It’s been a busy day today for various reasons. One is that both of our mallard hens have apparently claimed nesting spots, and so Team Duck has identified the spots in preparation for ducklings in about 5-6 weeks. The intriguing bit: both Dorothy and Honey have chosen to nest in the identical windowsills they occupied last year.
We’ll end the day with a BBC video of an individual from rare species of hyena (Hyaena brunnea), who, like Honey the duck, has had multiple generations of offspring in a (once) urban area. Pickings are slim, but this intrepid canid has been successful.
When did hyenas become canids? New to me!
Hyenas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feliformia
Damn, you two beat me to it ! ^^^ Jerry lumps hyenas in with the superior caste group…that aside; what an emotional tale !
It was an interesting mistake. Creationists often use dogs and cats as two easily recognized “natural kinds” with nothing in between them. The hyena shows clearly that there is something in between dogs and cats (so perfectly in between that even biologists have trouble sorting them out), and this is evidence that dogs and cats (and hyenas) evolved from a common ancestor.
Which they did, way back there. And further back, they share an ancestor with us. And further back, we all share a progenitor with thylacines. And they and we with mantis shrimp, etc. Poor ol’ creationists. Theirs is a life of Ceaseless Toil.