Questions and Answers

As they were receiving my letters, the children in the classes came up with an amazing variety of questions, which have been fun and challenging to answer. Here are their questions and my answers:

Catelyn asks: What is your favorite animal? Have you ever seen this animal in real life?

Well, I'm an avid bird-watcher, so my favorite animals are birds, of course. By the time Lee and I finished our trip to Kenya and Tanzania, we had seen exactly 2000 different kinds of birds around the world. I've rejoiced in the beauty of all of them, but if I had to choose my favorites, those would be the Birds-of-Paradise, which are found in New Guinea and the surrounding islands. We have seen about twenty species in this family and would like to see more (though travel in New Guinea is rather difficult -- the year before we were there, some of the local people had been shooting arrows at small airplanes as they were landing). Here's a link to a video clip of some of the Birds-of-Paradise. We've seen most of the ones in the video and quite a few others.

Katie: What is your favorite country to travel?

Madagascar, definitely, though it too is difficult to travel in. Madagascar is a very big island that broke away from Africa about 160,000,000 years ago. The plants and animals that it carried away with it have evolved on their own since then and, so, are very different from those anywhere else in the world. About 80% of everything that lives on Madagascar (plants, mammals, birds, lizards, etc.) is endemic, which means it does not exist anywhere else in the world. Going there is almost like visiting another planet. The birds are wonderful, but the lemurs are even better.

The lemurs are primates that evolved from something rather like a bushbaby. They arose on the African continent after Madagascar separated from Africa, and it is believed that the lemurs managed to colonize Madagascar as the result of accidentally being swept away on a tree carried to the sea by a flooding river that rafted them across to Madagascar. Once on Madagascar, they adapted to a myriad of different ecological niches and diversified into numerous species (about half of which went extinct when humans finally arrived on Madagascar a thousand years ago). Meanwhile, the lemurs left in Africa lost out to the monkeys and apes when they appeared on the scene, so the ones on Madagascar are the only ones left.

We saw about twenty species of lemurs when we were in Madagascar. One of our favorites was the Indri, which woke us several mornings with its eerie call. Here's a video clip of an Indri.

Kevin: While working at Princton did you ever meet John Bonner?

I never met him personally, but I did attend several of his public lectures. He was much revered here at Princeton. I remember being fascinated by those cool videos you have found. He was a wonderful man.

Albie: What is your favorite type of plant?

Oh, my, that would have to be the Baobab tree. If you've ever read The Little Prince, you will remember that the Prince was careful to remove any Baobab seedlings every morning so that Baobab trees didn't overwhelm his tiny planet. We saw Baobabs both in Madagascar and in East Africa. Those are Wildebeests in the foreground in this photo, and they're about the size of a cow, so that will give you an idea of how huge Baobabs are.

Baobab and Wildebeests Tarangire National Park (Click on any image to enlarge it)

Even elephants can't knock Baobabs over, though they do like to scrape off the bark with their tusks, as it is good to eat (if you're an elephant). Something very worrying is that the experts say that there are no young Baobabs anywhere in the world. All of the ones we saw were hundreds, or even thousands, of years old. Nobody knows why new Baobabs are not sprouting, as the trees still produce fruit and the fruits contain seeds.

Baobab gouged by elephants Tarangire

Nick: Have your ever seen any protists like slime molds?

(Another protist project)

Oh my, no, I haven't and I would like to. I'll add that to my "bucket list". (Old people like Lee and me keep lists of things we must do or see before we kick the bucket; that keeps us very busy, as the world is such a wonderful place to explore.)

Ian asks: What is the difference between a normal African family's house and an American family's house?

Well, you must remember that Africa has many cultures, each with its own style of house. Much of the time that we were in Kenya and Tanzania, we were in the land of the Maasai people. The Maasai have, for the most part, retained their traditional way of life. They herd goats and cattle and eat only meat, milk, and blood (Maasai children are never told to eat their vegetables). They have adopted only a few innovations from Western culture, most noticeably plastic containers, the wheelbarrow, the bicycle, and the cellphone. This photo shows a typical Maasai house. It is made of twigs woven together and covered with cow dung. We were invited inside it and found a central firepit surrounded by a raised platform that served as the beds for the family; that took up most of the space. The climate there is such that the people do most of their work outside, so the house didn't need to be any larger. (By the way, there is no noticeable odor of dung.)

Maasai with house Tanzania

Will asks: Have you ever petted a lemur?

Yes, I have, but it wasn't a truly wild animal. It was one that had been taken from its parents as a baby to be a pet. Once it was grown and too rambunctious to keep around, it had been taken to a national park. However, it didn't know how to take care of itself in the wild, so the rangers allowed it and another like it to stay in their headquarters.	Ring-tailed Lemur Zombits National Park, Madagascar
Here's my journal entry about the encounter: November 23, 2007, Zombits National Park, Madagascar ---------------------------------------------------- After lunch, just as we were about to say goodbye to the nice rangers, they opened up their museum, and the world suddenly seemed filled with lemurs. The rangers keep two captive-reared Ring-tailed Lemurs (who can't be returned to the wild) as pets there. The lemurs were glad to have some of our leftover fruit and scampered about everywhere, happily going onto people's shoulders and arms. Our guide Gerard revealed a new side of himself when he sat down and held one in his arms, petting it and cooing to it.	Not shy Zombits National Park
Gerard with Lemur Zombits National Park

I have also petted a bat (a fruit bat in Australia -- it had lovely, soft, golden-brown fur and was quite a delightful creature).

Anika asks: Do you speak any other languages?

I studied Latin, French, German, and Russian in school and still retain enough of all of them to be able to make out signs and such, which can be very handy. I read enough French to have read the last Harry Potter book in French (we were in Paris getting ready for an 11-hour flight to Reunion and I had already read all of the books I'd brought with me, so I really needed a book to read on the airplane and the latest Harry Potter was easy to find). I speak French less fluently, but I can order what we want in a Parisian pastry shop, which is a really important skill. I urge you to study languages while you are young; it really pays off later in life. Young brains (younger than teenagers) have special circuits for learning languages, but those circuits shut down in most people at the end of childhood. After that, learning a language no longer happens naturally and automatically. Despite not having studied any languages until I got to high school, I actually do have enough French to be able to enjoy other books in French and that enriches my life. One of my ambitions is to learn enough Italian to be able to read Dante in the original, but learning a new language at my age is really, really tough -- do it while you're young! If you have learned a bit about the origins of languages, you will notice that all of the languages I have studied belong to the Indo-European family of languages. They have all descended from a single language spoken by a small group of people about 6000 years ago. There are other language families, and it is much harder to learn languages from a family other than the one your mother tongue belongs to. The vocabulary and grammar of closely related languages seem natural to us, while those of other language families are much more difficult to understand and learn. For that reason, I was really impressed by these little kids in a Maasai primary school we visited. Their mother tongue, Maasai, is from the Nilo-Saharan language family. But their school is taught in Swahili, a common language of eastern Africa that belongs to the Niger-Congo language family. And, they proudly showed us that they could already count to 20 in English, yet another language family for them.

Maasai primary school Tanzania

Ana asks: How do you travel?

Well, we travel by just about any means, though I'll have to admit that I prefer not to have to ride a camel (or even a horse, for that matter), and I've never had the occasion to ride an elephant. Our favorite way to travel is by train. Our longest train trip was a few years ago, when we took the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Mongolia, a trip of about two thousand miles:	Trans-Siberian Railway Crossing Siberia
Mongolia is a very pretty land where many people still live in the traditional felt yurts:	Yurts Mongolia
While we were in Ulaan Baatar (the capital of Mongolia), we attended the Naadam Games, a traditional annual event that features horse-racing, archery contests, and sheep knuckle-bone shooting.	Naadam Games Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia
We like to travel by boat also. One winter, we took a coastal steamer up the coast of Norway all the way to the North Cape (the northernmost point in Europe) so that we could see the Northern Lights (the Aurora Borealis). While we were in northern Norway, I traveled a few kilometers by dogsled. When we went into the dog yard to select the dogs for our sleds, they all begged to be chosen. Here's a video clip taken by our friend Rob van der Heij. You will see that the dogs were much like human runners in that they were lean and sinewy and very active.	Dogsled ride Northern Norway (Photo by Rob van der Heij)
The trip was very cold and bumpy, but the scenery was splendid and I was glad I'd done it. (Notice how low in the sky the sun was in these photos, though this was the middle of the day. It was February, so the sun was up for only a few hours a day that far north and never rose far above the horizon.)	Melinda on dogsled Northern Norway (Photo by Rob van der Heij)
Perhaps our most exotic means of travel so far (other than the Russian icebreaker) was the dugout canoe with a washing-machine motor that took us up the Tambopata River in Peru. We had flown over the Andes from Lima to the small city of Puerto Maldonado, where we clambered down the muddy river bank to board the canoes. Unfortunately, I can't find a photo of the canoe, which was bright blue. It took us up the river for several hours. There was undisturbed rainforest on both banks, and we saw giant river otters and wonderful butterflies and birds as we rode along. I really loved traveling on the icebreaker, the Kapitan Khlebnikov.	Kapitan Khlebnikov High Arctic
I spent hours standing on the prow (wearing all the clothing I'd brought with me). When we smashed into the icepack and there was a sudden huge cracking sound as the ice split apart, the naughty child in me was delighted.	Plowing through the ice High Arctic
Cracking the ice, 0 High Arctic	Cracking the ice, 1 High Arctic
Cracking the ice, 2 High Arctic	Cracking the ice, 3 High Arctic
While we were on the icebreaker, we made many trips in Zodiacs (small rubber boats), which allowed us to get closer to the birds and other wildlife and to land at the villages that didn't have piers for the ship to dock. I'm the one nearest the top of this picture.	Out on a Zodiac High Arctic
We also made a few trips in helicopters (the ship had three).	Helicopter over the ice floes High Arctic
That allowed us to look down onto the glaciers. Another favorite trip was on a large sailboat in the Aegean Sea. One of the really wonderful parts of that was that dolphins rode in our bow wave. I don't have a video from that trip but our traveling companion Dr. Roger Moseley took this video of dolphins riding our bow wave when we were on another boat in the Sea of Cortez looking for Grey Whales. Bow-wave riding seems to be the dolphins' national sport. Mothers take their young to learn by riding in the waves made by big, slow boats, such as oil tankers. Dolphins also ride in the bow waves of whales, which is probably where the sport began.	Looking down on a glacier High Arctic

Emma asks: Have you ever seen what you believe to be a mythical creature?

No, not mythical, but almost. While we were on the icebreaker in the High Arctic, I continually searched the edges of the icepack for Narwhals. They are small whales that have a long spiral tusk (it's actually a tooth). You may have seen pictures of them. The tusks are quite beautiful and were greatly valued in Medieval Europe, where they were believed to have come from a horse-like animal, not a whale. That is the origin of the myth of the Unicorn. Here's a good National Geographic video clip showing Narwhals. Alas, we completely failed to see a Narwhal. Whenever the ship stopped at an Inuit village, the people would tell us that there'd been Narwhals passing by that morning or the previous day, but somehow we were never there at the right time (though we did see Narwhals that their hunters had killed -- very sad). The shops had lovely objects carved of Narwhal tusks. You can see a bunch of Narwhal tusks stacked in the corner of this shop in Greenland. You will see that they look exactly like the Unicorn horns one sees in the famous Unicorn tapestries and elsewhere.

Narwhal tusks for sale Greenland

On that same trip, we saw what I fear will be a mythical creature by the time you're my age, Polar Bears. Here's my journal entry describing one of those encounters: August 19, 2008, Norwegian Bay, Canada -------------------------------------- After breakfast, I was standing out on the bow again when there was an announcement that three polar bears had been sighted. Even knowing what I was looking for and that the ship had turned straight toward them, I had trouble making out the three light tan dots on one of the hundreds of ice flows around us. The ship was brought closer and we were treated to really great views of a female bear and her two second-year cubs. As they walked about on the floe, one of the cubs decided he needed a snow bath, so he stooped down and scooted along on his tummy with his head and neck going through the snow. That done, he rolled over in the snow to wash the rest of his fur. All three bears seemed to be in good condition. Rupert told us later that by living this far north, this mother bear can hunt all year around, though there is never very much prey for her. She would have denned on one of the nearby mountainous islands when she bore the cubs. I soon noticed that there were bloodstains further along the floe. The bear had made a kill there (or perhaps she was scavenging on a kill made by a male, which often happens). A Raven and a Glaucous Gull were busily scavenging on the kill, as well. Though it was clear that the mother had noticed us, she didn't seem too concerned at first. As the ship drew closer, however, she ordered the cubs to sit quietly behind her as she faced us. Finally, she led them to the edge of the floe and slipped into the water. The cubs seemed to be reluctant to follow her, but then both belly-flopped into the water and seemed to be enjoying themselves. The three of them swam away across the channel, and the Captain moved the ship away so as not to stress them further. I'm sorry that this is the closest photo we got of them, but you can at least see that they are not mythical for now.

Female Polar Bear with two cubs Norwegian Bay, Canada

Aunt Melinda