![]() ![]() Why not set up a webcam so weirdos can watch them take baths, and the like? They'll never know it, so "no harm, no foul"? * Individuals with severe intellectual disability. Should I allow a camera to trail my child, assuming the footage will be anonymous and the child will never find out? ![]() Suppose a psychologist wants 24 hour footage of an infant. But surely the audience on the outside are doing something wrong? People inside the bubble aren't aware that they are on camera, and aren't hurt by it. Jean Kazez over at In Living Color provides several additional thought experiments: Imagine that the subjects of the filming never knew that they had been filmed.īrett Mills’ suggestion has been ridiculed by a number of commentators (some have suggested that it is a prime example of wasted academic effort), but others have taken it more seriously. Why would it be wrong to film humans without their knowledge, but not wrong to do the same to animals. But imagine that he had used similar technology to obtain pictures from a human home birth, or to take pictures of copulating couples in their homes? Brett Mills, a lecturer in television studies at the University of East Anglia has controversially suggested that animals may have a right to privacy that is breached by filming them without their consent. I also live 1 km walking distance down a bush track to what was once a Platypus Reserve.Is it wrong for documentary film makers to film intimate moments in the lives of non-human animals? David Attenborough has used fibroptic cameras to obtain views of the inside of a platypus’ nest, providing never-before-seen images of the birth and feeding of a newborn platypus. I have been fortunate to have spotted several in their natural habitat once in the Royal National Park in Sydney and at a bush property on North Queensland’s Atherton Tableland. Platypus are secretive creatures that travel alone. Nor to bird nor beast, nor to horned owl They sleep like little brown billiard balls Jack, I’m in love…….Now feeling pumped for the next Trivia comp at the local bowlo.Īnd he plays and dives in the river bendsĪt the roots of the reeds and the grasses rank Did you know that Echidna’s back feet are backwards for digging purposes though taxidermied specimens do not reflect this, and the half a dozen Tasmanian Tigers around the world all have erections. Many of these creatures aren’t well known around the world and even the qualified staff at international Natural History Museums are quite clueless. ![]() Who knew! The male is venomous, and war hero Keith Payne VC testifies that the pain from an affliction is worse than a gun shot wound.Īnd did you know that in 1943 Winston Churchill asked Prime Minister John Curtain for six live specimens as moral boosters and to promote the relationship between England and Australia during the middle of World War 2 ? (A Japanese submarine ruined those plans….)įacts about the other mammals are also intriguing : how echidnas have intimate relations, wombats pouches face backwards and why their poop is cubed, and taxidermy does not simply involve retaining an animals skin and stuffing it with tissue paper. Ashby’s respect for the platypus shines through with not only a discussion about their physiology, but also their history in relation to Indigenous Dreamtime, early colonial poetry, and an array of information which I have stored in my Trivia Bank.įor instance, newborn platypus ( or platypups) require mothers milk though platypus do not have nipples. What could have very easily become another catalogue of interest only to other scientists or zoology students is fast paced, humorous and fascinating. He states that “our unique wildlife is disappearing at a rate unparalleled by any other large region on Earth, and its conservation is surely tied to how these animals are understood.” He argues “ why it matters that we think about how these animals are portrayed – how we talk about them, how we represent them on TV and in museums, and how we value them”. In this book he makes the case that Australia’s wildlife is not a collection of oddities or creatures that can kill you as is so often presented in the media. He puts his special regard for these three creatures down to the fact that they “waddle”.Īshby may well be a science nerd but he sounds like great fun around a barbie. ![]() His favourite marsupial is the platypus, followed by the echidna and then the wombat. Let me start by saying that Jack Ashby is a marsupial loving eccentric and I just love him. His first book was Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects and Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Lives of Australian Mammals was published in 2022. Jack Ashby is the Assistant Director of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, and an honorary research fellow in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London. ![]()
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