Text/Wang Miao
In the history of human culture, excrement, feces, has always been a taboo topic. Although excrement is an objective existence, it is more closely related to human daily life - whether you like it or not, some bacteria in the feces will re-enter your body through some channel, turning into probiotics to guard your intestines, and the feces themselves are also a nutrient resource widely used by humans and many animals. However, it is an indisputable fact that feces are "dirty in the eyes, smelly in the nose, dirty in the mouth, and dirty in the mouth", and because of their odorous and inaudible properties, it is regarded as taboo by human beings, making them scorn it and avoid it.
The new book "The Call of Nature: The Secret of Feces" by the British entomologist and naturalist Richard Jones is a monograph on feces, in which the protagonist is naturally feces, and the protagonist of the protagonists is the "dung man". These include fecal beetles, dung flies, and so on, fecal eaters, carrion eaters, predators, parasites...
Nature's Calling: The Secret of Feces
The author not only answers what happens after the production of feces, where the feces go, and how they eventually disappear, but also explores the significance of feces to the environment, the practical value of feces, the recycling of feces, and the complex ecological network formed around feces: a piece of feces is freshly landed, and many fecal customers are racing against the clock to obtain "limited amounts of feces" resources. It is through their competition that the manure is turned into fertile soil, and then the crops are harvested and the grass grows, thus opening the cycle of life that never ends.
As Jones puts it, the ecosystem is like a complex network that interconnects everything that is alive. Whenever the feces first appeared, countless dung beetles and flies followed, presenting a bustling scene and opening the curtain on the operation of the ecosystem. The feces carry a series of ecological revelations, observing how individuals depend on and how to coexist, which not only represents an perspective on the world, symbolizes an open mind in the face of exclusion topics, but also allows us to have a reverence for the diversity of living things and the complexity of things on this planet.
As the so-called "a grain of sand to see a world": "Although a pile of feces is small and small, it is lonely, but by observing those dung nails, dung flies and other animals that recycle feces back and forth, we have at least taken the first step to understand the overall situation." ”
Many people can't imagine that the ancient Egyptians worshipped dung beetles, which is also known as the shell lang. The ancient Egyptians worshipped dung beetles because dung beetles always made dung balls when the sun first rose, and then spared no effort to push and roll dung balls on the earth.
For the ancient Egyptians, the dung beetle was the embodiment of wisdom and persistence, and behind the weak but persistent figure of the dung beetle, there was a scorching sun and a vast land. It is the sun and the land that construct the vast background of the agrarian society. Obviously, the ancient Egyptians did not care about the dung beetle's fishy habits, they valued the dung beetle's environmentally friendly recycling behavior.
Indeed, nature never destroys natural things, and even the metabolic waste excreted by all living beings is never easily wasted. First, the land itself is not a passive neutral medium, but a dynamic biological system in which a large number of invertebrates and microorganisms live, which constantly degrade dead leaves, branches, animal carcasses and excrement, dissolve organic matter and reuse it.
Dung beetles and other insects such as dung beetles and dung flies are actually one of the invertebrates. They play the role of decomposers in this dynamic ecosystem, degrading manure and reabsorbing it into the land, loosening the soil and increasing the fertility of the soil, providing a fertile ground for crop growth. For dung eaters, dung is a resource on which to live, but it is by no means inexhaustible in quantity, which requires them to compete hard and seize the opportunity.
The so-called "dung has no owner, first come, first served", in terms of scrambling, they do their best, each shows their magic, they either push feces, or settle in the feces, or dig a hole under the feces to live, or a little trick, dove to occupy the magpie's nest... In order to gain an advantageous ecological niche, they even "equipped" them with powerful weapons in the long process of evolution: strong body shape, strong shoveling feet, folding fan-like tentacle hammer joints, and even ridges, ridges, tumors, spines, spines, spines, single horns, fork teeth... Everything is available, it can be called strong and sharp, armed to the teeth, and looks like a well-equipped soldier.
There is no doubt that taking risks and being proactive is the only way for all dung eaters to get their feces. For example, the genus of the tail dung beetle and the genus of the cockroach, their strategy is to hang on to the hair near the sloth's anus, and wait for the host to defecate, neither need to bother to find, nor to participate in the robbery, as long as you wait for the rabbit, you can sit back and enjoy it.
In short, no matter what strategy and method is adopted, every dung eater must compete with other competitors for limited resources, at the expense of cannibalism, and at the cost of life, only in this way can they stand out, occupy a place in the evolution of life, and become the winner of the natural competition.
Like everything in the world, feces vary from species to species, are very different from each other, and they have their own life cycle, which is what Jones calls "time-passing dung decay." Since the main body that promotes the recycling of feces is a complex biological community, the feces will change with the rhythm of this community, and all this will inevitably be affected by different seasons and weather differences.
Jones divides the life of feces into the following periods: fresh period: fresh baking, waiting for the dung; maturity period: the first batch of fecals sniffing the smell and preparing for the momentum; saturation period: you scramble, each showing its ability; moldy period: the fecal person decreases, the feces become dry; the decay period: gradual weathering, edge shrinking... In addition, a pile of feces will also go through the disintegration period, the residual period, the debris period, the trace period and the occasional flash period until it is integrated into the land and completely disappears.
For the dung man, they have different tasks for each period of feces, from the rapid shooting of the fresh and mature periods, to the mutual exclusion and scramble for territory in the saturation period, to the gradual departure of the moldy and decay periods, and the purpose of reproduction has been achieved. And the main component of feces bacteria, or have been eaten, or into dormant spore mode, waiting to open a new cycle, it can be said that each of the fecals, is a part of the maintenance of natural operation.
Dung people take on the heavy responsibility of dealing with stench, whether it is the "contrivance" of dung flies or the "strength" of dung beetles, in fact, it is due to their natural nature. However, although human beings have gained a lot from the labor of dung, they are always full of prejudice against the habits of dung, not only do they regard dung beetles and dung flies as unclean things and discard them, but they are even more silent and secretive about the topic of dung.
Human beings are accustomed to judging the right and wrong of everything in the world by feeling, and they ignore that feces is a widely used nutrient resource in the world, and they do not discuss the important contribution of feces to the environment. The word "excrement" is only used by them as a weapon for mutual aggression or cursing, and is only occasionally used in profanity or obscenity.
In fact, feces, and the creatures that use it to survive and their means, are part of both natural history and the history of civilization. It is said that the earliest dung beetles were found in the fossils of the late Jurassic period 140 million years ago, which shows that the story of feces and dung people has a long history.
In ancient times, human beings relied on nature's self-purification to stay away from pollution sources. In the agricultural era, humans disposed of excrement by burying it or pouring it into rivers. In the industrial age, humans invented public health treatment systems: drains, public toilets, sewer pipes... But no matter what era you live in, it is a fact that cannot be ignored is that without the unsung heroes who protect the environment, such as dung beetles and dung flies, humans will be annihilated by the dung of themselves or livestock.
Therefore, for human beings, in the face of feces and dung, instead of rejecting them inwardly, it is better to have an open mind to re-understand them, and transform the heavy taste of humor circulating among schoolchildren into serious environmental problems. In this regard, one of the ways the author offers us is empathy, arguing that to understand the dungs, it is necessary to start from their philosophy, put yourself in the shoes of others, and be able to draw conclusions that are not unfair.
As a well-known British entomologist and naturalist, Jones had his own family roots, his father was a well-known botanist, Jones became interested in naturalism, that is, obviously influenced by his father. Jones has been fascinated by animal droppings and the inhabitants of them since childhood, his first insect survey report was completed at the age of seventeen, and his journey to explore dung began much earlier— in early 2015, when he wrote the manuscript of Nature's Call, he had been collecting dung beetles across The Ephemeral turtle across The United Kingdom for forty-five years.
During Jones's dung exploration journey, he is not only increasingly aware of the important role that feces and dung people play in the circulation and balance of natural ecology, but also experience endless fun. Jones has always regretted that not many people know how to appreciate or know how to collect dung beetles, dung flies and other dung worms, and he has always been excited about the opportunity to witness thousands of dung beetles pouring into the feces like a tidal wave. The author tells in vivid, humorous writing about his favorite dung worms, how he finds them, how he observes them, how he feels "some seem bizarre, some are shocking, and some feel very good"... Thus, a topic that is despised and despised by people is pushed into the elegant hall of scientific monographs.
Jones's insect-hunting experience is that it is not necessary to lean over to pick up the dung, but to get closer, or to keep a certain distance, that is, to observe the endless fecal nails and fecal flies that come and go. If you are looking for insects in larger volumes of cow or horse manure, start with the fecal margin, then open along the natural cracks in the surface of the manure, and finally observe the grass root condition at the bottom of the manure. Jones repeatedly reminds everyone that they must wash their hands when they are picked up with their bare hands, trapped in it, and after the insect hunt is completed.
Once, Jones personally caught a dung turtle dung beetle, and when the dung golden turtle dung beetle pushed forward with a smooth and rough head and tried to fly away with its wide legs with teeth, it was like a mini helicopter taking off into the air, creating a slight cool breeze downwards. Jones called the humming sound of the dung turtle dung beetle flying by as he called it "the sound of summer nights in fond memories of childhood." Jones's narrative is unconsciously reminiscent of the haiku of japanese haiku poet Kazucha Kobayashi: "Don't fight, the fly rubs his hands and rubs his feet." ”
When we jump out of the worldly prejudices and look at those cute little creatures with aesthetic eyes, we will find that there is no distinction between good and bad insects in nature, they are all part of the "wonderful biological chain", and also constitute a beautiful and wonderful world of life. Writers who love nature share this sentiment, and in their writings, they all exude respect and kindness to all life.