Joined at the hippo!
QUESTION Does play between different species occur in the wild?
There are many records of animals forging bonds across species, especially domesticated animals.
Dogs are playful by nature and socialised from a young age. There are examples of them having playful relationships with cats, foxes, ducks, ferrets, calves, fawns, piglets, goats, lions and owls.
Cross-species bonds between wild animals, usually a mother/orphan relationship, have also been recorded. Young animals release juvenile pheromones — a baby smell that can bring out the maternal instinct in other species.
Game wardens at Samburu National reserve in Kenya reported a lioness who adopted six baby oryx, which are usually its prey.
German marine biologists recorded a dolphin with a spinal deformity that was adopted by a pod of sperm whales.
Film-makers following a young female leopard named Legadema in Botswana documented her caring for a day-old baboon after killing its mother.
A bulldog named Suzie adopted three orphaned squirrels, while a duck bonded with a chicken and helped raise her chicks. A cat also nursed a rottweiler with her kittens after the puppy was rejected by its mother.
Three large shore birds — a long-billed curlew, whimbrel and marbled godwit — kept each other company every winter in Vancouver for many years.
Owen, a Kenyan hippopotamus orphaned in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, was brought to a rescue centre where he forged a close bond with Mzee, an Aldabra giant tortoise, who was thought to be 130 years old. Mzee is Swahili for ‘old man’. Brian Charles, Nottingham.
QUESTION Was Belgium created to prevent a European war?
BeLGIuM is less than 200 years old. From 1556 to 1714, it was part of the Spanish Netherlands. After the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, it became part of a single nation called the united Kingdom of the Netherlands under King William I.
Catholic Belgians chafed under Protestant rule and staged an uprising, declaring independence on October 4, 1830. Lord Palmerston, Britain’s wily Foreign Secretary, had a strong hand in the creation of the new state.
At the London Conference of 1830 which chose Belgium’s first king, he nominated Leopold I of Saxe-Coburg, widower of Princess Charlotte of Wales and an admirer of the British constitution.
This was not welcomed by the Dutch, and they remained officially in conflict with the new state, though not in open warfare. This was resolved by the 1839 Treaty of London, and Belgium was fully recognised as independent.
Lord Palmerston insisted the Treaty contain the provision of Belgium being an ‘independent and perpetually neutral state’. This was designed to prevent a european war, but it eventually collapsed under the weight of arms.
Since 1892, when France and russia had joined in military alliance, it was clear four of the five signatories of the Belgian treaty — Britain, France, russia, Austria and Prussia — would be engaged.
The dam finally broke in 1914. Germany broke the treaty by invading Belgium, as a route into France.
Britain, compelled by the treaty to defend Belgium, protested to the German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmannhollweg on August 4, 1914.
Infamously, he dismissed the 1839 treaty as ‘a scrap of paper’. Later that day, Britain declared war on Germany. Candice Meyer, Hove, E. Sussex.
QUESTION Which art fake has sold for the most money?
FurTher to the earlier answer, han (henri) van Meegeren’s Vermeer forgeries may soon be overshadowed by Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. In 2017, the work, one of only about 20 complete pictures attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, was sold for a staggering £342,182,751 at Christie’s in New York.
The previous holder of the record price for an Old Master was Massacre Of The Innocents by Peter Paul rubens, which sold for £49.5 million in 2002.
Salvator Mundi’s buyer was Badr bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family, acting on behalf of the Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi. The picture was supposed to have been unveiled last September, but this was delayed indefinitely. This has led to allegations that it is a forgery.
Its origins had already been questioned. German art historian Frank Zollner wrote that it ‘exhibits a strongly developed sfumato technique [a gradual shading of tones and colours] that corresponds more closely to the manner of a Leonardo pupil active in the 1520s than to the style of the master himself ’.
university of Oxford art historian Matthew Landrus claimed only 20 to 30 per cent of the work was by Leonardo.
Those who believe it is fake point to the fact the glass orb held by Christ does not distort the light correctly — da Vinci was fastidious about such effects. Karen Burgess, Droitwich, Worcs.