Nothing in nature goes to waste. This was what we documented by setting up a camera-trap at the carcass of a dead gaur. On 23 December 2012, the staff of the Tamil Nadu Forest Department found a dead young adult gaur on the boundary of the Anamalai Tiger Reserve and a tea plantation. In the […]
Tag: animal behaviour
Turning the turtle
At the edge of the foaming sea, behind the spent waves on the beach, shapes materialize in the night. They are ancient shapes that have appeared countless times over millions of years. They slowly pulse towards the shore, their domed shells barely showing at the surface. Under a waning gibbous moon, scaly flippers strike the […]
In the interest of other animals
How should we as humans value and relate to other animals? When we use animals in research, in zoos and aquaria, as food items or body parts, as specimens or experimental models, as pets, as machismo-inflating trophies to be bagged, or just as objects for entertainment, do we fully understand their needs, their welfare, their […]
The deaths of Osama and a lesson for humanity
Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad in Pakistan on 2 May 2011, say the news reports. Really?! Or should I say—not again?! He’s been killed twice in India already! Once in 2006 and again in 2008. Yes, it made news splashes even then, although not as large a splash as his most recent death. […]
Lone palm tree, Sir!
It is a year, today, since he passed on from this world, almost unnoticed, unappreciated even. Not that he looked for appreciation. For as long and as far as I knew him, he looked for other things in his long and self-made life. Till the end, there were things that could light up his eye—a […]