Archives for September 2025

OTD in 2006—Let’s Talk Balls! with Bailey: The Basketball

September 3, 2025 By Imko Oaljefanta, TMD Archivist

Today’s ball is the BASKETball.

The basketball has a long history with Dogs.

Originally designed as an adjunct tool for gathering food, cynologists (those who study Dogs) believe that the basketball was first employed by the Cave Dog on his forays into the wilderness in search of sustenance.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the first basketballs were stones that were covered in a heavy fabric. This fabric, which was the colour of terracotta, was wrapped several times around the stone until the circumference of the “ball” measured at least ten times that of the original stone.

Scholars believe that the ball was placed in the centre of the basket that the Cave Dog wore around his neck on food-gathering trips. The basketball, which weighed at least 1 kilogram, prevented the basket from shaking to and fro as the Cave Dog foraged about.

Many believe sporting history was made on the day that the woven reeds in the centre of the basket broke and the ball fell through the hole. The Cave Dog, who was amused by this occurrence, picked up the ball and dropped it, again, through the broken basket. He repeated this play with the ball, from ever increasing heights, until he settled on the idea of hanging the broken basket above the cave door.

Since that time, the broken basket and its companion ball have provided many hours of pleasure for Dogs everywhere.

Sources: Survival and Sustenance in the Prehistoric World, Volume 4: Balls; The Fireside Book of Canine Prehistory; The Extraordinary Life of the Everyday Dog (2nd edition); The World of the Prehistoric Dog: Revelations and Balls; Various Newspaper Articles and Reports.

Bailey can be reached at bailey@mammaliandaily.com.

This column originally appeared in Issue #112 of The Mammalian Daily.

OTD in 2014—PIFF 2014 takes the political high road with choice of opening film

September 2, 2025 By Imko Oaljefanta, TMD Archivist

Director-turned-producer Ulla Kojootti’s engaging collage film, 32 Short Films About Zoocracy, has been selected to open the 10th annual Park Interspecial Film Festival (PIFF) on October 1.

PIFF Communications President Leola Ocelot made the announcement at a brief press conference this morning.

“We screened the film about a month ago and thought it would be perfect for the opening,” Ocelot said.

“It is a fine celebration of our struggle to establish and maintain Animal self-rule and it fits nicely with our own celebration of a decade of showcasing the work of Park filmmakers.”

The film is an unusual project for Kojootti, who is better known as a “lone Wolf” in the industry than as a collaborator. Her best known films, such as Coexistence, were written, directed and produced by her with no assistance from any other Animal.

Even so, Kojootti said in an interview recently, she was drawn to the subject “because I had been thinking about our life here in The Park and I wanted to know what others thought about it.”

She invited The Park’s film community to a discussion and, she says, “the idea began there.”

Kojootti invited 32 directors (one for each year of zoocracy in The Park) to make a short film about the subject either from their personal point of view or from that of their species. The result is what those who have seen it call a “brilliant, maddening, engaging, thought-provoking” film.

Ironically, Kojootti produced the work but did not direct any of the films. She has no regrets, though.

“Maybe we’ll do it again in a few years,” she says. “Then I will definitely save one [film] for myself.”