In 1968 LIFE magazine summed up the appeal of French philosopher and author Albert Camus with a single sentence: “Camus looked directly into the darkness as saw sun—the human spirit.” The line came from a review of Camus’ book “Lyrical and Critical Essays.” And the […]
PeopleRGU offers Graduate Apprenticeship (GA) courses designed around the needs of businesses which allow employees to continue to work while they earn their degree over the course of four years. Emma McGowan, Hire Administrator at STR, is a first-year student on the Business Management GA. […]
StudentMBA graduate Fiona shares her experience studying online at RGU and juggling university with a full-time job and new-born. My background Hi I’m Fiona, I live in Aberdeenshire and work in integrity monitoring in the oil and gas industry and have undertaken various science-based roles […]
StudentThe following is adapted from LIFE’s new special issue on bears, available at newsstands and online: Globally, bear populations are plummeting, with several species designated as endangered or vulnerable to extinction. But in many parts of North America, people are seeing more bears than ever. […]
AnimalsThe following is adapted from LIFE’s new special issue on bears, available at newsstands and online:
Globally, bear populations are plummeting, with several species designated as endangered or vulnerable to extinction. But in many parts of North America, people are seeing more bears than ever. Since the 1970s, American bears in the lower 48 states have been expanding their territories, and enthusiasts need not travel into dense forests to spot a black bear or grizzly. Many can just look into their backyards. In the early ’70s, there were fewer than 100 black bears in New Jersey; today there are about 3,000 and they have been found in every county in the Garden State.
Over the past several decades, Americans have been cutting down more forests and developing commercial properties on lands that have long belonged to bears. With less space to roam, bears are becoming our new next-door neighbors, taking dips in swimming pools, lounging in hammocks, and rifling through garden sheds. Their hijinks, often caught on camera, attract millions of views on social media and portray bears as approachable and playful. But they are still predators, whose tolerance of humans has its limits. “The victim wasn’t off walking in the woods,” Charlie Rose reported in a 2014 CBS News program about a woman in Florida mauled by a bear. “She was attacked in her own suburban yard.” She survived, with 10 stitches and 30 staples to the head.
Since 1960, Florida’s human population has increased from 5 million to more than 22 million. To accommodate this surge, 7 million acres of forest and wetlands have been destroyed for new homes. So it might have been the woman’s backyard, but to the bear, it was also his.
If you find yourself in bear country, which today could be deep in Yosemite or just off New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway, there’s plenty of advice to avoid conflicts. If you encounter a bear, dispensing a canister of bear spray at the animal is more effective than any air horn or sound. While you’re urged to carry it in certain national parks, the product could be dangerous if not used according to its directions. In 2022, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation tweeted: “Listen, bear spray DOES NOT work like bug spray. We would like to not have to say that again.”
Most bears will avoid humans if they hear them coming, but if a bear has noticed you, the U.S. National Park Service provides some general tips: Stand still and identify yourself as a human by talking calmly and slowly waving your arms, so the bear doesn’t mistake you for a prey animal. “It may come closer or stand on its hind legs to get a better look or smell,” notes the park service’s website. “A standing bear is usually curious, not threatening.”
Hike and travel in groups, as a collection of people are usually noisier—and smellier—than a lone person. A bear is more likely to notice your group and stay away. And remember that bears get more confident and linger when human food is involved. Keep your fare away and hidden; otherwise it could encourage a bear. If the bear is stationary, move away slowly and sideways. This movement allows you to keep an eye on the bear while avoiding tripping. Plus, moving sideways is non-threatening to bears.
Ultimately, stay calm and remember that most bears don’t want to attack you—they just want to be left alone. A bear woofing, yawning, growling, or snapping their jaws may just be bluffing their way out of a potential encounter. Continue to talk to the bear in low tones, keeping it calm until it leaves. Wild animals are dangerous and can be enjoyed from a distance, and hopefully that distance will widen after decades of encroachment on each other’s turf. And those who live on the periphery of their habitats know that the beauty of bears is worth protecting.
Here is a selection of images from LIFE’s new special issue on bears.
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Alatom/Getty Images
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Teddy Roosevelt’s act of kindness toward a bear during a 1902 hunt was the seed what would become known as the “teddy bear.”
Getty Images
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Brown bears are the most widely distributed bear species in the world, and are found in northern North America, Europe and Asia.
Mari Perry/500px/Getty Images
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Brown bear cubs, after being protected by their mother early in life, often briefly stay with their littermates before going on to lead independent lives.
Getty Images
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When salmon migrate upriver, bears gather for a hearty meal.
© Gerald and Buff Corsi / Focus on Nature/Getty Images/iStockphoto
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For polar bears, climate change is threatening their way of life.
© PAUL SOUDERS | WORLDFOTO/Getty Images
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The koalas of Australia look like bears but are in fact marsupials.
B.S.P.I./Corbis Documentary/Getty Images
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Bears’ teeth are similar to humans, with broad, flat molars that can be used to grind food.
Irena Anna Sowinska/Getty Images
The post Bears: Strong, Wise, and Increasingly Among Us appeared first on LIFE.
More than most stars of her rare magnitude, Ingrid Bergman was an actress who went her own way. A Hollywood luminary for decades, from the Thirties well into the Seventies, the Swedish-born beauty acted in films that not only entertained millions but that also satisfied […]
PeopleMore than most stars of her rare magnitude, Ingrid Bergman was an actress who went her own way. A Hollywood luminary for decades, from the Thirties well into the Seventies, the Swedish-born beauty acted in films that not only entertained millions but that also satisfied her own, personal need to constantly test and broaden the limits of her craft.
In 1943, for example, she told LIFE magazine, “I am an actress and I am interested in acting, not in making money.” Coming from almost anyone else in her position, that might sound like a public relations platitude. But even at that relatively early point in her career, Bergman had already proven herself a singularly versatile artist, with solid and even iconic performances in films ranging from psychological thrillers (Rage in Heaven) to horror (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) to romance (Intermezzo) to arguably the very greatest of all American movies, the 1942 Best Picture Oscar winner, Casablanca.
Bergman won three acting Oscars during her long career (two for Best Actress, in Gaslight and Anastasia, and one for Best Supporting Actress for her role in 1974’s star-studded Murder on the Orient Express), and was nominated four more times. She also won Emmys, a Tony, Golden Globe and New York Film Critics Circle awards in other words, she proved again and again that she could act as well as star in almost any role, on film, stage and the small screen.
And for pretty much all of those years that she lit up the screen and the stage with her combustible mix of intellect, emotional honesty and sensuality, LIFE magazine covered Bergman’s life and her career. When she was the “hot new thing” in Hollywood (after making a name for herself in her native Sweden in the 1930s), LIFE raved about the “new brand of charm” she brought to the American screen. When, in 1946, she starred on Broadway in Maxwell Anderson’s Joan of Lorraine (for which she won her only Tony), LIFE referred to her deserved “enormous reputation” as Hollywood’s “undisputed queen.” When her career took a hit in the States after she left her husband and daughter, Pia, to live with and eventually marry the great Italian director Roberto Rossellini shocking and angering her American fans who had, simplistically, come to view her as something like a saint LIFE sympathetically covered her life and her work in Europe.
And when, years later, she was again embraced and beloved by fans who “forgave” her her trespasses, and flocked to see her in films like Orient Express and Autumn Sonata and watched, in the millions, her Emmy and Golden Globe-winning turn in the Golda Meir television biopic, A Woman Called Golda, LIFE celebrated her return to America’s good graces.
Here, on the anniversary of both her birth and her death she was born Aug. 29, 1915, and died Aug. 29, 1982, at a too-young 67 after a long battle with breast cancer LIFE.com presents pictures of the one and only Ingrid Bergman as she appeared in LIFE through the years.
Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
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Ingrid Bergman in 1941
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman in 1943, around the time she starred in For Whom The Bell Tolls.
John Florea/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman in 1943
John Florea/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman with the painter Alexander Brook, 1944.
John Florea/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman as Maria in the movie For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1944.
John Florea/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman in 1945 with her Best Actress Academy Award for Gaslight.
Walter Sanders/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman in 1945
John Florea/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman in the film Arch of Triumph
George Lacks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman in the film Arch of Triumph
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman as Joan of Arc praying for guidance during a scene from the Broadway production of Maxwell Anderson’s 1946 play, Joan of Lorraine, for which Bergman won a Tony.
Gjon Mili /Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman dresses as Joan of Arc in the Broadway production of Maxwell Anderson’s 1946 play, Joan of Lorraine, for which Bergman won a Tony.
Allan Grant/Life Pciture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman as Joan in the 1948 movie, Joan of Arc.
Loomis Dean/Life Pciture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman stands on a street as village women stare at her during filming of the movie “Stromboli” on the Italian island of Stromboli, 1949.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman during filming of the movie “Stromboli” on the Italian island of Stromboli, 1949.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman during filming of the movie “Stromboli,” on the Italian island of Stromboli, 1949.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman acting in a scene from the 1956 Jean Renoir film, ‘Elena et les Hommes.”
Thomas McAvoy/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman plays with a child actor between scenes of the taping of John Frankenheimer’s 1959 TV movie, The Turn of the Screw, for which she won an Emmy.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Ingrid Bergman in a special 1961 play on CBS, Twenty Four Hours in a Woman’s Life.
Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
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Absorbed in conversation, 52-year-old Ingrid Bergman rides through Los Angeles on her way to the theater where she’ll perform in Eugene O’Neill’s play, More Stately Mansions, in 1967.
Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock images
The post LIFE With Ingrid Bergman appeared first on LIFE.
It is, without question, one of the most famous, most frequently reproduced animal photographs ever made. But photographer Hansel Mieth‘s own attitude toward her 1938 portrait of a sodden rhesus monkey hunched in the water off of Puerto Rico was, to put it bluntly, conflicted. […]
AnimalsIt is, without question, one of the most famous, most frequently reproduced animal photographs ever made. But photographer Hansel Mieth‘s own attitude toward her 1938 portrait of a sodden rhesus monkey hunched in the water off of Puerto Rico was, to put it bluntly, conflicted. In fact, the German-born Mieth (1909-1998) memorably called the creature in the picture “the monkey on my back.”
As Mieth explained in a 1993 interview with John Loengard, published in his book, LIFE Photographers: What They Saw, she made the photograph while covering a Harvard Medical School primate study on tiny Cayo Santiago, off the east coast of Puerto Rico:
One afternoon all the doctors were away [Mieth told Loengard], and a little kid came running to me and said, “A monkey’s in the water.”
I came down, and that monkey was really going hell-bent for something. . . . I threw my Rolleiflex on my back and swam out. Finally, I was facing the monkey. I don’t think he liked me, but he sat on that coral reef, and I took about a dozen shots.
When she got back to New York, Mieth learned that the joke around the LIFE offices was that she’d produced a striking portrait of Henry Luce, the founder and publisher of TIME, LIFE, Fortune and other magazines: evidently, some of her colleagues felt that the rhesus in the water looked like their boss. When asked by Loengard, six decades later, if she felt the portrait did resemble Luce, Mieth was diplomatic.
I didn’t see Luce that much. He had lots of other things to do rather than talk with photographers. . . . But I suppose it does, in a way. It all depends on what kind of mood you are in. To me it looks like the monkey’s depicting the state of the world at the time. It was dark and somber and angry. There were a lot of dark clouds swirling around. I heard from many people that they were scared when they looked at it.
Today, the monkey on Mieth’s back still commands our gaze, inviting us perhaps challenging us to project our own fears, anxieties and speculations on to a picture, and a primate, that never gets old.
FINAL NOTE: While a half-dozen lesser pictures from the assignment in Puerto Rico were published in the Jan. 2, 1939, issue of LIFE, Mieth’s now-iconic monkey photo appeared a few weeks later, in the Jan. 16 issue accompanied by the caption, “A misogynist seeks solitude in the Caribbean off Puerto Rico.”
According to the magazine, a primatologist explained that “the chatter of innumerable female monkeys had impelled this neurotic bachelor to seek escape from the din” by fleeing the jungle and making his way into the waves.
Seventy-five years later, that particular theory about how and why the rhesus was out there in the water still sounds as reasonable as any other.
Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com
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A rhesus monkey in Puerto Rico, 1938.
Hansel Mieth—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A baby rhesus monkey climbed on the chest of Michael Tomlin, a primatologist who cared for a rhesus colony in Humacao, Puerto Rico, 1938.
Hansel Mieth/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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This photo, which ran at a full page in LIFE in 1939, was labelled “Rhesus: Life Size” to show readers how small the monkeys were.
Hansel Mieth/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A rhesus monkey ate a flower in Humacao, Puerto Rico, 1939
Hansel Mieth/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A rhesus monkey searched for food in Cayo Santiago, Humacao, Puerto Rico, 1938.
Hansel Mieth/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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Rhesus monkeys searched for food on Cayo Santiago, Humacao, Puerto Rico, 1938.
Hansel Mieth/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The post Behind the Picture: Hansel Mieth’s Wet, Unhappy Monkey appeared first on LIFE.
The following is from LIFE’s new special issue Apes: Their Remarkable World, available at newsstands and online: Two rangers quietly sat on a platform 25 feet up in a tree with a large pile of bananas and red buckets filled with milk. As I watched, […]
AnimalsThe following is from LIFE’s new special issue Apes: Their Remarkable World, available at newsstands and online:
Two rangers quietly sat on a platform 25 feet up in a tree with a large pile of bananas and red buckets filled with milk. As I watched, a dozen orangutans quickly climbed and swung over to grab the fruit and stick their heads in the buckets for a drink. The orange-haired apes then lounged around, undisturbed by the humans alongside them.
Half a mile further into Borneo’s Kabili-Sepilok rainforest it was much less hectic. The air felt humid. I could smell the earth and hear the droning sound of cicadas filling the forest as I avoided the leeches dropping from above. Up ahead I spied another feeding platform. The rangers there sat alone as they scanned the trees but saw no signs of orangutans eager to eat. One of the men bellowed out an apelike long call to announce their presence. Soon a single female with an infant gripping its fur lowered from the canopy above. She snatched some fruit and quickly disappeared back into the jungle.
The Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre near Sandakan, Malaysia, serves as a temporary home for the apes. Infants rescued from habitats destroyed by logging and orphans whose mothers have been killed by poachers are treated and cared for, their beseeching hands reaching out to anyone who enters the nursery. “It’s difficult when the orangutans come in very young,” Reynard Gondipon, the center’s veterinarian, told me as he showed me through the facility. “I urge the rangers to hug them every now and then.” As they grow, the orangutans are moved out onto the grounds of the 9,000-acre center. There these naturally solitary creatures live alongside others as they learn the lore of forest life: how to climb, build nests, search for food, survive. Slowly, like the mother and child who disappeared into the canopy, they embrace the wilds. Once it is determined that they can fend for themselves, Sepilok’s staff transport them into the forest far away from humanity.
I have long been fascinated by our closest living relatives and our linked ancient ancestry. In the early 1980s I was thrilled to hear presentations by all three of the primatologists known as the Trimates—Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas—when they were in New York to discuss their studies of chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. I recall Fossey mentioning a visit to the American Museum of Natural History’s Akeley Hall of African Mammals. While there, she stopped in front of the mountain gorilla diorama. The creatures behind the plate glass had been shot in 1921 by naturalist Carl Akeley during an expedition he led for the museum. Akeley soon after convinced the Belgian government—which controlled the land where those gorillas once lived—to create a national park to protect the apes. Fossey spoke of how she mourned the taxidermic creatures forever frozen in the case yet appreciated Akeley’s and the museum’s efforts to study and save those still in the wild. Of course, Fossey would die only a few years later as she herself fought to protect gorillas in the remote rainforests of Rwanda’s Virunga mountains.
The work Fossey, Galdikas, and Goodall dedicated their lives to is not for the faint of heart. Galdikas recently described to me the hardships she endured studying Borneo’s orangutans: “You are sitting in the swamp. It is so primeval. You couldn’t stand the buzzing of the mosquitos, the buzzing of the other insects, the horseflies that bite you. They really hurt, just a sharp hurt. And of course, the leeches.” But she also experienced true joy observing the magnificent animals, recalling how on Christmas Day 1971 at the start of her time doing her research she watched a mother and its child emerge from its tree nest. Galdikas called the sight “the best Christmas present.”
Humans and the great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans) and smaller apes (gibbons) share a common past. Our species diverged millions of years ago and evolved. Earth’s human population was about 1 million in 10,000 BCE, and 3 billion when Goodall arrived in Tanzania in 1960. There are now 8 billion people on earth. While the human population has exploded, that is not the case for apes. In 1900 there were more than 1 million chimpanzees in the wild. At most, a third of that number now exist. Orangutans have dropped from 300,000 to roughly 100,000.
Many more will perish, as the human population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2100. Apes’ numbers have been decimated, as they lose their habitats to deforestation and their lives to poachers. While there are laws to protect these species, trafficking is highly profitable. Each year, thousands of young apes are captured, with baby gorillas being offered for more than half a million dollars on social media sites like WhatsApp.
There are, though, hopeful signs for some ape populations as they and their habitats are being protected. The mountain gorillas in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest have seen their numbers increase from 254 in 1981 to more than 1,000 today, due to intense conservation practices and ecotourism.
To preserve their habitats, governments and organizations have trained locals to manage the forests. This creates jobs and encourages communities to protect what they have. The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund has trackers who monitor daily the largest of the apes where Fossey set up camp back in 1967. “These guys are the front line of conservation,” says Tara Stoinski, president of the fund. “They are the reason that these animals are still on the planet. These mountains are cold, they’re wet, and they are tracking up to 13,000 feet 365 days a year. They are true conservation heroes.”
Galdikas’ Camp Leakey and her Orangutan Care Center and Quarantine facility in the Indonesian village of Pasir Panjang 700 miles southwest of Sandakan similarly cares for and rewilds apes. And the new 117,000 acre Ekolo ya Bonobo, created by Claudine André in rainforests in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has become home to freed bonobos. There are fewer than 2,500 Javan silvery gibbons left in the wild, and the Aspinall Foundation in conjunction with the Indonesian government has successfully reintroduced two dozen into protected areas.
Such work is an uphill and often dangerous battle. Legions of researchers, scientists, and volunteers have devoted their lives to watching over, studying, and protecting our magnificent relatives. As the great primatologist George Schaller wrote of the gorillas in National Geographic in 1995, which holds true for all the great and smaller apes, “We have a common past, but only humans have been given the mental power to worry about their fate.”
Enjoy this selection of photos from LIFE’s new special issue Apes: Their Remarkable World.
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Nick Ledger/Alamy; (background) Gudkov Andrey/Shutterstock
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A chimpanzee mother and her baby at the Conkouati-Douli National Park in the Republic of Congo.
Gudkov Andrey/Shutterstock
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As it is with human children, chimpanzees like to have fun. Playtime is an important developmental activity and can lead to breathy laughter. Three-year-old Gizmo and his 8-year-old brother Gimli enjoyed a bit of roughhousing at Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park.
Anup Shah/Stone/Getty
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The bonobo is often mistaken for a chimpanzee, but it smaller and slimmer.
Gudkov Andrey/Shutterstock
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Gorillas are the largest living primates.
P. Wegner/imageBROKER/Shutterstock
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Orangutans like these have the most intense mother-child relationship of any primate besides humans.
Freder/E+/Getty
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The Siamang Gibbon makes sounds that can be heard two miles away.
Steve Clancy Photography/Moment/Getty
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A lar gibbon and its child swing through the forest canopy.
Kittipong Chotitana/Shutterstock
The post Apes: Their Remarkable World appeared first on LIFE.
If it’s not the strangest movie ever to come out of Hollywood, it’s close enough. And of all the strange movies to come out of Hollywood, it is likely the sweetest. The stars of the 1948 film Bill and Coo were birds. That’s not to […]
NatureIf it’s not the strangest movie ever to come out of Hollywood, it’s close enough. And of all the strange movies to come out of Hollywood, it is likely the sweetest.
The stars of the 1948 film Bill and Coo were birds. That’s not to say these these birds stole the show by upstaging their human costars—the birds were the show. The movie’s running time is just over an hour, and except for a two-minute introduction featuring humans, the story is acted out entirely by trained birds on a set of miniatures.
Here’s how LIFE described the production in its July 28, 1947 issue:
The pictures on these pages from Republic’s new movie Bill and Coo are tokens of the gloomy contention of the producer, that movie stars belonging to the species homo sapiens are washed up and the birds are ready to take over….No newcomer to strange breeds of actors, Vaudevillian Ken Murray for the last five years has been packing Hollywood’s El Capital Theater with a raucous oldtime variety show called Blackouts…When a bird trainer named brought his lovebird act around, Murray was so impressed that he dreamed up a starring vehicle for it, had miniature sets built and a lovebird story written.
The entire movie can be viewed online, and the photos taken by Peter Stackpole capture both the charm and peculiarity of the enterprise. The film is set in “Chirpendale U.S.A.,” and the location is one of the movie’s many bird-themed puns. The story is narrated by an off-screen human, but you see birds doing things like walking in and out of buildings, pushing little baby carriages and dropping letters in mailboxes. The plot revolves Bill and Coo, who love each other despite their class differences (Bill has a taxi service, Coo comes from a wealthy family), and they must fight off a malicious crow who threatens life in Chirpendale.
(Perhaps the most surprising detail about the production is that it was the only movie directed by former child actor Dean Riesner, who decades later would leave his mark on Hollywood history as one of the writers of the decidedly un-precious movie Dirty Harry. Yes, the man who directed Bill and Coo also gave us the line “Do you feel lucky? Well, do you punk?“)
On the one hand, no one is going to mistake Bill and Coo for Citizen Kane. On the other hand, it did win an honorary Academy Award, for creating a film “In which artistry and patience blended in a novel and entertaining use of the medium of motion pictures.”
It was novel indeed. In fact, when you look at the movie’s IMDB page and scroll to the heading “More Like This,” what you get are not more live-action movies but rather animated films such as Bambi. Which is another way of saying, there really are no movies like this.
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Bill and Coo, the titular stars of the movie, stood on top of a trolley on the film’s set.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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Ken Murray first encountered the birds in his vaudeville show and helped dream up the idea for featuring them in the movie that become Bill and Coo.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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Trainer George Burton works with alligators who also played a role in the movie Bill and Coo, 1947.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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From the set of the bird-centric movie Bill and Coo, 1947.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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The “wrong brothers” are celebrated in one of the many bird-related puns in the movie Bill and Coo.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A fire-bird slides down a pole the set of the all-bird movie Bill and Coo, 1947.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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From the set of the bird-centric live action movie Bill and Coo, 1947.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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From the set of the bird-centric movie Bill and Coo, 1947.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A crow played the villain in the bird-centric movie Bill and Coo, 1947.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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Owls on the set of the bird-centric movie Bill and Coo, 1947.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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At the end of the movie Bill and Coo, the titular birds head off on their honeymoon in a puppy-drawn carriage, 1947.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The post The Oscar-Winning Movie Where the Stars Were All Birds appeared first on LIFE.
In its March 10, 1952 issue LIFE magazine served its readers photos of the “sailing rocks” of the Racetrack Playa, a dry lake bed near Death Valley, California. The stones don’t do anything really wild like zip around in front of people, but they have […]
NatureIn its March 10, 1952 issue LIFE magazine served its readers photos of the “sailing rocks” of the Racetrack Playa, a dry lake bed near Death Valley, California. The stones don’t do anything really wild like zip around in front of people, but they have moved at some point, and we know it by the tracks they have left behind at the Racetrack and also at a few similar locations around the globe. LIFE’s photos by Loomis Dean captured the phenomenon that keeps the Playa Racetrack a tourist destination all these years later.
Here was the setup offered in LIFE, in an article titled “The Case of the Skating Stones”:
On a dry lake bed high in the Panamint Mountains near Death Valley sit several dozen boulders whose peculiar behavior has long been a nightmare to geologists. The boulders, which weigh up to a quarter ton, stand at the ends of long, gouged-out paths which show that they periodically respond to unknown forces and skate about on the flat earthen floor.
LIFE painted the situation as a complete mystery, mentioning disproved theories from everyday folks that attributed the stones’ movement to the lake bed tilting back and forth, or perhaps to “Russians tampering with the magnetic pole.” (This was the early days of the Cold War, mind you). LIFE ended its writeup by saying “The mystery may never be completely solved. When humans observers are about, the stones refuse to budge an inch.”
But since 1952 scientists, when not busy exploring space and inventing cell phones and so forth, did come up with a leading hypothesis, which is that the stones’ skating is likely caused by the movement of thin sheets of ice that can form there in wintertime, with high winds perhaps helping to push stones along.
Though sometimes the stones have moved for reasons that are all too explicable—such as in 2013, when some stones were stolen. A park spokesman expressed both disappointment and confusion at the theft, saying “They don’t seem to understand that outside the Racetrack, these stones have no value.” Other visitors have damaged the site by taking the “Racetrack” name literally and driving their cars on it.
Sometimes human behavior is a mystery all its own.
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The “sailing stones” of the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, 1952.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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The “sailing stones” of the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, 1952.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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LIFE’s 1952 story on the sailing stones of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley included this photo of stone-like objects described as “burro droppings” that had likely been moved by the same forces as the stones.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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The sailing stones of the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, 1952.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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This three-quarter-ton stone left its mark after moving across a dry lake bed in Death Valley, 1952.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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“Sailing stones” left tracks as they drifted across Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, 1952.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A small stone left these intricate tracks on the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, 1952.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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LIFE’s 1952 story on the Racetrack Playa described this photo as being from a “ghost experiment,” guessing that an amateur scientist had tied up the rock to keep it from moving, but over time the rope had eventually rotted away.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The post Stones on the Run: A Death Valley Spectacle appeared first on LIFE.
Lake George, N.Y. makes an unusual claim to fame: it touts itself as the America’s original vacation spot. The basis of that claim? In 1869 a Boston preacher named William H.H. Murray published his popular book Adventures in the Wilderness, or Camp-Life in the Adirondacks, […]
NatureLake George, N.Y. makes an unusual claim to fame: it touts itself as the America’s original vacation spot.
The basis of that claim? In 1869 a Boston preacher named William H.H. Murray published his popular book Adventures in the Wilderness, or Camp-Life in the Adirondacks, which was a mix of fiction and travel brochure touting the wonders of outdoor life in Lake George. And readers started coming there for getaways, inspired by the idea that the wilds of nature were to be enjoyed rather than merely navigated or avoided. According to an article in Smithsonian about Lake George, the people who ventured there that first summer didn’t enjoy it much because they were often unprepared for outdoor life and the weather that year was unusually cold and rainy. (Sounds like a classic vacation). But in subsequent years the weather was better and Lake George flourished as a tourist destination.
That history may help explain why LIFE photographer Nina Leen went to Lake George in 1941 to photograph a young couple enjoying a weekend in nature. The pictures are indeed stunning, particularly the one titled “Private Island,” which shows the couple sitting together on a small outcropping in the middle of a placid lake. The photo makes Lake George look like a kind of Eden. (It should be noted that the same spot looks more ordinary in other photos taken by Leen— the rock the couple is sitting on is just a few steps from the shore—but as every amateur photographer knows, when crafting that perfect vacation photo, angles are everything).
LIFE never ran Leen’s story on Lake George—one imagines it might have been bumped for news about the gathering storm that was World War II. So we don’t know much about the young man and woman in the photos: their ages, occupations, marital status, or where they arrived from. That’s fine. Their anonymity allows them become a symbolic Adam and Eve, making their way back for a couple days in paradise.
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A young couple vacationing at Lake George, New York.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A young couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A young couple enjoyed a Lake George vacation in a Nina Leen photo entitled “Private Island,” 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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A couple vacationing at Lake George, New York, 1941.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The post The Original Vacation Spot appeared first on LIFE.
The following is from LIFE’s beautifully illustrated new special edition, Birds: The World’s Most Remarkable Creatures, available at newsstands and online: The first bird I fell in love with—my “spark bird”—was soaring in the northeastern Florida sky one May many years ago, its pointed wings […]
NatureThe following is from LIFE’s beautifully illustrated new special edition, Birds: The World’s Most Remarkable Creatures, available at newsstands and online:
The first bird I fell in love with—my “spark bird”—was soaring in the northeastern Florida sky one May many years ago, its pointed wings spread gracefully and its deeply forked tail gently twisting to guide its curving flight. The black-and-white coloration was distinctive, and I rushed to a local used bookstore for what would become the first of many field guides on my shelves. A few flips of the pages, and I knew I’d seen a swallow-tailed kite, an elegant raptor that is a summer visitor to Florida and the southeastern United States.
Tens of millions of birders have had similar encounters with their own spark bird. In the United States alone, more than 45 million people are bird watchers. Roughly $4 billion is spent annually on birdseed and foods such as suet, nuts, and nectar, while another $2 billion is spent on binoculars, spotting scopes, and other equipment. Birds are the focus of conservation programs and citizen science projects such as the Great Backyard Bird Count; art projects like the Audubon Mural Project in New York City, which highlights 314 bird species; and movies like Happy Feet (about penguins) and The Big Year (about a birding competition).
That so many people love birds may be partly because there’s a bird for everyone. The more than 10,000 known bird species come in an extraordinary variety, and they can be found—almost literally—everywhere.
Birds thrive in all habitats, from fierce roadrunners in rocky deserts to colorful toucans in tropical jungles. You don’t need to live next to a wildlife refuge or nature preserve to enjoy a multitude of bird species—even the busiest cities are home to swallows and sparrows, hawks nesting on skyscrapers, ducks in park ponds, and hummingbirds in flower beds. Taking a trip to the beach? Watch for sandpipers running from the waves, pelicans floating on the water, and gulls flocking on the dunes. In rural areas, there might be quail, magpies, and wild turkeys at the edges of farm fields, while suburban yards can be flush with thrushes, warblers, and buntings. Wherever we are, birds provide us with an active, living connection to nature.
Birds’ often vibrant colors can distinguish a species in a beautiful way. The brilliant red of the northern cardinal stands out against winter snows, while the bright hue of the blue jay is a bold splash of color among the leaves. Birds come in every color, and some—like the painted bunting, with his blue head, lime-green back, and rich red chest—are a rainbow all by themselves.
The varied hues have a purpose. Brighter colors can help birds attract stronger mates—as a general but not ironclad rule, the more colorful of the species are the males, with female birds often more muted, more demure, in their coloring. In other cases, a mottled pattern provides camouflage to protect nesting birds, and some birds, such as the northern pygmy owl, even have false “eyespots” on the back of their head to fool potential predators.
The sight of birds in flight suggests a sense of freedom—from the awesome dive of a peregrine falcon to the swooping curves of a barn swallow, or even the quick flitting of a house wren. The long-distance migrations of birds, flying hundreds or even thousands of miles between their summer and winter habitats, highlight their endurance and perseverance, as well as a kind of navigational intelligence. Birds rely on landmarks and stars to guide their journeys.
There’s a variety in how they fly as well. Consider the hours-long flights of albatrosses out at sea as they soar on air currents; the frantic, adrenaline-inducing flights of pheasants scattering from predators; or the flittering flights of foraging warblers navigating the high trees without hitting a single branch.
And of course, there’s their songs. Chirps, whistles, coos, and warbles are as familiar as the somewhat less melodious screeches, squawks, hoots, and quacks. Some birds, such as mockingbirds, thrashers, and catbirds, are outstanding mimics and imitate not only other birds but also other animals—as well as car alarms and ring tones.
Birds sing to attract mates and to defend their territory, with more complex songs indicating better health and greater experience to lure the very best mates or defend larger territories. Other songs and calls communicate information about food or predators, and while in flight, flocks of birds often call to one another to maintain proper spacing with their airborne neighbors.
The reasons why humans appreciate birds are almost as diverse as birds themselves. The bill of a roseate spoonbill, the hovering of a hummingbird, the gleam of an eagle’s eye, the trill of a nightingale in the gloaming: Maybe one of those birds is your spark bird, long since catalogued or quite literally just up around the bend.
Here is a selection of photos from LIFE’s new special edition exploring the beauty of birds, Birds: The World’s Most Remarkable Creatures.
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phototrip/iStock/Getty Images
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The secretary bird, native to Africa and found south of the Sahara desert, stands about four feet tall.
Mark Newman/The Image Bank/Getty Images
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A red- billed blue magpie can use its wedge-shaped beak to open shells.
eiffel/500px/Getty Images
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The wild flamingo owes its distinctive hue to a diet that includes that includes shrimp and algae, which contain carotenoids that, when metabolized, create those fiery-colored feathers.
Jonathan Ross/iStock/Getty Images
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During migration, snow geese travel in large flocks and stick to fairly narrow routes that provide winds to follow, good visibility, and precipitation-free periods.
Spondylolithesis/iStock/Getty Images
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The king vulture is more colorful than other vultures and, unlike other colorful birds, it is bald, which is believed to help prevent disease-laden animal remains from festering in dense plumage.
miroslav_1/iStock/Getty Images
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Lapwings often build their nests in rough or broken ground to help camouflage the eggs.
Andrew Linscott/E+/Getty Images
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Known for their smarts, blue jays can mimic the calls of hawks to let other jays know a hawk is nearby.
GummyBone/iStock/Getty Images
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Mandarin duck males In spring and early summer have elaborate, colorful plumage. Females are a little less eye-catching, with gray feathers and a muted bill. After the mating season, the males’ feathers molt to brown and gray as well.
Vicki Jauron, Babylon and Beyond Photography/Moment/Getty Images
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In the vast landscape of Mongolia’s Altai Mountains, ancient Kazakh hunters on horseback used eagles to track their prey. The tradition was passed down through generations. Today, the practice has become a source of tourism revenue from visitors who pay to see the famed birds in action.
Timothy Allen/Stone/Getty Images
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The following story comes from the introduction to LIFE’s special issue, Cats: Companions in Life. One morning, some years ago when I was living in New York City, I gathered Kaya into an old blue shawl and carried him eight blocks to the animal clinic […]
NatureThe following story comes from the introduction to LIFE’s special issue, Cats: Companions in Life.
One morning, some years ago when I was living in New York City, I gathered Kaya into an old blue shawl and carried him eight blocks to the animal clinic to be put to sleep. He had been my cat since I was in the ninth grade. I named him after the Bob Marley album. “Nineteen years is a long time for a domestic short hair,” the vet said, stroking him.
Kaya still had a little life in him at the end. On the walk over to the clinic he batted at my chin from inside his wrap. I talked to him matter-of-factly, telling him about a recent CNN/New York Times poll that had voted him one of the seven best cats in the Northeast. I often told him things like this over the years: my version of coochy-coochy-coo.
Kaya always tolerated the stuff about the polls, though he must have known he wasn’t all that. Not compared to his brother Korduroy, anyway. Korduroy did things you’d tell people about. He would stand in the road near the STOP sign, for example, and when a car pulled up, he’d jump on the hood and peer into the windshield. Kaya would watch this impassively, and he also looked on when Korduroy engaged in elaborate play-fighting games with the neighbor’s German shepherd. Next to Korduroy, a skilled small-game hunter who knocked on our front door by putting a paw into the mail-slot, Kaya seemed a simpleton.
He was docile and deliberate and he purred a lot. He didn’t much go for killing things but he got into sudden, spirited battles with ball-point pens and dangling extension cords. He had white mittens on his front paws, white knee-length stockings on his hind legs, and soft snowy fur around his muzzle, neck, and breast. Otherwise he was cloaked in a hodgepodge of blacks and browns. He had wide, yellow-green eyes. He lay down a lot.
Among me and my immediate family we’ve had maybe a dozen cats over the years—not including the eight kittens that once roamed my parents’ house after Palaleela had her litter—and there is no question that in matters of decency and kindness Kaya was the best of the lot. He let Korduroy eat first. He put up with two-year-olds who tugged his tail. He kept you company. Many cats are keen to human suffering, but none was keener than Kaya. When someone was sad, Kaya always came around. “Mow,” he’d say, and look up at you.
Kaya appreciated
good, simple things: being brushed with a fine comb, warm chicken scraps, a
scratch behind the ears, weekends on the Cape, a place to sleep at the foot of
the bed. How often do we celebrate the life of a cat?
Maybe it was because he didn’t know any tricks that in the last few years of his life, Kaya began to talk. He mewed incessantly. His most common issuance was a loud, plaintive wail that sounded more like a human baby than any animal I’ve heard. “Dude, you’ve got a kid over there?” friends would say during phone conversations. My professional acquaintances knew him too. I’d be interviewing someone, and when Kaya’s voice filled the phone lines I’d sense the person on the other end ignoring it uncomfortably. “I know,” I’d say to Kaya afterward, “it can be hard to be a cat.”
Kaya delivered other
sounds besides that trademark yowl. He had a two-beat high-pitched me-ow for
when he was playing happily or anticipating food. He gave a short, chirplike
mew as a greeting when he walked into a room. His long trilling mew meant he
wanted to go out. A low, guttural “reowwl” said he was encountering another
cat. An airy half-mew, half-yawn meant he was waking up, and Kaya’s odd,
unnerving series of yips told you he sensed a thunderstorm on its way. Whatever
Kaya’s agenda, the only sure way to quiet him was to take him onto your lap.
The mewing became a backdrop to my life that did not fade until the very end. When I made the appointment at the clinic, Kaya had been sick for several weeks. Thyroid condition. He slept nearly all the time and he couldn’t keep his medicine down. He stopped jumping up onto the bed at night. He kept to a corner of the apartment, venturing out every few hours to stare into his water dish and take a few half-hearted laps. When his mewing died down, a strange silence settled upon the apartment. Around that time he stopped eating.
It got to me, of course. I tried to tempt him with his favorite foods. Friends came over to tell Kaya good-bye. The night before we went to the clinic I was sitting on the couch—quiet, glum, and staring off. I guess Kaya could tell I was in a rotten way. I looked down when I felt him rubbing weakly against my shins. He peered up at me. “Mow,” he said, and then he slumped back over to the corner to rest.
The next morning I
carried him in the crook of my arm. I talked to him as if nothing were wrong.
At the clinic I set him on a table in a small greenish room and stroked him
until I could feel a faint purr in his breast. The vet was there too, and Kaya,
with what seemed like great effort, gave a final, soft meow.
His life was gentle, I tell people, and you could have learned from him.
The special issue Cats: Companions in Life is available for purchase here.
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Yevgen Romanenko/Moment/Shutterstock
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Kittens can sleep up to 20 hours a day, but this one woke all the way up to smile for the camera.
jdross75/Shutterstock
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This fluffy cat was in a playful mood; feline personalities begin to emerge at around five weeks, which is when they begin to be weaned.
Evdoha_spb/Shutterstock
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Ancient Egyptians honored cats by preserving them as mummies.
Daniel Simon/Gamma-Rapho/Shutterstock
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A Bengal cat named Tobysden Pyrrha posed for a studio portrait after participating in the 2018 GCCF Supreme Cat Show in Birmingham, England.
Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage/Shutterstock
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This boy, a Dutch billiards prodigy, fed cream to his cat in 1953.
Nat Farbman/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation
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Brownie drank milk straight from the cow as Blackie waited his turn at a dairy farm in Fresno, Calif., in 1953.
Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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It looks like this dog, cat and mouse were considering acting out the food chain, but this was in fact a friendly gathering of the household pets of the Lyng family in Denmark, 1955.
Jytte Bjerregaard Muller/The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock
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This Siamese cat escaped up a pole in Carlsbad, N.M. in 1962, and hoped the cocker spaniel in pursuit would obey the sign.
Bettmann/Shutterstock
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Sometimes cats and dogs do get along.
Chris Swanda/EyeEm/Shutterstock
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Diana wrote in her diary at the desk in her sitting room in Kensington Palace.
DenisNata/Shutterstock
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Oscar, a hospice cat, who had an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients were going to die, walked past an activity room at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, R.I. David Dosa profiled Oscar in his 2011 book, “Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat.
Stew Milne/AP/REX/Shutterstock
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Scarlett the cat, whose eyes were singed shut after saving her kittens during a building fire, snuggled with her new owner, writer Karen Wellen in 1997; Scarlett’s eyes healed.
Taro Yamasaki/The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock
The post Cats: Companions in Life appeared first on LIFE.
They say you can’t beat mother nature, but every now and then people give it a shot. Every now and then it works—rivers are rerouted, new crops are introduced. So in 1963, Maine figured it would try to get its caribou back. Caribou were once […]
NatureThey say you can’t beat mother nature, but every now and then people give it a shot. Every now and then it works—rivers are rerouted, new crops are introduced. So in 1963, Maine figured it would try to get its caribou back.
Caribou were once plentiful in pine tree state, during the early years of the United States, but then because of hunting and disease destroyed the population around the turn of the century.
But in 1963, Maine attempted to restore its population, by working out a trade with Newfoundland. They swung a wildlife swap. Maine sent Canada 320 grouse, and Newfoundland agreed to hand over 24 caribou. These weren’t just any 24 caribou, either. Six were males, but eighteen of group were pregnant females. With all those young ones on the way, the LIFE story about this plan sounded a hopeful note: “Maine hopes its herd will be multiplied come spring.”
The process took some effort.
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Caribou being prepared for their journey.
Photo by Fritz Goro.
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Caribou being flown to Maine.
Photo by Fritz Goro.
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The Caribou were brought to Mount Katahdin in Maine’s Baxter State Park.
Photo by Fritz Goro.
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In Maine but before being released into the wild, the caribou attracted the curious.
Photo by Fritz Goro.
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The caribou were penned before released so they could be tagged and given penicillin shots.
Photo by Fritz Goro.
Did all these effort succeed? Not really. A recent report on Maine’s state website looked back on the 1963 effort, and Matthew LaRoche, Superintendent of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, wrote of the caribou of the class of ’63: “They dispersed after three or four years and were never seen again.” Maine again tried to bring in caribou from Newfoundland in 1993, but failed once more. The second time around the caribou—a dozen of them were this time—were fitted with radio collars, which means that the defeat was a little more detailed: “They all died or migrated out of the area.”
Caribou didn’t last in Maine, experts believe, because their habitat changed. Old growth forests had been cut down and replaced with new growth forests, and the younger trees didn’t produce the kind of lichen that are a staple of the caribou diet. Also, the whitetail deer population had increased, and those deer which carry a brainworm that doesn’t affect deer but is deadly to moose or caribou. While it is speculated that a caribou replenishment might have succeeded with a bigger initial herd—maybe closer to 100—that’s a big and expensive project. So if caribou are to come back to Maine anytime soon, no one will be buying them a ticket.
The post When Maine Got Its Caribou Back appeared first on LIFE.