Elephant No. 364: Kaleidoscope

I've loved kaleidoscopes ever since I was little, and have a small collection of at least three different types.

The word "kaleidoscope"—from the Greek kalos (beauty/beautiful), eidos (shape) and skopeo (to see/observe)—was coined in 1817 by Scottish inventor Sir David Brewster, who developed the device as an outgrowth of his experiments on the polarization of light.

His first design consisted of a tube with a pair of mirrors at one end, translucent disks at the other, and beads sandwiched in between. The kaleidscope was an instant success when it hit the market in 1817, with Brewster and his manufacturing partner Philip Carpenter selling 200,000 kaleidoscopes in London within the first three months. Realizing that they would never be able to keep up with the demand, the men licensed other companies to produce kaleidoscopes.

Toy kaleidoscope, ca. 1965.
Photo: Sheila Singhal

Kaleidoscopes were originally produced as a science tool, but were soon being made in cheaper toy versions. Most kaleidoscopes today consist of a tube, a trio of mirrors formed into a triangle, and a selection of beads, bits of coloured glass and shiny shapes, floating freely in a small receptacle at the opposite end from the eyepiece. As light enters the receptacle end of the kaleidoscope, and the user turns the receptacle, multifaceted and ever-changing patterns are created.

In addition to the typical mirrored tube, there are also liquid versions. Tiny coloured pieces suspended in a thick liquid drift past a mirrored tube, creating the pattern.

Inexpensive liquid kaleidoscope.
Photo: Sheila Singhal

And finally, there are teleidoscopes. These also employ mirrors; however, instead of having integral coloured pieces, they reflect objects outside the tube, producing a similar multifaceted effect.

Teleidoscope, ca. 1960.
Photo: Sheila Singhal

Although the vast majority of modern telescopes consist of inexpensive cardboard tubes, plastic mirrors and plastic beads, there is also a high-end market for kaleidoscopes produced by artists. Many craft galleries carry artisan kaleidoscopes and teleidoscopes, and they are a popular item at craft fairs.

For today's elephant, I bought this kaleidoscope kit, made for children.

And this is what it contained.

I didn't like the purple flowered paper provided for the outside of the tube, so I decided I would paint elephants on the outside, using a sheet of canvas from a canvas pad.

I cut the canvas into the appropriate sizes for the main part of the tube, the receptacle, and the little band dividing the two, and drew some elephants on all three pieces.

I painted everything next, bearing in mind that there would be a small overlap when everything was glued.

 

 

I glued all of the canvas pieces to the tube with a glue gun. I glued only the seams at the back, but made sure to smooth the canvas tightly around the tube before glueing the overlap.

Next, I assembled the mirrors. The kit included special tape to hold them in the requisite triangle formation. I then inserted the assemblage into the tube.

I planned to use many of the coloured bits that came with the kit, but I thought there should be at least one elephant shape in the mix. I didn't have any coloured plastic handy, so I bought this plastic food container for a dollar, then cut out three small elephant shapes. This was probably the hardest part of the whole activity, because the plastic was a bit thick, and wasn't very forgiving, splitting and cracking at will.

I put the elephants in the little plastic receptacle that goes in the bottom of the kaleidoscope tube, and added a bunch of other beads from the selection that came with the kit. When I was happy with the mix, I pushed the cup into the tube.

Now came the fun part. The three photos below show my best attempts at capturing my three pink elephants. You have to squint a bit, but at least I know they're there.

If I hadn't decided to redesign the decoration on the outside of the tube, and if I hadn't decided to cut out little elephants, this would probably have taken an hour or so. As it was, it took me most of the afternoon.

That being said, I really like the final result, and think it will make a nice little addition to my existing collection.

Elephant Lore of the Day
In 1887, Toby the elephant was added to Moore Park in Sydney, Australia. For many years, she was a great favourite with the public, performing a wide range of clever tricks. She could remove her keeper's hat when asked, take a handbell in her trunk and ring it, and ride an elephant-sized seesaw.

In those days, Australia's circuses and menageries often travelled by sea. And Toby, like all elephants, had a very good memory. On one voyage, a deckhand fed Toby an orange loaded with hot pepper—a rather cruel thing to do, considering the sensitivity of an elephant's trunk and mouth. On a much later voyage, the same deckhand happened to be passing by, when Toby grabbed him with her trunk. She tried to dump him overboard, but the man landed in the rigging and was saved.

Over time, as do many other performing elephants, Toby became more sour and less reliable. Sold to the Wirth Circus, she continued to perform, but was prone to tantrums. In July 1904, in a fit of pique, she broke free of her chains and rampaged through the grounds where the circus was encamped. She broke the pole holding up the main tent, the curtains and a stage, then dashed across the grounds, pulled down some fencing, and trampled a few trees. She only came to a stop when she happened upon an interesting snack consisting of a sack of wheat and a half-dozen loaves of bread. This restored her temper, and she was safely led back to her enclosure.

Toby continued to perform with the Wirth Circus until about 1914, when she collapsed on a bridge, holding up horse-drawn traffic for twelve hours. Although she recovered, she collapsed again about a year later, dying in April 1915 after an illness lasting about three days. It was suggested at the time that she was close to eighty years old—which would have been exceptionally old for an elephant. It is more likely, however, that she was born in 1877, making her only 37 or 38 at the time of her death.

A picture of Toby from a newspaper article.
Source: http://circuszooanimals.blogspot.ca/2011/11/
toby-troublemaking-elephant.html

To Support Elephant Welfare

World Wildlife Fund

World Society for the Protection of Animals

Performing Animal Welfare Society

Zoocheck

Bring the Elephant Home

African Wildlife Foundation

Elephants Without Borders 

Save the Elephants

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand) 

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Elephant Nature Park (Thailand)

Wildlife Trust of India

Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary (Thailand)
Wildlife SOS (India)  
The Elephant Sanctuary (Tennessee

Elephant No. 363: Party Blowout

I didn't actually know the name of this type of party favour—and I'm still slightly suspicious that "blowout" is a made-up descriptive name—but since I'm almost done with this yearlong project, a party favour seemed like the thing to make for today's elephant.

Also known as party horns, blowers, noisemakers, jolly Jonathans, squeakers and fizoos, party blowouts consist of paper cones attached to paper tubes that are flattened and rolled into coils. Most contain a coiled metal strip to make the tube retract again, as well as a small diaphragm, so that when you blow into the mouthpiece, it makes a noise.

The most familiar type of party blowout is the kind with a simple tube and a plastic mouthpiece. When I was little, they always had a small feather on the end as well, which fluttered when the tube was fully extended. Although I don't usually keep these, I did keep a rather unusual blowout with three extending tubes, brought back from India by my father.

Triple-tubed Divali noisemaker from India.
Photo: Sheila Singhal

There are also blowouts with novelty faces attached, which is the kind I'll be making for today's elephant. I had actually forgotten about the face version, until I saw this package in the party supplies section of a discount store. None of the packages contained an elephant face, which seemed odd to me.

This was dead simple to make, of course. All I had to do was disassemble one of the blowouts from the package, and use the headpiece as a template.

I traced around two of the animals on a piece of artist-quality bristol board. It obviously didn't matter which one I used as a guide, because it was going to be altered, anyway. To hedge my bets, however, I chose two different shapes and superimposed them. The main thing was to get the general size right, and to get the openings in approximately the right spot.

Once I'd traced around everything, I expanded it to add the elephant's features, obviously sans trunk.

This looked a bit like a vampire bat, which worried me, so I cut it out and fit one of the plain blowouts through the opening before I went to the trouble of painting it.

It looked okay, so I painted everything with gouache. I thought about painting the tube, but the harlequin pattern already had grey in it, and I didn't know what might happen if I added paint. I feared I might end up with a dissolving paper mash, so I left well enough alone.

To reassemble this, I simply slipped the new face over the basic blowout. And voilà!

And this is what it looked like in action. The squeaker on this blowout was eccentric, so I added my own sound effects.

This was very simple, and might make an interesting party activity for children—or adults, for that matter. In fact, I might try to coax some friends into trying this sometime, just for the fun of seeing what they come up with.

Elephant Lore of the Day
Elephants use their trunks to make a wide range of sounds, from loud trumpeting to a squeak said to be as tiny as that of a mouse. As far as I can tell, this is the general repertoire of trunk noises:

Loud trumpeting: Anger or fear. In a bull elephant, loud trumpeting—said to be "loud enough to bring down the walls of Jericho"—is often an expression of dominance. In a female, it is often an expression of anger, or warning to anyone foolish enough to get in between a mother and her calf. In both genders, it can also be a signal to flee.

Medium trumpeting: This is the most varied type of trumpeting, and can be used as a form of greeting between elephants, a means of saying goodbye, or even a way of expressing excitement and pleasure, as at feeding time. Elephants will also trumpet to express moderate displeasure, or to tease their human keepers.

Squealing: Baby elephants squeal partly because they aren't yet equipped to trumpet. They also squeal when feeling anxiety or distress. Never get between a squealing baby and its mother.

Screaming: This is, as in humans, an out-and-out distress call. Elephants scream when attacked by predators, poachers and snakes. They scream when frightened or cornered. They scream to let other elephants know there is an extreme threat in the area. They scream as they flee.

Squeaking: Even the largest bull elephant can make a tiny squeak. This is the sound many elephants emit when unsure, nervous or slightly anxious.

When elephants rumble, it doesn't involve the trunk at all, but a vibration in their vocal chords, just as we use ours to speak or sing. Many rumbles are at the infrasonic level, inaudible to human ears.

Trumpeting elephant, Tanzania, 2005.
Photo: Matt Lindop
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pod0/24250869/

To Support Elephant Welfare

World Wildlife Fund

World Society for the Protection of Animals

Performing Animal Welfare Society

Zoocheck

Bring the Elephant Home

African Wildlife Foundation

Elephants Without Borders 

Save the Elephants

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand) 

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Elephant Nature Park (Thailand)

Wildlife Trust of India

Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary (Thailand)
Wildlife SOS (India)  
The Elephant Sanctuary (Tennessee

Elephant No. 358: The Disappearing Elephant

Today's elephant is based on a vintage optical illusion, colloquially called "The Disappearing Chinaman", invented by Sam Lloyd. First printed in 1896, the puzzle was revived in 1930 by Lloyd's son, Sam Lloyd, Jr.

The idea of this vanishing puzzle is simple in concept, but devilishly difficult to figure out at first glance. The puzzle involves a disc overlaying a larger scene. When the disc is rotated from NE to NW, it appears to make one of the small figures disappear. There are 13 figures when you start, and only 12 when the disc is rotated.

I had one of these in a box of reproduction vintage optical puzzles and illusions, so I used it to inspire today's elephant. For an explanation of the original puzzle, as well as a downloadable version you can assemble yourself, click here.

The Disappearing Chinaman, 1930.
Source: The Paradox Box, Julian Rothenstein,
Shambala, 1999.

I started by drawing a circle. Next, I drew a box measuring 12.5 x 17.5 cm (5 x 7 inches), to serve as the base. I then cut out both pieces, and linked them together with a small brad that allows them to freely rotate. I also drew the arrow that points to NE, and lines for both NE and NW.

Now came the part that was hard for me to wrap my mind around. Lining up one set of these lines, I began drawing elephants, overlapping them in various ways. The idea is to make it possible for adjacent elephants to line up in order to create a new elephant. One of them will need to be a "double" elephant to allow one of them to disappear when the disc is rotated.

This part literally took me hours. I played with the original puzzle, trying to figure out which figure disappears, and how to pose my elephants to make this happen. At first, it seemed easy: just make adjacent elephants work together. The problem arises when you get to the end of this process, and find that nothing matches. You end up with legs in the middle of nowhere, and no elephant with which to match them.

I tried elephants with all their legs facing into the middle. The bodies were outside the disc, and the legs were on the disc. I thought it might work if I made one set of four legs into two sets of two legs. While that works, it doesn't make anything disappear.

Next I tried circus elephants doing various things, with legs and arms all over the place. I ended up with the same problem: the elephants worked with their neighbours, but nothing disappeared.

I went back to the legs in the middle and bodies outside the disc. I actually thought I had it figured out, but discovered—just as I was about to ink everything in—that I again had elephants that worked with their neighbours, but no disappearing elephant.

In desperation, I referred to the original puzzle, and started drawing elephants in similar poses. I still ran into difficulties making some of the elephants match up, but I did finally make one of them disappear. From twelve elephants when the arrow points to NE, it dropped to eleven elephants when I moved the arrow to NW.

I still can't really explain how it works, and I'd never be able to reproduce this in different poses. But after three hours of drawing and erasing a dozen elephants, I was just happy it worked.

I inked everything in, and heat-set it with a hairdryer. I then painted everything with gouache.

When everything was dry, I assembled it and tested it again to be sure it worked. It did.

This is what it looked like with the arrow pointing to NE.

And this is what it looked like with the arrow pointing to NW.

Now that I know how to do this, I would be willing to redraw one exactly like this. But I'd never attempt adding extra elephants, and if anyone were to ask me how it works, I'd still have to say that I don't have a clue.

Elephant Lore of the Day
Over the past year, many people have asked me when I began liking elephants. Although I can't pinpoint the exact moment, it might have been when I lived in Africa as a child. We lived in Nigeria, and one day took a trip to the Waza Game Preserve in neighbouring Cameroon.

I have no idea what it's like there today, but back then it was probably like being on the Serengeti. I remember our landrover screeching to a halt as a herd of elephants thundered past, and the whiplike necks of giraffes running in the distance. I also remember how the ground vibrated as several rhinos hove into view. I was only five or six at the time, but I've never forgotten it.

Sadly, Cameroon—although thankfully not the Waza Game Preserve—was the site of one of the worst poaching episodes in recent memory. Earlier this year, within the space of a few hours, over 200 elephants were killed at Bouba N’Djida National Park in northeastern Cameroon. This is a full 50% of the elephants in the region, and it is suspected that poachers have moved into Cameroon as the next frontier, having already wiped out elephant populations in nearby Chad and the Central African Republic.

Over the past ten years, elephants have been disappearing at an astonishing rate. A passion for ivory in the Far East—and a growing ability to afford it—is driving demand for elephant tusks in every part of the world. Where people once saw the occasional poacher picking off an elephant or two, there are now well-equipped marauders in jeeps and helicopters, armed with high-powered rifles.

Not content with killing elephants, in some parts of Africa they have also taken to murdering those whose job it is to protect dwindling wildlife populations. Nor do they limit themselves to rifles. Some poachers simply lob grenades into herds of elephants, or leave out poison-laced fruit. In some parts of Africa, the illicit trade in ivory is even believed responsible for supporting military forces, such as the disgraced Joseph Kony's rebel army in Uganda, and warlords in Somalia.

Even more disturbingly, poaching now appears to be driven from outside Africa. Many of the most recent arrests for ivory poaching have been of Chinese middlemen, caught with large shipments of African ivory. According to several sources, the number of Chinese nationals now operating in Africa's illicit ivory trade is growing, with no end in sight. Nor are elephants the only animals affected. In 2011, more than 400 rhinos were killed in South Africa for their horns, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine.

Africa is not alone. A number of elephant populations in Asia are also seriously endangered. At least one country's elephants are about to become extinct. Much of this is also due to poaching, although habitat loss is a significant factor in Asia as well.

This is not to say that no one cares. There are dedicated conservationists in China, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, and even countries with tiny populations of elephants such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The same is true of Africa, where wildlife rangers and national military forces often put their lives on the line to protect elephants from the activities of poachers and even irate farmers.

A number of solutions have been proposed to try and stem the tide of illicit killing for the sake of ivory. Some say that worldwide stockpiles of ivory should be released onto the open market. This would likely cause a precipitous drop in price, and make poaching less profitable. Others say that more money should be put into elephant protection, forensic tracking of ivory, and more severe penalties for the perpetrators.

There are arguments to be made for all of these. However, I don't think anything will stop the killing of elephants—whether for their ivory, or because they've trampled a farmer's corn—unless and until human beings stop seeing elephants as disposable vermin, and start seeing them for the intelligent, sensitive creatures they truly are.

Family of African elephants.
Source: http://www.hedweb.com/animimag/elephant-family.htm

To Support Elephant Welfare

World Wildlife Fund

World Society for the Protection of Animals

Performing Animal Welfare Society

Zoocheck

Bring the Elephant Home

African Wildlife Foundation

Elephants Without Borders 

Save the Elephants

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand) 

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Elephant Nature Park (Thailand)

Wildlife Trust of India

Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary (Thailand)
Wildlife SOS (India)  
The Elephant Sanctuary (Tennessee, U.S.A.)

Fauna & Flora International