![]() Similar spurs are found in many archaic mammal groups, indicating that this is an ancient characteristic for mammals as a whole, and not exclusive to the platypus or other monotremes. Since only males produce venom and production rises during the breeding season, it may be used as an offensive weapon to assert dominance during this period. There is nothing, physiologically or structurally, to prevent a platypus from walking backwards. The venom appears to have a different function from those produced by non-mammalian species its effects are not life-threatening to humans, but nevertheless powerful enough to seriously impair the victim. The female platypus, in common with echidnas, has rudimentary spur buds that do not develop (dropping off before the end of their first year) and lack functional crural glands. Venom is produced in the crural glands of the male, which are kidney-shaped alveolar glands connected by a thin-walled duct to a calcaneus spur on each hind limb. ![]() ![]() Oedema rapidly develops around the wound and gradually spreads throughout the affected limb. Although powerful enough to kill smaller animals such as dogs, the venom is not lethal to humans, but the pain is so excruciating that the victim may be incapacitated. The function of defensins is to cause lysis in pathogenic bacteria and viruses, but in platypuses, they also are formed into venom for defense. The DLPs are produced by the immune system of the platypus. The result is a wide-ranging exploration of the interplay between human desires and the natural world.While both male and female platypuses are born with ankle spurs, only the spurs on the male's back ankles deliver venom, composed largely of defensin-like proteins (DLPs), three of which are unique to the platypus. Boruch ties these two threads together with an inventive touch and a sarcastic yet wondrous tone. It also takes inspiration from Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, a compendium of scientific and social-scientific knowledge first published in AD 77. “Marianne Boruch’s eleventh collection draws on observation and questions gathered during her time as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Canberra in 2019. Mortality plagues this text-why, then, revive the bestiary? A simple answer: There must be a witness to the entries ripped from its pages, seemingly every day.” - The Rumpus In Boruch’s hands, it becomes a bridge through time as readers, we are made to consider Pliny’s death in Pompeii while Boruch recalls the burning landscape she has barely escaped. “The bestiary is an unusual work, tasked with the prospect of a never-ending compilation, limited as all texts are. If you would move sideways to the left, I can get everyone in the picture. “Boruch displays a quietly gymnastic intellect in the examinations of art, the body, and the human condition.” - American Poets in a direction to the left or right, not forward or backward: The fence is leaning sideways. Her poems often give fresh examples of how rare and thrilling it can be to notice.” - Washington Post … But she believes that to ‘recollect is to rescue,/ to invite back the plain astonishments.’ These poems offer delights and fascinations at every turn.” - Publishers Weekly, starred review “Written with unabashed awe… Boruch keeps her touch light and self-deprecating as the world that the poems describe disappears, or has already been destroyed by the bush fires…shortly after her time there. ![]() That raised roar of earth at Pompeii never kept raging,Īs if fires in Australia skipped the loved places. Open your book, Pliny, still at it at it as if Walk happily to find the rock wall they painted That’s the dream, to get away, is it not? We’ll sit, we’ll Were us–bad joints need oil, cross species. We-full speed ho-hum to them, so nothing at all Pressed forward on those little arms to rise, Sideways as if at a company picnic downing In wind or rain, steady multiple Kangaroos, Medieval enough, going dark, this nowhere-elseĪll of them: Platypus, Koala, Emu on the run, Their little Pentecostal tongues of flameįriends, this was pre-fire, pre-knitting of mittensīefore present turned past to reconfigure a future.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |