{"id":10470,"date":"2023-07-01T21:44:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-02T01:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=10470"},"modified":"2023-07-25T19:22:53","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T23:22:53","slug":"encounters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2023\/07\/encounters\/","title":{"rendered":"Encounters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Carol and I went for walks in two wildlife sanctuaries today: the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary and the North River Wildlife Sanctuary, both in Marshfield, Mass. Usually when we walk in wildlife sanctuaries I spend most of my time looking at plants, especially flowering plants. But today, without trying at all, we wound up seeing a quite a few animals. Here are three of them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two
Adult and juvenile Osprey (Pandion haliaetus<\/em>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A
Red Milkweed Beetle (Tetraopes tetrophthalmus<\/em>) on Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca<\/em>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Turtle
Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta<\/em>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Each of these three animals is what I’d call charismatic. I’m not quite sure what makes some animals more charismatic than others. Animal charisma is not a matter of being cuddly \u2014 none of these three animals could be considered cuddly. Nor is animal charisma a matter of being cute \u2014 a baby Osprey might be cute, in a fierce flesh-tearing-beak sort of way, but a Red Milkweed Beetle is not what most people would consider cute. In fact, being cute and cuddly is almost the opposite of being charismatic. Cuteness and cuddliness feel controllable; charisma does not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humans remain my favorite animal. At the same time, I think it’s good for us humans to encounter non-human animals. After all, for most of human existence, we lived in close-knit human communities while being surrounded by non-human animals \u2014 a distinct contrast to our current existence, where we are alienated both from other humans, and from non-human organisms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carol and I went for walks in two wildlife sanctuaries today: the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary and the North River Wildlife Sanctuary, both in Marshfield, Mass. Usually when we walk in wildlife sanctuaries I spend most of my time looking at plants, especially flowering plants. But today, without trying at all, we wound up seeing … Continue reading “Encounters”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[945],"tags":[537,1020,538,594],"class_list":["post-10470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","tag-arthropods","tag-charisma","tag-raptors","tag-reptiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10470"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10506,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10470\/revisions\/10506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}