What Does It Mean to Be Exotic?

My gardener confided to me the other day that I am lucky to have any peaches at all. He told me that most people around here who try to grow peaches have very little success.

This surprised me, because when I moved here, I took my peaches for granted. I can't take any credit for them, though, because the previous owners had planted them. "They require a lot of pruning and care," my expert told me.

To me this rings of: it's not native here. It's probably exotic. And I asked him to try to find me trees that are as close to native and natural as he could, while meeting my needs. I didn't say this because I have some ingrained prejudice against exotic plants. I don't uproot trees that came from somewhere else, and I don't kill wildflowers just because someone calls them exotic invasives. It's just that I want my trees to grow easily, with minimum effort on my part.

Blossoms on my first pear tree this morning

But thinking about it, I am beginning to suspect that all my fruit trees are exotic. They may be "traditional" for people to plant, in the sense that this has customarily been done since the first non-native American settlers appeared here, but this does not mean that any of these trees originated here naturally.

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/cropmap/missouri/crop/fruit.html

More of my First Pear Tree blossoms

Can a fruit tree be both traditional and exotic? It think it can, "Pear, Asian" is listed under  "Traditional Crops: fruit and nut crops in commercial production" in the first table on the site I linked above. If the pear tree comes from Asia, it is not native to Missouri. So it must be exotic. And yet it is also "traditional".

Blossoms of the Second Pear Tree This morning

People are often confused about the meaning of the word exotic. The lowly service berry may in fact be native to Missouri, but it is much less traditional a fruit tree than a pear.

So what does exotic mean? According to Merriam-Webster online, it means:

Full Definition of EXOTIC 

1 :  introduced from another country :  not native to the place where found  <exotic plants>;

2 archaic :  foreign, alien
3 :  strikingly, excitingly, or mysteriously different or unusual ; <exotic flavors>

          4 :  of or relating to striptease ;<exotic dancing>;

 Taking striptease entirely out of the discussion,  exotic means coming from another country. It also has the connotation of being striking, exciting, mysterious. different or unusual. It used to mean foreign. It is derived from Latin, from a word whose root means "out" or "outside." In its derivation, it is not that different from the English word "outlandish." Exotic was first used in English in 1599.

I was called exotic once. I did not know what to make of it. I was at a friend's house when I was a little girl in Texas, and a woman visiting there kept staring at me. Finally, unable to restrain herself any longer, she blurted out; "What are you?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, confused.

"You just look so different," she said. "Are you Italian?"

"Oh," I said, finally understanding what she meant. "I come from Israel."

"Well, I knew it was something exotic," she said.

To me that was a very odd incident. I spoke English with an American accent, so she was clearly referring to my appearance, not my speech. Nothing quite like that has ever happened to me, before or since, but I think it is just because most people are more polite. I don't mind that she asked that, but I was confused by her question for a minute. 

Prejudice against outsiders is usually known as bigotry, and it is considered politically incorrect. But when it comes to exotic animals, people feel free to display their attitude quite openly, sometimes in a belligerent manner.

Yesterday, I posted on Facebook about  a Texas House Bill 3592 "Registration and Regulation of "Dangerous" Wild Animals". I was just trying to warn my friends in Texas that their rights to own big cats, bears, primates and other species were being threatened and suggested that they get in touch with their representatives. The post was intended for my friends in Texas, as this concerned them, but a few other people came by and left friendly comments about the right to own exotic animals. Others  voiced concerns about rattlesnakes, which are actually native to Texas and not exotic at all. Then one person, from Canada of all places, declared categorically: "Sorry, I don't think people should have exotic pets." When I pointed out to her that the post pertained to Texas, she replied: "I don't care where you live, people should not have exotic pets."

This a woman who lives in Canada, is from Scottish ancestry and resides in an apartment with a cat. The cat, like all cats, did not evolve in North America. How can she be against exotics? Neither she nor her cat are native to the region where she lives.

If she had said "animals that have not been domesticated", rather than "exotics", then I could maybe understand her claim. But then again, according the wikipedia: 

In comparison to dogs cats have not undergone major changes during the domestication process, as the form and behavior of the domestic cat is not radically different from those of wildcats and domestic cats are perfectly capable of surviving in the wild.^[

I did not speak to her about her cat. I merely pointed out that the laws are quite different in Texas than in Canada, and that this particular bill only affects those in Texas. Neither she nor I have any right to tell Texans what laws they should pass. I was merely warning those of my friends who live in Texas that this legislation was about to be voted on, so that they could do something about it, if they wished. Lawmakers often pass laws of this sort without consulting their constituencies.

We are all exotic one way or another, Even native Americans migrated here and did not evolve in North America. If exotics were tolerated only in their place of origin, then all of us would have to go back to Africa. And this would include not just the humans. All life is kin. Scientists have yet to replicate the production of life out of non-life, and so it seems that all of us have a common origin, and  it was in Africa that all our ancestors were spawned. Should we all go back to Africa? Would we be welcome there, do you think?

Bow was born and bred in Missouri, so has greater claim to native status than I do

It is usually those people who are totally  unaware of their own bigotry who display it the most clearly. My friend from Canada probably has never thought through the exotic conundrum, so this is why she feels so uninhibited in speaking out against exotics. But one way or another, we are all exotics, and it is best to learn to get along, and to live and let live. 

Chimpanzee Fathers

It's father's day, and in the news there is an item about the genetic contribution of chimpanzee fathers to the evolution of the species.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140612142307.htm

Ninety percent of genetic mutations in chimpanzees come from the father, and the older the father, the more mutations. Bow is still quite young, so I expect he would be a source of fewer mutations than most, were he allowed to father a child this year.

Bow in the outer pen yesterday

When I think of that, it reminds me of those people who say that we cannot safely interact with chimpanzees because they have not undergone a long process of domestication. By domestication, they do not mean becoming personally accustomed to living in a house, as the etymology of that word would imply. They mean a selective breeding program. Those people are crypto-eugenicists.

If we believed what they were saying and wanted to follow their train of thought to its ultimate conclusion, the obvious solution to the "chimpanzee problem" would be a breeding program designed to bring out more cooperative traits, less violence and higher intelligence. The product of that breeding program would be "domesticated chimpanzees", as safe to own as dog or cow.

I don't think it actually works that way. The truth is that nurture has a huge impact on how anyone turns out. The sense of having a common interest with others, as opposed to a conflict of interest, also makes a huge difference. Bow knows that we are in this together. Another chimpanzee who does not know me would behave completely differently toward me.The same is true for dogs. You cannot know that a dog is safe to interact with unless you know the dog. 

Maybe this idea that behavior is pre-wired in higher functioning mammals is influenced by the study of insects. Insects seem to pretty much know what they are supposed to be doing without anyone ever having told them. Yesterday, the bees on my property gravitated toward the blackberry blossoms.

The butterflies, on the other hand, congregated by the purple milkweed flowers.

How did they all know what they were supposed to be doing? And what made them all decide not to show up this morning, just because it looks like rain again?

Many things that Bow and I do also come pre-wired. The way we stand, for instance.

The way we move, the things we like to eat, the sorts of thoughts we have, all do involves some genetic predisposition. But who our friends are, who we rely on in a pinch and who is a stranger to us is something that depends on our experiences.

Chimpanzee fathers may cause ninety percent of the mutations, but it's the person the chimpanzee grows up with who is ultimately the trusted family member. 

Chimpanzees, Dogs and Domestication

Today is Mother's Day, and I am being nostalgic. In the picture above, from nine years ago, you can see me and Bow inside the sun room, while Sword and her friend are out in the yard on the back  porch. They are playing hopscotch on a chalk outline they made on the concrete. Bow was in his favorite pose, riding on my back. And, of course, there's a swing.

Today, the sun room has been transformed into the inner pens, the back porch is the floor of the outer pen, and the swing has been moved outdoors. It's Bow's swing, but today, since it is Mother's Day, Bow let me use it.

Bow was very unconcerned with my use of his swing, but Leo, who is a barker, kept trying to get more attention. If he were inside the pens, he would not feel so left out. Luckily, I do also interact with Leo at other times, so he's not entirely a neglected or a feral dog.

Which reminds me, offhand, of a discussion of chimpanzees, dogs and domestication I recently had with some friends and friends of friends on Facebook.

It all started with someone claiming that humans, even under conditions of slavery, cannot be domesticated, because they are so smart that they can cloak their tendency toward violence and thereby avoid having the violence culled right out of them. This, it was claimed, was in contrast to dogs who have been entirely domesticated, and can therefore be expected to be non-violent toward humans.

I took issue with this. I pointed out how many incidents of dogs killing humans we have in the United States each year. The killings are not breed specific. My point was not  that dogs were bad or that certain dogs were violent, but simply that those dogs who do not choose to kill humans do so not out of some kind of genetic predisposition against violence, but because of the way they are brought up, the way they are treated and the positive relationship that they have with humans. I mentioned that chimpanzees, who have not undergone "domestication", have by contrast not killed any human in the US in decades.

Up popped some woman, a friend of my friend, and gave me a stern lecture. She told me that chimpanzees may seem cute when they are babies, but by puberty they are very dangerous, and I should have a plan in place to get rid of mine. (She assumed Bow was in the cute baby phase, or else I would be dead by now.) Then she explained that domestication is not the same as taming, in case I thought it was, but was a program of genetic selection for certain traits that dogs have undergone for tens of thousands of years and that foxes underwent more recently in a less lengthy process.

First of all, if domestication as a way to disarm populations were really a possibility, whether for humans, dogs or chimpanzees, don't you think it would be achieved by now? The biggest killers of other humans are humans themselves. Governments interested in eradicating resistance are plotting to take away our guns or to drug us, because they don't know of any sure fire way to make us docile.

Many people have their dogs neutered, and it is not just for purposes of birth control. If birth control were desired, why not just perform a vasectomy? The same people who claim dogs are domesticated also push for universal neutering of all domestic dogs. Why?Some of it is to control behavior.

 Dogs don't always do what we expect them to. Neither do humans or chimpanzees. All of us are dangerous, whether armed or unarmed. Many different expedients are tried to neutralize the natural tendency to resist authority that comes built in to any intelligent being.

But even castrati can plot against the king, and neutered dogs and chimps have been known  to do much damage. So neither "domestication" despite its centuries' long breeding program, nor other methods such as drugs and lobotomies, is a substitute for a relationship of trust.

Telling people their dogs are domesticated and hence cannot harm them is an invitation to having people treat dogs badly or fail to relate to them at all, and expect that everything will be fine. Everything can be fine, but first you need to earn respect.

I go into the pens every day, bare footed and bare handed, with only trust for a weapon. It works a lot better than domestication ever could. Nobody in my house is domesticated: not me, not my daughter, not the dogs and certainly not Bow. We all came down from a long line of carnivorous predators, and somehow we avoid killing each other every single day.

Amazing, isn't it? But I bet it's the same at your house, too! Happy Mother's Day!