Thylacine brain science!!! (layman) (scientific journal) I feel like I should page @cryptoThelematrix about all things thylacine but also if you do not want pings to random places I'm sorry ((edit for formatting unbreaking))
A neighbouring cat has been leaving elastic bands on my driveway for weeks, and today left a band in the street exactly where I usually get out of the car. I may have written this off as accidentally dropping its treasures, but it was also sitting at my door, as if waiting. Has this cat adopted me? What do?
I learned today that the steep hill I live on - Brown Hill - is actually rightly known as Bron Hill, bron being an old saxon word for a hill or slope. I LIVE ON A HILL HILL. (Like Mount Fuji is basically Mountain Mountain, or saying Chai Tea is actually saying Tea Tea XDD) THIS MAKES ME UNREASONABLY HAPPY :D
…this is the dumbest thing, but one of my favorite actresses retweeted one of my favorite comedians and I got all :D FAMOUS PEOPLE I LIKE LIKE EACH OTHER :D
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE YES tell me tell me whenever there is thylacine anything. thank you!
so @Loq: This is very interesting because, while there are not a lot of detailed scientific observations of either wild or captive thylacines, there actually were a lot of non-scientific, first-person accounts of interactions between humans and thylacines in captivity. Robert Paddle collected large numbers of these stories and a surprising pattern turned up. Because propaganda against the thylacine made it out to be a particularly vicious killer, you would expect these stories to make thylacines sound dangerous and threatening. However, first person and anecdotal accounts very strongly suggest that they were not. Thylacines who were caught accidentally in traps intended for animals who were trapped for fur or for meat were often easily tamed and several aboriginal peoples were known to have kept them as pets (while others ate them). One animal is known to have been caught in a trap uninjured, put on a lead and after about 250 yards of balking, walked along with its captor like a well-trained dog. Another animal, an immature female, who was injured in the snare she was caught in, was taken home and looked after while she healed. She lived with her captor as a pet for several months, but became restless when she matured and became aware of males in the area. He let her go, and some years later, she stopped on a trail with her pups and greeted him, remembering his kindness. (ETA: Col Bailey's collection of stories also includes the story of a trapper who blundered into a cave during a fierce winter storm that would surely have killed him had he not found shelter--only to find that it was the den of a mama thylacine, who allowed him to stay in the cave with her and her pups until morning anyway, presumably because he kept to himself and didn't threaten them. It's impossible to verify this, but if it is true it's another example of this animal's ability to figure out who was and wasn't actually dangerous and to show concern for the welfare of other beings who were neither threatening it nor its normal food sources.) Thylacines who were kept as guard dogs and pets and not mistreated were excellent guards and could easily distinguish between threatening people and non-threatening people; one animal was known to not react badly to children playing ball games in its presence even when accidentally hit. There's only one really good record of thylacine-on-thylacine violence in a zoo and the two stories about them attacking people who were not trying to harm them include an urban legend, where the size and age of the animal and the name and circumstances of the woman involved vary from account to account, and the story of a photographer and videographer who encroached on their space in a zoo, ignored repeated threat displays--and got bitten in the seat of the pants, with more harm to his dignity than anything else. Small thylacines would play with string like cats and would share their food with each other, waiting in turns rather than fighting. They were easily tamed, learned rapidly when actual attempts were made to train them and were responsive to kindness. So it's very interesting that they actually had a lot of brain space devoted to planning and thinking and possibly even social behaviour, because while they were usually seen in small family groups or alone as their numbers began to dwindle, they showed very little territoriality and were known to hunt and/or travel in larger groups when there were a large number of them around. It really does bear out the fact that they were horribly maligned and slandered by white settlers and were actually very gentle for obligate carnivore apex predators.
Only for the next few hundred years, though! Then the word for hill will have changed and it'll probably be [corruption of "Hill"] [new word for hill]
The Cards Against Humanity guys put an ad on Craigslist trying to hire Obama to be their new CEO. I'm so glad I followed Diane Duane's tumblr because she reblogs some incredible things.
There is this bit in Trashed where Jeremy Irons attempts to SCIENCE. His one job? Dig some holes in a field for purposes of testing toxins in the dirt. What he actually does: Wanders around this fucking field going "I lost my stick! Now I'm fucked!" XDDDD
I've had a really good day in general, and have been in an extremely good mood for once. And then, to top it all off, I won ten dollars on a scratcher!
I opted to not do one of my writing assignments for a class and the world didn't fall apart; I still have a high B and I will still get my financial aid back if I have a b in the class. C:
