#Name of National Parks in india

[dazonntravels1]

Explore the untamed beauty of India's top 10 national parks! From the royal Bengal tigers of Jim Corbett to the lush Western Ghats of Periyar, each park is a sanctuary of biodiversity. Immerse yourself in the wonders of nature and witness India's diverse wildlife in their natural habitats. For more information, visit our website: or Contact us now:+1-888-216-7282.

[reasonsforhope]

"An endangered bird famous for its elaborate leaping courtship displays is being reared in a special facility where the animals are able to develop their wild instincts.

With less than 600 individuals left in the wilds of Cambodia, conservationists have shown that the Bengal florican can successfully grow up in semi-captivity, raising hope that a safe and stable population can be reintroduced to prevent further declines.

A large facility inside the 144 square miles of forest comprising Phnom Kulen National Park is the world’s first assurance colony of this florican’s Indo-Chinese subspecies. As the name implies, it’s native to Bangladesh and India, where it is also endangered.

Amid waist-high grass, soft mesh netting divides areas for these members of the bustard family to grow up in seclusion. Minimal visual contact with their keepers ensures that these birds have room to practice all the important skills they’ll need for wild living—like foraging, keeping a lookout for predators, but most importantly for a florican, how to find a mate.

All species of floricans look to dazzle prospective mates with a remarkable courtship display. Standing in high grass, they will leap between 6 and 9 feet off the ground whilst striking a heroic pose that involves tucking their legs up and leaning back.

Hardly flightless, their goal isn’t to take to the wing, but to stay airborne enough to attract the attention of a female, before falling back to the ground and disappearing among the grasses.

Unfortunately, these birds need grasslands to live in, but grasslands in their native range are rapidly being turned into agricultural land by a developing South Asian population.

Leaping into action

The Angkor Centre for Conservation of Biodiversity (ACCB) established the captive colony in 2019. Cambodia has a high degree of threatened biodiversity, with over 400 species listed as Endangered or Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, and 56 considered Critically Endangered.

The Bengal florican is just one of 30 such species held at the ACCB for future protection. The florican has just one remaining wild population of fewer than 600 individuals among the Tonle Sap Floodplains.

Conservationists from the ACCB work mainly to educate community members, especially Buddhist communities and students, about the plight of these ground-nesting birds.

“By engaging with diverse groups, we hope to bridge the conservation gap across generations,” Christel Griffioen, ACCB’s Country Director, told the IUCN.

These connections with the community have proved vital to the ACCB’s work. During the florican breeding season, the ACCB is notified where and when a wild florican nest is located. Depending on the timing in the season and the placement of the nest, ACCB biologists may choose to leave the eggs alone, but if the conditions aren’t optimal for chick mortality, they will safeguard the eggs, hatch them in their facility, and rear the birds in captivity for eventual reintroduction into the wild.

So far, the 11 surviving birds hatched at ACCB from eggs laid in the wild, along with four wild-hatched birds that have been taken in for one reason or another, are living and developing well.

“A full-time team at ACCB is dedicated to hand-rearing newly hatched chicks until they’re old enough to feed alone. They’re then moved into a facility that mimics their habitat where they remain, with limited to no human contact, safely cocooned in taller grass and soft ceilings that allow the males to practice their mating display,” writes the IUCN, noting that Christel and her team are always trying to transfer what they know about these birds in the wild to their conditions at the facility.

The conservationists hope to form a captive breeding program to further stabilize the animal’s numbers."

-via World at Large, January 10, 2025

[uncharismatic-fauna]

The Wonderful Wall Gecko

Hemidactylus frenatus is a gecko of many names. It is refered to in southeast Asia by the various interpretations of its call; in Malay it is the chichak gecko, in Tagalog it is the butiki, and in Thai it's the jing-jok, just to name a few. In English it's also known as the common house gecko, Asian house gecko. The species is native to south and southeast Asia, from India to Papua New Guinea, and has also been introduced to Australia, Africa, and the Americas. They can be found in a range of habitats including tropical forests, savannas, and urban environments.

Most common house geckos are 7.5-15 cm (2.9-5.9 in) long and weigh between 10-20 g (0.3-0.7 oz), but their appearance can vary widely. Individuals can be grey, tan, or beige; some exhibit mottling that closely resembles tree bark, while others are unmarked. The species can generally be distinguished from other geckos by the whorl of spines at the base of the tail, although dropped tails don't have this feature.

The chickak gecko typically hides during the day and emerges at night to hunt. They feed primarily on insects and spiders, but will also consume smaller lizards opportunistically. Both sexes are highly territorial, and will aggressively defend their areas from other geckos. The distinctive call of H. frenatus is often used to announce its territory to other geckos, as well as signalling readiness for mating. Due to their small size, Asian house geckos are frequently prey to cats, birds, snakes, rats, dogs, large spiders, praying mantids and larger lizards.

Wall geckos can reproduce year-round in warmer climates, and in more seasonal areas of its distribution they mate only in the warm months. Males seek out females and entice her by touching her with his snout, followed by biting and holding her neck. Females typically lay clutches of 2 eggs, though she may have up to 4 eggs at different stages of development at any given time. The eggs are laid in a crevice or covered area, and hatch after 46 to 62 days. Hatchlings are totally independent, and reach maturity at 6 to 12 months old. Individuals can live up to 7 years in the wild.

Conservation status: The IUCN has rated the butiki gecko as Least Concern, due to its large and widespread population and commonality in urban spaces. It is considered an invasive and ecologically damaging species in areas where it has been introduced.

Photos

Thai National Parks

Nicole Andrews

Cricket Raspet

[sitting-on-me-bum]

"Raiders Of Hives"

Satpura National Park, Madhya Pradesh, India

"In the dense forests of Satpura, a pair of Oriental Honey Buzzards raid a beehive. These raptors hunt for food in beehives and wasp nests but, unlike what their name suggests, they prefer bee and wasp larvae over actual honey."

By Pranav Mahendru

2023 Nature “inFocus” Photography Contest

[mindblowingscience]

Brazil's Lencois Maranhenses National Park, famed for its white dunes that fill with blue and emerald lagoons in the rainy season, was on Friday declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The vast park, named for the dunes' resemblance to a bedsheet spread across the landscape—"lencois" means sheets in Portuguese—is located in the northeastern state of Maranhao, in a transition zone between the Amazon, Cerrado, and Caatinga biomes. The decision was taken during the 46th annual meeting of the United Nations World Heritage Committee, which is taking place in India's capital New Delhi.

Continue Reading.

[tsalala]

Meet a tigress called Arrowhead from Ranthambhore. This picture is from 2015 when she was still a cub. Her brother Pac Man is running behind. (I named him after a Pac Man video game mark on his head.)

Arrowhead and Pac Man as cubs Ranthambore National Park, India Photographed by Aditya Singh

[lesmisletters-daily]

Tholomyès Is So Merry That He Sings A Spanish Ditty

Les Mis Letters reading club explores one chapter of Les Misérables every day. Join us on Discord, Substack - or share your thoughts right here on tumblr - today's tag is #lm 1.3.4

That day was composed of dawn, from one end to the other. All nature seemed to be having a holiday, and to be laughing. The flower-beds of Saint-Cloud perfumed the air; the breath of the Seine rustled the leaves vaguely; the branches gesticulated in the wind, bees pillaged the jasmines; a whole bohemia of butterflies swooped down upon the yarrow, the clover, and the sterile oats; in the august park of the King of France there was a pack of vagabonds, the birds.

The four merry couples, mingled with the sun, the fields, the flowers, the trees, were resplendent.

And in this community of Paradise, talking, singing, running, dancing, chasing butterflies, plucking convolvulus, wetting their pink, open-work stockings in the tall grass, fresh, wild, without malice, all received, to some extent, the kisses of all, with the exception of Fantine, who was hedged about with that vague resistance of hers composed of dreaminess and wildness, and who was in love. “You always have a queer look about you,” said Favourite to her.

Such things are joys. These passages of happy couples are a profound appeal to life and nature, and make a caress and light spring forth from everything. There was once a fairy who created the fields and forests expressly for those in love,—in that eternal hedge-school of lovers, which is forever beginning anew, and which will last as long as there are hedges and scholars. Hence the popularity of spring among thinkers. The patrician and the knife-grinder, the duke and the peer, the limb of the law, the courtiers and townspeople, as they used to say in olden times, all are subjects of this fairy. They laugh and hunt, and there is in the air the brilliance of an apotheosis—what a transfiguration effected by love! Notaries’ clerks are gods. And the little cries, the pursuits through the grass, the waists embraced on the fly, those jargons which are melodies, those adorations which burst forth in the manner of pronouncing a syllable, those cherries torn from one mouth by another,—all this blazes forth and takes its place among the celestial glories. Beautiful women waste themselves sweetly. They think that this will never come to an end. Philosophers, poets, painters, observe these ecstasies and know not what to make of it, so greatly are they dazzled by it. The departure for Cythera! exclaims Watteau; Lancret, the painter of plebeians, contemplates his bourgeois, who have flitted away into the azure sky; Diderot stretches out his arms to all these love idyls, and d’Urfé mingles druids with them.

After breakfast the four couples went to what was then called the King’s Square to see a newly arrived plant from India, whose name escapes our memory at this moment, and which, at that epoch, was attracting all Paris to Saint-Cloud. It was an odd and charming shrub with a long stem, whose numerous branches, bristling and leafless and as fine as threads, were covered with a million tiny white rosettes; this gave the shrub the air of a head of hair studded with flowers. There was always an admiring crowd about it.

After viewing the shrub, Tholomyès exclaimed, “I offer you asses!” and having agreed upon a price with the owner of the asses, they returned by way of Vanvres and Issy. At Issy an incident occurred. The truly national park, at that time owned by Bourguin the contractor, happened to be wide open. They passed the gates, visited the manikin anchorite in his grotto, tried the mysterious little effects of the famous cabinet of mirrors, the wanton trap worthy of a satyr become a millionaire or of Turcaret metamorphosed into a Priapus. They had stoutly shaken the swing attached to the two chestnut-trees celebrated by the Abbé de Bernis. As he swung these beauties, one after the other, producing folds in the fluttering skirts which Greuze would have found to his taste, amid peals of laughter, the Toulousan Tholomyès, who was somewhat of a Spaniard, Toulouse being the cousin of Tolosa, sang, to a melancholy chant, the old ballad <i>gallega</i>, probably inspired by some lovely maid dashing in full flight upon a rope between two trees:—

“Soy de Badajoz,

Amor me llama,

Toda mi alma,

Es en mi ojos,

Porque enseñas,

A tuas piernas.

“Badajoz is my home

And Love is my name;

To my eyes in flame,

All my soul doth come;

For instruction meet

I receive at thy feet”

Fantine alone refused to swing.

“I don’t like to have people put on airs like that,” muttered Favourite, with a good deal of acrimony.

After leaving the asses there was a fresh delight; they crossed the Seine in a boat, and proceeding from Passy on foot they reached the barrier of l’Étoile. They had been up since five o’clock that morning, as the reader will remember; but <i>bah! there is no such thing as fatigue on Sunday</i>, said Favourite; <i>on Sunday fatigue does not work</i>.

About three o’clock the four couples, frightened at their happiness, were sliding down the Russian mountains, a singular edifice which then occupied the heights of Beaujon, and whose undulating line was visible above the trees of the Champs-Élysées.

From time to time Favourite exclaimed:—

“And the surprise? I claim the surprise.”

“Patience,” replied Tholomyès.

[southeastasianists]

Singapore’s prosperity has long set it apart from many other former British colonies. There is another difference, too: Singapore has clung to honouring its former colonial ruler — and it wants to keep doing so.

Special accolade has gone to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who is considered to have founded modern Singapore in the early 1800s. For decades, Singapore’s textbooks credited Raffles with transforming the island from a “sleepy fishing village” into a thriving seaport. He has been the central character in a larger official narrative that says imperial Britain had set up Singapore for success as an independent nation.

Dedications to Raffles dot the landscape of Singapore. A business district, schools and dozens of other buildings bear his name. Two 2.5-metre likenesses of the man loom large in downtown Singapore.

But a new statue of Raffles, installed in a park in May, has revived a debate about the legacy of colonialism in Singapore. On one side is the broader establishment, which has held up British colonial rule positively. On the other are those who want a closer inspection of the empire that Raffles represented and the racial inequity he left behind, even as Singapore became wealthy.

This divide has surfaced before, perhaps most prominently a few years ago when Singapore celebrated the bicentennial of Raffles’ arrival on the island. Now, the new statue has set off a fresh debate, with critics pointing out that other countries have for years been taking down monuments to historical figures associated with slavery or imperialism, or both.

“The thing about Raffles is that, unfortunately I think, it has been delivered as a hagiography rather than just history,” said Alfian Sa’at, a playwright who wants to see the Raffles statues destroyed. “It’s so strange — the idea that one would defend colonial practice. It goes against the grain on what’s happening in many parts of the world.”

The new statue of Raffles stands next to one of his friend Nathaniel Wallich, a Danish botanist, at Fort Canning Park. Tan Kee Wee, an economist who pooled $330,000 with his siblings to commission the statues, said he wanted to commemorate the pair’s role in founding Singapore’s first botanic gardens, which were his frequent childhood haunt. He donated the sculptures in his parents’ name to the National Parks Board.

Opponents have also criticised the government for allowing the statue to go up at the park because it was the site of the tomb of precolonial Malay kings. The parks board said it considered historical relevance in the installation of the sculptures.

Questions about the statue have even been raised in Singapore’s parliament. In June, Desmond Lee, the minister for national development, responded to one by saying that Singapore did not glorify its colonial history. At the same time, Lee added, “We need not be afraid of the past.”

The plaque for the Raffles statue explains how Singapore’s first botanic gardens “cultivated plants of economic importance, particularly spices”. That, critics said, was a euphemism for their actual purpose: cash crops for the British Empire.

Tan defended the legacy of British colonialists in Singapore, saying they “didn’t come and kill Singaporeans”.

He added: “Singapore was treated well by the British. So why all this bitterness?”

Far from benign

But colonial Britain was far from benign. For instance, it treated nonwhite residents of Singapore as second-class citizens. Raffles created a town plan for Singapore that segregated people into different racial enclaves. And he did not interact with the locals, said Kwa Chong Guan, a historian.

“He was very much a corporate company man, just concerned with what he assumed to be the English East India Co’s interests,” Kwa said.

Raffles landed in Singapore in 1819 as Britain was looking to compete with the Dutch in the Malacca Strait, a crucial waterway to China. At the time, Singapore was under the sway of the kingdom of Johor in present-day Malaysia. Raffles exploited a succession dispute in Johor to secure a treaty that allowed the East India Company to set up a trading post in Singapore.

Within a handful of years, Singapore was officially a British territory. Convict labour, largely from the Indian subcontinent, was crucial to its economic development. So, too, were Chinese immigrants, which included wealthy traders and poor labourers.

Singapore achieved self-governance in 1959, then briefly joined Malaysia before becoming an independent republic in 1965. It has since built one of the world’s most open economies and among its busiest ports, as well as a bustling regional financial hub.

In recent years, the government has acknowledged, in small ways, the need to expand the narrative of Singapore’s founding beyond Raffles. Its textbooks now reflect that the island was a thriving centre of regional trade for hundreds of years before Raffles arrived.

In 2019, officials cast the commemoration of Raffles’ arrival as also a celebration of others who built Singapore. A Raffles statue was painted over as if to disappear into the backdrop. Placed next to it, though only for the duration of the event, were four other sculptures of early settlers, including that of Sang Nila Utama, a Malay prince who founded what was called Singapura in 1299.

To some historians and intellectuals, such gestures are merely symbolic and ignore the reckoning Singapore needs to have with its colonial past. British rule introduced racist stereotypes about nonwhites, such as that of the “lazy” Malay, an Indigenous group in Singapore, that has had a lasting effect on public attitudes. Colonialism led to racial divisions that, in many ways, persist to this day in the city-state that is now dominated by ethnic Chinese.

“If you only focus on one man and the so-called benevolent aspect of colonialism, and you don’t try to associate or think about the negative part too much, isn’t that a kind of blindness, or deliberate amnesia?” said Sai Siew Min, an independent historian. (Story continues below)

Role of race

Race relations played a role in Raffles’ ascension in Singaporean lore. Soon after Singapore became independent, the governing People’s Action Party — which remains in power decades later — decided to officially declare Raffles the founder of Singapore. Years later, S Rajaratnam, who was then the foreign minister, said that anointing a Malay, Chinese or Indian as its founder would have been fraught.

“So we put up an Englishman — a neutral, so there will be no dissension,” Rajaratnam said.

The decision was also meant to indicate that Singapore remained open to the West and free markets.

In a 1983 speech, Rajaratnam acknowledged that Raffles’ attitude toward the “nonwhite races was that without British overlordship the natives would not amount to much”.

Critics of the Raffles statues also argue that his legacy should reflect his time on the island of Java. Although Raffles outlawed slavery in Singapore, he allowed trading of slaves in Java, including children as young as 13, according to Tim Hannigan, who wrote a book about Raffles.

The new statues of Raffles and Wallich were created by Andrew Lacey, a British artist. The sculptures evoke the two men as apparitions — symbolism that Lacey said represented the world’s evolution away from the West.

Lacey said he had “wrangled” with the public reaction toward his sculptures and he had no qualms if Singaporeans wanted to take them down, destroy them or replace their heads with the Malay gardeners who were instrumental in creating the botanic gardens.

“I was cognisant of the complexities of making any dead white male,” he said of Raffles. “I wasn’t cognisant of the degree of complexity around him.”

[ghost-mantis]

Hunter and Hunted: Historical Horror Reading For Your Halloween

Burned out on masked stabbers? Yawning at the movie monster of the week? Alien abductions falling as flat as a cow dropped from a tractor beam?

Try reading some historical accounts of people hunting man-eating Tigers in India and never walk willingly into the dark again!

Towards the end of the colonial era in India, growing populations and deforestation were causing the same issues with wildlife that we see today. The difference being, there were thousands and thousands of tigers and leopards, far bigger populations than today, prowling the land.

And while still rare, a lot more animals means a lot more potential murder cats. In an era just before and during the advent of cars and phones, most people still lived in small communities surrounded by fields and forest. People that were easy prey for big cats that were too elderly or injured to hunt other prey, or just decided they liked to eat humans.

So imagine you and your friends are out in the fields or at the well doing your normal thing…

And a Giant Goddamn Tiger leaps out of the grass, grabs your friend, and drags them screaming into the woods to eat them. Right in front of you.

Oh Shit!The Economy!

Or when you walk home, the last person in line silently disappears and the only trace left behind is a piece of clothing.

This was the reality across many places in India.

Imagine this happening to SEVERAL HUNDRED PEOPLE in your community over the course of a few years. From ONE Tiger. And everyday you leave the house praying you aren’t next, while you can do fuckall about it.

Fuck…

This thing is a goddamn ghost, and while volunteer hunters go after the thing, they’re always one step behind. News of sightings and kills travels only as fast as people can walk, and the Tiger is hitting multiple villages in the region.

So along comes this guy from out of nowhere, he tells you he works on the railway or something? Then he tells you he’s going to try and kill this tiger. Just another trophy hunting jackass right?

But this guy never asks for anything other than a place to sleep and maybe a cup of tea if you can spare it.

And he’s running himself ragged walking 20+ miles a day between villages to where the tiger was last seen. For weeks or months on end.

And every night he sits alone, in the dark, in the woods, by a tethered farm animal he bought off you. Or the corpse of a half-eaten victim. Sometimes in a low tree branch or just sitting on the fucking ground.

The crazy bastard is hunting something that very much wants to kill and eat him. A thing that can see in the dark where he can not. By moonlight.

Or if seen during the day, the guy walks in after the Tiger, tracking the paw prints and knowing it is actively hunting him.

What could possibly go wrong?

But somehow, using the finest old-timey gun technology, he kills these nightmare monsters again and again. Some while they’re charging him!

He never asks for a dime, never cashed in a government reward, and takes the dead tiger back to the locals to prove its dead and provide closure and peace of mind. He genuinely cared about the locals and did everything he could to help at great personal risk. For decades.

Jim Corbett slayed man eating monsters under terrible odds like he was the goddamn final girl of every horror movie. And while it sounds far-fetched, his accounts were backed by many people, and his own photographs.

In his later days he became a staunch conservationist and recorded his tales for all to read in a number of books that read like the greatest horror fiction.

He was so beloved that he has a national park and a species of Tiger named after him!

All his works are available free on the Internet Archive. There’s also a YouTube channel with narrated versions of all his stories and context. The narrator grew up reading these accounts and does a fantastic job making audiobook recordings of his stories!

His accounts and this history have largely faded from public memory, but make for some of the finest horror reading ever penned.

And he wasn’t the only one doing this! Another hunter in the same era, Kenneth Anderson, was dedicated to hunting man-eating Tigers and Leopards across India.

Anderson, a madman who would sit in a blind made of two beds and a chair, and armed with a dying flashlight and a rifle, peered out into the dark and went face to face with one such monster. Point blank in pitch dark.

Just look at these creepy-ass covers and tell me this isn’t horror.

There are also written accounts of man-eating sloth bears, serial killer wild elephants, and general animal related nightmare fuel.

I’ll be writing about African man-eater books in a subsequent post. Many accounts are just as terrifying, all the more because it’s not fiction.

Happy Reading and Sleep Tight!

[rjzimmerman]

Some of the finalists for the "Wildlife Photographer of the Year" award. The contest is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum in London. In a separate post, I embedded a photo by the photographer Francisco Negroni of a volcano erupting in Chile with unreal atmospheric effects (colors and clouds). I'm including just a few of the finalist photos in this post.

"Annoying Neighbour" by Bence Máté. Description from Smithsonian Magazine:

A European roller performs acrobatics in an attempt to drive a little owl out of its breeding territory. A brilliant blue European roller in Hungary’s Kiskunság National Park appears frozen upside-down in mid-air, performing dramatic dives and rolls true to its name. The bird’s mating display consists of similar airborne acrobatics. The species has only a short mating season, and the male bird intends to take advantage of it—he “makes a sport of annoying other birds that stray into its breeding area,” according to a statement accompanying the shot. He might ambush the other creature and chase it down at a high speed. Hungarian photographer Bence Máté spent 27 days watching from a hide before capturing this shot.

"Curious Connection" by Nora Milligan. Description from Smithsonian Magazine:

A chimpanzee climbs a tree in Gabon and stares into the camera lens, making eye contact with the photographer. The call of a chimp rang out through Gabon’s Loango National Park. While on a guided trek through the forest, American photographer Nora Milligan and her group paused, listening. A family of chimpanzees, known to researchers as the Rekambo group, emerged from the brush and started to climb the nearby trees. “This particular chimp paused, his curiosity piqued, and sat still long enough to observe me in return. I knew we had made a true connection when he craned his neck forward and widened his eyes to get a better look at me,” Milligan writes on Instagram. “I hope my image can play some small part to inspire others to seek this same connection and care for all living beings on Earth.”

"Snuffling Sengi" by Piotr Naskrecki. Description from Smithsonian Magazine:

A four-toed sengi forages in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique.

At dawn and dusk, the rarely seen four-toed sengi emerges to feast on insects. The elusive species, seen here in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, might look like a rodent—but it’s actually more closely related to elephants. Its other name, the four-toed elephant shrew, refers to its trunk-like snout. Because sengis are skittish, Polish photographer Piotr Naskrecki didn’t want to scare them away—so, rather than lying on the ground to capture this shot, he set up a remote camera. For this method, he had to somewhat anticipate where and when the mammals would forage.

"Wolf Pack" by Arvind Ramamurthy. Description from Smithsonian Magazine:

Five wolf cubs pause amid play to look at the camera as they frolic near farms in India.  Not far from farming fields in Bhigwan, India, a pack of five wolves pauses amid play, each one staring into the camera. Indian photographer Arvind Ramamurthy captured the shot, which he calls a “unique natural history moment,” in a video posted to Instagram. But it also tells a larger story, he adds. “As their native habitat of grasslands are depleting, more and more wolves are moving into agricultural spaces,” Ramamurthy says in the video. “And that brings them into direct conflict with us humans.”

"Fallen from the Sky" by Carlo D’Aurizio. Description from Smithsonian Magazine:

Dead insects float in a stream in Italy, creating a somber mosaic of color and stilled wings. When Italian photographer Carlo D'Aurizio came upon this stream in Italy’s Majella National Park, he expected to see butterflies and dragonflies fluttering around the water. Instead, he found insect bodies floating, with no explanation as to what had happened to them. It was a summer morning, but the weather hadn’t been hot enough to cause a mass die-off. The reason for this “sad collage” remains a mystery, but it created a still life trapped in the water’s surface tension.

"Unsold" by Jose Fragozo. Description from Smithsonian Magazine:

A rescue operation in eastern Africa retrieved this cheetah cub from the illegal wildlife trade. Cheetahs get roped into the illegal wildlife trade in the Somali Region of Ethiopia, often when farmers capture and sell them, claiming the animals had been a threat to their business, according to a statement. Not all cubs sell, however, and some are killed, since their parts, especially bones, are valuable in Asian markets, such as for bone soup.Photographer Jose Fragozo of Portugal captured this shot during a rescue operation, which began after authorities got an anonymous tip. This cheetah cub had been taken from the wild and transported via camel to the northern coast of Somaliland. Though the young cat began chirping for its mother, the rescue was ultimately successful, acquiring this cub and bringing it to a safe place. “An important part of Wildlife Photographer of the Year is highlighting powerful and sometimes challenging stories about the natural world, as well as the effects of human impact on the planet,” the Wildlife Photographer of the Year account writes on Instagram. “We hope that by creating more awareness of the challenges faced by wildlife globally, we can inspire change and create advocates for our natural world.”

"Aspen Shadows" by Devon Pradhuman. Description from Smithsonian Magazine:

Gray wolves amble through Yellowstone National Park in the snow, framed behind a group of aspen trees. Four grey wolves walk single file through a snowy Yellowstone National Park, dotting a nearly barren landscape. In this composition, the mammals are joined only by a grouping of aspen trees, leafless against the winter ground. American photographer Devon Pradhuman watched from a distance as the wolves approached the trees, followed the rest of the tree line and disappeared over a hillside on the hunt for their next meal.

[butterfwiesndinorawrs]

Welcome to Aminal Facts wiff Zaboo part 6!

Todays we has special guest Simba! He's here to help us learns bout Lions 🦁 He just couldn't wait to be king n now he is 👑 so no one better den da king of kings himself right?

🦁 Female lions called lionesses do da majority of da hunting because dey is smaller n more agile, dey have very effective stwategies for hunting in a pack.

🦁 Da lionesses' often synchronize da births in da pride allowing all da females to looks after da young.

🦁 Da names for baby lion are cubs, whelps, or lionets.

🦁 Cubs are born spotted to help dem camouflage in da wild as dey mature da spots fade.

🦁 A lion can run for showt bursts up to 50 mph n leap as far as 36 feet n jump as high as 12 feet in da air!

🦁 Even though dey often called da king of da jungle, most lions live in grasslands n on plains.

🦁 Dey is da only cats to roar togeffer n dey roars can be heards up to 5 miles away.

🦁 Most lions live in Africa but a small population can be founds near Gir Forest National Park in western India.

🦁 It is believed dat there is 8 diffewent types of lions altogether.

🦁 Lions hunt at night n duwing stormies when dey prey is less likely to hear n see dem coming.

🦁 2 thousand years ago over a million lions roamed da earff in areas like Syria, Israel, Iraq, Pakistan and India, today a little over 20 thousand are found in da wild n mostly in Africa wiff a few still in India.

🦁 Da name for lion in Swahili is Simba.

🦁 Aslan is da Turkish/Mongolian name for lion n da name of da lion in da Lion da Witch n da Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

We finish off dis Aminal Facts wiff Zaboo showcasing some aminal cwafts! Hope yous enjoys! If you do any lion cwafts we woulds love to see! 🦁🧡

[naardehemelcelgregoriaans]

William Ricketts

William Ricketts (1898-1993) was an Australian potter and sculptor.

Born in Richmond, Victoria, in 1898. William settled permanently in Mount Dandenong, Victoria, in 1934. Although not trained as a potter and never technically superior (his works, large and small, frequently exhibit cracking), the power of his vision of a modern Australia that embraces Aboriginal spirituality and respect for the natural world was his general message throughout his artworks.

From 1949 to 1960 he made frequent trips into Central Australia to live with Pitjantjatjara and Arrernte Aboriginal Australians, whose traditions and culture inspired his sculpture. He was not an Aboriginal by blood but considered himself adopted by the Pitjantjatjara nation.

In 1934 he started his major artistic work, creating the sculpture park now named William Ricketts Sanctuary. He worked on this project until his death in 1993. In the 1970s, he spent two years in India, mostly at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram spiritual centre in Puducherry, developing spiritual empathy with Indian people and knowledge of their philosophy.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Black headed Ibis (Threskiornis melanocephalus) seen in Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India. Photo: Navin Verma Karola (Aug 18, 2024) :: [Robert Scott Horton]

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I am not a slow learner I am a quick forgetter such erasing makes one voracious if you teach me something beautiful I will name it quickly before it floats away  -Kaveh Akbar, Calling a Wolf a Wolf

[alive on all channels]

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazilian dunes dotted with dazzling pools make UNESCO heritage list

Brazil's Lencois Maranhenses National Park, famed for its white dunes that fill with blue and emerald lagoons in the rainy season, was on Friday declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The vast park, named for the dunes' resemblance to a bedsheet spread across the landscape—"lencois" means sheets in Portuguese—is located in the northeastern state of Maranhao, in a transition zone between the Amazon, Cerrado, and Caatinga biomes.

The decision was taken during the 46th annual meeting of the United Nations World Heritage Committee, which is taking place in India's capital New Delhi.

Lencois Maranhenses is the 24th site in Brazil to make it onto the list of places of significant cultural or natural significance.

Continue reading.

[demi-shoggoth]

2023 Reading Log, pt. 15

I am behind on my writeups: the last book here I read the week of Thanksgiving!

71. The Body Fantastic by Frank Gonzalez-Crussi. This book made for a surprisingly relevant pivot from Cult of the Dead, as it starts with talking about how Christianity has made a long history from denying and denigrating the flesh. This book is a miscellany of odd medical trivia and historical beliefs about the human body, from wandering wombs to the curative power of saliva. As someone who’s read a lot of medical history books, this one didn’t stand out so much to me, but it would probably be a good starting point for someone looking to learn some of the odder highways and byways of how people have thought about bodies. The author’s sensibilities are philosophical, leaning mystical, and his personality shines through. This is particularly true in matters of food and drink—he feels disgust over eating competitions having gone hungry in his youth, for example.

72. Eight Bears by Gloria Dickie. As the name suggests, this book covers all of the extant bear species, although more from a cultural and conservation perspective than evolution or ecology. The author travels around the world in an attempt to see all of the bears in the wild, or at least in local captivity (such as going to a panda preserve in China). I think the book’s strongest chapters are the ones in South Asia, where she sees how in India, humans and sloth bears are being pressed into conflict through land use, and the waning in visibility but still strong market in bear bile in Vietnam. I was also pretty surprised about the chapter closest to home—how the black bears in Yosemite National Park were outright fed by park management for decades as a tourist attraction before the realization that, wait, getting large strong omnivores used to associating humans with food is a bad decision.

73. The Delusions of Crowds by William J. Bernstein. This is an odd one. It poses itself essentially as a sequel to Charles Mackay’s Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, a book about mass hysteria and fads from the 1840s. It narrows down Mackay’s wide scope to two major domains—economic bubbles and millenialist religion, and then progresses in a roughly chronological order. The problems are two fold. One, the narrative never really draws much linkage between these two types of “delusions of crowds”, leaving the book feeling disjointed. Second, the author assumes a lot about the reader’s background in economics (possibly because he’s an economist himself), so the explanations of the exact financial chicanery involved in the various bubbles are not always fully comprehensible. I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did.

74. Spirit Beings in European Folklore 2 by Benjamin Adamah. The second of four volumes, this covers primarily north-central and north-east Europe. Germany, Finland and the Netherlands get the most attention. The monsters contained within include a lot of house and field spirits, as well as many variations of alps and other sleep paralysis monsters. Again, what monsters the author decides fall into his category of “spirit beings” and which ones don’t is somewhat arbitrary. Tatzelwurms and stollenwurms, for example, are listed, even when more traditional dragons are not. I also think that the author needs to be more careful with their word choice, and/or spend more time studying folklore as a whole. For example, the book talks about the spoukhoas, a ghostly hare from the Netherlands. It talks about the spoukhoas as being a “were-hare”, despite the only lycanthrope-like trait in the entry being its vulnerability to silver… which is not universal to werewolves, and only became inexorably linked to werewolves due to Hollywood. No references to being a person at all!

75. Saurian: A Field Guide to Hell Creek by Tom Parker, Chris Mansa and RJ Palmer. This is an art book, tied into the Saurian video game in which you play as a dinosaur. As such, the book takes an in depth look at the habitat represented by the game, and discusses the flora and fauna of the late Maastrichian South Dakota. The book is, of course, gorgeous. Both in terms of the dinosaur reconstructions and the landscapes, this makes a wonderful coffee table book. This might sound like an odd complain for a coffee table book based on a video game, but I do wish it had a bibliography. The book talks a lot about specific diets and habitat preferences of the animals within, and I want to have some sort of a guide to sorting out what’s supported by evidence, and what’s creative license.

[mutant-distraction]

Navonil Dutta

Sc. Name : Rhinoceros unicornis

Kaziranga National Park, Assam, India