Southern New York witnessed a partial eclipse while our neighbors to the north had an angle on a total block-out of the sun.
The much-hyped solar eclipse peaked at 3:25 pm today in the New York City area, where the angle afforded us a 90 percent obstructed view of our system’s star.
I spent those few minutes squinting through a pair of NASA-approved solar glasses, warnings from ophthalmologists echoing in my head.
Being able to gaze upon it directly was pretty cool, although I wonder how the humans of centuries past managed to study the phenomenon without blinding themselves.
I viewed the eclipse from Rye Town Park, a shoreline park adjacent to Rye Playland, a historic amusement park. A few hundred people had the same idea and the parking lot was as full as it gets on hot summer days when crowds head to the nearby beach. Some used solar glasses, some had homemade pinhole viewers, and a few people sat in their cars and smoked weed while waiting for peak viewing time. (The smell is ubiquitous since legalization.)
I spent more time looking at the nearby duck pond and its residents, mindful of warnings not to exceed three minutes of eclipse viewing time even with proper eyewear.
Several mated pairs of ducks waddled around, quietly quacking and seemingly unbothered by the solar phenomenon. It was darker than usual, although not as dark as one might expect given the amount of obstruction.
As for Bud, if he exhibited any strange behavior, I didn’t witness it. When I got home he was much more interested in the Chewy shipment and his brand new box:
Although he may appear to be a small cat in this photo, he asks me to remind readers to note the viewing angle, which makes his considerable meowscles look much smaller than they actually are. In reality he remains a terrifying beast, nearly indistinguishable from a tiger.
If you’re viewing today’s eclipse, stay safe and protect your eyes!
The last few decades have revealed birds like crows and parrots possess astonishing intelligence. “Bird brain” might not be much of an insult after all.
Meet Kiki the cockatiel, a bird who loves Earth, Wind and Fire so much that he sings the band’s classic hit, September, regularly — whether he’s just chilling by himself, singing along to the recording or driving his human crazy by whistling the catchy hook at ungodly hours.
“Kiki, it’s seven in the morning!” she tells him in one clip, raising an admonishing finger. “Silence!”
I’ve always thought parrots are a fascinating example of animal cognition and further proof that we share our planet with billions of other minds who think and feel.
Humans and birds last shared a common ancestor more than 300 million years ago. That means between them there’s been more than 600 million years of divergent evolution resulting in radically different physiology, abilities and minds.
Yet parrots can speak while non-human primates (apes and monkeys) cannot!
For decades scientists thought apes and monkeys, by virtue of their relative similarity to humans, possessed an inmate affinity for language and that the physical limits of their vocal apparatus is what keeps them from speaking.
But a 2016 study by a team from Princeton University found monkeys do possess the vocal “hardware” to speak, meaning their mouths and throats are capable of making the sounds necessary for human language. It’s the lack of associated brain circuitry that prevents them from talking.
If the ability to speak and the ability to dance/appreciate music and rhythm is uniquely human among the primate order, and birds arrived at it at a different point in their evolutionary history, that means language and appreciation for music/rhythm developed separately along two divergent evolutionary lines!
That’s incredible and has intriguing implications for the cognitive abilities of animals.
A common argument is that birds with the ability to form human speech are simply mimicking sounds and don’t understand what they’re saying. That’s a natural assumption given what we think we know about non-human capacity for understanding language, but research suggests it’s wrong.
Take a look at this video of the famous late African grey parrot, Alex:
When Dr. Irene Pepperberg asks Alex how many blue blocks are present on a tray with a random assortment of blocks, balls and triangular toys in different colors, Alex can’t give a rote answer. First he has to understand that a question is a request for information and not part of the strange human ritual called small talk. He can’t simply count or guess at the number of blocks either.
Instead, Alex has to perform two calculations. He must tally the blue objects and count the number of them that are blocks, or he’s got to count the number of blocks and figure out how many of them are blue.
If he was simply repeating information in context — like saying “Hello!” when a person walks into a room — Alex wouldn’t be able to correctly answer the questions, and Pepperberg’s research funding would have dried up. Instead, Alex became a focal point of research that persisted for decades.
There’s no indication Alex could master syntax, which has proven elusive for even the smartest animals. But the African grey, who died in 2007 at 31 years old, was curious, asking questions that were unique and unexpected of an animal. He once asked his caretakers to describe his physical appearance, and the night before he died, he told Pepperberg: “You be good. I love you. See you tomorrow.”
We’ve talked about parrots before on PITB, including Snowball the dancing cockatiel who not only appreciates music and has a great sense of rhythm, but also has an entire repertoire of unique dance moves. Then there’s my personal favorite, Ruby the African grey, who has demonstrated mastery of absolutely vile, uniquely British insults.
Sure, there may not be much research value in hearing Ruby hurl verbal abuse at her very loving human, Nick Chapman, but few things have made me laugh as hard as that extraordinarily foul-mouthed bird. She has to be seen and heard to be believed. (But if you’ve got kids in the room, stick with the wholesome Snowball. He’s got serious moves.)
Scientists credit Snowball with choreographing his own dance routines, with dozens of individual dance moves and combinations, and moves that change depending on the song he’s rocking out to.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to teach a certain feline a few Earth, Wind and Fire songs in the hope that he’ll give up on the screeching meows and use his natural falsetto for a more gentle wake-up experience.
Hey, hey, hey Ba-dee-ya, hey there my Big Buddy Ba-dee-ya, Little Buddy’s hungry! Ba-dee-ya, get your lazy ass up and feeeeeed me!
This momentous occasion marks only the second time PITB has participated in the daily writing prompt via WordPress, and the reason we’re participating is to bring more awareness to the meowscular and powerful Buddinese Tiger — and its threatened cousins, the majestic tigers, jaguars, lions and leopards.
Known in scientific nomenclature as panthera tigris muscularis handsomus, the Buddinese Tiger is an apex predator who rules over his natural habitat, the living room, with an iron paw. No one is safe from the Buddinese Tiger’s charms or its rage when sufficient snacks are not provided.
You can’t tell the difference, can you? I mean, they’re virtually identical!
All jokes aside, I’d compare myself to tigers and jaguars because they’re awesome and they’re my favorite cats, aside from the above-mentioned panthera tigris muscularis handsomus. Cats are solitary hunters, they don’t like to be disturbed when they’re sleeping, and they appreciate the value of a good nap as well as a good snack. They are creatures of extraordinary taste!
Most of all, we need more people to appreciate big cats because the future doesn’t look good for them if we don’t do more to save them. Although tiger numbers have rebounded somewhat thanks to concerted conservation efforts in places like India (Bengal) and Russia (Amur), they’re still extremely vulnerable to habitat loss, poaching and revenge killing by farmers and rural villagers who often blame the big cats for being cats and going after livestock.
Likewise, while jaguars were once the sole success story in the big cat world thanks to their isolation deep in the Amazon rainforest and their elusive nature, they face a massive threat to their existence from deforestation and from the Chinese presence in countries like Brazil and Peru, where Chinese nationals poach the majestic felids to fuel the destructive Chinese traditional “medicine” market.
Just as TCM has devastated tiger, lion, elephant, rhinoceros and pangolin populations, it’s moved on to jaguars. Even vast “tiger farms” in places like South Africa, which cater to canned hunts and the TCM market, aren’t enough to meet the demand for big cat parts for use in folk “medicine,” in which ground tiger bones, fur, claws and other body parts are included in various elixirs people believe will cure everything from baldness to sexual dysfunction.
Check out Panthera for more information on conservation efforts and how you can help.
Blurry photos and fleeting encounters keep the legend of big cats in the UK alive. Could there be leopards, pumas and other large cats roaming the countryside?
For all the advances in optics and camera technology over the last 20 years alone, there are two kinds of people who love blurry, low-resolution footage: UFO enthusiasts and people who are convinced the UK is like a cold, rainy Africa with big cats lurking in every bush and field.
To be a member of either group you’ve got to shut down critical thinking faculties, suspend disbelief and put faith in the highly improbable. (Or the impossible when it comes to people who insist little green men are zipping across the night sky in sleek ships that defy all we know about physics and aerodynamics.)
The UK’s big cat believers claim the country is home to a thriving native population of large felids. Some of them think they’re “panthers,” not specifying which species of cat they think is out there, while others claim jaguars, leopards or tigers are prowling the English countryside, spotted only fleetingly at the edges of fields or in the brush, and only by people who own two-decade-old Nokia flip phones with rudimentary cameras.
They believe a native, breeding population not only exists, but for centuries has eluded capture and avoided leaving compelling evidence.
“Pardon me, mate, could you point me toward Aldersgate Street?”
The phantom cats have remarkable stealth abilities. They’ve never tripped a trail camera or appeared in a single frame of CCTV footage. Not a single tree marked for territory, not a single pile of cow bones picked clean by giant barbed tongues, not a single clump of panthera dung. Not even a hungry cub drawn into a village by the smell of barbecue on a summer night.
The reported sightings say more about human capacity for imagination — and how poor we are at estimating size over distance — than they do about the crypto-pumas and melanistic tigers some people swear they’ve seen.
When alleged big cats are spotted in the UK, they’re always seen fleetingly and from afar. When witnesses try to confirm what they’ve seen, the animals are gone.
“I was coming up to Jolly Nice from Oxford at around 7.50pm and the car in front of me was travelling at a steady pace. I looked to the verge of the other side of the road because I saw a bright pair of eyes low down. Upon further inspection, I suddenly realised there was a large outline of a low and stocky cat that was huge.”
That’s the testimony of a UK man who told the Stroud Times, a local newspaper, that he encountered a big cat a few minutes before 8 p.m. on Friday in Nailsworth, a town of about 5,600 people a little more than 100 miles west of London. His description mirrors that of others who say they’ve spotted large felids, mostly in the UK’s countryside and small villages.
Photograph from a previous “big cat sighting.” It’s typical of the photos that surface with claims of leopards and pumas stalking the countryside. Blurred details and digital zoom make it difficult to gauge distance and scale.
The story’s headline reads: “Big cat expert’s verdict: beast spotted was a leopard.”
The expert in question is Rick Minter, an amateur biologist who has made UK big cat legends into something of a cottage industry by publishing books, hosting a podcast and frequently speaking to newspapers about the phenomenon. It’s not clear how Minter decided the animal in Friday’s sighting was a “black leopard,” but he’s said in previous interviews that he believes most alleged big cat sightings in the UK are leopards, with pumas accounting for most of the others.
Neither animal is native to Europe. Pumas range from South America to the American northwest and midwest, with isolated populations in places like Florida. Leopards are native to Africa and Asia, with ranges that overlap with lions on the former continent and tigers on the latter, mostly in India.
“I’m originally from San Diego, actually, but the expat life suits me and the British are very tasty.”
Some have floated the possibility that the mysterious felids are escaped pets who have successfully adjusted to the countryside. Minter says the evidence points to breeding populations.
If there are thriving populations, the cats would need to exist in numbers, with at least 50 on the extreme low end. If they’re escaped pets, the authorities would know.
Unlike the US, where big cat ownership was banned in the vast majority of states even before the recent Big Cat Public Safety Act was passed, owning a massive carnivore slash killing machine isn’t illegal in the UK. But owners have to register their animals, seek approval for the habitats and enclosures they’ve built, and submit to annual inspection.
There have been a handful of escapes over the decades and each time the authorities were able to capture or kill the animals, often tracking them via livestock kills. Pet tigers and leopards might be dangerous, but they’re still at a disadvantage compared to their wild brethren, meaning they go for the easy, guaranteed kills when they’re hungry. Nothing’s easier than a docile farm animal that’s never seen a big cat.
“Oi, wanna have a pint and watch Man U vs Arsenal on the telly?”
More recently, big cat hunters in the UK have tried to find more compelling evidence than a couple of blurry photographs of house cats out for a stroll. They’ve touted suspicious-looking pug marks, and in August 2022 found black fur on a barbed wire fence. According to the believers, a UK lab confirmed the fur belonged to a leopard, but there was no chain of custody, no documentation of how the sample was found and handled. Big cat experts remain skeptical.
— Big Cat Sightings In Scotland (@BCSI_Scotland) October 24, 2022
Indeed, Oxford’s Egil Droge, a wildlife conservationist, points out that in places where big cats live, you don’t have to go hunting for evidence. It’s everywhere.
“I’ve worked with large carnivores in Africa since 2007 and it’s obvious if big cats are around. You would regularly come across prints of their paws along roads. The rasping sound of a leopard’s roar can be heard from several kilometres,” Droge wrote, noting that leopards in particular are not discriminating about what they kill and leave ample evidence of their handiwork when they’ve hunted.
Still, as improbable as the sightings are, the big cat enthusiasts of the UK have one up on UFO enthusiasts and hunters of cryptics like Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster and the Jersey Devil: the creatures they’re looking for actually exist and may surprise us yet.
A London woman’s cat, Flossie, just celebrated her 29th birthday, making her the oldest cat in the world. And in Utah, a zoo just debuted an adorable little predator.
Happy Sunday, everyone, and if you’re on the east coast of the US like we are, we hope you’re safe and warm during this year’s first snow.
We’ll start off with a bit of significant news first reported in the The Buddesian Times: the famous artist and sculptor Meowchelangelo has unveiled a glorious marble statue of our favorite feline hero, “striding like a colossus toward evil-doers in the distance, his rippling muscles rendered in magnificent Calacatta Borghini,” which is marble from the same quarry in Carrara, Italy, that supplied the raw material for another masterpiece, the Renaissance sculpture commonly known as “David.”
The statue, which honors Buddy’s recent valorous defense of a helpless dog during a vicious attack by a pack of 72 coyotes, will likely be installed in Manhattan, although Washington’s city council is lobbying hard for it, promising the famous statue of Abraham Lincoln in his eponymous monument would be removed for the Buddesian likeness.
Today’s edition of the Buddesian Times with a front-page story on the statue.
The World’s Oldest Cat still moves like a kitten
The Guardian has an interesting column from Vicki Green, cat mom to Flossie, who at 28 years old is the Guinness World Records certified oldest domestic cat in the world.
Flossie, who was born in December of 1995, is as old as Green, who attributes the tortoiseshell’s longevity to “luck, and because she was loved by her previous owners.” Flossie was initially an outdoor kitten who lived in a managed colony until she was adopted by her first human, who died when Flossie was 14 years old.
The woman’s sister took Flossie in next but died after 10 years. Her son became the long-lived feline’s third servant, but after three years he brought her to Cat’s Protection in London, saying he could no longer provide the level of care Flossie deserved and needed.
Shortly after, Green was looking to adopt a cat and saw Flossie’s listing online.
“At the time, I thought it was an error and that she must be 17,” she wrote. “Cats Protection told me she was still available to adopt and that no, she was in fact 27, the same age as me.”
Green thought Flossie would likely only live a few more months, but “she’d at least spend them in a nice, warm flat, be fed well and get treats as well as a comfy bed.”
“To my surprise,” Green wrote, “I’ve had her for over a year now and she’s still going strong.”
Flossie takes lots of naps but is surprisingly active and playful for her age. Credit: Vicki Green
Despite her advanced age, Flossie is active, seeks attention and still plays with her favorite toys. Green got miniature stairs for the senior kitty to easily reach the couch, but Flossie doesn’t use them, preferring to jump up instead.
“The biggest difficulty is dealing with the fact that there may soon come a time when she passes. I’m in denial about that. I look at her and just think she doesn’t look old at all,” Green wrote. “Yet who knows? She could well be on the way to becoming the oldest cat in history. Though even if she doesn’t break the current record of 38 years and three days, at least I’ll know she had a great retirement home.”
Gaia the three-pound terror debuts in Salt Lake City
Black-footed cats are known primarily for three things: they’re outrageously cute, they’re diminutive and they’re remarkably deadly.
Of course with a maximum weight of three pounds, only tiny prey have to worry about the fury of these furry little guys. The rest of us get to point and go “Aww!”
Gaia’s personality is “large and feisty” according to zookeepers. Credit: Hogle Zoo
Native to the savannas of southern Africa, black-footed cats are excellent hunters, but like all felines they’re also prey, and they’re the subject of a worldwide zoological breeding and conservation program due to declining numbers in the wild.
The newest success story for those breeding efforts is Gaia, an eight-month-old black-footed kitten who just made her debut at Hogle Zoo in Utah.
Zookeepers describe baby Gaia’s personality as “large and feisty,” and they expect she’ll be popular with zoo visitors.
She’s now the second of her species at Hogle, joining Ryder, a male. They haven’t been introduced yet. A carefully supervised introduction is “in the cards, but we’ll let these two feline friends get acquainted when Gaia reaches maturity,” the zoo said.
Pain In The Bud 