so the best thing about this is that bobcats, like just about every feline besides lions and domestic cats, are pretty solitary. they don’t really have friends. they aren’t really equipped to make friends.
domestic cats, on the other hand, do know how to make friends. they are friendly to the point that lots of feral cats live in colonies— the females hang out together, even raise kids together, and the males like to spend nonsexual time with their baby mommas. they groom each other, play around, and have a particular tail position to signal to one another— straight up with the tip curled— that they’re friendly and happy to see each other. cats learned how to be chill with each other in order to take full advantage of human food sources: an ancient granary supplies enough rats for a lot of cats, as does a modern lady with a big bag of frisky bits, so it would be a waste of time and energy for any one cat to try and stake the entire foodsource out for exclusive use. less fighting means more eating and resting which means a longer, nicer life and a lot more kittens.
so this stray cat, she obviously has no colony if she’s wandering around and sneaking into zoo enclosures, so she’s like ‘hey! there’s food here! what up, other cat, let’s be friends, let’s be friends and share that food’. and the bobcat is like ‘??????’ because actually wild cats are pretty cautious about initiating hostilities and anything new and aggressive makes them very worried. and the domestic cat is like ‘haha cool, ok, we’re friends now, big guy. no problems.’ and the bobcat is like ‘????? well…?? ok?’ and then they are friends.
the super interesting thing about most wild cat species is they don’t really have the capacity to make friends on their own, especially outside of sibling bonds, but, if someone comes along and does all the friend-making themselves, they’ll totally roll with it. zoo cats can get really attached to their caregivers— or, in this case, a very confident little calico demonstrating exactly why her species has been so darn successful over the last nine thousand years .
so anyway that is the best thing: bobcats are not equipped to make friends, but luckily for this bobcat this homeless lady did not give any shits and made friends anyway. and now they are both happy.
The giant bees have two languages. One is a sign language very similar to human sign languages, but with more hands, fewer fingers, and a hard-coded method of communicating distance (it’s basically exactly like the bee dance language, just done with the hands)
The other is a tactile language. This one is communicated using light touches with the antennae, similar to morse code with a few more components than dots and dashes. They use this tactile language to communicate with grubs, giving them their first taste of language by associating certain words with the experiences they can perceive, like being held or fed. This also becomes the grub’s first opportunity to understand its own body as nurse bees inform it what it may be feeling.
When adult bees emerge from the comb after pupating, they have near-complete adult faculties but cannot speak the full sign language, since obviously, they have never seen it and didn’t have hands before to speak it with. So for a couple years after emergence they rely on the tactile language, allowing them to function in a rudimentary way while they get a crash course in a full and complex language.
Being a grub, and being a new adult worker are both vulnerable times where they rely a lot on trust and care from their sisters, so the bees associate the tactile language with this vulnerability. Even in older bees it is the language of trust, care and closeness, they never stop using it.
One of them yanks another away by the head feathers near the start of the video. Hummingbirds may be adorable, but they think they’re tiny dragons.
norway’s curling team is appropriately dressed for valentine’s day
day 2: norway is still slaying the pants game
day 3: pants game is still on top
day 4: still impressive
day 5: another day another trouser
day 6: they have yet to wear one pair twice
Okay so I already reblogged this once but I’m reblogging again because I just watched a short documentary about these pants.
Apparently back at their first Olympics appearance, they (especially Chris Svae, the ginger who plays second) were pretty disappointed with their gear because the gear didn’t look flattering. They couldn’t change the shirts because of Norway federation sponsorships so they started looking for pants to wear. They had a hard time finding pants that both looked respectable enough for professional curling and stretchy enough to allow curling, and promptly gave up on finding pants that were both stretchy and professional.
Chris Svae ended up finding pants that were Norway-colors-ish that looked comfortable enough for curling, but had crazy patterns. People at Olympics were not happy about this because PATTERNS AREN’T RESPECTABLE ENOUGH, so they were conflicted. But the night before the opening ceremony, they were hanging out with a bunch of lady skiiers. Chris at some point just takes off his pants and put on the crazy pants they bought and asks “Do you think we should wear these pants” and the skiers were like “he’ll yeah you should totally do it”
So they wore the crazy pants to play in the Olympics, and a few days later the website where they bought the pants crashed. The owner of the website visited them in Vancouver for the Olympics, and then decided to sponsor the team.
And now, 8 years layer, the Norwegian team has a different pair of pants for each match. Including a Valentine’s day pair.
I love the feedback loop of “wow people wearing our ridiculous pants made us successful. let’s send them MORE PANTS”
BettSplendens Tumblr Evac 