Bottoms up
Country Life UK|August 07, 2024
Why do so many animals have such obviously flashy appendages, asks Laura Parker, as she examines scuts, rumps and rears
Laura Parker
Bottoms up

GENERALLY, wildlife sees us before we see it. It’s rare to have the kind of face-to-face encounter that American writer Annie Dillard experienced when she unexpectedly came across a weasel and became locked in its gaze for so long she felt they were like lovers, exchanging brains: ‘The world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes.’

It seems strange that animals so keen to keep out of sight have such attention-grabbing features. Rabbits often freeze, blending against a bare winter hedge or molehills and rocks, but, once they run, their snowy tails immediately give them away. It is the same with roe deer. Motionless on winter barley or stubble, they merge with the scenery, but, when they scamper off, there go those flashing white beacons that seem to say: ‘Hey, look over here!’ Humorous cartoonist Gary Larson drew on that vein in one of his most familiar works: a deer, standing upright, displays a large bullseye target on its chest. ‘Bummer of a birthmark, Hal,’ his friend observes.

Why do so many prey animals have such obviously flashy appendages? In rabbits and some deer, the short, white, erect tails are known as scuts. Beatrix Potter captured these pristine puffs perfectly as they peeked pertly below the blue jacket and pink cloaks worn by Peter Rabbit and his sisters Flopsy, Mopsy and, of course, Cotton-tail. In Richard Adams’s seminal 1972 novel Watership Down, the scut is explained through a lapine creation myth. Irritated by the rabbits’ fecundity and refusal to cooperate, sun god Frith provides the fox and the weasel with cunning, fierceness—and the desire to hunt rabbits. Seeking out the impudent rabbit leader, by now digging frantically to avoid his new enemies, the deity bestows two gifts upon the visible anatomy. Thus were the rabbit’s back legs made more powerful and his tail ‘grew shining white and flashed like a star’. He had been given both speed and warning.

Esta historia es de la edición August 07, 2024 de Country Life UK.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

Esta historia es de la edición August 07, 2024 de Country Life UK.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

MÁS HISTORIAS DE COUNTRY LIFE UKVer todo
Save our family farms
Country Life UK

Save our family farms

IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.

time-read
1 min  |
November 27, 2024
A very good dog
Country Life UK

A very good dog

THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.

time-read
1 min  |
November 27, 2024
The great astral sneeze
Country Life UK

The great astral sneeze

Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
'What a good boy am I'
Country Life UK

'What a good boy am I'

We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
Forever a chorister
Country Life UK

Forever a chorister

The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death

time-read
4 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
Best of British
Country Life UK

Best of British

In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
Old habits die hard
Country Life UK

Old habits die hard

Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves

time-read
4 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
It takes the biscuit
Country Life UK

It takes the biscuit

Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
It's always darkest before the dawn
Country Life UK

It's always darkest before the dawn

After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat

time-read
4 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
Country Life UK

Tarrying in the mulberry shade

On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024