Knowing more of what I am starting to know, a lone wolf is not a romantic beast. His or her status is a walkabout, but when you walk a territory mainly devoid of potential companion alliances, what is your world like? My heart hurts; I’m not even sure what my own loneliness feels like.

Gray Wolf (Canis lupus)

At this time, there is only one documented gray wolf living in the wild in California.

On Dec. 28, 2011 a 2 ½-year-old, male gray wolf entered California after traveling from northeast Oregon. Designated OR7, his behavior, called dispersal, is not atypical of a wolf his age.

Historically, wolves inhabited California, but were extirpated. Before OR7, the last confirmed wolf in California was here in 1924 and since then, investigated “sightings” have turned out to be coyotes, dogs, wolf-dog hybrids, etc. DFG wildlife managers anticipated that wolves would eventually enter California, and have been preparing for it.

• The State of California is not intentionally reintroducing wolves.
• Gray wolves pose little direct risk to humans.
• Any wolf that enters California is protected as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.

DFG provides these maps to show the route that Wolf OR 7 has traveled since his entry into California. The maps will be updated periodically as additional data becomes available. However, there will be an intentional delay in posting new map information to protect the current location of this wolf. This wolf’s movement pattern, in terms of timing, direction and distance has so far been unpredictable. Therefore the maps will provide useful information on where he has been recently, but not where he is now.

• Map of OR7’s path in California (PDF)
  This map contains data through July 10, 2012Since July 10, OR7 has remained in the same general areas of Tehama, Plumas and Butte counties. When OR7 makes a significant move to other locations, DFG will update the map.
• Updates on Gray Wolf OR7

 

This is a photo of OR10. Another grey wolf from the Northwest, When this link breaks you will know there is shifted interest or possibly no more interest from California Fish and Wildlife (info source). I decided not to download the picture in order to upload it in a state of frozen preservation but leave it where it lies.

NY Times yesterday:

The police said on Saturday that they issued a desk appearance ticket for criminal trespass to a man who leapt from a monorail into a tiger enclosure at the Bronx Zoo on Friday.

Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman, said in an e-mail that the man, David Villalobos of Mahopac, N.Y., appeared to have a “passion for cats.”

According to Mr. Browne, Mr. Villalobos told investigators that the leap into the enclosure was motivated by a desire to be “one with the tiger.”

On Friday afternoon, Mr. Villalobos, 25, got on the Wild Asia Monorail, which glides over about 40 acres of open space, then jumped as it passed the tiger habitat. He cleared a 16-foot fence and landed near a 400-pound Siberian tiger named Bachuta.

Bachuta attacked Mr. Villalobos, who suffered a broken pelvis, a broken right shoulder, a broken right rib, a collapsed lung and a broken right ankle, which was also mauled by the tiger.

Mr. Browne said that Mr. Villalobos told the police that the jump caused most of his injuries.

“When an N.Y.P.D. sergeant asked Villalobos yesterday why he had jumped into the tiger preserve, he replied that ‘everyone in life makes choices,’ ” Mr. Browne wrote, adding: “He recalled being dragged by the tiger by the foot, and afterwards being able to pet the tiger.”

 

From an earlier NYT report on the incident:

Mr. Villalobos’s Facebook page is filled with tributes to nature and images of tigers and other wild animals. One picture of wolves carries the caption: “Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don’t trouble it, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness.”Mr. Villalobos was in stable condition at Jacobi Medical Center on Saturday.

Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness, Just Like Us
George Dvorsky, IO9, Aug 25, 2012

An international group of prominent scientists has signed The Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness in which they are proclaiming their support for the idea that animals are conscious and aware to the degree that humans are — a list of animals that includes all mammals, birds, and even the octopus.

Read More

Add’l essay: Octopuses Gain Consciousness According to Scientists Declaration, Katherine Harmon, Scientific American, August 21, 2012

“The weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness,” the scientists wrote. “Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.”

The octopus is the only invertebrate to get a shout-out at all. And plenty of research has been accumulated to back up this assertion. A 2009 study showed that some octopuses collect coconut shells to use as portable shelters—an example of tool use, according to the researchers. Other research has documented sophisticated spatial navigation and memory. Anecdotal reports from researchers, such as Jennifer Mather, describe watching octopuses in the wild make errands to collect just the right number of rocks to narrow the opening to a desired den. And laboratory experiments show a distinct change in behavior when octopuses are kept in tanks that do not have enough enrichment objects to keep them stimulated.

What about Humboldt squid? What about Deleuzian pack-conciousness?

From The New York Times, May 22 2012:

“They were totally silent, very quick and highly effective.”

The monkey population of Delhi has grown so large and aggressive that overwhelmed city officials have petitioned India’s Supreme Court to relieve them of the task of monkey control.

“We have trapped 13,013 monkeys since 2007,” said R. B. S. Tyagi, director of veterinary services for Delhi’s principal city government. Nonetheless, Delhi’s monkey population has only increased.

The reason is simple: People feed them. Monkeys are the living representatives of the cherished Hindu god Hanuman, and Hindu tradition calls for feeding monkeys on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

Dr. Tyagi expressed impatience with residents who feed the monkeys one day, then complain to the city when the monkeys steal their clothes on another day.

Dr. Tyagi’s agency has asked the city’s wildlife agency for help, but wildlife officials claim that the monkeys — a scourge of the city for years as urbanization has encroached on their original habitat — are no longer wild and are thus not their responsibility.

–The New York Times, “Indians Feed the Monkeys, Which Bite the Hand”

Stupid Animal Trick: Flying Sheep and Deer Among Hawaii’s Islands – NYTimes.com.

 

From the Maui News:

A helicopter pilot is pleading guilty to illegally flying deer from Maui to the Big Island, shedding light on a mystery that has been bewildering Hawaii: how did axis deer, an animal that can’t swim across the ocean, get to another island? But now federal authorities say the people behind the scheme also took several mouflon sheep from the Big Island and flew them to Maui.

Neither axis deer nor mouflon sheep are native to Hawaii and don’t have natural predators here. Their presence has damaged fragile native ecosystems and farms on the islands where they’ve become established. The alleged animal smugglers took the sheep to a Maui hunting ranch, and apparently didn’t release them into the wild. Even so, the sheep’s arrival on Maui for the first time deeply concerns conservationists who fear that the animals could escape or give others the idea to bring over more.

The New York Painter Allen Hirsch — Q&A – NYTimes.com.

The aluminum portrait and larger-than-life photographs on the roof and adjacent to the restaurant La Esquina… are … an homage by the New York City painter Allen Hirsch to Benjamin, his capuchin monkey who died at the age of 14, that is as much a reflection of a broken heart as any light on Broadway. To Mr. Hirsch, who had cut holes in the ceiling of his loft so that Benjamin could run from room to room and had allowed Benjamin to play with his daughter when she was a child, the monkey was not a pet, but “a fellow creature I take care of.”

To others, he was a fugitive. A year and a half ago, The Daily News called Benjamin a “cheek-chomping monkey” after he bit a woman at the inn Mr. Hirsch and his wife operated in upstate New York. When the local authorities demanded that Benjamin be euthanized and tested for rabies, he and Mr. Hirsch disappeared…

Benjamin, who was about 20 inches tall and weighed about seven pounds, died of cancer at a Florida animal sanctuary. Mr. Hirsch, who has created a Web site about Benjamin and the art he has made in the last year while mourning him (benjaminthemonkey.com), talked about the relationship.

Why are you putting up these pieces?

I had such an incredible epic love story with this creature. It spanned 14 years, even though it felt like 50 years, because we spent so much time together. He was dying in a box in a South American town where they kill monkeys, and I nursed him back to health. I became his mother, his father, his partner. Benjamin represented this primordial creature that sort of took me back to my elemental self. We were like two sides of the same creature. He was like the id: I brought out the human in him; he brought out the monkey in me. We had this connection which is hard to describe. I knew what he was feeling.

read more