Moorhens, Disney and Hyenas

[Sobs] My illusions shattered.

I’ve just seen two moorhens having a go at each other over food

They were next to the towpath, on the grass. (yes, crappy photo – cameraphone, poor light etc)

I was able to throw them food and not feed the ducks. [Ducks are, in my opinion, the humans of the Bird Kingdom; too many of them, they’re gaudy, they’re loud, they’re greedy, and they’re really quite aggressive and violent with each other and indeed everything around them.] 

But you see, I had set up moorhens in my head as a sort of sweet, mellow alternative…

What I’ve just seen reminds me – because I needed reminding – that we impose meaning on nature that isn’t there. We have cosmologies of good and bad, predator and prey, noble and savage. 

Disney is the modern vector for this, but it ain’t new (Aesop much?) We think in animals, and lately hate the idea we are animals.

My favourite example of this is lions and hyenas. And, you know, your European, (I think, especially British, but probably the others as well) “explorers” went and observed lions in their natural habitat, and managed to ignore the fact that, yeah, lions will go hunting BUT lions will also just go and “steal” other creatures’ work. 

So hyenas do the hunting.  A lion comes along and says, “Yeah, thanks, I’m having that.” And then the hyenas have to skulk in a circle, gritting their teeth. (And my god, can hyenas grit) until they get the leftovers of what was “rightfully” theirs,

And knowingly or not, the story gets told that the hyena is a, you know, low, skulking scavenger who is a parasite on the hard work of the noble lion. Because it fits. It fits our cosmology. It tells us what we want to believe. It’s confirmation bias, etc,

And to that, my friends, it’s how you write a blog post barely touching a keyboard.

Stuff I will read, if the gods promise me immortality and health/eyesight (I am not falling for that old Tithonus con)

Huggoson, A. (2021). The “Unnatural,”“Immoral” Hyena and the Implications for Conservation Strategy. Gender and Sexuality in Critical Animal Studies, 79.

Hugosson, A. (2022). The spotted hyena in popular media and the biopolitical implications for conservation strategy. Animal Studies Journal, 11(1), 173-199.