Endlings: Florida Panther - Oct 28

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, which is why I wanted to talk about Riordan and Oshiro’s ‘Court of the Dead’ novel (CoD), when I realized that it was not that different from the Florida panthers. Say what?

This week, ‘Bizarre Beasts’ released the episode about the Florida panthers – the wild cats, not the sports’ team and, again, it is a straightforward retelling of the Wiki page, plus an audio quote of Ms. Betty Osceola, an important person among the Miccosukee Native Americans. She is talking, to nobody’s surprise, about the Florida puma, and-

-And, yes, the obligatory statement: the North American ‘panther’ is another name for the puma, Puma concolor; it is only a distant relative to the ‘true’ panthers – the jaguar and the leopard; its’ closest relatives are the cheetah and the jaguarondi, a little-known wild cat that doesn’t look anything like the jaguar. Pause.

…All cats resemble one another; the differences between a tiger, a puma, a bobcat, and a housecat are mainly due to their sizes; there are few specialists as there are among the bovids, for example, or the rodents. This allows the felines to be very successful carnivores, and the puma is one of them; it is still the top feline carnivore in North America west of Mississippi. In the east, it is another story, as only the state of Florida still has any in the wild. This group of pumas was shrinking fast, due to inbreeding, so the U.S. government brought several pumas from Texas to fix this – and they did. But because the Florida wild themselves are shrinking, the pumas there are still dying-out and people need to fix this situation – just watch the BB episode for yourself. Stop.

So, here is the situation – after the series’ premiere that talked about the potential recreation of the passenger pigeon (done by a completely different narrator), and the dodgy episode about the dodgy silphium plant, BB hit its stride – the Florida panther episode is straightforward and simple, with nary a problem; it is delivered in a touching, poignant manner that is supposed to resonate with its’ audience – and perhaps it does. Only, is it enough to make the latter care enough to do something, to be affected by the BB delivery? That is the question.

On the other hand, we have ‘The Court of the Dead’ novel, where Will and Nico (a homosexual WASP couple) team-up with Frank and Hazel (a heterosexual POC couple) to help many monsters who don’t want to be evil, defeat a group of villains that are quite reminiscent for J-Ro’s Ministry of Magic in her HP books. These days she is keeping quiet (for her own reasons), but Mr. Riordan is going full speed ahead!..

Of course, he might not have a choice – when he stopped featuring sexual minorities and the like in his YA novels (‘The Trials of Apollo’ series), the price for his books fell to a flat $10-$15 dollars a book, that is very cheap by modern standards, and perhaps even a financial loss. Therefore, if Mr. Riordan wants to stay in the green (and work for Disney), he has to toe the party line, and if not, then just look at Gina Carano – she did not, and so she is gone.

Therefore, again, Mr. Riordan continues to release progressive and forwards-facing books; the problem here is that the society may not care; these days, the Americans are highly individualistic, and care only about what they think; a book, no matter how well-written, is not enough on its’ own to change their opinion – you need federal support to do so. In the U.S. In particular, this is a chancy and an unlikely thing to have or to manifest, and so that is that. ‘The Court of the Dead’ remains an inert, almost impotent, almost pointless and unrequired YA novel that does not do anything, or does not affect anyone, just as the ‘Endlings’ series of BB do – or don’t do. Sad, isn’t it? That is real life, however. It sucks.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

 

'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!

SI & FH - July 22

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but SI does not fare much better either.

…Now, some of you are raising a point that while AoS was a show about a group of people, (i.e. the titular characters), SI is a show about Nick Fury and his entourage, just as the ‘Hawkeye’ Series had been about Hawkeye… and the other Hawkeye, (you decide which is which). This is reasonable, but, again, if you look at ‘Hawkeye’, it was more than just about Hawkeyes one and two, it was also about their families, (especially about Kate’s), and about Echo, (another Marvel character who may or may not getting their own series in the future). In other words, ‘Hawkeye’ was part of MCU’s zeitgeist of that time, that of transitions: the title of ‘Hawkeye’ passed from Clint to Kate, and the landscape of MCU itself changed: NYC got a new vigilante, Echo, while Fisk was on the out, (supposedly), and Yelena Belova got further established in MCU than compared to her MCU debut in the ‘Black Widow’ film. SI does nothing like that, it is just Nick Fury running around, trying to save the world, while his few allies are just dying, and he’s blithely ignoring them: ‘Jeeves is dead? Thanks for the update, bye!’ There is no hook to capture and hold the audience’s attention, no nothing.

…AoS had the same problem, as a matter of fact, even from the start, but because they had several core characters who didn’t die in the initial episodes, for example, this show began to generate plenty of drama by the second half of the first season, and that was what kept it going, especially in the first three-four seasons. SI doesn’t have that either – the characters are both new and forgettable, and the new ‘Marvels’ trailer only further emphasized that SI is less of a milestone for MCU, and more of an aside, forgotten as quickly as possible. Why? Because that movie is about the Kree, not the Skrulls, as villains.

The fact that SI has evil Skrulls for villains, (rather than plain-mundane Chinese, North Koreans or Russians – thank God for that), is also a problem: by now MCU has established that Kree are the bad guys out of the two, and the Skrulls are allies of Fury and Earth’s humans; to have them suddenly become evil has made things even more convoluted and uncomfortable for MCU and its’ narrative, so the odds of SI being shoved aside and forgotten after its’ run ends is perfect.

Pause. Going back to the new ‘Marvels’ trailer, we also see Fury there, but no other member of the SI cast, including Ms. Sonya, who is just a variant of countess Val, of whom there’s no sign, which is proof that SI is about to be done and gone in MCU. True, the first ‘Captain Marvel’ film also starred Phil Coulson, who ended his AoS run being more live than dead, and the ‘Marvels’ trailer ignores that as well, but AoS is apocrypha of MCU on one hand, and on the other, MCU is restructuring itself even regardless of AoS by now. Is that it?

For SI – yes. For FH – not so much. This week the game has released a depiction of a new PC character, the Ocelotl. Succinctly put, this character is based on a RL and fantasy versions of the Aztec Jaguar Knight caste, but because of copyright infringement, or because FH is trying to be fancy, the character is named after the ocelot wildcat instead.

An ocelot is a sizeable feline, true, after the jaguar and the puma it is the biggest cat in the American tropics, but the jaguar could easily have an ocelot for breakfast if the latter got unlucky on one paw, and on the other, the North/Central American bobcat could probably overpower it as well. There is no idea as to why FH ignored the jaguar, the American biggest cat, in the favor of the ocelot, but it still did.

As for the new character’s weapons… He wields a Macahuitl and Tepoztopilli. The first is a wooden sword/baseball bat studded with sharp shards of obsidian. The second is a wooden spear with a wide head, also studded with sharp shards of obsidian. In the original Mesoamerica, which had no metal armor, such weapons were formidable, tearing at a human body, and obsidian shards could and would splinter on impact, further hurting the human. Against metal, (ok, steel), arms and armor, however, as well as firearms, the Aztec weapon proved inefficient, and the Natives would acquire those weapons and armor quickly enough, though it wasn’t sufficient to save their empire from collapsing… from several reasons, actually, but none of them are relevant to FH. What is important, supposedly, is that the Aztec Jaguar was already featured in S2 of Deadliest Warrior, (DW), where he faced a Zande warrior of Africa, and lost. Now, under a new name, he is returning to mass media – it will be interesting to see how the ‘Ocelotl’ will fair in the game.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

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 #61 - May 21

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about something else, anything else, really.

There’s the final season of AoS…which I’ll miss, because I’m stuck in a place that has no TV, and I’m not so certain that I’ll be able to access them via my computer, because no matter how much I love AoS, I’m not sure that it’ll be worth the money. As it is, odds are that in their final season, AoS will turn into DC’s LoT, (remember those guys?), complete with time travel and all. S.H.I.E.L.D. must save Hydra because otherwise there will be no S.H.I.E.L.D. – sigh. In the CA: CW film, Zemo made a point in telling some Hydra/ex-Hydra colonel or another that Hydra is done, gone, lost in the junkyard of history.

…Zemo was contained at the end of that movie. He’s supposed to return on ‘The Winter Soldier and the Falcon’ Disney+ series, but that series was one of the first to go down once COVID-19 was here to stay, and so that is the end of that, for the moment.

…Speaking of team DC, Ruby Rose is leaving the DC-verse. Since she was the titular character in the new ‘Batwoman’ TV series, this raises a question – just who will take over from her, and how will ‘Batwoman’ be able to spin it? The reasons here actually aren’t COVID-19-related, but RR is gone from DC-verse all the same, so what next?

…’The Lovebirds’ movie is coming to the Netflix soon, (as in tomorrow – May 22, 2020), so we will talk about it then. The ‘SCOOB!’ film did come to the screens before today, and it is yet another reboot of ‘Scooby-Doo’ in particular and of ‘Hanna-Barbara’ in general, so what is left?

Well, I wanted to talk about snakes today. They may be the youngest modern group of reptiles, and probably the most infamous, thanks to the Biblical serpent. In reality, snakes are not any more – or any less – dangerous than their closest cousins the lizards are, and as for the crocodilians… do not go there.

We have talked about various snakes on and off in the past, especially regarding the AFO episode ‘Jaguar vs. Anaconda’, where the latter had won. Why this was the wrong decision was also discussed at length, so what is left behind?

…Modern snakes are characterized by the lack of limbs, though the oldest of them all, pythons and boas, have spurs as remnants of them. Snakes’ eyelids have also ‘fused’ into goggles, making them different from the various legless lizards, such as the slowworm and the glass lizard. Many snakes are venomous, meaning that it is dangerous for them to bite you, but not vice versa, because otherwise they would be poisonous instead. The venomous snakes of North America are mostly the various pit vipers; they tend to be much more aggressive than their non-venomous counterparts are and do not hesitate to warn others of their defences – i.e., the rattlesnakes rattle, their cousins the cottonmouths (and maybe the copperheads as well) show the insides of their mouths, and so on.

…The odd ones here are the coral snakes of the southern, especially south-west USA, which are more closely related to cobras and kraits of the Old World than to the pit vipers, (which are also found in Asia, though the American species outnumber them). They are shier than the pit vipers are, but are also much more colorful, in bands of black, red and yellow that warns other animals to back away, and rightfully so, because the coral snakes are quite venomous.

There are other snakes, all over the New World, really, that imitate the coral snakes’ coloration with various degrees of authenticity – this is called mimicry, and it is a really quite amazing evolutionary devices that allows the non-venomous, very venomous, and slightly venomous snakes to co-exist with each other, while protecting each other as well, (in a manner) of speaking – but that is another story.

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

Quarantine entry #56 - May 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It is also tricky, both on a lesser level – i.e., co-existing with your family during the lockdown that cannot end because of various reasons, both of COVID-19-(directly)-related, and of Trudeau vs. Trump related. There are simple solutions, but no one likes them, and so the lockdown goes on, satisfying fewer and fewer people, no matter how good (and/or righteous) are its’ initial reasons were… What next?

Today, I want to talk about the otters, actually. To wit, they are 13 existing species of aquatic or semi-aquatic mammals, which belong to the Mustelid family, (aka the weasels and co.), but also – to their own subfamily, the Lutrinae. And-?

…Starting with the good old reliable taxonomy, there are about eight existing genera of otters, (that hold the aforementioned 13 existing species), and about twice as many extinct ones. As Mustelids, otters are more closely related to wild dogs, bears, and raccoons, rather than cats, hyenas, and mongooses. Their relationship with the pinnipeds – namely, seals, sea lions and walruses – is more obscure, taxonomically speaking, but ecologically? Otters and pinnipeds are two sides of the same coin… sort of.

Let us elaborate. The pinnipeds live in seas and oceans – as a rule. They come in several shapes, and in different sizes, but most of them are social, gregarious, noisy mammals that often are easy to spot on the shoreline; in the water, they may not be as formidable as the more ancient and derived cetaceans are, but they are still a force to be reckoned with; in one of his TV shows, Sir David Attenborough showed a bearded seal actually outmaneuver a killer whale, meaning that you don’t discount the seals just yet!

On the other hand, we have the otters. Aside from the well-known sea otter, and the much more obscure – and smaller – marine otter of South America, all otters live in freshwater bodies instead. They are social animals, and playful ones, but their basic unit is a single-family group, whereas pinnipeds – especially such big ones as the elephant seals, fur seals, and walruses – have harems instead. Proportionally, otters tend to be shier and less noisy and noticeable than the pinnipeds are; very often they are much less active during the day than at night, dawn, or dusk; in part, this is because of human pressure, but the biggest freshwater otters of them all – the giant otters of South America, (aka Pteronura brasiliensis), are freely active during the day instead, human pressure or not. What else is there?

The other animals. The aforementioned giant otter of South America is the most formidable of otters; family groups of these species were shown killing caiman, (cousins of the crocodile, remember?), and driving away jaguars, (though in the case of the latter, a safe, respectable distance was maintained, and the jaguars were young and not fully-grown or experienced). Put otherwise, as in most of them mammal societies, size and strength, multiplied by numbers of family group matter. The giant otters are the biggest and most social of the river otters, hence their also the bravest and the boldest. The other freshwater otter species – not so much, they are much more demure and tend to stay out of the way of such carnivores, as wolves, bears, and lynx, for example, (in the Northern Hemisphere, both in North America and Eurasia).

…The sea otter stands apart, not unlike the giant otter of South America; its’ closest relative – proportionally – is the spotted-necked otter of sub-Saharan Africa, (Hydrictis maculicollis), but the two animals don’t have much in common: the spotted-necked otter is a ‘typical’ freshwater otter, while the sea otter behaves more as the seals and pinnipeds do.

…There are freshwater seals – true, or earless, seals – in fast. They are subspecies of ‘marine seals’, the only truly freshwater seal is the Baikal seal, Pusa sibirica, and it is one of the smallest seals, under 1.5 m in length. It exists in the Baikal Lake, which is more of a freshwater sea, really, and is an exception that underlines the rule. The case of the sea otter, which is really the only otter known to most humans, that went into the sea, is the same. …The marine otter Lontra felina, a close relative of the North American river otter, looks much more like the other otters rather than like the sea otter. It behaves rather like the otters, instead of the sea otter does too… but we became carried away.

To summarize: otters have appeared later in Earth’s history than the pinnipeds did, and as such, they were unable to fully transition to the sea, as the seals and their relatives did, except for two species, of which only the sea otter can compete with the pinnipeds in the sea, ecologically speaking, and even it has some caveats in regards to its’ ecology, it is a very different mammal from the seals and etc.. On the other hand, they were able to keep the pinnipeds out of fresh water – the subspecies/species of earless seals that were able to make it there are found in places where river otters are uncomfortable to exist; all of them are more terrestrial than the pinnipeds are…

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!

The upcoming JW3 film - Sep 25

To continue talking about movies and their trailers, let us get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way: real life sucks. More specifically, I do not like climate warning, but I have to admit that I like young Ms. Thunberg even less: her belligerent approach is the last thing the world needs, and her entourage is somewhat reminiscent of the Hitler youth from the 1920s and 30s, which is bad.

Pause. The year 2019 – since we are talking about movies and related memorabilia – saw the release of the movie ‘JoJo Rabbit’, where the titular character has an imaginary friend. The friend’s name is Adolf Hitler, and the movie is not a horror like the ‘It’ franchise is, but is supposedly more light-hearted.

I do not like censure and censorship, but I have to admit that I am on board with the RF government on this one: they refused to show this movie in their country. You just don’t mess with some things, and to someone like them, ‘JoJo Rabbit’ may seem like an early half-assed attempt to re-write history by pretending that Hitler (and his regime) was imaginary, and the WWII was all the Communists’ fault, and all the information to the contrary is fake news. It is paranoid, yes, but some things you just do not fiddle with, not unless you want to set-off a chain reaction.

…The Donald appears to have set-off a chain reaction again, seeing how he has twitted a Tweet or two regarding Ms. Thunberg; the tweet is supposed to be taking sarcastically and despairingly, but, sadly, there is no indication that he isn’t trying to be genuinely nice here. Of course, he may also be genuinely trying to get himself impeached, but this is not my point here; my point here is that Ms. Thunberg’s take on things sometimes isn’t too different from the Donald’s; Ms. Thunberg has Asperger’s, (or something similar); what about the Donald? Is he conventionally sane, even? Maybe the good politicians of Washington D.C. just should have him assessed, and-

-and what if he is mentally or psychologically deviant? Then what? Aside from the fact that part of the reason as to why hasn’t been impeached up to date because if he does, his role will be taken over by Mike Pence, who is feared and hated, (whereas the Donald himself is more like hated and reviled instead), then where does it leave the U.S.? With a president that really conventionally not sane? With a president who has been removed for precisely the same reason, yet who had been competent enough to get himself elected in the first place? Somewhere else? Hypothetical, let alone real-life, situations like this one can cause the West to re-evaluate its’ values, something that it really does not want – but we have digressed.

Let us talk about movies… apolitical movies. How about the third ‘Jurassic World’ film? It will feature not just the new-original cast, but also the original cast – Ian Malcolm, Dr. Alan Grant, and Dr. Ellie Sattler. Put otherwise, we can safely say that this reboot of the JP franchise ran out of steam and ideas. Both the ‘Fallen Kingdom’ film and the BBR short feature depicted humans living in a new ‘Jurassic World’, co-existing with dinosaurs and other formerly extinct Mesozoic monsters, now reborn thanks to Dr. Wu and his wizardry. That is a good enough concept, but somehow the first two ‘Jurassic World’ films did not really do it justice; the BBR short feature did a better job, but it really isn’t that much different from the ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ film with some elements of the ‘Jurassic Park: The Lost World’ movie thrown in. Yes, it has done its’ job in getting people excited once more about dinosaur movies… but only to a limited extent. The first two ‘Jurassic World’ movies just dropped the ball too much as far as most of the audience members believe, and it is unlikely that the third film will change this state of affairs. Anything else?

There is now a trailer for a film named ‘Primal’, that is supposed to come out later this year or sometime around that. It features a ship in a storm, where a dangerous convict has escaped and released the rest of the ship’s cargo, including a white jaguar. What is the punchline?

There are no white jaguars; there are white tigers and lions, (and boy, are they a real-life mess and a half), but not white jaguars or leopards. (There may be albino jaguars and leopards, but I have not heard of them either). The black or melanistic jaguars and leopards are called black panthers, a fact that became quite known since MCU’s ‘Black Panther’ film, but white jaguars and leopards just do not exist. Put otherwise, ‘Primal 2019’ is just as fantasy and unreal as ‘Frozen II’ will be, (or ‘Frozen I’, for that matter). Still, jaguars don’t appear in movies very often, (even as just monsters – judging by the trailer, the white jaguar could just as well been an Indoraptor from the JP franchise, both animals do about as much and are just as real), so hopefully I will be able to see ‘Primal 2019’ (or whatever), when it comes on screen…

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

AFO: Cougar vs. grey wolf - Sep 20

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In case of Canada’s current PM, Justin Trudeau, this is because he has worn blackface/brownface in the past, and now it came back to bite him in the ass. The photos really show him in an unflattering light, but are they causing him to lose?

Well, if he loses, those photos will certainly be one of the reasons, but not the only one. As compared to the U.S., where each new presidential election is a bigger show than the lost one, (a tendency that became really obvious since Bill Clinton became impeached), Canadian elections… are not. Maybe it is because Canada is still subjected to the U.K., whose queen (or king) can always interfere, overtly or covertly, unlike the U.S., which is its’ own, independent country, but another reason is that Canada and its’ politicians tend not to blame anyone else when things go wrong in their lives; Hell, Trudeau has already apologized for those photos and this approach seems to be working – certainly, at least some people are turning onto Mr. Scheer for failing to apologize in his turn – it happens. Where were we?

Oh yes, someone has pointed out that when in the past I was doing my going-through of the AFO episode list, I forgot to cover the ‘cougar vs. wolf’ episode, so I might as well do it for closure…

Right. So, in one corner we had the cougar, (also known as puma and mountain lion), and in the other – the grey wolf. (As opposed to its’ more ambiguous cousin the red wolf, I suppose). The grey wolf lost. Why?

…Because the wolf is not an individualistic fighter, but a team one. ‘The Velvet Claw’ series and the companion book are somewhat outdated by 2019, especially when it comes to taxonomy of carnivores, but they are correct in that the cats are individualistic fighters, and the dogs are not. The puma, the lynx, the tiger, and the domestic cat have their differences, but even at a first glance a complete amateur of zoology/biology will I.D. them as relatives, and their lifestyles are very similar too. The only outliers among the cat clan are the African lions and the African cheetahs, (for a while, there were lions and cheetahs in Asia too, but now the cheetahs seem to be extinct there, and the lions are doing barely better. Sad, this is), because they do live in social groups – the cheetahs in family coalitions, the lions are more derived. Why this is so, is another question, but for now let us focus on the fact that the wild cats, small and big, tend to be solitary. And dogs?

This is where it gets blurry. Actually, most wild dog species are solitary, behaving as, say, the red fox does – we’re talking small carnivores that live on their own or in family groups; some of them, such as the raccoon dog of Far East, (initially), and the maned wolf of South America, can look very exotic, but their lifestyles are similar. And then there are the pack hunters.

Who are they? They are the domestic dog, the wolf, (grey and red), the coyote, the jackals, also – the African wild dog, and the dhole of Asia. This is it, right?

…No, because there’s also the bush dog of South America; proportionally, it may be related closest to the aforementioned maned wolf, but whereas the maned wolf looks like a wolf, or a dog, on stilts, the bush dog looks like a mix between a basset hound and an otter; it doesn’t even bark, more like chirps and squeaks, and it can swim and attack its’ prey items in water, as well as on land. A very atypical dog, but then again, South America has plenty of atypical carnivores, period – but we digress.

Such outliers as the bush dog aside, most pack hunting dogs look the same – streamlined, long-legged, long-muzzled, big-eared and long-tailed… built not for strength, but for speed and endurance. These carnivores evolved to act in a pack, overwhelming their prey through numbers, and using their jaws to tear and rip it to pieces, sometimes even eating it while the prey animal is still alive. They are hunters rather than fighters, especially when it comes to other carnivores, such as big cats and bears, although when it comes to dominance fights within the packs…they are ritualized, actually, and usually are resolved through shows of strength… and then…

Well, there is a video clip on YouTube that shows a wolf pack taking down a coyote. While externally wolves and coyotes are similar, wolves are larger and bulkier than coyotes are… although now scientists know that they do interbreed with each other as well as the domestic dog species, creating such animals as the eastern wolf, the eastern coyote, and the red wolf. The last species may actually be a species, having evolved into taxonomic and biological independence from both grey wolves and coyotes, but we digress. Wolves have evolved to function within a social unit – their pack, with which they bring down their prey items, from rabbits and hares to white-tailed deer, elk, and even the American bison. On their own, wolves are not very effective, as compared to the great cats and bears.

…Now a puma, technically, is not a ‘great cat’ – it is a ‘small cat’: it cannot roar, it can mew like a domestic cat, (or a bobcat), does, and while the jaguar, (can be twice as heavy as the puma) dominates the parts of the New World in which it lives, the puma does not. It can break even with an American black bear, (sometimes), but a grizzly (or brown) bear overpowers it more often than not, and the same goes for the jaguar, (which is unquestionably the bigger and more powerful animal of the two), and even wolf packs. Pause. ‘Packs’ is the key word here. A wolf pack can stand up not just to the puma, but also to the American black bear, (the grizzly/brown bear is a tougher question to answer), but a solitary wolf is no match for even the puma – which is precisely what has happened down in the CGI simulation of that AFO episode. While the rest of the carnivores are a mixed bag, (though, again, the ‘jaguar vs anaconda’ episode was something else), solitary pack hunters, (it even sounds as an oxymoron), are fair game and just are not… up to their best game, (pardon the tautology here), when facing-off with anyone by themselves. The grey wolf just couldn’t win by itself, especially against a mountain lion, which might be small and light by ‘great cat’ standards, but it still packs a punch well above its’ weight. The ‘puma vs. grey wolf’ episode was actually good, because it was honest and straightforward – whatever else you can say about AFO, at least there weren’t any inconsistences and partisanship as there was, (sort of), in DW, but that is another story…

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

Cats & whales - Sep 7

…Recently, on YouTube, I came across a video discussion about ‘big cats’ vs. ‘little cats’, and how those terms are confusing. Here are my two cents about them.

Firstly, these terms are not scientific, but more of lay. In reality, you can describe all animals, including wild cat species, as either ‘big’ or ‘little’, but from taxonomy’s point of view, most of the big cats belong to the genus Panthera, or – the roaring cats, (because they can roar). Currently, this genus consists of the lion, the tiger, the leopard, the jaguar, and – the snow leopard, (or ounce). The clouded leopard, (well, leopards – there are two species of them), belongs to the sister group of the Panthera cats, Neofelis, and together, the two genera compose the Pantherinae subfamily of the cat family.

So far so good, it can also be added that the ounce, while it is more often called the snow leopard, is much more closely related to the tiger, while the scientists are not currently sure, just who is more closely related to the lion – the jaguar or the leopard. The tiger and the ounce are the closest relatives of each other among the roaring cats though, even though the ounce really does look more like a leopard, which is why it is much more commonly called the snow leopard. What next?

The other ‘big cats’ of the modern world are usually the cheetah and the puma, (also cougar, mountain lion, catamount, panther, etc.). They are a part of the Felinae family, aka the non-roaring cats, which contains all of the cats that do not belong to the Panthera and Neofelis genera. Usually, the scientists call the cheetah and the puma ‘the Puma lineage’, which consists of the cheetah, the puma, and the jaguarundi, which looks nothing like a jaguar. Really, this small-headed, short-legged, long-bodied wildcat looks more like a weasel of some sort, not a cat. It lives in Central and South America, eating various small animals – rodents, birds, small reptiles, arthropods. They even eat some plants too. It is much smaller than the cheetah and the puma are, but then again, the cheetah is not really big, it is merely tall, as is the giraffe. I.e., the giraffe is tall, the elephant is big, (look at the two side by side to see the difference), the cheetah is also tall, while the lion is also big. This is different.

The cougar, (or the puma), on the other hand, is genuinely large, about the same size as the leopard, (or the smaller jaguars) is, and is built like a leopard too. As such, it is truly is a big cat size-wise, but on the other hand? It cannot roar. The jaguar can, and so can the leopard, but both the cheetah and the puma cannot, just as their cousin the jaguarundi cannot. As such, they are ‘little cats’, even though there is nothing little about them, particularly the puma, but from taxonomic point of view, they are. Period.

Hence lies the root of confusion between ‘big’ and ‘little’ cats: the scientific and non-scientific terms do not fully match. The wild cats are not unique with this problem; other animals have it too – the whales, for example.

Just like ‘big’ and ‘little cats’, ‘whale’ isn’t exactly a scientific term; science divides the cetaceans into two parvorders: the Mysticeti, or the baleen whales, and the Odontoceti, or the toothed whales. …There’s also the Archaeoceti, but all of those mammals have died out, (or not, and instead they are the truth behind the sea serpent myth as some cryptozoologists exclaim, but until a genuine sea serpent is captured and studied, they are still considered mythical, and the Archaeoceti – extinct).

Anyhow, most of the cetaceans known as ‘whales’ belong to the Mysticeti, the baleen whales; the Odontoceti or the toothed whales have proportionally far fewer ‘whales’ among their number, as opposed to ‘dolphins’, ‘porpoises’ or ‘blackfish’, and only the biggest of them all – the sperm whale – is usually treated as a ‘proper’ whale in non-scientific terms. Everyone else is usually considered ‘something else’; that is especially ironic since the sperm whale’s closest official relatives, the so-called dwarf sperm whale and the pygmy sperm whale, are among the smallest members of the cetacean clade. Sadly, they are also among the most obscure, shy, retiring and least studied members of the clade too, so we’ll talk about them some other time instead…

…And that is that for this talk; see you all soon!

Black Panther and Co. - Jan 23

…With both ‘Gifted’ and ‘Runaways’ first seasons done, there is only AoS left to carry us until February 2018, when ‘Black Panther’ makes its’ debut in cinemas. So far it seems to be fairly true to its’ source material, (not counting prince Namor of Atlantis outright destroying it…again), though one thing has caught my attention: why is Kilmonger declaring himself a ‘golden jaguar’ to fight the titular hero?

…The problem is not about the villain being ‘a dark mirror’ of the hero again, (something that plagued MCU for a while now), but rather – the jaguar bit. There are no jaguars in the Old World, (i.e. Africa and Eurasia), just as there are no leopards in the Americas (or the New World). Of course, the zoo- and circus-based animals are the cosmopolitan exception here, and big cats do escape from them into the wild, but so far, there are no true feral populations of the leopards in the Americas, or of the jaguars in Africa and Asia. (On the contrary, there are populations of feral hippos in South America, for example). So yeah, for Kilmonger to call himself a ‘golden jaguar’ is somewhat bizarre, but – understandable.

The leopard is the second-biggest cat in Africa. The panther here is still the leopard, just the all-black, not the spotted, color morph. Bagheera from the ‘Jungle Book’ franchise was a leopard, technically, but because of coloration issues, he is ID’d as a ‘panther’, rather than a ‘leopard’. In the New World, (i.e. the Americas, including USA), ‘panther’ is a name of a wild feline also known as the ‘puma’, the ‘cougar’ and the ‘mountain lion’, a wildcat that is more closely related to the cheetah and to the less-known jaguarondi, and none of them are what is known as ‘big cats’ – the leopard, the jaguar, the lion, etic. However, MCU’s Wakanda is in Africa, rather than in the New World, so the ‘panther’ here is the leopard, not the puma… while in RL Wakanda apparently is an apartment complex in the American state of California…right. This is just messed-up.

…Aside from the leopard, the other big cats of Africa, (small cats as the serval do not count, they just do not have the same imagery), and they are the cheetah and the lion. Cheetah is already the name of one of DCEU’s villains, one of Wonder Woman’s archnemeses, so giving this name to a MCU character could cause a major copyright/trademark fight, something that neither company really wants, while the lion…

Yes, a lion can be a villain – just ask Disney, but somehow a fight between ‘a black panther and a golden lion’ can raise a question as to who is the villain here. Kilmonger, of course, has the same question here, but MCU is on team Panther here, so no lions. They are probably all waiting for Captain America to arrive in Wakanda anyhow.

That is that for ‘Black Panther’ the movie; anything else? Well, awhile back we saw the first proper clip of MCU’s ‘Cloak & Dagger’ web TV/TV series. So far it seems that the titular characters are slightly older than their ‘Runaways’ counterparts are, not in high school, but in a college or a university. ‘Dagger’ is a girl named Tandy, who forms daggers of light. ‘Cloak’ is a boy named Tyrone, who forms a cloak out of shadow. Given that they are also one of the first distinctly interracial couples of TV, (something that AoS has not had mastered properly by now yet, for example), ‘Cloak & Dagger’ are going to have plenty of contemporary interracial, racial, and just socio-political content as well. Considering that ‘Runaways’ already tried this, sort of, especially with Alex…bully for ‘Cloak & Dagger’, I reckon. I mean in Canada you can see this sort of couple on the street, but ‘Cloak & Dagger’ are an American web TV/TV series, and this sort of thing is big deal in Hollywood and etc., so there!

Finally, there is another upcoming movie – ‘Rampage’. Based on a video game with the same name, so far the trailers were centered on a giant gorilla and his best friend, The Rock. Yes, that man – he certainly gets around in the movies, doesn’t he? Anyhow, aside from the already-mentioned gorilla and a Godzilla-like lizard, ‘Rampage’ is also going to feature a wolf-like monster that can…fly. Well, glide in a ‘flying squirrel’ style, but still. Giant aerial wolf. I have played ‘Rampage’ the game back in the 90s, and none of the monsters there could actually fly/glide through the air, so ‘Rampage the movie is going to be something else.

…and that is that for now. See you soon!

PS: Here is a sea-spawn from Pathfinder: Worldscape. How does it come across? Does it work?

Sea-Spawn ranger 3

CE Medium monstrous humanoid (sea-spawn)

Init +1; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +9

DEFENSE

AC 14, touch 11, flat-footed 13 (+3 armor, +1 Dex)

hp 36 (3d10+15)

Fort +5, Ref +4, Will +2

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft., swim 30 ft.

Melee 2 mwk handaxes +5 (1d6+3/×3) or

Bite +5 (1d3+3) or

Horns +5 (1d6+3)

Ranged mwk heavy crossbow +5 (1d10/19–20)

Special Attacks favored enemy (animals +2)

STATISTICS

Str 17, Dex 12, Con 16, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 8

Base Atk +3; CMB +6; CMD 17

Feats Double Slice, Endurance, Quick Draw, Two-Weapon Fighting

Skills Intimidate +4, Knowledge (geography) +3, Knowledge (local) -1, Knowledge (nature) +4, Perception +9, Stealth +7, Survival +5, Swim +17*; Racial Modifiers +8 racial bonus on Swim checks

Languages Common

SQ amphibious, favored terrain (sea +2), track +1, wild empathy +2

Combat Gearpotion of bull's strength, potions of cure light wounds (2), potion of hide from animals; Other Gear masterwork studded leather, masterwork handaxes (2), masterwork heavy crossbow with 20 bolts, 63 gp

AFO: Alligator vs. Black Bear - June 29

This week is proving to be much more exciting than the past ones; a new ‘DM’ movie is coming to the cinema at last; this is primarily a children’s franchise, so I cannot say that I am the biggest fan of these films.

Then there is the new TV promo for the new ‘Marvel’s InHumans’ series. So far, the viewers are not being impressed, let alone overwhelmed; many think that Lockjaw the dog is the best character of them all, and he is CGI’ed. In addition, he is a dog, not a human, so does make him an InDog instead? Never mind; my point is that I am more excited about the upcoming ‘Jumanji’ movie, and I am not its’ biggest fan either. I remember the original film very enough, it was good, and it was also less controversial than the upcoming rehash is, because it was more child-friendly and less sexualized and edgy. (Does ‘Jumanji’ even need that?)

…As for the upcoming new movie of the ‘Jurassic Park’/’Jurassic World’ franchise… so far we got some single shots and a poster – not too much to go on. The original JW movie was not bad, just… somewhat reminiscent of the SWII movie – not bad, but still nowhere as good as the original SW trilogy was.

This probably brings up back to the TV land, as ‘Killjoys’ S3 is coming to TV tomorrow, (June 30, 2017), or so. ‘Killjoys’ are a very enjoyable TV show, and I am honestly excited about seeing the S3 in the future, (hopefully. Things will be chaotic at our house in the near future, so I do not know how well I will be able to keep up with the series. In the meantime, though, I have been re-watching AFO – the ‘Alligator vs. Black Bear’ episode, so let us talk a bit about it instead.

Firstly, a dash of classification. The proper name of the episode is the ‘American Alligator vs. American Black Bear’, because overseas, in Asia, lives a Chinese Alligator, (possibly the closest relative to the American species), as well as an Asiatic Black Bear, (whose relationship with the American Black Bear is more vague).

The Chinese Alligator lives only in China, and may be extinct in the wild. It looks like its American cousin, but it is smaller, and has an armored belly, (and the American Alligator does not). The Asiatic Black Bear looks basically just like any other bear, (including the Giant Panda), but it is usually black, save for a large white patch on its’ chest, hence it is also called a moon bear – as opposed to the sun bear, which lives in southeast Asia, (and the Asiatic Black Bear lives – these days – in Bangladesh, China, and Russia, more to the north), is called a Malaysian bear for that reason, and the patch on its’ chest is yellow instead. The American Black Bear usually does not have a patch on its chest…but sometimes it does, and it is not always black; sometimes it is brown or even creamy white. Isn’t taxonomy fun?

But the science of classifying animals (and plants) aside, one of the reasons why the crew of AFO chose the American Alligator and Black Bear for this episode is because it is far more likely to happen in the wild, because the Chinese Alligator is virtually extinct in the wild on one hand, and on the other it is far too timid to attack something as big and dangerous as a bear. Come to think of it, so’s the American Alligator. So?

So we come to realism & suspension of disbelief, the storytelling elements that help people believe a story, whether it is AFO, AoS, or anything else. AoS, for example, seemed to have outlasted its’ welcome; certainly the S4 finale was met with very low audience numbers – people just weren’t excited about the titular characters winning against the last villains of the season anymore. Not when there is an entire platter of DC shows to choose from at the same time, for example.

But AoS is fiction, just as the aforementioned ‘Killjoys’, or ‘Marvel’s InHumans’ are. AFO was based on facts, conversely, and… they had their own pitfalls. They did their best to run the show only via facts and data, but they had only a limited amount of it from the start. The format of AFO was largely dependent on various big carnivorous animals – mammals, reptiles and fish – and most of them are physically similar to each other. A bear and a big cat are related to each other only distantly, but physically, they are built similarly, their skeletons have more superficial similarities to each other than the bones of a bear and a walrus do, even though the walrus is closer related to the bear (and the wolf) than a big cat is.

With crocodiles and alligators, of course, the similarities are more than just superficial – the two are twin twigs of the same branch of the tree of life: not only they occupy the same econiche, they can coexist – the Chinese Alligator lives on the same continent as do several species of crocodiles, and South America is home not only to the various caimans, (essentially the local versions of the alligators), but to several species of ‘true’ crocodiles as well. These reptiles can get along, and much better than the big cats of Africa, Asia and the Americas do, in comparison, and – they all have the same hunting & fighting technique, which was actually shown on AFO as part of the episodes’ footage. There are physical differences between crocodiles and alligators, but they are fairly minor, and from a technical P.O.V. – bare bones and the metal replicas built from these bones – they are non-existent.

With bears these similarities are not as extreme, but for the sort of experiments that AFO did with its’ machines, this was enough. Even in RL, all bears behave similarly, the only exceptions are the polar bear, (which is completely carnivorous and lives part of its’ life in the water), and the giant panda, (which is completely herbivorous instead). The brown bear has its’ differences from the black and the moon bears, but AFO does not focus on them, (and they are outside its’ data collecting criteria, anyhow).

This probably brings us to the actual face-off. In theory, just as DW did, AFO used the data that the staff collected via the models to determine the winner, but in reality, this was not so. In the ‘Jaguar vs. Anaconda’ episode, the jaguar lost. In RL, this would not be so; a jaguar has jaws powerful enough to bite through skull bones of peccaries and caimans, so, once it pinned down an anaconda and bit it, it would probably be able to rip the snake in two, if it got especially lucky. And yet it lost on AFO. Why?

Well, why not? On DW, the staff actually showed the various numbers of the various weapons, wins and x-factors; AFO did not even do that. DW actually raised an issue – who was correct, who was more important, the data or the experts/hosts; AFO did not have that. Moreover, while this ensured that there was no controversy surrounding their decision…there still was, at least in the ‘Lion vs. Tiger’ episode, (and so I probably will not be touching it at all). Instead, the viewers got the option to take the AFO’s decisions regarding the face-offs at a face value, (pardon the pun), and while some had accepted it, the others had not – and so the show was not renewed for a second season for this reason as well. AFO’s approach had its virtues, but it had its’ flaws too; not even the season’s/series’ finale ‘Sperm Whale vs. Giant Squid’ could save it…

Well, that is that for this entry; see you all soon!

Spinosaurus vs. Carcharodontosaurus

Let us see. ‘Time’ has been cancelled, ‘Powerless’ – ditto, AoS is over, ‘Blindspot’ – ditto, and ‘Killjoys’ will return only at the end of June. What is there left to talk about? How about dinosaurs?

Not so long ago I came across an online discussion, as to who would win in a face-off: Spinosaurus or Giganotosaurus? For those sticklers of accuracy, you can replace Giganotosaurus with its’ African counterpart, Carcharodontosaurus, but, regardless, who would win?

Here is the thing. Both dinosaurs are different from T-Rex. In case of Tyrannosaurus, evolution went towards raw strength rather than speed; Tyrannosaurus was made to crush bone and armor of such dinosaurs as Triceratops and Ankylosaurus, dinosaurs which knew how to fight against T-Rex, and so they did. By nature’s standards, it was a fair fight, just at look at the first episode of ‘The Truth about Killer Dinosaurs’, for example – a Triceratops could defeat a T-Rex if the odds were in its’ favor and vice versa. When the ‘Tyrant Lizard King’ went against the ‘Three-Horned Face’, the battle could go in either way…RL animals hate that.

Next, we have Giganotosaurus, and Carcharodontosaurus, and Mapusaurus, and Tyrannotitan, and the rest of the carnosaurs of the Cretaceous – and the earlier Jurassic. The differences between Giganotosaurus and Allosaurus were mainly concerned with size, and their behaviors were similar, as both hunted dinosaurs much bigger than any of the carnosaurs – the sauropods.

Now, I am not going to discuss the issue of the latest version of the dinosaur family tree, i.e. that the theropods are closer related to the ornithopods, and the sauropods may be an independent group of the ‘terrible lizards’ all along – as ‘The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life’ explained, (it was a book published by Impossible Pictures, BTW), the relationships between theropods, sauropodomorpha and ornithishchia dinosaurs are very confusing and scientists hadn’t quite figured out as to who relates to whom. The book was published years ago, but as we can see, this statement continues to ring true.  

Back to the carnosaurs. All of them – Jurassic or Cretaceous – focused primarily on hunting sauropods, most of whom were big enough to run down and trample any theropod in a straight-on fight, unlike Triceratops or Ankylosaurus, which could lose to Tyrannosaurus just as the T-Rex could lose to them. Thus, the carnosaurs never grew as robust as Tyrannosaurus did, not proportionally – they could not afford to be slow, they always had to be fast enough to outmaneuver the sauropods.

And yes, in truth, the sauropods themselves were probably some of the slowest dinosaurs ever, and as it is known by now, throughout the Mesozoic they continued to evolve into ever bigger and stronger beasts – not faster ones. Thus, carnosaurs themselves were not too fast and they grew increasingly bigger themselves – from Allosaurus and Sinraptor to Acrocanthosaurus to Carcharodontosaurus to Giganotosaurus and beyond. Yet due to quirks of their anatomy and DNA they simply could not get as big as the sauropods – speaking generally, sauropods would always be bigger than theropods, regardless of species-by-species case. Thus, even the biggest carnosaurs, such as Mapusaurus and Tyrannotitan, were more gracile than Tyrannosaurus was and they were team fighters – it would take several Giganotosaurs to bring down a single Argentinosaurus, especially if it was closer to its full size (35 m or so in length), for example. In modern terms, this is like a pride of African lions, teaming up to take down a single African bush elephant, as shown by the original ‘Planet Earth’ TV series – there are several lions, there is a single elephant that isn’t fully grown, but still can kill any lion with a one good kick, but if the lions will bring it down, then they will feed on it for weeks, thus it is worth being specialist elephant killers, see?

Now the analogue is not perfect, but it works. Carnosaurs were the lions of the Mesozoic…so does it mean that the Tyrannosaurus Rex was the tiger? Perhaps, but there may be an even more apt analogue for the King in the modern world, the American cousin of the lion and tiger, the jaguar. Pound for pound, the jaguar has the strongest bite of the big cats, it is even able to bite through skull bones – and in modern mammals, skull bones are some of the thickest and strongest, for the obvious reasons; in ‘Jaguar: The Year of the Cat’ the feline in question was filmed killing and eating tortoises and armadillos, both of which are armored well enough to be safe from smaller predators, such as the margay and the ocelot, for example. Unlike the lion, the jaguar is a loner, but it is about the same size as a lion, just – not as heavy, as I wrote earlier, during the Nat Geo Wild’s Big Cat week. Thus, the Tyrannosaurus Rex might have been the Cretaceous’ jaguar, a solitary hunter that ‘kills in one leap’ as the modern jaguar supposedly does. In addition, if faced against a lion in a fair, one on one fight, a jaguar could win, however—

However, here we enter the highly polarized land of lion vs. tiger (or anything else, really), and I am not going in there either. As AFO suggested, the lion won due to having a mane, and technically, it was an Asian lion, with a mane that is much smaller and less bushy than its’ African counterpart’s….Where were we?

Right, killer dinosaurs. The Indominus Rex from the ‘Jurassic World’ film might have been God-knows-what, but in game statistics, it was a carnosaur, i.e. a very different beast from a tyrannosaur, cough. Not unlike the African lions, carnosaurs such as Giganotosaurus and Mapusaurus had to have some concept of teamwork, because otherwise they would be unable to bring down an Argentinosaurus, even a young one. Thus, individually, a carnosaur would lose to the T-Rex, regardless of its size – it is a worse individual fighter, it has a proportionally weaker bite, designed to wound rather than to kill, and is proportionally weaker as well.

Yes, Rexy would have probably died after a fight with the I-Rex – a one-on-one fight…due to pain shock, and blood loss, and the like. The thing is that the I-Rex would have died first, because Rexy’s bite was much more powerful, and Rexy would probably be strong enough to rip the I-Rex literally into pieces during the fight – it was that powerful, and this brings us to Spinosaurus, and its’ fight with a T-Rex in JP3.

Now, it was established by now that the Spinosaurus in the JP franchise is a biologically incorrect one – in RL, Spinosaurus was front-heavy enough to move on all four legs instead, meaning that its’ front legs were even more muscular and powerful than those of a carnosaur, (Carcharodontosaurus, Acrocanthosaurus, etc.), which brings us back to JP3. If you look at the film’s Spinosaurus vs. T-Rex battle, Spinosaurus won not because it had the more powerful bite, (it didn’t, it was more like a crocodile or an alligator, teeth and jaws better suited for holding and gripping than for slicing and tearing), but because it bit down onto T-Rex’s head and used its front legs to break its neck. End the clip.

Now, true, in RL, Spinosaurus probably could not do that – its’ front legs were not pronated enough or something. Of course, until a time machine is invented and we go back to the Cretaceous North Africa to see the Spinosaurus how it was in life rather than as a fossil, we can never be fully certain, but—

A fight between a Spinosaurus and a Carcharodontosaurus is more likely to go in Spinosaurus’ favor; the last time this particular prehistoric predator was featured in a documentary series – ‘Planet Dinosaur’ – it did fight a Carcharodontosaurus, and while the Spinosaurus did succumb to its’ wounds at the end of the episode, it was still able to drive Carcharodontosaurus away and hurt the other dinosaur also very badly in the process. (I.e., the Carcharodontosaurus featured in a later episode of ‘Planet Dinosaur’ was a different Carcharodontosaurus than the one fighting the Spinosaurus… never mind).

This brings us to the actual fight between Spinosaurus and a carnosaur – any carnosaur, whether it is Carcharodontosaurus or Giganotosaurus. On land, Carcharodontosaurus would have the advantage – it would be faster and more maneuverable than a Spinosaurus would, and thus it would be able to outmaneuver its rival and be able to wear Spinosaurus down and kill it. Of course, if the Spinosaurus got lucky just once and was able to pin down Carcharodontosaurus with one good bite, then it still could win, by beating it to death with its powerful front legs and its superior weight and strength, (proportionally speaking). And in the water, Spinosaurus would win, because it was an aquatic dinosaur, adapted to life – and movement – in water, and Carcharodontosaurus (as well as the rest of carnosaurs) was not. Carcharodontosaurus was slower in the water, probably slow enough for Spinosaurus to ambush and catch it and drag into the watery depths, where the Carcharodontosaurus would drown. (And yes, supposedly, Spinosaurus specialized primarily in fish eating, but since it was one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs ever, it surely ate red meat when it could catch it?)

So yes, when you put Spinosaurus against any carnosaur, whether it is Carcharodontosaurus, Giganotosaurus, etc., it is not unlike putting a lion against a crocodile. As AFO showed, the smart money goes to the croc… so what about a Tyrannosaurus? What if it were to fight against a Spinosaurus?

Now that is truly another story…

Jaguar: a few facts - Feb 20

‘Big Cat Week’ has begun. Let us talk, in the honor of it, about the jaguar, since it seems to be the only non-African big cat on it, so far.

The jaguar is the third biggest wild cat in the world; it is twice as heavy as the leopard and can be as big as a lion, (which can twice more heavy than the jaguar itself). The Latin-Americans call it ‘el tigre’, which means ‘the tiger’, duh! This is why sometimes things get wonky in translation, and South America ends up having tigers instead. The puma – the second biggest cat in the New World – has its own share of problems with literature; sometimes it is described as a ‘panther’, which is also the alternate name of the leopard, especially its melanistic, black, phase. Bagheera from the ‘Jungle Book’ franchise is a ‘panther’, rather than a ‘leopard’, as an example. Now the puma just is not black; rather, it is uniformly colored from light grey to tawny brown, to brick red with creamy white underparts. Temperate pumas tend to be larger, with paler, greyish coloration, from the tropical individuals are smaller, with richer, redder tones. The cubs, BTW, are spotted, but these spots vanish around 1 year of age – so the giant black cat cryptids of U.S.A. most likely are not pumas, but the ‘panther’ versions of leopards and jaguars, which have escaped from zoos, public or private.

(Of course, wild cats as a group tend to have varied coloration in almost all species, so I am not dismissing the possibility of black pumas completely – it still can happen).

Back to the jaguar. Unlike the leopard or the African lion, for example, it is a very private, introvert feline; part of the reason why the African wildlife appears in documentaries is because it is somewhat used to the presence of people; all those lions and leopards, cheetahs and elephants aren’t domestic, but neither are they afraid of people too much – hence the problem of man-eating cats, rogue elephants, etc. Animals should not fear people and vice versa, but a healthy dose of respect between the two must remain, or else there is going to be tragedy and blood.

Well, the jaguar? It does not appear to be a man-eater, unlike its’ close cousins the lion and the leopard; it tends to avoid people, which is why it is hard to film. Why? Because it used to being the underdog, so to speak.

Not so long ago, about 10-11,000 years ago, the jaguar shared the New World not just with the puma and the ocelot, which are smaller than it is, but also with the American lion and the sabre-toothed cats, Smilodon and Homotherium, which were bigger than it was, and stronger. The African lion is particularly notorious for harassing and killing smaller carnivores, such as hyenas, so there is no reason to assume that the American lion was any different, and probably would go after the jaguar just as the African lion tends to go after the leopard and the cheetah. That said, the jaguar is much stronger than the leopard and especially the cheetah, so tackling it was probably a team effort for the American lion; the jaguar can bite through skull bones of peccaries, and shells of armadillos and tortoises, so if an American lion faced a jaguar one-on-one, the fight could go either way instead.

On the other hand, Arctodus horribilis, the extinct short-faced bear of the Americas also bit bones in two to eat the marrow, and it was one of the biggest and strongest carnivores of the New World; its’ relative the spectacled bear still lives in South America, but it prefers more mountainous habitat than the jaguar, and it is also one of the more herbivorous bears, so it probably doesn’t conflict with the modern American big cats very often.

None of this applied to the short-faced bear – it was a carnivore, and a hypercarnivore to boot. Between it, the American lion, the sabre-toothed cats, and other Ice Age carnivores like the dire wolf, (yes, it was a real animal, George Martin did not invent it, BTW), the jaguar was usually outmatched, one way or another, hence its’ reclusive, out-of-way, rather nocturnal, lifestyle. When the humans replaced the previous Ice Age megacarnivores, the jaguar adjusted to this development with few changes to its’ lifestyle; it could’ve lived alongside the European colonists as did along the previous, Native American civilizations, but—

But the European colonists brought something else with them – livestock. The jaguar may be avoiding humans as a rule, but their pets and especially livestock such as cattle is fair game. Hence the hunts for the jaguar; that, and the destruction of its habitat caused America’s biggest cat to be expatriated from about half of its previous range; it is extinct in the U.S., Uruguay and El Salvador – yes, it may be coming back into the U.S., but now that president Donald is trying to build his Great Wall, it probably means more bad news for these big cats.

Speaking of Great Walls? Matt Damon’s version of it…okay, the movie version with Matt Damon in it, did not go so well, and it can be seen why: the plot sucks, even moreso than the plot of ‘Fifty Shades Darker’. Sometimes the plot is not as important to the movie, the ‘LEGO Batman’ film attests to this, but unlike the ‘Great Wall’, it had some very good acting and the way it was delivered saved the film. The ‘Great Wall’? Not so much, even though it did have some amazing quasi-medieval warfare in it.

Speaking of quasi-medieval warfare? Yes, by now it is obvious that ‘For Honor’ has ballistae in it, or something like this…

The thing is, when one thinks of a ballista, one thinks of something more similar to a medieval catapult instead, maybe something like the torsion catapult featured in the S3 of DW, used by William the Conqueror against Joan of Arc. In reality, the ballista appeared back in S2 of DW, when it was used by Alexander the Great against Attila the Hun. Essentially, it was a giant, stationary crossbow, used more in siege warfare than in the field. It had scored the least amount of kills in that episode, (i.e. ‘Alexander the Great vs. Attila the Hun’) and was one of the reasons as to why Alexander the Great lost the battle: he and his team had inferior weapons. The torsion catapult of William the Conqueror had its own flaws, it was inferior to the cannon used by Joan of Arc, but it was still better than the ballista.

…None of this applies to ‘For Honor’, of course – for all of its realism, it still doesn’t go for authenticity; its’ role is to amuse, not to educate, and in the end, it is all about the fighting, with or without a ballista. Shall we get back to the jaguar?

There is not much left to be said about this big cat. It has a lifespan similar to that of the leopard – 22-23 years in captivity, 14-16 in the wild. It is classified by CITES as Near Threatened, and it deserves protection, not prosecution. Now let us sit back and enjoy the ‘Big Cat Week’.