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Post by parfive on May 3, 2022 15:50:35 GMT -5
Bookmatch loses its appeal when you rip out a page and turn it sideways. : )
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RWA3006
Cave Dweller
Member since March 2009
Posts: 4,234
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Post by RWA3006 on May 5, 2022 7:03:06 GMT -5
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RWA3006
Cave Dweller
Member since March 2009
Posts: 4,234
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Post by RWA3006 on May 5, 2022 13:12:38 GMT -5
Pretty, but I feel like you need to wash your hands. We call the saws "septic tanks" and the saw coolant "sewage."
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RWA3006
Cave Dweller
Member since March 2009
Posts: 4,234
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Post by RWA3006 on May 7, 2022 8:47:02 GMT -5
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Post by 1dave on May 7, 2022 12:51:39 GMT -5
Another Dung Beetle! First Dung Beetle Drat! it is the same piece.
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RWA3006
Cave Dweller
Member since March 2009
Posts: 4,234
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Post by RWA3006 on May 7, 2022 16:06:48 GMT -5
Several months back I had thumb CMC arthroplasty surgery on my dominant hand and was unable to prune my apple trees in between my coprolite towers. My buddy who is an expert arborist came over to prune them so I went out into the snow to keep him company while pruning. After a while he said "I know you're particular about your trees but trust me, I know how to do this, you can go back inside." My response was "I'm not worried about the trees, it's the coprolites I'm watching over." The look on his face was gratifying to me. Today the apple blossoms adorn the pillars of poo.
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Post by rockjunquie on May 7, 2022 17:43:52 GMT -5
Several months back I had thumb CMC arthroplasty surgery on my dominant hand and was unable to prune my apple trees in between my coprolite towers. My buddy who is an expert arborist came over to prune them so I went out into the snow to keep him company while pruning. After a while he said "I know you're particular about your trees but trust me, I know how to do this, you can go back inside." My response was "I'm not worried about the trees, it's the coprolites I'm watching over." The look on his face was gratifying to me. Today the apple blossoms adorn the pillars of poo.
The "Pillars of Poo", it has a nice ring.
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victor1941
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since November 2011
Posts: 1,982
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Post by victor1941 on May 7, 2022 21:22:49 GMT -5
Great heat sinks for the trees!
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Post by 1dave on May 8, 2022 9:08:07 GMT -5
Dung Beetle, that just sounds nasty. Dung beetles are good neighbors much appreciated in Australia where they are imported from all over the world. Fee Fie Foe Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman! He brought his cattle and sheep with him - and they brought their manure that Australia was not prepared for. Luckily the Dung beetles came to save the day. Dung generates torments and torrents of flies! the beetles remove their food supply and dine on the flies young - and you can't imagine how much that is appreciated in Australia! Dancing dung beetles memorize the sky and navigate using sun, moon and stars By Patrick Kinsella on May 16, 2016 animalogic.ca/news/dancing-dung-beetles-memorise-the-sky-and-navigate-using-sun-moon-and-starsDung beetles take snapshots of the sky and use the mental images to navigate, a new scientific study has revealed. And, according to researchers in Sweden, not only do the little manure-munching insects have the capability of accurately scanning the position of the sun, the moon and patterns in the stars—they memorise the map while prancing around on poo balls. Thousands of species of dung beetle exist all around the world, but the most well-known are found in Africa, where they tidy up after some of the globe’s biggest mammalian dumpers. Even in the dark domain of insects, these creatures have one of the least glamorous roles in all of nature—they clean up other creatures’ crap, typically by rolling bits of delicious dung into balls and scurrying away with it, to escape any potential competition. These balls are then buried, with the beetles returning to the scene later, to feast on the faeces or to use it to nourish their larval offspring. A larval dung beetle in its crappy cradle It’s dirty work, but someone has to do it, and the methods employed are way more sophisticated than you might expect. The beetles need to know where they’re going in order to hide the stinky stash in a good spot, and then they have to be able to find it again, so reliable navigation is crucial. Authors of the new study, published in the journal Current Biology, maintain that the crafty creatures can tell exactly where they are by comparing their current position to stored snapshots of the sky, taken while rolling their prize poo balls along. Previous studies have hinted at the dung beetles’ ability to use the Milky Way to find their way, but the new research reveals that they can also hold onto memories of what they’ve seen, and use these memories to map where they are. Scientists conducted tests on the insects at a facility in South Africa, which has an artificial sky where light levels and the location of various bodies in the sky can be controlled and altered. They discovered that dung beetles could detect many things that human eyes can’t, including polarised light and the spectral gradient of the sky. With this high-tech toolkit, the beetles are able to use multiple celestial cues and clues, so they’re not reliant on just one object in the sky, like the sun. 'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.' Dung beetles are huge Oscar Wilde fans… According to Lund University’s Dr Basil El Jundi, who led the study, the imaging takes place while the beetles perform an apparent ‘dance’ atop their balls of brown bounty, rotating around their vertical axis. ‘In that situation they scan the sky and take a mental image of what the sky looks like,’ he told the BBC. ‘When they start rolling they try to match the actual visual scenery of the sky with the mental image they have stored before. And that brings them away in a straight line.’ A closer look at ding beetles reveals there is more going on here than you might think It’s not the first time animals have been credited with the capability of using celestial signposts to find their way around. Numerous migratory birds are believed to use imprints of the sun and certain stars to negotiate vast distances across featureless oceans, and seals have also been known to use stars to steer. However, this is the first time such advanced techniques have been proven in an insect. Ants are thought to take snapshots too, but only of their immediate surrounds (ants’ eyesight is notoriously terrible), which is a far cry from mapping the sky. Researchers believe that, in future, the dung beetles’ gnarly navigational skills could even be used to help develop driverless vehicles.
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RWA3006
Cave Dweller
Member since March 2009
Posts: 4,234
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Post by RWA3006 on May 8, 2022 9:46:14 GMT -5
1dave thanks for that article. Wow, how can an insect be so sophisticated? It occurs to me that it will be very difficult to find a fossilized beetle larva inside a coprolite, but a fossilized adult is more likely.
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quartzilla
Cave Dweller
Member since April 2020
Posts: 1,219
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Post by quartzilla on May 8, 2022 15:55:24 GMT -5
Yeah who woulda thought that tumble bugs were essentially little smart phones?
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RWA3006
Cave Dweller
Member since March 2009
Posts: 4,234
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Post by RWA3006 on May 10, 2022 6:48:59 GMT -5
TURD TUESDAY
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RWA3006
Cave Dweller
Member since March 2009
Posts: 4,234
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Post by RWA3006 on May 10, 2022 6:49:59 GMT -5
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Post by rockjunquie on May 10, 2022 7:28:02 GMT -5
Well, that one is really interesting. It's almost a solid red. How unique is that?
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RWA3006
Cave Dweller
Member since March 2009
Posts: 4,234
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Post by RWA3006 on May 10, 2022 18:52:33 GMT -5
Well, that one is really interesting. It's almost a solid red. How unique is that? Tela, it might be the reddest one I've seen, but I have others approaching it.
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RWA3006
Cave Dweller
Member since March 2009
Posts: 4,234
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Post by RWA3006 on May 10, 2022 18:56:01 GMT -5
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Deleted
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Member since January 1970
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2022 10:08:25 GMT -5
Wow, so I learned something new! Coprolite is literally poop! Ok, we’ll than. Kinda speechless! All I can say is you guys keep a lot of crap! Especially you Randy! Lol!
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Post by hummingbirdstones on May 11, 2022 10:14:55 GMT -5
Peach poop! These are beautiful, Randy.
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Post by 1dave on May 11, 2022 10:43:48 GMT -5
Wow, so I learned something new! Coprolite is literally poop! Ok, we’ll than. Kinda speechless! All I can say is you guys keep a lot of crap! Especially you Randy! Lol! Spectacular Crap!
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Member since January 1970
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2022 10:52:21 GMT -5
Wow, so I learned something new! Coprolite is literally poop! Ok, we’ll than. Kinda speechless! All I can say is you guys keep a lot of crap! Especially you Randy! Lol! Spectacular Crap!
Lol, indeed!
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