It’s natural to be cruel
QUESTION If a male lion takes over a pride, he kills all of the cubs. In what other ways is nature cruel?
HUMANS tend to use the term ‘cruel’ loosely and interpret the ways of nature in terms of our own psychology.
Nature may be ‘red in tooth and claw’, as the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson put it, but only Man intentionally inflicts pain.
Yet, if we look at nature in anthropomorphic terms, there are many acts that appear cruel.
We have all seen nature programmes showing a pride of lions slaughtering a zebra, a pack of wolves bringing down a moose or a shark killing a seal or fish.
Some of the cruellest footage of recent times was featured on the BBC’s Blue Planet.
It was excruciating watching a pod of killer whales chasing a grey whale mother and calf, deliberately wearing them down until the calf tired and could be separated from its mother.
A seemingly cruel act, yet in Blue Planet II we saw an equally sad episode with a grieving Orca clinging to her calf for eight days before it died.
Infanticide may seem the cruellest act of all. Yet it is a powerful evolutionary tool that has been recorded in a number of species, including mammals, such as rodents and primates, and fish, insects and amphibians.
In the case of lions, by taking over the leadership of a pride, the new leader aims to pass on their own genetic line.
If they don’t kill the existing infant males, they run the risk these cubs will grow up and stage a coup.
Killing infants triggers fertility in the mother, increasing the chance of the new male having offspring.
Infanticide is common among wild chimpanzees. Males and females have been seen killing infants outside and within their own communities.
Similar behaviour has been observed in rats, guillemots and bottlenose dolphins. In meerkats, those most cuddly of animals, it is the females that do the killing of the young.
Meerkats are cooperative breeders, where there is an alpha male and female who breed and other adult subordinates that help to raise the young.
Dominant females are known to kill a subordinate’s pups. Dr Ken Bristow, Glasgow.
QUESTION Was it once illegal for women to smoke in public?
WOMEN have never been banned from smoking in Ireland or Britain. But up until the inter-war period, women smoking was viewed as deviant. In New York, however, there was an attempt to ban public smoking by women.
Until the early 20th century, there were many restrictions on American women. Without a male escort, women were refused service in restaurants, cafés and hotels, while saloons and private clubs closed their doors to female customers. The advent of department stores made it socially acceptable for women to appear in public without a chaperone.
At a time when women were agitating for the vote, smoking in public became a sign of rebellion. In 1907, Café Martin, a restaurant frequented by elite New Yorkers, decided to allow women to smoke. New York City Alderman Timothy ‘Little Tim’ Sullivan found this objectionable and his Bill forbidding owners of public establishments from allowing women to smoke was passed unanimously.
Only one woman, Katie Mulcahey, was arrested for smoking in public before the law was vetoed by New York’s mayor in 1908.
Tobacco producers soon realised there was a great untapped market and targeted brands and marketing at women. Cathy McFarlane, St Andrews, Fife.
QUESTION Did astrologer John Dee predict the exact day that Mary, Queen of Scots, would die?
JOHN Dee was an Elizabethan scientist, philosopher, astrologer, alchemist and occultist.
He interpreted a number of predictions made by the clairvoyant Edward Kelley, including the death of Mary, Queen of Scots – but not the exact date.
Dee was a polymath born to a merchant family in London in 1527 and educated at St John’s College, Cambridge.
He rose to eminence during the reign of Elizabeth I, when he became one of the few commoners to be honoured with personal visits from the queen.
While casting the horoscopes of the rich and powerful was Dee’s passion, he was also a key figure in England’s voyages of exploration by aiding ship captains in the mathematics of navigation.
Dee recorded his meetings with Kelley and his other investigations in his five-volume work the Libri Mysteriorum.
At the end of a session on May 5, 1583, Dee ‘contacted’ the archangel Uriel in order to interpret one of Kelley’s visions: ‘Dee: “As concerning the vision which yesternight was presented [unloked for] to the sight of E K as he sat at supper with me, in my hall, I meane the appering of the very sea, and many ships thereon, and the cutting of the hed of a woman, by a tall black man, what are we to imagine thereof”.
‘Uriel: “The One did signifie the prouision of forrayn powres against the welfare of this land: which they shall shortly put into practise. The other, the death of the Quene of Scotts.”’
It may not have been difficult to guess that the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, was a possibility and perhaps a foreign invasion appeared probable in 1583. But, nevertheless, this stands out as a remarkably detailed prediction. Arthur O’Grady, Brighton.