What interests us most are creatures that have not been found. Cryptids. So, what if there was an insane looking cryptid that was the size of a dog, had fangs proportionately as long as a lion, could lift its upper lip over it's nose, had finger-in-the-socket long blond hair, looked like it was wearing a fur coat parka, had reddish pink pecs, and so forth and so on. The people reporting it would have to be exaggerating! We'd swear that if they ever found this creature, we'd be talking about it all the time.
"We" did find this creature, the gelada. It was discovered in 1835 by the explorer Eduard Rüppell, who named it by the local name used by the inhabitants of the Gonder region of Ethiopia, where he first observed it. As wild as they look, they are very tame but little interest was shown in them until more recently, when Patsy and Robin Dunbar made an exhaustive study of their social behaviour. Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar is a British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist who completed his PhD in 1974 on the social organisation of the gelada baboon, Theropithecus gelada.
Why don't we marvel over this every day? Why don't people line up at zoo enclosures to see geladas like they do with giant pandas? Geladas have bad press agents? Is the grass always greener? Once you get what you want, once a crazy new species is discovered, do you rest on your laurels? Do you apply this type of thinking to other areas of your life? Why can't we endlessly marvel at things we have already found and already have 100% proof of their existence? Or, do we already do this with our pets?
If this animal was only known by fossil evidence, they'd have no clue that it looks the way it does with the blondish fur and red markings and all.
ReplyDeleteThat's very true and they do have the most beautiful hair xx
DeleteThere are probably some known dinosaurs that had freaky looking colorations that Jurassic Park wasn't even remotely close to and some that are pretty close to the way they actually were.
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