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Today we spread Glyn’s brother’s ashes on the sand dunes behind Alan’s favourite beach at La Marina near Torrevieja. We then reminisced and had a lovely lazy day watching the sea.
Meerkats are born with hair but not full coats and with their eyes closed. They will live in the wild up to 10 years. However, in captivity they can live to be 15 years of age. Although they are relatively healthy animals, they are unfortunately prone to bovine tuberculosis and have been known to get rabies. When they are adults at about one year of age they will weigh around 2 pounds (750 - 820 grams) and stand an average of 12 inches high (30 centimeters). When they are on all four of their feet their height is only 6 inches (15 centimeters). Like all mongooses, they are agile hunters; however, they differ considerably from most of their other relatives. Unlike the typical mongoose of which there are around 35 types, Meerkats live in communities and depend on one another for survival. There are three other types of sociable mongooses, the Banded, the Kousi Mansi and the Dwarf mongooses. They also live in groups, but are not usually found in the Kalahari desert. While most mongooses are nocturnal, Meerkats hunt during the day. They live at night in burrows, which are complex tunnel systems consisting of mounds, access holes, and tunnels which lead to numerous sleeping chambers. A Meerkat community is called a mob or gang, and can number up to 40. There is always a dominate alpha male and dominate alpha female in each gang. The Meerkats larger mongoose relatives typically live alone or in pairs. These intelligent animals are extremely communicative and posses a large vocabulary. They flourish in their environment and are not endangered.
Meerkats live in southern part of Africa which is dominated by the Kalahari desert - The Kalahari spreads over the countries of South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. The Kalahari desert has little rainfall and an arid climate with open plains. It spreads across the Southern part of Africa covering over one million square miles and is 10 times the size of Great Britain. The land is covered by a porous or soft sand that in many places is bright orange in color. The temperature in the summer months of October to April can reach 115 (f) or around 40 (c) which can give a sand temperature of 158 (f) or 70(c). In this harsh environment the difference between being in the sun and shade can be up to 86 (f) or 30 (c). The winter months from May to September are very different from the summer, you will see highs around 70 (f) or 22 (c) during the short days and lows at night down to 14 (f) or -10 (c). Winter is the dry season.
The average rainfall is 12 inches (300 millimeters) which comes between January and April. This is towards the end of the summer. There is little surface water but there is quite a bit of moisture below the sand. Generally, the broad plains of the Kalahari are covered with a thin coat of different types of grass and thorn scrub. When it rains during the summer, which is rare, the desert transforms into a lush carpet of plants, grasses, and flowers.
The Kalahari consists of both soft and compacted sands, ranging in color from bright orange to white. Meerkats like the soft sand when digging for food as it lessons the energy requirements in this harsh environment. However, they prefer compact sand to build their burrows which would collapse in softer sands. There could be any number of reasons Meerkats flourish in this environment, though all relate to competition for food and predators. One could speculate that the Meerkat may be a weaker type of mongoose that would find competing for food with other mongooses a tremendous hardship or that their coats would stand out making them easy prey for others. What is known is that Meerkats have specially adapted to the Kalahari, which is described later. The Yellow and the Slender mongooses also live in the Kalahari but generally live in harmony with the Meerkats. This is primarily because they each have a different diet and are not in competition for food. Unfortunately the Yellow mongoose will sometimes eat a Meerkat pup (baby), so meerkats will keep their distance from Yellows when there are pups around. Many other animals have also adapted over time in order to survive in this harsh environment, making the Kalahari a remarkable and interesting place. Even within this barren and harsh environment, animals and plant life flourish.
Animals in the Kalahari have a 40% lower metabolic rate then their counterparts in other parts of the world. This adaptation allows animals to survive with less food and water. Of course,the Kalahari's intense heat puts animals at risk of overheating, making the ability to efficiently regulate body temperature a necessity. Body size is key, the smaller the animal the faster the loss and gain of body heat. The "mouse-to-elephant curve" measures this relationship. The general idea is as follows, a gerbil has a 50 times higher metabolic rate than a elephant (per gram of bodyweight); therefore, the amount of energy from food that the gerbil needs to maintain its body temperature is greater than the elephants, making the need for food gathering almost constant. The Meerkat looses 5% of its body weight over night making the search for food very important every day. Can you imagine losing 5% of your body weight over night ? They can also get their fluid requirements from what they eat, so water sources while not a neccessity are helpful.
by: Lester Levy Jr
Meerkats.net
Meerkat characteristics - Meerkats at adulthood will grow to a standing height of 12 inches (30 centimeters) and weigh around 2 lbs. (750-820 grams). A pregnant female will weigh around 2.8 lb. (1.1 kilos). Their legs are short and their bodies are long and thin. Their tails are also long and thin with a dark tip. The reason for the dark tip is to identify other gang members while foraging for food. Meerkats forage for food with their tails in an upright position enabling them to easily identify their fellow gang members. Meerkats reach sexual maturity at 10 months and adulthood at 11 months. Both males and females share similar physical traits such as short hair and gray or tan markings. The markings on their backs are unique and no two are the same. They have dark brown or black bands around their eyes. Their ears are tipped with black or dark brown. They have dark bands on their sides and back. Their faces and throat are predominately a shade of white. There are four digits on each foot with very sharp non-retractile claws which are curved. They use their claws to dig their burrows. Meerkats also have the unique ability to close their ears, this is to keep dirt out while they burrow, which they do quite often.
Meerkats fur ranges in color from silver to orange to brown. Much of this depends on the subspecies as well as the sand color in which they live.Even in close proximity in the Kalahari you will find Meerkats with tanish fur in the dried out riverbeds and orange fur in the dunes above. Their coats have a great ability to act as both an insulation to keep heat in and an exhaust system to prevent them from overheating in the harsh climate. In the winter they will spread their hair out so to create a heat insulation effect much like a wet suit. Their stomach acts as a sort of solar panel during the winter months. Under a thin layer of stomach hair is a patch of dark skin which collects heat from the winter sun in order to provide warmth on cool days.
Meerkats vision is outstanding. They have a dark band around their eyes, which reduces any glare from the sun. As a result, Meerkats have the ability to see a predatory bird as they look directly into the sun. A Meerkat removes sand from its eyes by blinking. Between the eye and eye lid there is a white membrane called the nictitating membrane. This membrane acts as a windshield wiper and removes sand from their eyes with every blink. However, their ability to see things close up is not as good. Furthermore, they seem to have a problem with depth perception, not being able to focus within 20 feet (6 meters) of themselves. Often they will bob their head up and down trying to get the perspective right. As a result of this nearsightedness, they will often miss food directly in front of them. They often depend on their sense of smell to find food.
babies eating scorpion
meerkat.org
Meerkat cuisine .- Agile Meerkats always forage for their food in groups but catch and eat their food alone as their diet usually consist of small portions. As they search for their food they spread apart from one another on the desert floor. This distance between foraging Meerkats averages from 6 feet (2 meters) to 45 feet (15 meters), but can extend to 150 feet (50meters). The distance often depends on the availability of food. Generally Meerkats stay at their burrow one or two nights, so there line of foraging is usually from one burrow system to the next. During the winter when there is no grass and food is sparse they have been seen being as far as 150 feet (50 meters) apart. In the late summer when desert grass may reach three feet high and food is abundant they will forage about 6 feet (2 meters) apart. Meerkats frequently communicate with each other while they are looking for food in order to warn of possible dangers in the area or hear a distress call if one gets lost. Usually there is a Meerkat acting as a sentry watching for danger as the others look for food. This is usually the one that is the best fed at the time, there is no evidence that either sex has a predominance for sentry duty. If trouble arises, an alarm is sounded by the sentry and the gang will band together in a mob ( a mob is when Meerkats band together to fight) to assess what the danger is, and take appropriate defense actions. Meerkats will sometimes collect food for their pups and babysitters back at the den. The young pups as they learn to search for food will follow the adults to help supplement their diet. Current studies show that the pup that gives the loudest begging call gets the most food from the adults.
Most of the Meerkats food is found underground and their specially adapted bodies are perfect for this. Their front claws are curved and act as shovels. They often have to dig their own body weight in dirt just to get a small insect. Foraging for a Meerkat means digging here and there and occasionally finding a tasty morsel on the surface then moving forward with the gang on the endless search for food. A typical Meerkats diet consists of worms, crickets, grasshoppers, small rodents, lizards, small snakes, birds, eggs, fruit, and ant larvae (which they especially love). Insects are a particularly good source of nutrition for the Meerkats because they reproduce rapidly and supply an almost constant food source. I have even had the rare chance to see a Meerkat find a Kalahari truffle which is rare and very expensive in stores. He seemed to enjoy it immensely. Meerkats also love to eat poisonous scorpions which are plentiful. They do this by quickly biting off their stingers and then consuming the rest. Meerkats appear to be resistant to many deadly venom's which greatly increases the variety of their diet. A Meerkat will often drag any poisonous prey such as a scorpion or millipede across the sand before eating it. They do this to remove the chemical defenses of their soon to be meal. They will make use of a water source if one is nearby but Meerkats have developed the ability to get all their liquid requirements from their diet. In the summer, the Meerkats must work harder to get their food because the insects have burrowed deeper in the sand in order to be closer to moisture. The rain brings the insects back to the surface, which means feast to the Meerkat.
The Meerkat home - As mentioned previously, the Meerkats live in underground burrows which consist of entrance holes, tunnels, and sleeping chambers. There may be up to 70 different entrances to the burrow system which may also serve as an exit if the Meerkat is inside the burrow system. They are territorial and maintain an area of about one to three square miles. Their territorial expansion depends on the size of the gang, as well as, the abundance of food and water in the area. Meerkats mark their territory with the use of their anal gland or saliva from their cheek. This marking is done by the alpha male of the gang. They will protect their boundaries ferociously against other gangs. They have from 6 to 15 dens in their territory and will move dens every day or two. The breeding burrow ,which is where the offspring are born, is an exception to the frequent moves. Meerkats will stay at a breeding burrow for about three weeks. It is at this time that the young are able leave the burrow and start to learn to forage for food with the adults. In addition to this, the parasite loads become heavy in the burrow and fill with ticks, fleas and other undesirables after three weeks. Breeding burrows differ from other burrows in that they will have higher mounds of sand around the entrance holes. This is a result of the continual renovation of the tunnels and sleeping chambers necessary for the longer stays. The mounds of dirt around the entrances can reach up to three feet high. When breeding is successful Meerkats often return to the same breeding burrows to have there young. As the Meerkats rotate burrows, the insect population of each abandoned burrow has the opportunity to multiply. Furthermore, the burrow system itself needs to regenerate while the feces left behind becomes food for other animals and the parasite load decreases. When dens are not being used, snakes and ground squirrels often find them to be convenient residences. Mixed everywhere in the Meerkat territory are bolt holes. A bolt hole is a small system of entrances and tunnels between burrows. These bolt holes give Meerkats a place to take cover if danger arises if they are out foraging.
The strategic reasoning behind such an elaborate construction of multiple entrances, is to provide many alternative exits if a dangerous intruder should invade their home. Likewise they have multiple entrances in the burrow if the danger is from the outside. They sleep in groups, cuddled up or on top of each other for warmth as they are particularly sensitive to the cold. In the summer they tend to space out when they sleep. Their sleeping chambers are usually 6 to 8 feet under ground. This keeps the temperature in the sleeping chamber at a more constant level, cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. There are several sleeping chambers in the den but they will only use one at a time, in the breeding burrows there will be more sleeping chambers. They will move sleeping chamber because of build up of contaminates. What may seem odd to you is, Meerkats will urinate in their dens. This could be for several reasons first it may aid in a marking system to one another. Second Meerkats don't survive well alone so to go outside at night to go to the bathroom is not a prudent thing. In captivity though Meerkats can be trained to go to the bathroom in a litter box. There are certain beetles that share their den that they don't eat. These insects will eat their deification. Above the tunnel system, there is usually a dirt mound resulting from all of their excavation. This higher vantage point serves as a lookout point for the small Meerkats. From this outpost of sorts, they can survey the terrain for predators. This done in the the morning before they leave the burrow for foraging and in the evening before they go to bed.
Other animals, such as squirrels or the yellow mongoose, sometimes share the Meerkats burrow. Because these animals do not compete with the Meerkats for food, they are allowed to share the den. When pup are born they will keep the yellow mongoose away because they will eat a Meerkat pup. Predators, such as cobras, are not welcome houseguests. Meerkats will purposely harass a cobra in the open so to discourage it from entering the den.
Meerkats sometimes move their territories when food becomes to sparse or when another gang of Meerkats forces them from their previous den. Often territories overlap one another and a stronger Meerkat gang will overtake a weaker gangs burrow system. This forces the weaker gang to take the loss and try to expand in another direction, or wait tell they are stronger and retake the lost burrow system.
Family standing on home
meerkat.org
babies feeding
meerkat.org
Mating and reproduction - Meerkats try, but do not usually mate for life. Mating in the gang is suppose to be reserved for the alpha male and alpha female, but things happen to change this. First the alpha male might die or be overthrown by another male from inside their gang or another gang. Or the alpha female might mate with a male from a wondering male from another gang while out foraging for food, the alpha male never knowing. What they won't do is mate with another direct family member. When the dominate female is ready to breed she will chase away all the other beta families that can bear children, this will be females at 10 months and older. The temporary outcast will follow the gang until the alpha female has had her pups (babies) and regains her strength. This is done because she wants only her offspring in the gang and another beta female might try and displace her during her weakened time of giving birth. The trailing females often get impregnated from males from other gangs they encounter. Often they will abort these births. If the do give birth they will attempt to sneak them in with the pups of the alpha female. The alpha female will if she notices kill and eat the beta females babies. The beta female have about a 20% chance of getting the young snack in with the alphas females pups. A interesting note, if the alpha female pup die, no other meerkat will eat them. A few days after the birth of the alphas pups, the once outlasted females will rejoin the gang and help with the giving milk to the new pups if they are able. It was once observed that a beta female killed the alpha females pups just after birth and replace them with her pups a few days later, the alpha female not knowing the difference. They can breed every two months but tend to successfully breed two to three times a year depending on food availability. There was one gang observed breeding four times in a year. The gestational period is 70 days resulting in a litter of usually five to six. The pregnant female will increase her body weigh approximately 40% gestation (see - Meerkats are a type of mongoose). The babies, called pups, are born with sparse fur and eyes closed. For the first two weeks they stay in the sleeping chamber and drink their mothers or milk producing females. The third week they will venture outside and stay around the burrow system with a babysitter. . During this period when the alpha female is not feeding the young, babysitters will watch the pups while the alpha female goes out to feed, fortifying her supply of milk and her strength. She will do less sentry duty at this time and never babysitting. From week 4 to week 6 the pups will forage with their elders getting nourishment from both milk and insects. At 6 weeks to 16 weeks they will find their own food as well as be supplemented by the elders, and no longer getting milk. Studies show that the pups that make the loudest begging calls get fed the most from the elders. After sixteen weeks they are on there own to find there food Each pup will be taken on by a adult Meerkat which will act as a mentor, who will take the responsibility to teach the pup necessary skills for foraging for food as well as responding to danger. Male Meerkats tend to mentor male pups and female Meerkats tend to mentor the female pups. Many of skills Meerkats have are taught by the mentors rather then being instinctual.
Meerkats reach sexual maturity at 10 months, and reach adulthood at 11 months. After 10 months a Meerkat may venture out of the gang looking for breeding opportunities. They may also leave to form new gangs or join other gangs. They also may stay with their original gang for up to three years before venturing out. They also may leave in groups of two or three. It takes a brave Meerkat to leave the gang because the road out if filled with many dangers for the sole are small group.
Typical day of a Meerkat - Meerkats are extremely social animals. Observing Meerkats is a wonderful experience. They love grooming one another, wrestling and playing with one other. They have avid curiosities and can make a toy of almost anything. Even with all this play, Meerkats do not ignore the need for security. One Meerkat always seems to be a sentry and stands guard to keep the gang safe.
There typical day consist of, they wake up early in the morning as the first rays of sun stretch across the Kalahari. The first to come out of the burrow is usually the last one in from the preceding night. This Meerkat surveys the area to make sure the coast is clear after that the others start to rise one by one from several entrances. They start by soaking up the sun to warm up there bodies from the nights sleep by facing the sun and using their stomachs as solar panels.. One may observe some digging around the entrances, this seems to be more like exercise to warm their bodies up. Then the young start to scurry around play and grooming one another, as the elders spend time grooming sunning. Once hunger starts to set in, the search for food is on. The alpha male sets the direction for the day and decide weather or not to move towards another burrow system.. Scurrying hear and there and digging here and there, but always one is on sentry. As the day goes on and the heat sets in they will stop for a rest. These rest periods are longer during the summers but so are the days. As the day cools they are off again in the afternoon in search of food. Just before sunset they will arrive at the den for the night. At this time they will commence on repairs of the den as well as well deserved grooming and giving one another affection which is really marking one another with the anal gland or cheek saliva. As the sun falls, they descend one by one into the burrow for sleep all huddled together. Lastly, they don't like the rain and will stay in their burrow and not forage for food until the rain stops.
Interestingly enough Meerkats seem to identify one another my smell rather than sight. That is why the are constantly marking one another. For instance if a Meerkat gets separated for some time and try to rejoin the gang, the gang will think it is a intruder and get in a mobbing defense stance ( mobbing is when they huddle together so to look bigger and present aggressive behavior) until they smell what they think is the unknown Meerkat. Once the sent is recognized everything is fine.
Two babies playing - by -Alain Degre
A sentry in a tree
by:Alain Degre
Meerkats social structure - To survive, Meerkats must live in groups for protection, as the desert presents many challenges. Each Meerkat has an important, role to perform. It was first thought Meerkats had well defined roles in their gang from being a sentry to baby sitting to foraging for food for the young. Recent studies have disprove this and actually show that hormonal changes in Meerkats influence their behavior. Also the conditions around the burrow system effect their responsibilities. When food and water is abundant more time is spent being sentries, renovating the burrow systems, relaxing and caring for the young. Some things are instinctual while others are taught to the pups by the elders. For example raising young is a learned behavior for Meerkats. If a pup is separated at birth and kept as a pet, and the pup gets pregnant. She will not know how to raise her young or teach them how to forage for food. Meerkat roles vary:
alpha male - Dominate male of the gang, has breeding rights to the alpha female. The dominate male is not necessarily decided by the largest male in the gang.
alpha female - Dominate female of the gang, all betas are subservient to her. Only one that is suppose to breed in the gang.
beta male - Subservient males will leave the gang by 3 years in search of better breeding opportunities. They are 10 months or older
beta female - Subservient females will support the alpha Meerkats. They will be driven temporally from the gang by the alpha female when she is ready to get pregnant. They will leave the gang by 3 years in search of better breeding opportunities. At 10 months or older they are at sexual maturity.
pups - Meerkat babies, 10 months or younger.
babysitter - Stays with the pups while the gang is out foraging for food. Different gang members take the responsibility different days, this is not domiated by males of females. Generally though the least hungry Meerkat will do the babysitting. The alpha female never baby-sits. This duty is for Meerkats 6 months or older.
sentry - Watches over the gang to spot danger. It is either done standing on the ground or climbing a tree or bush. Known to climb up to 30 feet in a tree to do sentry duty. This duty is not dominated by males or female. There is a sentry on watch both at the burrow system as well as when the gang is foraging for food. During times of less available food less sentry duty is done when searching for food.
excavating - Necessary to renovate burrow systems. Often Meerkats will get one behind another and work together to move sand out of the burrow system. Like how firemen would hand buckets of water to one another to put out a fire in the old days.
mentoring - A elder Meerkat will take on the responsibility of teach a pup the do's and do don'ts of being a Meerkat. This includes how to raise young, how to forage for food, and what dangers lurk about.
grooming - Meerkats like to groom one another, and in fact have a natural reflex to groom when the area where there back and tail meet is stimulated. They will remove ticks and fleas from one anther and actually eat them, though these parasites are not a normal part of the diet
play fighting - Often done by the young in the morning and to a lesser degree in the evening. Adults will also play fight. This teaches the young to fight as well puts a dominance order to the gang.
Beta males and famales often leave the gang by three years to live with different gangs or join together to form different gangs in order to increase their chances to breed. Meerkats that embark on this journey alone or in groups of two or three face great danger, as Meerkats are most vulnerable when they few in number. Sometimes Meerkats will ally themselves with one another and takeover another gang, and getting rid of the competitive alpha male and perhaps the alpha female.
The size and makeup of the meerkat community determines what duties each will have. There is usually a dominate male and female in the community although there also seems to be a second in command. I have seen a case where the alpha female was killed and the alpha male did not seem to know what to do. He had not taken on another alpha female because that would mean a female from the outside. It was felt he would at some point leave the gang in search of throwing out another alpha male from a rival gang. The alpha male is responsible for marking the territory, some of the foraging trips turn into more of scouting trips so the alpha male can mark the outer boundaries of the territory. These tend to be days of more movement and less foraging for food.
Fights happen between rival Meerkat gangs. It generally happens for two reasons. One is territory conflict. When one gang encroaches on another gangs territory. Once the two gangs come in contact with one another they group up together and fluff their fur out and jump up and down to make themselves appear bigger, also making allot of noise. This is called mobbing. Each gang is assessing the others strength. Sometimes they separating and go opposite directions other times a ferocious fight breaks out. Meerkats will kill rival gang members if they can. Also during a fight 2 or 3 Meerkats may jump on a rival biting and scratching him. It will look like a big pile of dust. During or directly after attacks, the dominant male will take a few minutes to asses the situation and decide weather there was a victory or his gang members have fled, in this case he will retreat himself. The other case happens when roaming Meerkats either solo or in small groups are looking for better breeding possibilities try to join other gangs. Mobbing occurs and they may be or may not be successful at joining the gang..
#How did the Meerkat evolve
How did the Meerkat evolve - According to Sean Doolan, they evolved from the southern tip of Africa or the Cape of Good Hope,where a type of extinct Meerkat, called the Suricata Suricatta major, has been found . The extinct Meerkat was similar to the banded mongoose. The current theory is that the Meerkat evolved from the banded mongoose. As the weather climate changed in the region, so did the Meerkats ability to survive in drier conditions.
Why the meerkat stands - Meerkats walk and run on all four, there head is only six inches above ground in this state. When they stand, their total height is 12 inches, providing them with a much better vantage point to see danger. In order to attain an even better vantage point, they will also climb trees and bushes. Their vision is good but depth perception does not appear to be as strong. They bob their head up and down to get distance measurement when objects or close. this gives them different focal points.When facing a threat, they will stand, arch their bodies and erect their tails in an attempt to appear bigger.
What threatens Meerkats? - The threats to a meerkat come from sky, land and weather. In the sky, the Martial Eagle, with a wing span of six feet, can easily prey on adults, while other smaller birds of prey prefer to snatch the young. When the winged predator is seen the alarm goes out and all sprint for nearby bolt holes. If they are not near any bolt holes the will lie on the ground and depend on camouflage They also may take cover in thorny bushes where the birds dare not venture. On the ground, the jackal and other wild cats are the Meerkats primary foe; however, when banded together, Meerkats have the ability to chase away a jackal. Badgers can also be a threat, as their burrowing can penetrate the Meerkats den making them more vulnerable prey. As mentioned previously, the cobra sometimes threatens meerkat young. Meerkats will mob a cobra relentlessly if it tries to enter their burrow. They are agile enough to avoid a snakes strike. They even have the ability to kill a cobra. If they come across one while our foraging they will temporarily mob it and once the situation is under control move on. A puff header snake will also eat Meerkat pups. I have read about a sighting in which a group of Banded mongooses actually climbed a tree to rescue one of their family members from a eagle. Both the Banded mongoose and the meerkat have similar social habits.
Meerkats are also threatened by other competitive gangs as mentioned above. The sentry's alarm will sound if another gang of Meerkats is encroaching upon marked territory. The fights are fierce but sometimes fatal as submission is the goal. The winners, usually the larger of the groups, take or keep the burrow system in question. One interesting note after the fight and Meerkats try and rejoin there gang small fight break out because they have difficulty recognizing each other by sight. The Meerkat rejoining their gang may smell like the rival gang. After the conflict, the winners will hug and congratulate each other with human-like gestures, this is rely remarking each other.. Often non-dominant Meerkats defect from the losing group to the winner's side.
The summer rains also threaten the Meerkats. When rain approaches, the sentry sends the alarm off. As there are often newborns during this time, they must make sure the are on high ground so to avoid a flooding of the burrow system. The alpha female will transport the young one by one to the higher ground burrow. At night they may get stuck in a flooding burrow system.
The most famous of all Meerkats - There are two famous Meerkats that should be mentioned One is Timone, who was featured in the Lion King. Timone, the cartoon character, is based on the real-life Meerkat Timone who which is domesticated resides outside of Palm Springs, California at the only private refuge for Meerkats in existence. For more information, visit www.meerkats.com. You can actually go and visit Timone and hand feed other Meerkats there. I did and it was a terrific experience.
The second is Ziziphus of the Lazuli gang. She is a wild Meerkat and lives in the Kalahari and has been the subject of numerous documentaries and films. One of her more prominent projects is Walking With Meerkats which is a National Geographic documtory filmed in 2000.
Meerkat communication - Meerkats constantly communicate with one another in three different ways: scent, sound, and body language. There have over 20 different sounds that have been recorded which have different meanings. These calls can be broken down into six different groups: lost calls, alarm calls, leading the group calls, pup feeding calls, guarding calls, and foraging calls. For example, while out looking for food, they are are constantly communicating in what sounds like a kind of growling. It helps them to keep track of one another's location since they forage up to 15 feet (5 meters) apart. When the young are learning how to forage, they are very loud and can be heard up to a hundred yards away. If they become separated from the adults, the volume of their cries increases so that an adult will come to get them. They have numerous sounds that are used when grooming and playing
When on guard duty, there is an entirely different assortment of sounds employed. These sounds are constant and communicate to everyone else what is happening during the watch. When everything is fine, the sentry emits mellow tones. When a predator is spotted at a distance, a beeping sound is given, almost like a yellow alert. If the predator gets closer, the sound differentiates depending on the type of predator. The martial eagle tends to get the most frantic alarm even from great distance. Meerkats allow some predators to get very close before they sound the red alert (up to 100 feet from the den).
One last interesting point, sound can be broken up into one, two, three, and even four syllable calls.
How the seasons effect Meerkats -
In the Savanna desert, temperatures can vary greatly. Remember, Meerkats live on southern hemisphere as opposed to the United States and Europe which are on the northern hemisphere. South of the equator and the seasons are opposite of those in the northern hemisphere. The Kalahari summer is considered the wet season, . The summer months October to April temperature can reach 115 (f) or around 40 (c) which can give a sand temperature of 158 (f) or 70(c). In this harsh environment the difference between being in the sun and shade can be up to 86 (f) or 30 (c). The winter months from May to September are very different from the summer, you will see highs around 70 (f) or 22 (c) during the short days and lows at night down below freezing to 14 (f) or -10 (c). Winter is the dry season. Because of these dramatic temperature changes, their feeding habits change accordingly
In the wet season or summer, Meerkats get up early in order to avoid looking for food in the heat. As the day gets warmer, they look for food in shaded areas. At mid-day they return to their den or find a nice, shaded spot for a mid-day nap. If they nap outside, they will lie on their belly with legs stretched out and often throw cooler sand on their back. They will pant during the summer this aids in reducing their body temperature. The yellow mongoose shares this behavior. They wake for a late afternoon feeding which ends at sunset. This season is a virtual feast for Meerkats, as the rain brings out an abundance of food and vegetation especially towards the end of summer from January to April. Grasses on the dunes can reach heights of over three feet tall! Meerkats will eat to their hearts content and their little bellies stick out.
In the dry season or winter, they wait until it warms up a little (9 a.m.) to go and look for food. No mid-day naps at this time. They stay out all day and get back around 4:30 p.m. Meerkats then remain in their den to avoid the rapid and severe temperature change night brings. Food is not as abundant during this time and foraging for food is more difficult. They have to do allot more digging and cover more territory to find adequate nutrition. They will also eat ants, ant eggs, millipedes, and small beetles which are less appealing to them than their summer favorites of lizards, insect larvae, and scorpions.
Meerkats like most other living creatures change their behavior patterns as conditions change. As one reads about the charertistics of any animal you must know whether the animal was observed in captivity or in the wild. Unfortunately most of what has been written about Meerkats has been in captivity, because of the remote habitat where they live makes it hard reach. Therefor it is interesting to understand how their behavior changes when confined to zoos.
The gang will find many differences in captivity. For example food will be abundant and the normal procurement of food such as digging is not necessary. Also space is significantly limited. So the Meerkats will not migrate from burrow to burrow, but stay in one burrow system. They also are not able to forage for food keeping them within meters of there burrow system for their whole lives. Predators are non existent in captivity so there alert systems are dulled. In captivity one will find Meerkats living longer and bigger. Meerkats do fine in captivity, in fact for the Meerkat which spends most of its time looking for food in the wild, this is probably a vacation. In captivity Meerkats are known to mate up to twice a year while in the wild they only mate once a year. Their cuisine is quite different to. In captivity the keepers may feed mice, worms and other sorted insects locally available. A Scorpion, a Meerkat delight would never be seen. Meerkats that don't get along with the gang will be separated and put in another habitat.
Would Meerkats make good pets? - The answer to this question is no, not really. In the United States, you need special permits to keep these animals. The government mandates strict specification for Meerkats enclosures as well as their climate. Meerkats will think your family is their gang and the are the alpha. When you have guest to your home they will get aggressive towards them. A host of other animals would make more appropriate pets! I have run into many people in southern part of Africa that keep Meerkats as pets and say they can be friendly. They are terrific pets though if you have a scorpion infestation problem.
Dave Navarro's Spread TV with musical guest MASS (Music, Architecture, Sight & Sound). The unique performance group strung "The World's Longest Stringed Instrument" The Earth Harp, to the ceiling of the our studios to incorporate the architecture of the television studio into the performance.
To see the show go to www.maniaTV.com
Well never before have I had this much journaling to include on a page! It needed an entire 12 x 12 of its own to finish the story. But this was a story I wanted to document well and remember for a long time. :)
Journaling Reads:
On our one year anniversary, we didn’t intend to go ring shopping.
We had seen this antique store window the night before when it was already closed, and wanted to check it out. So we wandered in to look at many different things... but of course, I was drawn to the jewelry as usual. I tried on a couple of things just for fun, and then Ian did something surprising - he asked the owner if he had any brown diamonds. He knew I’d been wanting to see some in person. Well not only did they have brown diamonds, they had a whole binder full of beautiful colored diamonds to look at! We ended up finding my brown diamond from the 1930’s that is just stunning! Then we looked through the bands just for fun...
and we found one from the 1930’s as well (left photo). They seemed like a perfect fit and to my surprise. Ian said “let’s do it.” My reaction was shock. Although we had talked about marriage, I knew he wasn’t ready for that step yet and I was so surprised that he was ready to buy the ring. We put a down payment on it and headed home excited. I wanted to call my parents, but Ian asked me to wait until we got home. I wondered why, but didn’t say anything. When we got home, he gave me an even bigger surprise - he already HAD an engagement band - one that I had picked out months earlier. He had gone back and gotten it and held on
to it for me. I was so touched. It meant so much to me that he had made sure to get one that he knew I really loved. He had been hanging on to it for 10 months and I never had a clue! Once I knew he had this setting too (middle photo) I had to make the decision- do I go with the band we picked out on our one year anniversary along with the diamond? They’re both from the 1930’s and it’s special because we picked them out on our anniversary. But then on the other hand, the band I picked out ages ago was so beautiful, and it was also a sentimental thing because Ian was so sweet getting it for me. We ended up getting the best of both worlds. We had my diamond put in the beautiful band, but we also still purchased the 1930’s band to hold onto. We figure that some time for an anniversary, we can have it set with some new stones we pick out together. The finished ring (right photo) is just stunning. Even though I had to gaze at it longingly for 4 months after that before receiving it - I will always look back fondly on this day and how special it was picking these things out together. I love the fact that even though I was involved with every step, he still managed to surprise me!
CREDITS:
Background Paper & faded flourishes behind frames - Timeless Classics kit by Julie Mead (Scrapper's Guide Premier August 2008 Issue)
Clothespin frames - Clothesline Collection Frame Pack 2 -Joanne Brisebois
Gold Swirl embellishments - Enchanted Forest kit by Milla Designs
Glitter tears - barely torn by v stegall
Font for journaling - Pea Olson (fontsforpeas.com)
What is this spread I speak of to thee? The world's greatest food source of Vitamin B! Concentrated extract of yeast, you see, With essential vitamins for you and for me.
Thank you for checking out my photography.
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my permission.
© All rights reserved
These bird wings had been left at a grave in Hedley Cemetary in Hedley, British Columbia.
please view in lightbox
Spread Your Wings lyrics
Sammy was low,
just watching the show,
over and over again.
He knew it was time,
he'd made up his mind,
to leave his dead life behind.
His boss said to him
boy, you'd better begin
to get those crazy notions
right out of your head
Sammy who do you think that you are?
You should have been sweeping,
at the emerald bar.
Spread your wings and fly away,
fly away, far away.
Spread your little wings and fly away
fly away, far away.
Pull yourself together,
'cause you know you should do better,
that's because you're a free man.
He spends his evenings alone,
in his hotel room.
Keeping his thoughts to himself,
he'd be leaving soon.
Wishing he was miles and miles away,
nothing in this world, nothing,
would make him stay.
Since he was small,
had no luck at all,
nothing came easy to him.
Now it was time,
he'd made up his mind,
this could be my last chance
His boss said to him
now listen boy, you're always dreaming,
you got no real ambition,
you won't get very far.
Sammy, boy don't you know who you are?
why can't you be happy,
at the emerald bar?
(So honey) spread you wings and fly away,
fly away, far away.
spread your little wings and fly away,
fly away, far away.
pull yourself together,
'cause you know you should do better,
that's because your a free man.
come on honey (fly with me)... (lyrics by Queen)
watch & listen here:
Roseate Spoonbill's are one of the most beautiful birds. They are amazing unafraid of people which surprised me. This guy was definitely enjoying the day. For post-processing info, check out my short blog at www.digitalladysyd.com/?p=7505
Spread 1 of Legacy
A story written by Nina Callaghan for Idea1.
Idea 1 is a gruop of stories written and designed by young people in and around Cape Town; planned by Meghan Pitt and the Idea 1 group.
I tried to recreate the desolate feeling of the dry karoo through balck and white photography and then set that off with illustration and texture to echo and highlight the writting
see in light box (press L in keyboard)
It was a beautiful weather today; sun was shining after many days of rain. After office, I was walking with my friends in the center to enjoy that precious light :-)
My new book, Black & White Freedrawings! 132 pages, black/white, 210 x 297 mm, featuring the work of 45 international artists!
More information coming soon, stay tuned on www.freedrawings.nl!
The book is printed in black and white but has an additional bright yellow dustcover with the same print (plus a wee bit extra on the inside!)
and Fly! A Red Tailed Hawk soaring high above. I was actually stalking a huge Whitetail Buck when I kicked up a bunch of these guys, wasn't ready for it (never am) but got a shot off :)
Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
nomnomclub.com/restaurants/2010/ginos-eats-and-beats-makati/
Chorizo, desserts, Dumplings, Eats and Beats, Eggs Benedict, Fiamma, Gino's, Greatest Cheese Quesadillas, Greatest Longga Burger, Greatest Salpicao, Lunch, Mushroom and Artichoke Spread, Panna Cotta, Platters, Shrimp Scampi, Team Manila, The Distillery, Angus Belly Salpicao, French Toast, Stir Fried Pork Tofu, Grilled Sausage with Cheese Sauce, Grilled Chicken with Mushroom Sauce
nomnomclub.com/restaurants/2010/ginos-eats-and-beats-makati/
A spread from my second Remains of the Day Journal. On my blog you can also see the before pages, so you can see what I did to them.
caatjesartsystuff.blogspot.com/2012/01/spreads-from-rod2....
The pages measure about 15x21 cm.