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Pelican Yoga Posts

“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#8 in series: extreme Alpine transhumance)

Published September 7, 2026 by Pelidoug

“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#8 in series: extreme Alpine transhumance)

 

“Alpine transhumance”, according to its Wikipedia entry:

seasonal droving of grazing livestock between the valleys in winter and the high mountain pastures in summer.

Unsurprisingly, if you google for the term, and/or for information on high-altitude pastures, most of what you will find refers to Europe.

Europe’s largest single example of high altitude pasture (in Italy’s South Tyrolean Dolomites) covers 57 square kilometres; it sits between 1,600 & 2,350 metres above sea level.

Most European Alpine pastures are below 2,400 metres; none reach higher than 2,800 metres.

The domesticated sheep pictured above were grazing on grassy slopes at an altitude of more than 4,000 metres.

On the Tibetan Plateau, however, they were not remotely close to Alpine pastures’ “upper limit”!

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“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#7 in series: grand grazing on elevated “flats”)

Published September 4, 2026 by Pelidoug

“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#7 in series: grand grazing on elevated “flats”)

Only the foreground’s river flats offer really lush grazing for the pictured cattle and sheep..

Their feet stand on the Pamir Plateau in western China…very close to the border with Tajikistan, and close to the edges of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Very little precipitation falls on the pictured plain; in a typical year, most of it would arrive as snow or sleet.

Local landscapes are truly “epic”; their low points are still more than 3,000 metres above sea level – much higher than the Australian continent’s tallest peak.

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“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#6 in series: good grazing + natural splendour)

Published September 1, 2026 by Pelidoug

“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#6 in series: good grazing + natural splendour)

 

 

I took this post’s photo on a 2019 New Zealand autumn afternoon, whilst overlooking Otago’s Lake Hawea.

You may find it hard to imagine a more “idyllic” location for sheep, grazing.

New Zealand’s sheep numbers peaked in 1982; at 70 million, they outnumbered their human compatriots by a ratio of rather more than 20 to 1!

Questions:

What is NZ’s current ratio of sheep to humans?

Has NZ retained its “traditional” status as the world’s most “sheepish” nation?

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“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#5 in series: bovines respond to the call…plus musical bonus)

Published August 30, 2026 by Pelidoug

“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#5 in series: bovines respond to the call…plus musical bonus)

This chapter’s first/featured image reveals what was going on in the previous episode’s picture of bovines, swimming.

It was very late on the afternoon of 23 February 2023, as our little group strolled along the resort/village side of a river in Kerala – India’s southwesternmost state.

Grass was more plentiful on the river’s other (national park, I think) side.

Accordingly, earlier in the day, a local grazier had directed his herd to cross over to the grassier bank.

Now, it was time to call them home.

If leopards and tigers lived in the area, they would almost certainly favour the river’s “far” (unsettled) side; tigers and leopards prefer to hunt by night.

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“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#3 in series: “sacred”/ “living bank accounts”)

Published August 25, 2026 by Pelidoug

“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#3 in series: “sacred”/ “living bank accounts”)

I took the photo on 18 May 2018, on “the 8th continent”, as Madagascar is nicknamed.

Ambalavao is the southernmost substantial town in Madagascar’s central highlands; its weekly cattle market is the nation’s biggest.

All the cattle are Zebu – an originally-Indian breed, which became emblematically “Madagascan”; this has been so for rather more than a millennium.

Culturally/religiously, Zebu are enormously important; Madagascans revere them, some men test/display their “virility” in highly-ritualised (generally, non-lethal) fights with them.

Zebu beef is the most highly-prized animal protein.

There has long been a tradition (also highly-ritualised) of Zebu-rustling.

The traditional form of cattle-theft did not involve murder, armed intimidation, internationally-linked organised crime, and wholesale corruption.

In 21st century Madagascar all of the aforementioned are signature features of the so-called “Zebu War”.

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“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#2 in series: ploughing)

Published August 22, 2026 by Pelidoug

“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#2 in series: ploughing)

This series’ first image showed an aspect of human and animal life from circa 1,600 years ago.

This chapter’s images show an aspect of human and animal life, as still lived in some places, right now.

Had I access to Dr Who’s Tardis, I could probably have taken essentially the same photographs in the same Himalayan valley, at the same time of year, in any of the last several thousand years!

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“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#1 in series)

Published August 19, 2026 by Pelidoug

“Domesticated”: unwild animals (#1 in series)

Generally – but not in this series – Pelican Yoga inclines to so-called “wild” environments and animals…to what we like to call the “natural” world.

“Wild” and “natural” are highly problematic/contestable terms.

So too are their alleged opposites: so-called “domestic or “domesticated” animals and “unnatural” or “degraded” environments.

This series features animals which humans have “domesticated”, “tamed”, “farmed”; some of them we put to work, whilst others become our pets, companions, or furry/feathered “friends”.

We selectively breed, train, confine them…in order to satisfy human yearnings, fads, fashions, and notions of what is “beautiful”, “impressive” or “cute”…or to maximise meat production for human consumption.

This series’ opening image shows part of a Roman mosaic.

Circa 1,600 years old, it was created when the global biomass of “wild” mammals still hugely exceeded that of humans and their “domesticated” mammals.

A pertinent question:

What are the relevant proportions, now? 

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Aspects of Colombia (final in teaser series: high life)

Published August 17, 2026 by Pelidoug

Aspects of Colombia (final in teaser series: high life)

 

With more than fifty-four million members of ”our” planet’s dominant species, Colombia has nearly twice as many people as Australia.

Fewer than two thousand of them live in the pictured town!

At nearly 3,000 metres above sea level, Murillo is one of Colombia’s highest and coolest human settlements.

On a (rare) cloudless day one could stand in its quiet – but lovely and colourful – centre and   see the snowcapped top of a very big volcano.

Nevado del Ruiz reaches a further 2,400 vertical metres closer to the sun.

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Aspects of Colombia (#26 in teaser series: hummingbird, feeding)

Published August 15, 2026 by Pelidoug

Aspects of Colombia (#26 in teaser series: hummingbird, feeding)

 

 

Hummingbirds defy any newcomer’s belief.

They are incredibly nimble, “hyperactive”, very aggressive, tiny, exquisitely-feathered.

The beating of their wings is astonishingly rapid.

I photographed the pictured individual in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on 12 March 2026.

As you can see, on this occasion I managed to gain a clear view of the briefly-hovering bird and did achieve sharp focus upon its head.

As you can also see, an exposure of one two-thousandth of one second was not brief-enough to “freeze” its wings.

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