Friends, do you remember Henry the tutatara at the Invercar
gill Museum? I first encountered him here (scroll down for photos), and then discussed him again here, when David kindly pointed out his non-lizardliness.
The Southland Times today reports that Henry, after 111 years of celibacy, has been pitching pre-historic woo to Mildred the tuatara. I am really rather delighted about this, not least since Henry’s path from contended curmudgeon to coupled-in-chief rather mirrors my own of late.
In case the news item is eventually pulled, here is the photo that accompanies it. Is such a thing safe for work? I await your thoughts.
I trust you are all taking the example of the tuataras as an analogous lesson in not giving up one’s erotic hopes.
Original image source (Lindsay Hazley/ID 121843)
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Posterous
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
This almost makes up for the disappearance of the tuatara in the wallets of Aotearoa.
I still look for tuataras on the occasions I am carrying change.
There’s plenty of them at the Karori sanctuary, just kind of hanging around, and being.
Alas, none in Adelaide.
And it also turns out the genes that are using his body to further themselves (if you believe in sociobiology, which you probably shouldn’t…) are evolving faster than those any other animal yet recorded (if you believe that study, which you probably shouldn’t.
Predictably you can find accounts of both the fast genes and the slow stirrings within our Henry that call the poor guys lizards. A pedant’s work is never done. (I do have their very lizard like, but being their own thing is so much cooler).
Deborah: Thanks for the tip-off. The señor and I are taking a few days break in Wellington this coming week and, assuming the weather is fair, I am resolved at least some of that will involve a sanctuary-expedition.
David: I for one welcome our new tuatara overlords (I am throwing out a trajectory of future evolution of opposable thumbs, simple tools and then mastery of all artificial intelligences here, on the basis of your Herald link). The justice dealt to those who call them lizards will likely be slow and not terribly brutal, on the basis of Henry’s love-squeezin’, above.
On the subject of pedants, I stopped a powerpoint presentation this week when I realised I had failed to include an apostrophe on one bullet-pointed idea. By the time I’d inserted the absent punctuation and started the show again, the students had stopped snickering.