August 30, 2018
JAGUARUNDI JUST OUTSIDE EK BALAM
Last Saturday a little after noon I was biking beneath a very hot, bright Sun on the little paved road leading out of Ek Balam toward the ranch when a Jaguarundi, HERPAILURUS YAGOUAROUNDI crossed the pavement in front of me, about 40 meters (yards) distance. Though I'd never seen one before, I knew what it was immediately because it was shaped more or less like a domesticated cat, just larger and more powerfully built than any tomcat. Also it moved with a sense of presence that no house cat ever would display. Its body was too elongated and its tail too long and thick for it to have bee an Ocelot, Margay or immature Jaguar. It was close to Puma/ Couger/ Mountain Lion shape, but more elongated and smaller. In the Yucatan we only have those five wild cat species, so it just had to be a Jaguarundi. Based on a photo on the Internet, I prepared a silhouette showing exactly what I saw, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180830jg.gif
The Jaguarundi reaches up to 30 inches in total length (77cm), with legs that look a bit short for such a long cat's , body. The ears are short and rounded, and the head small and roundish. The individual I saw was blackish but a bit silvery. When I told Juan at the rancho -- the most backcountry Maya fellow I've ever known -- about my sighting, he said that males are black and females sort of reddish yellow. However, this is Maya myth, for I read that there are two color phases, the gray, with the coat ranging from blackish to brownish-gray, and the red, with a hue from chestnut to foxy red, and they have nothing to do with gender. Earlier the two phases were considered to be different species, but now it's known that both phases can be born in the same litter, so the color reflects neither sex nor taxonomic position. I saw the gray color phase, though it was quite a blackish one.
Juan wasn't too impressed with my sighting, saying that they're fairly common, and bad chicken-stealers. Also, my seeing a Jaguarundi at midday in glaring sunlight wasn't unusual, either, since they're diurnal, not nocturnal. The Jaguarundi isn't considered to be threatened with extinction, since it's distributed over a very large area, from southern Texas all through Mexico and Central America to northern Argentina in South America. In most of its area it's losing ground fast because of habitat destruction, but it's supposed that it might at least survive in Brazil's "mega-reserves."
Recent genetic studies indicate that the Jaguarundi's ancient ancestor migrated across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia into the America's about 8 to 8.5 million years ago. The Jaguarundi along with the Puma/ Couger/ Mountain Lion is thought to be next most closely related to the modern Cheetah of Africa and western Asia, but that relationship isn't yet certain.
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JUVENILE YUCATAN JAYS
More than one person in the Yucatan has sent me pictures of an "unidentifiable bird" such as the one shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180830yj.jpg
Probably most field guides don't show a bird like that, because this is a stage in the juvenile plumage of our pretty Yucatan Jay, whose page with other pictures and stories is at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/yucjay.htm
Nowadays a raucous, curious family of Yucatan Jays visits me each morning, enjoying dawn sunlight flooding in over the Papaya field below the hut. They may also like that location because this week army ants have plagued the hut area, and Yucatan Jays along with Groove-billed Anis and Altamira Orioles follow army ants, feeding on animals escaping the ants. As creatures flee from their ant-invaded covers they get snatched up. This week for four days in a row army ants invaded the hut. The last visit was by a much smaller species than usual, but still that species did the whole army ant routine.
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MANDEVILLA VINE FLOWERING
It's amazing that after all these years in the Yucatan I can still be wandering along a trail I've traveled many times, and something completely new to me will turn up, and often it's conspicuous and pretty. That's the case with what's shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180830ma.jpg
It was a slender vine with leaves situated opposite one another, and when a leaf was injured it bled milky white latex. Therefore, it just had to be a member of the big Dogbane or Oleander Family, the Apocynaceae, which now embraces species that used to belong to the now-abolished Milkweed Family. A side view of the flower shows a surprising amount of hairiness, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180830mb.jpg
A broken-open flower displays not only droplets of white latex oozing from the torn parts but also, at the entrance to the corolla's throat, a cluster of five anthers on very short filaments, assuring that any pollinator leaving the nectar area at the flower's bottom will be carrying pollen to the next flower. That's at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180830mc.jpg
This is MANDEVILLA SUBSAGITTATA, of which there are few pictures and little information on the Internet, despite the species being widely distributed from central Mexico south through Central America into South America. I find no English name for it, but up North certain species of Mandevilla vines are grown in gardens for their pretty flowers, so just calling it Mandevilla might do.
I read that the species is medicinal, but it's not said for what. In many traditional cultures, plants producing white latex are considered eye medicine because of the belief that plants tell us their uses -- the "Doctrine of Signatures." The white latex is like the opaqueness of certain blind people's eyes, so it must be good for eye diseases, they reason. But many members of the Euphorbia Family, for instance, produce white latex, and that sap often contains powerful alkaloids that can damage eyes.
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RAINS BRING OUT WIFFLEBALL STINKHORNS
At https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/stinkegg.htm we look at one of the most bizarre fungi I've ever seen, sometimes known as the Wiffleball Stinkhorn. On that page you can read about it's stinky manner of having its spores distributed, and how the Maya have certain beliefs about them that, when the fungus appears, makes them very nervous.
Despite the fungus's unusual appearance, during the rainy season it's fairly common over most of Mexico, and nowadays they're popping up all over the place. I just had to take another picture of one, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180830wb.jpg
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HOW CERTAIN PLANTS END UP GROWING ON SMOOTH PALM TRUNKS
Often on the smooth trunks of certain kinds of palm trees -- such as our Huano Palms from which the Maya construct their thatch roofs -- you see other plants growing halfway up the trunk, and you wonder how they got there. Here's the story:
The stems, or petioles, of the Huano's big fronds enlarge at their bases where they attach to the unbranching trunk. Organic matter such as shed leaves from other trees gathers in the scooplike depression formed at the point of detachment, and rain keeps the organic matter moist and crumbly. Here seeds of many kinds of plants germinate, and issue roots that grow through not only the rich organic matter but also around the palm's trunk itself.
Eventually the frond supporting the airborne plant dies and falls away, as new fronds appear above it. If the plants growing in the frond petiole's gathered organic matter aren't attached to the trunk, they fall with the debris. However, certain plants, such as orchids and bromeliads, appear to be programmed to attach securely to the trunk. And this attachment isn't parasitic; it's strictly to keep the airborne plant from falling with the accumulated debris. You can see a Catasetum integerrimum orchid established where most of its supporting frond has fallen away, but a portion of the petiole still cups some organic matter, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180830x6.jpg
Not far from that orchid, with several fronds above long fallen away, a Strangler Fig sapling is starting its career at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180830x5.jpg
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AQUATIC MAMMALS EVOLVED FROM LAND BACK TO WATER
In last week's story about wallowing pigs, in bringing up the matter of pigs being related to whales and hippopotamuses, I mentioned that their ancestors originated in an aquatic environment. Seth in Maine pointed out that aquatic mammals evolved from land back to water. This is a case of information learned long ago twisting around in my head. I even remember studying how the front flippers of whales evolved from a terrestrial mammal's forelimbs, and I recall fossil discoveries announced in 2001 in which feet and ankles of early whales were clearly observable. Funny how the mind works, especially our memories.
Anyway, to firm up my understandings I took a look at an online 2007 paper by Mark Uhen, published in "The Anatomical Record 290:514-522," entitled Evolution of Marine Mammals: Back to the Sea After 300 Million Years," which begins by noting that the fossil record demonstrates that over time at least seven mammal groups have re-entered the marine environment.
Uhen's use of the word "re-entered" refers to ancestors living before mammals existed. My notes, not my memory, say that mammals, like birds, arose from early reptiles, which arose from amphibians, whose beginnings were with early fish. On our Amphibian Evolution page at https://www.backyardnature.net/amphibs.htm there's this outline of when the various animal groups arose:
Birds...... about 170 million years ago
Mammals.... about 220 million years ago
Reptiles... about 320 million years ago
Amphibians: about 400 million years ago
Fish....... about 500 million years ago
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FOOD IMPORTED INTO MEXICO FROM THE USA
A Spanish-language page appearing on CNN's website reports on "Five products from the USA that feed Mexico." I was interested in it because when you take into account the large percentage of Mexico that is too arid or too rocky, mountainous or with eroded-away soil, I never have been able to see how so many Mexicans can be fed.
The report states that, after manufactured products, agricultural food products account for most of Mexico's imports from the US, to the amount of US$13,125,000,000. Of those products, five foods represent 41% of the total. It's interesting to see what those five are. Here are figures from 2016:
CORN (MAIZE): 14,000,000 tons at US$2.613,000,000
PORK: US$1,041,000,000
WHEAT: US$611,000,000
POWDERED MILK & CREAM: US$571,000,000
CHICKEN: US$524,000,000
You may be further interested in the Spanish-language page entitled Five Mexican products the people in the US can't live without.
I couldn't find those CNN pages in English, but an English page at Export.Gov on Mexican Agriculture covers much of the same territory, and adds that "With a growing population, an expanding economy, and an increasingly market-oriented agricultural sector, Mexico remained the United States’ third largest agricultural trading partner in 2016, accounting for nearly 12 percent of total American agricultural exports and 53 percent of Mexico’s total agricultural imports."
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TORTILLAS
The traditional Mexican tortilla begins with a quantity of corn (maize) grains that soak overnight in a container of water in which lime has been added. During this time they swell and soften, and the lime not only causes the kernels' indigestible skin, or seed coat, to slough off, but also imparts to the corn a high level of calcium, increases the availability of iron to the human body, and liberates niacin for the body's use. When the resulting hominylike kernels are thoroughly rinsed, the moist, soft, puffy corn kernels are ground into a moist, cream-colored paste called masa. The masa is formed into thin discs that then are baked on a dry (no oil or grease) hot-plate usually referred to as a comal. The resulting baked item is a tortilla, the "bread" of traditional Mesoamerican cultures. The average Mexican meal is unthinkable without a pile of tortillas being handy. I eat them everyday, too.
But, the world of tortillas is changing. Especially in northern Mexico and in larger cities, many Mexicans are abandoning tortillas for spongy, wheat-based white-bread. Also, nowadays many corn tortillas are made from very finely ground, degerminated dry corn sold in packages as cornmeal. Commercially it's known as Maseca. Maseca looks and feels more like wheat flour than cornmeal bought in the US for making cornbread, but it tastes different. In the ubiquitous little family-operated tortilla-baking shops called tortillarías, every morning in nearly every Mexican community, tortillas are turned out by the thousands, and nowadays most of those tortillaría-made tortillas are baked from masa made not from corn kernels soaked overnight in lime water, but by mixing bags of dry Maseca with water until the masa has the right consistency.
My rancho Maya friends tell me that in backwoods, traditional little Ek Balam about 80% of the families -- where most older women wear traditional huipeles, and some younger ones -- still eat traditional homemade tortillas. However, in nearby Temozón, which is too small to have a stoplight but large enough to support at least the four tortillarías I've visited, about 80% of the families now eat Maseca-based, tortillaría produced tortillas. In larger towns with stoplights, fairly few families enjoy homemade tortillas.
To me, Maseca tortillas are anemic and tasteless compared to tortillas handmade from traditional masa. However, Mexicans buy them for the same reason I do: Nobody in the family wants to spend the significant amount of time and effort needed to bake homemade tortillas every morning. It's much easier, and cheaper if you place a value on the labor, to buy tortillaría-made ones.
All this is understandable and fits with how human culture evolves everyplace, inexorably toward doing things with greater efficiency of time and energy use, usually with a corresponding loss of everyday life's homey texture.
Here's another feature of the tortilla story I find worth thinking about: Most people I know from the US regard all tortillas -- even homemade ones -- as too bland and tasteless to fool with.
This is understandable, too, for the US diet -- and more and more the Mexican diet, too -- is heavy on processed foods in which additives provide industrial-strength tastes that simply blow away all subtle, nuanced flavors such as those a good tortilla brings to the table. Taste buds continually subjected to heavy dosages of chemical "flavor enhancers" become desensitized. It's the same way with all the senses: Too much stimulation leads to desensitization.
So, what happens in a society where everything bombards people all the time at high intensity -- tastes, odors, sounds, undisciplined feelings of all kind, and mass-media-disseminated thoughts all in heavy doses mingled promiscuously, creating a continually pressing roar of sensory white-noise? Might not there be something in the human spirit that absolutely needs features of life that only the most humble and understated of sensations can offer? What if the sense of rootedness, of feeling like you're part of a healthy community, of having a sense of self-worth and focus in your life... all are rooted in something that only generous measures of quietness, peace and steady self discipline can provide?
Just to have something to think about, the question can be asked what might be done if someone were to decide to reorient his or her life toward simpler, more subtle and nuanced, and meaningful things. How can the desensitization that already has taken place be undone, to enable the body and spirit to register and benefit from softer stimuli?
When I became a vegetarian in my late teens, at first all non-flesh foods were tasteless. But in a few weeks, new tastes and aromas I didn't know existed spontaneously arose in unforeseen places, such as fresh carrots. Same when I stopped eating highly processed foods. When I got rid of my car and decided to live where cars weren't needed, before long I fond myself spending much less money, and with more time to do what made me feel good, and made sense to me. On and on I could go, but you get the drift, and I suspect that on some level everyone already knows all this, just that our society makes it hard to make such choices, and family and neighbors don't like for us to be different.
Still, it seems to me that the reorientation being considered here is worth thinking about, and can be accomplished one step at a time, always consciously and purposefully walking toward the sunrise of simplicity, peace and self realization.
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Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
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