
Badger or Bulbasaur – have children lost touch with nature? - jansho
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/30/robert-macfarlane-lost-words-children-nature
======
gilgoomesh
I live in Australia. My kids are well-versed in British and American animals
like squirrels, badgers, hares, raccoons, moose, bears and deer from childrens
books and songs.

However, we don't have any of them here in Australia.

Knowledge of animals and experience in nature are frequently unrelated. My
kids spend plenty of time outside but how often do they see _animals_ (other
than the occasional bird)? They're asleep when possums and fruit bats are
around. They occasionally see kangaroos on their grandparents farm. In general
though, they see cats, dogs and other pets: the animals we deliberately
introduce to kids.

~~~
randomstudent
This is very interesting. Do you know if they have any interesting
misconceptions about those animals they know about but have never seen
(assuming you yourself know enough about rabbits, badgers, hares and such to
know that they are misconceptions)?

It's interesting when many people know about a certain phenomenon through
media or things like cartoons, which obviously distort reality beyond any
possibility of recognition.

The most amazing example I've ever seen is the one about bullfights.
Apparently, many Americans know about bullfights from a single Bugs Bunny
sketch, in which he is dressed as a Matador and kinda "dances" with the bull
in the arena. This apparently made many people think that that's basically
what happens in a bullfight. Then you get some nasty culture shock when people
watch the real thing, as in this reddit thread (WARNING: video with blood and
violence against animals, first in CGI then in real life):
[https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/68i332/to_those_who...](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/68i332/to_those_who_say_bullfighting_is_cultural/)

The comments were really surprising to me. I would expect most people from
outside of Spain, Latin America and Portugal not to know about bullfights, but
I definitely didn't expect people to know about it from a cartoon and harbor
so many misconceptions about what it really is!

Spoiler: in a bullfight, the matador does nasty things to the bull (like
sticking short spears with hooks so that they don't come out when the bull
moves), dodges the bull's charge while distracting it with a cape, and in the
end he kills it with a sword through the back. If the killing blow fails to
kill the bull, they kill the animal with a knife just below the brain. Also,
Matador literally means killer in Spanish, because he _kills_ the bull.

~~~
amelius
> Do you know if they have any interesting misconceptions about those animals
> they know about but have never seen

Another misconception kids seem to have is about the hippopotamus, which is
always depicted as a cute animal, but which in fact is one of the most
dangerous animals around.

~~~
yardie
Baby hippos are really cute. In most people’s minds they simply grow into a
bigger version of that. Not the eventual psychopaths they are in reality.

------
serpix
Connection with nature in my opinion does not equal knowing the names of all
of the life found in nature. Connecting with nature means dropping your
misguided identification as being somehow separate from nature. Experiencing
the unmistakable unity of humans being a part of this earth just as any other
life is what I call being connected. Putting a label on a bird is not an
experience of anything but a symbol.

~~~
exhilaration
The problem is that if you can't tell two similar-looking birds apart then you
won't notice (or care) when one disappears. Names are important for this
reason, they force you to identify the differences between animals, to tell
one apart from another, and thereby appreciate the diversity of life around
you - a diversity that is rapidly vanishing.

~~~
24gttghh
An excellent point! Since the Big Bang, our universe has been getting more and
more complex, from particles, to atoms, to molecules, to the incredible
diversity of life we see today, which yes is under great threat today. Putting
a name on that diversity simply shows us our place in this complex universe.

------
yoz-y
As an aside, I think that animal and plant names are the least transferable
knowledge between languages. Quite regularly when i happen to need to use a
name of some animal I know it in my mother tongue or in English but not in
French or some combination of those. To me this shows that even though having
a passable knowledge of living things (i used to consider plant and mushroom
encyclopaedias as “fun reading” when I was little) I never had any motivation
to re-learn it

~~~
cyphar
Richard Feynman had a very good quote on this topic. Effectively, knowing the
name of an animal is the least useful knowledge about that animal.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc)

~~~
Radim
If I understand correctly, Feynman implies there exist other defining
properties, better than names, that are preferable when thinking about animals
(or objects in general)... unless one is communicating with other people, in
which case a name will do.

But it's names all the way down! These substitute properties are also only
names. Using articulate attention (science), we divide the world into abstract
categories, giving names to classes of "things" that are in fact unique, even
if the classes are fuzzy around the edges and just leaky abstractions of
reality.

Is thinking in terms of the _swirling, teeming, interconnected mass of
"stuff"_ that's truly at the core of Nature a useful tool for getting ahead
and making progress? It seems it's just too much to grasp, with everything
unique and indivisible, no categories, no repeats. Even leaky abstractions
(thrush! tiger! rock! water! human!) do better.

To question the utility of names is to question the utility of the power of
articulate discrimination, one of evolution's critical inventions. Not sure
what lies that way except inarticulate madness.

~~~
yoz-y
I do not think that he (or us here) questions the utility of names. Rather,
the utility of knowing only a name and not much else. Knowing the names of a
hundred mushrooms is less useful than knowing which of them you can eat.

------
bantunes
Children are a product of their environment. If adults don't care about nature
anymore, why should they?

It's basically trips to the zoo and CGI characters to them.

------
Tade0
I guess this knowledge followed the path of the knowledge of star
constellations.

Why are constellations not something you'd normally know nowadays? Because
most people don't get to see them due to increasing light pollution and
urbanization.

I for one had a proper look at the Milky Way for the first time when I was ten
years old.

There's simply currently less nature to behold in peoples' lives.

~~~
FroshKiller
I don't know constellations because I don't depend on them for navigation. I'm
not sure why else I should even care that a bunch of ancients thought this
bunch of stars looked like this animal or that one. It's not like I can even
see half of them in the sky where I live, regardless of whether the stars are
otherwise visible. And even if I could see them, all anyone ever seems to talk
about is this small canon of Western names.

And if I ever needed to know for some reason, if it could ever in anyone's
life possibly matter in the slightest whether this clump was called Cassiopeia
by a bunch of people a thousand years ago, I'm about 10 seconds away from
downloading an app that will superimpose constellations on my current sky. I
can spend an hour reading about constellations and know more about them and
their travels than many ancient astronomers could have observed in their
lifetimes. And it doesn't mean a thing to me, because we know more about the
universe than a handful of clumps that are occasionally visible to the naked
eye.

I can appreciate the spectacle of a constellation, but everything about them
that could possibly matter to my daily experience has been documented and
indexed to the point that I never need to know it. I'm not trying to sail back
to Ithaca. It has nothing really to do with urbanization and light pollution.
Maybe I have fewer opportunities to see them, but if they blazed overhead
every night, I probably wouldn't care one lick more about them.

~~~
Tade0
Never have I ever found somebody who had opinions on constellations so strong
that they would write three paragraphs about it.

Anyway my (currently) fiance used to use them as a pickup line(not on me
though). She said it was pretty effective so there's that.

~~~
FroshKiller
It's less an opinion about constellations than constellations as an example of
knowledge people shouldn't worry about "losing" or being "disconnected" from.
I imagine most people have a cognitive burden that's heavy enough with things
they genuinely need to know without being expected to manage constellations,
TV schedules, discrepancies in the Synoptic Gospels, the lyrics to "Time After
Time," or how to fry a turkey. You can look all of it up when it matters, and
your experience will not be much diminished.

------
randomstudent
Regarding the study they mention(the one that shows that children recognize
Pokemon better than real animals and plants).

There is an important aspect of this finding that the article doesn't discuss.
They don't link to the study, so I can't check for myself.

All the Pokemon names they mention are first generation. There are only 150
first generation Pokemon. It's a relatively small closed corpus. They also
have bright colors and are very easy to distinguish. How many species of
animals or plants does England have? Way more than 150, of course. How large
was the sample from which the ones used in the study were chosen? It wouldn't
surprise me if there were more than 150 relevant species that are needed to be
knowledgeable in "nature stuff" in England.

Of course kids in urban environments don't know much about naming animal or
plant species, that's just common sense. My beef with the study is that it
doesn't seem to go beyond the common-sense notion because of the problems
above... Knowing a small limited corpus of highly distinct entities will
always be easier than knowing the very large (although still finite) corpus of
animal and plant species that might be quite similar on the surface (e.g. cork
oak vs holm oak, bee vs wasp, cat vs lynx, etc)

~~~
zimpenfish
If you only wanted "highlight" animals and plants, you could probably get away
with a list of 150 (or less - I'm struggling to think of 150 off the top of my
head) but they definitely wouldn't be as easily distinguished as the Pokemon.

Found the study - they used 100 common species.

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.477...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.477.3630&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

~~~
randomstudent
Cool, thanks. That definitely answers my questions. They really should link
the study!

The part about distinguishing the animals from one another is still a problem,
but I think that if Pokemon were actually real animals kids would distinguish
them just fine anyway.

~~~
zimpenfish
I'd also venture that Pokemon are almost certainly deliberately designed and
focus tested to be recognisable and distinguishable because, well, that's how
you market stuff and that makes this a bit of a dumb study.

Mother Nature, alas, does not have this luxury.

~~~
lucozade
> that makes this a bit of a dumb study

Only if you assume no intent on the part of the study's authors. For example,
I wonder if they would have had quite a different result if they'd used, say,
14 year olds. Or a mix of ages.

I wasn't overly encouraged that two of their citations were for the Biophilia
Hypothesis. An interesting book, for sure, but not exactly rigorous science.

I was left with the definite impression that this study was as much about
politics as science. To that end, maybe not dumb just not particularly
impartial.

~~~
zimpenfish
> I was left with the definite impression that this study was as much about
> politics as science.

I suppose if they were trying to force a conversation about (say) getting
children to zoos, it wasn't dumb.

But in the sense of extending the human race's knowledge, it was dumb.

------
lifeisstillgood
Childhood is training for adulthood. It is almost certain that software and

Back when children were made to read en mass there were panics about them
spending too much time in doors and not playing outside. When TV came along,
too much time watching TV not reading nooks. Now Ipads.

I agree - there needs to be a balance. humans are designed to be roaming
outdoors. but 10,000 years ago ones life and prosperity depended on correctly
identifying edible vs poisonous plants. Today a kids life / prosperity depends
on much more complex social and technological skills - and playing Pokémon
with other kids will help improve both social and technological skills.

Don't leave them to be pulled about by evil corporations in mindless adverts,
but do encourage modern play as well as other things.

PS Tooling in this case matters. I can easily find OSS tools to run a
firewall, less to audit web usage (netflow etc) but I want to be able to audit
how much TV was watched (where is the API output from Netflix let alone from a
damn TV aerial). How do I get a report off my iphone saying how many minutes
(hours) I was looking at facebook? HN?

In order to make good choices we need good tools - and those tools are anti
the interests of the peddlars - so I really want OSS to step up and take its
place. but I am not sure how tractable the problem is.

------
wink
A point I haven't seen here is where the children learnt the Pokémon names
from. Was it TV? Games?

I'm asking this mostly because I'm old enough to just have missed the Pokémon
hype, but I did play Magic the Gathering. And it was absolutely no problem to
"kind of" know 100s of cards and remember all the properties (incl a name)
when just given the illustration or a name. And I still do remember some of
this, 20 years later - because it was useful applied knowledge.

On the other hand, although having grown up in the city and not having a close
connection to nature... I did learn some bird and animal species out of
interest. And nothing ever stuck. I'm especially bad with birds and mix up
everything. I guess I can really identify 10-20 species, everything else I
just declared unlearnable and I think I'll never try again. Of course I know
an owl.. But the different species? Nope.

------
zimpenfish
This is the original study from 2002 -
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.477...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.477.3630&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

------
badgerohnosnake
Here's my attempt to correct this depressing state of affairs \s
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzagBTcYsYQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzagBTcYsYQ)

------
Jeremy1026
Should have went with "Beaver or Bidoof" for the title.

------
k__
I thought going to the zoo was a thing for kids?

------
Pica_soO
Not only the children- most of the city-living adults too in my opinion. What
is declared nature and what perverted- often reveals a totally warped
perception.

When a re-introduced wulf hunts a sheep in a fence enclosed field, and eats it
alive - that is considered acceptable nature. If a hunter would shoot said
sheep outside the enclosure- that would be considered unnecessary brutal
murder. Its like we humans, ironically the more dependent and closer to nature
- the more, stopped being part of nature in these peoples eyes.

I also find it really interesting to what lengths some people go to fight for
nature- as in venturing out in the woods, to saw through a perch post- which
is totally unnecessary violence, as simply pissing near the feeding spot would
make the hunt there nonviable for about a week.

And the animals out in the forest are totally idealized Disney versions for
most people. The more stylish a animal looks, the more noble it is. Complete
disregard for the "characters" out there- for example old boars, giving the
"its-safe"-squeak to use young pigs as line of sight guinea-pigs for safety.

There are no deers, knowing that they are protected by hunting laws, parking
there "Bambis" below the perch to protect them from foxes.

There are no animals, who loose the fear from man - or never had it. Badgers,
Bears, Wulfes - all those why should they fear us, if they cant understand
what we are and what tools are?

There is not contemplation for the strangeness of some of the creatures we
routinely antromorphosize. There are horse-riders who do not get, the strict
hierarchy that is a herd, and the spots and jobs within. They do not
understand the concept of grooming friendships (which puts you on the exact
same rank, if you get groomed back, below if only you groom, above if only you
get groomed). Your horse does not know what hands are!

There are no over-testicled beasts in this world, that defend there territory
against anything path-persisting.

There are no jock-groups among young animals pranking other animals.

There are no ravens "hunting" rabbits into car-traffic.

There is also no understanding on the terra-forming some animals attempt.
Bucky the beaver wants your little settlement gone and flooded. He does not
need protection after two generations- your house does.

But worst of all - there is no grasping of ones own footprint. To long for a
second car- and then yell at the farmer/oil-driller who allows for it to
drive, that is deeply intellectually dishonest and social schizophrenia at its
worst. Your Greenpeace donation does not give you absolution in anyone's eyes.
Quite contrary, it marks you as a continuous sinner, with a washing machine
reflex.

What i observed, that helps nature along the most - is disorder and
sloppiness. Just forget about those ten meters near the field-borders. Just
leave that part of Forrest fallen into disrepair. Just dont harvest the fish
from that pond this year. Just leave your wife bitching about how bad
everything looks behind the house.

You will be surprised, how fast, how much will have a comeback. My dad used to
be sloppy with our fish-pond- and one summer day i suddenly saw a Common
kingfisher nesting there. If you want to do nature a favor, pick a spot to be
protected from obsessive human compulsions on what nature has too look like.

Sorry, this turned out to be such a long post.

~~~
Nursie
And yet this screed is just as one-sided. As an example -

>> Bucky the beaver wants your little settlement gone and flooded. He does not
need protection after two generations- your house does.

Beavers are being reintroduced into the UK precisely because of the massive
impact they have on local ecology. Bucky the beaver doesn't give two hoots
about your house - but the earthworks Bucky and his family will undertake
shape the local ecosystem and help keep everything alive.

~~~
Pica_soO
What about the people that live where he is re-introduced? Is silently
disowning someone by pushing a ecology that will make it vanish acceptable?

~~~
Nursie
Most likely not silently, but in many cases yes. In the UK we have
exterminated many of our large mammals over the years, to the detriment of
many species and habitats.

------
ztjio
Is there a single article on that site that's not an extreme exaggeration of
non-issues, including this one? Obviously I am exaggerating now, but, seems to
be the spirit.

People learn about what matters to them. Random animals not native to your
life do not matter to you. It's really no big deal, we love to learn and our
brains massively reward us for doing so especially when we actually believe it
will matter. That is why it takes little effort to bring someone up to speed
on flora and fauna that matters, when it really does.

Leave the rest of the concern to the biologists.

~~~
nerdponx
This strikes me as short-sighted and I think you're missing the point. The
concern is that _children don 't care about nature in the first place_.

You have to consider both causal directions: children don't know anything
about nature because they don't care, __or __children don 't care about nature
because they don't know. This process is self-reinforcing.

~~~
aaron695
The article gives no evedence that children are worse now than before. And to
me it seems like absolute rubbish. The younger generation seem to care more
about the environment than previous generations if anything.

The author seems to just not like the fact children like Pokemon and they
don't.

