Negative Energy: Rage (1 of 3)

Road rage

This is another entry in the Negative Energy series.  There are many aspects to nature, some nice, some not-so-nice. But they are what makes nature tick.
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People often see rage as a negative emotion because they usually experienced it done recklessly.  For example, the news often report about people battling over a perceived “stealing” of a parking space.  In fact, the expression “road rage” comes from other people’s bad behavior whilst driving.  The rage that frightens people is the raging prairie fire consuming everything in its wake destroying lives.

Some synonyms of rage are “acrimony, frenzy, fury, hysteria, indignation, and mania.”  In addition, crossword puzzles provide “anger, ire, irksome, and mad” as clues for rage.  To that list, I would add “vengeance and revenge”.  For me, the full range of emotion of rage ranges from irksome to hysteria to holding a grudge.

I see rage in three ways.  The first is that rage or anger is a secondary emotion that is rooted in fear.  I view anger as fear expressed outwards.  Fear masked as anger causes people to act out in outrageous ways.  Often, they act on fear and strike out at others.

The second is the positive emotion that is harnessed for good. Anger at injustice gives people the courage to act and to achieve justice.  The third is that anger is the expression of a harm done to the self.  This could manifest itself in overcoming injustice or correcting the harm.  However, the protection of the self often gets people into trouble when they define harm to include the taking of a parking spot.

Anger has been a friend to me.  It is the fuel that helped me to recover from my major illness of depression.  My rage has propelled me through various roadblocks to recovery.  Properly channeled, I see anger to be used to accomplish great things.

In many dictionaries, rage is defined as “emotional excitement induced by intense displeasure.”  This speaks to the physical arousal that occurs when this emotion overtakes you.  Therefore, if you have not taken care of your body or have ingested certain chemicals, your propensity for rage increases.

One type of rage comes from the malfunctioning of the brain. This is called intermittent explosive disorder (IED).  People with IED have a violent reaction to an event that may be benign.  It is considered impulsive aggression which offers relief after an outburst.  However IED points to the physical aspects of rage: the tension in the body, the act, and then the relief that comes.  IED is often controlled through medication. 

Rage that is felt in the body is something which needs to be considered.  Is the action a result of how we feel physically?  Do we seek a release through our actions?  Pounding pillows may not offer the relief desired but may continue to keep the body physically aroused.

Dinosaurs: Review: "Walking with Dinosaurs" BBC

“Walking with Dinosaurs”, BBC, 1999

“Walking with Dinosaurs” (BBC, 1999) is a six part documentary on the Time of the Dinosaurs, the Mesozoic Era.  The first episode features the beginnings of the dinosaurs amongst the therapsids (mammal-reptiles) in the Triassic Period.  The next one focuses on the charismatic dinosaurs of the Jurassic.  Two episodes feature the flying and marine reptiles of the Mesozoic Era.  One episode depicts the lives of the relative unknown polar dinosaurs.  Finally, the series concludes with the Cretaceous period and the meteor strike that spelled the end of the dinosaurs.

“Walking with Dinosaurs” uses computer generated imagery and animatronics to recreate the Mesozoic Era.  Adding to the realism of the series, the producers filmed landscapes that resembled various periods and habitats during the time of the dinosaurs.  In keeping with the natural effect, the “Walking with Dinosaurs” provides the sounds of Mesozoic Era – animals call, bellow, snort, and make all sorts of noises in general.  The producers took great care to show a realistic portrayal of prehistoric life.  Along with the dinosaurs are the other animals that live with them, each in its natural habitat.

This series sought to engage viewers by showing nature stories about the lives of the featured animals.  Because little is known about the actual lives of dinosaurs, the series offers plausible speculations.  Some of the ideas are a bit farfetched whilst others have been confirmed by science.  However, In some cases, some of the dinosaurs are either in the wrong period or location.

The first episode, “New Blood” presents the Triassic Period during the recovery from the Great Dying of the Permian Period.  One of the first dinosaurs, the Coelophysis is shown trying to survive the long dry season.  In her coping until the rains come, the Coelophysis attacks a Placerias (a theraspid (mammal-reptile)), eats a Thrinaxodon pup (an ancestor of the mammals), and later eats a dead Postosuchus (a top theraspid predator).  Finally in desperation, the Coelophysis eats her young and other adults.  However, it was later disproved that these dinosaurs were cannibals.

The second episode, “Time of Titans”, focused on the life of a young Diplodocus, a huge sauropod.  She and her fellow sauropodlets must endure the gauntlet of egg eaters, other predators, and forest fires to achieve adulthood.  As the young Diplodocus grows, she encounters an Allosaurus (a raptor), Brachiosaurus (a large sauropod), and Stegosaurus.  Finally joining her herd, she is saved from an Allosaurus attack by an older Diplodocus who defeats him with her whiptail.  The series posits that the Diplodocus communicated with each other with their tails, which is still under review.  Also scientists are unsure if the Diplodocus housed a small ecosystem of insects and small pterosaurs.

Episode Three, “The Cruel Sea” investigates the lives of marine animals.  The only dinosaur featured is the Eustreptospondylus (a medium-sized carnivore) swimming from island to island looking for food.  Meanwhile Episode Four, “The Giant of the Skies”, which focuses on flying reptiles, follows a journey of a giant Ornithocheirus (pterosaur) to his breeding grounds.  This episode has Utahraptors attacking Iguanodon.  A dinosaur swimming from place to place is not something people think of these animals doing.  However, the Utahraptor is misplaced in Europe, since these raptors lived in Mongolia and North America.

The most speculative episode, “Spirits of the Ice Forest” presents the dinosaurs of the South Pole.  A clan of Leaellynasaura (small bi-pedal herbivores) forages in the endless days of summer, and survives the dark and cool days of winter.  In the spring, a herd of Muttaburrasaurus migrate south for the summer to where the Leaellynasaura live, and returns north when autumn comes.  Meanwhile, the little Leaellynasaura raise their young, suffer the loss of the matriarch, and finally settle in with a new breeding pair in the spring.  The speculation in this episode ranges from the family life of these little dinosaurs to how they survived the winter.  The Leaellynasaura are shown moving to the center of the forest where it is warmer.  Later they huddle together to conserve body heat, and then go into a brief torpor.

The last episode, “Death of a Dynasty” emphasizes the polluted environment of the late Cretaceous Period.  Volcanoes frequently erupted poisoning the environment of the dinosaurs.  The mother Tyrannosaurus rex lost her brood to the pollution.  Later she raises another brood until she is killed by an Ankylosaurus.  As her chicks wait by her body, a giant asteroid slams into the earth.  The blowback from the meteorite kills them.  The series ends with the dinosaurs becoming birds.  The speculation in this episode is whether extensive volcanism with the meteor strike killed the dinosaurs.

Watching the series brings the world of the Mesozoic Era to life.  Entertaining though “Walking with Dinosaurs” may be the viewer must understand that many of the things presented about prehistory are speculative.  The series does introduce little known dinosaurs such as the Leaellynasaura, sparking more interest in them.  It is an enjoyable series to spend an afternoon in the Age of the Dinosaurs.

Works Used

Haines, Tim and Paul Chambers, “The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life”, Firefly: Ontario, 2006.

----, “Somewhere A Palaeontologist Is Crying”, TV Tropes,  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SomewhereAPalaeontologistIsCrying,

Strauss, Bob, “Dinosaurs at About.com”, About.com, 2011, http://dinosaurs.about.com/,

Various, “Prehistoric Life”, Dorling Kindersley: New York, 2009.

Dinosaurs: Review: "Raptor Red", Robert T. Bakker

“Raptor Red”, Robert T. Bakker, Bantam: New York, 1995 

“Raptor Red” is the story of an eventful year in the life of a female Utahraptor.  The novel opens with Raptor Red, the Utahraptor of the title, losing her mate.  Trying to cope with living alone, she meets up with her sister and her sister’s chicks.  In their travels, the Utahraptors encounter various dinosaurs and other animals of the late Jurassic-early Cretaceous periods.  Eventually Raptor Red finds a new mate, loses her sister, but forms a new park of Utahraptors with her sister’s two chicks.

The well-known paleontologist, Robert Bakker wrote this novel as a fictional companion to his ground breaking non-fiction book, “Dinosaur Heresies” (1986).  In that book, Dr. Bakker posited that not only were dinosaurs warm-blooded but also the ancient ancestors of birds.  “Raptor Red” was his exploration into the social lives of Utahraptors.  He shows these predatory dinosaurs living in a female dominated pack and coping with complex social connections.

Told from a predator’s point of view, “Raptor Red” has the reader enter the world of the Utahraptor.  Instead of vicious predators with a sickle for a toe claw, the reader empathizes with Raptor Red and her family and their struggles.  Seeing these predators in a positive light, the reader wants to know more about them.

In “Raptor Red”, Dr. Bakker interjects his theories of dinosaurs, evolution, and extinction.  For example, Raptor Red’s name comes from how she sees herself – a raptor with a red snout.  Her sister is “one half of me”, and her chicks are “one half of one half of me.”  She identifies them all in relation to herself.

The Utahraptors came from Mongolia to North America.  Because they were newcomers, these raptors “hit the new territory like a Darwinian blitzkrieg.”  The hunting strategies of these predatory dinosaurs confused the resident herbivores that lacked a basic defense strategy against them.  The Utahraptors succeeded in becoming the top predators in North America.

Dr. Bakker further introduces his theory that the resident dinosaurs went extinct because of the immigrant diseases brought over by the newcomers.  The “whiptails” (sauropods) were ravaged by the plague along with the Acrocanthosaurus, the native predator.  Moreover, insects brought diseases that infected many species.  Meanwhile, Raptor Red had to contend with new ticks and infections found in her new home.  Both the immigrant and resident groups had to contend with animals and diseases that neither had no resistance to.

Raptor Red is depicted as having a complex social life.  Since her species is female-centric, Raptor Red and her sister care for the sister’s chicks.  Males have to leave their families to find mates.  Meanwhile, the females choose the best males for their mates after the males do their mating dances.  In the novel, Raptor Red’s consort presents a potential conflict between her and her sister.  Raptor Red’s sister believes that he will kill the chicks since they are not his.  This provides the tension of the book – who would Raptor Red be loyal to – her consort or sister.

This tension gives insight into raptor family politics.  The conflict between Raptor Red’s sister and her consort ends when the sister dies in a “whip tail” attack.  However, Raptor Red finishes raising the chicks.  Meanwhile, her consort, Raptor Red, and the grown chicks form a new pack of Utahraptors.

As a novel, the plot of “Raptor Red” is predictable.  The title character endures various trials before finally finding true love and happiness.  Where the book shines is in the vignettes of prehistoric life.  Beside the Utahraptors, Dr. Bakker introduces the reader to the lives of an elderly Ornithocheirus (dactyl), a mother crocodile (Bernissartia), a baby Gastonia (armored herbivore), and others.  Moreover, the dactyl as the stand-in for the author takes the reader further into the mists of time to become a participant in the world of the Utahraptors.

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Dinosaurs: Dino-fantasy Fallacies

Fallacy: Erupting volcanoes and living dinos

Stories about dinosaurs are entertaining but they usually contain one or more scientific errors.  Since these stories need to engage people, they tend to be mammal-centric.  One error that is often committed is having dinosaurs interact with cave people.  The comic strip “Ally Oop” (V.T. Hamlin, 1935 – present) has the title character, a cave man, riding a dinosaur.  The TV cartoon, “The Flintstones” (Hanna-Barbera, 1960 -1966) feature cave people, dinosaurs, and Ice Age mammals together.  As entertaining as these stories are, they are incorrect.  Dinosaurs went extinct before the Ice Age.  Meanwhile, mammals of the Ice Age such as mammoths did not exist during the time of dinosaurs.  Of course, people and dinosaurs did not exist at the same time.

The stories that have modern day humans and dinosaurs together usually have the dinosaurs chasing the people.  The predatory dinosaurs (usually the T. rex) always regard people as food.  The dinosaurs seem to have a hyper-focus on eating humans.  They will stop at nothing to eat people, and endlessly chase them through the countryside.  Two things are wrong with this idea.  One is that predators generally do not expend extra energy for unprofitable prey.  Most predators will give up when the prey becomes too hard to get.  Furthermore, many are opportunistic hunters, and will seek easier prey.

The second problem is the assumption that predator dinosaurs hunt everything at all times.  This comes from the human-centric idea that every predator every time will automatically seek out humans to eat.  This is not usual predator behavior.  Some species ignore humans except during breeding season or when guarding their young.  Other species only hunt when hungry.  Still others have to be trained to eat people.  Some tolerate humans provided that humans do not interfere with their activities.  For example, many shark attacks occur when people punch these fish in the nose.  The corollary to predator dinosaurs is herbivores mindlessly charging people.

Another fallacy is to have dinosaurs of different periods together as well as the Dimetrodon (a sail-backed mammal-reptile of the Permian Period).  The favorite dinosaurs of people that are usually featured are the Apatosaurus, Stegosaurus, T. rex, and Triceratops.  The first two are of the Jurassic Period, while the second two are of the Cretaceous Period.  (In addition, the T. rex is often hunting the others.)  The rarely included Allosaurus of the Jurassic would be the predator of the first two dinosaurs.  Also, the Dimetrodon, a therapsid, is often mistaken for a dinosaur, and often included in dino-fantasies. 

A corollary of this is showing the dinosaurs of different continents and habitats living together.  Pangaea was separating into the continents we are familiar with today.  South America was isolated at this time.  Travel from Eurasia to North America was spotty at best.  In Disney’s “Dinosaur” (Zondag, 2000), the main predator was the Carnosaurus of South America who interacted with North American dinosaurs.

A favorite plot device is to have a T. rex attack an Apatosaurus.  Since this is not possible, the authors could replace the two with Giganotosaurus and Argentinosaurus.  However, these dinosaurs from South America would not be as well-known as the T. rex.  Meanwhile, the Allosaurus, a smaller raptor, does not pack the same punch in action as the massive T. rex.

Another favorite trope is the ubiquitous volcanoes, which usually are in the background smoking or erupting.  Dinosaurs are usually grazing peacefully, whilst the volcanoes spew out ash.  Depending on the volcano, the dinosaurs would have died from the deadly gases.  The late Cretaceous period was subject to extensive volcanism however the Jurassic was not.  W.T.J. Mitchell in “The Last Dinosaur” (1999) pondered if this harked back to Biblical notions of Hell on Earth, where volcanoes spewed hellfire on earth.  The corollary to that is that in their earliest depictions many dinosaurs spewed fire.  Mitchell also noted the tripod stance of many dinosaurs in many early pictures to be reminiscent of the serpents of hell.  People’s unconscious beliefs had leaked through in their depictions of dinosaurs.

Like landscape painters of an earlier era, the depicters of dinosaurs took short cuts.  Those painters rarely left their studios, and used broccoli as a substitute for trees.  Meanwhile, movie producers used iguanas as stand-ins for dinosaurs.  Since broccoli looked like leafy trees, why could not scaly reptiles with things glued on their backs look like dinosaurs.  Of course, dinosaurs looked and acted much differently than lizards.  And few people would mistake a stalk of broccoli for a tree.

Depiction of specific species has been problematic.  First, the tripod stance of many dinosaurs did not occur.  Few used their tails for balance in this way. Sauropods did not the physical ability to stand on two legs.  Meanwhile T. rex is often shown as a fast runner.  However, this animal did not have the muscle mass for long distant running.  Also, if this dinosaur fell down, it could not rise since its arms would be broken in the fall.  Of course, a lot of these ideas conformed to popular notions at the time.

Some of the fallacies found in dino-fantasy stem from the prevailing ideas of the day.  Other fallacies reflect beliefs such as angry reptiles and erupting volcanoes.  Still other fallacies are based on keeping the audience interested. For this reason, humans or mammals are usually the focus of the story.  Even “Raptor Red” (1995) written by Robert Bakker, a noted paleontologist, veers off from telling his story of an Utahraptor to spend two chapters on an unrelated mammal.  Part of keeping the audience’s interest includes having favorite dinosaurs together or being scarier than the actual dinosaurs.

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