Category Archives: Ecology

The Lion King is Messed Up

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A Brief Critique of The Lion King – an essay by Sage Wright – August 1, 2019

Alright, I’m going to apologize in the advance for this blog post because it literally has nothing to do with anything except for that I watched the new Lion King movie two days ago, and I’ve got issues with it. Serious issues. So I’m very sorry if you love The Lion King and all that it stands for, and think it’s a wonderful movie with a wonderful message because you’re wrong.

You’re wrong.

The Lion King is messed up.

Because let’s think about this seriously for a second–we all know this story is based off of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (roughly), but because this is Disney and we’ve all seen the original Lion King– we can all fairly guarantee that the good guys win in the end and hardly anyone will die. No harm no foul, the good guys save the day!

So yeah, despite all of the improbabilities of a lion ruling over the African savannah, the beginning portions are quite cute if you get over how ridiculously spoiled Simba is. But then we have the middle portion of the movie where Simba grows up with Pumbaa and Timon.

And that’s where I was shocked and became completely horrified at what I was watching.

Because Pumbaa and Timon are abusive child groomers who have completely brainwashed Simba out of being who he is — a lion. Simba is a lion and they convince Simba that he isn’t who he is. Simba is forced to deny his very identity in order to stay with Pumbaa and Timon–who are the only two people to show him kindness after the horror of watching his father die and Scarr’s betrayal. And Simba is fragile, and he clings to the barbed kindness they offer and so he will do anything to have some form of acceptance, when all he has feared for the past weeks of wandering is rejection and misery. So he will starve himself, he will change everything about himself and conform to their demands so that he might have love, friendship, a home. Because if he doesn’t, he will be left alone and Simba is afraid that if he is left alone again, he will die.

So what else can Simba do but acquiesce?

But I hear the counter-arguments– “he just became a vegetarian!” and “it’s not that bad!” — and I offer you this: Simba is a carnivore. That is his species. He can’t survive without meat. He can only live half a life without embracing that part of himself. You know–the circle of life. Lions are part of the food chain for a reason. If we have invasion of a foreign species that does not have any predators in an ecosystem, then that environment will become severely unbalanced due to the dramatic reduction in that species’ prey– the whole food chain crumbles and we get infestations and swarms. That’s ecology 101.

Granted, we’ve only a single lion, but he’s not doing his job. He’s not being a lion. He’s eating all of the bugs that the middle omnivores should be eating so they’re not getting enough nutrients and so they’re not providing enough specimen to their greater omnivores and carnivores which subsequently cannot produce enough children and then the species below the bugs that the lion is eating up will explode in population since the food chain is out of balance (if we assume that the lion is actually eating the amount of bugs that it would require to actually survive).

But the Lion King shows Simba perfectly satisfied with one long juicy caterpillar and so instead of the lower population of species erupting in population, all of them can. But greater omnivores and carnivores are likely scared aware because there is a lion roaming these woods but the middle omnivores are somehow friendly with Simba and it just doesn’t make sense.

I know, I know — suspend your disbelief, this is a children’s movie.

But anyways–back to the idea that Timon and Pumbaa are horrible beings. They manipulated Simba into denying who he is as at the very core of his identity. That manipulation is nothing but emotional abuse and it is horrifying to watch it play out so innocently on a movie screen in the form of happy jungle animals singing and dancing.

At the start, Timon and Pumbaa invite Simba to live with them because they could “use the protection of a lion” so then they groom him into the kind of lion that is tame. They tamed the wild soul of a lion by feeding it bugs and making it live in the woods and force its face into logs like a common warthog–oh wait.

But anyways, somehow Simba survives to become some super attractive grown lion with a glorious mane.

And then we have another scene where Simba is mocked for his religion. Despite all of his manipulation, Simba has managed to cling to the belief his father had told him about the stars–how every star is a “Great King of the Past.” But Timon and Pumbaa mock Simba and tell him that this is dumb. And because Simba doesn’t want to lose his friends–not after all this time–he’s emotionally dependent on his abusers–he gives in and says its dumb too. So he denies his own religion, his own beliefs because they made fun of them, despite the fact that Simba dearly cared for these religious beliefs and cherished them–since they gave him hope.

So basically, Simba is torn down, over and over again, throughout the years, and finally, every last inch of self has been destroyed. Simba the son of the Great King Mufasa is gone and in his place is Simba the loyal friend and “lion” of Timon and Pumbaa.

And then Simba’s childhood friend, Nala, who is a proud lioness arrives.

And Nala is horrified by Simba. I mean, she’s totally crushing on him, because this is a Disney movie, but she’s horrified by the way Simba is living. The way he has been reduced to feeding on bugs. The way that he has been denying his true potential and ignoring his real identity. They fight–and the movie jokes that Nala is just the better fighter and that’s why she beats Simba, but let’s get real here. The reason why Nala wins is because Simba has been raised to be docile. Simba has been trained out of any wild instincts he has. He isn’t a lion anymore. He doesn’t have any lion left in him besides his shape. True to the root with Stockholm Syndrome, Simba doesn’t want to return and just wants to stay with his abusers and just wants to live in “hakuna matata” in his jungle “paradise” where he is nothing more than a big furry house cat.

Obviously Nala realizes that Simba is a lost cause and so she leaves him because she is a strong independent woman who doesn’t need a man, and then Simba is all confused because he’s a useless lion.

Okay, and then we have the point of “no return.” Siimba has been confronted with someone from home, and has realized what he could have been and has been able to compare it to who he has become.

And that’s when the freaky monkey, Rafiki goes up to Simba and asks him “Who are you?”

And Simba doesn’t know anymore. He doesn’t know who he is. He has completely lost his sense of self. He had created an identity–a fragile one, albeit–with Timon and Pumbaa, and had been carefully standing on it for pretty much his entire life. But now, that fragile identity has been shaken and torn down. That’s not who Simba is anymore.

And we finally see the beautiful point where Simba realizes that he needs to get out of this situation and become a real lion once again–to reject his abusers, and who they made him, and return home.

Okay–so you’re saying “wow, what a beautiful story, then! Yeah, the abuse is bad, but the recovery! The final acceptance of self!”–and I’ll grant you that yeah, in a regular world, maybe.

But we’ve got to realize that what happens next is pretty much impossible. There is no way a bug-raised lion could ever beat Scarr who has been feasting on animals. Scarr is a strong lion. In all realities, Scarr would destroy Simba because Simba should be undernourished, and he has basically no survival instincts anymore because he has been repressing them since the day he set foot into Timon and Pumbaa’s lands. Simba would have lost. Everyone would have died (then it really would have been Hamlet) and there would be no happy ending.

His recovery could simply not have happened so fast.

But if we pretend and everything–pretend their journey actually took months and months, then sure. Sure, then maybe he could have been rehabilitated and then Simba could have beaten Scarr, and the savannah heals perfectly and everyone lives happily ever after!!! But not in the quick succession that the movie suggests. It’s just simply not possible.

And then, as a last kick in the side, Timon and Pumbaa decide that they’re going to come along. And they’re welcomed because they’re such good friends. Like???? What???? No, Simba! Don’t do that! They belittled you, they made you deny who you were–they made you forget who you were supposed to be! Don’t let them come with you!

But Simba has Stockholm Syndrome or something, and he loves Timon and Pumbaa, and they probably have been kind to Simba after Simba denied his true lion self and became who they had wanted Simba to become. So his abusers get to come along.

And so they live happily ever after?

I don’t think so. You can’t just forget about that. You can’t just forget about the time when you were raised as a bug-eating non-lion. That’s going to affect Simba for the rest of his life.

Now, the sequel movies have shown that their relationship was more of adoptive parent-child-like, and that they were simply raising Simba to their standards and lifestyle choices. But–that’s silly. Because they don’t act like parents to Simba. They act like friends–bossy friends, and nothing really like siblings or parents.

But, my opinions may be excessive–and maybe this is an extreme view of the Lion King. But it certainly warrants a close examination on how sometimes even well-intended behavior (even like ensuring their own survival) can end up being severely detrimental to another’s well-being. It encourages us to be tolerant (not laugh at other people’s religious beliefs, for one) and it encourages us to allow people to be who they are, and not try to change them. We’re better when we are who we are. Or, if that change comes from within ourselves, and not from exterior pressures. (The question of whether or not people can change can be hotly contested, and I think that it certainly bears investigation, but that will have to be for another time.)

In other respects, like in terms of the animation? Oh, The Lion King was pretty good. Solid. Almost a bit over the top. When I compare it to Shrek–it’s incredible just how much technology has progressed. It’s awesome.

If you were going to watch The Lion King, you’re going to see the Lion King. That’s what I saw. But I think being older certainly lended me a very different perspective to what exactly was going on–I certainly did not find The Lion King as innocent as I did when I was seven.

But everything has layers, and we can twist those layers in whatever way we want.

We could even argue that this movie suggests that it’s good to question what our parents taught us, and that trying alternative lifestyles is a good thing. I can see where you’re going with that, and there’s certainly support for that interpretation. Another potential idea could be that it talks about the dealing of grief and the stages of mourning; regardless, there’s plenty of themes to explore in this movie.

Were they intended? Possibly. But the beauty of interpretation is that it can change. No single interpretation is the right one, or the wrong one. If I watch this movie in another ten years, I may find something completely different than I do today, and that’s a good thing.

A final note we have to consider: was the “book” better than the movie?

I don’t know–Shakespeare’s Hamlet certainly did not have dancing giraffes.

Gentle Giants

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A Brief Introduction to Redwood Forests – an essay by Sage Wright – July 12, 2018 

I write this essay already knowing that my words will not give this tree justice, because there are no words that can properly describe the majesty and grandeur of the coastal redwood. But first, if you don’t know what a redwood tree is, let’s back up and talk about a different tree first and make some comparisons before I go into any detail.

Alright. Take a look at that figure from Save the Redwoods League, just for a second. Most of us have heard of sequoias. Think about sequoias while I tell you that all of the following numbers and values are from a publication found on this webpage titled “The Three Redwoods”. Alright. Back to giant sequoias. They look something like this:

(Thanks Jim Bahn for this picture of General Sherman!)

That’s one big tree. And that’s not a joke– they are the widest and thickest trees, getting up to a 30 foot diameter. That’s a massive circumference, roughly 94.2 feet. That means if we wrap fifteen jump ropes that are as long as my husband is tall around that tree’s base, it still wouldn’t be able to enclose it. That’s gigantic. So obviously, sequoia trees get pretty tall. Seriously tall, hundreds of feet tall–the tallest trees ever, right? That would make sense–but no, that’s actually not true. We’re wrong there. Even though giant sequoias have the widest bases, they are not the tallest trees. I may have mislead you with that first figure, because here is what it actually looks like:

No, its the coast redwood that wins the award for the tallest tree in the world, even though it’s max diameter is about 4 feet shorter (26 feet), meaning that I only would need 13 husband-length jump ropes. So, I mean, a difference of two husband-length jump ropes seems fairly significant? Granted, these are maximum measurements, so we should expect that in a regular tree, the number of husband-length jump ropes might differ more dramatically.

But how much taller? That picture doesn’t really make them seem that much taller. But that’s because we’re comparing them to an apple tree. In actuality, they’re surprisingly almost 100 feet taller. The maximum height of a giant sequoia was about 314 feet. The corresponding listing for the coast redwood is to 379 feet or more. That’s right. We don’t know how tall these trees can get–they don’t seem to reach a “maximum height” (although Koch, et al., predicted in 2004 that a redwood tree maximum height would peak around 425 feet due to the theory of evapotranspiration). Not to mention redwood trees still seem to grow as much as a foot a year. Here’s one lovely tree, featuring a burl (which is a knobby growth which is full of bud tissue that stores and preserves the genetic code of the tree, so if anything untoward happens to the tree, the burl can sprout so the tree can continue to exist). Note just how tall this tree is.

Lots of scrolling, huh? It’s even more impressive in person. And I’ll guess that this could be a second-growth tree, because there are a lot of skinny trees surrounding it. Keep that in mind, as we’ll talk about the difference in old-growth and second-growth forests later, but it’s true– there are a ton of trees and measuring each and every one can get fairly difficult. How do we know which one is the tallest? And since the location of the tallest coast redwood tree, Hyperion, is not revealed as per long-standing botany traditions to protect important specimens, it’s not like we can all march out there with our rulers to find larger trees and start shouting out “Oi! This a-one’s a big tree, ova’ here mate!” and have our friends all yell out encouraging groans and then we carve our names into the tree’s side so everyone for all generations of time will know that we were there first so hah.

Um, yeah, no thanks. Botanists try to avoid that exact situation, which is why we will never actually know the actual location of the tallest and largest plants in the world. It’s to protect them–and for good reason (at least, that’s what I’ve read in numerous blog posts and the first fifty pages of a book by Richard Preston, and on this database that lists the tallest redwood trees).

These trees grow up on the California/Oregon coast, and they used to have a range of over 2,000,000 acres, but since these trees are so massive, early loggers thought they would be brilliant sources of income so they cut them all down. Currently, less than 40,000 acres remain of the original old-growth forest (though some claim that there are actually 110,000 acres left, but if you take a look at the map below, I think that’s a massive overestimation).

While that map is roughly seven years old, the only real difference between more current versions is that the original extent of the old-growth forests has expanded to reach toward Napa, CA, and is much more coastal north of Eureka, CA. Still, the range of the forest shies away from the western-most point that is north of Mendocino and south of Eureka, which is directly tied into how these trees obtain water. When you see maps that claim that western-most area had old-growth redwood trees, you can be sure that they were incorrect. This is due to the precise mechanisms needed to generate massive amounts of fog that enable the trees to obtain the hundreds of gallons of water necessary each day.

Because let’s be real here–we have trees hundreds and hundreds of feet tall. We’re talking trees that are at their maximum 68 husband-length jump ropes tall. And let’s not forget that trees are plants, and plants need water. And a 400 foot tree? It’s gonna need a lot of water. Typically, most plants get their water through their extensive root systems. You would think that a tree like the coastal redwood would have an extensive root system that burrows deep into the earth to get all of that necessary water, right?

Nope! Redwood trees don’t have a taproot. According to the National Park Service, redwood tree roots only extend about 10-13 feet into the ground (about 2 husband-length jump ropes). So this presents an interesting conundrum. These trees extend far into the sky, but have very little anchoring them to the ground. Wind is the second-greatest danger to these trees falling, right after logging. If you go visit the redwoods, you will undoubtedly see a fallen redwood.

But before a redwood falls, they obviously will need water. A paper published in 1998 suggested around 600 quarts of water are needed each day. That’s about 150 gallons. Or a 150 milk jugs, if you’d like. That much milk will definitely not fit in your fridge. The original old-growth forests typically had only 5-15 trees in an acre, which makes sense in order to accommodate their massive water needs. However, there wasn’t that much available ground water year round to accommodate all of the tree’s needs. The dry season in the summertime led to a reduction in ground water, due to the lack of rain and lower levels in the streams and creeks. So what do the trees do to make it through the dry season? They need to find alternative water sources, but it’s not like they can walk around to sit down at another spot. And so this is where the most beautiful part of redwood ecology comes into play. They survive because of fog.

That’s right, fog. The fog that is created from the nearby Pacific ocean flows inland and then condenses on the needles of these trees. The water falls onto the ground, and then that enables the tree to be able to use it to live. That’s why these trees can only live in a certain part on the Northwest coast. They need a place where the fog will be consistent enough to provide them with enough water to make it through the summertime.

T.E. Dawson, the author of that paper published in 1998, measured the amount of rainfall and the number of “fog days”– days where visibility was severely decreased and the fog typically lasted for greater than 12 hours. You can see this trend in Figure 1, below. Click on it to make it bigger and easier to look at.

But the pattern here is pretty easy to see: when the rain is low, the fog days increase. It explains the pattern. Fog is what is able to make these trees get enough water year round. It’s frankly incredible, in my opinion. Nature is so cool.

Now, I mentioned that old-growth forests have only 5-15 trees per acre, and that’s because they need sufficient water. These old-growth forests also have rich diversity on the forest floor, and have open spaces where light can reach the ground; it’s a proper functioning ecosystem. Second-growth forests face a different problem.

When logging was occurring, private planes and helicopters had planted thousands and thousands of Douglas-fir and redwood trees. They were crowded close together and competed heavily for light, making the forest floor dark, and with little room for secondary plants to grow. There were over a thousand trees per acre. That’s right–over a thousand trees per acre. But these trees aren’t meant to live like this–well, no living thing is really meant to live like that.

The NPS went about trying to restore these forest by thinning out the Douglas-fir trees. They called it “restoration thinning,” which sounds much nicer than “we’re cutting down more trees because we’ve got too many of them.” And really, what they’re doing is absolutely necessary. These forests aren’t healthy. If we want to try and restore some of the forests to their magnificent state before the logging craze, then we need to do everything we can, even if it sounds a little unintuitive.

Maintaining these environments, and these glorious trees, is absolutely necessary. My family has a yearly tradition where we go and camp in a redwood state park. We’ve been doing it since my mother was a kid, and we’ll be still doing it when my siblings have kids of their own. We love the redwood trees. There’s something just absolutely incredible about them that words cannot describe. If you have not been to the redwood forest, then it’s probably difficult to imagine the awe these trees inspire.

The whole forest holds such great memories for me. The nostalgic smell of the tanin-rich trees, the sounds of the birds and the creeks, the feel of walking on the forest floor’s duff. The redwoods are not just trees. They are a part of who I am. They are a sacred space to me. In the groves of gentle giants, I find hope. I find wisdom, I find passion. I find home.

—

Here is a list of book suggestions that may interest you if you want to learn more about the redwood forests or sequoia trees. It includes children’s books (fiction and non-fiction) in addition to adult non-fiction. I must admit, this book is adorable if you have a really tiny kid because it rhymes and talks about the tree ecology and it’s just wonderful.