Sunday, November 27, 2011

Life.. in the jungle

Nature never ceases to bewilder me.
not only the variety of creation, but also the ways of the world, so to say!
as evolved mental beings, we impose our mental models to understand evolution and the myriad models of representing life.
but still, there are so many unanswered questions.
recently, while walking to the Dodda Sampige, the jeep had a puncture and not having the right tools, the driver went up ahead to get help and spares.
while that was getting fixed, some of us decided to take a walk.
one of the persons in the group pointed out a ‘Gobbare Hula’.
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an insect that would curl up to protect itself.
he demonstrated how that happens and we caught it on camera.
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we walked further and came to a small breach on the path, and did not want to get our feet wet in that muddy water.
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we saw another jeep with the spares coming our way and decided to get back to our jeep.
we could not miss a fresh squish on the road, which was the Hula we had seen just a few minutes ago.
squished by the second jeep.
we were, naturally, disturbed.
it surely was not normal for a jeep to go by that path regularly – particularly being a protected area with a requirement for advance permission to go there.
it was also not normal for someone to interfere with the Hula, to make it curl up on the road.
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maybe it might still have got crushed, we thought – on the other side of the road or by someone else..
the only evidence of this Hula being there was the photo we had taken!
there must be zillions of such lives and deaths in this world, that go un-chronicled, and even without leaving any trace or impact.
i remembered the book – the selfish gene – where the ‘desire’ to propagate was so strong in a gene that it figures out how to stay on!
i saw an example of that also in that jungle.
a mango sapling, growing out of a seed that was embedded in elephant poop!
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the seed had survived the elephant’s digestive system and at the first opportunity sprouted leaves..
not sure how long it can survive, without proper roots and nourishment..
maybe someone would transplant it or take it home.
who knows – that might even spawn off a new breed of mangoes – which would be the mango equivalent of ‘kopi luwak’!

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