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What inspired the creature who was "short and old and brownish and mossy?" The one who spoke in a "sharp and authoritative" voice He spoke for the trees, but he called his family. All that he left "in this mess was a small pile of rocks, with the only word …" EXCEPT. "
In 1970, Million people watched Earth Day for the first time, born Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" tops the charts.
And in La Jolla, California, Theodor Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss' name, was fighting to prevent a suburban development project from clearing the eucalyptus around his house.But when he tried to write a book on conservation for children that was not preachy or boring, he had the writer's block.
On the suggestion of his wife to clear his mind, they went to the Mount Kenya Safari Club, an exclusive resort where the guests have observed animals along the Laikipia Plateau in Kenya.
And if you have not yet guessed it, it's there that " The Lorax "took shape – on the side of a laundry list, almost all of his environmental message created in one afternoon.
Today, it has been translated into more than a dozen languages, sold at over a million copies and adapted into one 2012 movie. It was Dr. Seuss' favorite book and one that was much discussed for its environmental resonance .
In this, the Lorax, who "speaks for the trees," arises from a fallen tree stump and angrily asks that a businessman called the Ounce-ler stop cutting Truffula trees to knit thorns. But the Ounce does not listen and ends up being left alone in an empty and dilapidated factory on a sterile landscape.
Despite an unsuccessful attempt by the forestry industry to ban "The Lorax" in the 1980s many have adopted the book as a critical tale about environmental policy, especially for children. save the environment by taking care of it. But some worry that Lorax, with his possessive use of "my" in referring to trees and other creatures, is not really a good teaching model because he stands out as a Pharisaic eco-warrior with an unfounded foundation anger .
"The dominant sense among literary critics is that Lorax is too angry and that environmentalists can not afford to adopt this kind of rhetoric because it will never work with decision makers" , said Nathaniel Dominy, an evolutionary anthropologist and ecologist at Dartmouth College and lead author of the paper. "If you do not see Lorax as an indignant steward of the environment, but rather as a participating member of the ecosystem , so I think his anger is a lot more understandable, and I think, forgivable. "
Kenyan inspiration from Lorax emerged after Dr. Dominy grabbed something to discuss at one time. dinner with Donald E. Pease, English professor at Dartmouth College, praised for his lectures and his biography on Dr. Seuss.And he evolved into a scientific process that included the cartoon face feeding of Lorax in a Sophisticated Monkey Face Recognition Software
Dr. Dominy, also a father, raised the subject of "The Lorax", suggesting that the mustachioed protagonist of the book resembled the patas monkey, a fluffy, orange, real creature with a hoarse alarm call that he had observed working in Kenya.
The monkey draws most of its nutrients from a gnarled tree called whistling acacia, in a type of interaction called commensalism, in which one organism benefits from another without hurting it. The tree also looks like barren trees in history. "If Dr. Seuss was making a monkey," he told Dr. Pease, "that would be the case."
Dr. Pease questioned the idea that a master creator like Dr. Seuss would use a real life reference, but became convinced after seeing how Lorax appeared from this cut strain, suggesting, in a way, that the Lorax was one of them. This made the use of "my trees" by the character more reasonable.
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Science Times Bulletin "The Lorax no longer looked like an eco-policeman," said Dr. Pease, "but he was a creature that could be understood as the spirit in place for the entire ecosystem. "
For him, Dr. Dominy's otherwise silly conversation topic deserved attention because it enriched the earlier understanding of the work and addressed critical concerns and they sought clues to support Dr. Dominy's hypothesis
After going through the literature and discussing with Audrey Geisel, the author's wife, they determined that Dr. Seuss had probably invented his story after observing the relationship between the patas and the whistling acacia thorn during his vacation in Kenya.
They also teamed up with a anthropologist from New Yor University k who had developed an automatic learning algorithm to badyze the similarities between a large database of faces of African monkeys. Together, they fed the faces of five real Kenyan monkeys, the cartoon Lorax and a character from "The Foot Book" (their most common ancestor Seussian, they figured), in a program. The badysis revealed that the Lorax was more like the patas monkey than the creature Foot Book
"We take real tools of biology and we apply them in a very serious way," he said. said Dr. Dominy. "I hope people will find humor in this."
In the book, once the forest and all its inhabitants disappear and the Oun-ler left with its empty factory, the Lorax, flies into the sky behind the rocks and the word "to less".
The years go by, and a late Once-ler finally understands these words when a visitor asks what happened to Lorax. He throws the last Truffula tree seed to the child and says, "UNLESS someone like you cares a lot, nothing will get better. This is not the case. "
We will never know for sure the inspiration for this edifying story, but it does not really matter, Dr. Dominy said. "Ecosystems are communities, they are bademblages of species that interact, and if you touch one, you touch them all. That's what's important, and he nailed it beautifully. "
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