Alex & Me: Anecdotes on Language Acquisition

Many people are aware of the 30-year long relationship Irene Pepperberg had with her African Grey Parrot, Alex (roughly May 1976 – 6 September 2007). 

Irene Pepperberg was trained at Harvard in chemistry, but while writing her chemistry dissertation she became fascinated with the biological aspects of language acquisition in animals. She finished her chemistry dissertation but never used the degree directly. That said, however, she had learned many research and other transferable skills to enter into the biological field of animal psychology. She studied constantly -- about child acquisition of language, about animal cognition which at the time was believed to be almost non-existent. For years she battled disinterest in her studies, and especially flack from the scientific world in general; animals were strictly believed to be governed by instinct and intelligence wasn't to be considered. Until this time, language acquisition had only been testing in some primates, gorillas, and corvids (crows, ravens). Irene thought that a grey parrot, an animal known to talk, would be the ideal subject to research animal cognition and intelligence with, and so went to an exotic pet store to get one. One was arbitrarily scooped up, and that parrot became the famous talking Alex! 

Source

A video on YouTube "Alex: One of the smartest birds ever" shows some of his training to demonstrate that animals, precisely African Grey Parrots, can not only "parrot" humans but actually understand and communicate with them intellectually, rationally, intentionally - all aspects of intelligence previously denied possible in the animal world. Humans just couldn't wrap their brains around the fact that humans aren't positioned as the only "animals" that acquire and communicate with meaningful language.

Some anecdotes I pulled from the "Alex and Me" book, which become clearer after seeing this YouTube clip.

In his early years of training:

In training, Alex "was less interested in colors than the objects, probably because all the colors tasted the same, while the different objects had different tastes and textures."

"He loved chewing clothespins. We called them 'peg wood', which he picked up quickly. I then gave him a green clothespin, something he'd never seen before, and asked, 'What's this?' He looked at it and cocked his head a couple of times, obviously intrigued, as he often was with novel objects. He then looked at me and said, 'Green wood peg wood,' all one phrase. We hadn't modeled it, so this was striking. Of course, a perfect response would have been 'Green peg wood'. 

[Pepperberg's early initial struggles with funding and getting published in a time when there was a growing controversy in the field of ape-human communication .... and therefore if apes weren't given legitimacy in communication, certainly no 'bird-brain' was going to get it! She writes:  

The chimpanzee known as Washoe, for instance, in the care of Roger Fouts, had apparently coined the phrase "water bird" the first time she saw a swan; Koko the gorilla, the subject of Penny Patterson's research, seemingly described a zebra as a "white tiger". These efforts were garnering a lot of public attention (NOVA programs were just part of that; magazine and newspaper articles proliferated too). Yet linguists were expressing a growing unease over the claim that these animals had demonstrated a rudimentary facility for language. 

In November 1979, Science published a long paper by Herbert Terrace and several colleagues: "Can an Ape Create a Sentence?" It was to become a classic in the growing controversy.]

Some language acquisition with Alex was unplanned, for instance, in December 1980 Alex was taken to a washroom on researcher Kathy Davidson's shoulder and he noticed his reflection in the mirror for the first time. He looked into it, cocked his head, and asked, "What's this?" Kathy answered, "That's you. You're a parrot." Alex looked some more and then asked, "What color?" Kathy said, "Gray. You're a gray parrot, Alex." And that was how Alex learned the word grey.

After several years of work with Alex:

Alex as as grey was very affectionate and loved to have his head lightly scratched. Lab workers called it tickling, so Alex when he wanted attention sometimes would lower his head and say, "You tickle", meaning "scratch my head". One day a stuffed gray was on the desk where Alex worked. After a bit he went over to it, gave it a good look, and then lowered his head to the stuffed bird and said, "You tickle." When nothing happened, he did it again. Again nothing happened, so in a huff, Alex said, "You turkey," and walked off. "You turkey" was a phrase the lab students sometimes said to Alex when he was uncooperative.

Another phrase he picked up inadvertently was "Pay attention!" He had aspergillus infection, a killer, and had to be taken to the vet and put into a nebulizer to help him breathe in drugs for treatment. Of course he didn't like it in the confining nebulizer. He knew he had to "wait" until the bell went off after the treatment, but one time there was an emergency and when no one came after his timer went off, he rapped on the glass and said not only his unhappy-with-this-environment phrase of "Wanna go back", he called out, "Pay attention! Wanna go back!" He had picked up "Pay attention" from students who were testing him in the lab.

At the vets, Alex was popular during the day, but at night he was basically alone. One night the accountant stayed late, and Alex tried to communicate with her. She was working so therefore quiet, so Alex asked, "You want a nut?" "No, Alex." He persisted, "You want corn?" "No, thank you, Alex, I don't want corn." This went on for quite a while with the accountant trying to ignore him in order to do work. Finally, Alex apparently in exasperation said in a petulant voice, "Well, what do you want?" The accountant cracked up laughing and gave Alex the attention he was demanding.

After recovery, Alex was taken back to the lab, but he didn't seem interested. In response to the question "How many wool?" based on the number of wool pieces on a tray, Alex answered, "One." The correct answer was two. When asked again, he said, "Four." Back and forth, one and four. Finally Irene said he would have to go into time-out and put him in his private room away from people. He immediately called out from behind the closed door, "Two ... come here ... two." Yep, Alex had fully recovered and was up to his old tricks!

Of course Alex wasn't the only bird in the lab. There were others like Griffin and Wart. Both were younger than Alex and both were obtained years after Irene had bonded with Alex, so Alex was king in the lab. He always had to have the higher perch, be closer to Irene's face in pictures and in communal work, and was therefore bossier. When Griffin was asked a question and didn't answer immediately, Alex would call out the answer (and sometimes the incorrect one to confuse Griffin). If Griffin's pronunciation wasn't clear enough, Alex would call out, "Say better" and Griffin better sound better on the next try. 

Did Alex understand language? Well, what do you think? 

Irene came storming into the lab one day angry to lose funding for her research ... yet again. Alex looked at her, and said, "Calm down!" 

He babbled and played with sound when alone, for instance, "green, cheen, bean, keen ..." So one day while Irene was testing him with a photographer on a limited schedule, she was asking Alex questions related to phoneme sounds, something she'd never worked with Alex on, but because the interviewer was on a tight schedule Irene skipped giving Alex a reward for every correct answer because Alex eating a nut after each answer would take too much time. Alex was getting frustrated and at not being appropriately rewarded for his efforts and would call out, "Want nut!" He continued to answer each phoneme question correctly, despite never being asked such questions before, and after each would demand more loudly, "Want nut!" Finally, in exasperation Alex called out, "Want nut! Nnn ... uh ... tuh!" Irene was stunned! His response was equivalent to, "Hey stupid, do I have to spell it out for you?" 

Could Alex put thoughts together to create new meaning? Well, one day someone brought a birthday cake into the lab and everyone shared it, including the birds. Community was very important for fostering communication and relationships. When Alex got his piece, he appreciatively said, "Yummy bread." He had known "yummy" and "bread" before, but putting them together was totally Alex's idea.

The night before Alex died, September 2007. 

Alex stayed in the lab with the other birds, and every night before Irene would leave, she and Alex would say their parting words. Wart and Griffin said nothing.

Alex: "You be good. I love you."
Irene: "I love you too."
Alex: "You'll be in tomorrow?"
Irene: "Yes. I'll be in tomorrow."

And those were the last words Alex spoke to her, "You be good. I love you!" Irene treasures them!

The Moon by Whale Light

The Moon by Whale Light … and Other Adventures among Bats,Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales by Diane Ackerman. Diane Ackerman, one of my recent favorite authors, paints herself as a glorious animal-lover and –researcher. Her book The Moon by Whale Light is an insightful look at some of what I at first thought a most random selection of animals. Well, actually after reading the book I still think the animal selection is random but her deep zoological perspectives of the animals is not random but in fact astute, learned and is a wealth of behavioral comments gleaned from field research carried out with long-term professionals. Each of the four chapters dedicated to (1) bats (mammals), (2) crocodilians (reptiles), (3) whales (cetaceans), (4) penguins (aves) explores the animals’ use to man and man’s relationship with them. She also offers many intriguing and little known behaviors and knowledgeably creates the animals in their own highly structured and functional society, a perspective that few humans consider possible for “the lower species”.

So I have collected just a few thoughts on each of the animals, but this book is a jewel for animal-lovers. I so very highly recommend it!

On Bats

Merlin Tuttle, the world’s authority on bats, says, “Bats are among the gentlest of animals. They’re really shy and winsome creatures who have just had bad press.”

Bats are a natural pesticide. They eat 150 tons of insects every night. (Bracken Cave, San Antonio, TX) In fact, bats eat so much food in one evening of foraging that they weigh 50% heavier after one night of dining. An example of their insect gluttony, little brown bats of a common North American species catch as many as 600 insects in an hour.

Bats fly with their mouths open so they can echolocate, but which people mistakenly attribute to a snarling demeanor. They are not snarling, they are not mean, they’re just trying to not bump into anything.

Big brown bat
Picture taken from "The Why Files: The Science behind the News" in its feature "Stopping the Slaughter of Bats"

Bats are extremely tidy, comb themselves thoroughly, and do not gather a mess of nesting materials for their homes like birds. They provide excellent tender care of their young as well.

Cave walls are typically around 57F, but bat babies need to maintain body temperature of around 102F as they are born hairless (these cave conditions are the equivalent of a human lying naked on a cement floor). Therefore, caves chambers that have little moisture and shaped to retain heat become nurseries and babies cling from the ceiling packed with hundreds of other babies waiting for their mothers to return from their hunts and wrap their wings around the young. If bat nurseries are disturbed, the bats must move further back in the cave, where it is likely colder and many babies die. Only one young is raised per year so bats are at risk of not maintaining colony numbers if disturbed.

Even a person passing near a bat which is hibernating causes the bat to raise its body temperature in order to make a retreat if necessary, but this seemingly harmless elevation costs the bat 10-30 days of stored fat.

Bats are rapidly declining due to people not understanding them and killing them off. They have been victims of bat shoots, poison, attacked by flame throwers, napalm-bombed from the air, and dynamited. They have ultra-sensitive hearing and even the blast of a cherry bomb in a cave could kill their ultra-sensitive hearing and confuse a whole cavern of bats so that they can no longer use echolocation, and thus die.

Bats were once as numerous as the passenger pigeon. Old-timers remember when gray bats filled the night sky and now officially they are on the endangered list. The free-tailed bat has declined as much as 99.9% in some places. Its biggest colony went from 30 million to 30 thousand in just six years!

What people don’t realize is that bats are ESSENTIAL for maintaining the balance of nature! They fertilize bananas and maintain the wild strain which is disease-resistant. They plant the rain forest. Of the 3000 or so strains of peaches, which all started in China, bats were the seed dispensers and the pollinators. Bats pollinate many fruits, and bats and bees the the world’s greatest pollinators. Without them, earth would struggle to exist.

On Crocodilians

All crocodilians have a third transparent eyelid (or nictitating membrane), or goggles of a sort, so they can swim underwater. Their pupils are football-shaped and stay vertical to the horizon no matter what angle the head turns. Even if the gator tilts its head straight up, the pupil floats like a gyroscope, so vision isn’t distorted.

While mammals are extravagant with their energy, reptiles are extremely energy efficient and don’t expend energy unless they have to as they take their energy from external sources. Their inferno must be stoked carefully and kept at a precise temperature. If the temperature is incorrect, they cannot digest their food, but their efficiency is shown in their need for only three or four good meals a year.

Alligators have about 80 teeth (and crocodiles 70) and loose teeth throughout their lifespan. New teeth push up through the socket to replace old ones and an alligator, whose lifespan parallels a human’s, might have as many as 3,000 teeth. [Fun trivia: colonials used to fill up alligator’s teeth, which are hollow, with gun powder.]

A large gator, swinging its tail to counterweight the enormous head, stretches its head out of the water, gulps air then lowers itself in the water to make a sub-sonic boom when it bellows, making the water dance high around its body. Researchers note that alligators are responsive to the pitch of b-flat; when hearing b-flat tones, they go nuts with bellowing.

A mother alligator lays 35 or so porcelain eggs, which are incubated for about 65 days. Crocodilians do not have sex chromosomes; their gender is determined by the temperature at which they develop, and 2-3 weeks after the egg being laid, ambient air temperature determines the gender: 94+F produces males, 86-F produces females. Most often an entire nest is one gender, but in some cases, the top 2-3 eggs might be different based on their exposure to a different air temperature.

The first year is tough for an alligator. Yearlings are about 2 feet long and three-quarters of them die because they are eaten by fish, frogs, wading birds, to name a few. As they gain size, this risk is minimized, but then two- to three-year-olds are chased by adult alligators to protect territories and families, and a three-year-old which is about three and a half feet becomes a wanderer. In most reptiles, especially crocodilians, reproduction depends on size, not age, and some crocodilians might reproduce at 6 years of age while others at 15 for some males or 18 for females who develop later. By 30, a male alligator in the wild shows signs of senility, loses its teeth which aren’t replaced, becomes mottled and rough-skinned, and may even go blind. However, a male in captivity may grow as old as 90.

On Whales

If you ask someone to draw a picture of a whale, he/she will likely draw a sperm whale with its bulbous head made famous by Melville’s Moby Dick, but whales come in many shapes, sizes and colors … with 77 species of whales and dolphins inhabiting earth.

Whales are divided into two groups—toothed whales (Odontoceti from the Latin for “tooth” and “whale”) and baleen whales (Mysticeti, from Latinized Greek for “whale”). Toothed whales include sperm whales, dolphins, and orcas/killer whales. They have a single blowhole, echolocate like bats, have teeth for holding prey like fish, squid and shrimp but despite teeth, swallow their food whole. Baleen whales have paired blowholes—nostrils in fact. They graze with their mouths wide open, and the baleen with smooth outer edges and bristly inners catches the krill, plankton, and schools of fish while water passes on through. Other species with baleen have throat pleats and open their mouths even wider to swallow prey when the water is pressed to the top of the mouth and wrung out.

The Right whale, a Mysticeti, got its name from the age of whaling when a whaler would see a whale and ask if it were “the right one”. The Right whale floated when killed instead of sinking, didn’t struggle in battle, and was extremely valuable for its baleen. Now the Right whale is one of the rarest whale species (only 3,500 remaining) due to human greed. Never have humans caused an animal with widespread distribution across the globe to come to extinction, but they sure have come close in the case of the Right whale.

The Gray whale of the North Atlantic became extinct by the end of the 1700s because of Basque whalers, but the Grays in the North Pacific were “discovered” in the 19^th C and called devilfish; they were furiously hunted and in self-defense killed several men and smashing boats in the hunt. Now they are known for “the friendly whale phenomenon” which started in 1977 when a friendly whale near Baja California allowed itself to be patted by passengers on a whale watching boat. Since then, friendly whales have sought out boats, and on occasion rammed them and then rolled over to beg for belly rubs.

Blue whales make loud, low-frequency “songs” that can travel up to 500 miles in deep sound channels before disappearing into background noise.

A Humpback has paddle-like flippers and a huge tail with markings as unique as fingerprints, but its most arresting feature is it sings complicated, beautiful songs and varies them as it continuously sings.

When a whale exercises in warm equatorial waters, it can die of overheating. A whale is like a house with a too-large furnace and too few radiators. If it races too much for its food, it can become hot and can virtually blow up. Even after a whale is killed in the Antarctic, it must quickly be hauled aboard and cut up, for if it takes too long to drag the whale back to the ship for evisceration or is left in the water too long, its bones will be charred by the heat of its internal decay.

Most sperm whales live close to the equator and so dive to unimaginable depths to get to freezing water to cool off. They feed on squid and large fish, sometimes swallowing a whole shark. In the depths of the ocean and swimming under extreme pressure among luminescent fish, no wonder the sperm whales seems magical.

A mother whale is virtually 97% water, lives in water, sounds in water which travel through water and ultimately to her unborn who hears her, but because there is no air in the womb, the baby cannot speak back until it is born one year later.

On Penguins, those feathered dinosaurs

Penguins have no land predators, so they do not fear people. Just the opposite, they are curious and alert and allow their babies to waddle around and freely explore.

Penguins do NOT live at the South Pole, which is about 800 miles from the closest body of water and an altitude of almost 10,000 feet. Nor do they live with Eskimos and polar bears in the Arctic.

There are 17 types of penguins on earth, and while all penguins are essentially black and white, their head markings are what make them most easily identifiable.

·      Adelie penguins (named after Adelie Land near the Antarctic coast of Australia that was named after the wife of a 19^th C French explorer) have black heads with chalk-white eye rings—like little men in tuxedo suits.

·      Rock-hoppers have lively red eyes, long yellow and black head feathers resembling an outgrown crew cut, and thick yellow satanic eyebrows that slant upwards.

·      Chinstraps get their name from the thin black “strap” across their throats; their amber eyes are outlined in thick black and look Egyptian.

·      Emperors have black heads, a tawny stripe on their bill, and a bib of egg-yolk yellow around their necks and cheeks.

·      King penguins, the most flamboyant of all, display a large velvety-orange comma on each cheek, which melts to a radiant yellow, and on either side of their bills, a comet of apricot or lavender darts toward their mouth.

·      Fairy penguins are tiny and blue-headed.

Click to enlarge
Photos taken at Sea World just outside of Honolulu, Hawaii (a horrible place to visit -- the focus is on making money, e.g. $140 to kiss a dolphin and $18 a photo (and you can't take a camera in with you to get your own photo))

The black and white of penguins has very specific purposes. First, for protection—black backs make them less visible from above and white breasts make them appear like a reflection of water from below. For heat—if the penguin is cold, they turn the black towards the sun and warm up but turn white towards the sun if they are hot. An interesting study showed that when penguins were tagged with silver, they were quickly eaten by leopard seals which were attracted to the flash of the silver, so black tags were then used and the penguins were no longer at a disadvantage for becoming a targeted lunch.

Only 4 penguin types live in the Antarctic and only 2 live there exclusively. Most live in slightly balmier climates—on sub-Antarctic islands like South Georgia or the Falklands, along the coast of South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, and one species even lives in the Galapagos near the equator, but penguins do not and have never lived north of the equator. The ocean currents aren’t favorable for carrying them that far north.

Penguins come in a broad range of sizes. The Emperor penguin is the tallest and stands over five feet tall, weighing as much as 100 pounds while in contrast the smallest penguin, the fairy, weighs only 2 ½ pounds and stands a mere 12 inches tall.

Penguins waddle around and are believed by many to be flightless birds, but they do fly—they fly through water, and gracefully too, at speeds up to 15 miles per hour. They porpoise to breathe in just enough air to keep the lungs from collapsing and dive to great depths, with their pulse going from 100 beats per minute to only 20, and because they take only one shallow breath in their porpoise-move, they don't get the bends.

Penguins don’t have binocular vision like humans do, so they turn one eye to an object and then the other. Although they see well underwater, long vision on land isn’t necessary.

Perspective: Earth, Planets, the Sun

Seeing earth in relation to some of our nearest planet-neighbors makes us feel rather large, proud of our somewhat superior size, proud of the space we occupy in space.

Until we put our prideful size up against some of the larger planets, and even the sun, and our pride diminishes quite rapidly for we realize that we are relatively nothing ... despite us in our arrogance, not quite literally but figuratively, acting like the universe revolves around us, our desires, our needs, our goals. In size comparison, our pride can sure deflate quite rapidly. Our arrogance only can take a minute breath in space ... there's just so much more out there!

And then we put our tiny little planet with its millions of people with greatly inflated prideful ethnocentric egos next to the brightest star in the sky, Antares which is more than 1000 light years away, and we gulp as we pale at the comparison and insignificance of ourselves.

Now, to go a step further into the vastness of space and realize our less than insignificance in the grand scheme of revolutions and the organized display of brilliance above ... We look through the Hubble telescope at the ultra deep field using an infrared view and we see "countless" numbers, a vastness that our tiny eye with the aid of our most powerful scope can only manage a flickering glimpse of. There in that eyepiece are entire galaxies billions of light years away ... and we know that this is only a shadow of the vastness of the universe! In relation, we are next to nothing!

Even when we focus a look at the darkest region in space, we realize that the size there cannot possibly compare to our grain-of-sand-in-space volume. We ... are ... infinitesimal.

And yet, Someone knows how many hairs are on each of our heads, and the workings of earth are so important to Him that not a single sparrow dies apart from His will. (Matthew 10:29-31)

That makes little tiny us feel pretty darn special, and yes, very important in God's eyes!

______________________________________________

Here is a 2:33 minute YouTube clip [Star Size Comparison HD] 

of the moon, planet, and keynote stars, all in relationship to amazing size.  

A Fictionalized Monograph of an Aztec

The dust cover of Azteca by Gary Jennings reads:

"Once in a great while appears a book that combines the drama and immediacy of fiction with a deep knowledge and understanding of an exotic place and time — a book that excites and expands the imagination. In the last three decades, readers have been enthralled by Mika Waltari's splendid The Egyptian, Mary Renault's The King Must Die and James Clavell's Shogun. Now comes Azteca!" 

I've read Clavell's Shogun trilogy and now Jennings' Azteca, both of which were phenomenally researched and crafted with creative ethnology, so now I must go for Waltari's The Egyptian and Renault's The King Must Die, neither of which I'd ever heard of until picking up this book. When great literature is compared with other literary pieces and called similarly brilliant, the reader must listen to the erudite muse of print and ... read on!

The monograph 

And so begins the narrative of a quarrier's son, Mixtli, who was granted an ironic education, became a courier, a renowned warrior, a nobleman, an outcast, a wanderer, and a tradesman, but who ultimately died ignominiously at the hands of the "Christian" invaders who denied Mixtli his own Aztec spirituality and his own authenticity as the last keeper of ancient Aztec records. The narrative begins with him as an old gnarled and twisted man captured by the Conquistadores who want to hear and record a history of the Aztec people they have conquered and are decimating ... and who deny that Mixtli could possibly be telling the truth as Aztecs have no honor, no morals, and are on a ethnic hierarchy far below they themselves who are bringing Christianity to this uncivilized nation ... albeit in a violent bloodbath of deceit, treachery, and mercenary zeal that allows for no spiritual clemency or humanitarian act.

Mixtli, born with the Mexicatl dark spot like a bruise in the small of his back, begins his narrative by relating his abrupt entrance into the world in the Conquistadore year 1466, whereupon he was immediately plunged into a welcoming cold jar of water after which his severed navel string was wrapped around a little wooden war shield and given to the first Mexicatl warrior passing and who

was commissioned to plant the object somewhere on the next battlefield to better the boy's fate, destiny, fortune.

As a babe, his mother daily bathed his face in scalding hot lime water, as was the custom, to discourage the emergence of a beard throughout his adult life.

Mixtli tells of growing up and that lying, "speaking spittle and phlegm," was a grievous sin and punished by lower lip piercing of a thorn to curb such untoward behavior. He told of flags and tapestries made of fine feathers minus their quills — egrets for white, macaws and cardinals and parakeets for various reds, jays and herons for blue, toucans and tanagers for yellows. The colors and iridescence fluttered lively even in the softest breezes. But Mixtli intoned that the know-how for weaving these glorious flags died in the tumultuous years following the arrival of the Conquistadores and the passing of their virulent diseases (which he later related was ultimately what massacred the nation and not really the Conquistadores themselves).

He recalls wars and the need for wars even in peace time to feed the gods and keep them content. In times of peace when pestilence or a drought struck, the gods were thought to be angry and a war between alliances was arranged — not to kill on the battlefield but to take prisoners for sacrifice on temple altars. Warriors who died on the battlefield or as a temple sacrifice had a Flowery Death, that is, a death honorable to one's self and satisfying to the gods. To most effectively please the gods, alliances during the peace-time "wars" would sacrifice their captives on the same day and same hour. The god-nourishing blood of thousands of captives being sacrifices on the same day was thought to gorge the gods and make them replete so they would release their starvation caused by many (perhaps even as many as 20 or 30) warless years.

Using the term "flowers" to describe highly evocative situations was a literary motif of the Aztec. For instance, to give someone a "flower garland" was to kill them in sacrifice to the gods, "to destroy with flowers" was to seek retribution which almost certainly involved death, to have a "war of flowers" was to have a war among alliances for the purpose of taking prisoner-sacrifices to offer to the gods, and more benignly from a male's perspective, "to caress someone with flowers" was to seduce a woman.

Mixtli related that virginity of unmarried girls was required, and girls who went "astraddle the road" (prostituting) were deplored. However, some Aztec girls knew ways of proving their "virginity" on their wedding night. Pigeons fed with dark red seed of some flowers lay red-yolked eggs, so young virgins-to-be would secret an egg inside of them and would "prove" their virginity by the undetectable egg. The egg was used in conjunction with an astringent of buckthorn that would pucker the orifice to adolescent tightness. The Christian Conquistadore scribes were repulsed, insulted yet fascinated by the telling of Mixtli's tales of sexuality and war. The stories were duly documented but, though a baptized Christian of many years and his tales were of his culture or before his days as a Christian, Mixtli was thought to be repulsive to even speak such tales of blood, war and sexual appetites of himself, his people or his culture.

He told of the 5, not 4, directions of the compass — east, north, west and south, represented by the colors red, black, white and blue respectively. But green was the color to mark the center of where a person was at as well as all the space above as far as the sky and all the space below as far as the Mictlan underworld. Green, therefore, was a very important color for the Aztec, as for instance, only a child of a noble lineage could have a name reflecting a name with green in it, e.g. Jadestone Doll.

Mixtli spoke of Aztec medicine taken to the battlefield — salted honey or a healing salve of beeswax mixed with egg yolks, the juice of both adder bark and barbasco root as infection fighters. Soldiers, allies and enemies, too seriously injured in battle were knifed to death and all soldiers, friend or foe, were burned communally but each with a chip of jadestone in hand or mouth to honor their blood shed in battle and as symbols for their acceptance in the afterworld.

Just a cultural aside, the Conquistadores were culturally confused by the crosses found in the Aztec empire. To them, the crosses referenced a Christian burial, but to the Aztec the cross was a wayfarer symbol not for "reverence" but for "gladness" as it marked the presence of clear fresh water nearby.

Azteca as narrated my Mixtli tells of a nation at the height of its culture but in the depths of sacrificial depravity. He tells of the comings of the Conquistadores in the middle of his life, the deaths of all his family and friends, even his second wife who is dying of the disease "Being Eaten by the Gods" (leprosy). Finally, he tells of the overthrow of the Reverend Speaker (king) Montecuzoma and how Cortes, Alvarado and Narvaez lost the entire treasure of the dead king when they fled an uprising of the angry Mexicatl. And thus was lost the treasure now referenced as "the lost treasure of the Aztecs".

So Mixtli "kisses the earth" (swears or pledges honor) that he, as the last Rememberer of the Aztecs, has told his life tale with care and honor so that his history may be known to the conquerors, and yet he knows that before they strike him the last Rememberer down in cold-blood that the great Aztec history will similarly be chopped apart ... as the history of the Mexicatl / Aztecs is now in the hands of those who have no memories but are the usurpers of the nation.

AR (Accelerated Reading) score:   74 points, a very high score

Edible Insects (Entomophagy)

A variety of insects are eaten in the Central African Republic. During the rainy season, termites called bobo swarm around termite mounds or, in urban areas, around electric lights. After an evening storm, children run to collect them by the basketful - often, tossing them in their mouths with shrieks of delight. Termites are eaten sun dried, roasted with salt, and spiced with hot pepper, or they may be boiled in stews or dumplings.

Kindagozo refers to green grasshoppers that arrive in the area in the dry season. Central Africans roast grasshoppers or simmer them in water after the insects' legs and wings have been removed.

Several species of caterpillar are also eaten throughout the country, for example the larvae of the Imbrasia. A large brown moth lays its eggs in sapelli trees. After the caterpillars are hatched, villagers collect and wash them. The caterpillars are then simmered with tomatoes, onions, and other ingredients according to a family's recipe. Some may be dried or smoked for preservation. They can also be kept for up to three months for later use.

Safe and Good for People
Although not all insects are edible, many are safe when harvested from areas free of pesticides and fertilizers and prepared properly. Of course, as a precaution, they should be avoided by those allergic to the insects' marine counterparts, shellfish, which are also arthropods. In contrast to most shellfish, which scavenge for decaying matter, most edible insects eat only clean leaves and consume plants that humans might otherwise be unable to digest.

Caterpillars have an amazing amount of nutrition concentrated in a deceptively small package. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, dried caterpillars contain more than double the protein of beef. Food experts are rediscovering insects as a source of nourishment in developing lands.

Depending on the species of caterpillar eaten, just 100 grams can provide a large part of the daily requirements of such important minerals as calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, as well as many vitamins. Additionally, flour made from ground caterpillars can be mixed into a pulp to supplement the diet of undernourished children.

Besides their nutritional value, there are other benefits to entomophagy - the practice of eating insects. Using insects for food is environmentally friendly. Doing so requires little water and produces few greenhouse gas emissions. Added to that, collecting insects for food is a natural means of pest control.

Imbrasia obscura
Picts in this entry all taken from
"Some edible caterpillars of Bas-Congo"

Insects may not appeal to all tastes, but they are served in well over a hundred countries, and in some countries, some insects are considered delicacies. And as one lady in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, put it as she prepared a meal for her guests, "Insects are an important source of protein for many in Central Africa, but we do not eat them because we have to; we eat them because they taste so good." Her meal had the enticing aroma of onions, garlic and spices ... and yet the makongo (caterpillars) were served uncooked.

In the Bible the law covenant given to the ancient nation of Israel declared locusts to be clean. Servants of God, such as John the Baptist, ate them - see Leviticus 11:22; Matthew 3:4; Mark 1:6. However, people may still hesitate to eat what is culturally unacceptable to them in their culture - ah, good o' ethnocentrism! Nevertheless, in Central Africa large bowls of caterpillars can bring beaming smiles, and for the visitors, being served first and generously too is the way of showing one's heartfelt graciousness in welcoming the visitors ... and visitors should not disappoint ... or offend.

Info in this article is taken from "Awake!" June 2012 monthly publication.