Edward Johnson writes… Season’s Greetings! … YouTube is a great archive of interesting things you never see or hear on the TV or radio. What I find particularly fascinating is the reactions of animals to music. There are many examples on YT but the one I’ve chosen is a French guy who goes out into fields, farmyards, zoos etc. with his guitar, a mike and recording equipment, and a couple of helpers with cameras to film him singing to the wild life. He admits to being scared at first, not knowing what the animals’ reactions would be, but it turns out that they are all absolutely enthralled by what they see and hear, even though he’s not the world’s greatest singer. In this first clip, he explains how he started and you get to see cows and horses coming in real close, nudging him and checking out his guitar …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFj01cN9nMc
In this compilation you see an elephant waving it’s trunk as a kind of thank you; a zoo’s sea lion dashing across the water to get a closer look; a parrot dancing along with the music; a lion flopping down on the grass and showing no aggression at all; a huge rhinoceros ambling over and evidently sniffing the guitar; a group of orangutans, one of whom applauds the singer; and one of my favourites, a giant tortoise who stretches his neck out to the fullest and gives the singer a wink; then we get a tiger who seems to be joining in with the singer; and finally an okapi who, the singer was told, is very wary of humans. In this case it too came up for a good look at singer and guitar, though the clip ends a bit abruptly …
If you’d like to see another compilation, this one features highly inquisitive lemurs; two giraffes who bend right down to get a good look at the guitar; a panda; racoons also highly inquisitive; tigers also non-aggressive; ponies getting close and personal; more dancing parrots; not sure what the next inquisitive animal is called; finally an onrush of elephants all swaying their trunks in another clip which ends abruptly. Still, I hope you find all this equally fascinating! …
Happy Christmas!
EdJ
Nice to see Colin reviving the above Kostelanetz / Noel Coward recording in the Column. I collected a lot of AK’s LPs in my youth as he was a first-rate conductor. This one is a delight and Noel Coward is superb in his delivery of Ogden Nash’s verses. Here are two of my favourites:
“Elephants are useful friends, equipped with handles at both ends.
They have a wrinkled, moth-proof hide, their teeth are upside-down, outside.
If you think the elephant preposterous, you’ve probably never seen a rhinosterous.”
“The Kangaroo can jump incredible. He has to jump because he’s edible.
I could not eat a Kangaroo but many fine Australians do.
Those with cookbooks as well as boomerangs prefer him in tasty Kangaroo meringues.”
Happy Christmas!