Apparently there’s an evolutionary theory that the reason why Africa has so much wild big-ass megafauna while the big-ass megafauna on all the other continents went extinct is because they evolved right beside humans, and knew us well enough to not get hunted into extinction.
So while everything from giant koalas to giant sloths barely had the time to think “what the fuck is that” before getting pierced by a spear and getting their bone marrow gently fed to babies and the toothless elderly, Africa had elephants who had all the time in the world to learn to tell apart human languages and teach the next generations of their herd which human sounds mean that this tribe won’t hurt you, but humans who make this kind of sounds are a danger. And hippos learned to conclude “I think I’ll fuck up this two-legged weird shit on sight.”
That’s true about African Elephants being able to distinguish between human languages, BTW.
The original study they did on this is really cool, and it showed that not only can elephants distinguish languages, they respond differently depending on the general age and gender of the person spekaing. The researchers played recordings of different people speaking either Maasai or Kamba. All the speakers were saying the same thing, “Look, look over there, a group of elephants is coming.”
What they found is that when presented with voices speaking Kamba, the elephants were supremely unbothered. The Kamba are mostly farmers, many work for the park services, and they rarely present a danger to elephants.
When presented with the voices of adult men speaking Maasai, the elephants drew close to each other and started investigating. The Maasai are largely cattle herders, and they sometimes come into conflict with elephants over water and grazing lands.
However, the elephants did not seem nervous when presented with the voices of women or young boys speaking Maasai. They were aware that only humans with deep voices were a threat to them.
They also seem to recognize that if humans are talking, they aren’t necessarily a threat. Humans pursuing large game like elephants are stealth hunters. If you can hear them coming, they’re probably not trying to hurt you.
Anyway, elephants are amazing and one of the creatures high up on my list of “non-humans who are probably people.”
This is literally the most heart warming story I have read on Twitter so far.
I think this is exactly what friends should do, and I feel everyone deserves people like this.
A barn rasing:
a collective action of a community, in which a barn for one of the members is built or rebuilt collectively by members of the community.
because you cannot, you CANNOT, build a barn on your own, and without it, you will not be able to survive.
What a fuckin’ gem of a sentence. “What we did today was a barn rasin”
“Not all heroes…”, etc., etc. This is one way heroism looks.
[ID: A tweet by jazz! @/juhuachai. It reads: “optimal posting times” “stagger your posts” if you see me you see me. it’s in gods hands and i am not praying.
The tweet was posted at 7:57 PM on March 2nd 2023 in an unknown timezone. It had 9,615, 238 Quote Tweets, and 36.8K Likes. /End ID]
Me on first day as the job interviewer: what are your greatest weaknesses. What are you weaknesses. What will make you break. Am i scaring you. What would you say is your greatest weakness. Aaaa! Anyway. Have you ever been attacked? What would you consider your greatest weakness.
me with a gigantic red blinking light on my chest: oh you know i think i can get tunnel visioned on a project sometimes
