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fatehbaz · 2 years

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Whales, like wolves, elephants, and beavers, are keystone species, animals who disproportionately shape ecosystems. While alive, their fecal plumes fertilize phytoplankton, the microscopic plants that oxygenate our atmosphere. In death, whales who settle on the ocean floor attract an astonishing necrobiome, the community of scavengers who feed upon the dead: hagfish, mussels, limpets, isopods, sleeper sharks, chemosynthetic bacteria. Some, like bone-eating Osedax worms, subsist exclusively on benthic carcasses. Whalefalls are oases in the abyssal wastes, as enticing to life as a Saharan watering hole. Not every dead whale, however, comes to rest in the depths.

Those whales who drift ashore -- buoyed by internal gasses, conveyed by currents -- support complex ecosystems of their own.

Vultures and seabirds peck at eyes and blowhole; sharks strip blubber in the surf. In Namibia’s coastal deserts, jackals and hyenas gnaw at dead seal pups, dolphins, and whales. When, in 2020, a minke whale -- nicknamed Godfried, for a beloved local author -- washed ashore on a Dutch islet, he was visited by 57 species of beetle, 21 of whom had never been seen on the island before. In Russia, scientists have documented 180 polar bears feasting on a single bowhead.

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Once, coastal necrophages could count on a steady supply of whale carcasses. (California’s famously huge grizzlies, now extinct, may have attained their gargantuan size by feeding upon the same marine mammals who supported condors.) Today, however, washed-up cetaceans are comparatively rare. In part, that’s because industrial whaling -- “the largest removal of biomass in world history,” per one researcher -- ravaged the leviathans. Blue whale populations have plummeted by up to 90 percent, and sperm whales endure at just one-third of their historic numbers. Scavengers can’t eat nonexistent animals.

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But the dearth of whales isn’t entirely responsible for the dearth of whale carcasses. We humans also tend to be overzealous morticians. Rather than letting stranded animals fulfill their ancient roles, we hastily dispose of their remains, depriving coastal ecosystems of nature’s greatest windfall. As one group of scientists put it in a recent review of cetacean carcass management, whaling and whale-removal have together “led to radical changes in the abundance and availability of large marine biomass inputs.” In other words: Our shorelines miss their whales and dolphins.

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[E]very country, state, and municipality obeys slightly different protocols. Some whales are carted off to the landfill, incinerator, or rendering plant, where their oily fats may be extracted for soaps, pet foods, and biofuel. Some are towed to sea, weighed down with scrap metal, and sunk. Some are buried. Some are cleaned for museum display. In 1970, the Oregon Highway Department infamously dynamited a gray whale, flattening an Oldsmobile beneath a chunk of flying blubber [...]. Mostly, whales are removed for a prosaic reason: They stink. [...]

As a result, authorities seldom let carcasses lie. Some countries, like Belgium and France, actually require officials to usher dead cetaceans off to a waste-management facility. In the United States, Quaggiotto found that just 28 percent of cetacean carcasses remain in situ -- nearly all of these, surely, on remote beaches in wildlife refuges, national parks, and Alaska. In heavily developed Florida, Megan Stolen, a stranding investigator and scientist with the Blue World Research Institute, estimates that less than 5 percent of dead whales and dolphins get to stay put. [...]

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In May 2010, biologists in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park spotted a 41-foot-long female humpback carcass sprawled across a beach and, sensing opportunity, set out cameras to monitor her fate.

Over the next four months, brown bears and wolves feasted almost daily, inscribing networks of pawpaths onto forest and beach. The “blubber bonanza” became a site for ursine reproduction -- cameras caught a pair of bears mating -- and even innovation. In July, a researcher observed a young bear scrubbing his muzzle with a barnacle-encrusted rock, like a post-prandial diner dabbing himself with a napkin. [...] “That carcass seemed to be a beacon calling to these huge bears -- and, of course, they got huger and huger,” says Tania Lewis, wildlife biologist at Glacier Bay. “We can never underestimate the importance of the marine ecosystem for the terrestrial ecosystem.”

The Glacier Bay humpback was both a cornucopia and an anachronism, a glimpse of the resplendent necrobiome that predated industrial whaling, coastal development, and aseptic carcass management strategies. The feast lasted until early September, when park staff severed the whale’s head to perform a necropsy. Unmoored, the body lolled into the tide and drifted away; later, it would wash up down the beach, where wolves gnawed the bones. As the whale floated into the sunset, observers on the beach noticed a passenger: a seafaring brown bear, still trying to chisel off a few last morsels of blubber before the bounty bobbed away.

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Headline and all text above by: Ben Goldfarb. “Humans Are Overzealous Whale Morticians.” Nautilus. 10 August 2022. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

#whales and people

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a-dinosaur-a-day · 5 years

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Aepyornithomimus tugrikinensis

By Scott Reid

Etymology: Elephant Bird Mimic

First Described By: Tsogtbaatar et al., 2017

Classification: Dinosauromorpha, Dinosauriformes, Dracohors, Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoromorpha, Maniraptoriformes, Ornithomimosauria, Ornithomimoidea, Ornithomimidae

Status: Extinct

Time and Place: Around 80 million years ago, in the Campanian of the Late Cretaceous

Aepyornithomimus is known from the Tögrögiin Shiree environment of the Djadokhta Formation in Ömnögovi, Mongolia

Physical Description: Aepyornithomimus was a large, derived Ornithomimosaur, much like the later Struthiomimus and Ornithomimus - indicating that these animals were present early on in the Latest Cretaceous. In fact, Aepyornithomimus was somewhat intermediate in form between earlier and later forms, indicating it was somewhat transitional. The size of this dinosaur is unknown, since so little of its skeleton is known, and it could have been anywhere between 2 and 5 meters long. It had unique feet, with fairly slender toes that were weirdly curved compared to close relatives. It also had longer toes than later forms - indicating said transitional nature. Unfortunately, the only parts of this dinosaur known are its legs and feet, so any weirdness elsewhere is currently unknown - though it stands to reason it may have looked different from other Ornithomimosaurs. It probably had a toothless beak, with a small head, long neck, and decently sized tail. As an Ornithomimosaur, Aepyornithomimus would have been covered in feathers all over its body, with wings on its arms (and potential ornamental feathers elsewhere as well).

By Ripley Cook

Diet: It is more likely than not that Aepyornithomimus was an herbivore, as other Ornithomimosaurs were as well.

Behavior: As an Ornithomimosaur, Aepyornithomimus would have been fast moving, primarily using speed to run away from predators rather than other means of defense. It probably would have lived in herds, or at least small groups, exploring its environment and feeding together. It is possible that it may have had adaptations in its mouth to aid in feeding on dry vegetation - since Ornithomimosaurs are usually wet-habitat dwellers, and stick to soft water-based vegetation, Aepyornithomimus is fascinating as a case study into how these dinosaurs adapted to different areas. As a dinosaur, it would have taken care of its young, potentially with the help of the rest of the flock. The wings would have been primarily used in communication - especially sexual and other forms of display. Brighter colors or weirder patterns on those feathers would have been used to indicate the health of the individuals involved.

By José Carlos Cortés

Ecosystem: The Tögrögiin environment was a red, windswept desert, much like how the fossil formation where these animals are found is today. There wasn’t a lot in terms of water, though eventually the ecosystem would transition to a wetter environment during the time of the likes of Deinocheirus et al. There were oases and arroyos, but it would have primarily been very, very dry. This means it would have been filled with tough vegetation, and as such it wasn’t a very herbivore-heavy environment.

This environment was filled with a wide variety of animals - especially lizards. There were Iguanas like Mimeosaurus, Temujinia, Zapsosaurus, Isodontosaurus, Flaviagama, Gurvansaurus, and Dzhadochtosaurus; skinks like Adamisaurus; and monitors like Cherminotus. As for mammals, there were the insectivorous stem-mammals like Barunlestes and Zalambdalestes, and the multituberculate Kryptobaatar.

By Stolp

Of course, Aepyornithomimus wasn’t the only dinosaur here! This place was lousy with the Ceratopsian Protoceratops, which would have been a major competitor with Aepyornithomimus for plant food; and there were also plenty of Pinacosaurus, the Ankylosaur, which would have been able to reach for plants with its long and flexible tongue. Insectivores included Shuvuuia, the Alvarezsaur; and Elsornis, the Opposite Bird. Mahakala, an early raptor, was present as well - and it may or may not have specialized in feeding whatever animals were present at the oases and arroyos that were present, as it seems to have been closely related to the later Goose-Raptor Halszkaraptor. Finally, the main predator of Aepyornithomimus would have been Velociraptor - which was extremely common in this location as well!

Other: Aepyornithomimus, as a potentially transitional Ornithomimosaur, helps to highlight some of the evolution of this group. It is entirely possible that Ornithomimids originated in Asia, before spreading out to North America - or, at least, went through a major portion of their evolution there. Aepyornithomimus also will help to show, as we study it further, how Ornithomimids may have handled the challenge of evolving for drier habitats.

~ By Meig Dickson

Sources Under the Cut

Alifanov, V. R. 1989. [New priscagamas (Lacertilia) from the Upper Cretaceous of Mongolia and their systematic position in the Iguania]. Paleontologiceskij Zhurnal 4:73-87.

Alifanov, V. R. 1993. New lizards of the family Macrocephalosauridae (Sauria) from the Upper Cretaceous of Mongolia, critical remarks on the systematics of the Teiidae. Paleontological Journal 27(1):70-90.

Barsbold, R. 1974. Poyedinok dinozavrov [Dueling dinosaurs]. Prioda 1974(2):81-83.

Chiappe, L. M., M. A. Norell, and J. M. Clark. 1998. The skull of a relative of the stem-group bird Mononykus. Nature 392:275-278.

Chiappe, L. M., S. Suzuki, G. J. Dyke, M. Watabe, K. Tsogtbaatar and R. Barsbold. 2007. A new enantiornithine bird from the Late Cretaceous of the Gobi Desert. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 5(2):193-208.

Chinzorig, T., Y. Kobayashi, K. Tsogtbaatar, P. J. Currie, M. Watabe and R. Barsbold. 2017. First ornithomimid (Theropoda, Ornithomimosauria) from the Upper Cretaceous Djadokhta Formation of Tögrögiin Shiree, Mongolia. Scientific Reports 7(1):5835:1-14.

Fastovsky, D. E., D. B. Weishampel, M. Watabe, R. Barsbold, K. Tsogtbaatar and P. Narmandakh. 2011. A nest of Protoceratops andrewsi (Dinosauria, Ornithischia). Journal of Paleontology 85(6):1035-1041.

Gao, K., and M. A. Norell. 2000. Taxonomic composition and systematics of Late Cretaceous lizard assemblages from Ukhaa Tolgod and adjacent localities, Mongolian Gobi Desert. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 249:1-118.

Gradzinski, R., and T. Jerzykiewicz. 1972. Additional geographical and geological data from the Polish-Mongolian Palaeontological Expeditions. Palaeontologia Polonica 27:17-306.

Kielan-Jaworowska, Z., and R. Barsbold. 1972. Narrative of the Polish-Mongolian Palaeontological Expeditions 1967-1971. Palaeontologia Polonica 27:5-136.

Kielan-Jaworowska, Z., and D. Dashzeveg. 1978. New Late Cretaceous mammal locality in Mongolia and a description of a new multituberculate. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 23(2):115-128.

Kielan-Jaworowska, Z., and B. A. Trofimov. 1981. A new occurence of Late Cretaceous eutherian mammal Zalambdalestes. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 26(1):3-7.

Kielan-Jaworowska, Z. 1984. Evolution of the therian mammals in the Late Cretaceous of Asia. Part V. Skull structure in Zalambdalestidae. Palaeontologia Polonica 46:107-117.

Kielan-Jaworowska, Z., and J. H. Hurum. 1997. Djadochtatheria - a new suborder of multituberculate mammals. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 42(2):201-242.

Kurzanov, S. M. 1972. Sexual dimorphism in protoceratopsians. Paleontological Journal 1972(1):91-97.

Jerzykiewicz, T., P. J. Currie, D. A. Eberth, P. A. Johnston, E. H. Koster and J. J. Zheng. 1994. Djadokha Formation correlative strata in Chinese Inner Mongolia: an overview of the stratigraphy, sedimentary geology, and paleontology and comparisons with the type locality in the pre-Altai Gobi. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 39(10-11):2180-2195.

Mikhailov, K. E. 1991. Classification of fossil eggshells of amniotic vertebrates. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 36(2):193-238.

Mikhailov, K. 1994. Eggs of theropods and protoceratopsian dinosaurs from the Cretaceous of Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Paleontological Journal 28:101-120.

Mikhailov, K. E. 2000. Eggs and eggshells of dinosaurs and birds from the Cretaceous of Mongolia. In M. J. Benton, M. A. Shishkin, D. M. Unwin, & E N. Kurichkin (eds.), The Age of Dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia 560-572.

Nikoloff, I., and F. v. Huene. 1966. Neue Vertebratenfunde in der Wüste Gobi. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie Monatshefte 11:691-694.

Norell, M. A., and P. J. Makovicky. 1997. Important features of the dromaeosaur skeleton: information from a new specimen. American Museum Novitates 3215:1-28.

Norell, M. A., and P. J. Makovicky. 1999. Important features of the dromaeosaur skeleton II: information from newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis. American Museum Novitates 3282:1-45.

Perle, A., M. A. Norell, L. M. Chiappe and J. M. Clark. 1993. Flightless bird from the Cretaceous of Mongolia. Nature 362:623-626.

Sabath, K. 1991. Upper Cretaceous amniotic eggs from the Gobi Desert. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 36(2):151-192.

Saneyoshi, M., M. Watabe, T. Tsubamoto, K. Tsogtbaatar, T. Chinzorig and S. Suzuki. 2010. Report of the HMNS-MPC Joint Paleontological Expedition in 2007. Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences Research Bulletin 3:19-28.

Suzuki, S., and M. Watabe. 2000. Report on the Japan–Mongolia Joint Paleontological Expedition to the Gobi desert, 1998. Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences Research Bulletin 1:83-98.

Turner, A. H., D. Pol, J. A. Clarke, G. M. Erickson, and M. A. Norell. 2007. A basal dromaeosaurid and size evolution preceding avian flight. Science 317:1378-1381.

Watabe, M., and D. B. Weishampel. 1994. Results of Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences–Institute of Geology, Academy of Sciences of Mongolia Joint Paleontological Expedition to the Gobi Desert in 1993. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 14(3, suppl.):51A.

Watabe, M., and S. Suzuki. 2000. Cretaceous fossil localities and a list of fossils collected by the Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences and Mongolian Paleontological Center Joint Paleontological Expedition (JMJPE) from 1993 through 1998. Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences Research Bulletin 1:99-108.

Watabe, W., and S. Suzuki. 2000. Report on the Japan–Mongolia Joint Paleontological Expedition to the Gobi desert, 1994. Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences Research Bulletin 1:30-44.

Watabe, M., and K. Tsogtbaatar. 2004. Report on the Japan–Mongolia Joint Paleontological Expedition to the Gobi desert, 2000. Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences Research Bulletin 2:45-67.

Watabe, M., and D. E. Fastovsky. 2007. Mass burial event of Pinacosaurus (Ankylosauria, Dinosauria) in Alag Teg, a fluvial facies of the Djadokhta Formation (Late Cretaceous), Gobi Desert, Mongolia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 27(3, suppl.):163A.

Wible, J. R., M. J. Novacek, and G. W. Rougier. 2004. New data on the skull and dentition of the Mongolia Late Cretaceous eutherian mammal Zalabdalestes. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 281:1-144.

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greenpond-tearoom · 2 years

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Living with Plants

I've always felt deeply connected to Nature! Being around plants is in all senses an inspiring experience -- comforting, harmonizing, refreshening, energizing and healing! Whether it is a private garden, terrace, a tiny balcony or only a couple of narrow windowsills in your urban dwelling - there is always an option to green up your space. I noticed that even a few minutes spent wholeheartedly with my green friends increases my concentration and nourishes my creativity. I always love to know about new ways of styling and displaying indoor plants and creating smart, harmonious indoor oases. Also, I keep constantly discovering innumerable kinds of plants - my Pinterest Wishlist is ever-growing!😎 For this post, I've gathered some ideas on how to enliven interior spaces with plants & bring more plants-inspired layers to our daily DecoLiving...

upper left - isabellas.dk upper right - moebe.dk

Besides my special love for succulents, I'm also fascinated by plants with large, burdock-like leaves, no matter whether patterned or with just plain green foliage! Here's a couple of stunningly looking Alocasias...

LEFT: One of my IKEA crushes, FABRIKÖR Glass-door cabinet adorned by a whimsical A l o c a s i a & Co.:)... via maplantemonbonheur.fr RIGHT: Another impressive species of Alocasia, also known as Elephant's Ear, here as an a c c e n t p l a n t ... via thejoyofplants.co.uk

upper left - A lovely i l l u s t r a t i o n by Saar Manche upper right - A stylish cornerwith a jar terrarium @ MadameLove .instagram

bottom left - Some pretty s e w n a p p l i c a t i o n s in embroidery hoops via Lia Griffith bottom right - Photography by Luisa Brimble via homelife.com.au Now, if you are like me, amazed by the p l a n t theme in fashion and home decoration, you'll defenitely like these finds of mine - charming gifts to treat yourself and someone you love!

Click on ALT to read about items the set contains.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the post! Also, you might like to visit my ⌘GRÜN Wohnen Pinterest board. I collect there wonderful ideas of indoor plants, plants-inspired DIYs and shopping, including the best books about plants and care tips.

#moodboards #shop with me

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xtruss · 2 years

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Environment: Humans Are Overzealous Whale Morticians

We hastily dispose of dead whales, ignoring the ecological significance of their carcasses.

By Bob Goldfarb | August 10, 2022 | Nautilus

The Public Domain Review/Flickr

When, at the dawn of the 19th century, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traversed western North America, they encountered a wondrous bestiary: the “fleet and delicately formed” coyote, the “bear of enormous size” which we call the grizzly. Yet few creatures impressed them more than the “Buzzard or Vulture” their party captured near the mouth of the Columbia River. The bird was massive, more than nine feet from wingtip to wingtip, and garish, with an “iris of a pale scarlet,” a “pale orrange [sic] Yellow” head, and feathers of “Glossy Shineing black.” Just as striking was the bird’s diet. “(W)e have Seen it feeding on the remains of the whale and other fish which have been thrown up by the waves on the Sea Coast,” Clark reported. Marine creatures, he added, “constitute their principal food.”

That Lewis and Clark first encountered a California condor by the sea was no coincidence. Once, condors soared across much of the continent, merrily scavenging dead ground sloths, mammoths, and glyptodonts. When human hunters wiped out these giant herbivores during the Pleistocene, condors nearly went extinct themselves. But they never quite vanished. Instead, they survived along the Pacific Coast, feasting on the last megafauna carcasses still available: marine mammals, particularly the blue, humpback, and gray whales who migrate along North America’s western rim.1 That we know Gymnogyps californianus as the California condor—as opposed to, say, the Kansas condor—is the nomenclatural legacy of dead cetaceans.

We are removing what is natural from a natural place.

Whales, like wolves, elephants, and beavers, are keystone species, animals who disproportionately shape ecosystems. While alive, their fecal plumes fertilize phytoplankton, the microscopic plants that oxygenate our atmosphere.2 In death, whales who settle on the ocean floor attract an astonishing necrobiome, the community of scavengers who feed upon the dead: hagfish, mussels, limpets, isopods, sleeper sharks, chemosynthetic bacteria.3 Some, like bone-eating Osedax worms, subsist exclusively on benthic carcasses. Whalefalls are oases in the abyssal wastes, as enticing to life as a Saharan watering hole. Not every dead whale, however, comes to rest in the depths.

Those whales who drift ashore—buoyed by internal gasses, conveyed by currents—support complex ecosystems of their own. Vultures and seabirds peck at eyes and blowhole; sharks strip blubber in the surf. In Namibia’s coastal deserts, jackals and hyenas gnaw at dead seal pups, dolphins, and whales.4 When, in 2020, a minke whale—nicknamed Godfried, for a beloved local author—washed ashore on a Dutch islet, he was visited by 57 species of beetle, 21 of whom had never been seen on the island before. In Russia, scientists have documented 180 polar bears feasting on a single bowhead.5

When The Going Gets Tough: When Pleistocene-era warming melted Arctic sea ice, polar bears likely survived by scavenging cetaceans. Perhaps that is how they’ll survive modern climate change, too. Photo by FriedChicken99 / Shutterstock.

Once, coastal necrophages could count on a steady supply of whale carcasses. (California’s famously huge grizzlies, now extinct, may have attained their gargantuan size by feeding upon the same marine mammals who supported condors.6) Today, however, washed-up cetaceans are comparatively rare. In part, that’s because industrial whaling—“the largest removal of biomass in world history,” per one researcher—ravaged the leviathans. Blue whale populations have plummeted by up to 90 percent, and sperm whales endure at just one-third of their historic numbers. Scavengers can’t eat nonexistent animals.

But the dearth of whales isn’t entirely responsible for the dearth of whale carcasses. We humans also tend to be overzealous morticians. Rather than letting stranded animals fulfill their ancient roles, we hastily dispose of their remains, depriving coastal ecosystems of nature’s greatest windfall. As one group of scientists put it in a recent review of cetacean carcass management, whaling and whale-removal have together “led to radical changes in the abundance and availability of large marine biomass inputs.”7 In other words: Our shorelines miss their whales and dolphins.

Lately, some researchers have begun to pay closer heed to the value of stranded whales, and to encourage coastal managers to let carcasses lie. Granted, not every beach is an appropriate resting place for a reeking, 50,000-pound corpse. When circumstances allow, however, permitting dead whales to decompose in situ may be preferable to disposal. “Can we do better than the way we manage carcasses nowadays?” says Martina Quaggiotto, an ecologist at the University of Stirling and the review’s lead author. “We are removing what is natural from a natural place.”

In 1979, a pod of 41 sperm whales stranded on an Oregon beach—“hemorrhaging under the crushing weight of their own flesh,” wrote Barry Lopez, who attended the spectacle. The whales, it was clear, couldn’t be saved, and the numinous visitation became a profane exercise in bureaucratic wrangling. What law-enforcement agency should manage crowd-control, which scientists should be in charge of obtaining tissue samples, and how would the state dispose of the corpses? “If buried, the carcasses would become hard envelopes of rotting flesh, the internal organs would liquefy and leach out onto the beach, and winter storms would uncover the whole mess,” Lopez cautioned. (Officials ultimately decided to burn the whales, then bury the charred remnants.) A dead cetacean on a public beach was no longer an ecological cog, but a logistical nightmare.

More than 40 years later, our management of dead whales is no more coherent. As Quaggiotto and her colleagues note, every country, state, and municipality obeys slightly different protocols. Some whales are carted off to the landfill, incinerator, or rendering plant, where their oily fats may be extracted for soaps, pet foods, and biofuel. Some are towed to sea, weighed down with scrap metal, and sunk. Some are buried. Some are cleaned for museum display. In 1970, the Oregon Highway Department infamously dynamited a gray whale, flattening an Oldsmobile beneath a chunk of flying blubber and leaving 75 bystanders flecked with putrescent meat. Detonation, needless to say, is no longer anyone’s preferred alternative.

Each dead whale was a great gift of nature.

In some cases removal is a matter of public safety, given that a dead whale is the world’s most alluring shark bait; even a buried cetacean may leach shark-beckoning plumes of carbon and ammonium into the ocean.8 Often, whales who strand alive are put out of their misery with pentobarbital, a drug that renders their bodies toxic long after death. In one horrifying incident, a 2-year-old Australian shepherd fell into a coma after she excavated blubber from a humpback who’d been euthanized three weeks earlier.9 (Today many veterinarians prefer potassium chloride, which doesn’t leave behind dangerous residues.)

Mostly, whales are removed for a prosaic reason: They stink. The aroma of dead cetaceans has been described as “the worst garbage smell you can think of,” “death in a dumpster,” and “like a dead animal but multiply that by 10 and then add fish smell to that and then feces.” The journalist Sarah Gilman took a more literary tack: “a throatier version of seashore rot that tastes like backwash from a mildew-darkened garbage disposal.”

As a result, authorities seldom let carcasses lie. Some countries, like Belgium and France, actually require officials to usher dead cetaceans off to a waste-management facility. In the United States, Quaggiotto found that just 28 percent of cetacean carcasses remain in situ—nearly all of these, surely, on remote beaches in wildlife refuges, national parks, and Alaska. In heavily developed Florida, Megan Stolen, a stranding investigator and scientist with the Blue World Research Institute, estimates that less than 5 percent of dead whales and dolphins get to stay put. The removal of a bottlenose dolphin can be a tourist attraction as enticing as Epcot Center. “Daytona Beach during spring break on a Friday afternoon, that’s fun,” Stolen says wryly.

Our tendency to remove carcasses, however understandable, is problematic on a few levels. In Australia, disposing of a single small whale costs around $20,000 AUD (nearly $14,000),10 and some large humpbacks have run more than $115,000 It’s also tremendously labor-intensive. Stolen’s team once elected to chop up and bury a humpback on Melbourne Beach. Because heavy machinery would have destroyed sea turtle nests, they dug the immense grave by hand. “It was about eight hours of digging with a five-man crew,” Stolen recalls.

We may wish to restore our coasts, yet our broken world doesn’t make it easy.

The refusal to let bodies be bodies has ecological implications, too. Deprived of coastal carrion, California condors have turned to the gut piles left behind by hunters, which are often tainted with bullet fragments; today lead poisoning accounts for half of known condor deaths.11 Similarly afflicted are Andean condors, the California condor’s cousins, whose 10-foot wingspans shadow South America’s Pacific lip. Like their North American relatives, Andean condors once depended on coastal cuisine, then turned to cattle and other terrestrial carrion after industrial whaling eliminated their preferred repast. But it hasn’t been a smooth transition. To access their inland scavenging grounds on the Patagonian steppe, many condors must wing over the Andes, fight powerful headwinds, and traverse one of the wettest rainforests on Earth. Condors on the Pacific coast, scientists note, “expend more time and energy than their historical counterparts” hunting for carcasses, which, along with the coastal development that has overwhelmed prime foraging grounds, is among the reasons that they’re endangered throughout much of their range.12

Nor are condors the only scavengers to get crowded out by humans. This was illustrated by a clever 2012 experiment, in which Australian researchers placed dead fish along two sets of beaches—some near towns, others in more rural areas.13 While fish on remote beaches were quickly claimed by native raptors like whistling kites, the urban carcasses lingered much longer, and were only belatedly scavenged by nonnative foxes and rats. The implications were troubling: Many coastal necrobiomes are too impoverished by people to take full advantage of carrion.

Yet letting scavengers feast can be fraught, too. In California, scientists typically necropsy cetaceans to ascertain their cause of death and collect bone and tissue samples. Sometimes, though, bodies wash up near nesting colonies of snowy plovers, threatened seabirds who lay their eggs in sandy hollows. Cutting open a whale on a plover beach, says Moe Flannery, a senior collections manager at the California Academy of Sciences who investigates cetacean strandings, risks attracting ravens, coyotes, and other scavengers, who might prey on plover eggs and chicks once they’re in the area. Some land managers prohibit necropsies near plover beaches altogether, even if performing one would theoretically benefit scavengers.

Plovers have always contended with predators and the carcasses that enticed them, of course—but today their populations, diminished by development, are more vulnerable to hungry mouths and beaks. We may wish to restore coastal necrobiomes, yet our broken world doesn’t always make it easy.

Millennia ago, we humans were as dependent on whale carcasses as condors. Coastal Indigenous peoples around the planet—the Arawak, the Maori, the Inuit—exploited stranded cetaceans for food and tool material. In one Spanish cave occupied by humans some 14,000 years ago, researchers unearthed barnacles that grow only upon the skin of right whales, a molluscan testament to our ancestors’ scavenging prowess.14 To Patagonia’s Fuegians, each dead whale was a “great gift of nature.”

“For as long as there have been humans,” Rebecca Giggs points out in Fathoms, her meditation on cetaceans, “the whale has been a portentous animal.” Precisely what a dead whale portends, however, has changed drastically. In the Anthropocene, carcasses aren’t always divine gifts; sometimes they’re curses of a sort, the rotten fruits of modernity’s diseased tree. Whales and dolphins are diced by ship propellers, drowned by fishing gear, starved by the plastic bezoars that accumulate in their guts. Pods of pilot whales, agonized and disoriented by the clamor of naval sonar and seismic energy testing, hurl themselves onto beaches. A symbol of nature’s bounty transmutates into a symptom of its collapse. We jettison dead whales not just because they’re smelly shark attractants, perhaps, but to escape the evidence of our sins.

The True Paleo Diet: Until very recently in Earth’s history, the sight of animals feasting upon washed-ashore cetacean carcasses was a common one—and in the absence of these bodies, entire webs of life collapse. Photo by Bob pool / Shutterstock.

Our treatment of dead whales mirrors our treatment of most dead animals. Highway maintenance personnel haul roadkill to the dump, a reasonable safety measure that also disguises the violence of automobility. In Spain, regulations imposed in the wake of Mad Cow Disease require farmers to incinerate livestock rather than letting their bodies nourish vultures. Our “aseptic” approach to carcass management has short-circuited processes, like scavenging and decomposition, that have buttressed ecosystems since the dawn of microbial life. Because objects interred in landfills don’t readily break down, many coastal dumps have become tombs for the unprocessed corpses of whales and dolphins, as eerily preserved as pharaohs in their pyramids. “It’s kind of a joke among marine-mammal people,” Megan Stolen says. “When life on Earth ends and the aliens come down, they’re going to wonder what the heck these humans were doing.”

And the management of dead cetaceans will only grow more vexing. Many whale populations have grown in recent decades, meaning there’s more future carrion in the sea; some groups of humpbacks, for instance, have nearly recovered from whaling.15 Less happily, climate change is already wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems. Along the Pacific Coast, a recent rash of stranded and emaciated gray whales may be symptomatic of dwindling Arctic food supplies.16 Warmer oceans may also give rise to more infectious diseases and, with them, “mass mortality events.”17 For some creatures, the carcass boom may present a grim opportunity. During the Pleistocene, when warmer temperatures melted Arctic sea-ice and left polar bears unable to hunt seals, Ursus maritimus likely survived by scavenging cetaceans.17 It’s some solace to think that the great white bear, the poster-species for global warming, could yet endure the Anthropocene on a putrescent diet of bowheads and grays.

In a sense, says Quaggiotto, humanity’s relationship with stranded cetaceans must come full circle. A dead whale furnishes vital data about the health of our oceans; reconnects us to nature; and nourishes the scavengers whose waste-management services support our own health. A dead whale, as our forebears knew, was both tragedy and gift, an object to be cherished and learned from, not reflexively discarded. “For looking at the future of carcass management, we must also look to the past,” Quaggiotto says.

Our coastlines may be impoverished, yet we can still restore wildness to the processes of death.18 In May 2010, biologists in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park spotted a 41-foot-long female humpback carcass sprawled across a beach and, sensing opportunity, set out cameras to monitor her fate. Over the next four months, brown bears and wolves feasted almost daily, inscribing networks of pawpaths onto forest and beach.19 The “blubber bonanza” became a site for ursine reproduction—cameras caught a pair of bears mating—and even innovation. In July, a researcher observed a young bear scrubbing his muzzle with a barnacle-encrusted rock, like a post-prandial diner dabbing himself with a napkin. It was the first time a brown bear had ever been documented using tools.20 “That carcass seemed to be a beacon calling to these huge bears—and, of course, they got huger and huger,” says Tania Lewis, wildlife biologist at Glacier Bay. “We can never underestimate the importance of the marine ecosystem for the terrestrial ecosystem.”

References:

1. Chamberlain, C.P., Waldbauer, J.R., Fox-Dobbs, K., & Risebrough, R. Pleistocene to recent dietary shifts in California condors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102, 16707-16711 (2005).

2. Roman, J. & McCarthy, J.J. The whale pump: Marine mammals enhance primary productivity in a coastal basin. PLos One 5, e13255 (2010).

3. Engelhaupt, E. After you die, a universe eats your body. Popular Mechanics (2022).

4. Skinner, J.D., van Aarde, R.J., & Goss, R.A. Space and resource use by brown hyenas Hyaena brunnea in the Namib desert. Journal of Zoology 237, 123-131 (1995).

5. Laidre, K.L., Stirling, I., Estes, J.A., Kochnev, A., & Roberts, J. Historical and potential future importance of large whales as food for polar bears. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 16, 515-524 (2018).

6. Miller, J. Awakening the grizzly. Pacific Standard (2018).

7. Quaggiotto, M., et al. Past, present and future of the ecosystem services provided by cetacean carcasses. Ecosystem Services 54, 101406 (2022).

8. Heiss, J.W. Whale burial and organic matter impacts on biogeochemical cycling in beach aquifers and leachate fluxes to the nearshore zone. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology 233, 103656 (2020).

9. Bischoff, K., Jaeger, R., & Ebel, J.G. An unusual case of relay pentobarbital toxicosis in a dog. Journal of Medical Toxicology 7, 236-239 (2011).

10. Tucker, J.P., Santos, I.R., Crocetti, S., & Butcher, P. Whale carcass strandings on beaches: Management challenges, research needs, and examples from Australia. Ocean & Coastal Management 163, 323-338 (2018).

11. Puper, B. California condor deaths are rising due to lead poisoning—again. Kcbx.org (2021).

12. Lambertucci, S.A., et al. Tracking data and retrospective analyses of diet reveal the consequences of loss of marine subsidies for an obligate scavenger, the Andean condor. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 285, 20180550 (2018).

13. Huijbers, C.M., Schlacher, T.A., Schoeman, D.S., Weston, M.A., & Connolly, R.M. Urbanisation alters processing of marine carrion on sandy beaches. Landscape and Urban Planning 119, 1-8 (2013).

14. Álvarez-Fernández, E., et al. Occurrence of whale barnacles in Nerja Cave (Málaga, southern Spain): Indirect evidence of whale consumption by humans in the Upper Magdalenian. Quaternary International 337, 163-169 (2014).

15. Zerbini, A.N., et al. Assessing the recovery of an Antarctic predator from historical exploitation. Royal Society Open Science 6 190368 (2019).

16. Wolfe, D. Gray whales are dying along the Pacific coast. Cnn.com (2022).

17. Sanderson, C.E. & Alexander, K.A. Unchartered waters: Climate change likely to intensify infectious disease outbreaks causing mass mortality events in marine mammals. Global Change Biology 26, 4284-4301 (2020).

18. Kaminsky, I. Rewilding death: The plan to restore the necrobiome. bbc.com (2021)

19. Lewis, T.M. & Lafferty, D.J.R. Brown bears and wolves scavenge humpback whale carcass in Alaska. Ursus 25, 8-13 (2014).

20. Deecke, V.B. Tool-use in the brown bear (Ursus arctos). Animal Cognition 15, 725-730 (2012).

— Ben Goldfarb is an environmental journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Geographic, and many other publications. He is the author of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.

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jaisalmerdekhodesertcampsblog · 2 years

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Indian Desert Trail

Touring India, is accompanied with many adventure activities that is an added feature to the historically rich sub-continent of India. As already aware about it, there is much adventure scope on mighty Himalayas on the pristine blue beaches in India but what is not much known is that India also poses for a great desert adventure destination. Rajasthan is one such destination that has evolved as a great place for desert adventure in India. The state is in complete contrast to other adventure destinations. In Rajasthan there is thirst, fear of getting lost, camels as the only saviour of lives and means of travel. The vast stretches of Thar Desert in Rajasthan is a treasure trove with daunting affair, unexplored rural magic, unsurpassed adventure thrills and a romance only found in deserts. Tent in Jaisalmer

Adventure in Rajasthan

Rajasthan is after-all the bastion of desert thrill and adventure. It culminates with safaris in desert, sand bashing, camel cart ride and stay in camps in midst of desert dunes. The entire Rajasthan actually seem to unleash adventure as every niche of Thar Desert is a perfect place for adventurous activities.

Jaisalmer, Jodhpur and Bikaner, however, emerged as prime destinations where one can seek adventure, experience it and learn to live with it. Moreover, Rajasthan is a land of mysticism and reveals that to everyone whenever it is given the opportunity. Long camel rides on desert dunes crossing the long queue of caravan, quenching thirst from artistically designed step wells the sights of beautiful rural folklore balancing 5 storey earthen pots is indeed spell-binding and sets perfect ambience for tales from Arabian Nights amidst the desert dunes. Jaisalmer Desert Camp

Desert Magic

The desert thrills are just manifold and it can be experienced with every ride on camel back that takes to distant places and brings to you oases that are refuges from the extreme harshness of the desert. The sand, the heat and the treacherous routes all seem to be against your motion but yet the successful completion of a trip just defeats all the friction. The Thar Desert is a vast stretch and is illuminated by villages that form small pockets. These villages are glorious and have a history to tell. So, whenever you reach villages observe everything that come to you and learn the ways of life in Rajasthan. The people are there to tell you their tales of what they have learned from the desert and what the desert taught them. Life in desert is different from living in hills and valleys, where every day is a new struggle and also a new lesson.

Camping during nights on desert dunes in Sam sand or Kuri near Jaisalmer, is indeed a unique experience with bonfire buffets accompanied with music and dance performances of rural folklore. Camping on Sand Dunes is a far greater expedition than just spending a night in a camp. Watching the desert sky bountiful of shimmering stars is beyond imagination, the thrill doesn't ends here, there are then sand bashing trip that roars you up and down the mountain dunes, newly introduced in India. Jaisalmer Desert package

Remember Desert Feast

Rajasthan has lot on offer. Adventures like camel ride on vast stretches of the desert is common. Besides, camel cart ride in villages add extra thrill to the adventure. Then a ride on elephant back to ramparts of forts that are great strongholds, leave you amazed at the majestic ride, for it never would have been so exciting before. Watching the rural charms sitting on a horse's back and sensing the aura of burning sand in a basking Sun, will surely be there in your memory for you to recall whenever you may so desire. Whenever you are on such a trip never compromises on setting foot to explore the unexplored treasury of Thar. Evenings can be more exciting than ever. Camel ride up to the sunset point to watch the setting sun is organized in evenings. Further, night stay on the dunes of deserts adds to the excitement that brings to you glimpses of happenings that are just in imaginations. You might have to ponder a lot to find its true meaning.

View More: Desert safari in jaisalmer

Jaisalmer Dekho Desert Camp, Near Sam Sand Dunes, Jaisalmer

Call Us: +91 – 8690551966

Email: [email protected]

Check In: 3.00 pm

Check Out: 11.00 am

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mysnowflakekinder · 3 years

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DAS NEUE KINDERZIMMER VON FRIEDA HODEL

ÜBER FRIEDA HODEL

Frieda Hodel @FRIEDAHODEL ist Beauty, Health & Lifestyle Expertin, Unternehmerin, Influencerin und 1. Schweizer Bachelorette - dazu ist sie Mama von zwei Mädchen. Seit 2013 leitet sie erfolgreich ihr eigenes Unternehmen "FH Health & Lifestyle" und verwöhnt jeden mit den persönlichen Beautytreatments im malerischen Wallis. Sie ist nicht nur Expertin auf dem Gebiet, sondern lebt den Lifestyle - ihr Körper ist ihr Kapital.

DAS NEUE KINDERZIMMER VON ZURIA

Frieda hat mit ihrer Familie ein neues Haus bezogen und wir durften das Kinderzimmer von Zuria, Friedas Tochter, neu gestalten und dekorieren, und nehmen euch hier auf eine Tour mit. Lasst euch inspirieren.

DAS EINRICHTUNGSKONZEPT FÜRS NEUE KINDERZIMMER

Als Frieda Hodel den Umzug in ihr neues Heim plante, kam sie auf uns zu und wollte mit uns ihr neues Kinderzimmer gestalten. Eine zentrale Rolle sollte dabei ein neues Bett für Zuria spielen, das als Schlafplatz, Ruheort und Leseecke dienen sollte. Wir erstellten für sie ein Moodboard fürs Kinderzimmer mit passenden Produkten.

Bei der Gestaltung des neuen Kinderzimmers von Zuria haben wir uns schlichten, natürlichen Tönen bedient. Das Zimmer wurde mit Farrow & Ball Estate Emulsion "Elephants Breath" gestrichen, einem satten Mittelgrau mit einem leichten Hauch Magenta, das in kühlen, nach Westen ausgerichteten Räumen beinahe Lila wirkt. Die umweltfreundlichen, auf Wasser basierenden Farben von Farrow & Ball eignen sich perfekt fürs Kinderzimmer. Für die Dekoration und Accessoires wählten wir zarte Rosa- und Erdtönen. Diese feinen Farben lassen mehr Raum für das Wichtige. Die Möbel - unteranderem das Herzstück, das Bettsofa von Oliver Furniture aus der Wood Kollektion, wurden in cleanem Weiss und Eiche gehalten. Das Wood Original Bettsofa hat einen schönen Touch aus den 50er Jahren und reine, einfache und klare Linien. Tagsüber kann das Bettsofa mit vielen Decken und Kissen leicht als gemütliches Sofa oder Leseplatz genutzt werden. Es ist eine perfekte Einrichtungslösung für ein kleineres Kinderzimmer.

Das schöne Tidy Books Kinderbücherregal in weiss fördert die Freude der Kinder an Büchern auf ganz besondere Weise: Das kindgerechte Design zeigt den gesamten Buchumschlag - Zuria kann so die Bücher eigenständig auswählen. Dieses Bücherregal entspricht damit den Grundsätzen der Montessori Philosophie und erlaubt den Kindern mehr Selbstständigkeit.

Mit diversen Lichtquellen wird das Zimmer zum gemütlichen Rückzugsort. Die Mr. Maria Miffy Lampe in XL in Hasenform, das Highlight in jedem Kinderzimmer, sorgt für genügend Licht und begleitet Zuria in den Schlaf.

SHOP THE LOOK

Du kannst Zurias Kinderzimmer ganz einfach nachstylen, hier gehts zu den Produkten aus dem Kinderzimmer.

DREI FRAGEN AN FRIEDA

Das Kinderzimmer von Zuria ist bereits im Einsatz. Wir wollten von Frieda wissen, wie das Kinderzimmer entstand und wie es bei Zuria ankommt.

Liebe Frieda, ihr seid in euer neues Zuhause gezogen und habt Zurias Kinderzimmer neu gestaltet. Wie gefällt Zuria ihr neues Reich?

Zuria liebt ihr neues kleines Reich! Wir haben sie auch in gewisse Entscheidungsprozesse mit eingebunden, so durfte sie z.B. Deko und Farben mitbestimmen. Ich denke es ist wichtig, den Kindern von klein an aufzuzeigen, dass sie ihre eigene Meinung einbringen können und so ihren Alltag mitgestalten dürfen. Dies fördert Kreativität, Eigenständigkeit und Selbstbewusstsein.

Was war euch wichtig bei der Einrichtung des neuen Kinderzimmers?

Uns war wichtig, dass Zuria ein Zimmer hat, in welchem sie sich wohl fühlt zum schlafen aber auch wenn sie spielen oder kreativ sein will. Mit warmen und ruhigen Farben wollten wir ihre kleine Oase gestalten – so dass sie sich immer gerne an ihre Kindheit zurückerinnern wird.

Ihr habt euch für eine Einzelbett von Oliver Furniture aus der Wood Collection entschieden, was hat euch überzeugt?

Wir haben uns fürs Oliver Furniture Wood Collection Bett entschieden, da es modular aufbau- und erweiterbar ist. Unter dem Bett haben wir eine grosse Schublade gewählt, sodass all ihre Plüschtiere und Sachen auch gut versorgt sind. Und wenn sie etwas grösser ist, machen wir aus dem Bett ein Hochbett, damit sie sich unter dem Bett eine Kuschelecke einrichten kann. So können wir den Platz im Zimmer ideal nutzen und das Raumgefühl sichtlich vergrössern.

EINRICHTUNGSBERATUNG BEI MY SNOWFLAKE

Möchtest du dein Kinderzimmer einrichten und suchst noch nach Ideen? Wir entwerfen für dich ein schönes Konzept und kreieren zusammen mit dir dein Wunsch-Kinderzimmer. Wir helfen dir passende Möbel, Wandfarbe und Accessoires zu finden und erstellen für dich ein Moodboard mit konkreten Produktvorschlägen. Was dich erwartet:

· Einrichtungsvorschlag für ein Kinderzimmer oder für eine Kinderzimmerecke

· Erstellung eines Moodboards

· Grundrisspositionierung

· Farbkonzept für Wände, Möbel & Accessoires

· Präsentation der Bemusterung (telefonisch oder in unserem Laden)

· Shoppingliste für alle unsere Produktempfehlungen

Interessiert? Hier gehts zur Kinderzimmer Einrichtungsberatung. Buche jetzt deine Einrichtungsberatung online oder

#KINDERZIMMER #BABYMODE & ACCESSOIRES #ZUBEHÖR NACH MARKEN

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044-eu · 4 years

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Trip to Jaipur the capital of Rajasthan, the land of the Maharajas

This was a stop on my trip to India, a very important stage both for what I saw, and for what I experienced in those few days. I would say that it was 1997, so today it will most likely be easier to move between two cities, in that period to do 200 kilometers it took several hours. The streets were poorly cared for, narrow and full of animals as ever, especially camels that were most likely used for freight transport from one country to another. So we left rather early in the morning, from New Delhi with a basket containing lunch of the day because we didn't count on arriving in Jaipur until the afternoon. The street usually offers many things to see. Small villages that seem lost in time, people working in the fields, some big factory in the distance but this was the only note of modernity we saw. Cars were very few, many bicycles, and many carts. And a lot of animals. Towards the middle of the day, we had only done half the way, stopped in a meadow near the road to eat what we had brought and then left. We stopped a short time later because we punctured a wheel. So we changed it and went in search of a place to accommodate that punctured, also seeing that, for the bad conditions of the road it was very easy to drill again. At one point we see a sign with an arrow that also pointed to a rubber is a rubber is, so we entered a kind of huge courtyard, with a wooden shack at the bottom and other smaller shacks around. Pigs were circling around, and they came right near us. They had no fear of humans. Our guest explained that this was also a hotel. In fact we saw at the bottom of the shack bigger than in front, apart from a long counter, it was completely open, a row of heamaches. The dirt reigned supreme in that place and there were people who came in and drank beer at the counter and looked at us curiously. It took about an hour to get the tyre repaired and in that time I always had a bit of a fear for that desolate place. Luckily they ignored us and we were able to leave safely. A couple of hours before sunset we arrived near Jaipur but since there was still enough light we decided to make a stop before going into town. We went to see Amber's fortress. We did not see the interior of the fortress because it was already closed, we still saw the large square, full of stalls where they sold spices and all kinds of fruit both fresh and dried. There are some wonderful gardens in Amber, located on an island in a lake that I think is artificial. Seen from the top of the fortress are something wonderful. Another feature that impressed me were the monkeys. Many on all sides, which were circling over the walls, between the streets and also in the market. There were also other gardens nearby where we took refuge to escape the heat, and walking barefoot on the fresh grass felt immediately better. There were many people in those gardens, I think tourists although most were Indian. At one point they stopped a group of guys who saw my son's sunglasses and asked if they could try them. One of the boys had a camera and took turns inforking his glasses, the very common Ray-Ban, they photographed each other. They were very happy to have that experience, but it seemed strange to us. They may have seen some publicity that had affected them, but they wouldn't have the opportunity to have them. As soon as we arrived in the city, even this noisy and chaotic as the capital, overflowing with humanity and animals, where the continuous sounds of horns filled the air, we had a nice surprise; the hotel that our guest had booked us. It was just on the outskirts of the city, but what immediately struck us was the silence once we entered the lobby after a very long drive through a gigantic garden. The hotel was wonderful. It was built as the residence of the Maharajas of Jaipur and perfectly retains its elaborate splendor, with beautiful hand-carved decorations in marble and sandstone domes and balustrades. And inside is the best restaurant in the city, located in the French-style ballroom with huge crystal chandeliers. Its gardens are wonderful with peacocks that roam freely and other birds. We were enchanted by everything we saw. From our room, which was immense and gave on a portico with armchairs and wicker tables from which we descended directly into the garden, to the room where we made breakfast, to the two very different bars, to the pool. I mean, everything was perfect. The next evening we dined in that wonderful dining room, where thanks also to an Italian chef we ate really great Italian food. And the evening after dinner stroll in front of the hotel lobby or sit on one of the many cushion-covered sofas placed outside enjoying the coolness of the evening, in the light of torches and candles. In the city of Jaipur we only made tourists going to see everything that was indicated in the tour guides, then the palace of the winds that had been built for the women of Maharaja, who could not leave the palace and who looked at the streets adjacent with the tiny windows that adorned the 5-story facade and inside a whole series of stairs and small niches from which you could see outside comfortably seated. We saw the Royal Palace with a guide who was learning Italian and then struggled to explain everything to us in our language, and shopped in the crowded bazaars. But to return to the evening after the hot, chaotic and deafening day in that oase of peace was priceless. We stayed another day in Jaipur, then left to return to New Delhi but made a detour on the street to go and see the tiger park. Before the park we stopped at a large lake where we could take a boat ride and where I who stayed ashore I fed peanuts to monkeys that were in the surroundings, staying to observe the larger monkeys that removed the peanuts to the pi I was trying to send them away so I could feed those puppies without success. I also had a close encounter with a monkey, always the day we got back we stopped in a small town, to visit the old part that had remained like a century ago and after making some purchases to a kind of bazaar getting back in the car , a monkey grabs the plastic bag I had in my hand and at my refusal to leave it almost slaps me, always trying to rip off my bag. She would have won it if someone hadn't come and kicked her out. But on second thought after my argument with a monkey was a lot of fun, even though it scared me a little bit. Monkeys in India are really from everything. Our guest, who also lives in the capital, tells us that they had to lock both the refrigerator and the pantry, because if they manage to get into the house they can open both and then they take away all the eatable. But they are endured by the people who also feed them and indeed there is also a temple dedicated to monkeys located in Alta, near Jaipur and here the monkeys are considered sacred and are fed and pampered by tourists who buy peanuts especially for them c they are sold at the entrance to the temple. The tour we did inside the tiger park unfortunately was not very successful. We haven't seen one of tigers, but it's normal to think that at that time of year it's very hot and they prefer to lie in the shade in the cool. However, we have seen many other types of animals, which have partly paid off for us. These are areas that do not see tourism anyway and where it is interesting to see small towns, rural life, wells, small shops and life as it takes place away from the big cities. I was left with a memory. We stopped for lunch in one of these small towns and at some sort of inn we asked for food. However, we realized that we had almost no more Indian currency but only dollars, so we asked to be able to pay with these. But they did not accept, so to eat we rummaged through every pocket, every wallet to be able to find some rupee and in the end with what we managed to scrape us 4 or 5 omelettes that we divided among ourselves that we were in 9. On the day of the return to New Delhi we made quite late and so in the dark we were not yet in sight of the city. The traffic gradually went down until it was completely over and every 4 or 5 kilometers we found a patrol of soldiers who always told us the same thing, to get back into the city soon. Our guest explained to us that at night no one travels because it is dangerous. There's a lot of crime especially outside the inner circle. However we were able to return safely and since it was late and at lunch we had eaten only a piece of omelette, our host invited us to eat at a restaurant, one of the best in the city, which made international cuisine. The place was almost all full, but not of families, generally they were couples or groups of men. Very few women. What amazed me was when we went out and headed to where we had parked the car. The road was completely deserted. That street where up to two or three hours before there were huge rickshaws, bicycles, camels and elephants along with a flood of noisy people and continuous sounds of horns. there was just nothing. In fact, in the evening the Indians stay at home, they rarely go out to a restaurant or a movie theater. By the way I have not seen a cinema and very few restaurants and bars. In the evening sit back home after dinner, we might take a walk in the park in front of the house to cool off or play cards after putting the kids to bed. And after a while if I woke up at night I could hear a strange sound almost a verse of a bird. I asked what it was and our guest told us that it is the guardians of the neighborhood who at night go around all areas and exchange that signal to indicate that everything is fine. The neighborhood where we lived was surrounded by a very high wall and the gates that were two were closed in the evening and at night armed guards were turning for the tranquility of the inhabitants. In the neighborhood there was also an emergency room, various shops, hairdressers and a bazaar, but what seemed strange was the pharmacy. Think of a small garage with a metal door. Inside a counter and many small shelves. If you need medication, the doctor marks the amount on the prescription and the pharmacist takes the package and gives you the exact number of pills, putting away what advances. On my trip,I was lucky enough to be in New Delhi on a Friday 17th. Here it is a date that brings bad, in India and the day indicated for weddings. And that night in the city we celebrated a lot of them. We then went out to see the processions of the groom, who pass through the streets and accompany the groom to the chosen place for the ceremony, where the bride is waiting. These processions are very picturesque, they have lights and songs and to get them they carry with them huge batteries. The groom is lavishly dressed and everyone sings and dances walking. We have seen several of these processions, more or less long, more or less rich and following one of these we have arrived at a place where pavilions are mounted that at night resemble castles and temples real with spires and towers that are all fake and where the day after, there is no trace of it. We approached one of these that seemed the most beautiful and next to the entrance we saw an elderly person welcoming guests. We were there to see the procession of the groom, who by the way arrived on horseback. When the Indian gentleman saw us he came towards us and asked if we were tourists. We told him we were Italian and this invited us in. Inside there were tables set up, fountains of all colors and lots of people. At the bottom, covered with golden curtains there were armchairs for the newlyweds where the ceremony would be held. They offered us a drink and a food and when it came time for the ceremony the elderly gentleman took us and took us under the tent and made us sit in the front row. They then told me that for Indians to have foreign guests at the wedding brings good luck. So we were the guests of honor of that wedding that left us speechless in terms of pageantry, both of the clothes of the newlyweds and of the jewels of the bride and the women of the family. And the setting and refreshments were also opulent. The wedding was simple and very beautiful. The exchange of a wreath of flowers, and at the end rose petals that came down from the sky. We passed the next day where the night before there were many pavilions and there was nothing left, not even the garbage, it was a barren, dry area, without a tree, really ugly, but that for one evening turned into many castles from a thousand and one night. One day I'd like to go back to India. Read the full article

#English #holiday #india #jaipur #maharaja #rajasthan #travelers #travels

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southrift-galaxy-safaris-blog · 5 years

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Hidden Gems of The Rift Valley

Away from the plus coast line is one of the most attractive geographical features of the country, there is more than half a million square kilometers of absolute marvel waiting for you if you look deeper into the country. The Rift Valley has so much to offer that we wouldn't exhaust its marvels in a whole book. Here are some of the uncommon/unknown/unexplored sites that will leave you breathless... Iten View Point Iten is a small town located about 50km north of Eldoret town. Although it is well-known as the home of Kenya’s world-class athletes, it also owes its reputation for great viewpoints of the Rift Valley, a geographical feature in East Africa The view point is one of the highest altitudes closest to escarpment where visitors view Kerio Valley. As the tarmac road meanders downhill, you get a perfect view of spectacular natural landmarks including the valley, Lake Kamnarok, Kerio River which hosts deadly crocodiles, Tugen Hills and Cherangani Hills. The magically laid out fault steps, steep escarpments and valleys covered with acacia vegetation paint a magnificent picture. Iten viewpoint allows you to see more of the Great Rift Valley than any other place on the ground. In fact, you can only see more of the Rift Valley if you are on a plane. Kerio Valley and Kerio valley National Reserve Kerio Valley, one of the landmark features of the Great Rift, descends 4,000 ft, and is near the towns of Eldoret and Iten, The magically laid fault steps, steep escarpment facing and valley extensively covered with acacia vegetation paints a magnificent land on the Kenya Rift Valley. The floor of the Kerio Valley is covered by dry thorn bushes while the slopes have semitropical vegetation. Kerio Valley National Reserve offers a spectacular view of the Kerio valley in Kenya. You can also view the Torok Falls as well as the Chebloch Gorge while at the Kerio Valley National Reserve in Rift Valley part of Kenya. For the lucky few who happen to visit the reserve, you can experience the elephant migration via the Rimgoi reserve in Kenya Wildlife population including elephants, leopards and buffaloes, yellow baboons, bush backs, waterbucks and warthogs can be seen in the park. Kerio River Kerio River occupies the lowest level in Kerio Valley and hosts deadly Crocodiles. How Kerio River formed is extraordinary and mythical, Tugen and Keiyo communities have grounds to believe that long time ago, the two had undying boundary conflict and so a god locally known as Ilat became angry with the ongoing wrangles and stricken hard on the ground to demarcate Keiyo land from Tugen land hence end the dispute. Rimoi Game Reserve Its home to thousands of species of Rift Valley’s flora and fauna. Gazetted in 1983, the reserve boasts a variety of animals including elephants, buffalos and dikdiks. There are also impalas, monkeys, baboons. Bird life is abundant and various, with weavers, sunbirds, pigeons, honey guides, hornbills and turacos particularly prevalent Saiwa Swamp National Park Saiwa Swamp National Park is a forested paradise filled with exotic flowers, trees and bird. Arguably the smallest National Park in the Country, Saiwa Swamp gives the visitors a great chance to see one of nature’s peculiar creatures, the Sitatunga antelope which is semi aquatic. You can also see the white bearded De Brazza’s monkey that can only be found in this region. Within this tropical wetlands and mosaic of riverine forest, sedges and acacia woodlands, with fringing dense rushes and grass bedsBird life is abundant. Water birds include the lesser jacana, grey heron and the African black duck while the forest shelters the Narina trogons, the collared and orange-tufted sunbird, the yellow bishop, Hatlaub’s marsh widow bird and the Noisy Ross’s turacos which are difficult to miss. Kipkoikoi Rock On the cliff side near Tambach, there towers a mythical Kipkoikoi Rock, a fairly cylindrical tip-pointed rock with a tabular platform at the foot. Our forefathers quips that Kipkoikoi Rock was a Holy Shrine of Keiyo people. This is where they used to offer sacrifices to Supreme Being locally known as Asis. They would pour some milk or lay some green grass on the tabular rock beside Kipkoikoi and have their sins forgiven and fortune go their way. It is also bluntly believed that none would dare climb up to top of such rock, or else it befalls on him or her. Kolol Viewpoint About 15 miles away from Iten town downhill, you’ll never hesitate to stop at Kolol Viewpoint. The tarmac road curves at a fairly level platform that provides an open view of fascinating Torok waterfall on escarpment on the South West direction and diminishing Lake Kamnarok. Just ahead, lays a ‘snake-like’ tarmac road meandering down to Chebloch Gorge on Kerio River before leading to Kabarnet town. The Cherangani Hills They are the fourth highest mountain range in Kenya and include rolling hills as well as dramatic mountain peaks, and forms the highest, most breathtaking and spectacular escarpments of the Rift Valley. Unlike most of Kenya's mountains and ranges, the Cherangani Hills are not volcanic in origin. They are centred upon a forested escarpment and surrounded on three sides by sheer cliff faces. They are criss-crossed by walking paths, and ease of direction and undemanding slopes make this excellent country for relaxing hill walking. The paths cross open farmland, pass through sheltered valleys and wind their way up to forested peaks. All the main routes cross the 3000m contour, with decreased oxygen supplies Cherangani Hills Forest This is a collection of thirteen forest reserve blocks on the western ridge of The Great Rift Valey. The forested area is about 1,200 square kilometres. These forests form the upper catchments of the Kerio and Nzoia and Turkwel rivers. Attractions include, Beautiful Landscapes and scenery, Plenty of wildlife and bird watching. Kipteber Mountain Popping from approximately five kilometers off the range of Cherangany hills is a huge, steep, rocky and extraordinary mountain..A Mountain barring an extraordinary narrative of its origin spanning lots of generations ago. Mt. Kipteber strategically sits on the Elgeyo/Marakwet- Pokot counties borderline Chebloch Gorge This gorge was cut down into the hard, basalt rock by the power of the Kerio River itself. When in flood, the river increases tremendously in height and volume and carries a heavy load of fine, highly-abrasive silt which grinds down the river bed. Steel beams of the old colonial-age bridge are close by and in place to offer a perilous perch from which to view the gorge. Below the bridge, usually about 20m below, much less in the rainy season, are the muddy brown, crocodile-infested waters of the Kerio River. Young boys with primitive fishing rods compete with the crocodiles for the mudfish and catfish that are seasonally abundant. The Chalbi Desert Chalbi desert is located in northern Kenya, east of Lake Turkana. Chalbi in the local Gabbra language means "bare and salty." It is among the hottest and most regions in Kenya, a salty pan surrounded by volcano and lava flows . Amazingly, you might still come across oryx, ostrich or even endangered Grevy zebra galloping across the great, shimmering whiteness. After the rains, the bone dry land turns into a shallow lake. On its northern fringes, where the wind piles up sand dunes, a chain of oases nourishes vast palm grooves. Chyulu Hills Chyulu Hills is located in Eastern Kenya, a mountain range that forms a 100Km long volcanic field. This destination is one of the prettiest places in Kenya, seeing the enchanted land of black frozen lava speckled with flaring poker trees is really something special. Ancient and new volcanic cinder cones and craters dot the landscape with black lava flow spilling down their flanks. Chyulu Hills provide to nature lovers. Large mammals include buffalo, bushbucks, elands, elephants, leopards, giant forest hogs, bush pigs, reedbucks and giraffes along with various reptiles and insects. Horse riding, camping, mountain climbing and bird watching can be enjoyed in this hidden part of paradise. Kapsowar Kapsower is a beautiful small town located in Rift Valley Province, Kenya. It’s a picture-perfect town; filled with quaint charm, crisp breeze and amazing scenic beauty. It’s one of the best places to explore the most breathtaking landscapes and unique attractions such as charming flowing rivers, herds of cows and gorgeous hills. Torok waterfall Elgeyo Escarpment Lake Turkana One of the largest lakes in Africa, and the planet’s biggest permanent lake in a desert, Turkana lies in the Rift Valley, mostly in northern Kenya but with the tip running into southern Ethiopia. It is a spectacular place with some extraordinary landscapes, jade coloured waters, plentiful crocodiles, and incredible populations of massive Nile perch. It’s surrounded by some of the harshest terrain on earth where, somehow, some of the toughest but most delightful people manage to live too. Loita Hills The Loita Hills are one of Kenya's last remaining true wilderness areas which form an important part of the Maasai Mara Ecosystem. There are pockets of remote forests, wide open plains surrounded by the stunning hillsides. The escarpment is dotted with abundant wildlife and has a rich variety of different bird species. You can take a walking safari into the hills. Local people and their donkeys carry the luggage and the camp, leaving you free to explore the beauty of the hills and forests. Walking with people who live here is the best way to do it, and you’ll learn a huge amount about life in such a beautiful and remote place, one that’s truly off the map. Olorgasailie Olorgesailie pre-historic site is world renown as the "factory of stone tools" and the only place in the world with the largest number. The prominence and accumulation of human tools represents actual camping places of early men and evidence that human species had a tropical origin. The site is in a lake basin that existed about 100,000 to 200'000 years ago. Olorgesailie has excellently preserved biological and cultural evidence about the evolution of man. This was made possible by heavy falls of alkaline volcanic ash from the nearby Mt. Suswa and Mt. Longonot, which might have contributed much to the accumulated ash in the lake basin. Mount Suswa A true hidden gem, Mount Suswa is an excellent destination to add to your wish list, especially if you like camping. Another inactive volcano in the Rift Valley, Mount Suswa boasts a unique double-caldera, with an outer crater surrounding a second, inner peak. Hire local Maasai guide to help you find the road up to the crater, its isolation is a big part of Mount Suswa’s appeal. Its zigzagging hike along the outer crater rim will give you exceptional views of the volcano. Drive around the caldera to find Suswa’s famous lava tube caves and hike down into the caverns, which are full of bats, stalactites, and some interesting cave drawings of dubious origins. Not for the faint of heart, and not for those without a 4WD, Mount Suswa is a badge you’ll wear with honor. Koobi Fora Historic Sites Koobi Fora in the local language, means a place of the commiphora a source of myrrh, which is a common plant in this hot and arid area. The rich sedimentary rocks have yielded more than 10,000 Vertebrate and Hominid fossils. Most interesting here is a Stone Age burial site. Loiyangalani Desert Museum This museum was built on a bluff with a backdrop of Lake Turkana, the "Jade Sea." The name Loiyangalani means "a place of many trees" in the native Samburu language. The museum is hosted in this area by the El Molos, an almost extinct community in Kenya. Kapedo hot springs Two boiling hot waterfalls that plunge over a small escarpment before merging with Suguta river! Kapedo itself is a picturesque village where traditional grass thatched huts prevail. The surrounding has also a lot of charm with Silali volcano to the east and Tiati hills to the west which both are a rewarding hiking terrain. After walking the hills you can treat your tired legs with a swim in the huge bathing tub of Mother Nature, the warm waters of Suguta river. Whether you prefer it boiling hot or lukewarm, you will find the right water temperature depending on how close you are to the merger of the hot streams with Suguta river! Top holiday deals in Kenya Best Deals on Major Seasonal Holidays – Valentine, Easter, Madaraka, Mashujaa, Jamhuri & Christmas. Variety of options – Safari adventures, Beach, Getaways & International. Only top-rated destinations & pocket-friendly prices. Weekend Getaway Deals in Kenya Self Drive Holiday Deals in Kenya Outdoor Activities in Kenya Madaraka Express SGR Holiday Deals in Kenya Seasonal holiday Deals in Kenya Top Self Drive Holiday Deals in Kenya If you think you have to travel far to enjoy a nice weekend, you may never get away. Besides, you can enjoy a beautiful weekend right here in Kenya. There are countless wallet-friendly Kenyan self drive getaways that won’t even break your budget. Don’t spend your weekend, doing absolutely nothing at home. Whether you are looking for romantic destinations, pristine beaches, and adventurous outdoor activities, there are plenty wallet-friendly getaways that will satisfy your weekend desires. Malindi & Watamu Self Drive Deals Mombasa South Coast Self Drive Deals Mombasa North Coast Self Drive Deals Masai Mara Self Drive Holiday Packages Lukenya & Machakos Self Drive Meru Holiday Self Drive Deals Mt. Kenya & Aberdare Self Drive Holiday Deals Nyeri Holiday Self Drive Deals Samburu Holiday Self Drive Deals Read the full article

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junker-town · 5 years

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Seven Worlds, One Planet: Episode 2, reviewed by how sports it is

Including a walrus massacre, volcano bears and snakes pretending that they’re spiders.

We continue our extremely important mission to conduct a scene-by-scene review of the BBC’s new nature documentary, Seven Worlds, One Planet, in order to see how sports it is. We determined that Episode 1, which focused on Antarctica, was reasonably sports. How fares Asia?

Episode 2 Asia

Scene 1: Walrus Massacre

Me on my work commute. #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/tZPZFsZTjl

— BBC One (@BBCOne) November 3, 2019

The Pacific walrus is not one of nature’s most appealing creations. They resemble nothing so much as socks left to rot in a garden and then stuffed full of blubber a few years later. And while on land, tusked animals are majestic — the eyes of an elephant convey a deep, thoughtful, almost platonic serenity — the walrus betrays its toothy compatriots, lurching about horribly on land and bringing to bear what is perhaps the animal kingdom’s beadiest stare. The sabre-tusks themselves (I seem to remember being taught that they are of use in rooting out clams, although exactly how was a mystery to me then and remains one now) are a perverse addition to the ensemble. “Well-armed” is hardly a sensible adjective for evolution to bestow upon what is essentially an enormous sausage.

The sausage-ness attracts exactly what you’d expect in the Arctic: polar bears. Both walrus and polar bear are creatures of the ice, and, as I expect you’ve seen from increasingly breathless news reports, there’s less of that around these days. Walruses need a flat surface upon which to rest, while polar bears need it as a platform from which to hunt. With no ice, walruses have to congregate on a few thin, rocky beaches, and that sort of gathering attracts hungry polar bears.

Packing maybe 100,000 tonnes of walrus on one beach sounds like a recipe for severe puncture wounds and indeed several dozen walruses attempt to escape the packed crowds by scaling the cliffs behind the beach. And here is where this scene turns from ominous to outright macabre.

Are walruses good at climbing? No, but they’re persistent enough to scale the cliffs, given enough time. If you’ve ever gone on a serious hike, however, you might have noticed that the descent is just as grueling as the ascent. Now imagine if you weighed as much as a small car, had flippers for limb and were trying to get down a large cliff in a hurry.

The ‘hurry’ is where the polar bears come in. Where a walrus can climb, so too can a bear, and when they reach the top of the cliffs, the walruses instinctively try to escape towards the sea, where they’re more mobile and thus better equipped to fend off attacks. So they race towards the sea, the fastest way possible: by hurling themselves off the cliff. A walrus might be ill-equipped to climb, but it’s even less capable of handling a 100-yard drop.

This rain of soon-to-be-former-walruses rather naturally spooks their fellows, creating a stampede in which many other walruses are crushed or slashed to death by flailing tusks. The Odobenid Vespers — more than 200 walruses die — conclude with a delighted polar bear surveying a pile of corpses, clearly stunned by its good fortune.

NB: This scene is shocking. I’m not trying to celebrate it by writing so much about; it’s just been weighing on my mind since I saw it. The knowledge that anthropogenic climate change is at least partially responsible for these events (Attenborough assures us that they’re still relatively rare) brings the horror home even further.

Aesthetics 9/10

As I’ve mentioned, walruses are hideous animals. But this category necessarily includes atmosphere, and the oppressive grimness of this awful scene carries too much weight to ignore. A bouncing walrus might not have any conventional aesthetic value, but there’s no way we can give this tragic, moving scene any less than high marks here.

Difficulty 10/10

I think that the difficulty of this one is adequately illustrated by the body count.

Competitiveness 3/10

Apart from the early scuffle between a walrus and a bear (in the water, the walrus has the advantage), this is all about walrus versus ground, at speed, and is therefore not competitive.

Overall 22/30

Walrus-diving is sports. Not the sort of sports I want to actually watch, but definitely sports.

Scene 2: Volcano Bears

When you’re desperate to get greens into your diet at any cost. #SevenWorldsOnePlanet #saladwoe pic.twitter.com/mignAvLIbv

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

Bears are incredible animals. Sometimes they’re ferocious, brutal predators, able to rip you basically in half with a swipe of the paw. Sometimes they’re fisherbears. Sometimes they’re honey thieves. And sometimes they perch daintily on top of a volcano, eating grass.

Go find the Kamchatka Peninsula on Google Maps. It’s the thing attached like a stubby tail to the east coast of Siberia. A winter there, you might imagine, is a cold, unpleasant thing. However, Kamchatka is also blessed by a surprising abundance of volcanos, which create unusually dangerous oases in the barren desert of snow.

And so we meet our volcano bears. These bears, who emerge from hibernation hungry, converge on the only snow-free spots around. To find greenery, they must conduct some precarious scrambles above volcanic vents, and some bears have been known to get too close or to slip and fall. Those bears do not have a good lunch.

Aesthetics 7/10

The true beauty of a bear comes mostly in comparison to other animals, and unfortunately we don’t get that here. Instead we have some scruffy-looking critters doing an ungainly shuffling to eat some grass. But ...

Difficulty 10/10

... it’s metal as fuck because they’re shuffling around eating grass that’s growing over volcanic springs which would kill them if they fell in. It’s so metal, in fact, that I’m giving some bonus points in aesthetics.

Competitiveness 2/10

Bear vs. grass? Enh. Bear vs. volcano? Also one sided (and, fortunately, we don’t see that).

Overall 19/30

All sports would be improved, at least hypothetically, if conducted over a volcano. In this case, the aggressive geology upgrades ‘skinny bears eat some grass’ from ‘definitely not a sport’ to ‘possibly sports’.

Scene 3: The Battle of Little Bigfoot

Hearing your parents car in the driveway but you’ve done zero chores.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet #runningforcover pic.twitter.com/Hghyh23hIo

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

The forest of Shennongjia, in Hubei Province, China, is home to some very strange creatures. Himalayan lore is rife with rumours of man-sized, furry apes, averse to human contact. And, well, here they are. Maybe. These are blue-faced, golden-coated, snub-nosed snow monkeys. They’re rare, mountain-dwelling, mostly-bipedal and overly-hyphenated primates whom you could quite happily build that sort of myth off if you were snowblind and suffering from the altitude. Granted, they’re not that much over 2’ tall, but let’s have some artistic license here. Where’s your sense of mystery?

Monkeys are not usually associated with snowy conditions. These ones have a hard time of it in the winter, surviving by huddling together for warmth (given their beautiful, plush coats, this doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world) and feeding on what looks like a miserable diet of bark, moss and associated grime.

So desperate are they for food that when families collide at the edge of their territories we get what this hitherto serene scene desperately needed: a huge monkey fight. We begin with the dominant males baring their teeth and punching the shit out of each other and then descend into a general melee of kicking, scratching and biting.

Fight over, the scattered band must regroup for warmth, so we get another heart-rending monkey hug. Awwww.

Aesthetics 9/10

The snub nose is ugly and the blue skin is very Game of Thrones, but fortunately those considerations are overwhelmed by a) the really lovely golden fur and b) the flying hugs and c) MONKEY BABIES. These snowmen are extremely bominable.

Difficulty 9/10

I assume nobody reading this has ever tried to punch a monkey in the face. Readers, please do not try punching a monkey in the face, even if you have a monkey to hand. It would be cruel, for one, but also I imagine it would be extremely bad news for you, because monkeys are agile, strong, and mean, and seem more than capable of biting off that hand.

Now make this a small army of very hungry, oversized monkeys punching each other in the face. And it’s also freezing. They would kick your ass.

Competitiveness 9/10

The male monkeys looked well matched, and when you add the general chaos of the melee to that you get an intense, hard-fought battle.

Overall 27/30

MMMA is 100 percent sports and I will have these monkeys fight you if you don’t agree.

Scene 4: Spider-Snake

Everyone: Snakes and spiders are scary, but at least they’re mutually exclusive. Nature: Hold my beer…#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/gXpJFQ74yM

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

Many people are terrified of spiders. Many people are terrified of snakes. What this scene asks is: what if we COMBINED THE TWO? Here is a special guest review of the above GIF, by my good friend Harry Lyles:

But let’s back up.

The Dasht-e Lut, in Iran, is not a fun place to hang out. It’s one of the driest places in the world. It’s also one of the hottest. There is no earthly reason to live here, except by accident.

When mishap or sheer bloody-mindedness places critters in these sorts of environments, evolution gets to work. And given long enough, evolution can come up with some absolutely wild shit. The Dasht-e Lut is on the flight path of migratory birds, which provide a rare food source — if they can be got.

Perhaps the best way of catching birds is to get them to come to you, which is the trick used by the spider-tailed horned viper. The scales on the tip of its tail have been formed perfectly to look like a plump, juicy spider with wriggling legs, and when the viper flicks back and forth it really does look like a tasty morsel (if you’re a bird) is sitting there just waiting to be plucked.

But no! It’s a snake, and now it’s going to try to bite you in the head. Have fun!

Aesthetics 8/10

Another relatively ugly scene — the shot of the shrike hovering in astonishment is a particularly cool exception — redeemed by the sheer insanity of what we’re seeing. SPIDER-SNAKE!

Difficulty 9/10

You try catching a bird with your teeth. You can draw a spider on your hand (or hold a spider model, or a real spider). I don’t care. Not happening.

Competitiveness 7/10

Some birds get away, which suggests that this is not as one-sided a match as it might appear.

Overall 24/30

Imitating a spider so that you can catch birds with your face is sports.

Scene 5: Sure, Let’s Watch a Tiny Lizard Fight

Run Forrest, run! #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/DiFZXio2Qb

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

Lizards will go to great lengths for love. In the breeding season, male sarada lizards strut their stuff on the open plains of northern India. They’re brightly coloured and beautiful, and have a dazzling blue and red fan on their throat they unfurl to catch the attention of those lovely lizard ladies. But there’s a problem: saradas are not very big lizards.

Standing (and their gait is quite something when they do) at all of three inches tall, male saradas need some environmental help to be seen. And so battles commence over the small rocks which dot the landscape. Throat-fans are waved with menace, and then the fight begins. Jaws snap, legs flex, and these little lizards go flying through the air, a blaze of shrieking colour.

Aesthetics 9/10

They lose a point for their ridiculous waddle, but these lizards know how to put on a show. Beautiful colours and a surprisingly acrobatic fight scene.

Difficulty 4/10

You might get a nasty bite or two but I’m pretty confident anyone reading this would clean up against a three-inch lizard if they had to.

Competitiveness 10/10

A well-matched fight between two lizards at the top of their game. It’s a shame one had to lose: he left everything on the rock out there.

Overall 23/30

Miniature sports are still sports.

Scene 6: Orang-utans

You...are...the love of my life, and I’ve never felt this way before. #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/RFaosm6JAa

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

Here we get to watch a baby orang-utan try to eat termites (not tasty!), struggle to climb a tree, give up after nearly getting all the way up to the top, and then take a nap on his mother. Then he eats some mangos.

Nothing else happens. It rules.

Aesthetics 10/10

Look at the little floof! I can’t stand how cute the little guy is. The nap absolutely kills me.

Difficulty 5/10

That tree looks like a very annoying but definitely possible climb.

Competitiveness 0/10

A) mother is always there to help out if he needs it and b) nothing actually happens, which is totally fine.

Overall 15/30

It’s adorable, but it’s not sports.

Scene 7: A Miniature Singing Rhino

I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t know these critters existed until I watched this episode. Sumatran rhinoceros are the smallest rhinos in the world, standing around 4’ tall and covered in red hair. They also sing little songs to one another. Or they would, if there was still a ‘one another’ to sing to: Sumatran rhinos are critically endangered, with less than 100 individuals left. So that’s depressing.

Attenborough uses the plight of the rhinos to segue into an illustration of the annihilation of the Southeast Asian rainforest. They contain valuable timber, and that land can also be used to grow oil palm plantations, which produce additives to be used in processed food and biofuels. That last note is particularly depressing: even supposedly eco-friendly technologies and techniques can lead to habitat destruction.

“Huge areas were initially stripped for timber and then a very different type of tree was planted. Oil Palm.” #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/reSWTBBfNW

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

Asian land is increasingly valuable as the population expands, but the growth of its cities, while substantial, cannot possibly account for the scale of habitat loss. In the battered forests of Indonesia and Malaysia, we have monuments to one of the oldest of human foibles: near-sighted greed.

Aesthetics 2/10

The rhino is ugly enough before we pivot into scenes of forests being bulldozed.

Difficulty 10/10

It’s easy to feel smug about one’s environmental footprint when the damage being done on your behalf is conducted out of sight. But we should never forget that while cheap goods come at a cost we might not feel now, the real price will be revealed soon enough.

I’m not trying to guilt trip anyone here: I live in England, and so simply by existing I am personally responsible for titanic levels of carbon generation and general destruction. But the first step in fixing the problem is recognising that there’s a problem.

Competitiveness 0/10

Pretty much beating a dead horse at this point.

Overall 12/30

Just because it’s depressing doesn’t mean it’s sports.

Scene 8: Whale sharks

Whale sharks are the largest fish in the sea. They are slow-moving, friendly filter feeders, and are absolutely enormous — the largest recorded are nearly 60-feet long. As one might imagine, they are easy to catch, and as they have so much meat that they’re extremely valuable. Unsurprisingly, there are not many whale sharks left. In this scene, a whale shark cruises near the surface, edging up to a waiting fishing boat ...

... but this scene is not so depressing as the last. Fishing for whale sharks has been banned in Indonesian waters, and instead of hunting the giants, they throw them their bycatch, causing the gentlest shark feeding frenzy ever captured on film.

Me: Oh no, I’m on a diet. Also me: ... #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/V3lB0GoTFP

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 3, 2019

Just slurping those little fish right in. Yum!

Aesthetics 6/10

Whale sharks are undeniably cool fish. But they are in fact so cool they barely do anything apart from sucking smaller fish into their hungry maws.

Difficulty 6/10

I appreciate the choice of the fishermen have made not to defy laws and go for the easy, hefty catch.

Competitiveness 0/10

Whale sharks against little fish isn’t even fair when the little fish are alive to begin with.

Overall 12/30

Not sports. Cool whale sharks, though.

Overall sports tally: Quite a lot of sports

Four definitely-sports, one probably-sports, and three nos. BBC did a nice job stepping up the sportsiness this episode.

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