{"id":9881,"date":"2021-05-27T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lafayettepark.org\/staging_5\/?p=9881"},"modified":"2021-09-07T00:10:38","modified_gmt":"2021-09-07T00:10:38","slug":"treehuggers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lafayettepark.org\/staging_5\/treehuggers\/","title":{"rendered":"TREEHUGGERS"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY\u00a0KIERAN LINDSEY, PhD<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

I\u2019ve been called a treehugger more than once in my life, and while I know the comments weren\u2019t intended as such, I always take them as compliments. As a sobriquet it\u2019s both true and false: true, because I do spontaneously hug exceptionally handsome or venerable trees; and false, because compared to the practiced professionals who scamper up and down tree boles every waking hour of their lives, my embraces are too amateurish to qualify as authentic hugging.<\/h4>\n

Sure, as a kid I would climb trees and hang from the larger limbs by my knees. We had several sturdy silver maples in our yard and I loved spending time in these leafy hideouts. But\u00a0there\u2019s more to being a treehugger than practice. I simply don\u2019t have the body to become world-class, or even marginally proficient. To compete with the Eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis<\/em>) in my neighborhood, whose arboreal acrobatics would make a Cirque du Soleil gymnast green with envy, I would need a significantly different anatomy.<\/h4>\n

For example, I would need to lose enough weight (and height) to allow just enough friction to be created by the pressure of my paws gripping a small branch to overpower gravity\u2019s bullying attempts to push me rudely onto the ground.<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A better sense of balance would also be necessary if I were to have any success as a legitimate treehugger. I\u2019m not saying I trip over myself on a daily basis but, as friends and family can attest, when I do fall it\u2019s Charlie-Brown spectacular\u2026 and usually on my face.<\/h4>\n

\"\"Tree squirrels, in comparison, are masters at controlling their center of gravity. This is due, at least in part, because they can hold on equally well with both hands and feet. Here again I\u2019m disadvantaged, and I place full blame on evolution, my DNA, and whichever hominid ancestors of mine climbed down from a tree on an African savannah. At some point a decision was made by someone to stand upright and use feet almost exclusively for the precarious task of bipedal perambulation. There are times when I\u2019m not at all convinced this was a better way to go than remaining quadrupedal.<\/h4>\n

My filed and brightly polished toenails would have to go, replaced by strong, sharp claws that could easily pierce porous bark or hook onto an uneven edge (completely impractical for someone who wears socks and sleeps under a blanket, though). Whereas humans, including me, need at least three points of attachment when climbing, this spiky adaptation allows squirrels to secure their position with only two attachment points, and to grasp new surfaces at angles most animals would find impossible.<\/h4>\n

Most important of all, I would need feet that can pivot on a swivel joint, allowing my ankles to rotate backwards so I could hang from nearly vertical surfaces.<\/h4>\n

If I\u2019d been born a flamboyantly fluffy-tailed rodent then maybe, just maybe, I could latch on to a wrinkle in the tree rind and hang by my toenails while enjoying a leisurely acorn snack. Alas, \u2019tis the fault in my stars to peer ever and enviously skyward, my feet with their simple-hinge ankles planted on the firmament at the base of the trunk, and looked down upon with curiosity and pity (I assume) from the higher-ups.<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u00a9<\/strong>\u00a02017 Next-Door Nature. Reprints welcomed with written permission from the author. Thanks to the photographers made their work available through the Creative Commons license: Mr.TinDC<\/span><\/a>, Artful Magpie<\/span><\/a>, JoeInQueens<\/span><\/a>, and Jed Sheehan<\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY\u00a0KIERAN LINDSEY, PhD I\u2019ve been called a treehugger more than once in my life, and while I know the comments weren\u2019t intended as such, I always take them as compliments. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9882,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"

BY KIERAN LINDSEY, PhD<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we\u2019re twenty years into the Information Age so I\u2019m pretty sure everyone in this courtroom knows that, to quote a famous New Yorker <\/em>cartoon, \u201cOn the Internet, nobody knows you\u2019re a dog.\u201d The anonymity baked into the the interwebs means we\u2019re all free to be whatever, or whomever, we want to virtually be\u2026 even if we want to be someone else.<\/h4>\n

Identity theft may seem like a new and viral meme, but I assure you, creating a counterfeit profile is a prehistoric trope. It\u2019s older than Dick Whitman snagging Don Draper\u2019s dog tag in Mad Men (2007).  Older than Mrs. Doubtfire\u2019s dad-turned-nanny (1993). Older than the King of Ruritania\u2019s body-double in The Prisoner of Zenda (1894). Older, even, than the sibling-switch of Esau and Jacob in the Book of Genesis (6th century BC).<\/h4>\n

No, we need to travel even further back in time\u2014way, way back\u2014to the Pennsylvanian epoch over 300 million years ago, and what must surely be the first, the most diabolically devious, the most indelible stolen guise in the entire history of Planet Earth.<\/h4>\n

I intend to demonstrate, beyond any doubt (reasonable or otherwise), that the defendant\u2014Armadillidium vulgare<\/em>, aka \u201cpillbug\u201d\u2014is an imposter!<\/h4>\n
\"\"You already know he\u2019s a shape-shifter. Thanks to a body composed of overlapping plates he\u2019s a skilled conglobator\u2014transforming at a moment\u2019s notice from a scurrying, nearly two-dimensional, thumbnail-sized oval into an almost perfectly symmetrical 3D sphere. This is no parlor game, folks.  Crumpling to the size of a baby aspirin is a prescription for prevention of detection by those who would expose his true nature. (It also limits dehydration, but I digress).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Don\u2019t be fooled by this roly-poly fellow\u2019s non-threatening demeanor and diminutive stature. His rap sheet is a phone directory\u2019s worth of aliases: pillbug, wood bug, pea bug, potato bug, and doodlebug, to name only a few\u2026 but he is NOT a bug.<\/div>\n

That\u2019s right, this armored charlatan may claim to be kin to bedbugs, ladybugs, mealybugs, spittle bugs, stinkbugs, and other insects whose identities he has appropriated, but take a closer look and even without a DNA analysis the evidence is indisputable.<\/h4>\n

Exhibit #1:<\/strong>  Insects have a single pair of antennae. If the defendant would untuck enough to show his face to members of the jury, you would see that he has not one, but TWO pair of antennae.<\/h4>\n

Exhibit #2:<\/strong>  Insects have 3 pairs of jointed legs, clustered on the thorax. The defendant has 7 pairs of jointed legs\u2014one pair for each of the 7 segments that constitute his torso. But don\u2019t take my word for it\u2014count them yourselves.<\/h4>\n

\"\"Exhibit #3:<\/strong> As adults, insects breathe using a system of apertures and tubes called spiracles and tracheae, respectively. The defendant\u2014who, while not aquatic is clearly in some legal hot water here\u2014breathes using gill-like structures.<\/h4>\n

Exhibit #4: <\/strong> True bugs have piercing and sucking mouth-parts that place them in an insect league of their own. The defendant has no such anatomical features.  Just look\u2014he\u2019s not even able to use a straw!<\/h4>\n

Exhibit  #5:<\/strong>  Speaking of drinking\u2026 insect have a waxy, water-resistant epicuticle that deters desiccation. The defendant does not, which leads me to wonder if his repeated requests for a glass of water are due to the dry air in this courtroom, or a case of nerves born of a guilty conscience?<\/h4>\n

Exhibit #6:<\/strong> No courtroom drama would be complete without a reference to sex so let\u2019s talk about reproduction. Insects employ a diverse set of parenting strategies, including: oviparity<\/em> (eggs are deposited and develop outside the female\u2019s body); ovoviparity<\/em> (eggs develop inside the female\u2019s body and hatch immediately after being laid); and even viviparity<\/em> (young gestate inside the female and are born, not hatched). But the one strategy insects do NOT use is the marsupium<\/em>. That\u2019s right, a pouch tucked under the thorax in which newly hatched young develop until they are old enough to venture out into the world on their own\u2026 a pouch just like the one you would find on the defendant\u2019s own mother!<\/h4>\n

Members of the jury, the facts speak for themselves. The phony before you is not a bug. He has far more in common with a shrimp, a crab, or a lobster than any insect. Literally. Because this common pillbug is, in reality\u2026<\/h4>\n

\u2026a terrestrial CRUSTACEAN!!<\/em><\/h4>\n

[Audible gasps from the courtroom audience]<\/em><\/h4>\n

Your Honor, the prosecution rests.<\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n\n
\n\n

\u00a9 2010 <\/em>Next-Door Nature. 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