Animals

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2021/feb/12/the-week-in-wildlife-in-pictures

Woohoo the otter is still around! And this time I managed to take a photo rather than just squealing.

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I do wonder if people will ever stop this sort of shit.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/12/chinese-hotel-with-polar-bear-enclosure-opens-to-outrage

We went out for a walk in Blackbush woods yesterday. I don't have any photos as stupidly I left my phone at home, but we chanced upon two Fallow deer ahead of us on a path. They quickly ran off, but as I looked off through the woods to the right, I spotted what looked like a white horse, only to realise it was a white deer. It was amongst four of five normal deer, then another ten came across the path in twos, all of them stopping to check us out, before running off into the woods.

Wow. Still, albino animals are much more at risk without camouflage. Hope it has a long and happy life.

Whales are amazing, and stories like this are really heartbreaking.

The hunters themselves realised the whales’ efforts to escape. They saw that the animals appeared to communicate the threat within their attacked groups. Abandoning their usual defensive formations, the whales swam upwind to escape the hunters’ ships, themselves wind-powered. ‘This was cultural evolution, much too fast for genetic evolution,’ says Whitehead.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/17/sperm-whales-in-19th-century-shared-ship-attack-information

I don't see any need to call it 'cultural evolution', though--it was obviously whales telling each other what to do once they'd worked it out, no need for 'evolution'.

The usual apologies to @BareNecessities for posting a sad story, but I'm extremely interested in stories of animal intelligence.

rheally ?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-56535979

No otter spotted today, just several vampire deer

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^ soon

I like bovines and I like that they're slowly being reintroduced in the wild, even if, as here in Spain, there are still legal hurdles:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/14/european-bison-spain-forest-fires-aoe

Beavers in "our part" of the River Otter today. We have Otters too but they're trickier to film.
Also- not me filming- I'm still stuck in London.
Re: dicki's article upthread- FWIW- the reintroduction (whenever it was) has been pretty well supported upstream (which is where the video below was shot).

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• VID-20210414-WA0001.mp4

Top beaver action^

I got shouted at by this vampire deer this morning

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3 out of shot on the patio

Pretty sure this is in a trap in Return of the Jedi.

I also found this skull which might be the same species

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There's a baby whale stuck in the Thames by Richmond. Really sad.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/richmond-whale-stranded-b934111.html

^ It seems to have been refloated by now, but the last few all died. You can only hope it finds its way back out of the Thames on the tide.

Quite an astonishing species:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/05/giant-wood-moth-found-queensland-australia-school

I'm sure Australians won't be impressed, but I'm not Australian.

It swam the wrong way after escaping it's flotation device. It's been put down now.

Ah yes, sad:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/what-happened-baby-minke-whale-thames-put-down-b934323.html

Here’s some brilliant footage of one of our local water deer, taken by Rob Cadd
https://twitter.com/robcadd/status/1396506726325800960?s=21

Are you sure they're not ddeer?

Boing this morning

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Boing

Do you mean 'boeing'? :)