Vision of Life; by Sanjay: Spiders, Lizards, Termites & Wild Life!

“The difference between utility and utility plus beauty is the difference between telephone wires and the spider web”… Edwin Way Teale.

Edwin Way Teale was an American naturalist, photographer and writer. Teale's works serve as primary source material documenting environmental conditions across North America from 1930 - 1980. He is perhaps best known for his series The American Seasons, four books documenting over 75,000 miles (121,000 km) of automobile travel across North America following the changing seasons. And no wonder with such closeness with nature Teale can differentiate a telephone wire & spider web so wonderfully! Just look at the work Teale has put in to make mankind rich on the front of not just knowledge but making them aware about importance of thousands of species which we have not very (read at all) bothered about species like spiders, frogs, lizards & many such! And Teale did it by his sheer dedication towards nature in totality by spending over fifty years rather actually living with all such species, not something one can even imagine! As I always wonder about the so called recent Face book wild lifers who goes to forests with fancy gears with all protection like sun cream, outfit, glares, stays at best of the resorts & yes cameras with zoom lenses & click snaps (mostly of tiger) & after coming back post them on social media & discuss sightings & what thrill it was types things over chilled beer at some bar with their friends! Can any of such lot survive even twenty four hours if put in a real forest or nature is what I always think & then you realize hard work & dedication people like Teale has put in & that’s why they are real wild lifers or say wild life conservationist. And then when it comes to wild life, all our love, passion, awareness etc stops at four or five animals, tiger is at apex of it. If you don’t believe me check wild life groups on FB, who calls themselves wild lifers & see the numbers of photographs of tigers & like such snaps gets & rest all photographs of insects or smaller species & the likes as well comments they gets! Especially if the photograph is of some lizard or a spider or a frog or any such species which is equally a part or form of wild life as tiger is then barring few no one even bothers to comment or ask about details of such specie! Well I don’t judge something (read importance of wild life) from the “likes” but just pointing out the trend as the likes definitely shows what masses cares about or say runs behind is proper term!

Last year I had been to Panna forest & it’s mainly famous for leopards & we also were not exception as a leopard is rarer than tiger because of its hide & seek way of living. On one safari our guide RP More, who is very enthusiastic about entire wild life (again a rare species by himself with such attitude) asked to stop suddenly gypsy & excitedly pointed at something. As usual we thought tiger or leopard & aimed our cameras towards the direction he was pointing but we couldn’t even see what he was trying to show in first place! He said it’s a “Tree shrew”, a small euarchontoglire mammal, native to the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. It was hardly of size of mouse & even looks alike but Omre was so excited, he said he hasn’t seen a Tree shrew in last five years & never in day time in forest. We clicked enough snaps of it & pretty clear ones; More than next 30 minutes kept telling us about Tree shrew & its life style & how rare its sighting is etc etc. Frankly I came to know about Tree shrew for the first time but I also felt great & a day before that at nigh safari we have seen Civets; a civet is a small, lithe-bodied, mostly nocturnal mammal native to tropical Asia and Africa, especially the tropical forests. The term civet applies to over a dozen different mammal species. Most of the species diversity is found in Southeast Asia. Again till we actually saw civet we didn’t realized how difficult sightings of such animals is in forest as all we know about forest is tiger, leopards & slot bear at the most! Well, after coming back home I posted snaps of tigers, leopards & Tree shrew on FB, needless to say to my expectation not a single comment was about Tree shrew, nobody even bothered to ask what’s so special about it & where it found or any information about its food & such things! At the same time I have got snaps of tigress drinking water as well few of leopards & those snaps got loads of likes! I repeat I am sharing this only to tell you how even the so called wild lifers also are unaware or non-interested in animals apart from Big 5 i.e. Tigers, leopards, sloth bear, bison & at the most barsingha types or sometimes wild dogs gets some attention! And the story with many animals like Porcupine or Ud Manjar (Ant Eater) Or Lizards or Snakes (King Cobra is exception again) is not different as all such species exists but not many cares about their existence is a bitter fact! Seems most people either knows all the things about such animals (just sarcastic) or don’t bother about it as for us jungle is tiger. As most of the people who has gone to jungle has seen tiger & it indeed is great sight (I too agree) but you can like the snap of animal which you have seen many times but you don’t even look at the snap of an animal who you haven’t ever seen even after visiting its habitat (I am not asking to like something from rain forests of Brazil) but you are not interested; and you still call yourself a wild lifer?

And why just social media even the print media is hell bend of just saving tiger or covering tiger related things & I am referring to news-papers who are face of the society in a way! On this background when you get to read news about some new species of spider & lizard has been found by two researchers in Maharashtra & on top of it the species has been named after a forest officer, its real heartwarming thing! Because first not many youngsters take such field as their career & thing is simple there isn’t enough money which is first mark of success in our culture & then there is no fame! As well being a researcher in something like lizards or spiders needs to you get away from normal urban world i.e. giving up all the luxuries like nice clothes & social life & yes even the mobile net work a times! And then the researcher has to spend hours, days, months even years in adverse conditions as wilderness is fun as a tourist but can be ruthless when it’s your home! Because the very same greens can be suddenly boring & frustrating when it surrounds you all the times with extreme cold or hot or rainy weather! Yet there are few who chose forest as their career & the two names in the news are of Mr. Rajesh Sanap & Dr Varad Giri & Rajesh has found a new specie of spider in Aare Colony i.e. right in Mumbai, Borivali National Park which very few people know a home for many such non glamorous yet wild species! And he aptly named it by the name of Mr. Sunil Limaye, IFS who has been Director at Borivali National Park & has been himself avid wild lifer & does his forest duty not because he gets paid for it but because he loves forests!

And this is the reason I am happy to read the news about spider & lizard because still there is hope for wild life in totality. As when you say forest what you mean or what comes in your mind, is I will like to ask? Most people will say, trees, lots of trees actually, grass, deer, river, leopard & yes tiger; indeed most people’s answer will be this & I don’t blame them! As the problem is right from our school days nobody has made us understood what actually forest means, all what we have been taught is text books is full of words while forest is something one needs to feel by being in it! As when you will realize forest is much more than the items in above list for e.g. forest is creepers hanging from trees, forest is various sounds surrounding you right from birds chirping to alarm calls to cicadas constant noise & even wind whistling through bamboos, forest is not just green leafs on trees but fallen leafs which gets rotten on the earth beneath our feet, forest is spider webs hanging across the less travelled tracks & insects caught in them, forest is Baami i.e. termite houses & rodents digging through them, forest is honey bees collecting honey from wild flowers & hanging beehives on tall banyan trees, forest is butterflies dancing on wild flowers! All these & many such makes a forest complete life cycle of which every link is equally important & this is what we need to make people understand if we want to make forests survive. As no link of the forest is less or more important than other; if we want to make tiger or leopard survive then we need its prey i.e. deer, monkeys & wild boars to survive as well water bodies & the habitat in which tiger lives also to survive. To make deer survive we need grass lands as well lots of shrubs to survive, if we need monkeys to survive we need to make fruit as well flowering trees survive, if we want wild boars to survive we need to make termite houses as well roots of grass & many such rotten things to survive. We want to make grass land survive with the help of many insects like termites to make the soil fertile with minerals. If we want to make fruit & flowering tress then we need insects & butterflies & birds to survive so as pollination will happen! If you want water bodies & birds to survive you need to make fish & frogs like species to survive & the list of things to survive goes on & on!

Finally let’s understand every specie, tree, grass, water, air, sky all these combine makes the thing we call forest & these all are connected to each other; the only thing which is not connected to above all is, us the humans & that’s main reason of destruction of forests! And that’s why news of some Rajesh or some Dr Varad Giri finding a new species of spider & naming after some forest office Sunil Limaye is very much important as these are the people who has understood what forest means & so has the guide of Panna, RP More who cares for a Tree shrew as much he cares for tiger! Friends, years after year, sometimes with ignorance & most of the time with our greed, we have killed forest named life cycle which exists right in our backyards also in the form of a small water body or patch of shrubs or a big neem tree! Still all is not lost, let’s understand forests & make them survive, as today we only can help forests & make them survive but once forests are gone, who will help to make us survive, is the question written on the wall ahead!

Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about real estate in Pune at U-Tube link below..

https://youtu.be/g3lx1Nq7pBs

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http://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2018/08/pune-city-no-1.html