guyanatimesgy.com
APRIL 24, 2016
Sunday Times Magazine 23
World Times
Wild facts about Mowgli’s jungle
Bengal tigers are now the most at-risk species featured in Kipling's tale
D
isney’s movie “The Jungle Book”, adapted from the 1894 Rudyard Kipling classic of the same name, has already achieved success at the movie box office, but how much do we know about the animals of Mowgli’s jungle? National Geographic investigates and reports that Bagheera the black panther is a colour variant of the spotted leopards of Asia, Africa and also the jaguars of South America. In the book, Kipling reveals that Bagheera is “inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk.” Bagheera has good reason to fear mankind. Leopards have the largest
distribution of any wild cat in the world, but they are also the most persecuted.The cat's conservation status, as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is at “near threatened” but may move to “vulnerable” if this trend persists. Looking at Baloo, they discovered that his physical description in the book would suggest a sloth bear, but his diet of nuts and honey runs counter to that species’ insect-eating preferences. Baloo’s name, which simply means “bear” in Hindustani, lends no additional clues. While the book is fictional so such enigmas are to be expected, Kipling did use 19th-century naturalists’
Brain Teaser Answer Each person paid $9, totalling $27. The manager has $25 and the bellboy has $2. The bellboy's $2 should be added to the manager's $25 or subtracted from the tenants' $27, not added to the tenants' $27.
SUDOKU
KID SUDOKU
writings while crafting the book, and one of his sources was an 1884 natural history text that notes that the common Indian sloth bear is “as a rule vegetarian.” Given that sloth bears tend to sleep a lot during the day and can be found throughout India, most scholars agree that Baloo likely fits this label. Sloth bears, which are found only in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and India, are currently listed as “vulnerable” by the IUCN, but they “are quite widespread and safe in India in terms of conservation, although they are under some pressure from trade for their gallbladders,” Ullas Karanth, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s India program tells National Geographic. The bears are also abundant in many reserves in India, he adds, “where they are especially adapted to eating termites—and fond of honey.” But it is Mowgli’s jungle foe, the Bengal tiger Shere Khan that is the most imperilled of Kipling’s characters.According to new estimates, about 3,890 tigers remain in the wild worldwide—about half of which live in India. That’s an ap-
parent increase from 2010, when 3,200 tigers were thought to exist. But not everyone is convinced that the bump truly represents a recovery for the
this as a huge success in tiger conservation,” says Alan Rabinowitz, CEO of Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization.“In reality, it was a huge success in assessing tiger numbers.” He credits better census-taking strategies and technologies for the apparent population rise. Overall, Rabinowitz says, “India’s doing well and is the major country that’s contributing to the conservation of wild tigers.” Mowgli’s adoptive canine parents are Indian wolves, which are simply wolves that live in India. “The wolf, Canis lupus, is circumpolar, so it ranges throughout the world,” says David Mech, a senior research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey. “The wolf in India is the same species as the ones in Minnesota, Canada, or anywhere.” Listed as “least concern” by the IUCN, wolves are doing OK in India, where they
The conniving Kaa is an Indian rock python, a nonvenomous serpent that can grow up to 21 feet (6.4 meters) long. Cars represent the biggest threat to rock pythons, followed by habitat destruction and purposeful killings by villagers. “People get afraid and kill pythons because they confuse them with venomous snakes,” says M. Bubesh Guptha, a wildlife biologist at Pitchandikulam Forest in southern India. The snakes are also always in high demand by the foreign pet trade. For now, rock pythons are listed as “near threatened,” and India has established captive breeding programs and rehabilitation centres for the snakes, in addition to banning their trade. King Louie has always been a bit of a cinematic wild card. Kipling included no such character in his book, but Disney’s introduction of a vine-swinging jazzy orangutan in its 1967 animated
Sloth bear
big cats, and new data published by the IUCN shows that global tiger range has declined by 40 percent since 2010. “A lot of people hailed
live scattered across more rural areas of the country. However, “[t]here’s no evidence of a child ever actually being raised by wolves,” Mech says.
CROSSWORD
Museum model showing what Gigantopithecus might have looked like (National Geographic)
feature was an instant hit. There was a hitch, however: Orangutans don’t live in India. The endangered great apes are found only in the dwindling rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra. Rather than perpetuate a geographic fallacy, the team behind the new Disney movie came up with a creative fix—one that would allow them to have their ape king and correctly place him, too. Today’s King Louie is a Gigantopithecus, a massive ape genus that once lived in forests throughout southern China, Southeast Asia, and India. Experts know little about what the creatures actually looked like, because they have only jaw bones and enamel teeth caps to go on. For now, all we know for sure is that Gigantopithecus fits within the evolutionary tree of Asian apes and that it likely appeared most similar to a modern orangutan— albeit a 9-foot-tall (2.7-meter-tall) version.