BROWSE Columns
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is fabulous,
RAMPHASTOS TOCO: made for the mascot of a cruise ship salsa band. Fast-o Toco they’d call him, Fast Touch. Practice your moves and happiness awaits - toucans are gorgeous, can’t smell, are silent most of the day, purr when they sit in your lap, and mate for life. A toucan’s bill is beautiful to some and to others a
GROSSLY MONSTROUS APPENDAGE: three times better than elephant ears for letting off heat but a burden on chilly nights, when it must shelter beneath a wing. Wikipedia says I should never, ever feed rats to a toucan but if I get one, I intend to seek care advice elsewhere. Of bills, the
SWORDBILL HUMMINGBIRD: only bird with a bill longer than its entire body, so long that it must useinstead its toes to clean itself. Perches with chin aloft, to reduce neck strain. Given the name ensifera from the Latin ensis (sword) and ferre (to carry) by
AUGUSTE BOISSONNEAU: whose own name was an excellent one. It’s hard to imagine being underestimated with a name like his. Ensifera and the passionflower are partners in
EXTREME COEVOLUTION: ensifera’s beak the exact length of the passionflower’s tube of nectar, so she can eat only this, and the passionflower can be pollinated by no one else. When ensifera lays her tiny eggs, they are cradled by moss cups on the forest floor and the delicacy of this lifestyle is very touching. Other passionflowers are sipped by a bat called
TUBE-LIPPED: whose lower lip extends far beyond the upper and rolls in a funnel shape. The function of the tube-lip is unknown, as it’s not a match to any flower. NatGeo Kids tells of a bat in the family anoura that, if the bat were a person, nine feet would be the length of his
TONGUE: the longest relative to body size of any mammal, the base of which is in the bat's rib cage near his heart, where he keeps it rolled up when not eating. Otherwise he’d need a very long snout to house it, and this would make difficult the gathering of insects. Other anouras don’t have long tongues and also are missing a tail, though in the case of the
TAILED TAILESS BAT: it’s unclear what is missing.
André Breton wrote in 1929 that the pleasures life offers to man are akin to those offered to the ant, by an anteater’s tongue. The giant anteater’s tongue is attached anoura style, deep in her chest, which she can unfurl at the right moment through a tiny hole. She cannot open her mouth further. If she must yawn she does so with extreme refinement, I guess. The giant has
NO TEETH but claws so long they’re in the way, so she folds them under and walks on her knuckles. She gallops from danger if she can, but if cornered will rear up and slash. A teenaged zookeeper in Buenos Aires was killed this way, by a giant named Ramon. The anteater stands also to give birth, gravity lowering single soft babies into the woolly cradle of her tail.
I TOO am funneled belly-ward as seasons pass, feathers without color, mouth the shape of no flower, heart far from my tongue. Still I paddle with as much humor as I can muster, cling with as much grace, the only choice to unfurl my pale expanse on the tide and witness change, undulating in.
Sarah has been teaching psychology at Bard College for 16 years, working with undergraduates (in upstate New York), preschool-aged children (in her research), and wild chimpanzees (in Kibale, Uganda). Her academic writing has appeared in journals including the Journal of Cognition and Development, Folia Primatologica, and Scientific American; her creative nonfiction writing appears in places including Plume, The Common, Unbroken, Passages North, and Terrain.
