"John Varley - Mammoth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

He urinated constantly and that made a green alga grow on his most sensitive parts, and that
irritated him. He took to rubbing himself against rocks and trees because it itched so badly, but this
only made it hurt worse.

No wonder mammoths in musth were cranky!

He had a bad headache, like what we would call a migraine, so that colors looked too bright
and every movement around him made him feel dizzy.

At the same time, he was very sexually aroused.

All around him for many miles were herds of woolly mammoth females coming into season. They
were calling out to him. And they were doing it in an amazing way.

Since mammoth females could only become pregnant during four or five days out of the entire
year, it was important that males and females get together for courtship and mating during those few
days.

But because males and females lived apart and didn't really have that much to do with one
another during most of the year, this could be a problem.
 Mammoths had very good noses (just look how long they are!), but this was not always enough
to bring males and females together at the right time.

Mammoths could bellow very loudly, just as elephants can, but normal sound can only travel so
far before it becomes too quiet to hear.

However, evolution had provided mammoths with a way. It was a sort of long-distance
telephone, many years before humans invented the telephone. Mammoths could make sounds that
would have been below the range of human hearing. Imagine the deepest musical note you have ever
heard... and then try to imagine a note twice as low as that! (Musicians call this an octave.)

Scientists call these very low notes infrasound, and it travels much farther than normal sound.

When male mammoths heard these infrasound songs, they became very excited. In mammoth
language, the females were singing:

"I'm ready!"

And the males sang back:

"I'm on my way!"




8
LELAND said, "How do you give an enema to an elephant?"

"Diplomatically," Roger suggested.