In Tucson there’s a similar species! Our cat caught one and brought it in where it immediately entangled itself in the carpet. Like a long skinny earthworm but not slimy of course because it’s a snake (or at least we called them blind snakes, I guess maybe they’re a different reptile).
I wonder what species they used for their monoculture and their diverse treatments (fucking pay walls). If it was all grassy spp of the same height this would be really cool.
Not knowing what they used the findings aren’t that surprising given that if you h ave diversity, you are much more likely to to have structure (layers) in the vegetative community, and therefore greater canopy cover and overlap.
In winter, this still applies somewhat in terms of sheltering and catching snow which is more insulating.
I was really excited to try this to try and figure out what the squeaky bird hiding in a tree by my window was, but it's not picking up anything (gives a pop up about how google assist interferes, but I've never had that enabled on my phone so I can't do much else) :(
It’s a great software but is not perfect. You should try posting your recording on an online birding group. There are lots of talented birders who can identify songs and calls!
I wonder if these little things literally move on their own. Kinda like how like Venus flytraps have traps that can close when triggered by an insect (or a curious child), or how some parasitic vines will try to mimic the leaves of their hosts even if the host is artificial. Is it possible that moss’ leaves just subtly move during the day, and because we’re talking about moss balls, that subtle movement translates into physical translation? Granted, it doesn’t explain why they move together, but if you can figure out the mechanism behind the movement then it’ll make it easier to figure out the rest.
… Cooper said, adding that “no cetaceans have mobile thumbs.”
Didn’t imagine them with thumbs in the first place. So, their fins are hands, with fingers, but the tissue connecting them remains, forming the fin. In humans the connecting tissue dies off.
Patrick Duffy had fin hands in that 70’s Aquaman? series. Saw that as a kid and absolutely wanted that.
HONOLULU–In an announcement with grave implications for the primacy of the species of man, marine biologists at the Hawaii Oceanographic Institute reported Monday that dolphins, or family Delphinidae, have evolved opposable thumbs on their pectoral fins.
“I believe I speak for the entire human race when I say, ‘Holy fuck,’” said Oceanographic Institute director Dr. James Aoki, noting that the dolphin has a cranial capacity 40 percent greater than that of humans. “That’s it for us monkeys.”
Aoki strongly urged humans, especially those living near the sea, to learn to communicate using a system of clicks and whistles in a frequency range of 4 to 150 kHz. He also encouraged humans to “start practicing their echolocation as soon as possible.”
Delphinologists have reported more than 7,000 cases of spontaneous opposable-digit manifestation in the past two weeks alone, with “thumbs” observed on the bottle-nosed dolphin, the Atlantic humpback dolphin, and even the rare Ganges River dolphin.
“It appears to be species-wide,” said dolphin specialist Clifford Brees of the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory, speaking from the shark cage he welded shut around himself late Monday. “And it may be even worse: We haven’t exactly been eager to check for thumbs on other marine mammals belonging to the order of cetaceans, such as the killer whale. Oh, Christ, we’re really in the soup now.”
Thus far, all the opposable digits encountered appear to be fully functional, making it possible for dolphins–believed to be capable of faster and more complex cogitation than man–to manipulate objects, fashion tools, and construct rudimentary pulley and lever systems.
“They really seem to be making up for lost time with this thumb thing,” said Dr. Jim Kuczaj, a University of California–San Diego biologist who has studied the seasonal behavior of dolphins for more than 30 years. “Last Friday, a crude seaweed-and-shell abacus washed up on the beach near Hilo, Hawaii. The next day, a far more sophisticated abacus, fashioned from some unknown material and capable of calculating equations involving numbers of up to 16 digits, washed up on the same beach. The day after that, the beach was littered with thousands of what turned out to be coral-silicate and kelp-based biomicrocircuitry.”
“My God,” Kuczaj added. “What are they doing down there?”
It is unknown what precipitated the dolphins’ sudden development of opposable thumbs. Some dolphin behaviorists believe that the gentle marine mammal, pushed to the brink by humanity’s reckless pollution and exploitation of the sea, tapped into some previously unmined mental powers to spontaneously generate a thumb-like appendage. However, given that 95 percent of the world’s dolphin experts have committed suicide since learning of the development, the full story may never be known.
“You must believe, sleek ocean masters, that many of us homo sapiens weep with shame and disgust over the degradation to which our species has subjected our All-Mother, the Great World-Sea,” read the suicide note of Dr. Richard Morse, a Brisbane, Australia, delphinologist and regular contributor to Marine Mammal Science. “If you are reading this, I estimate that it is the day we know as August 31, 2000. Please be decent and kind masters to our poor ape-race. Oh, God, I’m so sorry about the tracking collars.”
“Scientists once wondered whether dolphins, with their remarkably advanced social and language structures, are actually smarter than we are,” said Aoki, ushering reporters out of the laboratory he claimed “will either be a smoking hole or a zoo exhibit in the coming Dolphin Age.” “Well, we’re not wondering anymore.”
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