Mountain Turtles and Giant Crabs
Cosmological Implications and Supernatural Understandings of Rare Creatures on an Eastern Indonesian Island
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2162329 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gregory Forth (University of Alberta) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 495-513 |
| Publication date | 2022-07-04 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthrozoös (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0892-7936 • E-ISSN: 1753-0377 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/08927936.2021.2012338 |
| OpenAlex | W4205280970 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 12 |
On the eastern Indonesian island of Flores, the Lio and neighboring ethno-linguistic groups report rare encounters with freshwater turtles and giant land crabs. Though neither species has yet to be scientifically documented for Flores, local descriptions of these animals closely correspond to Cuora amboinensis, a species of box turtle found elsewhere in eastern Indonesia, and the Coconut crab, Birgus latro, the world’s largest terrestrial arthropod. At the same time, Lio and other Florenese attribute supernatural powers to the creatures and identify both as embodiments of forest spirits. This paper shows how this dual ontological status is explicable by reference to features of Florenese cosmology and folk ecology, particularly the value islanders place on the opposition of “land” and “sea.” According to academic zoology, the turtles and crabs are both terrestrial creatures. But because of their extreme rarity, and because Florenese are normally familiar only with marine turtles and marine and small land or freshwater crabs, they identify all turtles and crabs as, essentially, creatures of the sea. So on those rare occasions when someone sees a freshwater turtle or Coconut crab, typically far inland and often in mountain forests, their phenomenal occurrence is experienced as a radical and frightening contravention of the fundamental cosmological opposition of sea and land. Also facilitated by the species’ rarity – locally understood as a quality of being normally invisible or hidden – encounters with both creatures, considered anomalous within the framework of folk zoogeography, are further experienced as dangerous manifestations of supernatural powers identical to those possessed by normally invisible forest spirits. Even so, there is one context in which the rare turtles and crabs are beneficial to humans – just as are the forest spirits themselves, a nice illustration of how otherwise negative supernatural power can contextually be turned to human use. The case thus raises questions concerning the ubiquitous anthropological trichotomy of “animal,” “human,” and “spirit” while demonstrating how people can conceive of creatures of particular sorts as participating in both categories simultaneously – indeed, in ways comparable to aspects of Christian theology
Archaeology · Biology · Creatures · Geography · Indonesian · Opposition (politics · Turtle (robot · Human-Animal Interaction Studies · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Primate Behavior and Ecology · Ecology · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |