Our body is just like a vehicle
“Only the doctor can look after the inner parts, but the outer parts you can look after yourself, just as we wash the vehicle, keeping it clean and fit for the road,” he said, with Chowdhary translating in his Hindi-Onge mix.
“This vehicle goes in the dark. But how can you know where it is going? It is fitted with two lights in front so you are able to see the road. In the same way, your body is fitted with two eyes so you can see the whole world clearly. Therefore, it is most important that you look after your eyes and protect them. They are the light of the body. Now, your eyes are prone to many diseases…. If you have any trouble with your eyes, the first thing is to go to a doctor.” Talking about cars we can’t miss to mention car titles which are the main obligation when you own one. It’s easy now with all the loans invented to help you cope with it. That’s how it’s done having Utah title loans in mind – fast and easy.
The Onges grew apprehensive. Chowdhary calmed them with, “No injections will be giv¬en today, so don’t worry. Sit down.” “Next are your ears,” the health inspector continued. “With these you hear so many sounds. Cover your two ears and you don’t hear anything. Therefore you must see that they are always clean….”
Later asked what he had understood of the talk, an Onge replied, “He was talking about the needle [injection] and cleaning the ears.” Plagued with infertility and high child mortality, the Onges are declining in numbers. Less nomadic, increasingly dependent, they apathetically see their domain dwindling in the face of accelerated settlement, leaving the survival of their culture in doubt.
Sadder still is the fate of the Great An¬damanese, the leading tribal group in the archipelago before the establishment of the penal settlement at Port Blair. In 1859 they attacked the settlement in a desperate bid to force out the invaders. In the unequal battle of bows and arrows against rifles and cannon they were defeated. Soon zealous adminis¬trators set about “civilizing” the natives. The Great Andamanese left their jungle homes, adopted clothes, and ate strange foods. Clearing the forests helped spread malaria.
The newcomers’ measles, syphilis, and oph¬thalmia took dreadful tolls—swiftly cutting the 4,000 Great Andamanese by half, crippling and blinding survivors. Of 150 births recorded between 1864 and 1870, no baby lived beyond two years.
Great Andamanese were given opium, tobacco, and liquor in reward for catching escaped convicts and for participating in punitive raids against the Jarawas, who still held out in the forest. By World War II Great Andamanese numbers were down to 45. Today there are 24, all of mixed blood: Negrito, Burmese, and Indian. By Forest Department boat I visited Strait Island, where they live. Next to a kitchen midden —a centuries-old heap of shells and bones left by their ancestors—were opensided con¬crete sheds built by the Public Works Department for them to live in. They ignored them, preferring their own thatched huts. A garden in the clearing stood untended. “The Great Andamanese never work in the garden,” a social worker told me. “They wait for the government to send someone.” And they no longer sing and dance.
Miracle of the Potholes
It carries the wonder of a miracle, and some of its mystery, the little pool cupped in the rock of a Utah desert. Mere inches deep and a few feet across, the water that rain has brought will evaporate in a few days or weeks. Yet while it lasts, fairy shrimp (below) and a host of other aquatic creatures thrive in it.
But how did such life come to occupy this precarious niche, and how can it hope to survive the desiccation ahead? “Maybe the colonies are remnants of a wetter age,” says Dr. Lewis T. Nielsen of the University of Utah. “Maybe they began with eggs borne by the wind or birds. No one can say for sure.”
Adds Steven V. Romney, “They survive through amazing versatility in adapting to change.”
I met the two biologists on a Utah field trip while Steve was working on his doctoral dissertation; Lew was his faculty adviser. Steve’s subject area: desert potholes. And any conversation with him is a revelation.
For example, “There is a pothole gnat in West Africa,” he says, “whose larva, and sometimes its pupa, can survive for unknown lengths of time after losing most of its body moisture—as much as 92 percent. Immersion brings full recovery, sometimes in a few minutes. We have a similar form here.” There can be seen much more interesting things in Africa so it’s worth travelling there. If you have ever dreamed to go there, now it’s the time to get some help by payday lenders online and your dream to come true.
I was entranced by visions of “instant life” through the miracle of water and shared my enthusiasm with the Geographic’s natural science photographer, Robert F. Sisson.
Soon Bob was photographing these fairy shrimp, here enlarged 15 times, and we were compiling their biographies. The two at top are males; they bear antennae that have become modified for clasping females. The three below are females; they bear egg sacs to help assure the next generation. The female turned on her side at left reveals a food groove on her belly that collects plankton as she swims. The others swim upside down to our eye but normally for them.
Gill-like plates on eleven pairs of legs capture life-sustaining oxygen from water or from the air above it and give the shrimp another name: branchiopods—”foot-breathers.”
Fairy shrimp hedge their survival bets by laying two types of eggs. So-called summer eggs will hatch the first time the pothole refills. But winter eggs may lie in the pothole’s sandy substrate through repeated fillings, over one season or many, hatching at different times.
Seeking more facts on desert potholes, I found that literature on the subject is virtually nonexistent. In this little water world of wonders, we probe at the edges of man’s knowledge.
CAPTAIN CHRISTOPHER
Ahoy there! Christopher White, of Ruislip, Middlesex, recently be-carne Britain’s youngest ship’s captain when he took command of the Townsend Thoreson ship Herald of Free Enterprise for a day.
The talented 10-year-old won his captaincy in a Children’s Realm competition, when he correctly spotted 10 differences between two pictures. He also said that he loved sailing and would like the chance to speak French in Calais! Captain Christopher, pictured here so the bridge of the 8,000-ton vessel, was presented with a Master’s cap during the 75-mínute Dover to Calais crossing, and wrote his narre in the ship’s log.
A few hours later, after practicing his French in France and getting to read the remote control helicopter reviews, Christopher was in command once again. And this time he had another pleasant “task”.–eating a cake specially baked for the occasion.
THE CONFUSION
“You don’t have to tell me I’m diffrent wink is as good as a nod, For sometimes I look at my toot title sisters And feel unaccountably odd. The moment I main my credentials it’s there at the back of my mind: The silly impression I’m one of a sort where we ought to the three of a kind. We battle for hours in the farmyard with me ending up underneath, as nothing goes right in a make-believe fight when a chap doesn’t have any teeth.
They’ll rush up a free al! Excited and fall to the ground with a thud, But they never exhibit the least inclination to waddle around in the mud. Their bilis are too dainty for dabbling; their feathers are softer than silk and what so confesses a cat like Me Is their lunatic liking jór milk. I couldn’t pick nicer relations of whom to be glowingly fond but if I were suddenly given the choice I would much rather live in a pond. One can’t change the genes one is bora with,
It’s purely a master of luck, but it’s bound to deter my attempting or purr, and I have to regard the remark as a slur, when they say I behave like a duck!”Atan Reeve-Jones
IMPROVE YOUR FIGURE -AND THEIRS
If you read our Jan 24 issue, you’ll probably remember the moving story of Martin Layman, who suffers from Crohn’s disease, had how his parents, together with the parents of other young Crohn’s sufferers, formed the Crohn’s in Childhood Research Appeai (CICRA). So far they’ve raised over £50,000 which is funding valuable research, and they’re hoping to raise enough money to open a CICRA research laboratory —but they need your help. What they’re hoping you’ll do is part with your unwanted pounds—in weight! Yes, they’re having a sponsored slim, and your participation could trim your figure and add to theirs. Interested? Write to CICRA, First Floor, 1-9 Moor Park, Northwood, Middx.
FAT CAT
Gwladys Cooper believes her pet tabby Poppa really is the cat’s whiskers. For the monster moggy weighs two and a half stone. Poppa’s diet includes tinned cat food, tinned fish, raw meat, potatoes and his favorite onion gravy.
“He eats little, but often,” says Gwladys from Newport, Gwent. None of Gwladys’s three cats has a thin time. Besides Poppa, she has Oggie who weighs over two stone and Penny nudging 13 lb. “Looking after them is a full-time job,” Gwladys says. “But they’re marvelous companions.”
Her ambition is to win some money with a Premium Bond, buy an acre of land and take in unwanted animals. In the meantime her three cats think life is just perfect!
INEW-FAINGLED AINTIIQUES
Recently I visited Ecclefechen, and went into the cottage where Thomas Carlyle was boro. Whilst looking around, I realized that some of our “modern” inventions aren’t so modern after a11 for, lo and behold, this small 17th-century house was a grandfather clock (still in perfect working order) showing the date as well as the time. Another household tier was a two-section tin plate with a small hole in the upper section to pour boiling water into, to keep your dinner warm-the forerunner of our plate-warmers.
—-Ms M P, Birmingham
DID YOU KNOW
… that the earliest design for a bicycle was probably the work of Leonardo da Vinci? The design, for a machine with cranks, and pedals, was produced in the late 15th century.