“Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?…”*
Animals have evolved a variety of defensive techniques– camouflage, tough skins, fierce looks. But as National Geographic explains, olfactory defenses are among the most effective. Consider the hoatzin…
Hoatzins on the Rio Napo in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Photograph by Jared Hobbs, All Canada Photos/Getty Images
Hold your nose and meet the hoatzin, a bird with a number of distinctions, not the least of which is that it smells like fresh cow manure. The animal mostly eats leaves, which it digests in its crop, a pouch some birds have high up in their alimentary canal. It’s the only bird known to digest by fermentation, like a cow. This process is what causes its odor and has earned it the nickname the “stink bird.”
Don’t knock it, though. That stink means that even people don’t want to eat the hoatzin…
More on feral fragrance at “5 Animals With Stinky Defenses.”
* Friedrich Nietzsche
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As we hold our noses, we might spare a thought for Hannah Wilkinson Slater; she died on this date in 1812. The daughter and the wife of mill owners, Ms. Slater was the first woman to be issued a patent in the United States (1793)– for a process using spinning wheels to twist fine Surinam cotton yarn, that created a No. 20 two-ply thread that was an improvement on the linen thread previously in use for sewing cloth.
A waxen Hannah, at the Slaters’ Mill Museum in Pawtucket, RI