Category: Nature

I Kind of Like the Frantically Mating Arthropods

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I am referring to the Brood X Cicadas, of course.

Unlike the last time around, the volume is such that it does not penetrate the walls of my house, we moved a few miles north in the interim, and I find their calls kind of flutey.

When we were down in Northwest Baltimore, they were loud enough to be physically painful at times.

Charlie, on the other hand, finds it relentlessly desperate and filled with dread and .

I explained to him that desperation and existential angst (my term, not his) are why creatures procreate in the first place:  Having a progeny creates a legacy, and meaning.

It’s awfully deeply philosophy for a bunch of frantically f%$#ing bugs, at least for me.

I’m an engineer, I don’t look for solutions to major problems of existence, I just try to get, “Close Enough.”

Iawn, Pa Un Ohonoch Chi Sydd Wedi Bod Yn Ffycin Defaid? *

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It appears that as a result of Covid-19, efforts to reduce the population of feral goats has been curtailed, and so feral Llandudno Goats have been running rampant over portions of Wales. 

Is it just me, or does anyone else have an image of some poor bureaucrat trying to convince goats to wear a condom?

The goats of the Great Orme headland in Wales were a worldwide sensation during the first Covid lockdown last year after they were pictured roaming brazenly around the deserted streets of nearby Llandudno.

This year there has been a population explosion of the kashmiri goats in their north Wales headland home after the Covid crisis forced countryside wardens to cancel a planned contraception campaign.

………

Sally Pidcock, warden of the Great Orme country park, said there were estimated to be about 30 billy goats – the males are the ones that tend to travel – at large Llandudno and roughly 150 less adventurous males, plus females and kids, back on the Great Orme.

Pidcock said a campaign to give contraceptive injections to nanny goats last summer had to be postponed because of Covid. “It means there are more kids being born on the Great Orme now than there would have been,” she said. As long as Covid allows, a contraceptive vaccination campaign will take place this summer.

We live in strange times.

*This is Welsh for, “Which one of you boys been f%$#ing the sheep?

My Son’s Worst Nightmare

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Charlie has a mild arachnophobia, a fear of spiders, and I just told him about a spider that sounds like his worst nightmare.

It’s a jumping spider, it’s aggressive, it’s favorite food is human blood, and follows our smell.

Sounds scary, even to someone like me who finds spiders to be a fascinating member phylum Arthropoda.

It turns that this little 8 legged beast is actually good for people.

His lust for human blood is limited to human blood inside of the body of an anopheles mosquito:

………

A new study by researchers at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury and the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology looked at what these spiders like to eat. They found, reiterating what previous studies have also, that these “mosquito terminators” shouldn’t be feared at all — they should be viewed as friends.

(I know, friends sounds like quite a stretch. But follow me here.)

 Female Anopheles mosquitoes carry and spread malaria. It’s a preventable yet deadly disease that’s responsible for about 500,000 deaths a year. Even though that figure has dropped significantly since 2000, allowing half a million preventable deaths is still, by any measure, unacceptable.

 Here’s the good news: The Evarcha culicivora has a specialized craving for those female Anopheles mosquitoes.

Feasting on our blood gives these spiders an odor that attracts mates. So, naturally, they’re gunning for it. But earlier — when I said these spiders love our blood — I didn’t say it had to be in us. Funny story: These spiders’ mouths aren’t even equipped to bite humans.
They can, however, snack on human blood carried by malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.

“This is unique,” Fiona Cross, who co-authored the study, told The Guardian. “There’s no other animal that targets its prey based on what that prey has eaten.”

Not quite as scary now, huh?

I Am Shocked That This Is Not Florida

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You know the saying, don’t mess with Alligators


And the inevitable Taiwanese computer animation

I asked a number of people about this, and they all guessed that it was Florida, but instead it was Texas where a man shouted f%$# that alligator and jumped in an infested lake, where he was promptly killed by an alligator:

The man in question, 28 year old Tommie Woodward, mocked warning signs cautioning against getting in the water because of the alligator before jumping in and meeting a grizzly end.

Alligators had been spotted around the marina previously, with plenty of notices being placed around to warn people not to get too close to the water, let alone jump in and go swimming.

Woodward and an unidentified woman decided to ignore said warnings and get in the water, and while Woodward was tragically killed by the animal, the woman was thankfully unharmed.

The first gator death in Texas in about 180 years.

It’s been 8 years since a Florida gator death.

Also, Florida is cray cray, so it is not surprising that we all jumped to this conclusion.