Thankful Thursday

[mdlbear]

Today I am thankful for...

• The coconut octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, a tool-using invertebrate. It's also one of two octopus species known to walk bipedally.
• Hopepunk (c.f. Denethor in Lord of the Rings is now a metaphor for doomscrolling, and "Bread and Butter and Hope" by Robert Reich.)
• Getting the melody for m's new song transcribed. (Figuring out the chords is another matter. It might be in Cmin, but are those grace-notes quarter-tones?) (No; it needed quite a lot of proofreading this afternoon.)
• A mastodon thread that starts out "I'm on the server floor of a "highly secure data center with 24/7/365 surveillance, direct access control and robust perimeter security".
  An actual duck just walked by. 🦆

Comments

[kellan_the_tabby]

that duck thread made my WEEK

I was absolutely boggled to see an example of tool use by an insect right here on our property last summer -- we have a particular species of parasitic wasp here who are very visible in the process of making a place for their offspring to grow. So of course we watch them sometimes, because that's _fascinating_, but it wasn't until last year that I saw one pick up the same tiny pebble she'd already used to close off the entrance to the burrow she'd dug (& that was already pretty awesome!) & use it to tamp down the dirt around the hole.

I am SO glad CJ was within hollering range, because he got to see it, too, before she was done. But neither of us had a camera to hand, & none of us have managed to catch one of them doing it so far this summer.

Of course I immediately dashed to Wikipedia to see if anyone else had noticed this behavior, in the hopes of NEW SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY, but no, this has been seen before -- but at least that led me to the probable genus if not species, Ammophila.

Anyway eventually one of us is gonna get video of it happening & find a scientist to send it to.

[mdlbear]

Very cool!