Much has been said about possible linkages of the origins of the Corona Virus and its passing to humans from bats in a route still as nebulous as the spaces they inhabit.
But have we given much thought to the similarities between humans and bats?
I share this article I wrote about a rare species of these menstruating mammals that dwell in the mysterious caves of Mount Tamana in Trinidad’s Central Range. It was part of my series of columns, The C Monologues that sometimes made unprecedented connections between and among current events of the day, including my coverage of the goings-on in the National Parliament.
Change the names and the players, but the situation remains much the same. What are the implications for the Post Pandemic Planet?
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From the C Monologues by Dr Kris Rampersad
Though of much more significance than scenes from the hollowed out halls of Parliament on Tuesday and Friday, the most sensational news of the week did not make the front pages of the dailies, or the weeklies; nor the headlines on radio or television.
It may be because it came from a most unusual quarter; one in which direction we rarely cast a glance, which we generally view as a dark, hollow place that echoes all sounds inwards, rather than outwards; where flutter some creatures which prefer not to see light, sleep with their heads suspended, and are generally thought to rise daily from the wrong side of their beds.
If you were thinking the Tamana Caves (or the Tapana Quarry where darker deeds are said to be taking place), you’re pretty warm. If the University of the West Indies – which, admittedly, to its credit, has to date not produced any of those who profess to be our senior politicians – you’re right on target.
Much unlike the uproar in the hollowed out halls of Parliament, following the virtual cussout between honourable Senators Danny Montano and Wade Mark on Tuesday, and on Friday between Barry Sinanan and Kelvin Ramnath, Professor John Rasweiler The Fourth midweek dropped a bombshell. A certain species of bat – the short-tailed, fruit bat, Carollia – has a menstrual cycle, he announced.
For those who do not recognise its significance, menstruating mammals is a rarity. Around it has evolved much of the mystique that surrounds the female of the human species. (If we have given it any thought at all, it was to assume it was exclusive to the human race, hence The Curse, so here explodes a myth.)
It fell with but a dull thud, though one expects a detonation this week when the pro-condom lobby may begin a programme of condom distribution to our friendly seasonal house bats – especially when they learn said bats have bi-annual reproductive cycles!
Prof Rasweiler, with Dr Richard Behringer, is studying our bats to trace their gene flow to isolate those genes common to humans and those that are different. Their aim, I gather, is to define what specifically makes us different from those we consider lesser life forms, ie animals, beasts et al.
What they have perhaps only just learnt is they could have saved themselves considerable hardships and discomfort involved in locating the bats in the dark hideaways etc, had they used study material from the much more accessible Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago.
Those hollow chambers would certainly have obligingly offered up to scientific scrutiny and experimentation prime species like Senators Mark, the Montano brothers and others of their nature, whose display in the Parliament often reinforce the very close connections between the human and animal worlds.
The latest Hollywood blockbuster The Matrix Reloaded suggests the human’s superiority to other species lies in its obsession with the question, why?
And we are indeed, as a country, asking:
Why are school children beating their teachers, principals and police officers?
Why are husbands killing wives and girlfriends; and fathers, sons and daughters; and gangs beating up on the authorities? Why?
Why are drivers on the road so angry? And why, despite all scientific and popular evidence to the contrary, there is persistent affirmation of ethnic superiority, allowing racial tension to simmer so close to the surface? Why?
Why are parliamentarians so ready to roll up their cuffs and deliver a few?
The proposed parliamentarians can at last do their country proud by submitting themselves to science, as their exchange across the floor reflected much of this tension in the society.
And the scientists may want to test some of the theories making the rounds:
Have the honourable gentlemen had bad family experiences and poor parenting as the goodly Dean Knolly Clarke has proposed?
Have they been listening to too much dub, R&B and Hip Hop which the cultural theorists want us to believe are fostering gangsterism?
Perhaps they were sexually active at too early an age? Or they grew up in poverty, and deprivation, and this is but an expression of hostility against the “have’s” if the economists’ view has merit?
None in T&T – said to be bursting at the seams with pregnant teens, wounded youngsters, generations illiterate in life but sophisticated in violent means of survival – would object, were these gentlemen to allow the experts to examine their gene pool and trace it back to their evolution from animals.
Asking why of Mark, Ramnath and the Montano bros may unravel much on the enigma befuddling this society, and they are certainly more familiar subjects for study, the professors will agree, than those bloody bats.
Alternatively, to take a page out of Canon Clarke’s book, Senate President Ma Baboolal may want to consider putting the perpetually polished parliamentary mace to what must have been its intended use – to discipline unruly MPs – as House Speaker Barry Sinanan must have on several occasions been tempted to do in the lower place.
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