Chance animals
It’s uncertain what to make of particular synchronicities. Are most coincidences meaningful for the fact they are so unlikely, the substance of them signaling something more significant? Or is it that they are very likely and our expectations are just so askew we aren’t able to see just how natural such occurrences are?
Perhaps the most simple & classic example of the latter, less mystical alternative, is the experience of learning a new word or hearing of some quasi-celebrity for the first time and then hearing the word or seeing mention of that person at every turn (again and yet again) the days and weeks following. My guess is that this is a function our lack of attention to the patterns we aren’t already primed for seeing, but once we a cued-in can’t help but notice in everything (For some reason, I recall Don Knotts –of Incredible Mr. Limpett fame— being such an instance for me).
Anyway, now I’m wondering about the Camelopard.
I was looking up some word in the dictionary yesterday and then got to browsing only to come across the camelopard, the apparent love-child of a camel and a leopard (head of the former, spots of the latter). Pliny makes note of it in his records, and it sounds like the Romans were really thinking about giraffes. Hm.
Later that night I’m reading some random book I’d never opened before. I flip to page 74 and there in its chimeric glory is the picture of a camelopard, as recorded in a book by Gaspar Schott, 1776. (by the way, why wasn’t I named “Gaspar,” Mom?).
Is the fabled “camelopard” going to be another Don Knotts for me? I guess only time will tell. Although I haven’t come across any more camelopards today, there are some concerned whether contemporary hybrid shenanigans such as “ligers” and zeedonks” are really what the Almighty had in mind…
(see also: wholphins, ratacoons, satyrs and GFP bunny)
Perhaps the most simple & classic example of the latter, less mystical alternative, is the experience of learning a new word or hearing of some quasi-celebrity for the first time and then hearing the word or seeing mention of that person at every turn (again and yet again) the days and weeks following. My guess is that this is a function our lack of attention to the patterns we aren’t already primed for seeing, but once we a cued-in can’t help but notice in everything (For some reason, I recall Don Knotts –of Incredible Mr. Limpett fame— being such an instance for me).
Anyway, now I’m wondering about the Camelopard.
I was looking up some word in the dictionary yesterday and then got to browsing only to come across the camelopard, the apparent love-child of a camel and a leopard (head of the former, spots of the latter). Pliny makes note of it in his records, and it sounds like the Romans were really thinking about giraffes. Hm.
Later that night I’m reading some random book I’d never opened before. I flip to page 74 and there in its chimeric glory is the picture of a camelopard, as recorded in a book by Gaspar Schott, 1776. (by the way, why wasn’t I named “Gaspar,” Mom?).
Is the fabled “camelopard” going to be another Don Knotts for me? I guess only time will tell. Although I haven’t come across any more camelopards today, there are some concerned whether contemporary hybrid shenanigans such as “ligers” and zeedonks” are really what the Almighty had in mind…
(see also: wholphins, ratacoons, satyrs and GFP bunny)
posted by andrew s.yang at Wednesday, September 08, 2004
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