Nope, not me. Although I have been toying with the idea of getting into anthropogistism. 
I’ve never understood the difference between an anthropogist and an anthropologist. Don’t they both study people?
Anyone?
Anthropologists are people who study the evolution of homo sapiens.
Anthropogists are people who prey on other people… Long Pork, it’s what’s for dinner and the other, other white meat.
I thought that was an anthrophagist.
Two things:
- Has anyone else noticed a marked tendency over the past few years for nature documentaries – esp. on channels like Discovery – to focus on the “nature red in tooth and claw” aspects? It’s like a pendulum swung from one extreme of aww-look-at-them (nice playful monkey groups raising the cutest babies ever and everyone’s happy) to the truly awful (I saw a documentary on hippos recently where one baby hippo was followed, and filmed in such a way to raise your cute response as high as it can go, and then spent the last fifteen minutes or so showing a new dominant male chase the baby around a pool and finally drown it, until you see it floating slowly away, followed by a forlorn mother).
It bugs me a bit, because neither extreme is very true; it seems like documentaries are now more about constructing a story, complete with plot and bad guys and good guys, and less about actually presenting an honest picture of a species/ecosystem/whatever. And now there are all these “educational” shows with titles like: “Fangs!”, or “Deadly Predators of the Reef!”, or “Maneaters!” Sheesh.
- Current research into birdsong similarly paints a way more complex story than one of either merry little songsters or fierce protectors of territory, etc. (a good book on the subject: Donald Kroodsma’s “The Singing Life of Birds”; Kroodsma’s a biologist who’s devoted over 30 years to studying birdsong). The answers to “why do birds sing?” seems to be several, depending on a number of factors, ranging from territoriality and mate-finding, to disclosing the location of food sources to flockmates, to “because they enjoy it”. And of course, much of the singing is about sex (something human musicians – esp. rock stars! – have known for years. . .) But you can read about his experiences listening all night to a whip-poor-will, which sang over 20,000 repetitions of its one song for the entire night and to the time when, in a single two-hour span, a brown thrasher sang almost 5,000 songs, about 2,000 of them different; thrashers often mimic the songs of other species, too.
Fascinating stuff, birdsong, both in its study and simply in the hearing of it. It’s one of my favorite parts of camping, waking early to the dawn chorus. Soooo much nicer than waking to the friggin’ alarm . . .