I climb a lot around the forests where I live in Switzerland. In one area there are a lot of yew trees - deadly to mammals. Just 30 grams of the needles will stop your heart. The bright red berry tastes very nice and isn't poisonous but the seed, if just one seed has a crack in it and you swallow it it will stop your heart in about thirty minutes. German kings have used it to kill themselves after being defeated by Roman armies so that they don't have to surrender.
Anyway, there's an animal here, I assume marmots, that swallows the berries whole and shits them out as a half-digested diarrhea onto the tops of rocks, logs, anywhere high enough to mark their territory. Probably better than shitting out a charcoal briquette that you hope won't roll over... but they seem to know not to chew and crack the seeds.
Most plants evolved to have their fruit eaten whole and seeds simply pooped out because of the fertilizing effects of animal feces and the fact that the seeds end up dropped far away from the parent plant. That includes large fruit with massive seeds like mangos.
I'm reminded of Professor Hermione Lee of the University of York English department facing a stuttering student explaining the contextual meaning of the word "quaint" in middle English poetry:
Spit it out man! It means CUNT.
Can we stop with this "poop" nonsense. Number #2 and other forms, it's shit English, it's stupid. It's feces. Or shit. Or that fine old English word Turd.
> The Northern Hairy-nosed wombat is considered one of the rarest mammals in the world -- there are only 80 of them left. If you can, please donate or follow any of these organizations. I personally donated $10,000 to help kick things off.
Thank you :) All wombats are in some trouble right now (even the bare-nosed or "common" wombat), but the Northern Hairy-nosed is right on the edge of extinction.
Wombats never get much attention, so it's awesome to see this article and the response it's got.
A problem with metric-imperial conversion in the article? Based on having seen them in the bush, wombat poo is a 4 centimetre cube not a 4 inch cube. That would be a Diprotodon sized wombat. Lucky we're only talking about wombat poo, and not something important like a space craft...
A bit of a tangent but I've read this phrase almost verbatim in another article[1] today:
> "This study is really good," says Sunghwan Jung, a biophysicist at Cornell University who studies the mechanics of animal movements and was not involved with the research. It shows, he says, that the guts of these animals "are very special."
The other article [1] quote:
> It’s “an impressive step,” said Jack Szostak (opens a new tab), who studies the origins of life at the University of Chicago and was not involved in the research. “I don’t know of any other effort to put together an artificial cell from biological components that has progressed so far.”
Are these editorial guidelines to get an independent read? Just coincidence? I don't think they are LLM bits because I expect better from these magazines, but it's too eerily similar.
Isn't the more parsimonious explanation that science journalists and writers have scientist friends or advisors who they consult when something interesting happens? I imagine their correspondence going something like:
"Hi, Jack, came across this thing where they claim to have created artificial life. Is it real?"
"It's an impressive step..."
"Hey, Jack, there's this new thing called LK-99 that everyone is excited about. Why?"
"It's not real"
Some amount of `site:www.quantamagazine.org "Jack Szostak"` querying on Google seems to indicate this might be the case. Though I have to say it's probably not everyone who has a Nobel laureate on their rolodex for a quick "hi, is this real?"
>Hu speculates that because the animals climb up on rocks and logs to mark their territory, the flat-sided feces aren't as likely to roll off from these high perches.
and those who of them who shit cubes ended up more likely to procreate...?
This is most amazing when you click into the study[0] and see the supporting materials linked to at the bottom like a .mov of a rotating 3d model of wombat poop[1]
> Distinctive intestines mold feces into sharp-cornered poop
...written directly above a photo of the subject matter that clearly does not have sharp corners (which is all for the best, I guess, poor wombats!), not even sharp edges, just flattened sides.
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[ 596 ms ] story [ 1857 ms ] threadAnyway, there's an animal here, I assume marmots, that swallows the berries whole and shits them out as a half-digested diarrhea onto the tops of rocks, logs, anywhere high enough to mark their territory. Probably better than shitting out a charcoal briquette that you hope won't roll over... but they seem to know not to chew and crack the seeds.
Great to see someone having some fun writing an article.
We need to have a conversation about wombats
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/wombats
Possibly NSFW, depending on your W.
Wombats never get much attention, so it's awesome to see this article and the response it's got.
> "This study is really good," says Sunghwan Jung, a biophysicist at Cornell University who studies the mechanics of animal movements and was not involved with the research. It shows, he says, that the guts of these animals "are very special."
The other article [1] quote:
> It’s “an impressive step,” said Jack Szostak (opens a new tab), who studies the origins of life at the University of Chicago and was not involved in the research. “I don’t know of any other effort to put together an artificial cell from biological components that has progressed so far.”
Are these editorial guidelines to get an independent read? Just coincidence? I don't think they are LLM bits because I expect better from these magazines, but it's too eerily similar.
[1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/for-the-first-time-a-cell-bui...
"Hi, Jack, came across this thing where they claim to have created artificial life. Is it real?"
"It's an impressive step..."
"Hey, Jack, there's this new thing called LK-99 that everyone is excited about. Why?"
"It's not real"
Some amount of `site:www.quantamagazine.org "Jack Szostak"` querying on Google seems to indicate this might be the case. Though I have to say it's probably not everyone who has a Nobel laureate on their rolodex for a quick "hi, is this real?"
and those who of them who shit cubes ended up more likely to procreate...?
[0]https://pubs.rsc.org/sm/article-abstract/17/3/475/708006/Int...
[1]https://pubs.rsc.org/sm/article-supplement/708006/mov/d0sm01...
My kids can't stop laughing
Wombat Song by Noam Hassenfeld
Ending of Vox Unexplainable Podcast on Wombat cube poops
...written directly above a photo of the subject matter that clearly does not have sharp corners (which is all for the best, I guess, poor wombats!), not even sharp edges, just flattened sides.
I'll leave now...