The Animals We Think We Know

Do all these animal videos spur us to action or lull us to sleep?

Dear friends,

An anteater crosses a road with her baby clinging on for dear life. A newly hatched nest of sea turtles rushes to the ocean. A herd of giant reindeer bed down in the snow, quiet beneath the aurora borealis. A mottled tree trunk moves just slightly and the grey owl perched in front of it emerges from its camouflage. A tiny, orphaned kangaroo looks lost and agitated until it jumps into a makeshift cloth pouch held by a park ranger. A spotted whale shark corkscrews its massive body through a cloud of fish that disperses and reforms like a group of starlings.

That is just a sampling of the short videos of birds and animals that have flashed through my life in the last month. I have followed a few bird and wildlife-focused accounts on social media in recent years and now the algorithm continues to suggest new ones every day, essentially flooding my feeds with critters large and small. It’s an odd experience at this moment as the world faces what the UN calls a “nature crisis” driven by climate change, invasive species, pollution, and humans’ ongoing exploitation of natural resources. Just last week, for instance, the United Nations released its first report on the State of the World’s Migratory Species, and it showed more than one in five (or 22 percent) of migratory species now face extinction due to changes and loss to their habitats.

I reflected on this juxtaposition when video footage of a group of land-roaming polar bears showed up in the news cycle a few weeks ago.

But unlike the other videos in my feed, these weren’t there to soothe or entertain their audience. Part of a larger study published in Nature, they show how the bears have adapted to living longer on land now that there is less ice in the Canadian arctic. In the footage, the massive animals eat berries, grass, and moose antlers, rather than the variety of marine mammals they typically thrive on when the ice is present. In the study, the animals were seen swimming and locating food, but they didn’t have anywhere to eat it. In one case a young female, “found a beluga carcass and was only observed feeding on it for 35 seconds over the 6 hours that she was periodically observed near it. Instead, she appeared to use the carcass more as a buoy to rest upon.”

“Although polar bears on land exhibit remarkable behavioral plasticity, our findings reinforce the risk of starvation, particularly in [younger bears], with forecasted increases in the onshore period,” the researchers wrote in the study.

Screenshots of video captured by the U.S. Geological Survey.

None of this is entirely surprising. We’ve known that polar bears are faring poorly as the climate warms. But can we really see them?

In 2000, TIME magazine famously featured a polar bear on the edge of an ice shelf with the caption “Arctic Meltdown: This polar bear is in danger, and so are you.” That same year,  Greenpeace staged a die-in wherein activists in polar bear costumes lay down in front of attendees to Conference of the Parties (COP6). In 2006, Al Gore’s climate documentary An Inconvenient Truth included a heartstring-tugging animation of a polar bear trying to climb onto melting ice and failing. And in 2008, thanks to petitions from several environmental NGOs, the animals were listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA)—a highly politicized act that didn’t result in any marked policy changes at the time.

Since then, the animal-as-symbol has gone from a simple (even simplistic) warning to a haunting, persuasive image, to what many now see as an oversaturated cliché. As Sierra O’Neill, a geology professor at the University of Exeter, writes in her fantastic 2022 article that polar bear imagery has endured over the last twenty-five years because it originates in an idea of the arctic as “distant and vast, and also white, pristine, wild, and untouched,” a blank space that “visually represent climate change as something distant in both time and space.”

Over time, O’Neill says, images of these animals won’t quite leave us alone. She writes:

By the end of the 2010s, polar bears had become associated with little else but climate change. It’s the Skin You’re Living In was a film designed to explore and challenge climate visuals, through the medium of polar bear imagery. The film flits between the real and the virtual. Sometimes, it looks like a person dressed as a polar bear, and sometimes like it might be a real bear; the polar bear is sometimes human, and the human is sometimes the polar bear. Polar bears and humans haunt each other in a statement from scientist Patricia Romero Lankao at the launch of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report Working Group II, too: ‘the polar bear is us.’ 

In recent years, many have rejected the large white bear as a symbol of climate change in favor of closer, more relatable visuals, such as those of people in the aftermath of storms, fires, and floods. “Overexposure has turned the polar bear into a fluffy, environmental cliché, like saving the whales or hugging trees, as opposed to a real-life carnivore with dangerous teeth and claws,” wrote Kate Yoder in Grist last year. 

But for those of us who are still inclined to wonder about the state of actual polar bears—and whales and trees—the fact that they have teeth and claws doesn’t have to be an unappealing sidenote. Their innate predatory behavior, and how it is being disrupted, is an important part of the story.

As I watched the recent footage in which a bear tears through the flesh of a recently killed bird and eats a tuft of grass, I found myself considering the calories it takes to keep looking for more food, and the cyclical and sometimes cruel nature of survival—much like I do when my 10-yr-old and I watch the survivalists trying to make it through the winter on Alone.

Watching those polar bears, I felt the same stabbing discomfort I’d felt when I saw footage from the 2020 Australian wildfires of singed koalas rescued from high up in burnt trees, and when I considered the fates of the thousands of penguins who disappeared last fall when an ice shelf collapsed in Antarctica. I also noticed that it also lit up the part of my brain that has gotten used to seeing wild animals on demand.

When the documentary Winged Migration was released in 2001, moviegoers were able to see migratory birds make their annual journeys across all seven continents, thanks to cameras attached to their bodies. And when those cameras captured footage of arctic nesting grounds that had never been seen by humans, I wondered: Should we have such easy window onto the natural world? What does that do to our brains? And are there places to which humans shouldn’t have access?

That was over 20 years ago, and I suppose I have acclimated to the idea that technology has given anyone with access to the internet unending footage of the natural world. Or, perhaps it’s more accurate to say, I participate even if I may never fully get used it. Thanks to telephoto and infrared technology, my child and I have seen birds enact intricate mating dances, African penguins fighting off predators, and bats pollinating night-blooming cactus flowers, all from our couch.

It’s not possible for most of us to grasp the devastation and loss taking place on the planet right now. And seeing glimpses of animals thriving in nature can provide rare moments of beauty, brief opportunities to rest.

But I can’t help wondering if the deluge of animal photos and videos aren’t part of a larger media landscape that allows us to stay numb in the face of the real crisis at hand. Yes, they can evoke a sense of connection, but they’re also missing an element of reciprocity and relation. And that part seems crucial to waking up the parts of ourselves that wants to do more than stay still and witness.

What do you think? What does it mean to understand and care about animals—and trees, plants, and fungi for that matter—we don’t have a real time connection with? What have we traded in exchange for all this on-demand access to the intricacies of their lives? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Climate news you might have missed

When climate scientists become activists

Just a few years ago, it was rare for climate scientists to step outside the bounds of their profession to speak out on the crisis. A feature story published last week in Nature suggests that the tide has turned. The piece, from reporter Daniel Grossman, profiles prominent scientist-turned-activists Rose Abramoff, Greta Dargie, and Peter Kalmus and looks at several surveys of scientists on climate.

One study, conducted by researchers in the Netherlands found that nearly one third of the scientists who responded had engaged in climate advocacy, while “23 percent had joined legal protests and 10%—nearly 900 scientists—had engaged in civil disobedience.” Another study of the general public found that 74 percent of Americans approve of scientists advocating for climate-related policies.

Abramoff was fired for civil disobedience in 2022 after peer-reviewing several chapters of the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (“My job can’t just be to calmly document the end of the world,” she told Nature.) Dargie has been arrested twice, and Kalmus has received warnings from his employers at NASA. But, by and large, the article suggests that actions by scientists like them appears to be paving a path for others to be more vocal in just the last few years.

That shift is also reflected in Grossman’s experience reporting the piece. “While talking about that experience on the train, Abramoff welled up and wiped away a tear,” he wrote. “It’s the third time in eight months that a climate scientist or climate negotiator has choked up during an interview with me, something I haven’t witnessed before in my 25 years of climate reporting.”

Who’s at the wheel?

“We are living through perhaps the biggest and most important policy experiment in human history,” wrote author and Swedish Professor Brett Chistophers in a recent op-ed for the Guardian. “We have been relying primarily on the private sector to put an end to the climate crisis.”

Christophers points to the dismal state of the S&P Global Clean Energy Index, and the fact that clean energy just hasn’t resulted in the kinds of profit that many in the sector hoped it would have. Meanwhile, he adds, governments have mainly been doling out tax breaks, grants, and other incentives rather than investing in the energy transition themselves (China is the one exception) or taking a war-time approach to climate and demanding that companies invest.

This vacuum leaves it up to investment firms and asset managers like BlackRock. But even they appear to be making a u-turn, as the Financial Times reported recently. Citing the fact that investors are backing out of Climate Action 100+, an association of investors that engages with polluting companies to reduce emissions, the story points to the fact that asset managers face opposition from Republican lawmakers and says there’s a “growing concerns that climate investing is for do-gooders rather than capitalists.” Can one really be both? That appears to be the question for the ages.

Are the Oscars and climate conversations compatible?

I’ve written a little about the fact that Hollywood is lagging behind when it comes to anything close to representing our current climate reality. Now, Good Energy and the Buck Lab for Climate and the Environment at Colby College have created what they’re calling a Bechdel test for climate in films. The researchers at Colby ran this year’s Oscar-nominated films and found that only 3 of the 13 had any mention of climate change: Nyad, Mission Impossible, and Barbie (that one’s a stretch, imho). They’re inviting others to weigh in about other movies they’ve seen this year and said, “We hope to see 50% of Oscar-nominated films (that are set on Earth in the present or future) pass the Climate Reality Check by 2027.

Is it possible to build a media landscape that doesn’t cater to Big Oil?

The recent layoffs at news outlets have been disheartening to say the least. But I appreciate the way Drilled Media’s Amy Westervelt is connecting the dots between advertorials, oil money, and the breakdown of today’s media landscape and explicit urges the philanthropy world to engage in fixing it. In a recent screed, she wrote,
“… solving this problem, answering the question of how to support consistent, independent reporting on climate that serves the public interest, is absolutely critical to getting to a place where we can adequately confront the climate crisis (also, bonus! pretty necessary for a healthy democracy).”

On the brighter side

1. All hail flood plains! As a growing number of farmers and ranchers begin fallowing land in California’s Central Valley to meet groundwater laws, a small group of people have been actively imagining ways to rebuild the landscape. I’m especially interested in efforts to rebuild natural floodplains, which allow water to meander and soak into the aquifers. Ian James’ latest LA Times piece on the topic is well worth reading.

2. Ducks have long been used to control weeds in rice paddies, but the practice disappeared for the last 50+ years as herbicides and pesticides offered what was seen as a simpler solution. Now, some farms in Japan are bringing the practice back. (Yes, it’s a cute animal video!)

3. A new $7 billion federal program, Solar for All, is poised to help get Inflation Reduction Act dollars to more than 700,000 low-income households across the nation.

4. Diversity on farms doesn’t just benefit ecosystems. A recent study in the UK—where pests are a significant problem for apple growers—found that the farmers who planted strips of wildflowers along the edge of their operations drew significantly more wild predatory insects to the trees, result was a markedly higher yield of undamaged apples.  “Only 48% of trees had fruit damage compared to 80% in orchards without flowers,” the researchers noted, adding that the practice goes hand-in-hand with reducing reliance on pesticides.

5. Members of the Karuk and Yurok Indigenous communities in Northern California are planting thousands of tiny acorns in the place where several large dams have recently been removed, freeing the Klamath river. The new oak trees—and the plants they grow in symbiosis with—will help retain moisture along the river and prevent invasive weeds from taking over.

Take good care,
Twilight