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Latest Posts by cybersaladunicorn987 - Page 3
imagine being that fucking rich and that fucking careless.
every year I post this meme and every year people get more mad at me than they did the previous year
Humans are so cute. They think they can outsmart birds. They place nasty metal spikes on rooftops and ledges to prevent birds from nesting there.
It’s a classic human trick known in urban design as “evil architecture”: designing a place in a way that’s meant to deter others. Think of the city benches you see segmented by bars to stop homeless people sleeping there.
But birds are genius rebels. Not only are they undeterred by evil architecture, they actually use it to their advantage, according to a new Dutch study published in the journal Deinsea.
Crows and magpies, it turns out, are learning to rip strips of anti-bird spikes off of buildings and use them to build their nests. It’s an incredible addition to the growing body of evidence about the intelligence of birds, so wrongly maligned as stupid that “bird-brained” is still commonly used as an insult...
Magpies also use anti-bird spikes for their nests. In 2021, a hospital patient in Antwerp, Belgium, looked out the window and noticed a huge magpie’s nest in a tree in the courtyard. Biologist Auke-Florian Hiemstra of Leiden-based Naturalis Biodiversity Center, one of the study’s authors, went to collect the nest and found that it was made out of 50 meters of anti-bird strips, containing no fewer than 1,500 metal spikes.
Hiemstra describes the magpie nest as “an impregnable fortress.”
Pictured: A huge magpie nest made out of 1,500 metal spikes.
Magpies are known to build roofs over their nests to prevent other birds from stealing their eggs and young. Usually, they scrounge around in nature for thorny plants or spiky branches to form the roof. But city birds don’t need to search for the perfect branch — they can just use the anti-bird spikes that humans have so kindly put at their disposal.
“The magpies appear to be using the pins exactly the same way we do: to keep other birds away from their nest,” Hiemstra said.
Another urban magpie nest, this one from Scotland, really shows off the roof-building tactic:
Pictured: A nest from Scotland shows how urban magpies are using anti-bird spikes to construct a roof meant to protect their young and eggs from predators.
Birds had already been spotted using upward-pointing anti-bird spikes as foundations for nests. In 2016, the so-called Parkdale Pigeon became Twitter-famous for refusing to give up when humans removed her first nest and installed spikes on her chosen nesting site, the top of an LCD monitor on a subway platform in Melbourne. The avian architect rebelled and built an even better home there, using the spikes as a foundation to hold her nest more securely in place.
...Hiemstra’s study is the first to show that birds, adapting to city life, are learning to seek out and use our anti-bird spikes as their nesting material. Pretty badass, right?
The genius of birds — and other animals we underestimate
It’s a well-established fact that many bird species are highly intelligent. Members of the corvid family, which includes crows and magpies, are especially renowned for their smarts. Crows can solve complex puzzles, while magpies can pass the “mirror test” — the classic test that scientists use to determine if a species is self-aware.
Studies show that some birds have evolved cognitive skills similar to our own: They have amazing memories, remembering for months the thousands of different hiding places where they’ve stashed seeds, and they use their own experiences to predict the behavior of other birds, suggesting they’ve got some theory of mind.
And, as author Jennifer Ackerman details in The Genius of Birds, birds are brilliant at using tools. Black palm cockatoos use twigs as drumsticks, tapping out a beat on a tree trunk to get a female’s attention. Jays use sticks as spears to attack other birds...
Birds have also been known to use human tools to their advantage. When carrion crows want to crack a walnut, for example, they position the nut on a busy road, wait for a passing car to crush the shell, then swoop down to collect the nut and eat it. This behavior has been recorded several times in Japanese crows.
But what’s unique about Hiemstra’s study is that it shows birds using human tools, specifically designed to thwart birds’ plans, in order to thwart our plans instead. We humans try to keep birds away with spikes, and the birds — ingenious rebels that they are — retort: Thanks, humans!
-via Vox, July 26, 2023
You fuck ass Israeli Colonizers are going to die anyway, Nazis in America don't fuckin like you lmao 😂
The Israeli occupation dropped leaflets in Al-Bureij today (Times of Gaza) that read:
"You are located in an critical battle zone. For your safety leave immediately and head to known shelters in Deir-Al-Balah" (25-12-23)
Here’s what the situation in Deir-Al-Balah has been this past week up until this morning:
Dr Ebraheem works in the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Hospital in Deir-Al-Balah. This is what he’s got to say about the situation in Deir-Al-Balah
In a post written on his blog, Dr Ebraheem describes the situation at the hospital further:
“I saw bodies coming spewing dust as if they were a sponge dipped in ash. I saw children bleeding and sinking into a coma because heavy stones came on their weak heads. I saw people whose colors, shapes, and names changed, where at a certain moment it was not possible to know who was injured, as they said: ‘Clean his face from the dust, perhaps we might recognize him.’
They do, and discover that he is so-and-so, the kind and simple man, as he was sitting in his house because he had no other place to escape.
I saw people confused by the number of victims - because of their large number—‘How many dead did we count today? Did we miscount? I told you, in the last hour, two girls came as martyrs, two children with bleeding heads, ten young men who came without vital signs in one fell swoop at the very least, lumps of flesh (parts) in a small bag, and open heads from which the brain can be seen.’
I sat with someone who was talking to himself and asking: ‘All these injured and martyrs were like us an hour ago, they were with us.’
A little while ago they were alive (like us), so when will our turn come?”
meanwhile, we have people making excuses saying palestinians are given “ample time to evacuate”. evacuate where?! where should they go? everywhere they go there is murder, rubble, bombings and destruction. nowhere is safe. it’s all a trap!
where. should. they. go?
this is their homeland. there are not going anywhere else. ceasefire and end occupation NOW!!
CONTACT YOUR REPS AND CALL FOR CEASEFIRE AND AN END TO OCCUPATION
PROTEST!
let the world know you stand with palestine. let the world know it MUST at any cost, dismantle the state of israel and free the palestinians.
demand the rights of the palestinians. demand they be given back their land. THIS is what land back means. the palestinians must be given their land back in its entirety.
from the river to the sea, palestine must be freed.
there are no more negotiations to be made. they must be free. this has gone too far for too long. israeli aggression is intolerable and the world will no longer stand for it nor make excuses for it. this is not a war. these people are not collateral. this is a textbook case of genocide and it, and the israeli occupation, must be stopped.
well. it's christmas.
There are still hundreds of thousands of people in Northern Gaza
For the first time since the 1948 Nakba, there was no Christmas tree lighting outside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Palestine.
In its place, an installation depicting the nativity scene is placed as if it were taking place in Gaza today. This is done in support of the people of Gaza who have been facing a harrowing Israeli aggression for the past 80 days, an aggression so catastrophic that it lead to cancelling Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem this year.
With the nativity models placed amid rubble and barbed wire, the star of Bethlehem is represented by the aftermath of a bomb hitting their shelter. The scene replicates those following Israeli shelling of civilian homes in Gaza.