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Once the birds had learned how to initiate video interactions, the second phase of the experiment could begin. In this “open call” period, the 15 participating birds could make calls freely; they also got to choose which bird to dial up. Over the next two months, pet parrots made 147 deliberate video calls to other birds. Their owners took detailed notes about the calls and recorded more than 1,000 hours of video footage that the researchers analyzed.

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My dad raises grass-fed beef cattle and I help him sell it, mainly by maintaining an online presence. For a while, I kept having the most ridiculous conversations with people who I assume were marketing students. I didn't want to be rude so I'd try to let them down gently but this one guy just kept insisting that with his magical marketing skills he could grow our business.

What he could not seem to comprehend is that we could not grow our business, at least not without significant time and monetary investment. Cows take two years from pregnancy to the size that you can sell. If we buy adult cows, our margins become razor thin or even negative. Even if we somehow could acquire some cows, our barn and hay fields are already near maximum capacity. Renting another field would be relatively easy, building a bigger barn not so much.

Cows are living animals, they aren't widgets that can be produced infinitely. Besides that, many businesses inherently cannot grow, because if they do they'll become something else. The delicious bakery down the street cannot produce much more than they do, if they began mass marketing and production they'd eventually be selling the equivalent of Twinkies. We grow grass-fed, organic beef, if we expanded how long would that last? Eventually we'd become the very factor farms that we hate. Some things can only ever be made on a small scale and they are usually the best things.

But also, what are they teaching them at marketing school and how is it so disconnected from reality?

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I thought y'all might like to see Niagara Falls lit up for Pride.

Hope you had a good one!

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Starting using a cane has been a real game changer for me. Yesterday I went to a pride and did the whole walk, arriving at the end not too tired, thanks to the cane that helped me with balance and not putting too much weight on my legs. When I was doing marches without a cane it felt like hell most of the time.

Mobility aids are freedom, guys, no matter what society thinks or says. It’s not giving in. It’s not shameful.

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We are approaching the maximum of images you can post here so I thought it was time I make a little showcase of all the formation pieces we covered so far on the streams.

For people who don't know: for several months now I draw one formation or fossil locality every Saturday. The next place we visit is chosen by a wheel of names, which we also constantly fill up again when a new formation is picked.

I try to make it as interesting as possible in my composition and choice of animals and I can tell you this series has been a great training when it comes to constructing these, how I call them, Menageries.

I have to thank a team of friends and colleagues who help behind the scenes with research, creation of size charts and conversation partners when it comes to deciding on the compositions of these pieces. Their help has been invaluable!

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I saw your post yesterday with Bug and the peachicks, and the tiny tail fan made me lol. For some reason it never occurred to me that the fan would appear at the first fledge; I have to ask, when do the plumes on young peacocks start getting ostentatious?

That's actually her tail, not her train! And they don't really fledge the way other birds do, considering they are born with full flight feathers

(pictured: a freshly-hatched, damp peachick with full flight pinfeathers resting partially on OP's fingers while sitting on their leg)

That little bastard will pretty much be flight ready as soon as the sheaths are off those feathers. They waste no time. The train actually consists of modified tail coverts and back feathers, and is supported by a VERY large tail

(pictured: the medial tail feather of an opal peacock, which is as long as OP's outstretched arm)

But the train feathers will be down for a lot longer than it takes them to grow any tail feathers, and the tail feathers come in later than the wings. In fact, the crown feathers come in sooner than the back and tail coverts stop being down!

Up front you should know that all peafowl age up on Jan 1st of a new year (so a chick born in march and a chick born in sept both become "yearlings" at the first Jan 1st after hatch, and two year olds at the next Jan 1st, etc). This is important for understanding that presentation can vary WIDELY between birds of the same "age" because no one is talking about literal age, they are speaking of hatch year age.

It's generally understood that males will get a "baby" train as yearlings, where their feathers elongate a LITTLE, and have wedges at the tips. At two they may begin to show hurls, and many 2 year olds (especially early hatches before June) will have an eye feather or two. SOME males, in warmer climates, will develop more of a train that second year, but it typically looks like a scraggly teenager trying to grow a beard. By 3 years old, they generally have a train, though it may be lacking length. Between 3 and 6, they will grow in a longer train each year, and at 6 they are considered fully mature, with a train that is pretty much as long as it's going to get. (this is also the age you can expect blackshoulder birds will have all the coloring they are going to get on their wings; some have wings that turn fully solid [desired] and some retain marbling closer to the body [considered a fault]).

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cell bio professor closed out today's lecture on free-radical oxidation in mitochondria and programmed cell death by saying "you've probably all seen those commercials for fruit juice that says it's got antioxidants, which are said to prevent this sort of thing from happening, or at least slow it down. well, they don't work. this is an inevitable fact of life— this process that lets us live is also the thing that kills us, and it's why all of us will die someday. there's no escaping that. it's been with us since the dawn of eukaryotic cells; our pact with mitochondria is to the death. anyway, enjoy the rest of your friday, and remember, exam four is next week!"

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And it’s not just the roots. It’s a whole ass tree.

I saw a post about this tree on Tumblr and I had to have a photo with it. It is magnificent!!

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Plants 🌱

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Rufous-tailed Jacamar (Galbula ruficauda), family Galbulidae, order Piciformes, Trinidad

Photograph by Paul Wittet

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i think there’s actually nothing better than being randomly told “I love you” after doing something characteristically stupid. Like what do you mean I’m a lovable person and I just did something silly and you thought “of course you would do that. I love you.”. No better feeling

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I saw a post about this tree on Tumblr and I had to have a photo with it. It is magnificent!!

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Boo begreshs!

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Your baby looks a lot like my baby! This is my precious idiot boy Dirt.

I love Dirt. Dirt is precious!! 🥰