 |
| Credit: Shree Ganesh |
Something called the Nipah virus is spreading in South Asia. There is no known cure or antidote, and the lethality is 57%. Or perhaps between 40% and 75%. So if the virus spreads internationally, it could potentially kill over half of the world´s population.
Oh.
Thank god, there is no indication that this will happen. The international spread, that is. Until next time?
A video entitled "The Most Mysterious Cryptids in the World". Somewhat ironically, many of them seem more plausible than the regular cryptids?! Perhaps because we are dealing with actual physical evidence. Or even strange species theorized to exist, which were later actually discovered.
Of course, there are some exceptions. I mean, "Strange Creatures Seldom Seen" is obviously a collection of folklore or even talltales, so don´t worry, no super-sized woodpecker larger than an eagle will corner you in the Canadian outback! Well, I hope...
Could be of some passing interest.
An entertaining review by Darren Naish of a strange French book in the "speculative zoology" genre: "Demain, les Animaux du Futur". I haven´t seen the work, but it seems the future is *really* wild in this scenario.
10 million years into the future, all mammals except bats have disappeared. Together with birds, they have taken over land and air. Mega-bats gliding around in the upper atmosphere, enormous geese with four legs, and parrots looking like theropods are some of the evolutionary monstrosities "described" in the book. The front cover shows a flightless terror bird descended from the Lammergeier! The oceans are dominated by 40 meters long tadpoles, squids in various sizes, and whale-like penguins (here we go again).
"Demain" pays tribute to other works of Spec Zoo, including Dougal Dixon´s classic "After Man: A Zoology of the Future". Apparently, speculative zoology is big in Japan, so a Japanese version of "Demain" actually exist, but no English translation. At one point, Naish (clearly a big fan of this genre) quips: "I, for one, welcome our new gargantuan marine tadpole monster overlords." Dude!
Not sure if this is of any interest except to a certain kind of super-nerds, but...there you go.
 |
| Credit: Charles J Sharp |
“Dracula´s Hidden Kingdom” is the dramatic title of a fairly regular
nature documentary about Transylvania in Romania. As far as I understand, Transylvania
wasn´t even 15th century warlord Vlad Dracula´s actual principality!
It was probably British writer Bram Stoker (19th century) who made
the association and…well, here we are.
To give the docu some (tourist) “local color”, some scary castles, ruins
and graveyards have been included, and something I take to be Gypsy music plays
in the background while the narrator speaks. Most of the time, however, we get
to see all the usual players: lynxes, wolves, red foxes, deer, beavers and European
bison – OK, maybe the latter is new to most viewers! Birds shown include white
storks, bee-eaters and the hoopoe. We also learn that there are 200 species of
butterflies in Transylvania and 27 species of bats. I admit I had no idea so
many species of these particular critters even existed in Europe! Sources?
Apparently, Homo sapiens have lived in Transylvania for 40,000 years (a Stone Age cave painting of a bison is shown) and throughout most of its history, the area was teeming with wildlife, including enormous herds of the just mentioned bison. Even today, at least the bear population seems to be thriving, while many other animals have diminishing populations. The bison were actually extirpated in the wild at one point, but have been reintroduced. Plans to establish a new national park in the Carpathians are mentioned.
Personally, I have to admit that East European rural backwaters give me claustrophobia, but sure, maybe they are good for non-humane Animalia? Perhaps somewhere in that vast mountain wilderness, some lonely vampire is still stalking the hills…
So I just watched the nature documentary "Wild Ireland: Kingdom of Stone", about the apparently world famous karst landscape between County Clare and County Galway known as the Burren. I admit I never heard about it before! Or maybe I did, since parts of this docu reminds me of - surprise - other documentaries about western Ireland.
Animals shown include the pine marten, Daubenton´s bat, whooper swans and the butterfly known as the marsh fritillary. In the Atlantic Ocean we also find the finback whale (the world´s second largest animal) and the basking shark (the world´s second largest fish). The basking sharks occasionally gather in one place and swim in a large circle, nobody really knows why. But yes, it does look majestic.
The Burren also has an interesting human history. Here we find Neolithic grave monuments, abandoned churches and monasteries, and a mysterious tower once inhabited by none other than W B Yeats (who apparently saw whooper swans as near-divine). Indeed, the landscape is man-made in the sense that Neolithic farmers cut down all the trees, presumably to give room for agriculture and cattle.
"The Kingdom of Stone" has a romantic (or Romantic) undertone, and frequently shows ravens (?) flying across the bizarre landscape of karst and ruins. Ahem, Ireland is a modern, globalized territory these days...
Still, could be interesting on a boring Wednesday evening.
One of the most funny theories in science, but unfortunately disproven by DNA studies! Yes, it´s the idea that fruitbats or megabats are more related to primates (and therefore humans) than to other bats.
I suppose we could still hope that the Aquatic Ape Theory is true, LOL. Speaking as a true moonbat here...
_Photograph_By_Shantanu_Kuveskar.jpg)
I might write a criticism of this essay later, but for now, I want you to read it just for the sheer fun of the anecdote retold in the first paragraphs. I almost fell from my chair, laughing. It just *can´t* be true, and yet we all know that of course it is. Yes, it´s about crazy "identity politics" in California. How *does* it feel to be a bat?
"A Perfect Planet: Weather" is the third installment in the recent BBC Earth saga. As usual, we get to see the wild, the weird and the wonderful from our (far from perfect) planet. 10 million flying foxes gathering in one small forest in Zambia, fire ants floating on the Amazon river, turtles laying eggs in Amazon sand banks which are washed away after only three months of existence, bee-eaters chased by eagles and crocodiles in Africa, red crabs afraid of sea water on Christmas Island (50 million of them), and the constant threat of climate change looming in the background.
The high point of the production is the film crew´s search for the last remaining wild Bactrian camels in the Gobi desert (Mongolia). Imagine a desert that´s as cold as the Arctic, and where the camels can survive only by eating snow. If they can find it, that is... Finding the camels wasn´t easy either, the team apparently looking for them for two weeks!
Despite protestations to the contrary, there is no particular "message" or educational value in this series, although it might of course give you a better appreciation of Nature. Or, more likely, scare the hell out of you (or make you admire new camera technology). Stay tuned for more extraordinary footage next week...
"Mysterious Planet: Giants of the Carribean" is a spectacular but also somewhat confusing documentary about...essentially everything at the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, and its oceanic vicinity. Ostensibly, though, it´s about whale sharks! And yes, the sharks are in there somewhere.
The narrator moves back and forth between the jungle, the water-filled underground caves, and the open sea, just as freely as he crosses millions of years of deep time. It´s not always clear whether what we see is real footage, or the special effects department working overtime. But yes, "Giants of the Carribean" *is* fascinating.
As late as two years ago, marine biologists were stunned to discover a huge annual gathering of whale sharks off the Yucatan coast, in an area seemingly devoid of plankton (their staple food). What on earth were they doing there? Apparently, there *is* a lot of plankton in the area, after all, specifically the roe of bonito tunafish. Meanwhile, other scientists are exploring the underground "rivers" in the Yucatan jungles, which may even have inspired ancient Mayan mythology about a dangerous subterranean realm of demons and spirits. The flooded caves turn out to have a connection to the Caribbean Sea! Fortunately or otherwise, the only "monsters" in the caves are peculiar shrimps, fishes and (above water level) bats and snakes. There are also mysterious bacterial formations nicknamed "Hell´s Bells". Apparently, the bacteria need neither sun light nor oxygen to propagate. (Life on Mars discovered?)
The sink holes (known as cenotes) in the ex-Mayan jungle turn out to be the last remnants of the large crater that killed the dinosaurs (and a lot of other creatures) at the end of the Cretaceous. One of the organisms killed off in this spectacular Velikovskian manner was a fish even larger than the whale shark. At the time, the ancestors of the whale sharks were small fish living at the bottom of the ocean. And so it goes, around and around, in this crazy world (perhaps ruled by some demonic entity appeased by the Maya, but that´s literally another show!).
Hell´s Bells indeed.
 |
| If this idiot blogger calls me chicken one more time, I´m gonna go ultra-rogue on him! |
