Wildlife, living next to nature

[BigV]

I see. Good links, xoB, thanks. I see some important differences in the two scenarios. The first and most significant difference is that the sky burial has a substantial spiritual component and that aspect is missing entirely from the operation in Texas (and other body farms in the US). The two different procedures spring from different motivations. In Texas, there's no shortage of resources to bury the dead unlike the steppes of Mongolia. There isn't the necessity in Texas to process the bodies in this way that there is in Mongolia.

But the process is largely the same. I don't know what happens with the skeletons in Texas, though I'm sure they're under continued observation. Both processes serve a higher purpose. Both processes are deliberate. Both processes involve the knowledge of the deceased. I think they're more alike than they are different.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I'd read several articles about Tibet's sky burials, it was a coincidence I ran across those links last night. No, not the same. Not because of the spiritual aspect of proper disposal, but the method of employing the body breakers, who are basically lunch ladies for vultures and other flying creatures.

[Undertoad]

It was an IotD once!

[Gravdigr]

I don't condone trapping, but, goddamn look at the size of these wolves!



Northern Minnesota.

[Griff]

Dude, winter is coming.

[orthodoc]

Take out the apex predators, destroy the ecosystem.
This is cowardly and disgusting, MN. Nothing justifies this.

[Gravdigr]

They (the wolves) are eating all the moose and squirrel deer. Like, way, way too many.

The wolves are too successful/efficient for their own good.

[Sundae]

Take out the direwolves and you get left with the lions
(apols to Griff who was being more subtle)

[Gravdigr]

Walked out on my porch the other afternoon and there was one of my squrls. He sat up on his hind legs, looked me straight in the eye, and said "Cookie, motherfucker!"



I got him a cookie. Best not to mess with them thug squrls.

[orthodoc]

You're his bitch now, grav. Stock up on those cookies.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Teach him to catch Blue Jays.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Wild Canadian horses...


It's worth seeing big...

The national government just took control of the island from the province and had a $35,000 study done on the welfare of the horses. the result is the horses "may face extinction".
OH my, oh no, why, pray tell?
1- If we have a bad winter and the food gets covered with ice/snow they'll starve, even though they haven't since the mid 1700s.
2- Inbreeding may have weakened the herd. May?

Guess the author had to make them feel they got their $35000 worth.

[Gravdigr]

I just learned about Sable Island, its horses, and watched that very video recently.

[DanaC]

They're Lovely!

Wild horses on Dartmoor:







(not truly 'wild' so much as* feral)





*bloody furious

[glatt]

Last time we camped on Assateague (in September) one of the wild horses came up to our hard plastic cooler and opened the lid with its teeth. It was one of those hard plastic lids that kinda pushed over a bump in the body of the cooler to snap closed on the other side of the bump. So not an actual latch, but more like a snap. Anyway, the horse opened the rigid plastic cooler with its mouth and grabbed a big plastic bag of grapes and started chewing the bag and sucking the juice out of the holes it was perforating in the bag. They were obnoxious creatures, those wild horses. It was against the law to touch them, and so you just had to keep your wits about you when they were around. Yelling at them and waving your arms and banging pots and pans in their faces did absolutely nothing.