Thursday 31 October 2013

Diwali 2013


Well, it's that time of the year again! Another peril that the festival brings along is the sacrifice of owls to please Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, which is again a paradox considering the fact that the owl is recognized as the vaahana or mount of the goddess. Please remember that this practice is a criminal offence. Let's celebrate Diwali 2013 like a festival should be celebrated. Have a cracker-free Diwali.
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This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Thursday 24 October 2013

Curiosity trapped the cat?


Camera traps have proved invaluable in conservation. Although they were initially developed for hunting, camera traps are fast replacing traditional and often unreliable methods of wildlife monitoring. Trail cameras have an obvious advantage over invasive methods like capturing of animals, operate continually and silently and yeild accurate data. These cameras have revealed the presence of several animals in areas where they were not known to exist, or presumed locally extinct. Live and real time monitoring of bird nests has also been made possible owing to this device. Although some animals like tigers that are scared of the camera flash may avoid or even destroy camera traps, alternative light sources such as infrared light have been used effectively, which are usually not detectable by birds and mammals.

This comic appeared in the October issue of Tinkle Digest. And do you see the watermark? Yes, I'm now greenhumour.com! :)

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This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Monday 21 October 2013

Orangutan Halloween


The orangutans celebrate Halloween on Green Humour just the way the tiger, the leopard, the rhino and the elephant did last year (http://greenhumour.blogspot.in/2012/10/halloween-in-wild.html). Fortunately for the orangutans, the anti-palm oil movement is getting stronger each day, but substantial measures still have to be implemented if we are to assure our intelligent cousins of a secure future. If you haven't renounced palm oil yet, do it NOW!
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This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

Monsanto and the Nobel Prize of Agriculture


If you're a fan of bizarre news, this one's for you.

Monsanto winning the Nobel prize equivalent for agriculture is not just expected, but also very delayed. No single company has done more to make sure that agriculture, the definitive development that made the nomadic humans independent for their food and served to make civilization possible, is now as nature intended- dependent on greater forces of existence, namely large corporations. Their benevolent 'creations' include, amongst other feats of marvel, bio-pesticide producing seeds. These seeds produce chemicals that are so effective that they kill any Insect that tries to feed on them. It is democratic, so that it practices no discrimination. Crop destroying pests, symbiotic life forms and bees that are responsible for pollinating huge percentage of crops- Monsanto ensures they all die. Who could deserve a Nobel more? (Text- Pallavi Talware)
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This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Monday 14 October 2013

The Elephant in India



The Asian Elephant is so synonymous with India that it was chosen as India's National Heritage Animal by the environment ministry in 2010. However, various problems continue to plague these gentle giants, 29000 of which struggle to cope with deforestation, man-animal conflict, habitat loss and train accidents in an ever-shrinking space. Although poaching for ivory is not as rampant in India as it is in Africa, it only makes the animal a lot more vulnerable to the threat of extinction. Even though the government has announced several schemes and measures to overcome the threat from train accidents, they have not been implemented effectively. Ironically, 'Bholu the Elephant', is the mascot for Indian Railways! The very species that endorses the locomotive is being violated and slashed by it. 

This comic is a part of Sanctuary Asia's Elephant special issue (October 2013) along side Vivek Menon's cover story on elephant conservation in India. Always a special feeling being published in Sanctuary Asia!
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This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Monday 7 October 2013

Interview with the Deccan Herald

I was interviewed by the Deccan Herald on the occasion of World Animals' Day, which appeared in their Sunday edition yesterday. You can read it here- http://www.deccanherald.com/content/361322/cartooning-concerns.html . A little glitch is that the exhibition at Melbourne is long over :)
Thanks to Priyanka Rao of Deccan Herald for the feature.

Saturday 5 October 2013

The Amazon Gold Rush


Uncontrolled illegal gold mining is turning the most pristine forests of the Peruvian Amazon into wastelands. There are several factors that contribute to this- the massive deforestation, pollutants released during the mining process, pollution from mercury that is used to amalgamate the gold, and river-dredging.
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This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Tuesday 1 October 2013

15 Amusing Bird Nests
















Nests are a truly remarkable result of evolution and an example of the artistic superiority of birds over the rest of the animal kingdom. Edward Hamilton Atkien devotes one whole chapter of his widely read 'Tribes on my Frontier' explaining why in his view, birds are a much more sophisticated class, owing to their elaborate coutrship displays and their preference for tastefully designed houses. Although nests are usually thought to represent decorative and elaborate structures such as the cup-shaped nests of flycatchers or the hanging nests of the weaver, the term applies to a wide variety of structures which are used to harbour birds'eggs. These may range from the intricately stitched nest of the Common Tailorbird to the shabby, haphazard arrangement of twigs used by doves. Some birds like the murres lay their eggs directly onto rocky ledges while some swifts construct their nests entirely out of their sticky saliva. Nests are yet another reflection of the fact that birds truly are creatures of taste.

A very happy Wildlife Week! And as always, the compilation is available as a poster, which you can order by writing to me on rohanchakcartoonist@gmail.com. Saevus readers will have seen 11 of these already in the August issue of the magazine.

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This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.