This mild Wikipedia sentence is like the understatement of all time
Here are some crazy grasshopper mouse facts for those who are not familiar with the most badass mouse species on the planet
- They are fully carnivorous, and their diet is made up of not only bugs but also snakes, lizards and other mice.
- They hunt like true predators, slowly stalking and creeping up on their prey before ambushing them. They will sometimes let out a screech as they attack.
- Like wolves, they howl to establish territory and have a specially developed throat to produce louder vocalizations. They will stand up on their hind legs and throw their head back to howl- a sound that can be heard from 100 meters away!
- Grasshopper mouse behavior is linked to lunar cycles and they are more active during a full moon.
- These mice have been hunting bark scorpions and evolving alongside them for so long that they’ve evolved a mutation where scorpion venom that is lethal to other animals is converted into a painkiller in the grasshopper mouse’s body.
I love desire paths. There's something so wonderous about seeing an echo of humanity. Depending on it's location, a desire path can mean so many different things.
In a city, like the pic above, they represent rebellion, and efficiency. The messiness of humanity. We like to imagine we're oh so logical and neat so we design our cities to be logical and neat an then real humans literally trample on that idea. The ego required to think you can design something perfect that checks every box. Life is all about compromise and patching stuff when some new problem arises. Though people have certainly tried! Ohio state univeristy let students carve their desire paths, and then paved them over. It looks pretty artsy.
Some people will try to discourage desire paths, but this is almost always going to fail.
Eventually, people just have to accept them. Humans are too dang stubborn.
Certain desire paths are just adorable. A 0.5 second time saver. You just can't design for maximum efficiency, humans will always find shortcuts!
Though on occasion a desire path can actually be the least efficient way...especially if you're superstitious.
In a wilder area, such as below, they show us the curiosity of humans. A desire path somewhere natural often tells you there's something interesting just ahead. (Though remember some ecosystems are fragile and will suffer if trampled! Stick to paths in these sorts of areas)
And how about desire stairs? I always think these look so cool. We get see humans determination to climb, to traverse every kind of terrain.
And for something really crazy...a desire path used for centuries will create a 'holloway'
All of these pics are off the Desirepath subreddit, check them out for more examples! And many thanks to the users who submitted these photos.
Fieldwork tip: sometimes in the Forest you will find deer desire paths. “Oh!” says your brain, “this will lead me to somewhere cool!”
It will not. The deer wants to go to heavy brush and surge up a steep hill with its powerful hindquarters and presumably collect all the deer ticks living along the deer desire path. Waiting. You are a human, you want to meander along the side of the hill in absolutely no brush at all, thank you. Your desires are not compatible. You must abandon the deer path.
Cow desire paths though: flat as pancakes, always lead you to water or meadows. Useful things.
Thank god someone else said it. When I saw that path in the woods and it was talking about human curiosity I was like... no. Other animals besides humans make paths.
Sometimes it's a really bad idea to follow them.
Especially if you don't want to get covered in deer ticks.
Because Google is totally useless and won't help you with ANYTHING
iNaturalist: Take photos of living things you see, post them, and the community will identify them for you. Data from iNaturalist is used in scientific research.
Wildflower.org Plant Database: Enter search criteria and find some plants. Very useful if you're looking for plants with specific qualities or know what you have in mind.
Native Plant Finder: This website is still in beta and is a work in progress, but it will show you plants for your area ranked by the number of butterflies that use them for their caterpillars.
WildflowerSearch: AMAZING resource for identification and for learning about new plants. Shows you where plants are native/not native, TONS of search filters.
Native Plant Trust: A New England organization, but probably useful to anyone.
Northern Forest Atlas: Great images and identification resources for trees; has good pictures of bark, seeds, buds, leaves.
FloraFinder: Another plant database site that's being slowly built up by a passionate nerd.
MonarchWatch milkweed by USA ecoregion: Tells you what milkweed species you should plant for monarch butterflies.
Native Beeology: Not plants, but a closely related subject.
I will add more and post an updated list as I find more.
Thousands of acres of rainforest is being cleared to produce palm oil, used in popular Nestlé and Mondelēz brands
West Papua’s Indigenous people have called for a boycott of KitKat, Smarties and Aero chocolate, Oreo biscuits and Ritz crackers, and the cosmetics brands Pantene and Herbal Essences, over alleged ecocide in their territory.
All are products that contain palm oil and are made, say the campaigners, by companies that source the ingredient directly from West Papua, which has been under Indonesian control since 1963 and where thousands of acres of rainforest are being cleared for agriculture.
More than 90 West Papuan tribes, political organisations and religious groups have endorsed the call for a boycott, which they say should continue until the people of West Papua are given the right to self-determination.
Raki Ap, a spokesperson for the United Liberation Movement for West Papua, which is overseeing the call, said: “These products are linked to human rights violations, in the first place, because West Papuans are being forced, with violence, to get off the land where they’ve lived for thousands of years, which has now resulted in ecocide.
“This is a signal to the countries who are dealing with Indonesia, especially those in the Pacific region, to take notice of who they’re dealing with and how they are basically allowing Indonesia to continue the colonial project in West Papua, the human rights violations, and also ecocide.”
West Papuans say more than 500,000 of their people have been killed by the occupation in the past six decades, while millions of acres of their ancestral lands have been destroyed for corporate profit. Indonesia, already the world’s largest palm oil exporter, is now breaking ground in West Papua on the world’s biggest single palm oil plantation, as well as a sugar cane and biofuel plantation that will be the largest deforestation project ever launched.
“West Papuans’, especially the ULMWP, position is very clear: we are a modern-day colony,” said Ap, speaking from the Netherlands.
“Indonesia hijacked the right to self-determination in 1962 when the Netherlands and Indonesia signed an agreement without any consultation in West Papua … After that, in 1969, there was a so-called referendum, which wasn’t fair, which wasn’t under international law, one man, one vote: just 1,025 men were handpicked at gunpoint to vote for integration to Indonesia.
“So this is the foundation of the Indonesia’s colonial project. When we became part of Indonesia against our will, basically the genocide unfolded.”
girl who sat next to me at the coffee shop had that Tortured By Computer Work look in her eye so i turned to her and was like Are u doing research? and it turns out she (white) just started working as an indigenous liaison for an ecological wellness surveying company (hired bc she worked with the local nation for a year) so i was like OMG can i share resources with you. and whipped out my 1 million notes and academic papers on ethical Indigenous-settler relations/research and Indigenous perspectives on ecological restoration. she was like omg are u sure this is basically a whole course for free and i wanted to tear my shirt off liek YES!!!! I WANT TO PROMOTE LOW BARRIER EDUCATION TO ADVANCE DECOLONIZATION AND RECONCILIATION!!!!!!!!!!! STEP IN2 MY GOOGLE DOC !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
here's a googoodrive folder containing learnings on Experiential Learning in Ecological Restoration annnddd Research Practice in Indigenous Contexts. each course folder contains a "![Course number] Notes" document as well as PDFs of all the text-based readings that the notes draw from :-)
i plan 2 make accessible the learnings from my other classes too but i think ill only have time to do all that anonymizing & reformatting once i graduate in a few months lol
no but genuinely I lose a little more patience for people who won't wear wool, leather, silk, or fur every day that I live in a world where plastic is increasingly the only damn kind of clothing you can find (or the only kind of fabric for sewing, even)
obviously, animal cruelty is horrible. I believe that even industries that rely on the deaths of animals should make their lives as good and their ends as humane as possible. and many of these industries need tighter environmental regulations on their production practices- some of the chemicals involved are highly toxic and ill-controlled at times
but at some point, you have to wake up to the fact that the only alternative we've found to date is destroying our planet
it's all plastic. and plastic is horrible for the world- the environment, humans, and especially animals. how cruelty-free is it to cause mass habitat loss? or climate change that disrupts food sources for those animals on a vast scale? how is that better than the deaths of a relatively small proportion of animals comparatively?
(and don't even start with "but pineapple leather! but cactus leather!" when those are still basically plastic due to heavy plastics use in their production processes. there is currently no non-plastic alternative to most animal-based textile products)
I've always tried to keep in mind that we all have to decide where our line is, that we all consume and there's no way of living in this world that doesn't take something from it. that for me, plastic clothing is to be avoided as much as possible, and for others, animal clothing products are to be avoided as much as possible. that the choice is equally valid
but I'm having a hard time seeing it as valid anymore when it just feels like trying to push the unpleasant part away from yourself so you can pretend your choice has no negative impacts. you're not wearing animal skin (or wool that an animal didn't even die to produce), so surely your way of doing things is better! no animals were harmed in the making of your outfit!
WOOL SHEARING DOES NOT HARM THE ANIMAL EVER I REPEAT WOOL HAS ALWAYS BEEN CRUELTY FREE
Current sheep were bred to have lots of wool to be sheared in the summer and in return they get food and safety!
Before that sheep had different coats that shed naturally and the wool was gathered across the native range of the animal! This was done everywhere with different animals!!!!
Also leather is usually a byproduct of the meat industry so make of that what you will!
There are silk productions that don't kill the caterpillar!
Furs are more varied and controversial but look! At all these options!
in appreciation of the feathered and the furred @bumblereeds - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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