By Meredith Root-Bernstein, UMR CESCO, CNRS, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France; Center of Sustainability and Applied Ecology, Santiago, Chile; Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Santiago, Chile §
Phanerology
In a news item titled “Mountain excitement,” the scientific journal Current Biology reported the rediscovery of the Bavarian short-eared mouse Microtus bavaricus. Nothing about this news item is as it seems. First of all, the Bavarian short-eared mouse is not a mouse, but is in fact a vole. Secondly, what is exciting here is not that the mouse-which-is-a-vole has been seen, because it has probably been seen a lot, but that it has finally been recognized. An expert in voles explains that all voles basically look the same, saying, “They all have tiny ears and short tails” (Williams 2005). Thirdly, the accompanying illustration of the rediscovered Bavarian short-eared mouse is a photograph of an Oakney vole, as the caption freely admits. Biologists are excited about this rediscovery because it helps them piece together otherwise imperceptible patterns of speciation or niche partitioning. But by focusing on the imperceptible, we may forget to ask obvious questions about things as they appear to us: why, for example, does a Bavarian short-eared mouse look so much like an Oakney vole? Shouldn’t all animals look different?
In his relatively obscure classic book Animal Forms and Patterns the early twentieth century Swiss biologist Adolf Portmann introduced a new field called phanerology. According to Portmann, the function of the exterior form of an animal is to appear, or to present the self. Phanerology is the study of these appearances. Portmann presents phanerology as rigorously objective, as though there were a single perspective on appearing—his own perspective as a scientist. He ignores the perspectives of conspecifics, competitors, prey or predators on a given species’ appearance.
We may compare this to the ideas of another early twentieth century zoologist and classic author, Jakob von Uexküll. If Portmann under-appreciated subjective perspectives, von Uexküll appreciated them abundantly, beyond what science could absorb. He is best known for his work introducing the idea of the Umwelt, or the sensorial world proper to each species. He also describes a less-known phenomenon he calls the “magic shadow,” a concept similar to what modern animal psychologists call “superstitious behavior.” Both terms refer to learning an association between two cues, even though this association does not reflect the “real” structure of the world or the normal relationship between those cues. For example, due to a coincidence a chicken might associate the shadow of a guinea pig with an electric shock. From then on, the chicken behaves as though guinea pig shadows cause or predict electric shocks even though (as an experimenter or outside observer may determine), the original guinea pig shadow had no such relationship to electric shocks. The shadow takes on a quality that von Uexküll describes as “magic.” Needless to say, the evocation of magic made this concept harder to absorb into science than the related but resolutely objective “superstitious behavior.”
In my reading, von Uexküll is not just using colorful language, but is referring to a specific kind of subjective experience. Magic is the perception of a structure and functioning of the world, a set of influences and powers that are largely invisible, yet can be traced and manipulated via a logic of visual resemblances and analogies of form (Taussig 1993; Bernault 2019). While “superstition” suggests such perceptions are objectively false, the word “magic” points to ways of knowing invisible causes from within Umwelts generating a world of subjective appearances. If appearances are always positional and subjective, making judgements about their objectivity misses the richness of perspectives at play in biology.
Here I want to propose an approach to ethnobiology that combines phanerology with Umwelts and magic shadows. I think of ethnobiology as a discipline that can pose questions both about how people understand the world, and also about how other species understand the world—or what we can understand about how other species understand the world (see for example Lestel et al. 2006, Zimmerer 2001). An ethnobiology of subjective phanerology poses questions about how species appear from different perspectives and what kinds of interspecies functions appearances may have.
Invisibility
One thing that Portmann misses from his perspective as a scientist is the appearance of invisibility of the vast majority of mammals and marsupials. Most mammals and marsupials are actually quite difficult to observe—at least from a human perspective. Even expert trackers or naturalists have difficulties because of their camouflage or small size, but also nocturnal or crepuscular activity patterns, and other aspects of their behavior such as living in trees or underground. There are at least a dozen cases in which a species has not been seen during 50 or 100 years, and is presumed extinct, only to be rediscovered again by chance (e.g., Carrington 2020; Ochoa et al. 2020; Leggett et al. 2017; Cserkész et al. 2015; Řeháková et al. 2015; Williams 2005; Percequillo et al. 2004; Hulbert et al. 1971; Wilkinson 1961). Many of these lost and then rediscovered mammals are small or arboreal, such as species of possum, elephant shrew and vole.
Beyond being effectively invisible to humans, some mammals and marsupials are also what are called “cryptic species.” This refers to the idea that more than one species can be “hidden” within a single morphology or appearance, usually of species living together in the same area. Like the voles discussed above, many small mammals resemble one another very closely.
Cryptic species are a puzzle for biology because they seem to confound one, if not both, of the most popular species definitions (Baskevich et al. 2014; Harrison & Larson 2014). For example, the morphological or typological species concept states that there should be a “morphological hiatus” between species—some kind of distinction in body shape. The biological or genetic concept of species states that species consist of populations of individuals that can reproduce with one another and share a gene pool. Two populations that cannot breed together, and are thus different species, are generally assumed to diverge over time, and thus should also not look the same.
The yaca and the monito del monte
There are two arboreal marsupials in Chile, the yaca Thylamys elegans, and the monito del monte (“little monkey of the forest”, but not in fact a monkey), Dromiciops gliroides (Figure 1). While not described as cryptic species, they are indeed very similar in appearance, and even experts can sometimes have difficulty identifying photographs or specimens of these species correctly. The clearest difference between them is their geographical distribution: the yaca tolerates drier conditions, and is found in a large range from the moist temperate south of Chile to the arid north. The monito del monte prefers dense and humid forests, and is found only in the south-central part of Chile: their ranges overlap but the yaca’s is larger. The monito is well-known and well-loved in Chile, having featured in various nature shows on television.
For several years I have carried out conservation research in an isolated valley in central Chile known as Alhué. Much of this research depends on the ecological knowledge of local interlocutors. During one research trip, one of my most trusted interlocutors told me that he and others had seen monitos del monte in the forests of Alhué. As Alhué is central Chile, several hundred kilometers north of the northernmost distribution of monitos, I asked him if what he had seen were possibly yacas: did he know about yacas? Yes, he said, yacas are different. Intrigued, I later asked my ecologist colleague Juan Luis Celis, an expert in yacas and monitos, if this was possible. He told me that this was not the first time that he had heard about monitos in Alhué. He had carried out a trapping campaign in Alhué several years ago, but had found no trace of them. However, he pointed out that this was not evidence that there are no monitos in Alhué: small marsupials are hard to detect. Could this be a case of potential rediscovery, establishing a more northerly original distribution for D. gliroides including the valley of Alhué?
Alhué, surrounded by mountains and harboring large areas of woodland, is considered a biocultural refuge (Barthel et al. 2013). It is certainly not untouched by modernity—in addition to a mine and a mine tailings dam, large parts of the valley have been converted to industrial vineyards and fruit plantations. But other parts of the valley are still managed almost exactly as they have been for centuries. Alhué may also be a biogeographical refuge where monitos (and perhaps other very small animals) could have survived extensive conversion of woodlands to agricultural fields starting several centuries ago.
Consequently, in August 2018 my collaborator Matías Guerrero and I interviewed 13 people in Alhué who claimed to have seen monitos in Alhué, whom we found through snowballing. We asked them how they recognized the monito, if they knew about yacas, and if so, how to distinguish the two animals. We also presented each person with 19 cards showing photos and scientific drawings of the two species and asked them to sort the cards into those showing monitos and those showing yacas. One person correctly identified 18 out of 19 cards. The majority of participants correctly identified 2 or 3 cards of one species or the other, and then refused to sort the other cards. A remaining few people sorted most of the cards but were only 50% correct. Thus most people felt unsure about most images: only in certain poses or with some features highlighted were most people sure what was a yaca and/or what was a monito.
There were multiple forms of knowledge of monitos among study participants. Direct observation was, in this context, of greatest interest to us. In our field notes we recorded: “[The monito] was also seen briefly in the branches in the sector of Polulo, where it is very forested, in an area with many trees, a little animal that was jumping in the branches[1]” (interview notes, interviewee 1). Another participant’s account was that “[h]e had seen them when he was planting potatoes in 1987. He was removing the vegetation and cleaning in order to plant. They were in the trunk of a quillay [tree][2]” (interview notes, interviewee 3). One of the participants also claimed to have found a dead monito drowned in a bucket, and to have sent it to one of the Chilean universities for identification. Unfortunately, it proved impossible to locate this specimen. Other knowledge did not come from direct observation. “He has never seen a yaca, but knows about it from reading—but he has heard that there are yacas here—where the palms are[3]” (interview notes, interviewee 1). Nature programs also had an influence: “He has seen the monito on TV[4]” (interview notes, interviewee 11).
The descriptions of how to recognize and identify monitos vs. yacas relied on a common set of features. Notably, participants had difficulty finding the words to convey the appearances of animals they had sometimes seen only once, at a distance, 30 years ago. One person I was interviewing paused in the middle of the interview to call a friend or relative on the phone and ask (with no preamble) “What color is a yaca?” A key distinguishing feature was the ears. Monitos were often described as having “little baby’s ears” [orejitas de guagua], whereas yacas had ears that were “round” [redondas], “sticking out” [saltonas], “upright” [paradas], or simply “a different shape” [de otra forma] compared to monito ears. The tail was another key feature. Many participants claimed that only the monito has a prehensile tail—although in fact both species have prehensile tails. Behavior was also a way to distinguish them. The yaca was described as “fierce” [brava], “jumping” [saltona], and was said to bite; the monito was described as calm and unaggressive in comparison. Participants also attempted to convey qualities of the nose, fur, size, habitat and food of the two species.
During one of the initial interviews, I suddenly realized that my interlocutor was describing neither D. gliroides nor T. elegans, but an entirely different small mammal: Octodon lunatus, a species of degu, which is a kind of rodent. This cryptic, or occasionally explicitly named, appearance of the degu in answers to questions about monitos and yacas was repeated more than once in our interviews. Although degus objectively do not look very much like either of the two marsupials, it seems to be the case that both degus and yacas eat the tiny coconuts of the Chilean palm. I presume that people saw one or more small furry animals at a distance on or under palms, and later found its visible traces in the form of partially-eaten coconuts (which are about 1.5 cm in diameter) with small teeth marks on them. The two species then became combined in many accounts as one “coconut-eating small animal.”
From the descriptions given to us, I derive three possible classification systems that different people in Alhué may be using, which draw on the same names but use different categorizations. In the first and second classification systems, what the things called “monitos” have in common is that they are the least visualizable category, defined by implicit similarity to, but unspecified difference from a yaca made visible either in its body or in the signs of its eating coconuts. “Monito” is here simply an invisible “other” to the yaca. Only in the third classification system does the animal sometimes called a “monito” come into view. Thus, the first classification system contrasts an animal called “yaca”, defined as “a pointy-nosed animal with ears that stick out, that you see everywhere”, with a “nameless animal” category that may correspond to D. gliroides and/or O. lunatus. The second system identifies the “yaca” as a “coconut-eating small animal” (including the two scientific species T. elegans and O. lunatus), contrasted with a “monito”. A third system contrasts one animal called either “monito” or “yaca” which is defined as “a pointy-nosed baby-eared animal seen fleetingly in a tree”, vs. an animal called either “yaca” or “degu” and defined as a “coconut-eating small animal”.
Mimesis
More specifically, however, I want to propose that what is usually called “monito” in Alhué refers less to a particular species per se, and more to an appearance generated by a form of encounter that renders briefly visible an otherwise invisible animal. As we recorded in the notes from interviewee 4, “He has seen them both, he doesn’t know if they can be distinguished visually, but rather upon encountering them[5].” There were also controversies around the mode of encounter that correctly produced the fleeting, arboreal, pointy-nosed and baby-eared appearance of a monito: “The ones that are seen drowned in water are not monitos [as is sometimes claimed]… The yaca is more visible, it is always seen[6]” (interview notes, interviewee 3). Previously, monitos appeared when people were clearing forest to establish fields, or collecting various forest products in the mountains. Today both of these activities have been almost entirely abandoned, and the conditions for encountering a monito are rarely met. Nevertheless, many people we interviewed were convinced that monitos were still there.
In Mimesis and Alterity, Taussig (1993) describes mimesis as influence over an other through techniques of similarity. When thinking about mimesis in the context of small mammal and marsupial phanerology, we should consider both what influence techniques of similarity (that is, similar appearances and how they are interacted with) operate on the species that resemble one another, and also what influence these techniques have on third parties such as humans.
In many cases, small animals that resemble one another to some degree also mate with one another. For example, the females of the pocket gopher Thomomys bottae apparently view males of the larger pocket gopher species Thomomys townsendii as perfectly valid mates whose large size makes them super-normally attractive, leading to zones of hybridization (Shurtliff 2011). The mimesis underlying successful hybridization and the blurring of species boundaries that it creates allows for greater reproductive success and generates possibilities for adaptation (Shurtliff 2011). In other cases, similar species do not create viable hybrids. As far as we know, for example, there are several species or subspecies of D. gliroides but there are no reports of hybridization with T. elegans. This is possibly because they are not closely related and their hybrids (if they mate) could be inviable: D. gliroides is a “living fossil” not closely related to other extant marsupials (Fontúrbel et al. 2021), while T. elegans is one of many very similar-looking “mouse opossums” found throughout South America.
While there is no biological theory specifically about whether or not two species can have the same appearance, we generally understand that the physical traits or characteristics of species determine how they live in the world. For example, the differently-shaped beaks of Darwin’s finches reflect that they specialize in eating different things, and have different niches. This, in turn, points to an evolutionary process in which, to avoid competition over the same niche, or because of physical barriers preventing reproduction, they have diverged from a common ancestor. Thus, in sum, two species, which if they ever come into contact must have two different niches, cannot resemble one another. The opposite occurs within a species: members of a species should resemble each other because by the genetic species criterion, members of the same species may mate with one another: a species is a continuity of the reproduction of form and niche[7].
This set of logical relations points to the possible conditions under which yacas and monitos could come to resemble one another in defiance of the morphological species criterion. If yacas and monitos have the potentiality to mate with one another (because they come into contact and look similar), then they would effectively act as one species, defying the genetic species criterion. And if they potentially mate with one another, then they are essentially the same species, and if they are essentially the same species, they should have essentially the same niche, and if they have the same niche they should essentially look the same. Imagining that monitos and yacas potentially mate with one another is more obvious that one might think.
Here I take a cue from environmental humanities, which have pushed the boundaries in our conception of nonhuman gender and sexuality, drawing on contemporary art and science fiction (Hessler 2021). Kurt Vonnegut in his novel Slaughterhouse-Five describes an alien species that has a large number of biological sexes, each of which plays a specific role in the process of reproduction. Biologists are accustomed to recognize only two sexes on Earth, as defined by the two gametes, egg and sperm, which sometimes (but indeed, not in all species or all cases) need one of each to merge to create a developing embryo. In a Vonnegut style, however, we could also imagine monitos and yacas (or the large and small pocket gophers discussed above) as comprising one morphological species with four sexes, in which only some combinations result directly in the final outcome of reproduction. Since sexual behavior throughout the animal kingdom appears to be inherently imprecise in who it targets (Monk et al. 2019), any sexual interactions in which mating does not lead immediately to a viable embryo must be considered part of the general adaptive sexual behavior. We may thus think of monitos and yacas as potentially comprising two varieties of a single species according to the biological criterion, as well as two varieties of a morphological species with an overlapping ecological niche. It is thus the potentialities of yaca-monito encounters that can account for their close resemblance.
Influence
I would argue that for the people of Alhué, the visible yaca serves to conjure the monito, despite economic, political and climate changes that reduce practices of human-monito encounter in the mountains. The yaca is a kind of “magic shadow” of the monito, a learned association (or confusion) that links the two in the shared cultural imagination. A landscape that reveals the possibility of monitos is a landscape in which people are not only influenced, in the sense of being manipulated by large-scale socio-politico-economic transformations, but can also exercise a magical influence in the form of encounters with other beings. Knowledge of how to make a monito appear in the forest asserts Alhuinos’ mastery of something beyond the mere surface of the world.
Phanerology, as the study of biological appearances, consists of an interplay between surfaces, which are visible and communicate certain affordances to the world, and interiors, which are invisible and wherein reside the potential for various unrealized conformations or comportments. I argue that phanerological encounters in the forest between humans and yacas, and/or humans and monitos, produce certain associations between monitos and yacas that make the yaca the magic shadow which implies the presence of an unobserved monito. I argue that to understand claims about the presence of the monito in Alhué it is not important whether the appearance that is observed is really o f a Dromiciops gliroides or of a Thylamys elegans— what is really being talked about in these claims are the conditions under which encounters reveal the appearance of a yaca or a monito. By naming monitos according to the mode of encounter rather than barely distinguishable differences in form, Alhuinos continue to read the signs of a mode of influence they have over their landscape which is slowly fading away.
The surfaces of monitos and yacas— that is their shapes, their appearances— reveal a continuity of form that, I argue, we have to take seriously as a unity of kind in a biological-ecological sense, despite the likelihood that their distinct genetic lineages mean they cannot produce viable young. In a classic ethnobiology move, but with a phanerological and environmental humanities twist, I want to argue that scientific naming conventions for species are not the only valid or relevant ones— not only for people, who as we know may be talking about many things that are not genetic lineage categories when naming species— but also for other species, or even within biology. Thus, when we focus on how other species perceive one another’s appearances— phanerology plus Umwelt— we understand that many or perhaps all species live in a world of interspecies social continuities and fluidities where the term interspecies doesn’t even make sense. The many ways in which species concepts are breached or ignored have hardly been theorized in biology. Darwin understood that the differences between two varieties, between two species, two genera, or two families are differences of the same kind, which illustrates the gradual and universal process of differentiation by natural selection— yet the species category, for history of science reasons I will not go into here, has been reified as the most important and evolutionarily meaningful level of difference. I argue that the way that other species themselves form mimetic relationships— the influences they exercise through techniques of similarity, including sexual interactions— deserve to be theorized, to be treated as important and critical clues to the structuring of life in a multispecies biology that de-centers the traditional human and scientific perspective.
Notes
[1] También se vió muy fugaz en las ramas en el sector Polulo, donde es muy boscoso, en un lugar con muchos árboles, un animalito que saltaba en las ramas.
[2] Él los vio sembrando porotos en 1987. Roza[ndo] el monte y limpia[ndo] para poder sembrar. Estaban en un tronco de quillay.
[3] Nunca ha visto una yaca, conoce por lectura- pero a escuchado que hay acá- donde las palmas.
[4] Ha visto el monito por la tele.
[5] Ha visto los dos, no sabe si se puede distinguirlos a la vista, pero a la encuentra.
[6] Los que se ven ahogados en agua no son monitos… La yaca es más visible, todavía se ve…
[7] Here I am simplifying and ignoring a lot of things like sexual dimorphism, epigenetic influences on development, and behavioral variation. A fuller explanation, which I don’t have space for here, would bring in the relationship between the genotype, development, and the phenotype.
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Meredith Root-Bernstein is an ethnobiologist and conservation ecologist at the CNRS, based in the Natural History Museum in Paris, France. Her research focuses on rewilding and degradation.
Engagement 