Academia's Lunch (2)
"Hyung! What's the snow leopard saying? Why on earth is it biting its own tail?"
I hadn't said a word, only staring at the snow leopard in blank disbelief, when Na Muk-hwi — standing behind me — started badgering me, practically itching with impatience. I turned it over for a moment, then shrugged and answered.
"Says it's because it feels good."
"……Pardon?"
"Apparently biting it feels nice, so that's why it's doing it."
I pointed at the snow leopard, squirming with its tail clamped in its mouth.
"Heh heh heh."
Whether it truly was pleased or not, the creature was rumbling out a contented purr.
"Really? You're telling me it's doing that for no particular reason at all — just because it feels good?"
I gave a small nod and looked at the snow leopard again.
"You're honestly biting your tail like that just because it feels good? Not because your tail's cold, or your mouth?"
"Cuz it feels so good!"
"No, I get that it feels good. There isn't some other reason, though?"
"Not really?"
The snow leopard said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, then went right on swinging its tail about and biting it — chomping to the left, chomping to the right, even hauling the thing up over its back and down beneath its belly. It looked, in all sincerity, like a creature doing something for no reason except that it enjoyed it. I shook my head and turned to Na Muk-hwi.
"It really does seem to be doing it just because it feels good. How should I put it... kind of like how guys sometimes stick a hand down their pants while they're watching TV or looking at their phones? Science says there's some reason for it, but nobody's actually thinking about that while they do it."
"Ugh... I was sure there'd be some kind of reason. Ah — Hyung. Then could you at least ask why it did that the first time?"
It didn't seem difficult, so I passed Na Muk-hwi's question along to the snow leopard.
"The first time? Hmm... I don't really remember, but I think I learned it from Mom. Mom told me doing this feels good."
When I relayed that the behavior had been learned from its mother, Na Muk-hwi looked thoroughly intrigued.
"That does sound plausible. Snow leopards are animals whose mothers teach their cubs how to scale cliffs and how to hunt while raising them. It isn't impossible that tail-biting got taught somewhere along the way..."
"Indeed. That animals pass knowledge from parent to offspring is a well-established fact. Humanity itself, in the distant past, confined the transmission of knowledge to the members of the family, did it not?"
It wasn't only Na Muk-hwi. Professor Lee Il-saeng, standing behind him, looked every bit as fascinated, and the two of them murmured back and forth, nodding along as they traded one remark after another. I could follow the beginning of their exchange well enough, but the further it went, the more specialist terminology crept in, until I could hardly keep up. Rather than try to wedge myself into the conversation, I decided to spend a little while with the snow leopard chuckling heh-heh-heh at my side.
As I stroked the creature, the Japanese keepers checking over the snow leopards' health bustled briskly around us.
"Nyagh!"
They turned the fur this way and that, checking for skin disease, and while the leopard's attention was locked entirely on me they hauled its muzzle open for an oral exam.
"Ptui, ptui."
The various instruments that had briefly gone into its mouth must have left a bad taste, because the snow leopard started working its tongue around in distaste.
"When the humans do this now and then, try to cooperate. They're checking whether you're sick. If you are, they'll make you better."
"Mmmngh."
I scrubbed the head of the creature, which had gone back to biting its tail while it thought it over.
"You've got to stay well if you want to keep biting your tail and feeling good about it."
"Okay!"
It trotted straight over to the humans who had just stuck instruments in its muzzle and opened wide for them, and the sight made me burst out laughing.
"Hyung. Shall we go see the next animal?"
"Sure."
I was still laughing when Na Muk-hwi — finished, it seemed, with the talk between teacher and student — came over and said it was time to move on.
Taking the snow leopard keepers' thanks with us, we moved on to a place full of pelicans, birds with staggeringly enormous beaks.
"Hyung. Did you know the pelican has a Korean name of its own?"
"Isn't it just pelican?"
"It is. They're called sadasae. Pelicans are migratory, so they're hardly impossible to see in Korea — they're recorded in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, and even in the Dongui Bogam, the great compendium of traditional Korean medicine."
Learning a curious fact like that, I found myself nodding of my own accord. I knew what a pelican was, of course, but I had truly never heard anything of the sort.
"Anyway — what are we supposed to ask these ones?"
"Pelicans sometimes crank their necks so far that the loose skin of the beak flips inside out. To the point where people say they're pulling their own spine out through their throat. Ah — look, that one's doing it right there."
I turned where Na Muk-hwi was pointing, and a rather appalling sight met my eyes. The pelican had its beak gaped wide, and its neck was showing through the maw — no, looking closer, it was exactly as he'd said. The inside of the beak had turned inside out, so the throat seemed to have popped free.
"There was a theory that they do it to cool their body temperature, but since the skin of the beak actually ends up covering the neck, it was dismissed as nonsense."
With the pelican keepers' help, I approached the birds. At first they made as if to flee, but curiosity soon won out and they crowded in around me.
"……Don't peck me, you lot."
After fending off the ones jabbing at my legs and feet, I found the bird that had been turning its beak inside out a moment earlier.
"You were flipping your beak just now. Why were you doing that?"
"Eegwik?"
The question had barely left my mouth before the bird flipped its beak over to show me. The pale pink skin inside came into view, and the sight was a little grotesque.
"R-right."
"Stretching! Doing this makes my neck feel good. It makes my neck comfortable for swallowing big things, and it's comfortable all around."
The bird worked its neck every which way — gaping its beak wide, then stretching the neck that had been bent into an S out dead straight. Whether stretching had truly been the point or not, a very small crack sounded from its neck.
"It says it's simply stretching. Seeing as they eat such large prey, I think they're trying to keep their necks comfortable."
The instant I finished, Na Muk-hwi and Professor Lee Il-saeng fell to talking with each other. Another round of biology, from the look of it, so I shook my head and got out of the enclosure. Stay any longer with them pecking at me, and either my pants or my shoes was going to be ruined.
A short while later the two of them emerged with the cuffs of their pants chewed by the pelicans, and together we set off in search of the seals.
"Aren't seals pretty well-known animals?"
"They are. But there's one thing that isn't widely known — the way they drum on their own bellies."
"Er... you mean the clapping?"
"That's what people call it. In reality, they're slapping their own stomachs. Whether the behavior is a means of communication among their own kind, or a threat toward enemies — opinions abound. At present, academia leans toward viewing it as a threat display."
"Oh..."
Talking with Na Muk-hwi, I kept picking up facts I'd never known. We walked while I listened to how a sea lion could be told from a true seal by the development of the foreflippers, by the whiskers, by the shape of the ears, and the like, and before long we had arrived at the seal enclosure.
Pud-dud-dud-duk!
Drawing near, I could see a seal drumming its belly at a furious speed. It was a spotted seal, grayish hide covered in black blotches. And the moment I laid eyes on it, I knew — the belly-drumming really was a way of speaking to its own kind.
"Bring the food! Food, food, food, food, food!"
Its muzzle wasn't even open, and yet the drumming alone reached me as if the animal were talking. I couldn't quite take that at face value, though. Two little seals, not yet fully grown, were tangled together, rumbling at one another.
"Play with me!"
"Okay!"
Unlike the one slapping its belly, these two were communicating out loud, and I couldn't sort out whether they talked by drumming, by voice, or by both at once. Even so, as I stood and watched, the meaning of the belly-slapping became perfectly clear. Above the water they both called and drummed, speaking to one another that way; underwater, they communicated by drumming their bellies. Making noise down there would only spend the air they needed to breathe, so it seemed they talked by slapping instead.
"The way they drum their bellies is a kind of communication. On land, though, it seems closer to a touch of irritation. I'm hungry, this is mine, go away — that sort of thing."
At once Na Muk-hwi and Professor Lee Il-saeng launched into a discussion of their own. Most of it ran along the lines of "I knew it," or "I was sure there'd be some other meaning — what a shame."
But we weren't finished uncovering what the animals were up to.
The next creature we sought out was the sea turtle, to prove that a sea turtle can converse with the sibling embryos around it even before it breaks out of the egg.
"They say it is possible. They can't communicate across a whole range of meanings, but something on the order of 'I'm heading out — you coming too?' is within reach. The idea is that they all hatch together, so that even one more of them makes it to the sea alive."
After that I kept making the rounds of zoos across Korea, Japan, and China, and got to meet animal after animal. I learned that a honey badger isn't so much fearless as unable to hold back its fury at the mere sight of something moving — a proper failure of anger management — and that the cliff-climbing goat known as the ibex insists it climbs simply because there is a cliff in front of it.
Above all, I came to understand why the panda, arguably the most famous animal in China, has such trouble breeding properly. There were plenty of guesses: the estrus is too short, they never learned what they needed to know about sex. None of that was the reason. They're lazy, and with food delivered on schedule every other appetite had drained away until nothing remained but the urge to sleep. Pampered to such an extreme, they had reached the point where nothing short of pornography made for pandas could stir any sex drive at all.
I sorted out the rumors and misconceptions clinging to plenty of other animals besides, and once Na Muk-hwi's thesis was published, I found myself besieged by inquiries.