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Come with me as we go on a journey of naturalist exploration, looking to see examples of a rare species - The Flummox - in the wild. Formerly kept in captivity as a side show act for the Circus McGurkus, these little puzzle-creating critters have now been freed and re-introduced to their native habitat by Flummox-rights campaigners. Opinion is divided on whether this was a good thing.
Together we will track them to their lairs and explore their struggle to re-adjust to their new surroundings, as they try to shrug off the after-effects of their captivity. You can read more about The Flummox here: GC9F205, where all the caches in the series are listed.
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Life On Airth
There have been very few comprehensive studies of how Flummoxes communicate and how they are socially ordered. This is because they are a rare species and there aren’t enough in captivity to study them effectively. Plus, those that are captive are typically used in circuses and sideshows where their freakish little puzzling minds are put to use doing tricks for the amusement of the punters. Hardly their natural habitat for being studied.
The celebrated TV naturalist Davy Atemyburger did study them during their time in the Circus McGurkis, and again when they were freed by Flummox-rights activists to scatter across Falkirk Council area, eventually going feral. His award-winning nature documentary series on a large group of Flummoxes living in the flatlands of the southern banks of the Firth of Forth - ‘Life on Airth’ - looked at patterns of the group’s social structure. His work suggested Flummoxes operate in an essentially straightforward ‘pecking order’ method of social organization, where each Flummox is attributed a position in the social strata as either being greater or lesser in stature to any other Flummox. There were 6 levels to this social hierarchy. He mapped the social order using the simple < or > notation to show their hierarchy in the Flummox community.
Take a look at Davy Atemyburger’s Flummox pecking order diagram below that shows a community of Flummoxes in the wild – each Flummox is indicated by an oval image. Can you fill the grid with numbers so that each row and column is filled with digits representing the social hierarchy of the flummox from 1 to 6? The < and > symbols provide additional clues that show you the hierarchical relationship between adjacent Flummoxes. Davy figured out that he could just note down a few of the social rank numbers as short hand, because from those he could figure out the rest - so he's put those in the ovals below. Turns out that he used it to note down where that Flummox lair near Airth was at well.
It's at: N 56° 03.A(B+C)D W 003° 46.E(F-G)H
Flummox Pecking Order
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