PEACE from TREES

Two of 28

Is it really real for you to feel that there is no other way? Or is it what you say to avoid what you've yet to imagine? Sometimes a path away from the way you want is best. Sometimes certain realms of understanding are only understood when we no longer doubt that we understand them.

Before a sunrise, is that where we'll always be? Is it who we are? Is it how we're of most benefit? The fall from a tree as an ant is different than the fall from a tree as a bear. Just as every breath is spent, every effort exhausted, as soon as exasperation takes hold...

A bear falling from a tree is much different than an ant... Ant glides back to trunk and branch as if in flight... Bear plummets in a racket of cracking limbs and waits-patient-calm for a branch-strong-swing into a bending that doesn't break. Then paw and claw wrap round to climb back to visit sky of warm sun's sunrise.

Poem by DeaneTR (c) 2007
Photos from internet search

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This series of 28 photo-poems are inspired by recent scientific discoveries related to forests around the world. The poem above is inspired by the condensed news article below. If you'd like to learn about forest issues from around the world on a regular basis subscribe to my newsletter / weblog, which is called: "Earth's Tree News." Which viewed on the web at http://www.livejournal.com/users/olyecology or by sending a blank email message to earthtreenews-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

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Add ants to the list of animals that can fly. Worker ants, the wingless kind. Scientists call it gliding, or directed aerial descent. But just as one might say that flying squirrels fly, so do a type of ants called Cephalotes astratus. They live in rainforest treetops, and their newly discovered ability is a lifesaver. Stephen Yanoviak of the University of Texas Medical Branch and University of Florida made the discovery by accident about two years ago while collecting mosquitoes for an unrelated project in the rainforest canopy near Iquitos, Peru. The finding was announced today. "When I brushed some of the ants off of the tree trunk, I noticed that they did not fall straight to the ground," Yanoviak told LiveScience. "Instead, they made a J-shaped cascade leading back to the tree trunk." Yanoviak immediately suspected that his observation was something "new and exciting," but figured someone must have scooped him years ago. However, a quick read of past research revealed that his observation was novel. The team found that the ants downward journey comes in three phases: a two- to three-yard freefall and attempt to slow down, followed by a rapid mid-air turn back toward the tree trunk, and finished off with a steep but directed glide to the tree trunk. The remarkably adapted ants are the first animals found to consistently glide backwards, other than microbes, some of which spend their entire lives gliding in directions hard to call backwards or forwards.http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050209_gliding_ants.html


"There is an art...or rather, a knack to flying," says Douglas Adams, the British writer and radio personality famous for his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." Curiously, Adams' definition leaves out one element usually thought of as essential to flying-wings. While his intentions were clearly humorous, Adams was perhaps more correct than he realized: from squirrels and lizards to some tropical ant species, a surprising number of wingless creatures do have a knack for avoiding the ground. They glide. Today, researchers at UC Berkeley are studying gliding organisms and accumulating clues as to how and why nature favored this adaptation. Not until recently, with the advent of high-speed, high-resolution video cameras, was it possible to observe the movement of individual body parts on an airborne animal or insect. Armed with these innovative techniques, researchers are now looking at the specific morphologies and movements of gliders. Such research is elucidating the biomechanics of aerial behavior in real time, in turn providing insight into the evolutionary patterns behind gliding flight. http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles.php?issue=11&article=flight

PEACE from TREES