Mammalogy at the Intersection of Mercy and Truth

By Jenny Mathias, Cataloging Intern, Field Book Project

 

One of the first collections I cataloged for the Field Book Project was the notebooks of mammalogist Vernon Orlando Bailey, Smithsonian Institution Archives Record Unit 7267.    At the time I encountered Bailey’s notebooks, field books were new to me as a genre of archival material and it was through the Bailey field books that I first experienced the pleasure of reading someone else’s field notes.  Bailey proved an excellent travel guide and his field books introduced me to just how much fun these guys and gals have while collecting specimens all over the world, and how much contemplation and observation takes place out in the field.   The Bailey field notes introduced me to the concept of Life Zones, popularized in the late 19^th and early 20^th century by Bailey’s mentor, collecting companion, and eventual brother-in-law C. Hart Merriam.   While Bailey’s specimen lists were at first difficult to decipher, his sparse, and insightful narrative passages and poetic ponderings gave me my first clues to what it was he was doing in the field.  

 

 

Dipodops or kangaroo rats, which Bailey refers to in one of his poems and drawings, were a life-long subject of his research for the USDA’s Bureau of Biological Survey, as were coyotes and wolves.  Collecting animal specimens for study and for display often requires trapping them.   In his notes, he points out that this can cause immense and often unnecessary suffering on the part of the animal in question.   He negotiated the tricky position faced by many biodiversity researchers – one where compassion, even love, for the animals studied meets the understanding that these animals are often harmed in the course of our study of them.  Bailey also clearly knew that animals, particularly predators like coyotes and wolves and ‘pests’ like rodents, would inevitably be killed by humans in order to protect livestock and crops. 

 

 

He wrote articles on the subject for scholarly and popular audiences. Manuscripts of some of these articles are also available as a part of Record Unit 7262.  One particular favorite of mine is the annotated manuscript was originally titled “Bobbity and Bitty: The long and solitary lives of two little Pocket Mice”.  In it, Bailey describes the collection and observation of two Perognathus pacificus using humane traps. The little pocket mice he named Bobbity and Bitty were from the coastal sand dunes of southern California and he chronicles their behavior both in their natural habitat and within the human–made world of Bailey’s own family and friends. 

 

 
Bailey devoted himself to the design and manufacture of more humane traps and the education of the public on how to use these traps in order to control and study animal populations.  At his funeral in April  1942, Reverend John Van Schaick quoted from the Eighty-fifth Psalm: “Mercy and truth have met together.” (Zahnsiser, 1942, p. 6).   Bailey strove for both truth in the form of scientific research and mercy in the form of compassion for his wild subjects.  He consistently advocated for the simultaneous rights of humans to study the creatures of the natural world and for the rights of these wild animals to be treated with the dignity they deserve. 

 

Zahniser, H. (January 01, 1942). Vernon Orlando Bailey 1864-1942. Science (New York, N.Y.), 96, 2479, 6-7.

Comments

[admin]

Thank you for your comment, Denise.

sonoe
Field Book Project

[Denise]

If only more of those in animal research fields shared Bailey's sense of compassion for the animals they study. Yes, in some cases, the end may justify the means but all too often, we experiment on animals for non-essential purposes, subjecting them to unnecessary pain and suffering.