100 Days of Wonder – #10

Perspective is a funny thing isn’t it. I like spending time at the Animal Kingdom, lots of time. I like the way taking time to watch the animals can flip the perspective. Who is watching and who is being watched? And I like the way the animals can also inspire stories in interesting ways, either because we can watch them from our very human perspectives, full of assumptions and preconceived ideas about life and the world, or for the opposite reason. What can we learn by watching if we try not to make any assumptions about what is happening? I spent ages watching the hippo half swim half walk a few laps on the bottom of their ‘lake’ before settling down as we see it in the picture. Almost immediately the bird came and used the hippo as a convenient perch in the water. What the picture doesn’t capture is how most adults didn’t see the hippo and most smaller children didn’t see the bird. Everyone was just looking at their eye level not bothering to look up or down. That’s what made me take the picture – I wanted a reminder that we rarely see the whole picture and if we want to get closer to doing so, we need to consciously deviate from our normal eye line. We might be surprised by what we see.