Last week I wrote about the strange and mysterious deaths of birds and fish that have taken place. But how many birds are killed every year due to human activity? I am not going to take into account the billion chickens that are killed at the rate of 1000 every minute, the turkeys, emus, ducks, quail that are slaughtered in the millions. I am talking about the birds you do not eat but kill anyway with deliberate malice or carelessness. Why are you ignorant of these? Because bird bodies are rarely found on the roads.  Night roaming scavengers finish them off very quickly. Here’s one estimate of numbers. A 2005 paper by Wallace Erickson, Gregory Johnson, and David Young (“A Summary and Comparison of Bird Mortality from Anthropogenic Causes with an Emphasis on Collisions“) estimates that 500 million-1 billion birds are killed each year in the U.S. alone from human-related causes. This includes: Collisions with buildings – 550 million (58.2%) Collisions with power lines – 130 million (13.7%) Cats – 100 million (10.6%) Cars, trucks, etc. – 80 million (8.5%) Pesticides – 67 million (7.1%) Communication towers – 4.5 million (0.5%) Wind turbines – 28.5 thousand (less than 0.01%) Airplanes – 25 thousand (less than 0.01%) Other sources (oil spills, fishing by-catch, etc) – did not estimate I would put the same number in India . Perhaps decrease the collision with buildings and increase the pesticide hit ones. While large mortality events make the news, the constant attrition, the constant killing has put one in six bird species worldwide in danger of extinction because of the factors listed above plus habitat loss, invasive species, and climate change. I was in Kolkata recently to start a campaign to save sparrows. It consisted of caps, drawings, speeches and the distribution of bird feeders. I hope it will work but this much I learnt – very few of the children in the school had even seen a sparrow. How many kinds of birds have you seen? Most cities now just have crows and kites and a few parakeets. Looking at this list, can you see a number of ways that people – from municipalities to individuals can work to prevent at least some of these deaths. Things like making windows and other structures more visible to birds, keeping cats indoors, and minimizing use of pesticides are all crucial to the survival of many species. The deaths are huge and quick but they are preventable if we just tweak our lifestyles. If I told you that you stood at the edge of a cliff and a little step forward would kill you but if you just sidestepped, you could reach safety, would you not?  Often the disappearance of a bird species alters entire human lifestyles, forcing them to change. With the disappearance of the vulture most villages have had to think of what to do with cow/bullock dead bodies. The carcass which would have been cleaned up in an hour by the vultures now becomes a threat to human life. No solutions have been found as yet. The Parsis will have to find another way to honour their dead as the towers of silence have no vultures so an entire religion has changed. China lost its sparrows (killed all of them) and then lost its grain because the insects proliferated. It finally had to import sparrows and start rebreeding them. Today it is losing them again – as we are. Animal mortality is actually a far larger problem than these numbers might suggest. Just one example: in the U.S. there are some 70 million house cats. Each year they kill off hundreds of millions of native birds and more than a billion small mammals such as rabbits, chipmunks, and squirrels. The numbers are staggering. But they tend to go unnoticed, except by ecological researchers. Most people consider what these cats (which are non-native, invasive pets) are doing to be “natural.” While animals are killed by weather fluctuations, lightning generated fires, the impacts of volcanism, earthquakes or other natural threats, all these hazards pale in comparison to what humans do to them. We have become by far the most significant factor in the deaths of individual animals, or entire species over the past several centuries. There are many lethal artefacts of civilization. These range from agricultural toxins, to industrial pollution, to lawn care chemicals, to windows and glass buildings (which attract birds to collide with reflections), to predatory pets, to wires to loss of crucial habitats. So many birds have been killed by DDT alone – and it is still being used. When the Americans finally noticed that their national bird, the Bald Eagle, was disappearing due to DDT, they banned it. We have lost all our birds of prey because DDT does a lot more than just kill insects. It impacts birds of prey to such a degree that it causes their eggs to weaken so that they can’t hatch. Our consumption of fish is killing all the shore birds. With sonar fish finders and GPS technology, fish harvesters are decimating swordfish, tuna, and a host of other “food species” as our world population swells to 7 billion. Make a New Year resolution that goes beyond not smoking, drinking and being nice to your mother/daughter in law. Start by making your house less toxic and by eating organic wheat/dal/rice. Plant as many fruit trees as you can so that birds have somewhere to nest. Choose a village and see if you can help them clean up their water body.

Maneka Gandhi

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When we were young, every time my younger sister felt ignored or hard done by she would stop eating. No fuss, no drama, just a refusal to put any food in her mouth. This habit has carried on till today: if she is scolded, she will not eat. She does it with God as well. When she wants something from the universe, she will fast for it.

Mahatma Gandhi invented the fast and it is the most amazing weapon one has. After all it is not injuring anyone, it is totally weapon-less, and it is not aggressive. The complainant is simply injuring himself. But it evokes immediate concern and everyone is helpless in front of such gentleness and bravery that says – what will you do to me, see I am doing it myself.

Of course, the fast has to be genuine otherwise it is simply a joke. It cannot be a relay fast between meals. It cannot be accompanied with an immediate collapse and coma within 2 days when most of India gets to eat only on alternate days. It has to be accompanied with calm and cheeriness as if nothing unusual has happened and people are free to respond as they will. Anna’s fast was an example of how a fast should be done. I would also say Medha Patkar’s fasts are to be respected except that it is not a tactic that can be used many times.

Are humans the only ones who can emotionally blackmail like this? After all it takes intelligence and foresight and knowledge of the probable response to go through with a fast.

Devi is a small black and white dog who has come to my house after being thrown out of two houses. She is a very demanding hysterical dog who spends all her time sitting at my feet and trying to climb into my lap, will not allow me to move without her, will walk for 3 kilometres as I do every evening, and will fight with everyone who comes near me. She is not nice. She bites the blind dog, she spends a lot of her time snarling and she will not allow me any privacy. If I shut the door when I have visitors, she will squeal and whine loudly. She probably does all this because she thinks that if she stays close she will not be abandoned again, but this is probably the behaviour that caused her to be thrown out in the first place.

Anyway. One night she made everyone attack my blind and deaf dog Gudiya and she bit her savagely and repeatedly. I hit Devi several times. The next day I pushed her away and raised my hand every time she came near me. At night I locked her in the bathroom.

Two days later she disappeared I was busy and didn’t notice that she was not around. In the evening, the people who work in the house came to where I was. Devi had positioned herself in front of the main entrance – so that everyone had to see her as they went in and out. She had sat down on a mat and had refused to eat the whole day. She did not whine or growl or speak to anyone but she refused to move and she refused to eat. When they tried to persuade her, she simply wagged her tail (the equivalent of a smile) and kept her mouth shut.

I went out. She received me without getting up or showing any excitement but with a friendly wag of the tail. I sat down on the ground, took her into my lap, held her close and apologized for my behaviour. After a few minutes of stroking her, I asked them to bring the food. She kept her body in my lap, ate all the food, ate an extra bowl and left her position to resume her life as normal.

Our relationship has changed somewhat after that. I realize that she is as clever and sensitive as we are and certainly more politically agile. She has realised that I love her and that she does not have to be so breathy and hysterical and so mean to get my attention. We are in a happy place at the moment.

The people who work in the house respect her. They tell everyone who comes – we have our own Anna Hazare. Her one day protest fast has certainly elevated her.

Gudiya, my handicapped and yet so clever and happy Great Dane protests violence in another way. Even a gentle tap to push her away results in her sitting down and turning her face away. She will not respond to that person unless they hug and kiss her and give her a biscuit.  But that is not a calculated response. That is who she is. In Devi’s case, she simply took a leaf out of the Mahatma’s book and proved in the process that there is no difference between any species.

Maneka Gandhi

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In school you learn that biological sex is a game of X and Y chromosomes. Women have two X's, and men have X and Y. Those with sexual abnormalities and whose sex cannot be classified as male or female are hermophrodite (the polite term is now intersexual). The word hermaphrodite is a combination of the names of the Greek gods Hermes (male) and Aphrodite (female). Humans are rigidly bound. For a man to become a woman and vice versa, it takes a series of very painful operations and the disapproval of society. But animals, god bless them, can have much more fun with their identities. In the wild, gender ambiguity is natural and practically anything goes. From protozoa to pill bugs to porgies, changing from one sex to another is a way of life. Some species will begin life as males and switch to females and others switch from female to male. Some will change sex in both directions, and others will be both sexes at the same time. Most species will only change once, but there are some species that change numerous times. The hamlet, a tropical fish, can shift back and forth between the sexes in just 30 seconds. That speed comes in handy during the hamlet's marathon sex sessions; hamlets spawn an average of 14 times in one day. Sometimes, all it takes is an environmental factor to alter one’s gender. Humans don’t need survival strategies – we are now more than 7 billion – but every other species does. For many species, it is certain that the majority of their offspring will not survive to adulthood. The solution, then, is to simply have more offspring. But this is where nature finds a limitation. While males of almost every species can produce sperm in very short order, the females, once impregnated, must wait until they give birth (or lay eggs) before they can reproduce again. For coral reef fish, evolution found an interesting solution. 

Change sex.

Not only do the size, colour, and markings of fish change as they change sexes, so do their sexual organs and sex cells. A red female stoplight parrotfish can turn into a green male.

Female-to-male fish which once produced eggs are able to instead produce sperm. This is conversely true for male-to-female fish. While some fish can only undergo a sex change once in their lives, others can go back and forth many times, or even have both sexual organs at once. There are two kinds of hermaphrodites in the plant and animal world: simultaneous hermaphrodites and sequential hermaphrodites.. Simultaneous hermaphrodites have both male and female reproductive parts for their entire life and can mate with any other member of their species. That is a huge reproductive advantage, because it's easy to have a large number of children -- your mating options are doubled. Snails, slugs and earthworms are simultaneous hermaphrodites. Sperm is exchanged between both snails and both will lay eggs after a period of gestation. Banana slugs go one step better. The male sexual organ of a banana slug is large in proportion to its size. If, during mating, the banana slugs get stuck together, one slug will bite off the other’s male organ. If a banana slug has lost its male sexual organ, it can still mate as a female, making its hermaphroditic quality a valuable adaptation. Sexual reproduction occurs when two worms meet, exchange sperm and bury the fertilized eggs just below ground. Sequential hermaphrodites are born as one sex, but change into the other sex as they grow. The beautiful yellow striped fish, Anemone fish, or clownfish, are one of the most prominent examples. Clownfish live on the reefs in a group. There is strict hierarchy based on size: the largest is the female, next largest is the male, and then the non-breeding males. If the female dies, the male will change sex and become the female and she begins mating with the next male. This mating strategy is advantageous for reproduction, particularly since this fish never ventures very far from home. If the males look for new female partners rather than change sex, the process can take months. During this time the fish would be unable to reproduce, and might miss his only opportunity to mate.

In coral reef fishes, sex change is a normal process. In the wrasses, sex change is from female to male. As soon as the male is gone, the largest female in the harem begins to behave like a male: chasing the girls, swaggering around, and being macho. Inside her ovary, within 24 hours the female’s immune system is reabsorbing her eggs and turning on the testosterone. Within a week she/he will produce sperm. Limpets which spend their lives on rocks are hermaphrodites who start life as males but after a couple of years become female. The small-eyed goby is ready to dance to any tune. Put her with a larger female, and she becomes male. With a bigger, meaner male, this goby turns back into a female. Sheepheads start off life as females and then turn into males. Overfishing leads to sheepheads maturing early and changing sex earlier. Other gender changers are shrimps, swordtails, guppies, mollusks basses, sea breams.

Some species start out as one sex and then transform into hermaphrodites. The peppermint shrimp matures as a male, and sometimes turns into a hermaphrodite with both male and female sexual organs. Most peppermint shrimps stay male if they are successful at finding mates. The decision to change is determined by the size of the social group. To maximise their chances of being able to mate, shrimp living on their own always turn into hermaphrodites, even though they end up growing slowly because of the energy spent on making eggs. However the male finds it tough going ( he has to chase a mate for up to 8 hours and this costs him 15% of his physical growth). This means that males end up smaller than hermaphrodites, which often out-compete them for food. So being a hermaphrodite makes more sense. Both maleness and femaleness have a lot of costs – females must produce food-rich eggs, males must engage in courtship. So, slow-moving animals that rarely meet a mate are the most likely to be hermaphrodites. Corals may look plant-like, but they are animals. Mushroom corals change sex from male to female and back on an annual basis.  When mushroom corals are small, it makes more sense to be male because it takes less energy to produce sperm than to produce eggs. When the coral size increases it's better to be female. However corals sometimes switch back from female to male when that they are in distress and need to conserve resources. If pollution to climate change pressures push too many mushroom corals towards maleness, a skewed sex ratio could threaten their future. Water fleas are freshwater crustaceans that hop through the water on fan-like fins. When algae are just enough, everyone is female and asexual. But if the food increases, suddenly males are hatched. They mate with females, which produce eggs. For these water fleas, sex can be turned on or off as needed. Being double-sexed often leads to orgies. Sea hares are snails without shells that are male in front and female behind, leading them to form erotic daisy chains that can involve a dozen or more animals at once. Slipper limpets are male while free-swimming and female when they settle down on a rock. When a male swims by a female slipper limpet, he flops onto her to mate. If another male lands on top of him, the lower male turns female, and they clasp. And so on upto 14 limpets at a time pancaked into towers of lust. In his book The Red Queen, science writer Matt Ridley explains that baby-making is more business than pleasure. “Sex is not about reproduction,” he writes. “Gender is not about males and females, courtship is not about persuasion, fashion is not about beauty and love is not about affection.” It is about getting your genes into the next generation, escaping predators, parasites, and the neighbors. According to scientists , while the main sex changers are now fish, gastropods, worms and plants, it is  possible that more species will start changing sex due to environmental factors.  A 2004 study details the changes taking place in polar bears and alligators due to manmade pollution. Atrazine, a common pesticide, given even at very low levels has been found to turn male frogs into hermaphrodites. The limit for atrazine contamination for drinking water is 3 parts per billion (ppb) but 0.1 ppb causes sexual abnormalities.  Who knows what is happening to the human body.

Maneka Gandhi

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