On cats, corgis, sunfish and cockroaches
A love-letter in four parts // A natural history museum tour
I know I should get out in nature when I’m depressed/anxious because that’s what the first 300 Google searches tell me to do. But nature can also kill me, and my terrible survival skills make forgetting my place in the ecosystem very hard. So I go to a natural history museum instead because there’s restrooms, shiny dead things, and most importantly a glass barrier between the shiny dead things and their desire to possibly want me dead.
I strongly recommend a trip to the Natural History museum if you ever feel like your self-esteem could use some help. This isn’t going to be one of those essays that waxes eloquent on the achievements of homo sapiens, our opposable thumbs and what not (although some of that is cool). This is not going to be an anthropomorphic essay, in that humans and their genealogy are not the focus of this piece.
No, the next time you’re at a Natural History museum, I want you to look at an exhibit of something so truly repulsive that your primal animal brain is screaming. No gracious whales or beautiful gazelles or something that makes you go “wow, nature is beautiful and amazing”. You should approach something so hideously grotesque that your brain thinks something like:
!!!!!
Ew.
How does such a creature even exist?
I would not make eye contact with such a creature in the wild if I can help it.
Thank goodness it’s dead.
It is dead, right? Does it even have eyes? What is that?
Do I want to find out?
Ew (again).
Then, approach the plaque/LED display panel/ information signboard near it, and read it. You’ll discover that there is definitely at least one (if not more) teams of scientists and researchers who have been tasked with tracking down everything there is to know about this specific abomination. Like, there is actual funding and money going into conservation and comprehension of such species, and yet, the specimen before you is the stuff crawling out of nightmares. All of this is to say that if something so awful, so incomprehensible can be worthy of so much time, curation and effort, then so are you.
Now, I present some unsolicited reviews of creatures.
Sunfish
Okay, what a name. When I heard the name, I thought it was going to be one of those tiny fish that travel in schools and they are so reflective because they’re shiny and they travel in swarms. Or maybe it was going to be one of those tiny fish that dentists keep in their aquariums (aquaria?) that look like little bits of glitter so you have something to distract yourself from as you bleed out of a root canal.
No, the sunfish is literally the size of an SUV.
[Image courtesy: Atlantic Naturalist/ NYTimes]
The name is also particularly cruel because the only reason this creature comes up to the surface of the water is so that birds can free it from parasites that ravage its skin. “Ahaha it’s sunning,” these beach visitors of the Azores must have said. “Let’s call it the sunfish, that’s so funny,” they said as this freshly-pecked creature wriggled back into the deep ocean.
Secondly, this creature is poorly designed. It’s stuff like this that makes me think there has to be a God because there is no evolutionary adaptation that permits a 3 yr-old’s conceptualization of a fish (flat stony blob, random misshapen fins) and makes it in extra extra large. The mola (I’m using its Latin name out of respect) is also unfortunately a clumsy swimmer. It can die if it bonks a ship from concussion injuries. It is not fast and agile. Its fins offer very limited steering ability. How is such a creature expected to survive in the wild? Honestly, if I were a mola, I would be angry. Doesn’t matter if I don’t have the evolutionary temperament for it, I would still find a way to be angry.
Cats
I need you all to absorb this fact: there is a 7 million year gap in the fossil record when there were no cats.
The fossil record tracks cat-ancestors up to 25 million years ago, and then they disappear from the North American continent and large parts of Eurasia, and then they return again 18 million years ago. And people are still trying to figure out why.
I’ve read about cats being really selective about when they want to cuddle with or play with their humans, but imagine playing at this scale. This is evolutionary halloween. 10/10, if I were a cat, I would also keep my secrets. But I am not, which is why you have this newsletter.
Corgis
Before I begin, I want you to know that yes, I think corgis are cute. They are very fluffy and very loving and lovable. Nothing I write here changes that opinion.
But, and bear with me here, I have to raise the question of what a corgi actually does. The design of the creature is very ambiguous as to what it’s supposed to be besides cute. The corgi isn’t particularly a fast dog, and it’s certainly not aerodynamic or streamlined. There are plenty of other dog shapes very effective at managing survival skills in the wild. It has teeth, but are they specifically sharp or structured differently from other dogs to compensate for other evolutionary advantages?
I’m trying to think of a natural environment where a corgi thrives and short of Buckingham Palace or someone’s lap, I am failing to come up with answers. I would be worried for this creature in the wild. If I were a corgi and in someone else’s lap, I would simply not have opinions. If I were a corgi in the wild? I have no idea. Please reply and correct my understanding of feral corgis besides being really good little floofs.
If I were an inspirational writer, I would close with some remark like this:
Nature, in all of its forms, is glorious and infinite. We should be lucky that we get to experience and name such wonders. Steady the hand that lands a heavy paperweight upon the cockroach, and instead kiss your garden earthworm as it enters the–
But I am not. I’m just saying that if nature allows poorly-designed and beta-release versions of remarkable things to exist, and that they have merit through the sheer virtue of existence, so can you.