5/22/23
Pedestrian Society
Pedestrian Society
An old friend recently went on holiday to London—his first trip abroad. Since we both grew up around here, in the rural hillscapes of southern West Virginia, it caused me to reflect on the most radical difference between life in rural America and cosmopolitan Europe: walking.
Evolutionary biologists tell us we are a species built for walking. Assuming we’ve never flown on our own power, aren’t born in water, and didn’t arise as a species with horseless or horsed carriages, that seems rather obvious. Plus, the bipedalism thingy. But in America our legs might eventually become forgotten appendages, as mysterious to our heirs as their appendices. We Americans took to individual motorized mobility as soon as Henry Ford opened it up to all, and we haven’t looked back since. For a long time we didn’t even bother installing pedestrian accommodations along new public roads. Out here in the countryside, the ratio of roads without sidewalks to those with them must be well over a hundred to one.
I lived in Cologne, Germany, for large chunk of the 1990s, and I never owned a car. I had various bicycles and monthly subscriptions to the public transit system, and most of the time I walked. For miles on any given day that I was out of the house. I’d walk to local shops for groceries, beer, smokes, and other essentials. I’d walk to the university, to the foreign language school where I taught, and to government offices to take care of whatever bureaucratic stuff needing taken care of. I’d walk to parks, restaurants, cafés, and nightclubs to meet friends, often staggering back home after it all closed down for the night, long after the last light-rail train had made its run.
Somewhere in our not-too-distant past in America, we, too, walked all over the place to get around. I don’t know of any sources for good historical information on it, but I strongly suspect that not every household had horse-drawn carriages on hand for local jaunts to town and such. Horses are a costly extra mouth to feed when most of your time is spent figuring out how to feed a house full of people in the months of the year when there are no crops to harvest. There was no motorized transportation, and taking a horse to get from one side of a pasture to the other as one might today take an ATV would have been a nonsensical idea. Or so I assume.
Compared to Europeans, we Americans prefer the speed and efficiency of driving everywhere to walking anywhere. Maybe the difference in mobility accounts for the differences between American and European wealth—with even the richest Europeans having significantly lower average incomes than Americans. Our commerce moves faster, meaning that our economy moves faster. That movement grows the economy.
This is not to advocate for one society over another, per se. Since we are built for walking, it does seem that walking does us good all around. It isn’t taken seriously as exercise because it lacks the clear benefits of cardio workouts. It doesn’t involve strenuous exercise of the sort that helps build muscle. Yet it is known to enhance your mood. Going outside for a walk can clear the mind. Or, in today’s world, it gives you the chance to listen to music or audiobooks over wireless headphones.
Walking might be more popular in America if Americans thought it served a purpose, but most consider it either a time-consuming inconvenience, or something that you drive to in order to engage in it as a focused leisure-time activity. It isn’t considered a means to an end of getting things done. Maybe it’s a cultural difference that is a side-effect of our wealth. Once you give up walking for personal motorized transit, you never look back.
Today's special animal friends are the tenrecs, mammals of the order Afrosoricida endemic to Madagascar. (This order also includes golden moles, found in southern Africa, and otter shrews, found in equatorial Africa.) The Tenrecidae family includes three subfamilies, eight genera, and 31 extant species. Like birds and reptiles, all tenrecs have a single opening – cloaca – for reproduction and waste elimination. I'd never heard of them, but the kids are all saying, "Oh, those things!"
Tenrecs range in size from less than 2 inches to more than 15 inches. It is believed they all descended from a common ancestor originating in continental Africa. Over millions of years, a variety of body types developed in different ecological niches. Larger species which forage on the ground have defensive spines like those of a hedgehog. Ground and tree-dwelling species are similar to shrews.
Species found beneath the leaf litter resemble moles. Some are semi-aquatic, like otters.
The lesser hedgehog tenrec, Echinops telfairi, is regularly kept in captivity. This species is about six inches long and weighs about 7 oz. Its entire back is covered with sharp spines. It is found in dry forest, scrubland, savannahs, and grassland, where it feeds mainly on insects and a few small vertebrates. They are solitary except when mothers are rearing young. They are a species of least concern and are becoming popular in the pet trade as well as for research labs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wArMujLe81s
The common or tailless tenrec, Tenrec ecaudatus, is the largest species of tenrec. It has been introduced to other island groups in the Indian Ocean. It has sharp spines, a very short tail, and an opossum face. They favor a wetter habitat than the lesser hedgehog tenrec, and they have adapted to agricultural areas and suburban lawns. In addition to insects, frogs, and mice, tailless tenrecs eat leaves. A female can give birth to as many as 32 young. During cool weather, tailless tenrecs can remain in low-energy torpor for up to nine months.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VowaLsu5hl4
The streaked tenrecs, Hemicentetes nigriceps and Hemicentetes semispinosus, have detachable spines like a porcupines. H. nigriceps, the highland streaked tenrec, lives in the central upland regions of Madagascar, where it eats earthworms. It has black and white blotches and stripes, believed to help it blend in to the forest floor. H. semispinosus, the lowland streaked tenrec, lives in tropical lowland rainforests. It forages on land and in the water and digs burrows. Its base color is black, and its stripes are yellow or reddish. It has an array of yellow bristles, like a sunburst, around its head. This species lives in large family groups in large burrows. Females have 5 to 8 young at a time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LBHZk3C3NI
Both these species, as well as the tailless tenrec, are of Least Concern, as are most species of tenrecs. Habitat loss is the main threat to all of them as deforestation and urbanization continue in Madagascar. Tenrecs are a vector of bubonic plague, of which there are hundreds of cases per year in Madagascar. Predators of tenrecs include fossa, snakes, birds of prey, and humans.
Look at the heels that woman is wearing. Of course she got to the pedestrian crossing by motorized transport!
Good morning. I'm reading John Muir's "A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf." He observed in 1867 that everyone in rural Kentucky - male or female, young or old, black or white - was on horseback, except himself, and they all figured he was dotty.