Elephants' nemesis: the Honeybee

Enormous elephant versus a swarm of honeybees - which would flee first?

I watched Natural World's Queen of the Savannah last night and part of the programme featured a farmer called Peter who had an irrigated plantation in Kenya which migrating elephants loved to decimate. He'd come up with a plan - or rather the Save the Elephant's Elephants and Bees Research team had - which saw his land ring-fenced with honeybee hives (all attached together by wire).  Migrating honeybees were also attracted to Peter's plot of sunflowers and plants growing in the parched Savannah and they swarmed into the man-made hives, creating a natural defence against an elephant invasion.

You could see the elephants sniffing the air as they approached all the lush vegetation; you could almost see a spring in their step...until they also smelt the queen bee in one of the hives in front of them. They stood stock still; the matriarch flapping her ears, raising her trunk and stepping backwards and forwards in agitation. Apparently, the honeybees make a beeline (sorry!) for the elephant's tender and ill-protected ears, eyes and inside of their trunks - aggressive guard honeybees are programmed to defend their leader, the Queen, to the death.  

The man-elephant-honeybee triangle is a beautiful example of how man and animals can work together, without harming either in the process. Man provides bees with a home, bees drive off elephants and provide honey (unless they eat it all before migrating), and elephants are saved from being shot or poisoned to keep them away from crops. Wouldn't it be good if more man/animal relations could be this harmonious...?!

Dickens and Beastly London

To celebrate Charles Dickens' 200th birthday (one day out), I went on a search to see if I could find out what he thought of animals.

From his writing: I know from reading Oliver Twist that he could describe the animal life in London perfectly - in this extract he's describing market day at Smithfield Market, which was near to St Paul's Cathedral:

'It was market morning. The ground was covered nearly ankle deep with filth and mire; and a thick steam perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney tops, hung heavily above ...Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and vagabonds of every low grade, were mingled together in a dense mass: the whistling of drovers, the barking of dogs, the bellowing and plunging of beasts, the bleating of sheep, and the grunting and squealing of pigs; the cries of hawkers, the shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all sides, the ringing of bells, and the roar of voices that issued from every public house; the crowding, pushing, driving, beating, whooping and yelling; the hideous and discordant din that resounded from every corner of the market; and the unwashed, unshaven, squalid, and dirty figures constantly running to and fro, and bursting in and out of the throng, rendered it a stunning and bewildering scene which quite confused the senses.'

Sounds horrendous, doesn't it?! Not just for the animals, but for the residents who lived next to the market and witnessed the cruelty, smelt the pong and had to negotiate irate beasts on the streets.

Dickens as an animal campaigner: He was one of the only public figures to endorse the 'Home for Lost Dogs' proposed by Mrs Mary Tealby, from Holloway in September 1860, when papers such as The Times ridiculed the idea because it took pity and charity away from children. Dickens argued:


‘I think it is rather hard to laugh this humane effort to scorn. If people really think it wrong to spend a very very little money on that poor cur whose face I frankly own often haunts my memory, after I have hardened myself successfully against him – if people really do consider it an injustice to the poor, to give to this particular institution, let them leave it to its fate; but I think it is somewhat hard that they should turn the whole scheme into ridicule, or assail it with open ferocity as a dangerous competitor, with other enterprises for public favour.’


In later years this dog's home became known as Battersea Dogs' and Cats' Home!

Dickens as an animal lover: Probably Dickens' most famous pet was a raven called 'Grip' which found immortality in his Barnaby Rudge as the companion to the 'idiotic' (Dickens' description) Barnaby. Grip is now stuffed and can be visited at the Free Library of Philadelphia. While Dickens was distraught at the death of his bird in 1841, it seems that Grip did have a dark side: he had a taste for coach seat linings, wheel paint, the ankles of Dickens' children and was well-known for molesting the butcher in nearby streets. 


I've only scrapped the surface of my findings about Dickens....much more can be seen in my new book 'Beastly London' which will be published just as soon as I can find a publisher who will do the book, or the animals contained in it, justice. (Images from Wellcome Images)

Uggie retires - lucky boy

I've been meaning to write about Uggie who 'stars' in the silent film The Artist for a while now, but haven't really had the hook I've needed...until now. He's going to be retired (from feature films) by his owners after he's competed for the Golden Collars canine movie awards in February. By letting Uggie grow old peacefully, rather than pushing him back into the Hollywood limelight, his trainers at the Animal Savvy agency have shown a great respect for this Jack Russell. After all, there are plenty of less scrupulous trainers who'd have kept Uggie going to cash in on his celebrity.

Compare Uggie's blessed life - his favourite food is sausages and he's going to retire in the Los Angeles sun next to a swimming pool - with other less fortunate canine entertainers in London, c.1850. Mayhew, the chronicler of London's poor and downcast, interviewed an ‘old, ill and poor Italian’ who owned three dancing dogs. Originally, he had arrived from Palma with ten dogs, but over the years they had died - it's unclear how they died, but you can be sure it wasn't just from old age. Mayhew reports that the Italian was kind to his animals, but, through necessity, he had to make them work hard on the streets to earn a living. He dressed them in jackets and hats and he played music while they danced, jumped over sticks and through hoops. These dogs performed from 9am to 7-8pm, dancing between 20-40 times a day; and for all this effort the performances were rewarded with only two or three shillings, and sometimes nothing at all. It was a dog's life...


(Images: Uggie image from the NME website and (right) Charles Wood and his dancing dog, 1815, from John Thomas Smith's Vagabondiana from Spitalsfield Life blog)

Humanimals Season

Just stumbled across this series of exhibitions at UCL Grant Museum of Zoology. Of particular interest in the Humanimals Season is the 'Art by Animals' show - can animals paint and transfer thoughts and emotions to the canvas, or is the 'art' just a load of squiggles? I'm not sure; although I can believe that the animals are enjoying the physical process of daubing paint and seeing the result. I have a three year old son and his painting, at the moment, consists of smearing loads of paint on and turning whatever he WAS doing into a brown mess - so perhaps these animals really are choosing where to place their paints....we will never know, I shouldn't think.

(Image: Digital Master by a chimpanzee; taken from www.culture24.org.uk)

Emotional Life of Cows

I haven't been around for ages....another good excuse, though - another baby (gorgeous girl called Freya). So bit of a shock to the system when I got an email asking me to write a piece for the 'Comment is Free' Guardian website on the emotional life of cows! I haven't written about cows for ages - so inbetween feeds late at night I got the grey matter in gear again and tapped something out. In the cold light of day, it doesn't read too badly. Nice to be back writing again.

'Free Dog Food' - What Dog Wouldn't?

My quite-grown-up-now black lab (who is two-and-a-half-years old) has finally decided that larking about madly and upsetting everyone, and everything, is a juvenile pastime. She has aged quietly over the last few months - perhaps the spaying helped? - and has taken her new family member (Cameron - 17 months) in her stride. He is totally besotted by her and will hug and kiss her given the opportunity; however, Duffy is not so keen on his attentions and tends to move away rapidly if she even hears the slightest toddler advance. Mind you, she will share her stick with him when the sun is shining (see below).

So good is Duffy now (except when I repeatedly, and ineffectually, call her back when she's on the scent of something sooooo interesting), that when I was asked by Burgess to try a large pack of dog food for free (well, in return for a review), how could I resist, on Duffy's behalf?

The food duly arrived - Supadog's Beef Casserole. I have to say that I was extremely happy with the food Duffy was already eating - Burns' Adult Food - but I was not so happy with its price tag (at c.£23 for 7.5kg, which lasted just under 2 weeks). Duffers is not a fussy dog, it has to be said, but she has wolfed down the pieces of beef (or large and small chunks of gristle/fat/non-descript) in the Beef Casserole, which are added to the biscuit-looking dry feed. After the chunks, she laps up the gravy, which appears when hot water is added to the feed. Lastly, there's the biscuit part, which has some rather ominous bright red and green specks in it which appear when it's soaked. So, Duffy loves this casserole dish. And I love it for the price - she's eating half of what is recommended as she put on loads of weight when I gave her the full amount. Not only is she eating a very small portion (compared with her Burns food), but a 12.5kg bag costs just over £25; so I'm quids in.

However, there's one problem. Duffy's coat is one of her best assets - in Scotland, her Granny says she has a beautiful 'Jacket' - but she's been on Supadog for about three weeks now and her Jacket is decidedly scruffy: quite a bit duller (the pic above shows her with a bright coat), and she's got some dandruff. I've added some vegetable oil to her feeds (she's still fed twice a day) for the last few days and I can't yet comment on whether this is helping her coat back to its full glory. So here's the rub: does her downturn in coat condition indicate that the extra cost of the previous feed is worth paying? I don't know as yet, but I'm going to finish the bag Burgess sent us, and keep up with the oil...the Budget is out tomorrow and I maybe counting my pennies very closely!

N.B UPDATE: Duffy's coat is again beautiful - perhaps she was just going through a moult - and I have recommended others to the food...

I'm quite interested in the power of this blog-review-advertising (or Social Media) that Burgess have adopted - have any other bloggers been asked to review items? Perhaps I should do it with my books. I've had reviews in the LA Times and Newsday in the US last week for MILK, but perhaps this is another avenue...I've just seen this site; they pay you to review...can't be bad.

MILK published

Such a long time since I last posted...but I have been busy. And here's one piece of proof. My book MILK for Reaktion's Edible Series was published at the end of April. I wrote it while pregnant with my son, who is now 16 months old, so you can see that the process of book researching, writing, finding illustrations, writing captions, editing and indexing is a drawn out affair - but mostly enjoyable; especially when you receive your authors' copies in the post, with your name emblazoned on the dust cover. What a special moment that is.

Here's the MILK jacket blurb:

Milk, poured over cereal in the morning and splashed in coffee, is part of daily life in the West. Though wordwide demand for milk is growing every year, the majority of the world's population cannot digest raw cow's milk. Of those that do drink milk regularly, most have never actually tasted raw milk; what is known as milk today is a heavily treated version far removed form its natural state.

In Milk, Hannah Velten explores the myths and misconceptions surrounding the ubiquitous drink. Modern milk processing produces a safe, clean beverage that is very different from pure milk straight from the cow. Nonetheless, there are many advocates of raw milk that long for the days before pasteurization, homogenization, and standardization. Yet milk in the time before these scientific processes was even less natural than today—known then as the 'white poison', it was bacteria-ridden, mixed with additives to make it look like milk after the cream was removed, filled with chemicals to promote its shelf life, and extremely watered down.
Now that milk is considered a staple of a healthy and balanced diet, Velten investigates how and why conceptions of milk have shifted in the public consciousness, from the science of nutrition to the dairy industry’s advertising campaigns. This highly illustrated exploration of one of the most fundamental foods and drinks also includes recipes for ice-cream, milkshakes, and even milk paint. Milk will surprise and entertain in equal measure.

The moment of unwrapping your newly published book is so special, in fact, that I have found renewed vigour for the book I'm currently writing (when Cameron is asleep) - a history of animals in London. I'm on to the blood sports chapter now and it's grizzly reading for the most part - bear-baiting, bull-baiting, cock-fighting, dog-fights, rat-killing, pigeon shooting, etc. But I keep thinking that if I don't write this history and fail to show how Londoners used to regard and treat animals, then the animals' lives will somehow have been wasted - at least a nod of recognition to their past brutal treatment will bring animals out of the shadows and highlight the important role they played in entertaining the lower, and upper, classes of London.

I'm also getting married in June, so it's chaos in my brain! Luckily, I can sit down at the computer and switch in to 'writing mode'; otherwise I'd be in trouble as I have a November deadline for the Beastly London book....argh!