- Natural history is an ancient form of art that can be traced thousands of years back to the Stone Age.
- Sciences such as taxonomy, wildlife biology and ecology are all offshoots of natural history.
- The tenacity of natural history can be seen in the form of legendary voices.
- The views in this commentary are that of the author.
Observing and documenting organisms and the way they live in natural areas is an ancient art that can be traced to tens of thousands of years before the present. The Stone Age cave paintings left behind by the prehistoric human ancestors bear testimony to this assertion. The millennia-old art that eventually came to be known as “natural history” paved the way for now-trending life sciences such as taxonomy, wildlife biology and ecology.
Natural history the cornerstone of taxonomy
Taxonomy is the science of classifying and naming organisms. That taxonomy has had its roots in natural history is quite evident in traditional systems of classifying plants and animals. The symbiotic relationship set roots and blossomed in dedicated natural history museums such as the Museum of Natural History (London), American Museum of Natural History (New York), and others such as the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) that houses the oldest repository of natural history in India. Even today, these museums hold the best natural history repositories in the form of well-preserved collections of biological specimens, drawings, paintings, photographs, audio recordings, and field notes.
BNHS stands out as the most important contributor to India’s knowledge of its birds, butterflies, and mammals. BNHS and India’s ‘Bird Man’ Salim Ali are synonymous. When the first edition of his Book of Indian Birds was published in 1941, it revolutionised birdwatching and field ornithology in the country. At that time, no user-friendly illustrated book was available for the field study of any class of organisms in India. Further, Salim Ali’s meticulously written natural history notes and bird collections continue to be gold mines for serious bird taxonomists.
Natural history and wildlife biology
Wildlife biology is another progeny of natural history. Although wildlife biology traditionally focused more on larger (and charismatic) vertebrates like elephants, tigers, lions, rhinos, and crocodiles, the science has evolved into an omnibus, taking on board birds and other smaller vertebrates. Globally, wildlife biologists vary in their approach to studying animals. Many still rely on inexpensive and classical natural history. Drawing a rigid line between a natural historian and a wildlife biologist is, therefore, difficult.
AJT Johnsingh, widely acclaimed as India’s foremost wildlife biologist, relied much more on natural history, guided by naturalists’ art. None would counter it when said that George B. Schaller is the ‘father’ of wildlife biology. But anyone who has read his landmark book on Indian wildlife, The Deer and the Tiger, would agree that it is about the natural history of certain large Indian mammals. This 1967 publication is, in fact, not very different in its contents and style from that of M. Krishnan’s 1975 book India’s Wildlife in 1959-1970: An ecological survey of the larger mammals of peninsular India.
BNHS published Krishnan’s book as a compendium, putting together a series of articles first published in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. While Krishnan relied more on his excellent photographs to anchor his field observations, Schaller chose to present some of his observations as numbers in the form of tables and graphs. Although Krishnan’s book was published eight years later than Schaller’s, Krishnan’s field studies of Indian wildlife began in 1959, if not earlier – at least eight years before Schaller first arrived in India. No one has called Krishnan a wildlife biologist, though. Not even Ramachandra Guha in his recent book on the origins of environmentalism in India.
Forming the nucleus of community ecology
Ecology in its nascent stages was rather boring and deeply focused on ecosystem processes such as water, energy, and nutrient cycles. There was also a lot of emphasis on ecosystem productivity, a topic still relevant to carbon sequestration and climate change. The complex flow charts in books depicting ecosystem processes and productivity pathways dissuaded students from learning ecology. However, with the advent of community ecology in the early 1960s, ecology opened newer avenues and became one of the most sought-after subjects, at least during the next thirty years.
Community ecology is the closest that one can get to understanding ecosystems’ composition, organisation, and functioning. Despite reductionism (the science of studying components to understand the whole system) limiting the scope of community ecology, it remains the cream of ecological science. Natural history is the nucleus of community ecology. However, community ecology is special because it relies a lot on quantifying field observations. It has thus emerged as a subject in which mathematicians have excelled more than biologists.
Charles Darwin, who identified himself as a naturalist, first explained how competition leads to diversification and how it is the most important natural factor limiting species’ coexistence in a community or ecosystem. Community ecologists such as G.E. Hutchinson and his students developed interesting mathematical equations to demonstrate how similar species can be (to one another) if they had to coexist – an early insight later known as ‘limiting similarity’ – if two species or entities are too similar in their characteristics or ecological niches, competition will drive them to diverge over time to reduce overlap and increase survival chances. The inspiration for the ecological theories on limiting similarity was Darwin’s century-old natural history of finches found in the Galapagos Islands (famously called Darwin’s Finches).
Behavioural ecology and natural history
Animal behaviour can be studied in labs, zoos and in the wild. When the behaviour of free-ranging wild animals is studied in relation to the ecosystem and evolutionary forces, it is called behavioural ecology. Behavioural ecology requires a sound understanding of natural history. Take, for instance, elephants. Wild elephants behave very differently from captive elephants. They normally move in herds. They have a large home range covering hundreds of square kilometres and may vary according to the seasons. They maintain social hierarchies within a herd.
Prior knowledge about the ways elephants live comes only through an understanding of natural history. Early career behavioural ecologists (and wildlife biologists) often depend on local guides (wildlife trackers or bare-foot ecologists) for their field research. Wildlife trackers are often ‘illiterate’ and belong to forest-dwelling tribes. However, they are the best natural historians, possessing and passing on their intimate knowledge to the generations through well-developed oral traditions. They know wild elephants like the back of their hands. The Oscar-winning documentary Elephant Whisperers showcased the intimate knowledge about elephants that rests in such people.
Legendary voices
For many to whom it might come as a surprise, Enid Blyton, the well-known author of adventure books for children, was a natural historian. Her 1952 book Nature Lover’s Book Number 1: Rambles with Zacky the Gipsy, among others, on the countryside wildlife of England, is an excellent model of how natural history can be used to teach animal behaviour to children.
Natural history has also echoed through the voices of some legendary Indians. Salim Ali is no doubt one among them, but there were others. One of British India’s finest carnivore behavioural ecologists was Jim Corbett. His understanding of tiger behaviour in the Himalayan foothills has been surpassed by none. He was simultaneously a naturalist, and his many books are classical examples of archaic natural history writing.
Deep south in the Western Ghats, AJT Johnsingh was a legend in his own right. His path-breaking work on the behaviour of wild dogs (dhole) in Bandipur continues to be a landmark example. ERC Davidar is yet another legendary voice of the Western Ghats. His natural history writings on the Nilgiri tahr and other wildlife are cherished even today. K. Neelakantan and his Birds of Kerala in Malayalam is probably the first attempt at writing in-depth natural history in a regional language in India.
Surviving the times of change
M. K. Ranjitsinh’s 2024 book ‘Mountain Mammals of the World’ is the latest addition to India’s natural history memoirs. But will it be India’s last? It depends on how well natural history writing adapts. In the nineteenth century, India saw its first natural history journal published in Stray Feathers. Stray Feathers did not survive for long. However, its contemporary journal, the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, has adapted well. It now serves as a hybrid journal that publishes both scientific papers and natural history notes.
The Newsletter for Birdwatchers, launched more than 60 years ago by Zafar Futehally (one of BNHS’ early Honorary Secretaries and President of WWF-India), was meant to promote natural history writing on birds. Although there is a phenomenal number of active birdwatchers in India, the newsletter is languishing without adequate patronage. This is bound to happen unless natural history stays relevant and appealing to the younger generations. It has to reinvent itself. Its archaic template has to evolve into one that offers equal opportunities for the livid and the flamboyant.
CITATION:
George B Schaller (1967) The Deer and the Tiger. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
M Krishnan (1975) India’s Wildlife in 1959-1970: An ecological survey of the larger mammals of peninsular India. Bombay Natural History Society, Bombay.
Ramachandra Guha (2024) Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism. Fourth Estate, New Delhi.
Enid Blyton (1952) Nature Lover’s Book Number 1: Rambles with Zacky the Gipsy. Evans Brothers Limited, UK.
R J Ranjit Daniels (2015) A real wonderland. Frontline, September 4 Issue.
Usha Rai’s Book Review in Mongabay Oct 16, 2024 Issue.
The author is a co-founder and Trustee of Care Earth Trust, Chennai.
Banner image: An illustration of Indo-Pacific finless porpoise. Image by Biodiversity Heritage Library via Flickr (PDM 1.0).
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