Non-political things that make you say...WTF?!?! (Welcome To Florida!) **NOT CV RELATED** NO TALKY!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEhKvT2NC-c

 

Ridiculously hot there...dunno for sure what the temp got to inside the B1 but imagine 125-130° outside temp and the inside temp of aircraft...no A/C sitting on a ramp...i bet it was 140° or higher

 

The last time I was in California...



It didn't feel as hot as I thought it would, but I'm used to 95 degrees with 95% humidity...

I kept an eye on the temperature guage in our rental Exploder, but it never overheated.

-Bear

 

Meanwhile...


Study confirms that painting eyes on cow butts helps ward off predators
There's no silver bullet, but "eye-cow" technique is one available tool for farmers



Cattle herds in the Okavango delta region in Botswana are plagued by attacks by lions and other predators, prompting farmers to retaliate by killing the predators. An alternative nonlethal technique involves painting eyes on the butts of cattle to trick ambush predators like lions into thinking they've been spotted by their intended prey. It's called the "Eye-Cow Project," and a recent paper published in the journal Communications Biology provides some solid empirical evidence for the practice. There are now practical guides for using the "eye-cow" technique available in both English and Setswana, so farmers can try it out for themselves.

Neil Jordan, a conservation biologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, came up with the idea several years ago while he was doing field work in Botswana. Local farmers killed a pair of lionesses in retaliation for preying on their herds of cattle, and Jordan wanted to come up with a non-lethal alternative. The African lion population has dropped significantly from more than 100,000 in the 1990s to somewhere between 23,000 and 39,000 in 2016—much of it due to retaliation killings.

Jordan knew that butterfly wings sporting eye-like patterns are known to ward off preying birds, and are also found in certain fish, mollusks, amphibians and birds, although such patterns had not been observed in mammals. He also discovered that woodcutters in Indian forests have been known to wear masks on the backs of their heads to discourage any tigers hunting for prey. He had observed a lion stalking an impala, and noticed the predator gave up the chase when the prey spotted it. Lions are ambush hunters, Jordan reasoned, and decided to test his "detection hypothesis" that painting eyes on the butts of cows would discourage predatory behavior from the local lion population.

The Botswana Predator Conservation Trust (BPCT) agreed to work with Jordan on the project, along with a local farmer, for a ten-week pilot study. Jordan and the farmer painted eyes on one-third of a herd of 62 cattle, and took a head count when the cattle returned to the fold each night to see how many had survived. Only three cows were killed during that period, none of which had painted eyes on their butts. All the painted cows survived.

Granted, it was a small sample size, but those results were encouraging enough to convince Jordan to conduct a more ambitious study over the last four years. His team worked with local farmers in the Okavango delta region, painting the cattle in 14 herds (a total of 2,061 animals). They used acrylic paint (black and white or yellow), applied with foam stencils in the shapes of the inner and outer "eye." The colors were chosen "because of their highly contrasting and aposematic features, common in natural anti-predator signaling settings," the authors wrote.

Roughly one-third of the cattle in each herd got the eye patterns, one third got simple cross-marks, and one-third weren't painted at all. The results confirmed Jordan's preliminary findings. Cattle with the painted eyes on their rumps were significantly more likely to survive that those cattle that had crosses painted on their butts and those that weren't painted at all. But the authors were surprised to find that even the painted crosses offered some survival advantage over the unpainted cattle. Over the course of the four-year study, 15 (out of 835) unpainted and four (out of 543) cross-painted cattle were killed by lions; none of the 683 cattle with painted eyes were killed.

“To our knowledge, our research is the first time eyespots have been shown to deter large mammalian predators,” said co-author Cameron Radford, a graduate student at the University of South Wales. “Previous work on mammal responses to eye patterns has generally supported the detection hypothesis. We think this may suggest the presence of an inherent response to eyes that could be exploited to modify behavior in practical situations, such as to prevent human-wildlife conflicts, and reduce criminal activity in humans.”

There are a couple of caveats. First, Jordan acknowledged that there were always unmarked cattle in the herd for their experiments as controls—what he termed "proverbial sacrificial lambs." It's not clear whether applying painted eyes to cow butts would be as effective if all the cows in the herd were painted. He suggests that farmers apply the marks to the most valuable cattle in the herd as the best approach until future research can be done. Second, there is the question of habituation: whether predators will eventually become accustomed to the painted eyes and learn to ignore it as a deterrent.

“Protecting livestock from wild carnivores—and carnivores themselves—is an important and complex issue that likely requires the application of a suite of tools, including practical and social interventions," said Jordan. “The eye-cow technique is one of a number of tools that can prevent carnivore-livestock conflict. No single tool is likely to be a silver bullet. Indeed we need to do much better than a silver bullet if we are to ensure the successful coexistence of livestock and large carnivores. But we’re hoping this simple, low-cost, non-lethal approach could reduce the costs of coexistence for those farmers bearing the brunt.”

 

So's my fucking oven, but I dont sit there and read a book in it.

Dry heat is awful on me, I feel like a snake shedding, I itch all over. When I lived in Vegas it was horrible, I would go through a big bottle of lotion twice a month. No thanks, I'll take the humidity.

 

So everyone in here wondering "What size tire......blah, blah...", this guy figured it out.

https://youtu.be/VTRQwlpEG2k

 

Thanks for that, hadn’t heard any news from there since the lions targeted a small village and the occupants had to plead for the government to send rangers out to kill the predatory lions.

Right now I’m keeping up with a mate that flys in Congo at Virunga national park as an anti-poaching pilot. It’s a deadly serious situation as poachers have no reservations about shooting anyone they feel is getting between them and their money.



If you want to show some love for the program they have a website, we get all of the T-shirt patterns they come out with to show support and help spread the word.



https://linktr.ee/virunganationalpark

 

Poachers should be shot (with lead free ammo) and left where they drop.

 

The rangers aren’t there to fuck spiders, they hunt poachers constantly and work with the ANR - Congo secret service - when they collect intel. Seriously hardcore dudes. Firefights are sadly a regular event for these guys and way too many are killed in action.

 

Don't want to be riding it when that front fork snaps, which it certainly will. Otherwise pretty cool video.

 

I thought the same thing, that fork is not going to hold. I wanna see him go off a curb.

 

What does fucking spiders have to do with poachers?

 

I’m not the fuckstick whisperer mate, sort it out.

 

Another manager here at work has (*sniff* had) a 2006 X-Runner that was CHERRY.

Until it got slammed into today by an semi-dump truck (with him in it). He said that it clipped him from behind making a blind unannounced lane change, spun him, dragged long spiked lug nuts down the side, then hit him again in the front (setting the airbags off).









He's already working on getting a new truck. He's also got a lawyer and chiropractor (he's 72).

Rest in peace, Toy Yoda.

 

Sounds like he is going to have a nice newer truck.

 

I'm waiting on deets. He just told me "voodoo blue 6-speed Tacoma" but nothing else.

I think he's keeping me in suspense on purpose. He's been a fan of my truck, and now he's making me wait for details on his.








Fucker.

 

OK, he says it's an SR5 4x4 6-speed, and no plans yet to modify it.