I saw a thing in the garden (4 Viewers)

[magicbastarder]

i think it's a common garden spider aka a cross orbweaver.

 

[flashback]

Not in the garden... but, out in Shenandoah up this mountain I saw a family of mountain lions.
We stopped for a snack close to the top of the mountain, and sat off to one side. When we stepped back onto the trail there they were.

Absolute units. Like, they're clearly cats, but they are not doing the whole cat/lithe/slinky look. I'm assuming it was mama I saw, with little ones. And so we're clear: she'd wreck you. Just a block of a decent sized cat. The babies were more slinky kitty type, Mama turned and gave the look that was "I'm walking off the trail here, but I COULD just keeping walking on the trail, and you would not be."

Lower down on the path I noticed some poos balanced on top of a high rock. I've noticed this before, some predators will take a dump on top of a really obvious rock, where you can't not notice. I think it's a territorial thing. I've never seen a big cat in the wild before. The closest was when I smelled puma in the Andes.

It's amazing to see them.

 

[GO]

A bat there just now

 

[seanc]

Lower down on the path I noticed some poos balanced on top of a high rock. I've noticed this before, some predators will take a dump on top of a really obvious rock, where you can't not notice. I think it's a territorial thing. I've never seen a big cat in the wild before. The closest was when I smelled puma in the Andes.

It's a thing. All animals know what lion poo smells like, and avoid areas that smells like that. London Zoo sells lion poo to people who don't want foxes or moles or badgers in their garden. And there's actually a waiting list to get your hands on some Simba-crap.
Which I find amazing, no London fox has never met a lion, yet a fox knows that if they smell lion poop they're in trouble.

 

[Cormcolash]

A bat there just now

Pfft that's not a mountain lion

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

It's a thing. All animals know what lion poo smells like, and avoid areas that smells like that. London Zoo sells lion poo to people who don't want foxes or moles or badgers in their garden. And there's actually a waiting list to get your hands on some Simba-crap.
Which I find amazing, no London fox has never met a lion, yet a fox knows that if they smell lion poop they're in trouble.

I think it’s a generic predatory smell rather than just the smell of lion. Their shite is going to be full of dead animal and a strong cat scent, they probably just think there’s a Turbo Tabby on the loose.

On a related note, a lot of monkeys are hardwired to fear snakes. Monkeys born in captivity will freak out if you expose them to a toy snake, despite never having met a snake or seen a snake. It’s a bit more understandable here as the same monkeys raised in the wild will encounter snakes as part of their natural habitat; unlike foxes and lions.

 

[pete]

just like how cats evolved to fear bananas and cucumbers

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[seanc]

Seems really obvious now that it's been explained to me. I is a stupid.

 

[magicbastarder]

just a black widow killing a snake (and no, i did not see this in my garden)

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[seanc]

Her eye is bigger than her belly there now.

 

[magicbastarder]

well, she probably has loads of eyes, to be fair.

 

[therealjohnny]

I saw a thing on the internet about what some guy saw in his garden

George and Mabel – A Love Story

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, this is a re-post of the popular 2017 George and Mabel: A Love Story They say that crows usually mate for life. George and Mabel have certainly stuck together …

urbannature.blog

 

[GO]

I'm thinking of writing a song called I saw a thing in the garden

 

[flashback]

On a related note, a lot of monkeys are hardwired to fear snakes.

I read about this work absolutely ages ago, I think it was back in the 60s/70s or something, where they were looking at this fear of snakes in primates, and they noticed extremely quick reaction times associated specifically with snakes. There were instances where the reaction time was too quick to be a normal process visual recognition -> skeletal muscle reaction, it was almost that there was a different circuit involved that was dedictated to snakes.
This was linked with anecdotal stuff where humans jerked their hand away from somewhere and didn't understand why for a moment until the normal neural processing kicked in and said "snake".

But yeah, I've heard about this strange hardwiring that appears to exist with primates and snakes. It's really interesting.

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

I read about this work absolutely ages ago, I think it was back in the 60s/70s or something, where they were looking at this fear of snakes in primates, and they noticed extremely quick reaction times associated specifically with snakes. There were instances where the reaction time was too quick to be a normal process visual recognition -> skeletal muscle reaction, it was almost that there was a different circuit involved that was dedictated to snakes.
This was linked with anecdotal stuff where humans jerked their hand away from somewhere and didn't understand why for a moment until the normal neural processing kicked in and said "snake".

But yeah, I've heard about this strange hardwiring that appears to exist with primates and snakes. It's really interesting.

You can remove the part of the brain involved in their fear of snakes and they will go up and play with the toy snake (versus running away from it pre-surgery).

 

[therealjohnny]

Thinking the last post should be in the Hellworld thread

 

[therealjohnny]

A raven flew low overhead a little while ago , and now I can hear the buzzards out there doing their thing.

 

[magicbastarder]

a fox has chewed the shite out of the liner on our pond. had been wondering why the level had dropped a couple of inches.

 

[therealjohnny]

Pretty sure it was a fox that left a big jobby at our back door the other night.

 

[Diddles]

This fucking rat is still hanging around, the tenant is on a crusade to catch it and is constantly texting me about its movements and generally doing my head in. He has a dog too so there's three dogs out the back doing SFA and this yoke is still sauntering around. I cut loads of branches back and cleaned up all the windfall pears yesterday and I broke up a log pile it was hanging out in. I'm going to make a trap tomorrow to capture it, if I do I'll release it into the nearby park or slap the tenant around the head with it.