I like pigeons. Their voices are soft and rhythmic. I have put up baskets for them in the front verandah and they live there quietly. They don’t ask for food – probably because they are fed at the roundabout near my house by compassionate people who come from far to drop grains for them every da...
District Forest Officers and rangers are not trained in ecology. Ecology means the interrelationship of all things – what happens to the whole when one part is affected. They don’t know about plants or animals. In fact, this entire service should be disbanded because all they do is an illi...
One of the effects of this corona pandemic is to make you think about your lungs and respiratory system. Can you breathe easily?It is vitally important to protect your lungs. There are things you cannot control individually (like air pollution, unless you have a factory that is creating it. Don’t ...
Savitri Devi, born as Maximiani Portas in 1905 of Greek-English parents, wrote a very thought provoking and profound book called “Impeachment of Man” in 1945 on different religions and their “compassion factor”. She spent 30 years in India undertaking a systematic study of the wo...
On 24 March 24, when the lockdown was announced, I immediately gave my phone number across the country for all animal volunteers to use if they needed help. I thought that perhaps a few organisations would get in touch. Not so. Thousands of calls started coming in from people who needed passes...
Mimicry, by changing form, shape and colour, is unique to animals. Imagine if you went into a Chinese or African neighbourhood and had to blend in. Or become shorter, fatter, change the shape of your nose, increase the number of arms, the odour your body emits. We can't do any of these t...
My granddaughter, Anasuyaa, 5, is a vegetarian and a very healthy eater. She loves vegetables, specially broccoli. She doesn’t like maida in any form, including cakes. She likes the idea of ice cream, but will rarely go beyond a few licks. My son went through a phase of offering her lollipops, whi...
The moon influences life with its light. Moonlight, its presence and absence, affects reproduction, foraging, communication and other aspects of an animal’s world. Nocturnal animals can hunt or forage more easily under the light of the moon – although venturing out on moonlit nights also comes w...
Children use role play to deal with complicated situations in order to understand them better. Young children act out real or imagined situations, not just as themselves, but also as other people or characters such as friends, family members, characters in story books or superheroes – they are exp...
Nature has a reason for everything. A creature's environment plays the main part in deciding how its eyes develop and function. For instance, starfish have five eyes at the end of each arm, but they can only see shade and light and huge masses of land. They don’t need to see any more than looming ...