Posted in birds, Galliformes, tagged Congo peafowl, domestic turkey, Guinea fowl, Guineafowl, wild turkey on May 21, 2009 |
These birds aren’t that closely related.
They are both just large Galliformes that have evolved similar courtship displays.
Interestingly, the turkey was thought to be the same species as the helmeted Guineafowl, which was brought to England from the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). The helmeted Guineafowl are from Africa, but they were common as poultry in the Ottoman Empire. That’s why the scientific name for the turkey is Meleagris gallopavo, and the scientific name for the helmeted Guineafowl is Numida meleagris. Meleagris refers to the Guineafowl.
The Guineafowl were called “Turkey birds,” as were the ones found in North America. It was only when it was discovered that the two were distinct species that turkey began to refer to the North American bird and Guineafowl to the African bird.
Ironically, peafowl are more closely related to Guineafowl than turkeys, so if any species should be confused with Guineafowl, it is the peafowl. Now, there is a missing link between the Guineafowl and peafowl. For decades, ornate feathers were coming out of Central Africa, and these were classified as peafowl by traders. However, taxonomists would say that these were imports from India that came through Africa. There was no such thing as an African peafowl.
However, in 1936, James Chapin, an American ornithologist, declared the existence of a new species of peafowl indigenous to the Congo Basin. It was called the Congo peafowl (Afropavo congensis) . His discovery was not in the jungles of darkest Africa, however. His discovery came from two taxidermied specimens that were in the Congo Museum in Belgium (which, you might recall, once owned the Congo.)
Congo Peafowl
The congo peafowl looks like a juvenile Indian peafowl or maybe a cross between a peafowl and a Guineafowl. The Congo peafowl is thought to be the missing link between the peafowl and Guineafowl families.
However, very little is known about the Congo peafowl. It is not widely studied in the wild. There aren’t many of them. Further, their habitat is rapidly shrinking, as trees are felled. This species is considered “vulnerable” by the International Conservation Union.
I am somewhat amazed that I was able to generate this post simply from watching a video of a domestic turkey and an Indian peafowl. I certainly didn’t think it was going to launch into a post on the Congo peafowl or why we call the turkey a turkey.
The text in question comes from Gervase Markham’s Hunger’s Prevention or the Art of Fowling from Water and Land (1621).
He was a prolific non-fiction writer of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He was well-acquainted with the early techniques of forestry and game keeping. This book is actually a treatise on how to shoot every kind of game bird that exists in Britain.
The dog in question is not a poodle– at least as we would understand it.
It is the dog more often referred to as the English rough water dog. It was something like a poodle or a barbet, but it was a distinctly English dog.
Contrary to this piece on spaniel history, Shakespeare was not referring to any breed of spaniel when he was talking about the English water spaniel when he mentioned the term “water rug.” Both rough water dogs and English water spaniels existed, and Shakespeare used both terms.
The water rug quote is from a piece of dialogue spoken by Macbeth:
Macbeth: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men,
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clipt
All by the name of dogs.”
– William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 1
Shakespeare mentions water spaniels, which also existed. The character Launce says:
She hath more qualities than a water- spaniel, which is much in a bare Christian.
William Shakespeare Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 3, Scene 1.
One wonders why the spaniel researchers didn’t look into this a little closer. It is clear here that the Bard deliberately is using two different terms for two different dogs. The water rug is the same thing as the English rough water dog. It was a dog of the poodle-type, and some texts refer to it as a poodle. The other dog is also a water dog. However, it is a cross between the rough water dog and a spaniel or setter. In Shakespeare’s time, setters were classed as spaniels. This tradition still exists in France, where index spaniels, which we would call setters, are still referred to as épagneuls. So it is quite possible that some water spaniels had setter them, rather than spaniel.
The old water dogs were almost entirely replaced by the water spaniels by the mid-eighteenth century. Stubbs painted a water spaniel that is more of the rough water dog type, but as far as I can tell, those dogs either disappeared entirely or were absorbed into the poodle.
The water spaniels probably would’ve wound up the working water dogs of Europe had shooting pheasants, partridges, rabbits, and hares with shotguns not become a popular activity among the European gentry. They needed a dog that could retrieve from heavier cover and from the water. They started using water spaniels, collies, and setters to pick up shot game. Different nobles cross-bred them to create their own breeds of retriever. Retriever in those early days was a job description. Any dog that could pick up game was a retriever.
In the British colony of Newfoundland, the settlers had developed a dog for hauling nets and lines from the sea. Unlike any European dogs of this type, this dog often came with a short, thick coat that was quite waterproof. The dog could handle the frigid waters of the Grand Banks, and it lacked the coat that required clipping to be useful in the water. This dog was, of course, the St. John’s water dog. This dog was also used for fowling in the Newfoundland back country as Newfoundland explorer and entrepreneur William Epps Cormack described them in 1822:
The dogs are admirably trained as retrievers in fowling, and are otherwise useful…The smooth or short haired dog is preferred because in frosty weather the long haired kind become encumbered with ice on coming out of the water.
When these dogs arrived in England with imports of cod, they were instantly chosen as working retrievers. In fact, they were so good at this sort of work, that every modern breed of retriever descends from some version of this dog. They were crossed with water spaniels along the River Tweed, which is why the Tweed water spaniel or Tweed water dog looked so much like a retriever.
The specially bred retrievers proved really useful for the work at hand, and then water spaniels began to disappear. Today, only one breed of water spaniel from the islands of Great Britain and Ireland still exists. Just as the water spaniel replaced the rough water dog, the retrievers replaced the water spaniels. However, the water spaniels were more clearly absorbed into the retrievers than the rough water dogs were absorbed into the poodles and water spaniels.
Shakespeare and Markham both knew the ancestors of the modern water dogs. In fact, both were around to see the gradual shift away from the dogs of the poodle type to dogs of the water spaniel type. That change was rather gradual. When the St. John’s water dog arrived on the scene, the change was rather drastic.
Even though it was my birthday yesterday, I am feeling a deep sense of ennui.
I have found meaningful work, just for those of you who were wondering.
That’s not what is causing this sense of ennui.
I just feel like I can’t be myself these days.
I have no idea what is causing it.
I know what I’m good at. In fact, I’m doing a little bit of it right now. I’d like to make a living doing this, if only there was a way.
When I was 18 years old, history and politics were my favorite things. That’s why I studied them in college. But now, I think I studied them because I loved the stories that stemmed from those disciplines. I like doing historical research if it involves documents. I don’t like doing political “science,” if it has to exist with the veneer of scientism. I like the drama. I don’t really care if it’s the most beautifully methodologically correct piece ever written.
I should have gone and got my MFA in creative writing, which is what my creative writing professors (no surprise) wanted me to do.
Oh well. I’ve taught myself more through writing for the web than I have learned in all my years of law school and grad school. I know that my writing style has greatly improved since I started writing this blog in July of last year.
So maybe writing is my only way out of the ennui, whatever caused it.
Some people believed it. The newspaper was skeptical. And rightly so.
The hoax says that this cougar was killed in West Virginia– somewhere between Grantsville (my area) and Walker (a small town near Parkersburg).
If there are cougars in this area, they are going to be very smart and cautious animals. People have guns and will kill them. It doesn’t matter whether the species has any state or federal protection here. If someone sees it, it will be shot.
So why would one of these alleged Eastern cougars wander out onto the highway and get hit by a car?
Secondly, the hoax said that some officials from “Fish and Game” came out and put the poor cat out its misery. We have no such department in West Virginia; it is the DNR that handles all of these things. In fact, if it had just been a deer or other mundane roadkill, the Department of Highways would be called.
Thirdly, Walker and Grantsville are some distance apart. I think that if I really wanted to do a hoax, I would say it was killed between Grantsville and Elizabeth, Grantsville and Glenville, or Grantsville and Smithville. To me those would be more logical places to say that a great cat cross the road. But I digress. Some hoaxers don’t do their homework.
The truth about the hoax can be found here. It turns out that the cougar died on the highway. It was on Highway 64– no, not I-64, which runs through West Virginia. It was hit by a car in Arizona. The cat was mortally wounded, so someone from Arizona’s Fish and Game Department came out and dispatched the poor creature.
The cat was a big tom. It was estimated to be 7 feet long and over 200 pounds.
Now, someone snapped some photos of the cat. Then the photos were sent along in e-mails. Someone with a sense of humor sent one of the photos along claiming that the cat was killed near Prescott, where lots of people live. As the photos got forwarded, someone decided to sent the photos along with the story that they had been killed in Arkansas. Then someone forwarded them with the crazy story about the cat being killed in rural West Virginia.
If the cats are still in West Virginia, they are going to be very wary creatures. Further, a large number of sightings are going to be misidentifications. Bobcats, both species of fox, domestic cats (like Abyssinians) and certain breed of dog look a bit like cougars. In fact, it is thought that a lot of cougar sightings are actually dark-colored golden retrievers, which, I have to say, do look like the cats if you just see their long-tailed bodies running away at a distance.
The bull shark story was a hoax– a recycled April Fool’s joke. I carefully added a total hoax to a bunch of actual true stories about bull sharks in rivers. It is now physically impossible for a bull shark to get that far up the Mississippi, unless they evolve some way to walk on land like walking catfish. There are now too many locks and dams on the river. They also would have to evolve internal thermoregulation like great whites and salmon sharks have. Even that water is too freaking cold for a shark of a primarily subtropical origin.
I think the bit I had in there about the bull sharks jumping Minnehaha Falls may have raised your suspicions that I was being a bit less than truthful. However, if you didn’t realize it was a joke, I apologize.
I did it yesterday because 1. It was my birthday. 2. I was bored. 3. I was laughing at how many people fell for the Montauk Monster conspiracy theories! So I thought I’d try my own using that recycled April Fool’s hoax.
(I wonder if the Fonz did this in Minnesota or Wisconsin. ; ) )
I hope no one believed the drivel I wrote yesterday. I intentionally mislead you. No shark would ever make it up to Minnesota or Wisconsin. Too many locks and dams on the Mississippi. There also never been a shark in West Virginia– at least in historic times. That story came from an April Fool’s joke that I received about three years ago.
Why would I mislead you?Well, I am reading post after post about the Montauk Monster, I thought I’d try my hand at writing absolute tripe. I wanted to see if I had any readers dumb enough to “bite.” I have none. But I am amazed at how many people think the Montauk Monster has something to do with a government conspiracy.
I did mix in actual facts: a bull shark was captured in the Mississippi near St. Louis, the Matawan Creek shark was probably a bull shark, and one was captured 2,000 miles up the Amazon in Peru. These sharks have shown up in Washington, D.C., proving that those who make political class are not the only cold blooded killers in that town. And the best lies always contain a lot of truth wrapped in.
I even gave some canards about the Lake Michigan shark attack, which I actually think is totally false, and the skill that these creatures have at crossing locks and dams. However, I know I lost a few people when I said the sharks could jump Minnehaha Falls. Bull sharks do jump the rapids on the San Juan River in Nicaragua, but I doubt they would make it up these falls.
I apologize to anyone who would believe that story, but yesterday was my birthday. I wanted to have some fun. I wanted to try my hand at something like the Montauk Monster-swine flu theory. I actually had two rather disconcerting discussions on youtube about the Montauk Monster, swine flu, and government conspiracy. Someone actually asked me “Why woud Plum Island do that to a raccoon?”
The answer is it wouldn’t. Raccoons die every day, and some wind up in the ocean. Because we have killed tons of sharks and other scavengers, these carcasses remain in the ocean long enough until they rot.
I also need to tell you that my own grandfather started a wildlife mystery entirely by falsehood.
His friend is the town barber. This barber keeps lots of taxidermied animals in the front window. One of them is a ghastly creature. It looks like a moderately sized monkey-type creature with long nails. It is obviously fake.
However, patrons of the barber shop often ask about its identity. For years, the answer was that it was just a joke.
My grandpa decided one day that he wasn’t going to go along with the “it’s a joke” story.
He knew that such a creature needed a heck of a story.
One day, a woman from the local church brought in her little boy for haircut. While waiting their turn for the barber’s chair, the little boy went around and checked out all the taxidermied specimens. When he approached the monkey creature, he asked “What’s that ugly thing?”
To which my grandpa replied: “It’s a bujeonowl.”
“A what?!” both the boy and his mother asked.
“A bujeonowl. Quite rare in this country. But I hear the DNR turned some more loose to keep the coyote numbers down.”
“Why would they turn out something like that?”
“Because unlike wolves or other predators of coyotes, these bujeonowls won’t also kill calves or sheep. You see, the bujeonowl likes coyote meat above all other animals. They wait in the trees until an old coyote comes slinking down the trail. When it passes the tree where the bujeonowl is waiting, it leaps down onto the coyote. It takes its long claws and tears out the coyote’s throat. Then it carries the coyote up into the trees to eat. If you see a coyote carcass up in a tree, you can bet that a bujeonowl carried it up there.”
Well, it wasn’t long before word spread that the DNR had turned out some new predator to kill the coyotes. Not everyone believed it, but those who did often came by my grandpa and asked him about the bujeonowl. He would tell the same story, although sometimes he would had that the beast had eyes that glowed read in the dark or that it sometimes hunted children, even claiming that his own brother was attacked by a bujeonowl one winter as the boys walked home from school.
One day, he found himself telling the bujeonowl story to an entire cafe full of people. I think after that, he started to feel guilty about the whole thing, and he stopped telling the story.
However, the story of the bujeonowl is not the story of a unique coyote-killing ape. It is really an interesting story about how naive and gullible people are. After all, the year before the people were all talking about how the insurance companies turned loose the coyotes in order to reduce the number of deer and, thus, the number of deer-related damage claims. Of course, that story was utter malarkey. The coyotes had arrived both on their own volition and because various hunt clubs wanted them introduced as a game species. (Of course, no one did any research to find out that coyotes don’t kill that many deer, and the insurance companies were more interested in knocking off a few elected judges than knocking off the white-tailed deer.)
So I’m sorry I misled you, but I hope that it is a fair warning. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, especially if it has to do with wild animals. People like to sensationalize everything.
And just remember, the Montauk Monster didn’t kill JFK. JFK and Elvis were last seen ice fishing for bull sharks on Lake Woebegon.
RT @RichardDawkins: Burn one Quran and millions of exact copies remain available to read. But each Assyrian or Buddhist statue smashed is u… 4 days ago
