Animal Behavior

Hi, everyone. Well, we were dog sitting this beautiful creature last week. One of the things we are most excited to see while traveling are the animals that we cannot normally see in their native habitats. Kiwis. Not: . Cassowaries. Penguins. And of course kangaroos. Mary’s not so keen on Tasmanian devils.

I remember seeing a sad mangy North American squirrel lying dormant on a tree branch in the Dublin zoo on my first visit to Ireland and thought, “that doesn’t give a true experience of what a squirrel is like in its natural environment where I come from.” Yet someone who never gets to travel to North America but only sees that squirrel in the zoo may believe that is how North American squirrels act.

There is a great place here in Palm Desert called the Living Desert. A showcase of exotic animals and native flora and fauna. But of course humans are animals too. And we look forward to learning about how humans act in their native areas as well. You can borrow ideas but you can’t borrow situations, as Thomas Paine said. The people of New Zealand act the way they do because of the demands of the climate, geography, and culture. What about that climate, geography, and culture can we not guess or imagine from afar?

One reason to travel is to meet those people from foreign countries who cannot or will not travel to see you. Kind of like with animals, maybe those humans who can and want to travel abroad do not always represent the humans who remain in their native environments. I like to imagine that I present a different type of American (U.S.) than what foreigners might see on Dallas or Duck Dynasty.

Perhaps we are all a horse of a different color.