Lucy the Chimpanzee

Around the late 1960s, a psychological experiment  was conducted by Dr. Maurice Temerlin, to explore what happened if he and his wife raised a baby chimpanzee as if she was their own daughter. Over the course of twelve years Lucy the chimp had learned to make tea, dress herself, draw with markers, and even communicate with sign language. Before long Lucy had started to grow a lot, having developed the strength to rip apart the Temerlin's house, and the couple had to stop their experiment. They wanted to release Lucy into the wild to honor her, but unfortunately she had become so attached to her family, she became depressed, she didn't eat, and got very sick. Within 2 years of the Temerlin's stopping their experiment, a friend of Lucy's, who had supervised the chimp's release, found the skeleton of Lucy. She had appeared to be skinned and her hands and feet were no were to be found. This suggests that poachers, must likely aware of Lucy's relationship with humans, had taken advantage of her.

I thought this story was pretty powerful, and although Lucy's end was tragic, I think the experiment was worthwhile. It showed us that under the care of humans, chimps can become more and more like us. After billions of years of evolution, only ten years can dissolve the gaps between the two species.

Listen to Lucy's story on Radiolab HERE

Thinking Like a Mountain

"The cowmen who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf's job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain."

In the article "Thinking Like a Mountain" by Aldo Leopard, he describes a scene in nature of how everything need to be in balance to survive. For example, wolves control the population of deer, who would otherwise eat all the plants up if they overpopulate. Leopard suggests that while cowmen try to protect their cows from wolves, they don't see that the increased cow population will lead a shortage in natural resources.

I agree with Mr. Leopard and I like how he used the mysterious howl of the wolf to tie everything together. He is a very interesting writer and made me think about different relationships in nature and how we humans fit into it.

What it Takes to be a Tree

"It takes a magnifying glass to look at a giant tree..."  This was a quote from science writer Richard Preston. In his TED talk in 2008, he explained the vastness of Sequoias, how each tree is its own ecosystem and how massive these beasts are. Preston explained that the moss and lichen developed on one of these trees could have taken 700 hundred years to grow, and even the smallest plant could help direct oxygen down into the trees roots. No wonder a magnifying glass would be helpful.

 So few people have climbed these trees that the unexplored canopy can be described as a lost world. Even species still undiscovered live and thrive in these trees. In 2006, Preston was part of a climbing team that found an unknown type of golden brown ant on Hyperion, one of the largest Sequoias. Curiously enough, those ants were never found on any other redwood.

But these trees were not the only thing Preston talked about. In the East, a deadly invasive tree parasite, the Woolly Adelgid, has killed a lot of the eastern Hemlocks causing many complex ecosystems to be lost. Most like that parasite, the pine beetle here in Colorado has done a considerable amount of damage too.

This TED talk was very interesting and I would love to learn more about trees, their own ecosystems and also how to stop the spread the stop of deadly invasive species like the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid and the Pine Beetle. But for now I think I'm going to take my magnifying glass and look around the forest a bit...


Interested too? Click HERE to see Richard Preston's TED talk.