for, the single distillation of my feeling about it, is my only thought about the piece, I can create it.

–

I also decided today what pieces I’m going to learn next. It’s been … about five years since I set out to systematically learn a new piece. If the difficulty level is at or above the hardest piece I currently have mastered, it takes me a year, on average, if I take lessons, to learn one non-trivial piece. But all these new ones I can sightread cold for both hands simultaneously with the main melodies recognizable. So they’re pretty easy. I think this will be very good for keeping me motivated, so I play more often (which will keep my hands healthier), and I’ll be in a better position to borrow someone’s piano to play while I’m in Kenya so that I can play while I’m there. I love multi-pronged solutions. (Come to think of it, I’ve borrowed the pianos of perfect strangers for several months at a time in Wisconsin, Arizona and Australia, which doesn’t include pianos owned by a roommate or a university).

I’ve decided on a Valse by Chopin (Op. 64, No. 2), his Nocture in E-flat Major (Op. 9, No. 2), and Rachmaninoff’s G# Minor Prelude (Op. 32, No. 12). It’s been a while since I learned a piece in a major key. Probably Chopin would have had to call that Nocture a Petit Requiem if he had written it in a minor key.

For some reason, I have little patience for blithely happy-sounding pieces (which are often in major keys). I just can’t bear to learn them, and I don’t know why. But I have noticed that I have far more interest in and patience for slow songs now. In fact, I have no intention of playing the new Rachmaninoff prelude at its specified tempo (120-168bpm - which for this piece works out to 480-672 notes/minute). Instead, I plan on playing it slowly. The tone of the notes is just fantastically beautiful (ode to minor keys), and I see no reason not to dwell on it.

Viewing a fair bit of art this weekend brought to mind my unblogged experience at a couple of museums in Washington DC this summer. 

The take-the-cake prize went to Albert Bierstadt’s Among the Sierra Nevada, California (1868; at the Smithsonian American Art Museum). Bierstadt himself was of interest to me. The little plaque near the painting read (in part): "Bierstadt was an immigrant and a hardworking entrepreneur who had grown rich pairing his artistic skill with a talent for self-promotion." I think "skill" and "talent" are hugely mundane words to describe this man’s artistic achievement, even in this one painting.

But to the painting itself: All I can really say is, none of the images online come near to doing justice to this painting. And that is not art-snob hyperbole, I swear. Viewed personally, the painting literally made me cry, it was so knock-me-over beautiful and enrapturing. Not even the 1400-pixel image linked above begins to capture the glittering water, the minute detail of the elk, the majesty of the rocky crags, or the radiance of the snowy mountains, which are so washed out as to be nearly invisible in these online images. It’s a painting of light, color, majesty, awe, benevolence, and heady inspiration, and I don’t see that in these online images. All I can say is go, go, go! see the painting for yourself. Let it encircle you, transport you, dazzle you, uplift you.

This morning, thanks to KDFC’s excellent musical judgment, I rocketed out of bed at 5:45am to the sound of the third movement of Tchaikovsky’s 1st piano concerto. For this purpose, I realized it’s quite superior to the third movement of Rachmaninoff’s Third (although nothing grips me like the first movement of that concerto).

The pianist was Fazil Say playing with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra under Yuri Temirkanov - new to me, but I think Say did an excellent job. Some pianists seem to get a bit dwarfed or drowned out by the orchestra, or feel bullied by the heady rush of the music and overcompensate by being too rigid and shrill. His chords were gratifyingly blocky, the bright runs up the keyboard like riding a wave, and he toed the line with the orchestra in volume and presence without dominating it.

(Looking into Say’s work just a little bit, it turns out he has quite an interest in jazz and contemporary music, and is a composer as well. I’m intrigued by his Black Earth album. You can preview some of it on his MySpace page, but not Amazon. Boo, Amazon.)

I have a hunch that Tchaikovsky wasn’t as prone to brooding, gruffness or melancholy as Rachmaninoff. But testing it would require reading the thick Tchaikovsky biography sitting on my shelf, and I’ve got springbok to analyze this month.

And unexpectedly so. I got two doses of art, first at the new Cordair Gallery in Napa, and then at the house of a friend who is a bit of a collector, which I hadn’t known. Saturday I got yummy breakfast with a friend, and then yummy tri-tip with more friends, and I got to answer lots of questions about antelope. Then we went to the Ceja’s winebar and lounge and met some of the family and drank great wine and had a fabulous time.

Sunday I got reaaallly yummy sun-dried tomato bruschetta and sausage-bacon-date appetizers and home-made meatballs and chocolate cake and red wine with friends, and I got to answer lots of questions about antelope. And whales and school and Kenya. And I found out my club will get to host another campus speaker this spring, to talk about free speech, in addition to our panel on global warming (and how there isn’t a consensus, and even if there was and that meant anything, statism is not the solution to national or global environmental and climatological challenges).

And this week I will live and breathe springbok data analysis.

Of artistic note this weekend, I learned about and/or saw and/or had reason to think about:

A bronze bust of Antinous, after the one in the Vatican.

Bouguereau’s Dawn and Evening Mood.

Happily, a new discovery to me: both Herbert Draper and his Gates of Dawn.

As always, my favorites at the Cordair Gallery were by Alfredo Gomez, closely followed by Brian Larsen - his new Deliberation, and Heroes in the front window.

Turns out it’s convenient to walk between the Dept. of Justice and the IRS buildings on my way to the natural history museum. Apart from being very large (and reminding me of the giant government buildings surrounding Tiananmen Square), these buildings aren’t hugely remarkable, for their neoclassicism. I mean they’re fancy and tall and a full city block in size, with lots of columns and relief sculptures and whatnot.

What suprised me was the use and non-use of signs and words between the two. The DoJ has its name spelled out in giant letters on a smooth strip of stones running the length of the building on at least two sides, near the top floors. Every side of the building has some big sign or engraving proclaiming it’s the DoJ, often flanked by "United States of America", or "Office of the Attorney General", and American flags are in no short supply. On all sides there are quotes pertaining to justice carved into the side of the building, sometimes near a statue, things like (and I’m botching them here, from memory) "Render to each man what he earns", "Absent the rule of law, tyranny rules", etc. They are the DoJ, they’re proud of it (at least when the building was built), and they want everyone to know it.

Compare it with it’s near-sibling building, the IRS. It too has a line of smooth stones near the top which says … nothing. There are no quotes, no statues, not even a "United States of America" sign anywhere on the four sides of the building. Most doors are totally unmarked. No flags fly, as I recall. Only the two main entrances - on a building that extends over a city block - have signs reading "Internal Revenue Service," with 18"x18" panels at knee-height, on either side of the door. And that is it. Not even "United States Internal Revenue Service."

Somehow it reminds me of any of countless movies where the mobster says, "Bring the money - unmarked bills only. We don’t want nobody tracing the dough. Got it?"  

But it also kind of reminds me of a cartoon elephant trying to hind behind a lightpole in a crowded square.  

I heard a story recently which underscored the need for awareness of cultural context. It really is secondhand - I heard it from the guy myself. It goes like this:

He ships out for a west African university to help them set up a computer network at their school. His excess baggage on the plane consists of some 30 computers. He arrives at his destination, and within two weeks he has the whole thing set up. Huzzah.

Of course, a network with no one who actually knows how to administer and maintain it is useless, so he decides that an internship program would be perfect for training students to use the computers, administer the network, boost usage, and ensure long-term viability. So at a faculty meeting he pitches his idea to the chair, and concludes by saying "So I think an internship program would be perfect. 12 interns should be just right. Six men and six women."

The chair nods slowly, and drawls out a "Yes," which, as the fellow said, is African for "no." Everyone else in the room is silent, and remains silent. Seconds tick by. Eventually someone lets out a giggle. Soon everyone is laughing uproariously, the chair included. The fellow has no idea what’s going on. He thought it was a good idea.

At least in that west African country, students who want to learn a new skill are first "attached" to an instructor. If they’re interested enough and good enough, they will then become "apprenticed" to the instructor, to eventually become independent with their skillset.

The only "intern" they had ever heard of was Monica Lewinsky. And he wanted twelve!

—-

I also happened to watch the movie Secondhand Lions last night, which centers a lot on secondhand stories and trust, although it does also have a secondhand (used) lion in it. Not a bad movie, except for some overly mushy parts towards the end. It’s kind of an oddball movie, maybe a little discombobulated as far as style goes, but if you find it on TV and have nothing else to do, I recommend it.

Sigh. Kenyans are ecstatic that Obama got the nomination. Why? Because he’s so qualified? Because he’s a great speaker? Because they agree with his positions and policies? Because they think he will be good for our country, and advance noble ideals and practical solutions? Because he’s (more) photogenic?

No.

Because he is Kenyan. Obviously.

From the Kenya Times:

"We as a family are thrilled to be directly related to a man who has not only made a major achievement, but has also made history."– Said Obama, Barack Obama’s Uncle

"It’s unbelievable! This shows that Kenya is a great place; a great country. God has blessed this country. Senator Obama is already the next U.S. President." — Bishop Beneah Salalah of the Anglican Church of Kenya  [can you believe that?!]

"We know he will go ahead and be elected President of the United States. The American citizens have shown that they don’t see race or tribe in someone, but his or her leadership qualities. Africans should learn from this."– Kakamega Mayor Joe Serenge

"We are strongly behind him and we urge Americans to go ahead and elect him their President."– Kisumu Mayor Sam Okello

"Kenyan" is the only information most Kenyans need. It’s all they needed when I was there a year ago, and it’s all they care about now. There is no discussion of Obama’s political positions, his background, his qualifications, his experience. Only that he is Kenyan, and was a Senator for just four years in Illinois, and now he is nominated for president.

No matter that only his dad was from Kenya; his mother is rarely if ever mentioned. (It remains bizarre to me that mixed race people are judged to belong to the darker race, whichever it is, by all races). No matter that several tribes spent the better part of January trying to kill each other, resulting in about a thousand completely unnecessary deaths (the Prime Minister’s views notwithstanding). No matter that no tribe is more "Kenyan" than any other. No matter that if Obama was actually from Kogelo village and actually born in Kenya, the odds of him getting a good education and big opportunities would have been drastically reduced, not to mention being barred from running for president because he wasn’t born in the US. Yes, that sure makes Kenya great …

It’s total tribalism - whether you are blessed for it or cursed for it - which stems from determinism. In family-based tribalism, it reduces to genetic determinism. Pro-Kenyan-Obamaism, while cheerful to say the least, comes from the same premises that motivates people to burn each other alive. Lacking a machete doesn’t change the poor logic of "my family," "my tribe," "my color," "my town," "my country." You’re born into all of those, at least two of those you can never change. And if you’re very poor like most Kenyans, it can be hard to change your town or your country as well. So basically they have no choice as to whether they’re somehow linked to someone who turns out to be from one of their many groups. Ergo the person is brilliant and they are better people for being involuntarily associated with him. Wha…?

I became friends with the cook at the guesthouse I stayed at. We had many interesting and rewarding conversations, even on religion and politics, which for safety’s sake I had vowed not to discuss at all while abroad. On matters of business and politics, people were a lot more receptive than I had expected. Njenga and I talked about Obama several times. They knew more about him than I did, and were totally stoked about him back in spring 2007! I barely recognized his name.

Njenga asked if I supported Obama. I said no, because I didn’t know anything about him, and my views on all the candidates were preliminary at the very best, since it was early in the race and I didn’t have time to follow US politicking. I asked why he supported Obama. "Because he is from Kenya!" Njenga said, lighting up like a Christmas tree. "Obama is black - and there has never been a black President of the United States before. It would be good, very good. There is still so much racism."

I said, "Njenga, don’t you see, that is what it means to be racist - to prefer someone because of their race, or their country, or whatever. Racism isn’t just white people being unfair to black people. Racism is about being unfair to anyone because of their race, whatever their race. If you are against racism, don’t judge Obama based on his race. Judge him on the things he can control - his thoughts, his values, his actions, the kind of character he has, the kinds of policies he supports."

That stopped Njenga in his (mental) tracks. He considered it briefly, seriously, and then a smile spread across his face. "You are right. What you say is right. You are an unusual person," he said, addressing me by my last name, as was his custom. "What you say is very unusual. There aren’t many people like you," he instructed me. It was neither praise nor criticism, more like an observation, though he was often hugely entertained by my unusualness, all while being deeply interested in the ideas discussed.

This exchange probably sounds like a parody, the way I relate it. But that’s the style of speaking English in Nairobi - very much out of my third grade teacher’s book. I think it must be some combination of English as a second (or third) language, the tradition or dialect, and the state of political education even among the educated. I learned it by trial and error; speaking very simply, respectfully, cheerfully and honestly (sometimes brutally so) kept people happy and got me what I wanted. So it was wierd being hailed as an intellectual giant (staying in a roach-infested guesthouse for $10 a night), when I only said what I thought was simple and obvious, as simply as I could.

(It is exhausting speaking like that though.)

It’s lovely that Obama can be billed as the first post-racial candidate. But that’s true only among a certain demographic. It’s not true for all Americans, to say nothing of all nations. Many people still care very much about race, as an extension of a tribalistic outlook on life, selectively ignoring the contradictions that crop up. I wonder how many of Njenga’s people (the Kikuyu) are cheering for Obama (a Luo) this week. Cuz they were hacking each other to bits and burning each other alive six short months ago.

Related Posts:
Love of civilization
Thompson, Mouch, Chalmers et al., the later years

The trailer for Wanted, Angelina Jolie’s next movie, is spiffy. I’m totally going to see it, probably in LA since I’ll be there. I’m stoked. It’s tempting to start strategizing new tattoos, but I’ll hold off (for now).

The main competitor for Starbucks here in Chicago, it seems. Apart from having a cervid motif, I dig their slogan: "Life is short. Stay awake for it."

Q: What’s the difference between a chicken and an egg?

A: An egg needs certain favorable conditions to turn into a chicken. An egg can be cracked, squashed, scrambled, drained, rotted; the chick starved, stunted, left out in the cold, predated upon, cannibalized. Killing a chicken is a much more effortful, violent affair, because it has the will and the ability to survive and reproduce on its own. You have to be willing to shoot it, wring its neck, chop off its head, or something, in order to kill a chicken. Many people aren’t up to the task, so the chicken gets to live. And lay eggs. And make more chickens. And then killing just one chicken gets you no where.

Dammitall, am I going to have to vote for McCain?

Sigh.

Obama and his wife scare the piss out of me.  

Check out these amazing photographs, from the Smithsonian Institutions’ Nature’s Best.

Index of 2007 winners
Index of 2006 winners
Flash of 2005 winners
Flash of 2004 winners

Among the 2007 winners, my favorites are the zebra, bison, mandarin duck, Fly Geyser, goliath grouper, and snowy egrets.

Among the 2006 winners (there are a lot more), I like the giraffe on a purple sunset, osprey, giant kelp, orchid cactus, pink cyclamen, Alaskan brown bear, horseshoe crabs, snow and ice at sunset, lightning strike, and ladybug.

And the idiot award goes to the photographer of this alligator.

I saw a great pic of a friend impersonating Superman, complete with logoed t-shirt under an Oxford shirt and business vest and trousers.

And it got me to thinking - no one wears a good business vest anymore. If I talked about vests with you recently, I most certainly don’t include tan leather or leather-like vests from the ’70s in this category.

Then it occured to me that perhaps I just hang in the wrong crowds. I mean, my friend is essentially a businessman - at least, he’s not an academic. And in my various fields of academia, it seems REI sets the fashion bar for grad students, and jeans are a common occurence even among faculty in my department. The only time I see colleagues dressed smartly is when they’re giving a talk and looking for a job. I heard that Joe Gregory, a Great Paleontologist who recently passed away, was among the last who insisted on wearing a tie at work. And I think most of my G.G. Simpson books show him in a suit. People used to dress up more, even in paleontology, even at Berkeley.

So, if I ever have time to spare, or am hard up for change, or just need a change of pace on a post-tenure sabbatical, maybe I’ll opine in a book. I even thought of a cool title: Class Outside the Classroom: Practical, Professional Attire for the 21st Century Academic.  

So, I finally made it to the SF Zoo this weekend. My motivation was entirely bovidly, of course. They have greater kudu, which I had great trouble seeing well in the field, and Derby’s elands, which nowadays reside in countries I don’t care to visit (Sudan, DRC, and other central and west African gems).

This is a Derby’s eland bull. A.k.a. a giant eland, mainly because of its horns, which are a more stretched-out twist compared to common elands. Some authors say Derbies can be heavier than common eland, but it’s a really close call. This bull is pretty lightly built, although his horns are very nice. Derbies also tend to be a richer red-brown throughout life, and retain more stripes on the body (in male common elands, the stripes fade with maturity and age). The white spots low on the cheek are also key distinguishers of Derbies, and a dewlap that goes from chin to shoulder, but not down between the front legs. This guy doesn’t have much in the way of bangs; male elands often get that, and then they rub their bangs in the mud, in urine and feces and anything else that’s stinky. Either it attracts the ladies or repells competitors. Sometimes the males get grass or bushes wrapped around their horns, and end up with a bovid ‘fro.

There were also greater kudus, including one mellow bull and a few cows. The cows were rather variable in appearance, and I suspected some variation in age, although none was overtly juvenile. One was just fuzzier, had weaker stripes, and a bit of a pot belly. They do have very pretty eyes though.

In other bovid action, there were a few blackbuck ewes and one ram, though he looked a bit youngish, not be a very blackish buck. Blackbucks are from India. They’re they only living member of their genus (Antilope) and are the namesake of the whole subfamily Antilopinae. They’re rather bizarrely squat, for a gazelle (all their nearest African relatives are much narrower side to side), and don’t come up much higher than your hip. I don’t know as much about them, since I’m up to my eyeballs trying to get a handle on some 75 African bovids. There are a lot of them ranched in Texas though.

Next up, the scimitar-horned oryx. Normally I’d say these are desert animals, but they are apparently flexible enough to subsist at the zoo, which is about a stone’s throw from the Pacific Ocean. Males and females are virtually indistinguishable (unless you aren’t shy about peering for genitals, like I do). They’re not very tall, but they’re not midgets either. What can I say, the giraffe was in my way.

Oryxes are in the tribe Hippotragini, which in Greek means horse-goats, or something very close. Here you can see their horsey-ness: long tails, fairly even back, bit of a mane, and then kind of a goat-ish head with horns. They are my second-favorite tribe to tragelaphines.

The only other bovid I found was the yellow-backed duiker (rhymes with biker). Duikers are the most numerous African tribe, and most all are forest-dwellers. Since I haven’t been to the very forested parts of Africa, I’ve only seen the versatile common/bush/gray duiker. The yellow-backed duiker is among the largest, up to 80kg. Most are in the 10-20kg range. Proportionately, duikers are the brainiest bovids. They’re also the only ones that are habitually omnivorous; some actually hunt and eat birds! The smallest ones look kind of rabbity or rodenty, but that’s true of most ruminants under 20kg. The bigger duikers look a bit like pigs to me - arched backs, a wide wet nose, and a proclivity to eat some strange stuff.

Finally, to round out the ruminant branch of the mammalian family tree at the SF Zoo, we have the muntjac. It’s in the deer family (Cervidae), hence the antlers on its head. But, it’s quite small - probably not much taller than my knee - and it has very long, furry pedicles, from which the antlers grow annually.

This guy was on patrol most of the time, stalking the perimeter or stalking the does while they napped or got up to pee. Most ruminants males are obsessed with females’ urine; it’s how they tell if the female is in estrus or not, and so whether they get to have sex or not. It’s a pretty simple calculus, just not very appetizing to our tastes.

And I didn’t even get outside artiodactyla! Next up, the more mundane orders of carnivorans, primates and rodents, plus one very cool rhino.