Cordyceps

In the talk from Paul Stamets about mushrooms saving the planet he talks about fungi that infects a host such as an ant and uses its body as a growing ground so it can spore. I found this video of Planet Earth with David Attenbourgh about the Cordyceps fungi that do this and found it really interesting staying along the lines of the way nature overcomes anything really.

Decay

After a talk with Gaylie Runciman, she told me about an artist called Chris Jordan who has taken these starling pictures of deceased albatross chicks that have washed up on an island north of the pacific.  As their bodies decay and the shocking realisation that the contents of their stomach have not decayed due to the overwheming amounts of plastic that they have eaten.



WWF Campaign Posters

I just found pretty amazing 'World Wildlife Fund' (WWF) campaign posters when i was researching global warming etc.  They are really powerful visuals that instantly made me feel guilty about all the littering and slacking on recycling iv ever done. Job done then! They portray a real sense of the impact that us humans have had on nature and the development of the earth. These are a few of the campaigns that inspired me:

These last two especially jumped out to me because it portrays the way that we are and should be at one with nature and because we're cutting its life short we are ultimately ensuring ourselves with the same fate. The rest can be seen here.

The caption reads:"The Tsunami killed 100 times more people than
9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it."
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100008456/wwf-appalled-at-massive-publicity-generated-by-poster-campaign-with-which-of-course-it-had-absolutely-nothing-to-do/

This campaign poster for global warming created controversy due to its content of 9/11...obviously.  Although being rather offensive it is such a bold point to make, that i think hits home.  Us humans like to think we have so much control over nature and in many ways we do.  Almost too much.  Although ultimately...we have no control at all and nature is a force  so strong and dangerous that we should try to preserve it. Not anger it. 

This has given me thoughts to; are we at one with nature? and can we ever be at one or control nature? 

The Cycle of Life and Death

Whilst exploring my general subject i began thinking about the various "cycles" in life and started with the obvious - 

Life and Death

Death is generaly feared and thought of very negatively.  Although with death comes life because we kill to eat, survive and ,in death, something fuels life.  The same applies to dying vegitation which then decomposes and aids the soil.  So with all these ideas of life and death floating around my head I remembered watching a documentary on channel 4, (you can also watch it here http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-elephant-life-after-death) about how the corpse of an elephant provides food etc. for so many animals. The programme was called
                       "The Elephant: Life after Death"
                          
It's a really interesting documentary that started out just like any ordinary informative show with the usual plain facts about elephants like that a five-ton elephant amounts to “six million calories of meat, fat and guts.  I certainly didnt know that, so it had already done its job to be fair.  Although as it delved deeper and longer into the time the elaphant had been dead things started to get truely bizarre such as a hyena feasting on the elephants anus. Its amazing to see just exactly happened to the corpse because it's something, well i personaly, wouldn't think twice of yet theres a whole world of life that feeds off one elephant that has lost it's life.