To this day, black cats have a bad reputation, based on silly superstitions. Animal shelters say it's difficult to get black cats fostered or adopted. A cat is a cat for feck sake.
I read it SO long ago that the details are fuzzy, but the cats thing is addressed in the book The Great Mortality. He basically links the persecution of Jews to persecution of cats, as they were culturally more likely to keep them.
I love bats. Yes I'm batty for them. I started loving bats after reading an article by Bacardi ...the rum guys... It was saying that bats contribute so much to the environment with pollination and insect control. Then it went on to say that Guam lost 3 species of bats because people were eating them. That led to less pollination which led to lower banana yields ...>
lower exports.....> less money. Sometimes you got to stop monkeying with nature.
Great piece Dan thanks- is there also an argument that the BD was accompanied by something equally nasty- such as anthrax - which explains the speed it was able to travel particularly when it hit Britain?
Yes there is- covered in depth in the Great Courses series of lectures on the Black Death - anthrax and/or “murrain” — apparently anthrax can live in a sheep’s buried corpse for umm i want to say 70 years?! So you’d have villages burying the infected livestock but a couple of generations later nobody remembers where they put it and they dig it up and…
I watched a documentary with David Attenborough not so long back. It showed that there is a link between deforestation and the rise of viruses such as Sars-Cov 2. Apparently by taking away a natural predators habitat breaks the food chain. Less of the species that have high metabolism which can survive being infected are now flourishing instead being a meal. Ultimately we point the finger at bats and hamsters but at the end of the day we are causing our own demise.
A solid argument for sure. Humanity is going into places it has never gone before. It's reasonable to assume that we will unleash viruses that we have never seen before. Will we learn anything from COVID? Probably not, we'll continue on our lemming like path to our self inflicted destruction.
Have you seen the documentary on Channel 5 about the plague? It was very interesting and it was suggested that body lice was to blame for the mass outbreak (which is believable). I think it's still on demand on Channel 5.
I saw that, it was really interesting, although I think that looked more into the 1665 outbreak so not sure how much the theory can also be applied to the 1347 outbreak. I was particularly interested when they were looking at the data from the outbreak in Glasgow in I think it was around 1900 because a) scientists understood the germ theory of disease at this point and b) there's just a lot more and better quality data survives from this time
To this day, black cats have a bad reputation, based on silly superstitions. Animal shelters say it's difficult to get black cats fostered or adopted. A cat is a cat for feck sake.
I read it SO long ago that the details are fuzzy, but the cats thing is addressed in the book The Great Mortality. He basically links the persecution of Jews to persecution of cats, as they were culturally more likely to keep them.
The sign of a great writer is always leaving readers wanting more. You are a great writer Jones.
I love bats. Yes I'm batty for them. I started loving bats after reading an article by Bacardi ...the rum guys... It was saying that bats contribute so much to the environment with pollination and insect control. Then it went on to say that Guam lost 3 species of bats because people were eating them. That led to less pollination which led to lower banana yields ...>
lower exports.....> less money. Sometimes you got to stop monkeying with nature.
I've been writing about Hong Kong's culling of independent news media, so this was a welcomed treat. Great stuff, Jones.
Great piece Dan thanks- is there also an argument that the BD was accompanied by something equally nasty- such as anthrax - which explains the speed it was able to travel particularly when it hit Britain?
Yes there is- covered in depth in the Great Courses series of lectures on the Black Death - anthrax and/or “murrain” — apparently anthrax can live in a sheep’s buried corpse for umm i want to say 70 years?! So you’d have villages burying the infected livestock but a couple of generations later nobody remembers where they put it and they dig it up and…
I watched a documentary with David Attenborough not so long back. It showed that there is a link between deforestation and the rise of viruses such as Sars-Cov 2. Apparently by taking away a natural predators habitat breaks the food chain. Less of the species that have high metabolism which can survive being infected are now flourishing instead being a meal. Ultimately we point the finger at bats and hamsters but at the end of the day we are causing our own demise.
A solid argument for sure. Humanity is going into places it has never gone before. It's reasonable to assume that we will unleash viruses that we have never seen before. Will we learn anything from COVID? Probably not, we'll continue on our lemming like path to our self inflicted destruction.
Have you seen the documentary on Channel 5 about the plague? It was very interesting and it was suggested that body lice was to blame for the mass outbreak (which is believable). I think it's still on demand on Channel 5.
I saw that, it was really interesting, although I think that looked more into the 1665 outbreak so not sure how much the theory can also be applied to the 1347 outbreak. I was particularly interested when they were looking at the data from the outbreak in Glasgow in I think it was around 1900 because a) scientists understood the germ theory of disease at this point and b) there's just a lot more and better quality data survives from this time
Ser interresant
Thank you so much for a wickedly fascinating post. I was entertained, horrified, intrigued, and educated. Good job!
This was a treat ❤️❤️ Thank you Dan!
Fascinating read.
Great read! Thanks
Again, a fascinating post, especially as I begin book #2 which is set in England during the 14th c plague. I'll be sure to watch those cats.
Have you ever thought of writing headlines for The Sun, or Private Eye for that matter! 'Death to Hamsters' is a rather good headline..
I loved the “hamster wheel of Fortune”. That was ingenius.
True! He has some great lines!
It seems, at least the witch hunts were more popular after the Middle Ages. In England, they start with the Stuarts.