Tiger Panthera tigris

Description and Behavior

Largest of the big cats (Amur tigers can weigh up to 700 lbs; lions typically only weigh up to 500 lbs.), the tiger is also one of the best-known large mammals. Reddish-orange to yellow-ochre coat with black stripes and white belly. Males have a ruff – especially in the Sumatran sub-species.

Tigers love the water, and will spend much of a hot day soaking. They will also readily enter the water to kill prey. Tigers are by nature solitary animals (as are all cats except lions, which are the only true social cat), but at CPT they have adjusted to life with a mate. This is possible due to having enough food (the primary reason to be solitary).

Subspecies:

• Bengal tiger (P.t. tigris) – Indian subcontinent
• Amur (Siberian) tiger (P.t. altaica) – Amur river region of Russia and China, and North Korea
• South China tiger (P.t. amoyensis) – South-central China
• Sumatran tiger (P.t. sumatrae) – Sumatra, Indonesia
• Indo-Chinese tiger (P.t. corbeti) – Continental South-East Asia

Extinct Subspecies:

• Javan tiger (P.t. sondaica) – Java, Indonesia
• Caspian tiger (P.t. virgata) – Turkey through Central and West Asia
• Bali tiger (P.t. balica) – Bali, Indonesia

Stripe Patterns: The stripe pattern (the stripes are actually elongated spots or rosettes) will differ among individuals; in number, width, splitting, and spotting. Unlike the cheek strips, the dark lines around the eyes tend to be symmetrical, and are often used in the field to identify individuals. Tigers have the mark of “wang” (Chinese for “king”), on their foreheads.

White Tigers: White tigers have existed in the wild in India, only found in Bengal tigers – it’s a recessive genetic trait, not a sub-species. A white male cub taken in 1951 was the last recorded wild white tiger. Named Mohan, bred with a daughter to produce the first line of white tigers. Unfortunately this has led to the white tigers being very inbred. White tigers have brown stripes on an off-white background and ice-blue eyes. Most held in captivity today have some type of health problem related to inbreeding – such as crossed eyes, heart problems, epilepsy, deafness, etc. White tigers are bred almost exclusively for entertainment purposes.

Black Tigers: Black tigers have been reported occasionally, but the only physical evidence is a skin recovered from illegal traders in Delhi in October 1992, which has deep black on the top of the head and back extending down the flanks to end in stripes.

Prey 

Tigers hunt mainly between dusk and dawn, but have been observed hunting during the day in Indian National Parks. The principal prey across their range consists of various species of deer and wild pigs (including guar – bulls weigh up to 2,200 lbs); they will also kill the young of elephants and rhinos, and take smaller species, including monkeys, birds, reptiles, and fish. Tigers sometimes kill and eat leopards and their own kind (especially cubs they come across), as well as other carnivores, including bears, weighing up to 380 lbs, which they have attacked in their winter dens. They readily eat carrion.

Tigers usually attack large prey by stalking from the rear and then rushing their prey. When seizing and killing prey, the tiger’s main target is the neck, either the back or the front – depending on several factors, such as the size of the prey; the size of the tiger; whether the attack is from front, rear or side; and the reactive movements of the prey. Generally use weight of legs/paws to break neck – or at least stun prey. After the initial attack on large prey, the tiger will grasp the throat and hold a prey item until it dies from suffocation. This hold keeps the tiger safe from horns and hooves, and does not allow prey to regain their feet. Small prey are killed with a neck-bite. There have been relatively few observations of attacks on free-ranging wild animals. Adult tigers are cautious, and attack only when the danger of injury to themselves is minimal which is why they will only rarely attack when an animal is facing them (tigers like to attack from behind). Cooperative hunting has been observed. Family groups and mated pairs will often hunt together (while female is in estrus and they are mating). In this way, they are able to take larger prey, up to the size of an elephant.

Prey is usually dragged into cover and fed on over several days (3-6) until little remains. Tigers have tremendous strength, which is exhibited when moving heavy prey; Pocock (1939a) cites an instance in Burma of a tiger dragging the carcass of a gaur that 13 men could not move. A tiger eats 40-85 lbs of meat at a time, starting from the rump. Large prey is taken about once a week, although even highly skilled hunters, tigers are often unsuccessful. Probably only one in about 15-20 attacks are successful. On average their hunt-to-kill ratio is 5-30%, depending on prey density (higher the density, higher the ratio).

Tigers have the greatest reputation as man-eaters, especially in India. Currently, with greatly reduced numbers of tigers, attacks on people have been relatively rare, except in the Sundarbans mangrove forest fringing the Bay of Bengal in India and Bangladesh. The recent annual toll of people in the Indian Sundarbans tiger reserve has fluctuated between 66 in 1975-76; 15 in 1989 and 42 in 1992. Most deaths have been of fisherfolk, wood-cutters and honey-collectors illegally entering the reserve. The high 1992 figure is attributed to illegal entry by people, including young children, seeking to benefit from lucrative prawn harvesting. Earlier, management measures including the use of human face masks on the back of the head to deter tigers (which usually attack from the rear), appeared to be reducing the toll. New data suggests that tigers are beginning to realize the difference between a mask and the real face of a person – so predation may go up again. Many deaths arise from accidental confrontations in which the tiger makes a defensive attack. A chance encounter in which such a tiger kills someone in a defensive reaction and feeds on the body may lead it to target people as easy prey. A man-eating tigress may introduce her cubs to human prey. But deaths and injuries caused by surprised tigers or a tigress defending her cubs from intrusion do not usually lead to man-eating.

Habitat

The tiger is found in a variety of habitats: from the tropical evergreen and deciduous forests of southern Asia to the coniferous, scrub oak, and birch woodlands of Siberia. It also thrives in the mangrove swamps of the Sunderbans, the dry thorn forests of north-western India, and the tall grass jungles at the foot of the Himalayas. Tigers are found in the Himalayan valleys, and tracks have been recorded in winter snow at 9800 feet. The tiger’s habitat requirements can be summarized as having some form of dense vegetative cover, sufficient large ungulate prey, and access to water.

Range

The geographic distribution of the tiger once extended across Asia from eastern Turkey to the Sea of Okhotsk. However, its range has been greatly reduced in recent times. Currently, tigers survive only in scattered populations from India to Vietnam, and in Sumatra, China, and the Russian Far East. Tigers require adequate prey, cover and water. Their ranges vary in accordance with prey densities, from 4-150 square miles for females; 11-380 square miles for males. While females need ranges suitable for raising cubs, males seek access to females and have larger ranges.

Biology

Weight	< 700 lbs.
Reproductive Season	Mating takes place year round, but most frequently from end Nov to early April.
Gestation Period	About 103 days
Litter Size	2-3 cubs is most common in the wild, up to 6 in captivity
Age at Independence
Sexual Maturity	3.4 years, males 4.8 years, range 3.4-6.8 years
Longevity	Probably 8-10 in the wild; up to 26 years in captivity
Social Structure	While tigers are usually solitary, except for females with cubs, they are not anti-social. Males associate with females for breeding and have been observed with females and cubs when feeding or resting.

Principal Threats

Poaching, habitat loss (India, Sumatra, Indonesia). In India, the Bengal tiger, like other big cats, probably has little future outside protected areas because of actual and perceived threats to livestock and human life. Its current range extends through one of the most densely inhabited regions of the world, where human populations are rising at an average of 1.87% per annum. In India, the human population increased by over 300 million (nearly 50%) and livestock by over 100 million during the 20 years since Project Tiger began. In Siberia – principle threat is poaching.

beatrix-potter-pioneering-scientist-or-passionate-amateur

When you think of Beatrix Potter, you might think of one of her beloved creations: the gullible Jemima Puddleduck, impertinent Squirrel Nutkin or, of course, the foolhardy Peter Rabbit, risking it all in Mr McGregor’s garden for a few broad beans and radishes.

You’re probably less likely to think of mushrooms.

But before publishing The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902, the British writer and illustrator was interested in a range of scientific disciplines. The field that attracted her interest the most was mycology – the study of fungi.

Before she became famous for her children’s books, one of Beatrix Potter’s main passions was mycology (Credit: MagnoliaPhotos/Alamy)

For at least a decade, Potter painted hundreds of detailed, accurate images of mushrooms. She studied them under a microscope to investigate how they reproduced and wrote a paper on germinating fungal spores that was presented at the prestigious Linnean Society of London.

In recent years, this lesser-known side of Potter’s life has caused controversy. Historians, writers and scientists have interpreted her surviving letters and journal in very different ways. Some have suggested that she was a pioneering scientist whose contributions were suppressed by the patriarchal Victorian scientific establishment. Others have described her as an ambitious, well-connected amateur with an overinflated sense of her work’s importance – one that fooled later writers into believing she was breaking new ground.

Potter’s watercolour of lepiota friesii (also known as lepiota aspera), done from a mushroom she collected in September 1895 (Credit: Armitt Museum)

Potter’s first known watercolours of mushrooms date from the summer of 1887, when she was 20 years old. By the early 1890s, more and more of Potter’s art focused on fungi.

Potter had a passion for painting beautiful specimens – Linda Lear

It was the fashion for Victorian women to illustrate botanical subjects. But it was also an interest she’d had from a young age, when she would sketch and paint on long family holidays in the countryside.

“Beatrix’s interest in drawing and painting mushrooms, or fungi, began as a passion for painting beautiful specimens wherever she found them,” wrote historian Linda Lear in her 2007 biography Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature. “She was drawn to fungi first by their ephemeral fairy qualities and then by the variety of their shape and colour and the challenge they posed to watercolour techniques.”

Potter spent a great deal of time in the Lake District, where she was spoilt for choice for fungi to sketch (Credit: Anna Marlow/Alamy)

In October 1892, Potter met with Charles McIntosh, a naturalist she had known since she was four: he was the local postman in Dalguise, Scotland, where her family holidayed for many years. McIntosh admired her pictures, sent her specimens to paint and advised her on scientific classification and microscope techniques. She sent him copies of her pictures in return.

She would go on to produce some 350 highly accurate pictures of fungi, mosses and spores.

Potter’s watercolour of flammulina velutipes, or winter mushrooms, that she collected in Perthshire in 1892 (Credit: Armitt Museum)

Flammulina velutipes (Credit: Dr Nick Kurzenko/Science Photo Library)

By 1895, Potter’s interest in fungi was becoming even more scientific. Following advice from McIntosh, she began to include cross sections of mushrooms in her illustrations to show their gills and used a microscope to draw their tiny spores. She speculated about whether these spores could germinate and the environments in which they might do so.

Potter produced some 350 highly accurate pictures of fungi, mosses and spores

In May 1896 her uncle – the eminent chemist Sir Henry Roscoe – introduced her to George Massee, the mycologist at Kew’s Royal Botanic Gardens. By that summer she was successfully germinating spores of various fungi on glass plates and measuring their growth under a microscope.

Potter believed her spore germination work and ideas about fungal reproduction were breaking new ground. Massee was sceptical. He advised her to read the work of German mycologist Julius Brefeld, who had germinated spores in the 1860s as part of pioneering work on fungi culturing techniques.

Potter was unperturbed. Roscoe encouraged her to go over Massee’s head by writing up her findings to show William Thistleton-Dyer – the director of Kew. In her account of the meeting in December 1896, Potter wrote that Thistleton-Dyer was dismissive and patronising. “I informed him that it would be in all the books in ten years, whether or no, and departed giggling,” she said.

Potter went on to present her work to the Linnean Society of London, which promotes natural history.

Some scientists in the 1890s still believed that lichens were a distinct organism (Credit: US Geological Survey/Science Photo Library)

Potter also began to engage leading figures on the question of the true nature of lichens. This was a fierce botanical controversy in the late 19th Century: at the time, lichens were thought to be distinct organisms. But in the 1860s, the Swiss botanist Simon Schwendener proposed the idea that lichens were, instead, closely interwoven combinations of fungi and algae. Although subsequent work proved Schwendener correct – the fungus depends on either algae or cyanobacteria to provide some of the organic nutrients it needs – his ideas initially provoked hostility and derision from his peers.

The true nature of lichens was a fierce botanical controversy in the late 19th Century

In a journal entry dated 30 December 1896, Potter described taking what she thought was a lichen she had grown from fungal spores, to show to George Murray, the Natural History Museum’s Keeper of Botany. He told her it was a fungus that resembled a lichen. She then asked him for his views on the lichen controversy. “He was so very high-handedly contemptuous of old-fashioned lichenologists,” she wrote.

Potter’s journal, written in code, was translated by Potter enthusiast Leslie Linder and published in 1966. In The Journal of Beatrix Potter from 1881 to 1897, Linder wrote in a footnote, “It sounds as if Mr Murray was casting doubt on the possibility of the two partners living in symbiosis… whereas Beatrix Potter was apparently convinced of this.”

“The soon-to-be-famous children’s illustrator was hounded out of biology by the closed ranks and narrow minds of London’s top scientific institutes,” wrote Tom Wakeford in his 2000 book Liaisons of Life. “Their members refused to accept Beatrix’s evidence that the curious living encrustations, known as lichens, on tree-trunks, seashores and walls, were made up of not one but two organisms in intimate liaison.”Some prominent writers have taken this footnote at face value. They have suggested that Potter had carried out work that persuaded her Schwendener was right – and that she was rebuffed by an elitist scientific establishment.

Potter’s watercolour of hygrocybe punicea, also called a scarlet waxy cap, that she collected in October 1894 (Credit: Armitt Museum)

Scarlet waxy cap (Credit: John Wright/Science Photo Library)

In that interpretation, of course, Potter would have been on the right side of history. But in more recent years, mycologists have called this view incorrect: in fact, the opposite was true – Potter thought lichens were single organisms. Linder’s footnote was wrong. The error made it into biographies like Lear’s.

“I was taken in by Lindar’s footnote on her journal, and so I wrote that Beatrix Potter supported Schwendener, and did believe in dualism,” Lear said. “I was corrected by some young American mycologists. We went back to the sources and I realised it was she who was an old fashioned lichenologist.”

One such mycologist, Nicholas Money of Miami University, concluded that Potter thought lichens were formed by fungi that could generate their own chlorophyll.

It was Potter who was an old fashioned lichenologist – Lear

“Potter was being very egotistical in her dealings with Murray and Thistleton-Dyer,” Money said. “I’m guessing that they were a bit contemptuous towards her because by the time she was doing this work, a great deal of evidence had been brought forward that lichens were partnerships between fungi and photo-synthetic partners – and she was batting on the wrong side.”

Still, by March 1897, the Royal Botanic Gardens mycologist Massee had gained enough confidence in Potter’s spore germination work to agree for her to submit her paper, “On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae”, to the Linnean Society.

The Society did not admit its first female fellow until 1905 – and as only fellows could attend meetings, Potter was not present when her paper was discussed. She later noted that it was “well received” but that members said it required more work.

Potter withdrew the paper, presumably to make amendments. But it was never published. No copy exists today.

Potter collected this boletus granulatus at Windermere in August 1895 (Credit: Armitt Museum)

Potter’s attempts to get her ideas on fungi taken seriously by leading scientists ended by the autumn of 1897. This has led some to claim that she was an important scientist, stopped in her tracks by stuffy Victorian elitists.

Today, however, most experts agree that closer readings of Potter’s diary suggest such claims are exaggerated.

The reality is she was dabbling as an enthusiastic amateur rather than doing anything ground-breaking – Nicholas Money

“Beatrix Potter’s work with a microscope has been hyped and a whole mythology has been built up around it, but the reality is she was dabbling as an enthusiastic amateur rather than doing anything ground-breaking,” Money said. “Her paintings of fungi and their fruit bodies were beautiful and scientifically accurate – and were later used to help identify mushrooms. And in the end, that may have been her important contribution to mycology.”

Another of Potter’s Windermere finds: amanita excels, collected in August 1895 (Credit: Armitt Museum)

Lear, too, acknowledges that she gave Potter’s view on lichens more credit than was due. “My claims for Potter’s acceptance of symbiosis are both overstated and incorrect,” Lear said.

But, she added, “She should get credit for her openness to speculation, her careful and thoughtful observation of several species of lichens and algae and her courage as a female to speculate in a professional field.”

She should get credit for her courage as a female to speculate in a professional field – Lear

It is worth noting that although Potter was keen on studying fungi, there is no evidence she wanted to earn a living as a scientist. Her journal suggests she was motivated more by seeking something to occupy her intelligence and curiosity, make a little money and assert her independence – all at a time when most avenues for women were barred.

In that, of course, she succeeded: The Tale of Peter Rabbit alone has been translated into more than 45 languages and sold 45 million copies. More than 250 million copies of her books have been sold worldwide.

“Beatrix Potter was an intelligent woman who was bored and wanted something to do that would keep her busy and earn her a little money,” Lear said. “I don’t think she had any ambition to be a mycologist. She’s already been successful in selling some of her art work and when the research paper she wrote needed more work, she lost interest in favour of something that was more suited to what she was after.”

why-the-cats-on-one-british-island-have-lost-their-tails

n the towns dotted across Britain’s Isle of Man, you can sometimes spy a particularly eye-catching resident. It is a cat seemingly like any other, only missing something: its tail.

The animal has captured the hearts of pet owners both on the island and much further afield. In fact, there are now far more Manx cats in North America than on the island where they originated.

Four possible mutations of a single gene can lead to a Manx cat (Credit: blickwinkel/Alamy Stock Photo)

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How they came to lose their tails in the first place remains a bit of a mystery – but the answer lies in a genetic mutation.

In 2013, one gene was shown to have four possible mutations that can lead to a tailless Manx cat. All four mutations are specific to the Manx – other tailless or bob-tailed cats carry different mutations responsible for the trait.

The study’s co-author Leslie Lyons, a cat expert and geneticist at the University of Missouri – Columbia, went to the Isle of Man herself to collect samples from Manx cats. The mutations were present there, meaning all Manx cats must have come from tailless cats on the island, which have lived there for hundreds of years.

Isle of Man resident Sara Goodwins, author of the book A De-tailed Account of Manx Cats, notes that the first linguistic reference to tailless cats on the Isle of Man appears in the mid-18th Century. Before that, since there was no special word for them, Goodwins says that it was unlikely they were present in any significant number.

Since cats use their tails for balance when running and jumping, and to communicate body language, it seems odd that some should lack them. Lyons says she cannot think of any natural advantage to being without a tail. Instead, the gene likely has been passed on mainly through selective breeding by humans, a process called “novelty selection”.

If a cat inherits the Manx gene from two parents rather than one, it likely will die in the womb (Credit: blickwinkel/Alamy Stock Photo)

Although the gene that carries these mutations is dominant, making it easy enough to pass on, there is an interesting quirk: if an unborn cat inherits the gene from both parents rather than just one, it will likely die in the womb. That is why the gene that causes the cats to have no tail has been nicknamed, darkly, “the lethal gene”.

“You never see these babies born, or they never develop,” says Lyons. “That means there is a high selection against this mutation.”

For this reason, some breeders will not try to preserve the gene, while others have specialised in trying to breed Manx cats with healthier spines.Even when the gene is inherited from just one parent, it is not necessarily benign. Manx cats can suffer from health issues related to having too few vertebrae in the lower or lower-middle part of their spines, like incontinence and in some cases even lameness.

The introduction of problematic traits in domesticated animals is a phenomenon that is gradually becoming better understood.

Docking, which surgically removes the tails of young cats and dogs so that they appear to have been born without tails, is banned in the UK (Credit: John Hubble/Alamy Stock Photo)

For example, a 2016 study of dogs suggested that small domestic populations led to the accumulation of harmful genes in animals that were selectively bred for certain physical features, such as colour or shape of the head.

Even more troubling is a practice called “docking”, in which the tails of young cats and dogs are surgically removed so that they appear to have been born without tails. The process is banned as a cosmetic measure in the UK, except for working dogs used by the police and armed services.

However, Manx owners say that their breeding has not just caused them to lose their tails, but other feline characteristics, too. “A Manx cat will go for a walk with you,” says Goodwins. “Most cats hate water but Manx cats like swimming.”

It is not clear why they behave this way.

Goodwins’ personal theory is that the Manx genome was influenced by the introduction of Scandinavian cat breeds to the Isle of Man when Vikings arrived there over a millennium ago. Today’s Norwegian forest cats, which share some of the Manx’s doglike characteristics, are likely descended from cats that Vikings kept.

However, Lyons says that she is not aware of any genetic evidence that would back up Goodwins’ idea.

“They’re not similar to one another [genetically], but they are similar to random bred cats,” she says. The Manx genome is like the Norwegian forest cat’s only in the sense that they are both highly diverse: if a cat has been bred from many different breeds, it will “match” with a Manx simply because the two share diverse genomes.

Manx owners say the cats have lost feline characteristics aside from their tails — a Manx will even go for a walk with you (Credit: Daniel Valla FRPS/Alamy Stock Photo)

The Manx cat, then, may be an oddity but it reveals much about our attitudes towards domesticated animals. As our understanding of genetics has improved, so has our understanding of the Manx.

Whether it will be deemed ethical to preserve Manx mutations in the future is unclear. But the cat certainly has, against all the odds, survived and thrived, even far from its native shores.

For a humble islander without a tail, the Manx has – if nothing else – certainly travelled well.

ilm-review-deadpool-is-a-superhero-movie-for-adults-only

Deadpool is a Marvel superhero movie that infuses the usual noble bombast with a welcome dose of grunge. It’s a breezy, synthetic entertainment, nothing more, but with a distinctive tone – a wisecracking graveyard comedy in tights. Its main character, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), wears an outfit that’s a knockoff of Spider-Man’s, except that you can see the dirt on its red Spandex, and his attitude is even dirtier. When Wade talks (which is more or less all the time), he sounds like the Jim Carrey of 20 years ago – the nattering prankster of Ace Ventura and The Mask – crossed with one of the hellbent wiseacres on a Comedy Central Celebrity Roast, and mixed in with a hint of gangsta rap. He’s a one-man verbal hit squad, tossing off omnisexual rejoinders too naughty to recount here, and he’s also whip-smart. Before administering the coup de grâce to a goon he’s busy beating to a pulp, he says, “I’m about to do to you what Limp Bizkit did to music in the late ‘90s.” One appreciates not just his slasher wit but the spot-on accuracy of his pop judgment.

A former US military assassin who still spits bullets, Wade is scarred, edgy, antic, and maybe a little crazy – the kind of character you would not expect a likable lightweight like Ryan Reynolds to play. But Reynolds, who has already been burned – and badly – by the superhero genre, appears ready not to make the same mistake again. In the misbegotten Green Lantern he was fatally uncool, but in Deadpool he delivers his verbal fusillades with the nonchalance of someone who doesn’t care if he lives or dies, and his slightly fey nihilism is infectious. He invests the act of not giving a damn with conviction.

Behind the mask

In superhero fantasy, there’s a grand tradition of characters, both good and evil – the Hulk, the Joker – who find their physical and spiritual identities through being maimed; their patron saint might be the Phantom of the Opera. In Deadpool, Wade joins this gallery of darkly empowered freaks, but what makes him more than a gloss on the disfigured icons of comic books past is that the film doesn’t just pay lip service to the torments he has to endure. It makes us feel his pain.

This may be the first romance in movie history to make S&M kink look cuddly

Even prior to his transformation, Wade is an alarmingly unhinged badass. He hooks up with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), who matches his pierced-punk vibe, and they fall into what may be the first romance in movie history to make S&M kink look cuddly. Baccarin, as fiery as she is gorgeous, strikes the kind of sparks with Reynolds that love interests in superhero films too often don’t. When their idyll is interrupted by Wade’s diagnosis of advanced lung cancer, we feel as if we’re in his doomed shoes.

With nothing to lose, Wade joins an underground mutant-superhero program that promises to cure his disease and give him untold powers. The catch? He has to go through the torments of the damned. The leader of the experiment, a smirking sadist named Ajax (Ed Skrein), keeps inventing new physical punishments, so that Wade’s body, in response, will either “mutate or die”. This grisly sequence gives Deadpool a touch of horror beneath its jokey surface. Wade survives, with a body that’s invincible but also with a scarred face that makes him look like the preppy son of Freddy Krueger.

His powers are super, but is Deadpool a hero?

His powers are super, but is Deadpool a hero? He’s recruited by two members of the X-Men but he has no real interest in joining them. And thank goodness for that! Deadpool is a less clunky origin story than we’re used to, and the main reason is that Wade’s agenda has nothing to do with saving the world. He just wants to hunt down Ajax, force him to fix his face, and maybe kill him for kicks.

The film’s first-time director, Tim Miller, gives us opening credits worthy of Mad magazine – one of them reads, “Directed by Some Overpaid Tool” – and he uses schlocky soft rock by Wham! and Peter Cetera to counterpoint scenes of slow-mo mayhem. He also keeps having Reynolds’ Deadpool break the fourth wall: not just by directly addressing the audience but by making fun of other Marvel movies. When Deadpool is on the warpath, his weapon of choice is a pair of ninja swords he uses to turn bad guys into chopped liver, and he’s quite upfront about what he’s doing. It’s not just crime-fighting, it’s murder. The downside of the film’s elemental revenge plot is that it rarely feels like there’s a lot at stake. Deadpool hooks you into Wade’s trauma, but mostly it’s content to skate along on the cheekiness of his death-sport attitude. The film’s airy cynicism says: he’s not the hero we dream of, he’s just the one we deserve.

is-nordic-humour-too-dark-for-the-rest-of-the-world

Two brothers haven’t spoken in forty years, and a plague threatens to destroy what’s dearest to them – their prize-winning herd of sheep. There’s blood, there are tears, and it’s all set against a brooding grey landscape.

But Hrutar, or Rams, isn’t the latest success story of Nordic noir – although it’s from Iceland. It’s a tragi-comedy, which its director, Grímur Hákonarson, calls “sad and funny at the same time. We call it ‘gálgahúmor’ in Iceland, or ‘gallows humour’. It’s very typical of Scandinavia.”

‘Gálgahúmor’ or ‘gallows humour’ is very typical of Scandinavia – Grimur Hakonarson

Rams is on course to become one of the most critically successful Nordic films ever – after winning the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes, from next month it will be released in more than forty countries, including the US, UK, France and Italy. It’s also Iceland’s Oscar entry.

The global phenomenon of ‘Nordic Noir’ began in 2009 with the Swedish original of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Credit: Music Box Films)

But this is where Rams stands alone in its field – bleating. While Swedish producer Gudrun Giddings, who lives in Los Angeles, says her phone has been “ringing off the hook” since 2010 with requests for Nordic talent, the woman known as ‘the Scandinavian Whisperer’ for her ability to promote these countries in Hollywood, says when it comes to comedy, her sweet nothings fall on deaf ears.

“We’re known for being dark and depressing,” she says. “I suppose our comedy can be seen like that too.”

Pitch black

The global phenomenon of ‘Nordic Noir’ started with the Swedish original of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in 2009, which sold six million cinema tickets. It was followed by Wallander, The Killing, The Bridge and political thriller Borgen.

Hollywood capitalised on Swedish vampire horror Let the Right One In by remaking it as Let Me In, while even the family film Frozen is based on an old Scandinavian myth. Next tip for the top is Occupied, which debuted on Norway’s TV2 recently and is about the fictional Russian occupation of the country.

Comedy is ‘one tough nut to crack’ – Berna Levin

Stockholm-based Yellowbird productions is behind it, as well as Wallander and Dragon Tattoo, but even its Chief Creative Officer, Berna Levin, describes the comedic genre as “one tough nut to crack.”

“It’s the one area we just can’t develop,” she says. “We’re constantly in demand for drama because we’re seen as edgy, twisted and a little rebellious, but we’re finding it so difficult to sell comedy that I can’t see us doing anything for an international market for the foreseeable future.

Sweden’s The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared is a recent comedy from Scandinavia that has found international success (Credit: Music Box Films)

“It’s a shame. The Swedes and the Danes in particular love the dry Anglo-Saxon sense of humour, but it seems to be a one-way love affair.”

A matter of taste

There has been one notable international comic success recently – Sweden’s The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared, but this was based on Jonas Jonasson’s well-loved and best-selling book. Finland’s crowd-funded Iron Sky also marketed itself a global release in 2012, because director Timo Vuorensola already had a fanbase from a Star Trek parody he’d made. But Iron Sky, a B-movie romp about Nazis living on the moon, failed in its mission to make critics laugh – ‘it’s marginally more inspired than Snakes on a Plane or The Human Centipede’ was the comment of one.

Iron Sky, a B-movie romp about Nazis living on the moon, failed in its mission to make critics laugh (Credit: Entertainment One)

“However, I’d say our national characteristics as nations also play a part in holding us back – we tend to be extremely humble, and very reticent. We don’t play for laughs.”TV producer Johanna Karppinen is a supporting partner of A Finnish Film Affair, an event designed to expand the local industry globally. She thinks sub-titles are comedy’s biggest barrier to an international audience, “because so much of comedy is in the timing and delivery.

“We are really very morbid,” is the confession of Peter Franzén, a Finnish actor and director who plays King Harald in History’s TV series The Vikings. “We spend a lot of time in the far North, in the dark, surrounded by trees, alone. This can end up expressing itself in craziness – such as Iron Sky – or in something grimmer.”

If there’s a dead body in Denmark, someone is going to make a joke about it – Anders Jensen

The dark may or may not have something to do with the high suicide rate amongst the Nordic countries (Finland also has the highest murder rate in Western Europe) but it’s certainly contributed to their black humour. This tradition, according to Rams’ Grímur Hákonarson, stretches all the way back to the Old Icelandic Sagas and the descriptions of Viking killing – “the heads fly off and the bodies split apart,” he says. “That’s very funny, sometimes.”

The situation is not much better for modern-day corpses; according to Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen, “if there’s a dead body in Denmark, someone is going to make a joke about it.”

Jensen, who directed 2008’s The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley, also wrote Love Is All You Need, an Anglo-Danish rom-com starring Piers Brosnan – but wasn’t afraid to make his heroine a cancer sufferer. This year he wrote and directed Men and Chicken, starring Mads Mikkelsen and Borgen’s Søren Malling. A flat-out comedy, it’s about five grotesquely disfigured brothers and their estranged father running amok in a derelict sanatorium.

Men and Chicken stars Mads Mikkelsen and Borgen’s Søren Malling and is a comedy about five grotesquely disfigured brothers (Credit: Walt Disney Company Nordic)

“It won’t be to everyone’s taste,” he admits. “But sometimes I love it when people in the audience aren’t laughing.”

Men and Chicken premiered at the Toronto Film Festival this year – as did Return of the Atom, a bleakly humorous Finnish documentary about life in a town that has received the first European nuclear reactor since Chernobyl. The problem, according to its directors, Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola, was that they weren’t sure if the public outside the Nordic countries would realise it was supposed to be funny.

Or else you’ll cry

Should Scandinavians, and their Nordic cousins, be applauded for laughing at the darker side of life, while Hollywood makes The Hangover and Grown Ups? Iceland’s 2011 Oscar submission, Mama Gogo, by Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, managed to make a comedy about the onset of Alzheimers in an elderly woman. Norwegian TV series Dag is about a marriage counsellor who thinks everyone should live alone; Rare Exports from Finland in 2010 made a comedy horror out of a Christmas movie about Santa Claus.

If you just make pure comedy the laughs don’t always last that long – Maria Pykko

This, according to Maria Pykko, a Finnish TV director, is where Nordic humour is most successful – mixed with other genres. Her own show, The Black Widows, a Desperate-Housewives style comedy-drama that starts with three women murdering their husbands, is being re-made across Scandinavia and the English-language rights have been bought by CBS in North America.

Iceland’s 2011 Oscar submission, Mama Gogo, by Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, finds comedy in the story of the onset of Alzheimers in an elderly woman (Credit: SEG Distribusjon)

“If you just make pure comedy the laughs don’t always last that long,” she says. “If you have a bottom line of a strong plot and drama then I think our humour has a place. If you think of really successful thrillers like Norway’s Headhunters or the action thriller In Order of Disappearance, the strong drama allows for those comic moments.

“The harder the drama, the funnier it can be.”

This could be the secret to Rams’ s appeal, amidst its death and destructive relationships. Grímur Hákonarson says that he “couldn’t help but make it a little bit funny; the situation itself is humourous: two neighbouring sheep farmers who are brothers and who haven’t spoken in forty years.

“It’s very simple and humanistic but at the same time most people will recognise the themes. We have to make fun out of our own misery or we wouldn’t survive.”

An Island Only Helicopters Can Reach

In the centre of La Réunion, the tiny French island that bobs in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Mauritius, there is another sort of island. This one is even more isolated.

Formed when the magna chamber of a major volcano collapsed some three million years ago, the verdant Cirque de Mafate is separated from the rest of the island by sheer cliff walls, impressive mountains and thick tropical forest. The only way in or out of the amphitheatre-shaped valley is by foot – or, in a pinch, by helicopter.

Settlers arrived in the lush volcanic crater in the 18th Century. The first wave consisted of enslaved Africans fleeing their masters. Later came several impoverished French farmers whose plantations had failed after slavery was abolished. For generations, these settlers and their descendants were all but cut off from the outside world.

Today, Mafate’s roughly 800 inhabitants, known as Mafatais, live in tiny villages called îlets (a local Creole word that evokes the French word for tiny islands, îlots). Almost all of the residents are descendants of the original settlers, and each village consists of as few as two or three colourful, tin-roofed houses. There’s no electricity or water grid for the approximately 100sqkm valley. Doctors, police officers or foresters, if ever they are needed, are either brought in by helicopter or hike in.

In 2010, Unesco designated Mafate – as well as La Réunion’s two other, more accessible cirques and all of the island’s pitons and ramparts – as a World Heritage site, a move that’s brought in a recent influx of travellers. For now, those who visit this lost Garden of Eden are treated to breathtaking vistas, deep lush forests, wide African plains, wild rivers and a rich local culture – but that might not always be the case.

Much like the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean, La Réunion is home to a number of endemic birds, insects and plants not found anywhere else in the world. And Mafate is one of the few places left in the world to see an ecosystem that has developed over millions of years in relative isolation.

The valley is home to the Réunion stonechat, the Réunion marsh harrier, the Mascarene paradise flycatcher and the Réunion olive white-eye – all birds found only in the region. Several of the plants on view – most impressively the large highland tamarind tree that populates the Tamarin plains just below the Col des Bœufs mountain pass – grow nowhere else but Mafate.