At my mother’s house — there are American Crows everywhere. Big black birds that complain if humans step outside. Odin watches.
Unfortunately, I left the good camera at home and am reduced to iPhone photography.
This is what Orcas do to Great White Sharks.
Face it, Orcas are pretty damned metal.
Let’s be honest: as much as we all love a shark, orcas are definitely in with a shout of earning the title of Most Metal Animal In The Sea. Firstly, they’re absolutely massive. Secondly, they feast on other animals. Thirdly, they wear corpsepaint. Fourthly, they’re nicknamed killer whales! The defence rests.
And don’t forget, the Orcas around Spain and Gibraltar have had enough and are out there thrashing yachts for sport.
So somebody came up with the ‘clever’ idea of trying to deter attacks by playing a death metal playlist over underwater microphones. Do you think it worked?
One unexpected tactic that is currently doing the rounds in the marine community is to blast heavy metal at the fearsome sea mammals. According to a new report in the New York Times, Captain Florian Rutsch and his crew found themselves in uncomfortably close proximity to a pod of orcas around the Iberian Peninsula earlier this month, and attempted to drive them off with a specially curated playlist of metal bangers titled Metal For Orcas. The mix included cuts by death metal mainstays such as Aborted, Dying Fetus and Ingested, and was played via an underwater speaker.
Unfortunately for the crew, it didn’t work: the orcas attacked the rudder of their catamaran, causing enough damage to leave the boat stranded and its occupants requiring rescuing via local authorities. Captain Rutsh described the situation as “scary”, adding: “No one knows what works, what doesn’t work.”
Hell no. That was a mix of music that was either going to attract them to a wild party, or was going to enrage them. If you really want to scare away Orcas, I’d recommend trying a mix of Kenny G and Enya first.
In case you’ve ever wondered how a swordfish uses that long pointy thing on the front of their head, it’s exactly how you think they do.
Don’t turn the sound on. The narrator is awful.
Here’s a kiwi, shrieking.
Apparently kiwi’s scream like a demon pic.twitter.com/0BZKoh9Weq
— INTERNET EMPRESS OF SHARKS AND BONES (she/her) 🦈 (@Evoincarnate) November 10, 2023
You’re all awake now, right?
This thing is hanging in a tree near where I walk on the way to the lab. It’s bigger than my head!
That’s actually what I think when I walk by: “What if that fell off and landed on my head and I had to run around waving my arms?” A childhood watching Saturday morning cartoons has given me that expectation.
Down in the sea, it’s calm and restful as the octopus drifts by.
Of course, they also mention in passing that they’d previously seen one of these getting shredded by a predator, but we’ll just pretend that didn’t happen.
I know, I get complaints when I post spider photos here, but this one is just so pretty and the spider is so proud. It’s a Steatoda borealis female, she just made an egg sac this morning, and look at all those shiny smooth glistening eggs, and the elaborate tangle of silk surrounding it! How can you not love it?
I learned what cheetahs sound like.
Apparently, cheetahs are a hairy species of bird.
More evidence:
(They make other sounds as well, this is just the most surprising.)
Because we have so many blowflies.
You know this podish-sortacast that Freethoughtblogs runs? At the end of the last one, we were talking about new topics, and I casually threw out “SPIDERS” expecting everyone would actually pick something of broader general interest. The jokes on me, because guess what we’re talking about on Saturday?
I can probably think of something to say. Whether it is of interest is a different question.
