Animals

[jimmy jazz]

Looks like he listens to hardcore punk.

[Psy-Fi]

Elephant goes bananas! Woman gets smashed by giant animal after teasing it with fruit

[jimmy jazz]

Serves her right.

[Psy-Fi]

Serves her right.

Yeah.

I'd like to give that elephant a big basket full of bananas for that righteous move.

[Psy-Fi]

Scientists Taught Parrots to Make Video Calls — Now They Won't Stop Calling Their Friends

[Psy-Fi]

Man pulled over for DUI blames dog for driving, police say

[Lexi Darling]

[Guybrush]

There are times I regret I didn't study marine biology instead of terrestrial invertebrates. Marine invertebrates are so fascinating, from jellyfish and comb jellies, sea slugs, squids and octopi, amphipods and isopods, polychaetes, the list goes on and on.

One fascinating taxa of animals are the Gorgonocephalid brittle stars. These are starfish with branching arms that sometimes resemble living plants and who filter and snatch detritus and small crustaceans etc. out of the water using their arms.



For our folk bands debut EP, we just used Ernst Haeckel's illustration of a Gorgonocephalid as our cover art as it was more than old enough to be in the public domain.



Notice also the typical starfish pentameral symmetry.

Gorgonocephalids aren't the only fascinating, somewhat plant-like echinoderms either, but I can save some for another post 🙂

[Guybrush]

By the way, @Jwb , not sure if you're interested in megacolonies still, but ChatGPT gives some credible answers now on why these colonies don't get disrupted by the proliferation of selfish ants with selfish strategies.

It mentions things already considered like kin selection, division of labor, recognition of nestmates using pheromones, but one thing I had underestimated was the extent and effect of policing. The chatbot claims:

"Ants within a megacolony often exhibit policing behavior, which involves detecting and suppressing selfish behavior or cheating. If an individual exhibits selfish tendencies, it may be identified and punished by other colony members. This policing helps maintain cooperative behavior by deterring individuals from acting in their self-interest at the expense of the collective."

This is essentially enforcing altruism and does seem like it would be very powerful in terms of keeping selfishness down.

ChatGPT also rightly mentions the importance of things like genetic similarity, absence of predators and abundance of resources as factors that enable megacolonies. If these things change, that may promote selfish strategies and, I assume, a collapse of the megacolony, although I would expect a collapse to be local (possibly not the whole colony) and perhaps even temporary.

[Guybrush]

I read a story today, just published, about a Norwegian Osprey (called Fru (Mrs) Rauer) and her trek to Africa.

It was brilliantly written and very engaging, so I dropped it into Google Translate on the off-chance that some of you might like to read it as well.

https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/dokumentar/xl/fru-rauers-reise-1.16314326?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Well worth reading till the very end and so brilliant I had to send the author an email and commend him on a job well done 🙂

[Guybrush]

Here's a bumblebee from our garden this morning:



And here's our crab spider Nina 🙂

[Janszoon]

@Guybrush Whoa, that's a crazy looking spider!

[Guybrush]

@Guybrush Whoa, that's a crazy looking spider!

Yes, it's a family of spiders called crab spiders. Their front pair of legs are longer and often splayed out. They patiently wait for something to come within reach and so they can often be found in flowers where they wait for bees or flies.

I believe this is a female Misumena vatia. They're quite common here if you know where to look 🙂 They're relatively small spiders, so she's a big one.

[Psy-Fi]

Wild goat pushes woman off cliff, knocks friend unconscious in rampage 

[jimmy jazz]

Wild goat pushes woman off cliff, knocks friend unconscious in rampage 

Says she was 65.

Got me thinking, do you reckon you could take a goat in a fight?