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ously tried to improve the english wikipedia entry and the overall story was rather sad when i was a kid in the late 1970s my father used to bring home issues of the beautifully illustrated das tier a german predecessor of the bbc wildlife magazine that the max mueller bhavan in bangalore then located in an old bungalow on museum road decorated with a large araucaria and balan nambiar installations used to receive it was one of the popular creations of grzimek sadly there seem to be no digital archives of this amazing work and when i went to university i found his animal encyclopedia a fascinating work by some oversight i only noticed much later that the venue of wikimania was right across the road from a school named after michael grzimek one presumes that a large donation was made by bg to them the grzimek biography ends with the highly questionable and unusually large amount of wealth that he had accumulated through his life and the family squabbles and tragedies that had followed after his death nyeri was a welcome escape from nairobi and a visit to the baden powell memorial although not a fan of the man revealed a somewhat unexpected surprise i am sure it was well known but i had missed it in my research and the grave of jim corbett cropped up rather unexpectedly i knew that corbett moved to africa after indian independence and had known of his exploits in the nearby aberdare range which resulted in his last book treetops and his rather famous quip on the freshly minted queen elizabeth interestingly the bible quote used on the memorial is exactly the same one used on his mother s grave in nainital photo remembering a very rainy monsoon day in nainital presumably chosen by his sister maggie nearby was another large grave that of gray leakey a cousin of louis leakey the horrific story behind it was known to the local guide but was new to me and so naturally i later created a wikipedia entry at gray leakey overall it seems that the mau mau uprising needs a complete retelling in a post colonial analysis and voice there is a rather under appreciated museum at nyeri that looks at local history and the independence movement we visited the general karibu caves area and the surrounding countryside filled with streams fed by the glaciers on mount kenya the real reason for nyeri s agricultural wealth and much of the colonial settlement entrance to the dining room in treetops the aberdare national park is an incredibly large reserve and is undoubtedly the place for any naturalist to visit somehow the idea of a mountain range in africa came as a surprise to me whereas roads in indian hill regions tend to become highly twisted their the obligatory hair pin bends the roads in the aberdares are surrounding regions are laid remarkably straight and as one moves from here to the rift valley the changes in altitude are so gradual we entered the aberdares from the treetops gate named after an establishment that was patronised by corbett the moment one enters at dawn one is entertained with the amazing sounds of the african forest the almost electronic surround soun antiphonal duet call of a boubou combined with numerous apalis tauraco cisticola and other unidentified species the tops of the aberdares have shola like grasslands termed there as moorlands along the way one encounters thick hagenia a rather delicate rosaceae with almost herbaceous looking leaflets and podocarpus forests followed by tall bamboo forest we saw an elephant on a faraway hill a cape buffalo and a large pig which turned out to be meinertzhagen s giant forest hog hylochoerus meinertzhageni jackson s spurfowls were the tamest and most conspicuous roadside birds remarkable how understudied they are in the ornithological literature we only managed to reach as far as chania falls before we reached the 2 pm turn around point and the route was just stunning i dream of a day when i will be able to make another trip with someone who knows the region its fauna and flora better helichrysum on aberdare s moorlands heath hagenia sambucus podocarpus etc beside the chania stream moss draping the podocarpus parts of the aberdare are watered by condensation helichrysum in the foreground a kniphofia just visible the most coveted visit was to the afroalpine zone on mount kenya the road from naro moru to the met station which lies on the slopes of the extinct volcano of mount kenya was another of those straight mountain roads getting from 1500 m to 3050 m on a straight line with a leopard welcoming us the leopard we walked from the naro moru met station up above the tree line to see the incredible flora giant lobelia and dendrosenecio appear after a region of heath the ground is boggy and covered in strong tussocks of grass we were not equipped with waterproof shoes and we started a bit too late as well the weather on the mountain is constantly changing sun wind cloud mist and all of a sudden a shower of hailstones lobelia gregoriana which forms beautiful rosettes holds a little bit of fluid at the centre which is apparently a frost protection adaptation the polysaccharides produced by the plant cause ice to form at the top of the water pond which insulates the central growing tip from freeze injury i wondered if a similar adaptation exists in the hedyotis verticillaris of the mukurthi region i showed a picture of the landscape to botanist navendu page and he exclaimed that it was a different planet it is we did not go into teleki valley or see the nival zone and sadly the glaciers on mount kenya appear to be doomed the glaciers looked from the plains like flecks of white which led to the kikuyu name of kere nyaga which according to one etymology theory is related to the white feathers on an ostrich the kamba people called it kima ya kegnia others called it ndur kimaja kegnia and kirenia somehow that gave rise to the word kenya one bleak prediction on the glaciers is that they will all be gone by 2030 with it nobody quite knows what will happen to the streams that they fed the lands that they water the people involved in farming the vegetation and wildlife heath erica arborea just above the tree line the rosette of lobelia gregoriana with the pond lobelia gregoriana flowering the flower edges are torn by moorland chats pinarochroa sordida pollinators dendrosenecio keniensis in flower dendrosenecio keniodendron in the background looking up the slope of the so called vertical bog a final goodbye to mount kenya it is easy to see the effect the mountain had on the people and the ritual significance that many tribes gave to it from the rift valley the aberdares on the horizon rift valley vegetation of euphorbs we returned to nairobi with a stopover at a typical tourist trap thompsons falls and another stopover at lake naivasha we had enchanting views of mount longonot from the escarpment in the evening obviously we had just scraped the surface kenya is a beautiful country for the most part but like any place there are troubles hidden underneath there is clearly a vast wealth gap and the city of nairobi is a cruel one with the usual signs of urban poverty the lack of government spending on social infrastructure like public transport is glaring the villages and smaller towns were much more cheerful looking the kenyan public education system has clearly delivered in the past there were a few unfortunate sights like police extorting petty money from vehicles passing by and there were big protests that the government had suppressed with violent force a proliferation of churches which apparently make great money indicated the general poverty of governance hopefully good people will prevail and make it a better place for all in spite of the long and deep divides of tribes linguistics and circumstance i greatly missed my good old lumix fz100 which was the ideal travel camera which dealt with both macro and distant objects sadly a minor electronics fault has made it unusable bridge cameras have unfortunately become unavailable or too expensive i only had my mobile phone and my new olympus om d em10 but setup mostly for macro photography for which i did not have enough time but more images can be found on inaturalist and wikimedia commons all of course on free licenses a gallery can be found here thanks to numerous people and circumstances that made this trip possible wikimedia foundation for supporting my attendance at wikimania nairobi harish thyagarajan for assistance with kenya logistics and most importantly reassurance sugandhi for putting me in touch with harish peter our enlightened driver and local assistance we will remember the swahili wisdom kupotea njia ndio kujua njia to be lost is the way to find the way martina tichácková on inaturalist for the alpine plant identifications the wonderful welcoming people we met along the way kws guide alex the kws staff at various gates the friendly host at a tiny little restaurant in naro moru who found indian snacks too spicy manoj for the great company some wikipedia side effects articles created darwin glacier eanhs articles improved victor van someren samuel teleki halford mackinder ludwig von höhnel posted by shyamal l at 1 59 pm 4 comments labels kenya travelogue wikimedia wednesday september 17 2025 a focus on the process rather than product a few weeks back many of us read the rather stunning case of an ant in the genus messor from sicily that produced two kinds of male offspring one of them apparently of a completely different species given the number of eyebrows that such a finding raises it is clear that this research took a good while before it was finally published the complicated genetics was however not entirely unexpected this made me wonder about the teaching of genetics in classrooms the kind of finality and perfection that textbook concepts are made to appear like is perhaps a myth that teachers could do well to dispel early in life unfortunately it seems that teaching and testing in education is as fascist and authoritarian as the rest of the social environment some years ago on a trip to nandi hills i had the good fortune of being able to browse an old guest book one of the comments that caught my attention was this one a little digging revealed that this was spencer wharton brown a geneticist who at that point did not even have a wikipedia entry of course that gap was fixed he actually was so prominent in his time that he had the nickname mr chromosome it would appear that he must have been a visitor to the indian institute of science considering that some years later he did publish a paper with an indian coauthor chandra h sharat brown spencer w 1975 chromosome imprinting and the mammalian x chromosome nature 253 5488 my friend karthik ramaswamy then at the archives of the iisc now no longer an extant function tried to examine this a bit more now brown apparently decided to use scale insects as his model for genetics studies and was it a good choice in scale insects there appears to be such stuff as post zygotic deletion of the male genome sadly spencer brown was murdered somewhat mysteriously anyway the lesson here seems to be that the whole system of genetic control including the influence of peptides maternal environment silencing rna epigenetics lamarckism etc calls for a more cautious approach to the teaching of biology in general but looking at these findings should make one appreciate gene centric views of evolution brown s w 1963 the comstockiella system of chromosome behavior in the armored scale insects coccoidea diaspididae chromosoma 14 360 406 https dx doi org 10 1007 bf00326785 brown spencer w and giovanni delotto 1950 cytology and sex ratios of an african species of armored scale insect coccoidea diaspididae the american naturalist 93 873 369 379 brown spencer w 1960 spontaneous chromosome fragmentation in the armored scale insects coccoïdea diaspididae journal of morphology 106 2 159 185 hartl daniel l and spencer w brown 1970 the origin of male haploid genetic systems and their expected sex ratio theoretical population biology 1 2 165 190 ross laura ido pen and david m shuker 2010 genomic conflict in scale insects the causes and consequences of bizarre genetic systems biological reviews 85 4 807 828 posted by shyamal l at 12 13 pm 1 comment labels genetics insects tuesday may 27 2025 swarming springtails podurid springtail swarms on the forest floor s now fleas is a name used for collembola in the temperate zone for their swarming behavior over melting snows in spring i do not think there is much literature on western ghat forest springtails and their swarming presumably following the first summer rains these were seen in march 2025 in wayanad these swarms form bluish grey dust on the ground that begins to bristle when disturbed the swarm moves slowly on foot with some members making leaps and whole cloud like formations drift along the forest floor presumably following the slope of the land remarkably little has been written about forest little organisms in the western ghats even less so about such seasonal spectacles presumably the first rains flood the soil and leaf litter layer and flush the organisms although it is possible that these are newly emerged and following weather cues too here are some videos of the springtails swarms in action https commons wikimedia org wiki file collembola_swarming_2 webm https commons wikimedia org wiki file collembola_swarming_3 webm https commons wikimedia org wiki file collembola_swarming_4 webm postscript june 2025 the rains flush out some springtails out of the soil in bangalore too https www inaturalist org observations 288700709 posted by shyamal l at 8 47 pm no comments labels collembola insect swarms wednesday february 26 2025 an authorship puzzle i posted this a long time back on facebook with no response the author d r wrote a column on birds in the the bombay chronicle any information on the identity of the author is welcome this one is from 26 april 1949 p 6 and another 3 january 1949 the author apparently died in 1950 as mentioned in a comment to the editor posted by shyamal l at 12 54 pm 2 comments labels unsolved older posts home subscribe to posts atom visitor map followers blog archive 2026 1 june 1 invert life 2025 5 october 1 september 1 may 1 february 2 2024 4 august 1 may 1 march 2 2023 3 august 3 2022 5 october 1 september 1 august 1 july 1 february 1 2021 5 september 1 august 1 july 1 march 1 january 1 2020 5 october 1 september 1 june 1 may 1 april 1 2019 6 december 1 august 1 april 1 march 2 january 1 2018 3 june 1 april 1 january 1 2017 7 july 2 june 1 april 1 march 1 february 2 2016 11 december 1 november 1 september 2 august 1 july 1 june 2 march 1 february 1 january 1 2015 7 october 1 august 1 may 2 march 1 february 2 2014 8 november 2 october 1 june 1 april 2 march 1 february 1 2013 11 november 1 october 1 july 1 june 1 may 2 april 1 march 2 february 1 january 1 2012 19 december 1 october 2 september 4 july 2 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