Date Time
From A to Z: New volume examines animals’ role in British Empire, racial politics
“Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times,” co-edited by Illinois history professor Antoinette Burton, examines the roles that animals played in the British Empire – both in advancing and in disrupting British imperial power.
This image from the Second Anglo-Afghan War shows John Bull trying to stamp on scorpions that are half insect and half Afghan tribal fighter. The cartoon reflects “the challenges that the colonial creature world posed to British imperial ambition,” Burton wrote.
“Stamping It Out,” by John Gordon Thomson. From Fun, Aug. 11, 1880. Courtesy of Bodleian Library.
Some probe-foraging birds locate their buried prey by detecting vibrations in the substrate using a specialized tactile bill-tip organ. This remarkable ‘sixth sense’ is known as remote touch, and the associated organ is found in probe-foraging species belonging to both the palaeognathous (in kiwi) and neognathous (in ibises and shorebirds) groups of modern birds. Intriguingly, a structurally similar bill-tip organ is also present in the beaks of living, non-probing palaeognathous birds (e.g. emu and ostriches) that do not use remote touch. A team of researchers from South Africa provides evidence that the lithornithids the earliest known palaeognathous birds which evolved in the Cretaceous period had the ability to use remote touch.