Tag: Amazon rainforest

fake news, pop culture, technology, wildlife March 18, 2023

The ‘Snake Cat’ Is A Bad AI Fake

Say hello to felis retrowavus, commonly known as the synthwave cat, one of the rarest species of felid on Earth.

Using the same technique GloFish employed to create bioluminescent neon fish for the pet market, scientists engineered felis retrowavus by extracting fluorescent proteins from jellyfish and inserting them into cat embryos, which incorporated the new proteins into their genome.

The result? A new species of cat that glows in fabulous colors like Tigerbrite Orange™, Electro Azure™, RadarGlo Green™, 1984 Pink™ and SithRed™!

Your brand new Neon Feline™ will run, jump and meow just like a regular cat, but unlike a plain old kitty, your Neon Feline™ will snuggle up with you at night and serve as your personal biological night light! Collect them all!

If that sounds like BS, that’s because it is.

Obviously.

Likewise, it should only take a second or two to realize the widely disseminated photo of a “snake cat” is a fake rendered by an AI.

The image has all the hallmarks of an AI generated image fail: Anatomical errors, fuzzy pixels where the AI struggled with the way light hits fur, a misshapen head and a nebulous, blurry background.

Although the media seems to be more obsessed with the snake cat hoax than people are (the snake cat image “mystified the internet,” the New York Post claims), after years of witnessing people take Onion stories seriously and confidently repeat misinformation online, I’m not really surprised when something like this makes the rounds.

The image was accompanied by a clever bit of writing claiming the cat isn’t well known because it’s native to the deep jungle of the Amazon, where scientists have difficulty tracking it. The text even offered a taxonomical name for the cryptid animal.

Enough people apparently fell for it that the staff at Snopes felt the need to debunk the image, even going as far as to check with a biologist who specializes in tropical fauna.

The original author of the snake cat post says he created the image and accompanying text to prove how easy it is for people to be fooled by AI-generated fakes. A noble goal if true, but I’m not sure everyone got the message.

In any case, the “snake cat” proves once again that AI, like all innovations, isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s what we do with the technology that counts.

Now can I interest anyone in a brand new Purple Velvet or Flaming Hot Cheetos SnuggleCat™?

big cats, panthera, wildlife May 26, 2021

Sanctuary Jaguar Gives Birth To Beautiful Melanistic Baby, You Can Help Name Her

The Big Cat Sanctuary of Kent, UK — not to be confused with Florida’s Big Cat Rescue — is welcoming a newborn melanistic jaguar, and everyone from the vet staff to the caretakers are fussing over her.

The as-yet-unnamed baby was born to mom Keira and dad Neron in a big-cat breeding program designed to ensure the species survives as wild populations plummet due to habitat reduction and poaching. Staff at the UK sanctuary say the baby opened her eyes the day she was born and was walking by two weeks. That’s an unusually quick development for most cats, but apparently not for jaguars, who live in the deepest jungles of the Amazon.

jaguarbaby4 — The Big Cat Sanctuary’s newest addition. / Credit: Alma Leaper

The sanctuary is allowing the public to pick the baby’s name from among three choices as part of a fund-raiser.

The choices are Inka (Inca) after the Inca people and their empire, Inti, a Quechuan (pre-modern Peruvian) word meaning “Sunshine,” or Killari, a word from the same language that means “Moonlight.” I’m partial to the latter, especially for the image it evokes of the world’s largest black panther — and the largest cat in the Americas — stalking the jungle on a moon-lit night.

The term “black panther” is a catch-all for any felid with melanism. Both jaguars and leopards can have the black color morph, as can domestic cats. Cats with melanism retain their spots, and if you look closely you can see they’re a shade darker than the rest of the cats’ black fur.

Check out the video below to see the little one behaving just like any other kitten.

Black Jaguar cub https://app.asana.com/0/1135954362417873/1200379072986594/f Credit: Cam Whitnall

Black Jaguar cub https://app.asana.com/0/1135954362417873/1200379072986594/f Credit: Alma Leaper

Buddy, cat humor, Feline Overlords November 19, 2020

Cats Win ‘Laziest Species’ At 212th Annual Animal Awards

NEW YORK — Domestic cats swept the Laziest Species category at the 212th Annual Animal Awards on Friday night.

Accepting the award on behalf of all cats, Chonkmatic the Magnificent waddled on stage, took a short nap, then was helped up to the podium, where he yawned and addressed the audience.

“Thank you!” Chonkmatic said, allowing others to hoist the award for him. “We didn’t work hard at all to earn this recognition, and that makes it even more satisfying.”

Chonkmatic went on to list several other cats who made the award possible by demonstrating remarkable laziness, before handing off the list to his assistant so he could be carried off stage for a snack and another nap.

Jaguars, the apex predators of South America, were recognized in the wild cat category for the remarkable achievement of ruling more than two million square miles of rainforest while napping approximately 70 percent of the time.

jaguar-sleeping-big-cat-carnivore-feline-resting-cat-nap-portrait-fur — Prolific nappers: Panthera Onca, the jaguar.

The big cats of the Amazon prerecorded an acceptance speech because the award show was scheduled to interfere with their napping schedule.

“We are honored to receive this award,” Ahau-K’in, the King of Jaguars, said in the message. “If you could just deliver it to us, that’d be great. In fact, you can leave it at the Temple of Palenque, but bring it up the stairs, mind. We don’t want to have to drag that thing up here.”

Buddy the Cat sleeping on Big Buddy the Human.

Sharing in the recognition was Buddy the Cat, who “showed us all that a new style of napping is possible by training our humans never to move if we’re sleeping on top of them.”

“The New York cat also developed new techniques for prompting humans to deliver snacks directly to their feline overlords,” the judges wrote. “After all, why should we come running at the sound of a crinkly bag being opened? The snacks should be placed before us, requiring as little effort as possible to eat them and leaving more time for yawning, stretching and lazing.”