gray17

gray17, 7 days ago to random

from Bruce Bagemihl PhD, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (1999)

In fact, the percentage is probably even higher than this, when we consider how easy it is for common behaviors to be missed during even the most detailed of study. A caveat of any scientific endeavor, particularly biology, is that much remains to be learned and observed, and many secrets await discovery—and this is especially true where sexual behavior is concerned. Nocturnal or tree-dwelling habits, elusiveness, habitat inaccessibility, small size, and problems in identifying individual animals are just some of the factors that make field observations of sexuality in many species exceedingly difficult. Consider heterosexual mating, a behavior that is known to occur in all mammals and birds (and most other animals), usually with great regularity. Yet in many species this activity has never been seen: “Despite literally thousands of hours of observations made by biologists over many years in the West Indies, Hawaii, and elsewhere, actual copulation in humpback whales has yet to be observed.” Lucifer hummingbirds, northern rough-winged swallows, black-and-white warblers, red-tailed tropic birds, and several species of cranes (such as wattled and Siberian cranes) are just a handful of the birds in which heterosexual mating has never been recorded. In some cases, opposite-sex mating has been observed, but only a handful of times at most: in magnificent hummingbirds and black-headed grosbeaks,
in magnificent hummingbirds and black-headed grosbeaks, for example—the latter a common North American bird—copulation between males and females has only been seen once during the entire history of the scientific study of these species. Heterosexual copulation in Victoria’s Riflebirds was not documented until the mid-1990s (and then only several times), even though the species has been known to Western science for nearly a century and a half. During a ten-year study of Cheetahs, no opposite-sex matings were seen over the course of 5,000 hours of observation, and copulation has only been observed a total of five times in the wild during the entire scientific study of this animal. Similar patterns are characteristic of other species: in the akepa (a Hawaiian finch), only five copulations were witnessed during five years of study, only five heterosexual matings were seen in a four-year study of Spotted Hyenas, and only three matings in a three-year study of Agile Wallabies. Nests and eggs of many birds such as swallows and birds of paradise have yet to be discovered, while the first nest of the marbled murrelet was found in 1959, more than 170 years after discovery of the species by Western science.
...new revelations about heterosexual behavior are being made all the time: female initiation of mating activity in Orang-utans ... was not documented until 1980 in spite of nearly 22,000 hours of observation over the preceding 20 years (and prior extensive field studies often failed to report any heterosexual copulations). As recently as 1996, the existence of polygamous trios in the tanga’eo or Mangaia kingfisher (of the Cook Islands near New Zealand) were uncovered for the first time, and the full extent of heterosexual mating by Common Chimpanzees with animals outside their group was not understood until 1997. Multiple heterosexual matings by female Harbor Seals were not verified until 1998; even then, the behavior was never directly observed during three years of study (including continuous, 24-hour videotape surveillance of captive animals over an entire breeding season), and had to be verified indirectly through DNA testing. If direct observation by scientists were used as the sole criterion for the existence of a behavior, we would have to conclude that many species never engage in heterosexuality (or in certain forms of heterosexuality)—yet we know this cannot be true. So the fact that homosexuality has not been seen in many animals does not necessarily mean that it is absent in those species—only that it has yet to be observed. Ironically, many species in which heterosexuality has rarely or never been observed are ones in which homosexual activity has been recorded

keirFox, 4 days ago to random

What is even going on here. What universe did we end up in?

https://www.spencersonline.com/product/feral-and-horny-t-shirt/273802.uts

Matthew, 5 days ago to random

I’m 20 now

gray17, 8 days ago to random

I wonder how many of the "I might not vote for him now" are less, "I wasn't sure before, but now it seems like he really is a criminal", and more, "voting for a felon is embarrassing (but I might do it anyway (and having a felon for a president is embarrassing, but when he does regain the throne, we can beat up anyone that laughs at me)), I mean, of course I won't vote for him"

tvaziri, 10 days ago to random

I’d like to see this iPhone in the lineup:

iPhone G-Shock*

• iPhone mini screen (5.4” screen)
• iPhone mini height/width (5.18” x 2.53”)
• fucking thick as hell, maybe 1/2” thick

key features:

• reinforced edges for ruggedness
• gigantic battery
• for people who use their phones for work but need it to be rugged as hell and last all day no matter what
• no need for fancy features like periscope camera

*who cares what they call it (but you knew exactly what I meant when I said G-Shock)

JorgeStolfi, 10 days ago to random

When I become dictator of the universe, I will decree that words with opposite meanings -- like "in" and "out", "first" and "last", "next" and "previous" -- or words in closed finite sets, like colors, month names, and days of the week -- in any language, shall always be spelled with the same number of letters.

The current spellings make aligning commands and comments in programs a pain and a sore to the eyes. This is just unacceptable.

gray17, 13 days ago to random

um, yeah, thanks google

gray17, 19 days ago to random

Bye!

diana, 22 days ago to random

@yvonnezlam Made famous in the NewCrafts closing keynote … was a perfect moment set up by other talks here.

TodePond, 20 days ago to random

tired of writing console.log?

gray17, 21 days ago to random

...designing a keyboard layout where a qwerty user typing "ls -la" will execute "rm -rf"

gray17, 22 days ago to random

Thank you for posting. Your posts are very important to us. All our wolves are currently awooing. Please remain online. Your posts will be sniffed in the order they appear on the timeline

Matthew, 23 days ago to gamedev

after releasing my first game on steam, i should collect all of my games on itch.io, and make them as a collection with maybe a little more polish and with a selector menu to go between them and then sell that collection.

#gamedev

Redfuchs, 22 days ago to random

The furry milestone of carefully browsing through your gifs/stickers making VERY sure not to misclick on a nsfw within the minefield.

SimonTesla, 23 days ago to random

So I'm trying out the phanpy.social masto client and there's a lot to like here. While it isn't super configurable, It has some very good defaults around how it presents stuff and solves a lot of my annoyances with the regular Masto UI. So far the only things I really miss is the ability to turn off boosts in a timeline (though it does already de-emphasize boosts a lot by stuffing them into a carousel if there are multiple of them in a row) and there's minor differences in keyboard shortcuts that I might either fix with a userscript or something or just learn to deal with.

I'd really like to see the ability to add super-configurable columns a-la old TweetDeck but I imagine that's a non-trivial feature to implement pretty much anywhere.

gray17, 24 days ago to random

uh, somehow managed to chip the screen of my phone when I chewed on it. doesn't anyone chew-test their products any more?

gray17, 25 days ago to random

(the humans came to regret forgetting to ask the AI if it wanted to be demoed)

SimonTesla, 25 days ago to random

My kingdom for a notification pane that condenses favs and boosts of the same item :P

TodePond, 25 days ago to random

uhhhh

dreamberd got to 10k stars ⭐

gray17, 25 days ago to random

Founded in 2031, MORGN was the first Frictionless Autonomous Enterprise, a corporation whose employees are entirely AI constructs devoted to implementing the desires of the CEO. Often, the CEO is the sole human involved.

Since the CEO's view of their corporation is supplied by the AI employees, the world of the FAE is somewhat detached from the ordinary human world. Outside visitors are often fascinated and disoriented. Making deals with the FAE has benefits, but also many perils.