Father Knows Less Or: Can I Cook My Sister?

by Wendell Jamieson

  We made a circuit of the other high points, our voices echoing, our sneakers making little zippy sounds on the marble floors. We walked near the Apatosaurus, up on the see-through walkway, and compared a row of Protoceratops heads lined up in size order. We stopped in briefly at the prehistoric mammals and fish. Then it was time to go.

  I got him to school just in time for recess.

  The How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs had bombed, but my father had better luck. One afternoon he dropped by with a used paperback copy of The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert T. Bakker, the latest in the long list of adult books he’d bought Dean that had begun a thousand years before with Mack: Driven for a Century.

  This was a “chapter book,” as Dean would say, dread in his voice, aerated here and there with drawings by the author. Dean loved the drawings, they were filled with energy, with jumping and striking meat eaters, teeth always bared, and their squealing, fighting prey. I read it to him in his room as he drifted off to sleep, the Styrofoam planets hung above our heads, lit like half-moons by the light next to the bed.

  But then I did something I had never done before with one of his other bedtime books. After Dean’s breaths became regular, his eyes covered by lids like full moons, I gave him a kiss, switched off the light and crept into the living room, The Dinosaur Heresies in hand.

  I carried it with me to my green chair, turned on the light above me and kept right on reading.

  The book came out in the late 1980s, and while I’m certain much about dinosaur scholarship has changed since then, to me it was all new, and it seemed to fill in the key blanks between the dumb, lumbering dinosaurs of my childhood and the fast and smart ones of Dean’s. I’d been too intimidated by Norell, and surprised by his disinterest in dinosaur lifestyles, to ask him about the changes. But Bakker says it all right at the beginning: the long-accepted dinosaurian orthodoxy was terribly flawed, he realized one night while admiring the Brontosaurus skeleton at Yale’s Peabody Museum—they didn’t fail, done in by their weight and tiny brains, as had always been thought. No, they had succeeded spectacularly, dominating the earth for 130 million years. Humans, by comparison, have been around for only about half a million years.

  Dinosaurs were the single greatest evolutionary success story in the history of the planet.

  Bakker goes on from there, with the enthusiasm of a child. He fights the idea that mammals are the most adaptable, enduring creatures in existence—a theory created by mammals—by noting that there are far more species of reptiles, and far more species of reptile predators, in the world. He lists all the similarities dinosaurs share with birds. And he relishes every undeniably fascinating fact he relates, from the long muscle that stretched the whole way up Triceratops’ frill that gave his jaw immense chomping power, to Stegosaurus’ ability to flip his plates up or down depending on the angle of a predator’s attack, to the duckbill’s remarkable rows of teeth.

  Bakker questions whether dinosaurs were actually cold-blooded, contradicting Darlene Geis, author of The How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs, who wrote: “The climate was just right for them—warm and moist and comfortable for cold-blooded reptiles. Reptiles can be active only in warm climates.”

  Dean noticed me carrying the book as I walked him to school the next day. He was surprised when I told him I’d stayed up reading after he went to sleep, but quickly learned to take advantage of my nocturnal studies. He asked me what I’d learned.

  “You know, duckbills, I know you don’t like them, but they had these incredible teeth, rows and rows of them,” I said as we crowded together beneath my umbrella. “Whenever one fell out, another would come in, forever. It’s really amazing.”

  “I know,” he said as we got to the end of the block. “They were the only dinosaurs who really chewed.”

  “Really? How do you know that?”

  “One of my DVDs.”

  We got to school a minute later and I deposited him in his classroom. His coat went on the hook. Then I walked to the subway. I took the local, so I’d have more time to read.

  “Is hummus like dinosaur poop?”

  —DEAN, as I dipped a piece of pita bread in hummus

  My answer:

  “No. That’s disgusting. Don’t say that again.”

  Mark A. Norell, Ph.D., curator of dinosaur paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, New York City:

  “Probably not. Fossilized excrement is called coprolite. We find a fair amount of it. The difficult thing is, say, which went with this animal or which went with that animal? By looking at it you can determine things like diets; for instance, there is some that has been attributed to Tyrannosaurus rex that has bone fragments in it. Other specimens have been attributed to plant-eating animals, and occasionally little pieces of plants you can still identify are present in it. Really, the only way to attribute coprolite with an animal is if you find a dead animal and you find a coprolite still impacted in it. That’s extremely rare.”

  “Why do little kids love T-rex?”

  —DEAN

  Again, Mark A. Norell, Ph.D., curator of dinosaur paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, New York City:

  “Because it’s the major marketing tool for all dinosaurs. It’s what Godzilla was based on. It’s what Barney was based on. Every old film that had dinosaurs in it would always have a T-rex. It’s kind of a prototypical dinosaur.”

  Of course dinosaurs are only the beginning. Children love animals, extinct or extant, in their own house or behind a fence or a thick glass wall at the zoo. They project human qualities and emotions onto them—Are they mean? Do they cry? And they wonder about their strange traditions and habits like that other curious species in the house, the grown-up. After dinosaurs, big cats are a favorite of Dean’s, tigers and lions and cheetahs, and perhaps most obsessively, ligers, which are a mix of lion and tiger and grow to incredible sizes. I brought him a tear sheet of a story in the New York Post about ligers, and he studied the accompanying photograph for days, even took it to school to show around. Then there are snakes and lizards and alligators and Komodo dragons, which Dean sees as sort of modern-day dinosaurs, although Robert T. Bakker might take issue with that.

  “Are killer whales mean?”

  —DEAN, at the aquarium

  Martha Hiatt, supervisor of animal behavior and husbandry, New York Aquarium:

  “Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are sometimes referred to as the ‘wolves of the sea’ based on their strategy of hunting in packs. This cooperation, combined with their speed (up to thirty miles per hour) and size (males can be thirty-two feet in length), make them superbly adept at hunting and capturing prey. Killer whales are the oceans’ apex predators, which means they are at the top of the food chain. The function of an apex predator is to regulate populations by preying upon sick or weak animals.

  “Humans qualify as apex predators as well, although most of us are quite removed from the process through which we acquire food. Still, whether we pull nets to catch fish or travel to the supermarket to buy fillets, we are relying on predatory behavior. Does that suggest humans are mean?

  “Killer whales are highly social animals. The social structure is complex and is matriarchal, which means that the dominant animal is a female. An animal acquires dominance by displaying its fitness over others. Dominance displays and attacks in orcas, as in most toothed whales, frequently consist of chasing, biting, jaw popping, vocalizing and tail slapping. Like killer whales, humans are highly social with a sophisticated social structure. Perhaps we measure dominance by an individual’s wealth, popularity or political office. Sometimes our pursuits are combative. Does that make humans mean?

  “It might be said that ’mean’ is in the eye of the beholder—be it for food or social position. It may not be pleasant for the subordinant, but it results in an individual’s or group’s survival.”

  “Do large animals need help to have sex?”

  —DREW RICKARD, Burlington, Vermont (mother cannot recall his age when
he asked)

  Sue McDonnell, Ph.D., head of the equine behavioral program, Widener Hospital for Large Animals, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania:

  “Usually not, but there are instances where individual couples, because they are a little mismatched size wise, may need some help. You maybe have a small horse, and you like her personality and her willingness to perform, but she is not quite big enough to jump the jumps. So you cross her with a large stallion, hoping to get a nice mix—a nice personality with some size. The mare may be a little too small for the stallion, so you may have to guide the stallion, for insertion. Of course, if they were out completely on their own they would use the terrain: the mare would stand downhill. Miracles can happen: a tiny little pony can breed a huge horse. Many stallions who have had active athletic careers have little aches and pains or disabilities that require some assistance from people. For example, there have been horses with weak hind legs who have had people support them from their hips so they don’t fall off during mating.

  “Another example is pigs. They’ve been bred to be so meaty that they are sometimes physically too chubby. So sometimes they need help. Pigs stay in copula for a very long time, like twenty to thirty minutes, before they consummate the act, and sometimes they are just too out of shape and too chubby to get the job done. So they need help to just sort of support them, or you can put the female downhill from the male a little bit so that gravity keeps them going in the right direction.”

  “Why do all animals have tails, except for us and chimpanzees and gorillas?”

  —ISABELLA ROJAS BAUSO, age eleven, Portland, Oregon

  Dr. Kristen Lukas, curator of conservation and science at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo:

  “It is not just us and chimpanzees and gorillas that don’t have tails. Other apes like orangutans, bonobos and gibbons do not have tails either. Animals such as the guinea pig or koala have very rudimentary tails, which means they are there even if you can’t really see them. You have to think about what tails are for: they mostly provide balance for animals, particularly those that might live in trees, and for almost any animal that walks on four legs. A tail counterbalances the weight of the head at the front of the body. As humans became more upright and some apes started to brachiate—that’s hand-over-hand locomotion—the need for a tail for balancing became less and less; so over time and through evolution it kind of faded out. One thing I should point out is that we do have the vestiges, or the remains, of a tail. Basically, the bottom three to four vertebrae of the human spine are fused together, and that’s what’s called your tailbone. That structure still anchors muscles like your butt muscle and it still really hurts if you fall on it. I know because I broke mine when I was a cheerleader in the eighth grade.”

  “How did the cat’s tongue get rough?”

  —GENEVIEVE BOUCHONVILLE, age four, Branchburg, New Jersey

  Dr. Jill Mellen, education and science director, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Orlando, Florida:

  “Cats’ tongues are rough to help them eat. Cats are the ultimate carnivores and the ultimate predators: they capture prey bigger than they are, and they have these huge claws to bring their prey down, and then they eat whatever they’ve caught. And while they certainly use their teeth to pull off meat, where the tongue comes in is to get every last bit of meat off the bone. They have these great tongues and they have these little hook-like things, called papillae, on their tongues and they use them to scrape all the meat off the bones. Why did cats evolve to have these? Of course, no one knows for sure, but that has never stopped scientists from speculating. Cats eat meat and only meat, and if they are going to eat only meat, boy, they better get every little speck that’s down there. This speaks to evolution. As the cat family evolved, it became more and more specialized, so, presumably, those cats that ate more meat, and fewer fruits and vegetables, were more likely to survive. If a cat can get a little more meat off the bone because it has a few more hooks on its tongue, then presumably it can survive longer and reproduce more successfully.”

  “If a poisonous snake bites another poisonous snake, will one of the snakes die?”

  —CONNOR SULLIVAN, age nine, Fort Wayne, Indiana

  John Kinkaid, animal care manager, Department of Herpetology, San Diego Zoo:

  “If they are the same species—let’s say a red diamondback rattlesnake bites a red diamondback rattlesnake—and no vital organs are punctured, then no, the snake that is bitten won’t die—there seems to be some immunity. You might get a localized reaction, some swelling or something like that, but if they are the same species, the bitten snake will recover. But there are many venomous snakes that do eat other snakes, like king cobras.”

  “Does a sea horse know it’s a sea horse?”

  —DEVON CERMELE CINQUE, age four, Mountain Lakes, New Jersey

  Jeff Mitchell, senior aquarist/diver, John G. Shedd Aquarium, Chicago:

  “Well, our word for a sea horse is ‘sea horse,’ so whether or not the sea horse knows we call a sea horse a sea horse or we call it a beluga whale or whatever, a sea horse definitely knows when it sees another sea horse that it is the same animal as itself. The perfect example is that a male sea horse and a female sea horse are actually very monogamous during the breeding season. They may actually be monogamous for their whole life, we don’t know. The male will stay in a small area about a meter square for the entire season—which can be up to nine months—and the female will be in an area over one hundred meters square, and the female will return to the same male every day, and they will actually do a little pair bonding dance, and they’ll dance every day, and that dance can last anywhere from two minutes to five to ten minutes, and the day after he gives birth—because the male gets pregnant, not the female—the dance can last up to two to three hours before she deposits eggs into his pouch. He gives birth one day, and gets pregnant again the next day. They know that they know each other, that they are a pair, and that they are the same animal.”

  “Do elephants cry?”

  —AVA EISNER, age five, Merrick, New York

  Mike Keele, Deputy Director, Oregon Zoo, Portland:

  “I don’t believe anyone has proven that this is actually the case—I mean tears as a physical expression of an emotion. What we believe happens with not only elephants but with other animals is that they end up with a piece of sand in their eyes or something and because they don’t have hands to clear it—although I guess elephants sometimes use their trunks—the best way to make it go away is for the eye to cleanse itself, and so tears drain down through the lacrimal duct, and if there’s too much of it, it spills over and it appears as if there are tears on the face. When we talk about elephants and do they have emotions, I think for sure they do, because, for example, if a calf is removed from the herd, its mother reacts pretty violently—she’ll trumpet, she roars, she is not happy, there is anxiety. The thing I think humans have a tough time with is that we are always looking for a way for an animal to express emotion that we are familiar with, such as crying, while they may have a completely different way of expressing emotion, something we’ve never imagined. But at least thinking that they do have emotions is a good thing; it gives them the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Do raccoons eat cats?”

  —PETER ROY, age five, Montclair, New Jersey

  (family owns two cats)

  Dr. Brenda King, veterinary medical doctor, Montclair, New Jersey:

  “No, not to the best of my knowledge. The only mammal that I am familiar with raccoons eating is an occasional mouse. I think one of the misconceptions some people have about raccoons is that they are aggressive animals, and I don’t find them in general to be aggressive animals. In fact, I have a client who, for close to twenty years, had a whole family of raccoons living in back of his house, and they would share food bowls with his cats. There was a woman in Upper Montclair—for a while she had the same scenario going on on her side porch: she would put food out for some feral cats that lived nearby, and she would find the cat
s and raccoons dining together. The raccoons that I find to be more aggressive are the ones that have something wrong, like an illness; the rabid raccoon is going to be very aggressive. Any animal who is attacked or threatened is going to respond for its own protection; surely, if a dog should chase a raccoon, one would not be surprised to have the animal stand to protect itself. Yet when one thinks about raccoons’ reaction to being chased by coonhounds, the raccoons tend to tree themselves versus standing their ground. Needless to say, if cornered, they would stand their ground.”

  “Can a crow peck your eyes out?”

  —DEAN, on the way to school

  Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation, National Audubon Society, Washington, D.C.:

  “Yes it can. It would most likely happen if you picked one up or cornered it, and it was trying to defend itself. It would go for your head. It would be trying to peck you in the head to back you off. So if you put it in fear of its life, you should probably fear for yours.

  “Most humans who interact with crows have brought them up since they were babies, and the crows feel like they are part of the family. They are very intelligent birds. They can be taught to do tricks. People find them very companionable. In fact, there really is this long history of human interaction with crows, both positive and negative. The negative is because black birds just don’t have a good reputation. Crows look pretty formidable. They roost up in big flocks; there is just some kind of ominous feeling about a sky full of crows flying to their roost.”

  “Why do lightning bugs light up?”

  —MAXIMO GIOVANNI ROJAS BAUSO, age seven, Portland, Oregon