Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
FOURTEEN
Field Biology as Art
THESE PAGES OPENED WITH BAYARD
Taylor's allusion to a princess attacked by robbers for
the jewels she wore, his metaphor for Sierra Nevada streams ravaged by nineteenth-
century gold miners. Let me draw to a close with a better-known, twentieth-century
quote. As Senegalese environmentalist Baba Dioum said, “We will conserve only what
we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we
conservation. Field biologists observe organisms, discern patterns, and determine their
causes; then, ideally, society uses that knowledge to coexist with those with whom we
share the planet. And as I've tried to show, in the course of extricating nature's secrets
and passing them on, we gain personally as well.
Introducing herpetology students to desert reptiles was a welcome assignment, but
my most rewarding teaching at Berkeley entailed the class Joseph Grinnell initiated dec-
ades earlier, in which Henry Fitch had assisted as a grad student. Like Bob Stebbins,
the previous Museum of Vertebrate Zoology herpetologist, I taught natural history of the
vertebrates with an ornithologist and a mammalogist. My lectures summarized amphi-
bian and reptile diversity, then illustrated anatomy and ecology with local examples. I
explained how frogs and salamanders projected their tongues, acted out my “arms-and-
torso” model for how a snake eats. Most importantly, every spring we got several dozen
undergraduates paying attention to their surroundings, and they in turn shaped my life
as an educator.
During weekly laboratory sessions we laid out specimens for students to distinguish
some hundred species of vertebrates. They learned turtle shells and bird feathers, mem-
orized rodent teeth and other minutiae. In one lab, with approval from the campus animal
welfare committee, I fed a mouse to a rosy boa, so they could see the snake's jaws pulling
over its meal as well as confront the reality that predators kill and prey die. Beforehand
I mentioned the rodent was surplus from a research colony, described what would hap-
pen, and emphasized that students weren't required to watch. Then I gently maneuvered
the mouse within range. The serpent spun its muscular coil, and after a few seconds
both were still. We discussed snake jaw mechanics while the meal was swallowed. In my
twenty years of teaching that course, no one ever left the room or complained.
Every week our class carpooled to an East Bay regional park, each trip having a spe-
cific goal, such as observing the breeding behavior of California newts or the foraging
