Sunday: Hili dialogue and some animal tweets

October 27, 2019 • 6:12 am

by Matthew Cobb

Don’t forget – cats are predators.

Hili: A bird.
A: What kind of a bird?
Hili: I don’t know, probably tasty.
Hili: Ptaszek.
Ja: Jaki?
Hili: Nie wiem, chyba smaczny.

Helping a turtle can be tricky:

https://twitter.com/camilalissethh/status/1187809107903827968?s=11

 

I suspect this is less cute than appears – don’t forget octopuses are solitary predators:

https://twitter.com/41strange/status/1188346543788584960?s=11

 

Sleepy ferrets

https://twitter.com/twiddlekins/status/1188339925940203520?s=11

 

Lovely wasp preening behaviour. Think about how all that is encoded somewhere in its tiny little wasp brain, and ultimately in its genes. Nature is wonderful!

 

Nature is also bizarre. This would be great in an Entomology spot test. It is in fact the larva of a lobster moth, a group that is even found in the UK. See if you can work out what is going on with which bits.

 

14 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue and some animal tweets”

  1. “Don’t forget – cats are predators.”

    You don’t say , yesterday One of my cats Sooty was staking out the heater in the hall way ,that must mean he had brought a mouse in and let it go and it was hiding .

    Fast forward to One AM ,heard a noise ,the mouse had made a break for it and Sooty had it in his mouth .Managed to get it off him and put it out the window .
    Sometimes cats can be very trying .

  3. The turtle and the ferret don’t look right to me. Could be some health issues, methinks.

    1. Just looking at the way that turtle flipped and sank like a stone tells one that something’s very wrong. I googled “turtles upside down” and read that when a turtle starts flipping and can’t stay buoyant in water, it has an infection that’s gone to its lungs and it needs to be taken to the vet post haste.

      As for ferrets, they’re just extremely deep sleepers. One thing that clued me in to the fact that the ferret was just sleeping and not ill was its body tone. It was limp but definitely retained tension in its body, though that was just my sense of the situation; I haven’t looked into sleep and muscle tone in ferrets.

      The person who had the ferret knew the score but the woman with the turtle needs to do some research before taking photos of her turtle and making ignorant assumptions. I’m sure that poor turtle is dead by now.

    2. FERRET:

      I don’t know enough about ferret behaviour, but it does seem peculiarly heavily zonked out. I looked it up & ferret owners & vets speak of ferret “dead sleep” which is similar to human sleep paralysis i.e. the ferret is likely conscious but can’t control their body. The advice seems to be to not mess with it – using it like a toy must be traumatic for the animal. I couldn’t find any science about this & I’m not confident [in either direction] that it’s a behaviour found in nature! I have two opposite hypotheses

      [1] It’s because domestic ferrets are inbred – dealers [‘pet shops’] will act to maximise their profits.
      [2] Ferrets semi-hibernate when it’s cold & the food supply is low. This must confuse a house ferret’s clock & perhaps they ‘need’ to have an annual cycle of busy & slow even when conditions are the same year round.

      I really don’t like pet ownership of creatures not well understood by us! Some ferret owners on various threads say they’ve never had a zonked out ferret, so that could mean [1] or [2] above or some [3] I haven’t thought of.

      TURTLE:

      That definitely not right IMO. People in the Twitter thread agree & don’t agree of course. The leading [most common] vet opinion is respiratory infection although who is really a vet on the web?

        1. 😂. I think he did kinda wake up at the end. I have done the pick up the front leg and it falls right back down with my lazy louts of kitties😻

  4. That lobster moth caterpillar looks like it’s a double whammy of Batesian mimicry, mimicking an ant at the fore end and g*d knows what at the caboose (a spider?). Also could be mimicking something else again between its two ends.

  5. I apologize if this is out of place – I think it’s impirta enough:

    There’s a very interesting, exciting, and important project which just started :

    TeamTrees.org

    They are planting 20,000,000 trees for $1/tree by 2020. This will pull CO2 out of the air on a large scale, and make a statement.

    The Arbor Day Foundation is sponsoring it, YouTube is helping, and lots of YouTube channels have interesting videos on it like Veritasium, Mark Rober, and Smarter Every Day. Go there to learn very interesting basics about trees – and in excellent presentation form – no boring long winded stuff. To the point and sharp. I donated $5.00 so far, and the goal deadline is less than 70 days away.

    Thank you, and again, sorry if this is against Da Roolz but PCC(E) is in unusual circumstances for emails.

    Thanks.

    1. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. It’s good to plant trees. Lots of trees. I think China is having their army guys plant a billion or so.

      It strikes me that in the United States there is no governmental leadership on climate. Almost all the positive stuff comes out of non-governmental agencies. In order to coordinate the world wide effort all nations should be working together. Hows that ever going to happen?

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