Bears. Bears. Everywhere. In your backyard, in your brassiere. In your trashcan*, on your front stair. Bears. Bears. Everywhere.
*The trashcan bear link is really, really worth clicking. Promise.
A powem abt bares
– April 6, 2012
nature Archive
2
Squirrel vs. Snake
– March 23, 2012
I’ve never embedded a Liveleak video before, so I apologize in advance if there’s an ad or some such, but this is too good not to share. A carnivorous squirrel battles a hapless snake. And wins:
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Unembeddable Video of the Day
– November 23, 2011
Do you want to see an icicle form underwater and kill a bunch of starfish while Sir David Attenborough narrates? Of course you do.
1
What a croc
– September 9, 2011
Happened across this story the other day featuring the following photo cum caption:
In this photo taken Sunday, Sept. 4, 2011, Mayor Cox Elorde of Bunawan township, Agusan del Sur Province, pretends to measure a huge crocodile which was captured by residents and crocodile farm staff along a creek in Bunawan late Saturday in southern Philippines. Elorde said Monday that dozens of villagers and experts ensnared the 21-foot (6.4-meter) male crocodile along a creek in his township after a three-week hunt. It was one of the largest crocodiles to be captured alive in the Philippines in recent years. (AP Photo)
Obviously the image is impressive enough — some serious Lake Placid shit — but after re-reading the caption, I was struck by something. This is a 21-foot long crocodile. That’s two stories, snout to tail, so it would certainly make sense to craft a sentence that included the phrase “the largest” somewhere in your article. However, preceding those two words are another two: “one of” — as in “one of the largest,” not the largest.
Well, okay, still, “one of the largest” — that’s pretty impressive, right? Sure, normally, but you gotta keep parsing, because this isn’t one of the largest crocodiles ever. It’s merely one of the largest crocodiles to be captured alive in the Philippines in recent years.
When the discovery of a one-ton, 21-foot dinosaurian relic is peppered with such weak sauce modifiers, you’ve gotta ask yourself: what the hell else is out there???
Oh, and by the way: crocodiles eat sharks for breakfast.
(And, apparently, lunch.)
Update by Ben: Wikipedia’s a bit more confident/bold:
The largest crocodile ever caught alive might be a massive estuarine crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) weighing 1,075 kilograms (2,370 lb) with 6.4 metres (21 ft) long. Caught in the Mindanao Island, Philippines in September 2011. Based on existing records the largest crocodile had been captured alive previously was 5.48 metres (18.0 ft) long.[17]
I think poor AP was a combination of lazy and terrified of fact-checkers.
(FYI: According to the same article, largest ever found dead or alive might have been 23 feet, though that’s just an estimate based on skull size.)
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Asking Science About Circles (Updated)
– August 17, 2011
Tom turned me on to r/askscience a couple months ago. It’s great and I finally thought of a question yesterday, though it didn’t take off and I’m still curious, so I thought I’d ask y’all:
Is there anything in nature that is perfectly, undistortedly circular?
Answers so far:
Ludikalo 1 point ago(+1/-0)
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An Excuse to Go Outside
– June 27, 2011
Are you one of those people who, in theory, enjoys spending time outdoors, communing with nature, or otherwise embracing chlorophyll-based lifeforms, and yet, more often than not, finds themselves succumbing to the insidious force of SOFA INERTIA!!! ?
Yeah, me too. But good news! Now (and by “now” I mean, “for the last decade,” but shut up) you can reap untold fame, fortune, and/or malaria while earning your daily dose of exercise and vitamin D by engaging in the inexplicably compelling pastime of Geocaching — “an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device[2] and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, anywhere in the world.”
Lame-ass hippy activity? Umm, well, yeah. But with the right combination of buds, bud, or Bud, I think you’ll agree that geocaching is truly the sport of kings. (Just watch out for highways. And nightfall. Because you definitely don’t want either one of those catching up to you unexpectedly.)
