{"id":4922,"date":"2015-07-17T19:17:37","date_gmt":"2015-07-17T23:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=4922"},"modified":"2023-07-23T14:35:49","modified_gmt":"2023-07-23T18:35:49","slug":"nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2015\/07\/nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Nature, red in tooth and claw&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The old time Universalists were fond of saying that &#8220;God is love.&#8221; That statement may be true, but not in any sentimental sappy sense. Many years ago, Tennyson pointed out that he who might place trust in the belief that &#8220;God was love indeed \/ And love Creation\u2019s final law&#8221; needed to remember that &#8220;Nature, red in tooth and claw &#8230; shriek\u2019d against his creed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On our walk today, Abs and I saw a butterfly that had lost much of its left hindwing, and a part of its left forewing. We speculated that perhaps a bird or other predator had attacked the butterfly, and somehow it had gotten away, and was still flying:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/BlogJul1715b.jpg\" alt=\"BlogJul1715b\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4923\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/BlogJul1715b.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/BlogJul1715b-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 85vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Living things need to eat, and as often as not they eat other living things in order to stay alive. And this is true of you, too, O human being who think yourself an apex predator: there are plenty of microorganisms and parasites and biting insects who feed on you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The old time Universalists were fond of saying that &#8220;God is love.&#8221; That statement may be true, but not in any sentimental sappy sense. Many years ago, Tennyson pointed out that he who might place trust in the belief that &#8220;God was love indeed \/ And love Creation\u2019s final law&#8221; needed to remember that &#8220;Nature, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2015\/07\/nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8220;Nature, red in tooth and claw&#8221;&#8221;<\/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":[171,87],"tags":[957,537,535,648],"class_list":["post-4922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-concord-massachusetts","category-road-trips","tag-2015-road-trip","tag-arthropods","tag-invertebrates","tag-lepidoptera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4922","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=4922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4924,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4922\/revisions\/4924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}