'Anaconda'-2025 movie trailer - Sep 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, (mostly), so let us talk about the trailer to the 2025’s ‘Anaconda’ movie instead.

The original ‘Anaconda’ franchise was about people who came to the South American jungle for various reasons, and most of them would be eaten by an oversized anaconda (one or several) during the run time of the films, (there are several). Therefore, what makes this franchise better than the ‘Coyotes’ (remember them)?

The movies of the ‘Anaconda’ franchise, (including the one coming up in 2025), do not take themselves seriously and are not going for realism (or social commentary) the way that ‘Coyotes’ (and ‘Death of a Unicorn’) do. Even the trailer shows that the movie is going to be ridiculous and hilarious in a good way, and the completely unreal anaconda is a part of it.

The green anaconda might be the biggest modern snake; only the reticulated python of the Asian tropics might be able to match it; and the king cobra, of course, is always worth a mention, but the king cobra is a venomous snake among its’ other qualities, while the anacondas are constrictors.

‘Anacondas’ are used as a plural because ‘anaconda’ is a name of a genus of constrictor snakes, also known as the water boas. Just how many species of anaconda there actually are, is debated; two are known for sure – the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) and the yellow (Eunectes notaeus) are confirmed and recognized; the rest are up to debate, (and one is a fossil species anyhow, which just makes everything more complex).

Usually, the people talk about ‘THE anaconda’, or, more precisely, the bigger and more massive green anaconda of Brazil, Peru, French Guiana, Suriname and Bolivia; the smaller yellow anaconda lives mainly more to the east (the two species do co-exist in Brazil), and the rest of the anaconda clan do not matter right now. What matters is that the green anaconda can be big and impressive, yet it is nowhere near the size of the mythical snake monsters that haunt the West imagination ever since the Europeans began to colonize South America. The South American rainforest is larger than life even now, so naturally it has to be inhabited by larger than life monsters. The Native Americans of South America agreed, but their monsters are much less realistic than the oversized anaconda of the European colonists and their descendants is, so let us put them aside too.

Besides the CGI Titanoboa wannabe, the trailer shows the cast handling (and accidentally killing) some other non-venomous snake, probably a boa constrictor. When put face to face, the boa is much slimmer and smaller than the green anaconda is, but like all the constrictor snakes, it has a mouthful of hook-like, needle-sharp, backwards pointing teeth, and it can deliver very painful and bloody bites too, so it should never be taken for granted.

…The cast go to the American tropics with a ‘movie budget’ under 10 000 dollars. Again, there is no realism; they want to make an ‘indie film’ (a movie within a movie – that is quite clever, in fact); so why not go to Florida, (or perhaps California) is unknown. As RL shows, there are plenty of escaped pythons, (some of which are quite large), in Florida, so an anaconda would fit in as well, but no – it is South America or bust. Anything else?

Just that after their boa is lost (it falls in the water, where the piranhas get it, or the boat propeller does, or something), the cast go into the rainforest to find a replacement snake. Suspension of disbelief and all, but the way they were doing it would have resulted in them finding a venomous snake instead, most likely, and most of the South American venomous snakes are pit vipers, too. Just think rattlesnakes without the rattles, really. (In all of South America lives a single rattlesnake species – all the rest are natives of North America instead). A bite from anyone of them would have been bad – period. In a certain light, the cast of the ‘Anaconda’-2025 are lucky that the snake they confronted was a non-venomous type.

And again, given just how unrealistic this movie’s snake monster is, it just as well could have been a giant bear, (the spectacled bear of South America is not as large as the brown bear is, but it can kill adult livestock with blows of its’ paws), or even a horde of orcs – why not? How is a kaiju-sized snake more realistic than a horde of orcs?

It is not, but the cast make it work. Even in the trailer, they are clearly having fun and are not careening all over the place as ‘Coyotes’ script (and cast) do. ‘Anaconda’-2025 does not have any ‘special’ message as the other film does, but I daresay that it will be more enjoyable and fun to watch than ‘Coyotes’ will be.

…And as for ‘Marvel™ Zombies’, coming to the viewers on Sep 24, 2025? Looks as if they are designed to cover up for the ‘Eyes of Wakanda’ just as the ‘Eyes’ did for ‘Ironheart’. Again: ‘Ironheart’ was bad, perhaps not as bad as Disney’s ‘Snow White’ remake, but still bad, hitting all the right notes in all the wrong ways. For Disney, MCU, and the rest, good relationships with Afro-Americans are important, so they covered-up (and replaced) ‘Ironheart’ with ‘Eyes’.

However, ‘Eyes’ themselves were something of a rushed job, and people have felt it. Disney/MCU do not like confrontations, so they are using ‘Zombies’ to cover-up ‘Eyes’. ‘Zombies’ themselves, of course, are strongly reminiscent of ‘Game of Thrones’ series finale, when the heroes of Westeros found themselves confronting the Night King and his cohorts, including the walking dead – but let’s wait until Sep 24, 2025, to see the ‘Marvel™ Zombies for ourselves first).

…And yes, in early 2000s, ‘Animal Face-Off’ had a ‘jaguar vs. anaconda’ episode where the anaconda won. Sadly, it is only slightly more realistic than the upcoming ‘Anaconda’-2025 film will be, so let us discuss it some other time.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

Jaws vs. Livyatan 2024 - Sep 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us briefly talk about the ‘Jaws vs. Leviathan’ that was aired during the summer 2024. It is a sequel to the ‘Jaws vs. Meg’ that also aired earlier, and was discussed by us as well. Therefore, what about this show?

On one hand, it is an improvement over the first show, if simply by virtue of having a better CGI, one that is not almost all-monotonous dark blue. There are different shades and colors, and one can easily notice what is going on here. Moreover, the plot/script of the final face-off is a bit better, and is less reminiscent of the dragon-not-quite-a-fight in the HoD S1 finale. Therefore, why is the rant?

Because the premise of the show just feels somewhat wrong. Sharks are cartilaginous fish, while whales are cetacean mammals, alongside the smaller dolphins, porpoises, and co. The physical similarities between the two groups (and the extinct ichthyosaurus reptiles of the Mesozoic) are only superficial and physical, and are not even complete, given how the cetaceans (and the extinct ichthyosaurs) breathe air, while the sharks (and their relatives) do not.

Yet, the differences between sharks and cetaceans is more than just physical, it is mental: like most of the mammals, the cetaceans take care of their young, (as it was shown in the show), while the sharks – not so much. The cooperative hunting/feeding by the great white sharks is something else again: it is a pecking order, and a cooperative pecking order, but it is not pack hunting of the orcas.

Orcas… they’re the top pack hunters in the modern oceans; great white sharks attack and eat whale calves, to be sure, but orcas attack and successfully eat adult whales instead, including such big species as the modern grey whale, and even, according to some rumors, sperm whales.

Now, male sperm whales are the biggest modern toothed whales (cetaceans), period, and not even orcas like to mess with them, but sperm whale females and calves are smaller and thus have bigger chances to end up on the orcas’ menu. That said, what matters here is that the orcas do what the great whites can do, only better, and their existence is one of the reasons as to why the Megalodon shark did die out by the Pleistocene epoch. (Recent past, but still the past). In addition, the modern sperm whale?

First, the modern sperm whale is a carnivore specialist, as it feeds primarily on large species of squid and octopus, while the modern orca will try to eat anything at least once. Second, the two species are not close relatives; the sperm whale’s close relatives are the Kogia whales, two species of really small cetaceans that look slightly like the sperm whale does, but without the oversized head; there are plenty of debate as to how close they are to the sperm whale… but they are still more closely related to it than the killer whale does; more specifically, the sperm whale, the Kogia whales, and the extinct Livyatan whale are one group, and the killer whale is another, in the overall cetacean clan; and to involve the orca with the sperm whales and their relatives is wrong and incorrect.

Yet genealogy does not really play a role in the ‘Jaws vs. Livyatan’ special, and it doesn’t matter; what matters is that comparing sharks to cetaceans is like comparing apples to oranges… or even potatoes – the two groups of animals are too different on the inside to compare and contrast; but-

-but frankly, the ‘Jaws vs.’ series doesn’t care about such scientific niceties; instead, in the best tradition of AFO, it does its’ best to come across as both informative and entertaining; the version I watched was rather skewed in favor of the sharks – but then again, these are Shark Week specials after all – but still informative and entertaining enough for me to watch till the end, even though the repetitive reiteration that the CGI sharks act just as the live fish do was annoying. Still, the show was better than the reality is, because real life flat-out sucks – but that is another story.

For now, however, this is it. See you all soon!

Jaws vs. Meg 2023 - June 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us have a flashback to the Shark Week 2023 instead. Now, there has been some consideration about the new SW: Acolyte series, but at the end of the day? It does not deserve the hate that it is getting… or does it?

From my point of view, the people who hate ‘Acolyte’ are the same people who hated the SW Sequel Trilogy, aka films 7-9, and who were handled by Disney/SW… however they were handled. Regardless, they weren’t vanquished; already by the time of the ‘Mandalorian’ S3, when Disney/SW were beginning to bring, well, the SW universe from the 6^th movie’s setting to the 7^th, the old criticisms were coming back. They stopped when the ‘Mandalorian’ ended, but apparently did not go away, as they resurfaced once more when the ‘Acolyte’ came out. Now what?

So far, Disney/SW franchise is not backing down from the TV show the same way they did with the 8^th and 9^th films. Back then, they fluctuated between total support and full reboot, and the result was a big setback, much bigger than any other Disney branches had to deal with. Since then, Disney/SW tried to retcon and circumvent its’ rebooted/redesigned universe, but with more mixed success than they would like, and ‘Acolyte’ is part of this mixed bag. What will Disney/SW do next, now that the ‘Acolyte’ is not being as successful/accepted as they expected it to be? It is anyone’s guess, of course, but hopefully they will be more consistent with their response than how they acted during the SW Sequel movie trilogy… Back into the real world?

No, ‘cause the reason I’m writing this entry is because I got to see the Shark Week special ‘Jaws vs. Meg’. In this special feature, people made a CGI battle between the great white shark and the Megalodon, with the latter winning, because of course it did. Pause.

Here is the thing. The reason as to why I was watching the special in the first place was because of nostalgia for AFO (Animal Face-off), as well as JFC (Jurassic Fight Club) and DW (Deadliest Warrior). In the first show, episodes ended with two RL CGI animals faced-off, in the second – we had prehistoric animals, and in the third, we had a live-action re-enactment of a quasi-historical battle – say, a Spartan vs. a ninja, or a Viking vs. a samurai. Here, in ‘Jaws vs. Meg’, we also have a CGI battle, both of a modern and of a prehistoric animals, well – fish. What next?

Well, for one thing, there was no doubt that this was the fight for the great white shark to lose. In nature, especially among the vertebrates, (the invertebrates are another story, admittedly – just watch Monster Bug Wars), size matters, and bigger and stronger beings triumph over their physical inferiors. Lions dominate over leopards, leopards – over cheetahs, wolves – over coyotes, coyotes – over foxes, and so on. The bigger and stronger Megalodon would dominate the great white shark during the time the two species coexisted, simply because while the great white shark could hurt it, the Megalodon could kill it far too easier than vice versa – as the special feature’s CGI confirmed. The Megalodon was able to take the punishment that the great white shark threw at it, and kill the latter with a single lucky strike. Overdramatized, maybe, but regardless, this would how it happen… what else?

Co-existing with the Megalodon caused the great white shark to become a specialist – it specializes it hunting seals, fur seals and sea lions, mostly in tropical and subtropical waters. It is more modernized than the Megalodon was, but it still prefers warm and tropical waters than temperate and colder ones. These days, with the global warming (or whatever it is called), the shark is moving north (and south?), including the shores of Eastern U.S. and Canada. What will come out of this, is yet unknown.

Back in the past, the great white shark had to stay closer to the shoreline, because in the open ocean the adult Megalodon lived and dominated – other sharks. However, there were also the cetaceans…

The cetaceans’ overall evolutionary history still hasn’t been completely resolved, but what matters here and now, is that during the Miocene and Pliocene, the baleen whales were smaller than their modern counterparts are, and more vulnerable to attack from such as carnivores as the Megalodon and the predatory prehistoric sperm whale cousins, (including the Livyatan). Just as the great white shark specialized in the pinnipeds – seals and their cousins that usually stay closer to the coast than in the open seas, so did the Megalodon specialize in the cetaceans, which preferred the open seas to the coastlines instead. The two species co-existed by specializing in different directions, and the Megalodon’s closer cousins, the mako sharks, specialized in yet a third – they aren’t as massive as the great white shark, but are faster and more maneuverable than it is. If the great white shark is a lion of the seas, then the mako sharks are the cheetahs instead. They would not outfight the Megalodon (or most other prehistoric predators), but outpace and outmaneuver them instead. The killer whales, for example, are known to attack great white sharks – successfully, too – but the mako sharks? Not so much. However, where do they fit in?

The main reason as to why the Megalodon is not around anymore, no matter what fan favorite theories proclaim. During the end of the Miocene and the first half of the Pliocene, the two Americas formed a single continent finally, and the world began to enter an Ice Age. The Megalodon (and many of its’ prey species) couldn’t handle the climate change and died out; also, in the Megalodon’s case, the disappearance of the warm shallow seas between the two American continents left its’ young vulnerable – well, more vulnerable, to predation from smaller sharks, including the great white and the hammerhead species. Megalodon vanished during the Pliocene and Pleistocene periods, and the smaller sharks flourished.

The same situation goes for the whales: the modern whales are giants, true, but they are specialists as well. The baleen whales feed on plankton, and many of their species spend their lives migrating between the two poles, following the seasons and the currents, to keep themselves fed, (and the global warming is throwing a wrench into this), while the biggest toothed whale, the sperm whale, is a deep sea hunter, feeding mostly on the big, giant, and colossal deep sea squid species. Its’ closest relatives, the two Kogia whales, are tiny by comparison, and little is known about them, so let us put them aside for the moment. The point here is that the time of easy living in the ocean has ended for now even before the humans evolved on planet Earth; compared to the Miocene, when the global oceans were full of small and medium-sized baleen whales, the modern ocean has only big baleen whales, or giant ones. Megalodon would be outmuscled in the modern ocean – but the great white shark would have nothing to do with that… Anything else?

The CGI battle of ‘Jaws vs. Meg’ could have used some tweaking and twerking, but this is splitting hairs; the point here is that it was an enjoyable TV program, while the ‘Acolyte’, for example, is much more forgettable.

Therefore, we will end the discussion for now - This is it. See you all soon!

Sun bear vs. moon bear - Jan 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and family can always be counted on to make you feel worse. I hate them. So, let us talk about something else: bears. Yes, the wild mammals that inspired Winnie the Pooh and Paddington Bear, among other characters.

There are currently eight species of bears found in the world, so, in the spirit of 2023, let us have a face-off between just two bear species: the sun, or the Malaysian bear, and the moon, or the Asiatic black bear.

Where, and how, to begin? The sun bear is one of the smallest modern bears, right there alongside the giant panda. It is about 120-150 cm long, (the tail, less than 10 cm long, does not count), and weighs about 35-80 kg. Those are dimensions of a large dog breed, put otherwise.

The moon bear is somewhat larger out of the two: it is about 120-180 cm long, (plus an equally short tail), and weighs about 65-150 kg; the American black bear may not be much bigger, but it is certainly quite a bit heavier than its’ Asiatic counterpart, up to 400 kg heavy – but we’re talking about the sun bear instead.

Physically, the two bear species differ in that the sun bear has a yellow patch on its face and chest, while the moon bear has more of a white napkin on its’ chest. In addition, despite the similar-sounding names, the moon bear is more reminiscent of the sloth bear instead – but we are digressing.

Habitat-wise, the two bear species are similar: the sun bear lives in the tropics of Southeast Asia, whereas the moon bear lives further up north, in South and East Asia instead, where the climate is more temperate instead. Regardless, the two bear species behave more like each other, than like the sloth, the American black, or the giant panda bears: both are tree-dwelling animals, which feed upon… what?

The tropical sun bear is more of a specialist, (though not as much as the giant panda): it eats fruit, honey, termites, ants, beetles, bees, and their larvae. The temperate moon bear is more of a generalist, as it eats vegetation, fruits, nuts, insects… and big, hooved mammals, including domestic livestock. There’s a reason as to why it is considered more closely related to the American black, the brown, and the polar bears than to any other modern bear species, you know?

Lifestyle. The sun bear is one of the more arboreal of bear species: it finds most of its’ food (see above) in trees, and it finds escape from its’ own predators in trees, in particular humans and tigers. It actually got a big attitude for its’ small size and can usually hold its’ ground against such smaller carnivores as big snakes and leopards.

The moon bear spends more time on the ground than the sun bear does, but moreso than the brown or the American black bears do, for comparison. It even hibernates in trees sometimes, for it lives in a seasonal climate, especially in the northern half of its’ habitat. It is less aggressive than the sun bear is, but proportionally it is the more stronger and powerful bear species out of the two.

Weaponry… Both bears are armed with teeth and claws, but the moon bear has more powerful teeth and jaws, out of the two, as it eats more red meat in its’ food rations. By contrast, the sun bear eats more of softer, squishier foods, such as honey and fruits, where less chewing is required. Hence, it does not have such impressive teeth and jaws, and actually looks a bit like an anteater, with its’ extra-long tongue. It also has an extra-large jaw gap, but while it looks cool to us humans, the other animals are not as impressed by it.

The moon bear, on the other hand, has teeth and jaws typical of a bear: it is a relatively large and powerful omnivore, and so its’ teeth and jaws are designed to handle tougher stuff than just fruits, insects and honey.

The paws and claws, on the other hand, (pardon the pun), are more similar between the two bear species, as both are, well, tree-climbing bears and their limbs have evolved along similar lines: strong, powerful, with claws that are reminiscent of grappling hooks.

Combat style? Also reminiscent of most, if not all the bears: stand upright and pummel each other with the forepaws and claws. Teeth and biting are more secondary, (though still important, obviously) – and so, which bear would win?

I am still going with the Asiatic black/moon bear. While the two bears are mostly equally matched, the Asiatic black bear shows an edge, however slight, over its’ sun bear cousin. The sun bear may have a better fighting attitude, but among the animals, size and physical strength often matter more, and the moon bear would just be better able to absorb the physical punishment of its’ tropical cousin than vice versa. Still, opinions may differ, and I’m open to listen to them.

That is all for now, see you all soon!

Loki, 'The Nexus Event' - June 30

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Just ask the NatGeo magazine – in their July 2021 article about the Kenyan fossils they talk about ‘elephant relatives called proboscideans’, and all that I can say is: oh, for fuck’s sake! ‘Proboscideans’ are a taxonomic term that acts as an ‘umbrella’ that contains both the modern elephants and their extinct cousins, (the mammoths, the mastodons, and beyond). To call proboscideans ‘elephant relatives’ is just wrong, as the modern elephants, (the Asian and two African species), themselves are proboscideans. NatGeo once used to be a standard for scientific prestige and accuracy, and now that is gone. ‘Elephant relatives called proboscideans’ indeed!

…On to the more pleasant topics? This week’s ‘Loki’ episode, ‘The Nexus Event’ is…officially mediocre, as the show’s crew, apparently, just could not figure out the pacing in the show’s first season.

Let us elaborate, (if that is possible). From the start, Disney/MCU tried to downplay ‘Loki’; possibly because the titular character (characters?) are bisexual, and Disney hates controversy these days, and not just because it costs them money, but because. They just hate it after the entire SW, and MCU, and other messes. What next?

Well, again, I want to blame the troubles of ‘Loki’ on Disney/MCU trying to not have their LGBTQ+ cake and eat it too, but the truth is that the LGBTQ+ elements are minor in ‘Loki’, and the show itself suffers… from clunky, awkward plot. Loki and Sylvie’s entire side trip to Lamentis proved to be a monumental red herring; perhaps the duo needed to really bond, and there are few better bonding events than an apocalypse, (cough Thanos cough), but somehow ‘Loki’ the TV series mishandles this, by making Lamentis look like an unnecessary side trip from the TVA.

The TVA itself… I am no Loki, (though the post-credits scene introduced several more to the show), but I began to suspect that something was wrong with the TVA from the start; it was just too grand to be true, and now that the space lizard-gods proved to be robots… people aren’t being too surprised. Moreover, judge RnR is based on a character who has been associated with Conq the Kangaroo… I mean, Kang the Conqueror, who is a known villain in the Marvel Comics, so this sudden turn of events is not too sudden either.

In addition, Loki’s death? Also more dramatic than surprising, not to mention that I, for one, am kind of inured to this shit after the AoS’ S5 finale: they tried to make Fitz’s and Coulson’s demise oh so dramatic… and then they turned around and practically resurrected Fitz in S6, and as for Coulson and his look-alikes in AoS’ S6 & S7… don’t start.

‘Loki’, conversely, went in the other direction – all of the Lokis introduced in this series, (including Sylvie), are different from each other…and it will be interesting to see as to how the titular Loki figures out as to how to handle them, and how to deal with them, and so on. Straightforward enough, only ‘Loki’ the TV series does not deal with straightforward. Pause.

In AoS, the plot lines overindulged in twists and turns, especially in the first seasons…but regardless of this overindulgence, the overall plot still marched forward, from point A to point B, to oversimplify the situation. In ‘Loki’, conversely, the plot doesn’t go anywhere, it just circles around a single point – the TVA – and all the twists and turns serve even less purpose than they did in AoS, as they don’t progress the overall plot at all, but only make it more muddled. Anything else?

Ah, yes, back to the characters’ deaths. AoS already made a mockery of this aspect of MCU at the S5 finale, but ‘Loki’ took it one step further: apparently, all of the characters that are ‘killed’, or ‘deleted’, by TVA, don’t really die, but rather end up in some sort of a limbo, which is rather reminiscent of an apocalyptic NYC, (cough, the first Avengers’ movie, cough). I.e. instead of dying, Loki has found even more allies for himself, and whatever he will do now, he will do it with style and with help… (In theory about the last part). Anything else?

Sadly, no. Real life still sucks – a condo has collapsed in Florida, a man was attacked by a great white shark off the coast of California, (I believe), and yesterday we had to live through the mother of all the thunderstorms while dealing with a fire alarm. Put otherwise, my good readers, this is it for now – see you all soon!

FH: Gryphon - Dec 1

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Second, non-obligatory disclaimer: I am not dead yet. I just did not feel like writing much, not with real life being so, well, sucking. And real. And everything else in-between.

…Yes, things are not being so bad as I make them sound – I found the full episodes of AFO on YouTube, and they’re in English rather than in Spanish, (as I had them earlier), so this is important, so yay! Real life does deliver us some gems in all of the dung, after all.

…AFO is a mere one-season TV series, done by AP, which has moved on and beyond it? Fair enough, but I have been looking for it for years, and so it is a pleasant breakthrough in the entire morass of misery and bad weather and what else have you. COVID-19 maybe. Real life sucks, and lately I am grateful for anything that I can come across, and this includes the latest FH update. Pause.

Now, FH has been going through various updates lately, but ever since the Warmonger and their flamberge sword, they had no new characters. The flamberge, if anyone has forgotten, is a ‘flame-bladed sword’, aka… any sword whose blade is not straight, but wavy, to inflict greater damager. The sword types vary from the rapier, (self-explanatory), to the Zweihander, a two-handed sword, (a sword that you need both hands to wield, that is). Frankly, the two blades represent two ends of a wide spectrum of sword blades, yet both can have wavy- or flame-shaped blades. FH was scraping the bottom of the barrel here, not to mention that the term ‘warmonger’ is extremely generic in and of itself, (I do not have to explain it, do I?), but then they turned around – or did they? Let us talk about the gryphon.

…The ‘gryphon’, of course, is primarily just an alternate writing of ‘the griffin’, which is an eagle-lion hybrid that had its’ start in the Ancient Greece and Rome, but somehow survived through the Medieval times and beyond. Secondarily, of course, it is used as a name for various businesses, organizations, movies, art pieces, and even a mud volcano in geology, a parachute system in the military, (and also an American military rocket), and an asteroid, (6136 Gryphon, FYI). What do they have in common outside of their names? Absolutely nothing!..

…That is because the gryphon – or the griffin – itself is not so much generic, as it got a very specific appearance, as it is lackluster, unlike the dragon: the dragon has plenty of mythos to go on by, while the gryphon – doesn’t. In the ancient times, it pulled chariots of gods, (sometimes, when gods needed chariots that needed pulling and regular winged horses weren’t available, I guess), and it also guarded gold out in the East from the one-eyed Arimaspians, or Arimaspoi, a fictional race.

The Arimaspians themselves are gone, (since they were just smaller versions of Cyclopes, really), but the gryphons have survived in various fantasy RPGs, novels and comics, eking out some sort of a living as steeds for various characters…though the hippogriffs do a better job of it, apparently, and now, we got this. The Gryphon character in the FH.

Sadly, the man in question, (in the promo video this character was male, so I will be referring to the Gryphon as such), doesn’t look very eagle-like or lion-like – rather, he is just a man, armed with a bardiche.

Now, a bardiche – there are several ways of spelling it, but we will be calling it just a bardiche – is a poleaxe. If it sounds familiar, that is because the Lawbringer of the Knight version is already using a poleaxe in FH. Unlike this basic version, however, a bardiche is more elongated vertically with a crescent moon shape, and it has no spikes on top or in the back, unlike the halberd.

…The halberd brings us back to DW proper, because this show put the halberd against the bardiche in the ‘Ivan the Terrible vs. Hernan Cortez’ episode back in S3. We’ve discussed this episode when it first came out, and, admittedly, I don’t want to discuss it again – it had its’ flaws, it had its’ prejudices, but it was never truly bad or anything like that; but then again, DW had never been intentionally bad or stupid or prejudiced; now unintentionally is another story, but DW is gone, and we won’t be talking about it anytime soon, not for a good reason. That said, it had been a good show, just as good as AFO had been, for AFO, unlike of the later AP series, aimed to both entertain and educate, and its’ CGI wasn’t so bad for the early 2000s period…. Where were we?

Ah yes, the bardiche. It is a battle-axe, a poleaxe, or what else have you. It does not have two blades as the hitokiri’s weapon does, for example, though the FH version also has a stabbing tip. Neat. Anything else?

Sadly, no. I just wanted to remind everyone that I am still alive and kicking, at least for now. See you all soon instead!

Quarantine entry #115 - July 14

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Let us talk about the upcoming ‘Deep Blue Sea 3’ movie trailer. It promises to be good. Why? And what is it about?

Well, the latter is evident – it is about yet another team of people hunting down a pack of (possibly genetically modified) bull sharks in a river. Pause.

Here is the thing. All ‘monster (insert species’ name here)’ movies are really the same – it is a ‘man vs. nature’ conflict that would make Mr. Hemingway facepalm. I am talking about his ‘Old Man and the Sea’ novella here, when his titular character caught a swordfish after a long struggle, and but lost it to the sharks, (which personified the titular sea, I guess). It sounds quite exciting. Mr. Hemingway managed to depict it as long, deep, and almost semiotic instead; it is not quite in the same league as Stephen Baxter’s ‘Evolution’ is, because Stephen Baxter’s ‘Evolution’ is not quite so boring. I mean a classic, sorry.

…Anyways, the modern monster novels, (such as the classical ‘Jaws’), and movies, (such as the ‘Deep Blue Sea’ franchise in question), are not boring, but neither are they classic. Instead, whether we are talking sharks or snakes (think the ‘Anaconda’ franchise), it revolves around humans going into the wilderness, and where some wild beast picks them off one by one because reasons.

In such pieces of fiction, humans are smarter than their opponents are, true, but somehow it doesn’t matter, as the sharks, anacondas, crocodiles, big cats, etc. are strong and tough enough, are physically superior enough, to defeat the humans until the very end, when the humans win regardless.

There are some variations, true, as in the ‘monster alligator’ film that we have discussed a while back, where the alligators were depicted incorrectly as amphibious. That is wrong, because unlike fish and amphibians, the eggs of reptiles drown, as a rule, if submerged. There is an exception or two, true, because Mother Nature is like that, but none of them are alligators or their cousins – but what about sharks?

…It was semi-common knowledge since the early 2000s or so, when AFO had aired its’ ‘Hippo vs. Bull Shark’ episode, that bull sharks can exist in both salt and fresh water. They are formidable predators, but hippos are not too impressed by them, and neither are the Nile crocodiles, which defer to the hippos, (and for a good reason), but regularly hunt and overpower bull sharks instead.

Jeremy Wade, in his RM, regularly caught and fished for the bull sharks, especially in the first seasons, and he had also established that they are not as formidable as the saltwater crocodiles, for example, and their man-eater reputations might be overblown. That is why they are genetically modified, (sort of), in the franchise’s movies; and-?

And nothing. The other side of such films is that they are somewhat bland, there is no greater message, as there may be in the ‘AVP’ franchise, you know? There are humans, there are ‘monster animals’ which want to eat them, because they’re hungry, the end. The humans themselves may have greater motivations than just surviving, but because a big part of a movie budget is spent on special effects, (focused mainly on the monsters), the plot itself isn’t very complex, and the movie itself ends with the ‘monsters’ being dead, and human characters surviving, (usually only the main protagonist and their love interest, but there are versions, true). Period. Anything else?

…Sadly, no. We only got the first trailer so far, and it was a straightforward one, so for now, there is nothing left to discuss. Ergo, I will see you all soon instead!

Quarantine entry #101 - June 30

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, though many people are still talking about the Thylacosmilus’ and its’ new ‘redesign’ instead. Fair enough, but today we will be talking about eagles instead.

However, the eagles are a very varied bunch, so let us choose for our sample bird… the white-tailed eagle. It is a very impressive bird, and an Eurasian version of the bald eagle of North America; out of all the sea eagles, these two are mostly closely related to each other, but some people, (cough, the Russians, cough), aren’t very fond of this theory and don’t talk about it very much. Next?

While the white-tailed eagle is a sea eagle, it is not as specialized for fish eating as the bald eagle is, and actually prefers to hunt waterfowl instead. For us, however, it is the ‘sea eagle’ moniker that is important for the moment – it is a label that designated a group of about a dozen or so of eagles as, well, aquatic, (or semi-aquatic) specialists. What next?

…While the sea eagles are semi-aquatic specialists, other eagle groups are not. For example, the harpy eagle of South America hunts in jungles, while the golden eagle of Eurasia and North America prefers more open spaces, period. That, and its’ preference for the West Coast over the East, are some of the reasons why as to how come it’s the bald eagle that is the U.S.’ national bird, and not the golden eagle instead.

…Yes, since Thomas Jefferson, people have argued against the bald eagle being the U.S.’ national symbol, but nothing has come out of it, so that is that. What next?

Well, if the falcons are built for speed, (just like the cheetah), and the hawks are more versatile, then the eagles are built for power, (just as the lion is). While a falcon’s whammy can be formidable if this bird picks up speed, an eagle’s version is even more so, and it needs less distance and speed to achieve it. All birds are light-weight as a rule, (there are exceptions, but not among the birds of prey, no), but the eagles are less so, which is why their flying style is more of a passive gliding – they prefer to soar on warm aerial updrafts for hours, (or sit on some inconspicuous perch instead, cough), using their superior eyesight to keep an eye on what is going on down below, while remaining less noticeable for their potential prey. Once they choose a potential candidate, they swoop down and strike.

A falcon smites its’ prey in mid-air, often slicing it apart at least partially. An eagle, rather seizes prey with its’ talons, which can be big and sharp enough to pierce skin and flesh to the bone, inflicting massive damage and killing it. A golden eagle can kill an animal the size of a red fox or a grey wolf, which is why native people of Asia have trained it. A falcon catches other birds; an eagle, (just like a hawk), is more geared to attack mammals instead.

The downside for this is greater physical exhaustion when flying actively, hence why the eagles glide and rest more often than the smaller birds of prey, including hawks and falcons; they also are not beyond scavenging – whereas the falcons usually aren’t found on corpses of dead mammals, the eagles are, and on such occasions they don’t look very regal at all. Of course, neither do lions, but anthropomorphic associations aside, it can also be remembered that while lions have resolved their endurance issues by becoming social, the eagles have not; in fact, the only modern ‘raptors’ that have embraced the social hunting of their Mesozoic forebears are the so-called Harris’ hawks, which are more closely related to the buteos, than to the ‘true’ hawks…

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #88 - June 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but sometimes you get to see something new and unusual in it all the same. Case in point – bears, brown bears, to be more precise. For the last few days, Yahoo News and similar websites were discussing about the various mutant grizzlies that had appeared in the Banff national park. One is all white, (but not an albino, a different mutation). The second is still a cub, mostly brown, but with a white head, giving it a rather panda-like appearance. Cool, eh? But so what?

For one thing, it helps us to understand as to how the bears’ coloring scheme has evolved in general. With the exception of the giant panda, the modern bears are largely monochromatic, especially the American black, the brown, and the polar bears, but as those recent cases of mutated grizzlies showed, there are always exceptions to this rule, and just because a bear is supposed to be brown, (or black, or white, or etc.), doesn’t mean that it is going to be.

Yes, most discolored animals tend to die-off more quickly than their normal-colored counterparts for a variety of factors, but if an animal is large enough, (say, a sperm whale, or even ‘just’ an African bush elephant), then it may survive into adulthood and reproduce.

This is where it gets even trickier, because genetics. An animal’s coloration, (whether it is an elephant, a zebra, a hyena or a guinea pig), is defined by the DNA that it had inherited from its parents – usually. Sometimes the DNA misfires and we get albinos, leucistic animals, melanistic, (all black), and so on, but if they do reproduce, there is no indication that this genetic flaw will be inherited by its’ offspring, because the latter have different DNA – a mix from both parents, which changes the game entirely. Put otherwise, while breeding in captivity is one thing, (just look at all the breeds of domestic pigeons, geese, or even goldfish, for example), breeding in the wild is something else, and while it is possible that a ‘miscoloured’ animal will survive to sexual maturity, (as the first out of the two grizzlies in our case is a sexually mature animal and not just a cub), the odds of its’ offspring inheriting its’ atypical coloration is even less. What next?

Hard to say. For today, actually, I wanted to discuss the cockroaches. Yes, they are far less majestic than the bears are, but they are far, far older, having appeared back in the Mesozoic, during the Cretaceous period. Superficially, they are similar to beetles, but they are much less derived than the beetles are; whereas the beetles undergo a full metamorphosis, (rather like butterflies, honeybees, and flies), the cockroaches do not – their youngsters are not grubs like those of beetles, but are miniature versions of the adults.

Another important difference of cockroaches from beetles are the ooteca – whereas beetles just lay their eggs into rotting wood, ground, onto tree bark or someplace else, the cockroaches actually carry them in a sort of an ‘egg case’ until the eggs hatch and the young cockroaches scatter to begin their own lives.

…In any case, the physical similarity of cockroaches and beetles is superficial; whereas beetles are found all over the world, in all sorts of ecosystems, cockroaches are much more tropical, and in the wild are found usually in jungle ecosystems, or elsewhere wherever there is plenty of heat and moisture. Since their closest relatives are the termites, this does include underground. Pause.

…Termites deserve their own mention – sometimes they’re still called ‘the white ants’ because of their color, but they are very different insects from ants. Sometimes it’s obvious – the termite mounds are much bigger, in a different league altogether, from anthills, or hives of bees and wasps – and sometimes, not so much: whereas all worker ants, (wasps and bees), are all females, in the termite communities, both sexes are represented equally, plus worker and soldier termites are much more different from each other physically than those of ants or wasps.

Out of the two groups, the termites are the more derived ones, and may have involved from the cockroaches, (albeit different ones than those that live in human houses), but so far, no one knows for certain. Fossils of both cockroaches and termites are rare finds, so it is hard to make any decisive statements about them, at least right now.

…Moreover, for now, this is it. See you all soon instead.

Quarantine entry #87 - June 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. On the one hand, the official U.S.-Canada border will remain closed until July 21^st at least, because reasons. On the other,… wait.

…Let’s talk media, for a second. These days, at least some of mass media sites, such as Yahoo News, tend to illuminate such important events as the border closure and the prolonging of CERB very sparingly – they just tell us about the happening of one fact or another, and that is it. What and how it all went down – we do not know.

Instead, we are given brief polls on that site, basically the standard yes-or-no question with some minimal variations. Are those questions supposed to matter? In the West, true, people do believe that their opinions matter, but the fact is that if their opinions are handled in a sufficiently detached manner, then it suddenly becomes much harder to understand as to how precisely it does matter.

In the RF, the situation is different – people, the common people, know that the higher-ups in the Kremlin and etc. don’t care about their opinions, unless it is backed-up by force, so when they have enough, they go into the streets… therefore, the aforementioned higher-ups in the Kremlin and etc. do their best to appease their ‘electorate’ just enough to prevent the aforementioned revolution… usually. Right now, with their own COVID-19 epidemic on hands, this system is breaking down…sucks to be them…but real life sucks to begin with.

Elsewhere in the world, it is different. In the U.K., (and the rest of the EU), news about COVID-19 and the like are much more sparse than they are in the U.S. In Canada…well, we have just talked about how the Canadian government handles COVID-19 – apparently, they make all the decisions, but give polls to their electorate to reassure them that their opinion still matters and they can always vent, of course, online. Put otherwise, Canada may not be the RF, (thank God), but neither is it the U.S., (captain Obvious says ‘No duh!’). What next?

I admit that I wanted to talk to you about our old favorites, the elephants, today, but then I caught a glimpse of a cartoon. It was about bears, fair enough. The titular character is a grizzly bear, who used to be a circus actor slash jack-of-all-trades in his youth, but then settled down. He is also a bachelor, (because plot reasons), but has a girlfriend, also a grizzly/brown bear, who comes and goes throughout the show’s episodes. He also has a romantic rival, a male black bear, who is something of a jock, but who appears very rarely in the show, because it is a children’s cartoon… so what’s my point?

My point is that in this episode, the male grizzly’s old flame from the circus came to visit him. She was a spectacled bear from South America, a real party animal, (pun intended), and she is much smaller and more petite than the other bears of the show, (mostly brown and black, though there is a giant panda cub as a distant relative of the titular character too). And-?

And that is actually realistic – the spectacled bear is smaller than the brown bear is: about 120-200 cm, with the males being larger than the females are, (but that is a common trade of all the bears, especially the modern ones), and much heavier – up to 115 kg on average, while the female spectacled bears usually weigh – on average – only 65 kg. Apparently, this sort of discrepancy puts the spectacled bear right alongside the polar bear for being one of the most sexually dimorphic modern bear species, even though the latter is only a very distant cousin to the spectacled bear; both are true bears, of course, but the spectacled bear is much more closely related to the now-extinct giant short-faced bears of the previous epochs. (In particular, the short-faced bear Arctodus simus was featured in one episode of ‘Prehistoric Predators’, and had cameo appearances in some other, remember?) Ironically, however, diet-wise, the spectacled bear has only 5% of meat in his overall diet; it might be the next most herbivorous modern bear after the giant panda! Maybe that is how it was able to survive the last Ice Age when the short-faced bears died out, and keep in mind, that the American tropics are also home to the jaguar, which might be less physically formidable than the spectacled bear is, but much more formidable and carnivorous – the spectacled bear manages to avoid it by living in places where the jaguars are rare – mainly in the Andes mountains of north and west South America. If given the chance, spectacled bears are just as ecologically dexterous as the brown bears of the Northern hemisphere are, but these days, while the brown bears are Least Concern, the spectacled bears are Vulnerable instead, so there is that. Real life sucks for those fascinating creatures, it looks like, but that is real life.

…For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #82 - June 11

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and I cannot even escape into AoS, because I am currently trapped where it is not available, (because there is no TV and all). Pause.

Well, because I do not want to tackle reality just yet, I will acknowledge that for the moment the final season of AoS is still staying in the AC time period – aka the post-WWII USA and they have already encountered their very first racist – a certain Mr. Sharpe. Right now, the character is mostly a comic relief, (this is the first time he has appeared in MCU period, and given AoS’ record of accomplishment, and it is possible that he will soon die anyhow… where were we?)

Ah yes, the racist. AC itself fiddled with the issue of racism in the USA post-WWII, especially in the second season, when agent – now chief – David Sousa suddenly had a non-captain Rogers’ rival for agent Carter’s heart of an Afro-American descent, cough – but now…

Well, now it seems that the final season of AoS is stealing plot ideas from the third season of AC that never was, which is good. Marvel’s ‘InHumans’ actually did manifest despite AoS’ present, and the result was insipid, and also cancelled after a single season, even though despite its’ flaws, it had a better, more compact plot than AoS usually had. Disney rocks?

Getting back to the issue of racism in the States, in particular – now, listen: the George Floyd situation manifested because of management and mismanagement of the protests, the Americans wanted a diversion from COVID-19, and so they got it! Now, people are talking about reforming the police, (a major federal organization, putting it mildly), Confederate statues are being pulled down, (seriously, what the Hell?!), and COVID-19 was put on a backburner, though now it is coming back – either because the George Floyd narrative has ran its’ course, the man has been buried, and, hopefully, at least some people on the top of the American society have begun to think as to what COVID-19 will do to American population now that the self-isolation was effectively torn down.

…As we have said before, in Canada the situation is different, less intense, and more artificial-feeling. It is possible that Trudeau is using it as a smoke screen… period, because he isn’t handling the COVID-19 chaos very well, but then again, right now, Canada is supposedly run by a Liberal/Conservative/NDP joint effort, and where are the other two? Scheer keeps on fighting with Trudeau, the end, and Singh, (for whom and whose NDP party I have voted, FYI), is simply a no-show. The Hell? Trudeau is flawed, (though he is better than the American Donald is by default), but at least he is trying to do something, which is more than you can say about the other two. Sigh. Canada may be better than the U.S. is, but these days? That is not much to go on about.

Now, today I actually wanted to talk about bears, but somehow I was never able to get into the right frame of mind. Pity, because actually bears are quite fascinating mammals, hailing from the Eocene epoch, aka practically the very beginning of the Cenozoic. Their various species and genera came and went, but in the modern times? There are only eight species in three genera, including the giant panda that we have discussed earlier. It is the most ancient of the modern bears, and one of the most specialized, and probably one of the smallest ones too, (I am sorry, but compared to a brown bear? The giant panda is not that huge).

At the other end of the spectrum we have the polar bear, the most recent of the modern bears, that we have already discussed on this blog, for it was featured on AFO, where it’d lost to a walrus, as well as its’ closest cousins – the brown bear, (defeated a Siberian tiger), and the American black bear, (who took down the American Alligator). This leaves with the spectacled bear, the sloth bear, and the sun and the moon bears.

The moon bear is the Asian black bear, which is an ecological counterpart to the American black bear, and whom we have discussed in the past, largely because of the conjunction to the American black bear, (the American alligator and the Chinese alligator were featured as well).

The sun bear is also called the Malaysian bear, and it is one of the smallest bears, possibly smaller than even the giant panda is – and is one of the most arboreal of all the modern bears. Unlike the moon bear, its’ patch on the chest is yellow rather than white, hence the ‘sun bear’ moniker.

…Conversely, the sloth bear, (aka the true bear from the ‘Jungle Book’) usually has no patch on its’ chest, but when it does, it is white. The same goes for the American black bear, actually – usually, this bear is colored in a single color, but sometimes it does have a white patch on its’ chest instead, (though it ought to be noted that an American black bear can be of any color actually, not just black, but also cinnamon brown or creamy white).

…The spectacled bear usually doesn’t have a mark on its’ chest – instead, it has ‘spectacles’ on its’ face, and it is the only modern survivor of the short-faced bear lineage, (remember, it was featured on the ‘Prehistoric Predators’ series?). That said, those ‘spectacles’ can look very different from one spectacled bear to another, and some can reach the chest area, I suppose. In fact, physically speaking, all bears look like each other, and aside from the brown and polar bears, (which are each other’s closest relatives out of all the modern bears), and the giant panda too, I suppose, all of the modern bears are colored similarly too – in black, with lighter patches of fur on its’ back. Even the giant panda’s black-and-white checkered coat might have evolved from a similar design as well; what do you think?

…For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #78 - May 7

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I mean, here you go, reading about how a lobster fisherman caught an albino lobster, one in a 100 million or something, and then you learn that a 10-ft. great white shark, (that’s 3 m long, longer than an average man is tall and much stronger, too), unintentionally killed a surfer. That is life, but it still sucks, even if it is not COVID-19 bad.

…And then you read how some pilot drew a fish – I mean, a fist - for George Floyd in the air over Nova Scotia, and this is when I knew that the American society is in trouble…and also nuts. Why? Because it is bored. Everyone in the West – but especially in the U.S. – was bored because of the lockdown, and when the George Floyd protests came along, they piled onto it with no intention of stopping it.

Oh, sure, people like the Donald try to stop it…which they do…in a manner that is certain to make everything worse and to ensure that the ‘U.S. civil unrest’ beats-out ‘Coronavirus-19’ for top spot on news sites, (such as the MSN, but still). The fact is that people are sick and tired of COVID-19 and will do anything to forget about it; but…

…But what people are not talking about is how the ‘civil unrest’ issue will exacerbate the COVID-19 issue. Forget ‘Barkskins’, forget ‘Gordon Ramsey Uncharted’, they are out in the real world, where blood is being spilled, and COVID-19 is beginning to become ignored, sickness or not. Pause.

Here is the thing. Canada itself is doing just that, demanding justice for its’ own deceased POC, deceased under suspicious circumstances, I point out, but somehow it falls far from the scope of the U.S. – and they still have not opened the borders.

That is to say, the U.S.-Canadian border is permeable, but because my family does not want to take risks – and they are not entirely wrong there by now – it might as well not be. Pause.

Here is another thing. I doubt that this border is going to be officially open anytime soon, as neither D.C. nor Ottawa want to force the issue, and actually, they probably do not want to open the border at all. The U.S. – because its’ people have been moving as in ‘immigrating’ to Canada since 2016, (and whose fault is that? Not the Canadians) – and Ottawa because right now the U.S. is a burning pile of tires that is full of crap that stinks. The Donald and Trudeau are two very different people that did not get along too often in the past, and now it shows.

…The people…under other circumstances, the people would, and could, tell Ottawa and D.C. something about that, and so they do…about people of color, and about defunding the police. The latter part is U.S.-only, somehow it didn’t get caught in Canada, (cough), and so I feel comfortable enough to say that whatever is going on in Canada is only an imitation of the ‘U.S. civil unrest’ and the ‘George Floyd fallout’, and it helps Trudeau and his peers to feel important, while keeping them out of the U.S. level of danger. Anything else?

Speaking of danger, the first episode of S2 of ‘Gordon Ramsay Uncharted’ has reminded me quite a lot of ‘River Monsters’, especially the African episodes, for the obvious reason – hippos. We have talked about them repeatedly on this blog, but they are amazing animals, especially the common hippo. The pygmy hippo is remarkable in its own right, but people do not encounter it in the wild as often as they do its’ larger cousin, with ‘encounter’ being the key word here. You see, unlike the wildlife in Asia or South America, the African animals are kind of used to people, they know that if they charge first and think about the fallout later, they can survive their human encounters, while humans don’t. Sadly, humans are even smarter and are even better at killing than the African mammals are, and the latter do include hippos; hippo attacks are one of the main causes of death in Africa, whereas shark attacks…

Whereas shark attacks in Africa are something else, and we have talked about the AFO episode ‘Hippo vs. bull shark’ in the past. The hippo won, but that is not very surprising; I have seen some live-action footage, (not CGI) of hippos encountering bull sharks, and the latter give hippos a wide berth. They may be as formidable as the great white sharks are, in proportion, but otherwise? Nile crocodiles feed on them, and hippos can handle Nile crocodiles, no problem! Kudos to GR for channelling his inner JW, I say!..

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #71 - May 31

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Just look at all the excitement, (word used in a negative way), surrounding the demise of George Floyd. It is a horrible thing, an awful thing, something that gone down really wrong – and now the entire U.S. is shaking because of it. Why?

The answer, of course, is ‘why not’, deep beneath. The American society is exhausted by the lockdown/self-isolation/quarantine/etc., this process was already breaking down, when George Floyd died, and now it is being thrown out as the proverbial baby with the bathwater, in all of the- in everything. Some people, according to Associated Press, claim that it is all the ‘outsiders’ fault, but I say to them – look at the Donald. When Tayler Swift is schooling you, then you know that you are in the wrong.

No, really, Taylor Swift, who once got embroiled in a fight with the Kardashian-West clan, has a better grip on the situation than the Donald does – and meanwhile, shit is hitting the fan from Miami to Seattle. The governor of California is ordering a lockdown in L.A., (though not citywide, admittedly). Yeesh!

…And on the other hand, Elon Mask’s SpaceX program is progressing at a steady pace – the latest rocket either had a breakthrough and went to space, or had a breakdown and exploded once again. What does COVID-19 have to do with it?

Everything in the background. People were sick and tired with isolation to begin with, and were looking for a good excuse to end it, and they got one, and it is one of the worst ones ever, (no, we are not talking of the SpaceX rocket here). Therefore, now, the lockdown has effectively ended, (no really), and with a fiery explosion too. USA! USA! They are not even trying to blame the RF for this one, thank God. Maybe there is hope for the Americans yet. What next?

Well, today I wanted to talk about the hippos instead. Why? Well, why not? After elephants and rhinos, they are the biggest land mammals of the modern world…though that is a relative term, as I may’ve mentioned it: a hippo, an elephant, a rhino, and a human can all stand on the black of a blue whale, and the marine giant won’t even notice their combined weight, so there!..

…Whales, (or rather – the cetaceans), are mentioned here for a reason: the hippos are their closest relatives out of all the mammals, and share many traits with the cetaceans, including a dependency on the water to live; there are important differences too, but that brings us to taxonomy, actually.

As people do not talk very often, there are two species of hippos in the modern world – the common hippopotamus, (aka Hippopotamus amphibius), that everyone knows about, and the much more obscure pygmy hippopotamus, (aka Hexaprotodon liberiensis), which has a much smaller distribution than their larger cousin does, (the two mammals may share the biological order and family, but each belongs to its’ own genus), is much smaller than the common hippopotamus is, period, and is also – proportionally more terrestrial than the common hippopotamus is. Pause.

Let us start again. The common hippopotamus lives… in fresh water, yes, but it also comes aground, where it prefers open spaces. Of course, it is also big and heavy enough to muscle its way through most of riverside vegetation (and beyond), and combined with its’ grazing, the common hippopotamus can turn many an overgrown space into open space instead.

The pygmy hippopotamus is much shier and more retiring, and while it spends more time on land than it cousin does, the land in question is the African jungle, which is much more obscure, dark, damp and less assessable to humans than the African savannah is. As such, the pygmy hippopotamus’ effect on the landscape is much smaller too, and as a result, people became aware of it much later than of the common hippo, (and no, I’m not talking about just the Europeans and Americans, but about the other people too, such as the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, who became aware of the common hippo fairly early in the human history), and they began to interact, (hunt, capture, study, etc.), with this species much later than with the common hippo too. Such two superficially similar (closely related) mammals and two such different fates!..

…As for the Biblical Behemoth, which might have been inspired by the common hippo? The jury is still out on this one – it might be a hippo… or a rhino, an elephant, even an African buffalo, which we really should discuss one of those days, as we’ve discussed its’ cousins the bison, the yak and the zebu earlier.

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #69 - May 29

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but everybody knows it… What is next?

Let us talk about zebras instead. As everyone knows it, they are the wild, striped, (black and white), horses of Africa… only not.

Yes, zebras are kin to horses and donkeys, (as well as to the rhinos and the tapirs), and they look like horses covered in stripes. In reality, however, the genetic evidence shows that zebras and horses, (both wild and domestic) are the most distant relatives out of the three equine groups; the zebras and the donkeys, (again, both wild and domestic) are much closely related to each other than they are to the horses, no matter how similar the three groups of perissodactyl mammals may look to each other.

…’Perissodactyl’ means ‘odd-toed’ – horses, zebras and donkeys have a single toe on each foot; the much more massive and robust rhinos and tapirs have three toes on their front legs, and four on their hind. The artiodactyls – even-toed ungulates – have two or four toes on each foot, an even number instead. Next?

…The two groups of herbivores are not close relatives to each other; the artiodactyls, in particular, these days are recognized as the sister group of cetaceans – whales, dolphins and porpoises. The latter names are informal themselves, and are gradually being taken out of circulation or are being clarified and reworked in various official sources themselves.

None of that involves the perissodactyls – they are their own group, (ok, a biological order), separate from the cetacean—artiodactyl team. In the past, they had their own aquatic representatives… actually, the Malaysian tapir and the Asian species of rhinos still spend a lot of time in the water; moreso than the South American tapirs, let alone the African rhinos, which are the most terrestrial of the bunch, as well as the most biggest.

Horses, donkeys and zebras, however, shun wet places unless they need to drink, and actually can flourish in places where their artiodactyl counterparts do not do so well – for example, the dry steppes of Central Asia. Camels, of which we have talked before, of course, flourish in deserts, but camels themselves are an old group of ungulates, and their own heyday has passed – these days, there are three species of ‘true’ camels, and four species of ‘camelids’, but we’ve talked about camelids & camels before, and right now, we’re talking about zebras instead.

There are three species of zebra – Grevy’s zebra, plains zebra, and mountain zebra. They differ from each other in stripe patterns and in general body shapes, and they also live slightly different places from each other. The quagga, which is a perissodactyl ungulate that had a striped neck and head, but not the body, was a subspecies of the plains’ zebra instead.

Why the quagga is mentioned? Because just like the Thylacine and Steller’s sea cow, this animal died out in the ‘historical’ times; there are photos, and maybe skins and bones of the animal, but no live quaggas, not anymore. There are rumors of scientists being able to reverse-engineer extinct animals, such as the giant ground sloth, the woolly mammoth, and the passenger pigeon, but the initial rush of this excitement quietly fades away, and we are left with nothing, not even the status quo.

As for reverse engineering the quagga using breeding and hybridization… that is trickier. The modern zebras can hybridize with each other and have fertile offspring, but the zebra-horse and zebra-donkey hybrids do not do so well, on the other hand…

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #66 - May 26

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, though it is weird sometimes – for example, there is a granny of a singer, who is both over 90, and owns over a dozen of mature and fully-grown lions and tigers, (though not bears, apparently – somehow, she had missed them). The good singer is actually half-boasting about that – I am guessing she is waiting for the mammals to eat the granny and then be acquitted, because they are, well, animals, and are not really subjected to the American law…and if they are euthanized or whatever when the granny gets eaten, it’s no skin off the singer’s nose either – win-win. What next?

The province of Ontario – during the long weekend – broke all of the rules of social distancing, yet they still want the borders with U.S. closed. Imbeciles. This is why I hate other people too, and not just myself. Ergo, let us talk about the other animals instead – and how about the walrus?

…Yes, we’ve talked about the walrus a long time ago, when we’ve discussed the AFO episode ‘Polar bear vs. Walrus’ – remember it?.. but first, here is a shout-out to NatGeo’s latest mini TV-series, ‘Barkskins’, which we’ve mentioned earlier as well. This is a fairly decent and enjoyable drama, and a pleasant change from ‘The Wrong Missy’ and ‘The Lovebirds’ that we’ve discussed earlier.

As for the walrus itself…where to start? The walrus is the biggest pinniped of the Northern Hemisphere – males can reach up to 4 m in length and weigh up to 2 metric tons. Despite its physical similarity with the eared seals, (aka fur seals & sea lions) rather than the true seals, the walrus is in its own group, not exactly too close to either of the seal groups, and it is a single species, with two or three subspecies, (scientists are not sure about the number).

The walruses prefer to live in the shallows of the northern seas, where they feed on bottom-dwelling sea animals – molluscs, worms, crustaceans, etc. There are stories about walrus orphans that became full carnivores, but that evidence is anecdotal, and in the last few decades there wasn’t any new ones, so that is probably a salty sea tale or whatever.

Once, the walruses lived all over the Arctic waters, living in herds of hundreds, if not thousands of animals. Now, however, their numbers have fallen – even with the conservation efforts, the global warming is affecting them as well as the polar bears, and the walrus females are not that much more fertile than their polar bear counterparts are – they become sexually mature only at four to five years of age, and give birth to new pups only every three to four years. The pups in question grow slowly – for the first two years they feed only on milk, but during that time, they grow up to 2 m in length and over 300 kg in weight.

…The walruses supposedly grow until they reach about 20 years of age, and they live for a very long time, if they survived their initial childhood. Humans aside, the only animals that mess with fully grown walruses are killer whales and polar bears – and it’s a mixed bag with polar bears, (they prefer to go after walrus pups and females, not the mature males, and if they can afford it, they go for seals instead), and as for killer whales… I have not seen much evidence of killer whale on walrus attacks, so I am guessing that they would rather eat anything else than a walrus first, especially a mature male one.

Finally, here is a piece of the original fiction about it instead:

A walrus is a big and heavy beast. It looks like a bag of blubber, but got plenty of brawn too.

A walrus has two ivory tusks jutting from beneath the bristly moustache. It got flippers instead of feet, too. A walrus is an aquatic beast.

A walrus will dive deep and graze on the sea floor like a cow on a meadow. It eats seaweed and mollusks, and once it is done, the walrus will emerge, grab an ice floe or the shoreline with its tusks and get out of the water completely. It will lie down and sleep.

… Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #53 - May 13

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and on this particular day, there is nothing going on in real life that is exceptionally noteworthy, the rant of a certain musician on Twitter aside. People are falling apart, as simple as that, and the fact that such captains of industry as the aforementioned Twitter, Google and Facebook are allowing their workers to work from their homes even in the post-lockdown world doesn’t help. Working from home means co-existing with your family 24/7, and this is what the lockdown has already exposed as overrated – you need to have some space from your family, some time off, and if that isn’t happening, then it isn’t happening, and you got an unavoidable meltdown instead. What else?

…People have been asking me as to why I have not been discussing Ubisoft’s latest ‘Assassin’s Creed’ installment – the one with the Vikings. My answer is plain: I do not do ‘Assassin’s Creed’ as a rule, and this version is essentially ‘Assassin’s Creed’ meeting the ‘Vikings’ of History channel, and in case you have forgotten, I wasn’t impressed with that TV series either. Frankly, I’m going to call a spade a spade and call out, saying that if it wasn’t for the lockdown, the ‘ACV’ wouldn’t receive as much publicity as it did, but this is the hand it was dealt instead, the end.

…As for ‘Stargirl’, the latest darling of the DC TV-verse, I’m not going to touch it right now either – I’m not a big fan of DC TV-verse, ‘Stargirl’ may be superhero drama meeting a teenage rom-com, or sit-com, or whatever – don’t care. This is not my TV show for now, the end. What is left?

…I feel like talking about lions, actually. Of course, we have talked about them repeatedly in the past, so let us do this now once more – I am feeling sufficiently nostalgic, here and now.

So: the lion is the king of the beasts. People claimed that it could stare into the sun without blinking. However, so can the other cats – the anatomy of their eyes permits that. ‘Tis just that the lion is so regal-looking, so majestic! It appears that a lion is never looking at anyone directly, but only at some point in the distance, as if it does not notice you. And its’ roar is something else – it isn’t roar, it’s thunder!

When it comes to strength, the lion does not attack only the African bush elephant, (namely, the fully-grown animals), the African rhinos, (ditto), and the polar bear, (because the latter is never found in the African wilderness). Anything else is fair game. The lion’s strength is such, that it can break a bull’s back with one paw strike. However, more often, the lioness will jump onto the prey’s back, grab the muzzle with its paws, and by jerking around, it either suffocates the beast or breaks its’ neck, whether it was a wildebeest, some other antelope, a zebra, or even the African buffalo.

…Yes, there are several subspecies, or even species, of the African buffalo, which is only a distant relative of the American buffalo, aka the bison that we have discussed in the past. However, right now, we are talking about the lions, which is the only species in the Panthera genus that hunts in packs, as the wild dogs do – aka in prides. All the rest of the ‘roaring cats’ are solitary hunters. Beyond them, we got the cheetah and maybe the cheetah’s South American cousin the jaguarundi, which also live in family prides, especially the cheetah. Too little is known about the jaguarundi to make a concrete statement.

Finally, the lions used to live beyond Africa – in Eurasia and even in North America, (which used to be connected to Eurasia via a land bridge in the past epochs). As you know, those beasts were called cave lions in Europe and American lions in North America. Whether they actually lived in caves, or were only depicted there by the Stone Age humans, is another story. These days, lions live only in Africa, and in the Gir Forest in India, Asia, and their status slash well-being is contradictory and worrisome. A sad end for the king of the beasts there!..

…Well, this is it for now – see you all soon!

Quarantine entry #50 - May 10

Obligatory disclaimer: happy Mother’s day! May it be fruitful and satisfactory for all the mothers involved, for better or for worse, COVID-19 or not! …That said, real life sucks, and I am no prize either, I do not deny it. The lockdown has made it all worse, more acute, as everyone is cramped together and everyone is making an effort to get along, and as time goes along, the effort becomes more extreme. Our family actually has it easy, as we have time away from each other, and so the effects of the lockdown are not as extreme, but they are still felt, and we fight, but we usually have space to get away from each other, and that is important, because otherwise we would have killed each other instead. What next?

The head of the Russian space program is dead from COVID-19, which is kind of bad news for team Putin and the latter’s plans for the Russian domination. Pre-COVID-19, he was supposed to annul his old presidential experience and start everything anew, but now everything is falling apart instead; his new PM got COVID-19 already, (but he is not dead), and now this.

…Plus the windmills of God mill slowly, but exceedingly small; the patience of the Russian proletariat may be long, but it isn’t infinite, and when it ends, it’s explosive – just look at 1917, for example. In addition, Lenin is not gone either – he is right there, in the Mausoleum, next to the Kremlin. Yeltsin, the person (putting it mildly) that made it possible for Putin to become a president at the end, made plans to inter the first Soviet general-secretary ever in a proper grave, but somehow it never amounted to anything and in the end, Yeltsin was the one buried, because he died first. Well, when you were as bad an alcoholic as he had been, it was only a matter of time until he was dead for real – and so he is. The rest of his family and entourage lived on, and Putin was a part of it, at least until 2014-5, when the entire mess with the Crimean peninsula began, as Putin began to push his new, independent politics, and you can see as to where it had led the Russian Federation – in the past. In the present, with COVID-19 running rampant in the RF, Putin’s plans became derailed, and it is anyone’s guess as to where RF will go from there; Putin’s regime will endure for a while, because his opposition is hardly any better than he and his supporters are, but it will end. What will happen next is anyone’s guess, so what else?

A brief return to the jaguar – we have talked about the biggest cat of New World repeatedly in the past, so I decided to talk about it again, because why not? Let us begin.

…Neither lions nor tigers live in the Americas, but it has big cats of its own – the jaguar and the puma. Not everyone can distinguish a jaguar from a leopard, for the two cats are similar, and so are their spots, but the jaguar’s spots are bigger than a leopard’s are, and they are different – not plain spots, but rosettes with a smaller spot in the middle. In addition, a jaguar’s head is proportionally bigger, and this feline itself is taller but shorter than a leopard is. Pause.

…The jaguar is a natural climber, swimmer, and runner; it loves the water almost as much as a tiger does. Of all the big cats, only the tiger and the jaguar willingly go into water – even into such great rivers as the Ganges and the Amazon – on a regular basis. Sometimes a jaguar will feel so comfortable sleeping in the water that the current, supposedly, carries the cat out into the ocean… but I am not so sure about that.

In addition, a jaguar is an avid fisher, stalking fish from the shoreline for hours. As footage has proved, the jaguar also attacks caimans, (distant relatives of the crocodiles, close kin to the alligators), and turtles, including sea turtles, which it encounters on the seashore. It ambushes the reptiles as they come ashore to lay eggs and it flips them upside down to make a food cache. The turtles do not die, and their meat is not spoiled, but neither can they right themselves and escape back to the water…

Finally, the jaguar can be found almost anywhere, from the wet jungles, (where it is always possible to catch something nasty, like rickets), to the prairies and open ground in the rest of South America; they used to come into North America as well, but by now, most people admit that they are gone from it in the wild state; they may return, but the Donald’s wall might ruin that – but the Donald’s wall is another story…

…Well, this is it for now – see you all soon!

Quarantine entry #44 - May 4

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. No, I am not talking about the COVID-19 for the moment, but rather about the Asian giant hornets, better known as the Japanese killer hornets. A couple of inches long at least, and armed with a stinger and venom glands to match, this insect is more hated for killing honeybee colonies, especially outside of its’ native range in Asia, where the local honeybee populations have been known to swarm scouting specimens of this species and literally cook them to death, using their special powers. Pause.

Now, so far, (May 4, 2020), the giant hornets were spotted in the West, in the Washington state (and maybe the province of British Columbia). There were about one or two specimens of this giant insect, but given everything – they may devastate honeybee colonies, but their venomous stingers can kill humans and other creatures as well – everyone is panicking already, especially since with the COVID-19 still on the loose, humanity’s control over nature is more tenuous than how it usually is. What next?

Back in the East, in Brampton, Ontario, an American beaver got confused for an American alligator, or something similar among those lines. Considering that recently, (about May 3, 2020, or so), a woman in the U.S. state of South Caroline did die from an alligator attack, there is some reasoning beneath all the hysteria – I hope. The American beaver is one of the bigger rodents in the world and it is certainly the biggest in North America, and people have certainly died from beaver attacks, as a matter of fact – but proportionally, there are fewer beaver attacks, successful and otherwise, than there are alligator attacks, (and the fact that there are more horror movies featuring American alligators than beavers has a reason, you know?).

Pause. I will not tell a lie – today, I planned revisit our old friends the elephants. Why? Why not? It’s May the 4^th, people are talking about SW related jokes all over the Internet, and I’m feeling despondent – yes, the 2^nd season of ‘The Mandalorian’ is coming to Netflix, or Disney Plus, or some other streaming service… and judging by the trailer, Marvel’s GotG and the last two ‘Avengers’ movies left a mark on the SW series – baby Yoda is more of a teen now, and he acts rather like how the teen Groot acted in the aforementioned Marvel films. And-?

And nothing. The last SW movie ended on a low note for all sorts of reasons, (though the Rey/Kylo Ren ship lives on), including the fact that it was a damage control attempt that failed. So far, ‘The Mandalorian’ is the SW franchise’s last and only attempt to fix itself, and if it tries to do so by ripping-off the Marvel franchise… not cool.

…Yes, the ‘Trolls 2’ movie has also ripped off the last two ‘Avengers’ films, but they tried to be subtle-ish about it, plus this film did end on a rather different movie than the ‘Avengers: Endgame’ film did, so it kind of blew over and vanished in the COVID-19-related smog of obscurity. The fact that it was aimed at a younger audience than the ‘Avengers’ films did probably did not hurt either. ‘The Mandalorian’ does not have that.

What does it have? Plenty of distance, (especially metaphorically speaking) from the SW Sequel Trilogy, which was not good. It was not bad, but it certainly was not good either. The 1^st season of ‘The Mandalorian’ established that it was not connected to the Sequel Trilogy… or at least it did not appear to when the 1^st season was aired. Now that the movies are over for the moment, and we don’t have much information about the 2^nd season so far, the situation can always change – and as we’ve talked about above, the 2^nd season of ‘The Mandalorian’ may fail due to its’ own flaws and not be related to the Sequel Trilogy at all…

…Well, this is it for now. See you all soon! May the Fourth be with you indeed!