The Amazing Planet and Nature Thread

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Damn, a friend in Kingston sent me this one

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I don’t normally do this but:

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I am at the lake this evening, forecast for a clear sky and likely pretty good aurora. Tonight’s goal is a photo of Comet C/2023 A3 passing through the aurora in the western sky…

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I didn’t know where else to put this.

Humans are a disease on this planet.

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one of us

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I invite you to celebrate the glorious Godwit. Not only do they have a wonderful name, they also fly 12,000 km non-stop from Alaska to Australia and New Zealand.

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https://x.com/Scentofawoman10/status/1852769963661996297?t=6_c-gS4xjHAJ17vTxf0gbw&s=09

:heart_eyes:

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Attenborough Asia series is excellent as ever…

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The Canadian west coast just got hit by a ‘bomb cyclone’, a large storm pattern with a massive pressure drop in the center (dropping about 1 millibar per hour for at least 24 hours) which then plays havoc with wind, rain, and at sea, water currents.

Folger Passage is a relatively shallow channel on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, so it was more or less taking the brunt of landfall.

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*“My Mirrored Twin… My Next of Kin” * :astonished:

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Honestly a beautiful picture !

The one I post now isn’t, but I kind of liked it anyway:

I mean, that look. “Our relationship is officially over”

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Zoos should not be necessary as centres of conservation.

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There is going to be a whole load of wet tourists at any minute :0)

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Might have been the squirrels that were eating the dogs eh…

Squirrels have gone nuts and started eating meat as experts ‘can’t believe our eyes’

US researchers have been left stunned after finding California ground squirrels hunt and chomp down on voles despite experts believing they were primarily seed-eaters


Squirrels have started eating meat

Squirrels have gone nuts and started eating meat, boffins say. They have been spotted hunting and chomping on voles by stunned experts.

Lead study author Jennifer Smith said: “This was shocking. We had never seen this behaviour before. Squirrels are one of the most familiar animals to people. We see them right outside our windows. We interact with them regularly. Yet here’s this never-before-encountered-in-science behaviour that sheds light on the fact that there’s so much more to learn about the natural history of the world around us.”

US researchers found California ground squirrels, once thought to be primarily seed-eaters, actively hunt and eat voles.

Their study, published on December 18 in the Journal of Ethology, will reshape man’s understanding of the normally nut-obsessed animals. Of 74 squirrels observed at Briones Regional Park in Contra Costa County, California, earlier this year 42% were actively hunting voles for food.

Sonja Wild, of the University of California Davis, who has observed hundreds of squirrels, said: “I could barely believe my eyes. From then we saw that behaviour almost every day. Once we started looking, we saw it everywhere.”

The researchers said it was unknown how widespread hunting behaviour is among squirrels.

There are 2.5 million grey and 140,000 red squirrels in the UK, according to the Natural History Museum

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Fascinating stuff. Well, I thought so.

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