Animal Attire, Fashionable or Not

In the latter third of the 20th century, as awareness grew about how many mammal species might be headed toward extinction, campaigns against the purchasing and wearing of furs emerged.  Such campaigns have helped increase consciousness about the very real danger of species extinction.  The campaigns, however, have sometimes led to stereotypes about the views of people in previous centuries, when animal furs and skins were more often used for clothing.

helping a bear
get warm

Our current fur controversies can easily lead us to associating the wearing of furs for clothing with being less appreciative of animals.  But in previous centuries, that was not always the case. Sometimes the reverse was true.  For example, in the early 1700's, a time in which there were no synthetic furs, Alexander Pope (1688-1744) reminded his readers to humbly remember that:

"... Nature's children all divide her care;

The fur that warms a monarch, warm'd a bear."

Indeed, as we go back further in the history of Western civilization, we often find a greater awareness and appreciation of our human dependence on animals to protect our vulnerable human bodies.  In Shakespeare's King Lear, the king comes upon a man who is without the usual protection of clothing, and turns that person into an object lesson, telling his own companions:  "Consider him well."  Then, speaking to the pitiable man, the king says, "Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool."  The king then reminds us all that, "... unaccommodated [unclothed] man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal..."

The origins of the very first human attire are lost in pre-history.  That inability to name the inventor of clothing, along with an appreciation of clothing, could even lead to understanding clothing as being a gift from God.  That perspective appears in the Adam-and-Eve story in the Bible's book of Genesis.  Ashamed after having disobeyed God, the two archetypal humans try to conceal themselves:  "They sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves."  (Gen. 3:7, NRSV)  This was probably a laugh-line to an audience who would have been well aware how scratchy fig leaves would be.  God, although announcing the sad consequences of humans' trying to be like gods, then extends grace to the helpless humans in the form of more suitable attire:  "And the LORD God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them." (Gen. 3:21, NRSV)

bear tracks in snow

An appreciation of animal attire can also expand to a wonder at the ways animals themselves are "attired."  A half-century before Pope reminded the monarch that a bear had been warmed by the fur he also wore, the naturalist John Ray (1627-1705) marveled at the appropriate variations in the protective covering of different species.  Ray did not yet have Darwin's explanation for how such variations had come about through the natural process of evolution.  Nevertheless, Ray marveled not only at the fur covering some mammals, but also at the insulating blubber of fish in cold waters, and the warming down some birds are attired with.

~~~

Do you notice any changes in Nature as winter comes?  How do you prepare for it?

(The quote by Alexander Pope is from

An Essay on Man, 1733-34, Epistle III.)

(The excerpt from King Lear is from Act III, scene iv, 195.)
(The children's illustration is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.)