839
97.2 Anna
Anna’s hummingbird (Calypte anna) is a great example. She makes a lovely case
for input/output efficiency variance that functions at the highest levels of intelligence. Green and pale, flashes of red in the male, stubbornly non-migratory, and
named by René Primevère Lesson in 1829 after the French courtier, Anna de Belle
Massena, Princesse d’Essling (1802–1887), the Grande- Maitresse, Mistress of the
Robes, to the last Empress of France, Eugénie de Montijo, spouse to Emperor
Napoleon III. Anna and her husband, the ornithologist Prince Victor Massena,
maintained a collection of birds, which Audubon himself visited in Paris. He
famously described his hostess as a “beautiful young woman, not more than twenty,
extremely graceful and polite.”
8
Anna (the bird) is famed for her tireless pectoral
musculation, the hummingbird’s chemistry of metabolic wonders that liberate
immense ratios of energy from its conversion of glucose to pyruvic acid. That is an
alpha-keto that helps to enable the tiny marvel to hover in every conceivable aerial
gymnastic with a cascade of time-lapse-like superlatives, from reckless torpor to
maniacal pollinating frenzy, 50–1200 heartbeats and wing actions per second. In
addition, she breathes “273 times per minute.”
9
There is no algorithm that will ever
endow a bipedal ape with such pink-in-winter flight feathers, though there may be
other shared instincts (Fig. 97.2).
She is, in other words—like the more than 300 other hummingbird species—a
remarkable, otherworldly phenomenon, consolidated into a 4-inch marvel of life.
For all our enduring love of the Trochillidae Family, we don’t know how to ensure
their safety. One of them is the smallest known bird in the world, the Mellisuga
helenae, or bee hummingbird of Cuba, weighing approximately 1.6 grams fully
grown. There may be an even smaller bee hummingbird in Haiti. And there is the
recently discovered, 99-million-year-old Oculudentavis khaungraae skull, found in
a piece of amber from northern Myanmar, an even smaller bird, its skull 14.25 millimeter in length. Mellisuga is listed as “Near Threatened. A2c+3c.”
10
If our conscience be our guide in all aspects of conservation biology, as in animal rights
generally, then the metaphysics of protection, as we have elsewhere labeled the
totality of our efforts to save other life forms
11
will be judged: adjudicated both by
the scope of our nurturing ambitions, as well as the pragmatic imaginativeness we
8 See Southwestern Idaho Birders Association, December 5, 2016, from https://www.birdnote.org/.
9 See The Life of the Hummingbird, by Alexander F. Skutch, Illustrated by Arthur B. Singer, Crown
Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 41. See also, Hummingbirds of North America of North America:
Attracting, Feeding, and Photographing, by Dan True, University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque, NM, 1993, pp. 96–99; See also, Birds of North America, Western Region,
Smithsonian Handbooks, by Fred J. Alsop III, p. 396.
10 BirdLife International 2016. Mellisuga helenae. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
2016: e.T22688214A93187682. https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22688214A
93187682.en, https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22688214/93187682. Its last assessment was
October 1. 2016.
11 See The Metaphysics of Protection, by M. C. Tobias and J. G. Morrison, A Dancing Star
Foundation Book, Waterside Productions, Cardiff-by-the-Sea, CA, 2014.
97.2 Anna
97.2 Anna
Anna’s hummingbird (Calypte anna) is a great example. She makes a lovely case
for input/output efficiency variance that functions at the highest levels of intelligence. Green and pale, flashes of red in the male, stubbornly non-migratory, and
named by René Primevère Lesson in 1829 after the French courtier, Anna de Belle
Massena, Princesse d’Essling (1802–1887), the Grande- Maitresse, Mistress of the
Robes, to the last Empress of France, Eugénie de Montijo, spouse to Emperor
Napoleon III. Anna and her husband, the ornithologist Prince Victor Massena,
maintained a collection of birds, which Audubon himself visited in Paris. He
famously described his hostess as a “beautiful young woman, not more than twenty,
extremely graceful and polite.”
8
Anna (the bird) is famed for her tireless pectoral
musculation, the hummingbird’s chemistry of metabolic wonders that liberate
immense ratios of energy from its conversion of glucose to pyruvic acid. That is an
alpha-keto that helps to enable the tiny marvel to hover in every conceivable aerial
gymnastic with a cascade of time-lapse-like superlatives, from reckless torpor to
maniacal pollinating frenzy, 50–1200 heartbeats and wing actions per second. In
addition, she breathes “273 times per minute.”
9
There is no algorithm that will ever
endow a bipedal ape with such pink-in-winter flight feathers, though there may be
other shared instincts (Fig. 97.2).
She is, in other words—like the more than 300 other hummingbird species—a
remarkable, otherworldly phenomenon, consolidated into a 4-inch marvel of life.
For all our enduring love of the Trochillidae Family, we don’t know how to ensure
their safety. One of them is the smallest known bird in the world, the Mellisuga
helenae, or bee hummingbird of Cuba, weighing approximately 1.6 grams fully
grown. There may be an even smaller bee hummingbird in Haiti. And there is the
recently discovered, 99-million-year-old Oculudentavis khaungraae skull, found in
a piece of amber from northern Myanmar, an even smaller bird, its skull 14.25 millimeter in length. Mellisuga is listed as “Near Threatened. A2c+3c.”
10
If our conscience be our guide in all aspects of conservation biology, as in animal rights
generally, then the metaphysics of protection, as we have elsewhere labeled the
totality of our efforts to save other life forms
11
will be judged: adjudicated both by
the scope of our nurturing ambitions, as well as the pragmatic imaginativeness we
8 See Southwestern Idaho Birders Association, December 5, 2016, from https://www.birdnote.org/.
9 See The Life of the Hummingbird, by Alexander F. Skutch, Illustrated by Arthur B. Singer, Crown
Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 41. See also, Hummingbirds of North America of North America:
Attracting, Feeding, and Photographing, by Dan True, University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque, NM, 1993, pp. 96–99; See also, Birds of North America, Western Region,
Smithsonian Handbooks, by Fred J. Alsop III, p. 396.
10 BirdLife International 2016. Mellisuga helenae. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
2016: e.T22688214A93187682. https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22688214A
93187682.en, https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22688214/93187682. Its last assessment was
October 1. 2016.
11 See The Metaphysics of Protection, by M. C. Tobias and J. G. Morrison, A Dancing Star
Foundation Book, Waterside Productions, Cardiff-by-the-Sea, CA, 2014.
97.2 Anna