• sturger@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Replace “dig a hole” with “live in mom’s basement” and this describes another common species as well.

  • TurtleTourParty@midwest.social
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    1 day ago

    Ok, but on New Zealand there were no land predators, only air and water predators, so digging a hole or staying still in the dense forest was a good survival strategy.

  • shrugs@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Saw a tiktok Instagram about a kakapo once. The phrase lives rent-free in my head: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJt_wHSCfxW/

    Translated from german:

    The kakapo is the fluffiest mistake evolution never deleted. The stupid Kakapo. Everything about him screams: “I was never meant to survive”. He is fat, he can’t fly and he walks like an old stool with wheels build out of moss.

    In dangerous situations he just stands still. His survival instinct is “acting as if he im not there”. His biggest enemy? Everything! Cats, dogs, rats even time…

    Poor kakapo!

    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 days ago

      To quote Douglas Adams:

      [The kakapo] is an extremely fat bird. A good-sized adult will weigh about six or seven pounds, and its wings are just about good for waggling a bit if it thinks it’s about to trip over something — but flying is out of the question. Sadly, however, it seems that not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground.

      • shrugs@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Damn, I even have read Douglas Adams in the past, but what I remember is that shitty short video, sad

    • Mitchmaker@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      It was Mark Carwadine who got the honor of being shagged by a rare parrot, Stephen Fry was just spectating.

      • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 days ago

        And on this note I can highly recommend the book “Last chance to see” that this TV show was based on. There also an audio book version read by Adams

        Douglas Adams and Cawardine go around the world in the 80s to try to find almost extinct animals

        When they created the tv show the plan was to revisit them, but a couple of animals went extinct in the meantime

        Kakapo population is the only one that was somewhat positive, iirc

        • HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network
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          1 day ago

          The aye-aye is also doing much better, mostly because the population size was severely underestimated at the time of writing.

          And yeah, the book is amazing. I usually describe it to fans of his other works as somehow being his weirdest book, despite being non-fiction.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    After reading the descriptions here, how DO they survive? I’m assuming on some island where they have no significant predators?