People think dinosaurs went extinct https://t.co/i0hRlQ5xEd
— zeddy (@Zeddary) September 5, 2021
Trigger warning: TFG…
Nature
Oh Mah Gawd! Is That Floriduh! Man’s Music?!?!
Brazilian viper venom shows promise as drug to combat Covid https://t.co/zgDB9e33oE pic.twitter.com/BkYnoL4cea
— The Hill (@thehill) September 2, 2021
As a native Floriduhian, I guarantee someone in Miami actually owns one of these. I can also guarantee that either he or someone he knows will use it to try to self medicate against Covid.
And a whole bunch of people who live in the parts of the state we call BettyCracker land are right now trying to figure out how to illegally import them so they can self medicate with them against Covid.
This will all be followed by them being dumped, en masse, into the scrub in different parts of Floriduh creating a new non-native and invasive menace to go along with the monkeys that have herpes, the anacondas, the retirees from the rust belt living in the Villages who also all have STDs, and people from Long Island living in Broward and Palm Beach Counties!
Obligatory!
Open thread!
Oh Mah Gawd! Is That Floriduh! Man’s Music?!?!Post + Comments (120)
OK Boomer (Open Thread)
During mating season, male alligators flirt with females and let rival gator dudes know there’s someone in the territory by “booming,” i.e., making a deep, guttural call while partially submerged in such a way that their scaly backs vibrate and produce a dancing water courtship display. (I don’t judge — I’ve seen far more inexplicable courtship displays by humans.)
Anyhoo, the booming typically ramps up when rainy season starts in June, but if you’re in the right place, you can hear gators booming all summer long. Here’s a 30-second vid I took with my phone from my porch a while ago. You won’t see the gators, but if you turn up the sound, you’ll hear distant gators calling and then a response that sounds like it’s coming from under my dock.
Ever heard gators booming? Turn the sound up and listen: pic.twitter.com/PVmPHDDDcN
— Betty Cracker 🐊 (@bettycrackerfl) August 30, 2021
The alarmingly close gator you can hear at about the 20-second mark is probably Dexter, a little gator who has been hanging out on our dock when the river is high this summer, but it sure sounds big and scary, which is probably the point.
I have a healthy respect for gators, which is why I keep my dogs away from the water at all times and do not swim except in springs where I can see clearly. That said, I don’t live in fear of them. You’re hundreds or maybe even thousands of times more likely to die in a car collision with a deer than be attacked by a gator.
And yet, there’s something primordial about that booming that can freeze the blood, even if you’re in your own house that is safely elevated above the surface of the water. I think of it as nature’s way of saying, “You ain’t all that, human.” It’s an important and helpful reminder.
Open thread!
Saturday Evening Open Thread: Pop Culture & Otherwise
Kinda psyched for all-masked showings of DUNE, very immersive
Anyone unmasks, point at them and go "THEY SQUANDER THE WATER OF THE SIETCH" and challenge 'em to a crysknife duel
— Max Gladstone (@maxgladstone) July 28, 2021
The movie I’m looking forward to is The Green Knight, but not until I can watch it at home. Any of you braver Jackals seen it yet?
Sportsball-adjacent:
Obama joins NBA Africa as strategic partner https://t.co/PCK16LbumQ pic.twitter.com/CZnUSPOSUY
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 28, 2021
Former U.S. President Barack Obama has joined NBA Africa as a strategic partner to help advance social responsibility efforts across the continent, the National Basketball Association said on Tuesday.
Obama will have a minority equity stake in the new venture, which over time he intends to use to fund Obama Foundation youth and leadership programs across Africa.
“By investing in communities, promoting gender equality, and cultivating the love of the game of basketball, I believe that NBA Africa can make a difference for so many of Africa’s young people,” Obama said in a news release…
And from the faunasphere…
Seems like a decent metaphor for community formation on Twitter https://t.co/u4ZaeZrwm5
— The Mall Krampus (@cakotz) July 29, 2021
… [Bird ecologist Richard] Major has been studying Australian birds for almost 40 years. A few years back, he began noticing something peculiar in Sydney: cockatoos that were eating out of someone’s open trash bin.
“I wasn’t really expecting cockatoos to be rubbish bin feeders,” he said. “They’re not something like ibis or crows that are scavengers. These are good, self-respecting seed-eaters — or at least plant-eaters.”…
“The thing that really got me was when I saw a cockatoo fly up from a rubbish bin, sit on a electricity wire, holding a chicken drumstick in its foot,” he says, explaining that a cockatoo can perch on one leg and hold its food in another. “Here it was, just munching on a drumstick, and I thought, ‘Oh god, this is verging on cannibalism.’ Certainly once cockatoos start eating meat, we’re done for.”
He’d just assumed that those bins were already open and overflowing — nothing clever about that. But Major later began observing several of the birds actually opening the bins themselves, and now he was intrigued. If this behavior spreads, he thought, “There’ll be cockatoos opening bins all over the place and they’ll have this endless supply of rubbish.” A cockatoo smorgasbord…
A team of scientists — including John Martin, Sonja Wild, Jana K. Hörsch and Lucy Aplin — joined Klump and Major to figure out what was going on with these clever cockatoos. They started by sending surveys out to different suburbs in Sydney to ask people if they had noticed the big white parrots opening up their trash bins and, if they had, when they first saw it. The survey results showed that over two years, the number of trash-raiding cockatoo sightings had increased from just three suburbs to 44, indicating that the birds were learning from each other. A culture of trash can break-ins was radiating out from the birds who first figured it out…
Saturday Evening Open Thread: Pop Culture & OtherwisePost + Comments (235)
Nature & Respite Open Thread: Some Good News
(Jeff Danziger via GoComics.com)
Developer has pulled the plug on the Keystone XL pipeline. https://t.co/e4T1r06XuA
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) June 9, 2021
The Invisible Hand of the Market gives Keystone XL two thumbs down, with no little assistance from the Biden administration. Mr Pierce, at Esquire, takes a well-earned victory lap — “The Keystone Pipeline Defeat Is a Rare Example of Democratic Political Dexterity in the Heartland”:
… For a decade, the fight over the pipeline went on. The project was on, then it was off again. Egregious lies were told, especially about the economic benefits of the death funnel. Dire predictions were made about the consequences of a leak in the pipeline so close to the Ogallala Aquifer, the massive freshwater source for almost all the arable farmland of the Great Plains. (TransCanada’s other pipelines have leaked because they were pipelines, and pipelines leak.) There were hearings and votes and the national government changed twice. And late Wednesday afternoon, Randy Thompson and all the other people who took on this hopeless fight…won.
“On the day he was inaugurated, Mr. Biden, who has vowed to make tackling climate change a centerpiece of his administration, rescinded the construction permit for the pipeline, which developers had sought to build for over a decade. That same day, TC Energy, the company behind the project, said it was suspending work on the line. On Wednesday, the company wrote in a statement that it “will continue to coordinate with regulators, stakeholders and Indigenous groups to meet its environmental and regulatory commitments and ensure a safe termination of and exit from the project.”
One hesitates to declare this project dead because it has rolled back the stone a number of times over the past 10 years, but this seems final. TC Energy, TransCanada’s latest nom de pillage, seems to have surrendered…
At a time in which nothing seems to be moving in the correct direction, especially as regards the climate crisis, this is an underdog’s victory over which to rejoice. I am happy for Randy Thompson, who can look out over his fields again and not worry about somebody with a clipboard.
Not as prominent on the front pages, but also significant:
The Biden administration is moving to restore clean-water safeguards ended by President Donald Trump. The Trump-era rule ended federal protections for hundreds of thousands of small streams, wetlands and other waterways. https://t.co/gsvAzM4Qgt
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 10, 2021
Nature & Respite Open Thread: Some Good NewsPost + Comments (24)
Ostdrossel: Birds On A Feeder
Balloon Juice commenter, Paul in St. Augustine, sent me a link to a blog post about photos of birds taken by a woman named Lisa, who uses Ostdrossel as her professional name for photography. I think she got some amazing shots.
I’ll leave the explanation of how she is able to get such great shots to the article Woman Sets Up A Feeder Camera to Capture Wild Animals Eating in Her Backyard.
Here’s a short excerpt from the blog post:
Lisa had the most *ingenious idea to capture the beauty of Michigan’s wildlife without ever getting close to them: she did this by setting up a hidden camera in her garden. Each morning, she used to leave out food in her garden for the various different birds to feast on. The result: a whole abundance of feathered and furry creatures alike, captured in time. These photos were later published, and there was a success that Lisa did not expect.
There is a charming story and at least 30 amazing photos published at the link above – I hope you will go check it out; you won’t be sorry!
I didn’t even select all the best photos, to encourage you to check them all out for yourselves. Here is Lisa’s website.
*When I contacted Lisa to see if I could do a post with her wonderful photos, she was quick to point out that the idea of using feeder cams or trail cams is not her own, and she seemed slightly embarrassed that the writer of the blog post I link to had credited her with the ingenious idea of using feeder cams. Also, it appears that not every quote in the linked article is accurate, as Lisa has never had a Garden Warbler at her feeders.
I have sent her a link, and I hope Ostdrossel will stop by the thread!
PSA for Bird-Feeders
Birders: @CDCgov is investigating a Salmonella outbreak that has been linked to wild song birds. Eight people have been hospitalized in disparate parts of the country. CDC advises being careful about hand hygiene when handling bird feeders, baths. https://t.co/dFYolUphGz
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) April 1, 2021
Probably not necessary to remind y’all about washing your hands, but I ran into this note while aggregating last night’s COVID thread. Two cautions I hadn’t considered: The CDC says you shouldn’t let your pets hang around under bird feeders (they can still watch, from a safe distance), and they suggest you don’t wash birdfeeding equipment in the kitchen, just to be super-sure about avoiding contamination.