How animals use humans and the human environment?

Now I am sure there is a more technical and up to date term that describes the activity where an animal, or animals, use(s) human(s) and the environment created by humans - but for the moment I am going to use the term (that hopefully I have made up and doesn't exist already - this may be amended in later edits) Anthropic Faunal Behaviour (AFB). 

Anthropic - "Of or pertaining to mankind or humans, or the period of humanity's existence." (Wikipedia 2013a)

Faunal - "Pertaining to animals." (Wikitionary 2013)

I got to thinking about this AFB after watching the BBC 2 Horizon programme on cats and how they are monitored through camera and global positioning system (GPS) tracking) - this programme can also be viewed on YouTube. 

I was interested in two distinct types of AFB, which I have named Active and Passive AFB - henceforth known as aAFB or pAFB - where the animal, a cat in these first few examples, either actively uses humans and their environment or not. When a cat is fed by its owner, I am suggesting that this is an example of aAFB as the cat's brain is accepting the food offered by the human and bypassing the natural instinct of hunting and killing prey. The definition of aAFB, as I see it, is where the animals gains something useful directly from the human. 

However, if the cat were to jump on and use the fence to reach a roof, I would like to suggest that this is a form of pAFB as I think that cat sees the fence and roof as an extension of the natural habitat. Although it could posited that the cat's senses would pick up the difference between natural and man-made structures through hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. The definition of pAFB, as I see it,  is where the animal uses human activity and/or human infrastructure/environment to gain something later in that animal's time line.

Although there could be an argument for a grey area between aAFB and pAFB, I currently searching for an example of this.

An example of pAFB with larger cats can be seen with the video of the cheetah as shot by novatolady and is shown below. The cheetah jumps up onto the Land Rover at around 22 seconds. Is the cheetah using it to escape the cheetah cub or is it using the elevated surface to look for prey and predators? Either way, I think the cheetah made a conscious effort to use the Land Rover for further activity but gains nothing directly from the humans.

I can say that this is not an individual event as a search on YouTube offered 397,000 videos although I cannot vouch for the authenticity of each of these videos as I haven't watched them all.

Next time - Avian aAFB & pAFB

Anthropic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013a. Anthropic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic. [Accessed 30 June 2013].

faunal - Wiktionary. 2013. faunal - Wiktionary. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/faunal. [Accessed 30 June 2013].

BBC Radio 4 follows Avian Tweets

Using the concepts of tweets from the social networking site that was devised by Jack Dorsey, Twitter, the BBC have used the time slot just after the Farming Today and just before Today of less than two minutes. 

In this time, you get to hear the chatter, chirping, chirrupping, clucking, cock-a-doodle-dooing, crying and cuckooing (and remember these are only the "C" words) of many an assorted bird. As well as a fact or two (see I refrained from a pun that could have included the name of an Australian avian) about British birds.

BBC Radio 4's Tweet of the Day uses the Natural History Unit's collection of its avian recordings to bring to life these birds over the working week. The first month's recordings were narrated by Sir David Attenborough with the second month being introduced by Miranda Krestovnikoff. 

The two minute recordings, in my humble opinion, would be ideal for playing during the registration of school classes for the younger years or during a quiet period in between the transition of two subjects. 

• The podcasts can be found here. 
• A list of future birds can be found here.
• A Tweet Of The Day quiz can be found on this page and you will have to submit an answer to find the correct answer. 
• There are a surprising number of uses that use birdsong including reducing the stress of needles and in BP petrol stations toilets, find out how birdsong can be used here.

 

Tea - the great hydrator

Making cups of tea all day in a marquee often leads to the tea-maker not drinking enough tea themselves that then leads to dehydration and will lead to a need, a need for hydration (apologies to you Top Gun fans for that poor mulchification of a quote).

Source

Tea is said to be, by some people, a great hydrator. But aim for caffeine-free teas as the caffeine can lead to dehydration - but I need to find proof for this. Maybe this could be a two-day blog post with an update later today...

And on Friday, we ate fish

On Fridays, people of the Roman Catholic faith are known to eat fish...but what if the fishermen were to become extinct due to a bureaucratic bungle of red tape. A film released by Greenpeace may make this last sentence make more sense:

So if you get a chance, go and see your local fishmonger and say thank you. Sleep well.

Has YouTube replaced The Muppet Show?

For the uninitiated, The Muppet Show was a television show in the seventies that copied the old style of theatrical variety shows. The show was populated with small musical numbers, some comedy routines, maybe a headliner celebrity, who gets pushed into a big budget number with added realism with the sideways glances to the edge of the stage. Albeit in the stage manager's office controlling Viking singing pigs or listening to the heckling of the two old men in the box. This environment, created by Jim Henson and financed by Lew Grade is mainly populated by actors and actresses lovingly recreated in natural and man-made fibres apart from the celebrities.

The video above shows part one (of three) for the first episode of the first season. Within two minutes, we are introduced to Mahna Mahna - you could say it is a version of Psy's Gangham Style. It is sung mainly by a Muppet who could be wearing sunglasses or has really dark eyes singing lyrics that don't make much sense to the uninitiated but it is quite catchy. Does that remind you of anything?

On the flip-side, there seems to be no need to describe YouTube, but I will. It is a collection of videos added to by the public, "but was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal" (Wikipedia 2013). These videos attract "more than 1 billion unique users who watch over 4 billion hours of video each month whilst 72 hours of video are uploaded each minute" (YouTube 2013). But remind yourself of what videos are on YouTube - small musical numbers, some comedy routines, maybe a headliner celebrity, small furry animals. Here is one of the videos you might find readily on YouTube:

Each media outlet, be it through television (120 episodes of the original Muppet Show series - Wikipedia 2013) or through the Internet (in 2011, it had more than 1 trillion views - YouTube 2013) has its similarities and its differences. But, if you are bored on a Friday afternoon before you go home from work and watch a cute kitten or watch a sheep baa, it is possibly because the kids in the seventies were brought up on furry animal sketches. Enjoy this Muppet song brought to you by the wonders of YouTube and spot the celebrity plug.

So can you answer my question, has YouTube replaced The Muppet Show?

The Muppet Show - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013. The Muppet Show - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muppet_Show. [Accessed 06 June 2013].

YouTube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013. YouTube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube. [Accessed 06 June 2013].

Statistics - YouTube . 2013. Statistics - YouTube . [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en-GB/statistics.html. [Accessed 06 June 2013].

The Hobbit and Time Bandits - are they similar?

I got distracted this evening by finally watching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey directed by Peter Jackson with the new all singing (literally) and dancing (yup that too in the early part) colour adaptation. Admittedly, I was only half watching it whilst doing something else and I will concentrate more next time. 

But the premise of the whole story, and yes I know that J. R. R. Tolkien wrote it before Messrs Gilliam & Palin, seemed very similar to Time Bandits. Maybe it was the journey or the quest motif that both parties are starting on with the inclusion of an odd one out. Be it Bilbo Baggins or Kevin. Or is it because the dwarfs (or dwarves) seem to be either eating, fighting or running? Both use a map (of sorts).

Have a look at the trailer for The Hobbit:

And then compare it with the Time Bandits trailer:

If you can't find a copy of this film, there is currently a copy hiding within the depths of the YouTube oubliette (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AJPA5LzqXI). Admittedly, The Hobbit doesn't switch from time to time but maybe I have lost the plot. I look forward to your thoughts. This blog may resume more sense soon.

Oubliettes and why aren't there more of them in the real world

So should we worry about the oubliettes and why there aren't so many in the world. First of all, what is an oubliette?

According to Vocabulary.com, it is a form of dungeon that is "...very well constructed from the captor's point of view...the only entrance and exit being in the ceiling far above where the prisoner stands, escape is pretty much impossible." (Vocabulary 2013)

For the children of the eighties, you may have been introduced to the concept of an oubliette through Jim Henson's Labyrinth, where our heroine falls through a well of hands and is asked if she wants to go up or down. She chooses down and ends up in an oubliette at the 3 minute stage in the video below..

So creating an oubliette must have been a nightmare for both the builder and possibly the interior painter but a cinch for the architect. Imagine the profile of a brandy glass without the stem and other 

versions surely exist. Here is one image courtesy of Google Search:

How do you get a prisoner in there without injuring them, how do you get them out of there once the term of imprisonment has expired. I guess if the prisoner has expired before the time of imprisonment has completed, the body is left to rot to add to the overall environment.

What would the Third Geneva Convention of 1929 and updated in 1949 (relative to the treatment of prisoners of war) have to say on the construction of oubliettes and their use during periods of war. According to Wikipedia's summary of Part II, articles 12 & 13 to 16:

"Article 12 states that prisoners of war are the responsibility of the state, not the persons who capture them, and that they may not be transferred to a state that is not party to the Convention. Articles 13 to 16 state that prisoners of war must be treated humanely without any adverse discrimination and that their medical needs must be met." (Wikipedia 2013)

Articles 25 to 28 of Part III of the Third Geneva Convention deals with the quarters of the prisoners. Article 25 states: 

"Prisoners of war shall be quartered under conditions as favourable as those for the forces of the Detaining Power who are billeted in the same area. The said conditions shall make allowance for the habits and customs of the prisoners and shall in no case be prejudicial to their health." (ICRC 2013)

So I guess that is why there are less oubliettes created now after the introduction of the Geneva Convention.

It could be said that the smell of decaying flesh may lead to tunneling animals to dig through the oubliette's structure that could lead to escape for subsequent prisoners who have not expired.

This video below shows a Saxon oubliette under Courts of Justice in Nottingham which is really quite well conserved:

Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949. 2013. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.icrc.org/ihl/7c4d08d9b287a42141256739003e63bb/6fef854a3517b75ac125641e004a9e68. [Accessed 04 June 2013].

oubliette - Dictionary Definition : Vocabulary.com. 2013. oubliette - Dictionary Definition : Vocabulary.com. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/oubliette. [Accessed 04 June 2013].

Third Geneva Convention - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013. Third Geneva Convention - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Geneva_Convention. [Accessed 04 June 2013].

Doing lines - the theatrical way

As some of you may know, I am try to be a thespian but my downfall is my line learnign. I leave it to the last minute and the lines don't sink in until they are fully immersed in my muscle memory. But more importantly, how does that oubliette of knowledge (the Internet) educate the lone "Am-Drammer" to learn lines?

About.com suggests reading it out aloud a lot of times, I haven't been it reading it out aloud yet, so maybe this is my first stumbling block.

A BBC video of some of your favourite actors explain some tips - I do write out my own lines in my own hand writing and I am tempted to do some drawings to go with them as I feel I am a visual learner and I like doodling.

Wikihow suggests reading the play and understanding it - see how your character fits into the mesh of it - and use the movements in the play's script whilst you go over the lines. Know your cue by learning those as well and split your script into manageable chunks. 

As you traverse down the search engine's suggestions for learning lines, the suggestions increase from seven tips to ten to twelve. 

You will no doubt search through Youtube for some line learning tips, this is quite a fun one and he suggests you get a comfortable environment, understand the words and cover the words with your hand on the script, the hard work is at the beginning of the session to name but a few of the methods.

There is no magic way of learning lines, it is just a question of learning them but the above tips do help. 

Apologies for what might be a boring post, but it may help you at some point later, you never know.

The Queen who outshone the Queen at the Coronation in 1953

The second of June is noted in the British Isles for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second in 1953. You can see the first (of seven parts) of the coronation below including a pre-recorded narration of the event by Sir Laurence Olivier:

My Mother watched the procession with my Grandfather on a stand in Hyde Park opposite the Dorchester Hotel in London after a breakfast at the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Club. It was there they saw someone's newspaper's headline that claimed:

But back to the Coronation; after the event the dignitaries returned via carriages, most were closed but some were open as can be seen in the video below around about the 3.35 mark:

One of these royal carriage users was the Queen Sālote Mafile‘o Pilolevu Tupou III of Tonga, GCMG GCVO GBE DStJ, can be seen at the 4.02 mark and according to Wikipedia:

"She brought Tonga to international attention...endearing herself to the spectators by riding through the streets in an open carriage, smiling and waving, in the pouring rain." (Wikipedia 2013)

So much so was the adulation of this rain soaked monarch that the Trinidadian born band leader and vocalist, Edmundo Ros, wrote a calypso celebrating the Queen of Tonga - the song can be listened to below:

Sometimes good things come out of the rain and a hearty thanks to both queens, one died in 1965 and the other just celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of her coronation today

Sālote Tupou III - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013. Sālote Tupou III - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C4%81lote_Tupou_III. [Accessed 02 June 2013].

Is "Finding Nemo" the wrong title for the film?

The title for that Pixar produced piscatorial parable - Finding Nemo - did it have the wrong title?

Cracked (2013) describes the film as "...a heartfelt father-and-son story in which an entire family of clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris) is viciously devoured by a barracuda, and then the son is abducted by scuba divers and forced into performing peepshows for a sociopathic human child." That article continues to explore further disturbing truths about the Amphiprion ocellaris, I'll let you read that yourself.

But get out that Latin dictionary, the word "nemo" means no-one or nobody. Now, call me old-fashioned, but if you call a film "Finding No-one" or "Finding No-body", then you don't fill the screen up with assorted marine crustaceans, cephalopods and cetaceans. A Yahoo question and answer thread lists Clown Fish, Blue Tang, Moorish Idol, Puffer Fish, Starfish, White Shark, Sea Turtle, Sting Ray to name but a few.

Mr. Ray, the fish that takes the school class, is, I, assume is not a qualified teacher as s(he) lacks the male reproductive organs [the claspers] according to IMDB.

When he sings "Let's Name the Species" song, he sings both assorted phyla names and then classes of the phylum Cnidaria (Coelenterata) and a class within the phylum Mollusca. This IMDB article continues to explain:

"...although it is revealed, in the DVD, that Mr. Ray isn't an actual scientist, more that he just picks things up. In that case, it could very well be that he mistook the one for the other, not knowing that he was passing on incorrect information." (IMDB 2013)

Maybe Pixar were recreating a fish based Odyssey where our hero, Odysseus, is asked his name by the cyclops, Polyphemus:

"Odysseus gives as "Outis" 'No One'." (Gill, About.com 2013)

I am sure I can add more to this thread and may even cause a discussion, so what your thoughts?

Finding Nemo (2003) - Goofs - IMDb. 2013. Finding Nemo (2003) - Goofs - IMDb. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266543/trivia?tab=gf&ref_=tt_trv_gf. [Accessed 01 June 2013].

Odyssey Book IX - Summary of the Events in Odyssey Book IX. 2013. Odyssey Book IX - Summary of the Events in Odyssey Book IX. [ONLINE] Available at: http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/trojanwarinlit/a/OdysseyIX.htm. [Accessed 01 June 2013].

The Dirty Truth About 'Finding Nemo' | Cracked.com. 2013. The Dirty Truth About 'Finding Nemo' | Cracked.com. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/the-dirty-truth-about-finding-nemo/#ixzz2UoxapwPO. [Accessed 31 May 2013].

Asking and answering a question at a comic convention

Whilst trying to add to an article for tonight's Twilight Thinking, I came across the following on an Upworthy posting and reposted by George Takei, remember he was one of the actors from the original Star Trek series.

Someone luckily had videoed a question and answer session at a comic festival, Comicpaloooza - The Texas International Comic Con, where people were asking Sir Patrick Stewart questions. Heather Skye was one such woman, who plucked up the courage to ask a question; this young woman started by saying thank you to Sir Patrick Stewart for a video he did for the charity Amnesty International, see below:

I hope this is the video. From Heather's blog, she explains why she wanted to thank him:

"I had only seen it a few months ago but I was still dealing with my own personal experience with a similar issue, and I didn’t know what to call it. After seeing Patrick talk so personally about it I finally was able to correctly call it abuse, in my case sexual abuse that was going to quickly turn into physical abuse as well. I didn’t feel guilty or disgusting anymore. I finally didn’t feel responsible for the abuse that was put upon me. I was finally able to start my healing process and to put that part of my life behind me." (Skye, 2013)

She then continued to ask him the question, she had queued for so long, that question being:

"Besides acting, what are you most proud of that you have done in you life (that you are willing to share with us)?"
(Skye, 2013)

And this was when Sir Patrick Stewart answers that question, I will not spoil the reveal for you, but I will say it mentions the great work of Refuge; the abuse that his mother had to deal with and the illness that affected his father. Have a look at the video of this extraordinary Q & A session:

Or you can, if you have time, read the blog of Heather Skye http://tmblr.co/ZclMCtm6jfVW

  

I thank Heather for asking the question and sharing the answer, I thank Sir Patrick Stewart for the answer and his continuing good work and I thank the videographer for filming the Q & A session.

Skye, H. 2013 Blog of Heather Skye. [ONLINE] Available at: http://lemonsweetie.tumblr.com/post/51652237280/let-me-tell-you-a-thing-about-an-amazing-man?c=upworthy. [Accessed 01 June 2013].