I asked my boyfriend in Canada once, how he deals with polar bears because I was curious about what to do and he was like, just be calm, let them know you’re there, and give them space and they’ll usually just go away.
In 2004, this giant Aldabra tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) seems to have survived an ocean voyage from Atoll island of Aldabra to the east coast of Africa. That’s more than 740 km! The barnacles size suggests its trip took 6-7 weeks!
Despite the tortoise size, the trans-oceanic dispersal is supposed to be the mechanism where tortoises, and many other animals settle on islands around the world. This is the first direct evidence of a tortoise surviving a oceanic trip.
– Another record of a giant Aldabra tortoise off Alphonse Island, The Seychelles, December 2005. Photograph by J. Gerlach
Researchers believe that after torrential winds and hurricanes, tortoises are transported to the sea, left to its lucky. This is the classic model of oceanic island colonization. It is ironic that the first documented trans-oceanic movement of a tortoise occurred from an island to a continent, rather than the reverse direction that is so importantto island biogeography
Just a reminder: most tortoises CANNOT swim and should not be thrown into water! Try to avoid throwing turtles into water, as well. If you aren’t sure whether or not something can swim, put it next to the water and let it decide. Most tortoises will drown if you put them in deep water that they can’t wade out of in time.
i’ll never understand why we don’t call countries the names they actually call themselves
like, i know this is a weeaboo-sounding example, but let’s start with Japan. They call themselves Nippon or Nihon depending on… i guess, the speaker’s accent??? or their level of formality while speaking??? I dunno. But we still called them Zipangu for like a few hundred years. And now we call them Japan.
All because Marco Polo asked someone in China about that island over there and they said “oh that’s Cipangu” and Marco Polo was like “Oh, Zipangu, cool.” And then he went back to Italy and said “Y’ALL THERE’S THIS DOPE-ASS ISLAND CALLED ZIPANGU” and people back in Italy were like “An island called Giappone? Dope.”
And this pattern of people mishearing people kept repeating until we got to “Japan.”
And we still call them Japan even though we know better. Because fuck you, Marco Polo asked the wrong person 500 years ago and misheard them and we’re sticking to that, I guess.
that was literally just the world’s worst game of telephone
is the direct link to the interview and report from the Observer
mentioned there, it goes in dept to take as much info from many accounts
to find what could possibly have happened, and in particular it digs
deep into things consulting both toxicologists that know about what
types of rape drugs existed back then with their symptoms and historians
that know about how gay culture was in the US was during and before the
80′s.
Long story short, basically he admits that Takei stopped
his advances the moment he told him he didn’t want to and that during
all these years he only thought he might’ve been drugged very very
recently because of the rest of the sexual accusations made him cast a
doubt about how he used to tell this story to friends, as a more casual
meeting that happened rather than a rape case, the drug aspect of the
story is very recent but is also something that toxicologists say would’ve been quite unlikely
because of how fast the accuser himself says he recovered on the spot
and even able to drive back home without the next day symptomps rape
drugs of that era were known to give.
On the hand of historians they dissect about what things were expected behavior during a gay date back in early 80′s and since there was an age gap (accuser was 24), meaning a cultural gap too, there might’ve been a misreading on behaviors on each part, but the accuser does say Takei stopped his advances once he got told to even if he was too forward for him at first. Mind you the professionals questioned were offered the stories as annonymous hiding both names so there was no bias present when analysing them.
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