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Category: Americas and Eurasia and Africa

Quirky moments (#18 in series: up on the roof)

 

As you can see, the featured image shows a young primate, looking very relaxed, on a rooftop.

Obviously, the pictured individual was well aware of my (very close) presence.

At the time – 9.26 am on 28 February 2023 – the relevant two species had a couple of dozen mutually-visible members present, in a village near Coonoor in the Nilgiri Hills, south India.

Yours truly belongs to the world’s most abundant primate species.

My photo’s subject is a wild member of one of the rarest, most endangered primate species.

Its rapidly-vanishing natural rainforest habitat is confined to small, scattered locations in India’s Western Ghats.

Allegedly, that species’ members are elusive creatures (who) usually occupy the tallest, shadowy rainforest canopies, far from human sight.

However much I loved my experience of the “endearing moment” pictured above, it was in fact a moment that should never happen – a symptom of how very desperate has become the plight of Macaca silenus, the lion-tailed macacque.

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Quirky moments (#17 in series: unforgettable fellow diners)

 

 

On the 5th day of March 2023 my beloved and I ate a delicious lunch, al fresco, just outside a tiger sanctuary in southern India.

On the 18th of March 2018 in southern Tasmania, the food, the winery’s Pinot Noir and our lunch’s quasi-natural setting were all lovely.

However, as so often proves true, in both the above cases it was one of our fellow diners who made our lunch unforgettable.

Neither of them had made a booking.

We were unable to converse.

We never discovered their names…

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Quirky moments (#16 in series: big numbers/small numbers)

 

This post’s featured image was taken beside a waterhole in Etosha National Park in northern Namibia.

Visible are two members of one species, and more than hundred of another.

A mature African elephant is currently “our” planet’s most massive terrestrial animal.

Imagine this:

On one side of a colossal pair of scales you place one of the pictured elephants.

In order to balance those scales you would then need at least forty thousand of the pictured birds…and if a substantial flock of red queleas was present, forty thousand would not be an unusually high number!

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Quirky moments (#15 in series: mammalian avatar, with musical bonus)

 

If you are a Pelican Yoga regular, you have already seen Barbara Cartland’s and Barbie’s avian avatars. (in #10 of the “quirky moments” series)

This post’s “punkish” cub is a member of Africa’s most oft-misrepresented mammal species.

His kind are very much smarter and much more “social” than most humans realise.

Contrary to common human belief, spotted hyenas are primarily predators rather than scavengers.

Lions are much more likely to “steal” from hyenas than vice versa, and spotted hyenas are much the more efficient hunters.

Over the last several thousand years hyenas have had rotten “press”, but they are not rotters.

Nonetheless, the young hero of this post’s appearance and demeanour were decidedly “Rottenesque”.

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Quirky moments (#14 in series: asymmetric oryx)

 

 

The gemsbok – Oryx gazella – is the largest of four oryx species.

This superbly-adapted desert specialist is Namibia’s suitably majestic, emblematic mammal.

Gemsbok are also found in neighbouring southern African nations, and are sometimes known as “South African oryx” or “African oryx”.

They have striking, long, spear-like horns.

Atop the head of each adult male and female, the pair of horns is usually an example of nigh-perfect symmetry.

Not so, here!

Q: could this deformity cause any serious problem for the pictured individual?

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Quirky moments (#12 in series: subcontinental signage)

The roadside billboard pictured above is in the foothills of the Nilgiri Hills.

It hopes to lure travellers into what is in fact merely yet another of the world’s millions of franchised purveyors of junk “food”, “soft” drinks, and lousy coffee.

What’s actually on offer is drearily “global”, but the billboard-hyperbole has an unmistakably Indian flavour.

Where else would a brand name even attempt to associate its burgers, pizzas, sandwiches and fizzy drinks with drug “trips” and rock music’s first “supergroup”?

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Quirky moments (#11 in series: white-throated kingfisher, with musical bonus)

 

 

 

Members of the kingfisher family are typically very confident; these predatory birds are not much preyed-upon.

Fish are not invariably their primary prey, and not all kingfishers live near rivers or lakes.

Pictured is the most ubiquitous of Asia’s kingfishers, Halcyon smyrnensis – the white-throated kingfisher.

By itself, this perky individual’s demeanour was almost enough to qualify it for inclusion in this series…

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Quirky moments (#10 in series: avian avatars)

 

I dislike anthropomorphism, especially when it “cutesifies” animals that are not cute.

I wish we humans would learn to appreciate other animals in their own right, as themselves, rather than wilfully misreading their behaviours and facial expressions.

For instance, quokkas’ characteristic facial shapes/expressions do not in fact signify happiness.

That said, I am sometimes hugely amused by a particular animal’s fortuitous resemblance to a particular, famous/infamous human…or human-made humanoid.

One crisp Namibian morning I saw and heard a very loud local bird; its common name refers to its alarm call.

Why would a “Go-away bird” remind me of England’s self styled “Queen of Romance Fiction”?

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Quirky moments (#8 in series: Madagascan lizard atop Madagascan “lizard”, with musical bonus)

 

Presumably, the living lizard had no sense of the pictured circumstance’s synchronicity, let alone any awareness that a human passer-by might find it quirky or amusing.

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Quirky moments (#6 in series: “ghosts” walk steamy streets)

 

 

 

This post’s photos were not “manipulated”.

They were single-exposures, taken in available light (no flash) with a hand-held camera, on or near Market Street, San Francisco  on the night of 14 October 2012.

We had not stumbled upon the shooting of a scene for a “major motion picture” of the ghostly, supernatural, or steampunk kind.

It was just another normal autumn night in ‘Frisco – if one accepts that any urban-Californian night can ever be normal.

There is a non-supernatural explanation for the “surreal” appearance of some of this city’s central streets, most especially on chilly nights.

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