I've heard the phrase "it's so ugly that it's cute" used to describe a number of thing, including babies and pugs (the latter much to my girlfriend's chagrin), but it cannot be be more apt than for the Naked Mole Rat (Heterocephalus glaber). Prof. Justin O'Riain, my undergraduate lecturer and Honours supervisor at the University of Cape Town, described their overall appearance as "penises with teeth". He wasn't far off the mark, but there is just something so endearing about these little guys. They live underground anyway, and they're blind. So why should they care about their looks?
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Birders are a crazy bunch. We will do crazy things to see a special bird. We love going to strange places (think rubbish dumps and sewerage plants). We are easily distracted. I think every birder has jumped up without warning mid-conversation to see what that odd-looking flash was flying into the hedge, leaving a non-birder bewildered and socially stranded. Birders can also be obsessed with numbers. Lifelists, world lists, country lists, yearlists, province lists, reserve lists, garden lists. Not to say that birders don’t enjoy the birds for enjoyment’s sake too, but numbers of species on one’s list is often used as a benchmark for assessing another birder’s ability (often wrongly!). Records are important in the birding community. The record of the most bird species recorded in a year was broken in 2015 (Noah Strycker saw 6042 species!), and is already being challenged this year. The record for the most species seen in a year within the American Birding Association area has been broken by two people this year already. I guess this addiction with “collecting” species is akin to what drives hunters and collectors of rare specimens, although ours is a much more benign, environmentally-friendly hobby. It was thus no surprise that when Garth Shaw messaged a group of Western Cape birders enquiring who wanted to make an attempt at 200+ species in a day around Cape Town there were some excited replies. Getting people’s schedules to agree did cause some difficulty, but eventually four birders found a date that would suit them all, and the team of Garth Shaw, Frans-Hendrik Joubert, Dominic Rollinson, and Andrew de Blocq was formed! |
AuthorI am a birder, biologist, and nature blogger. I post about my trips, informative tidbits, and things I think are interesting. Archives
July 2017
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