The Life Cycle Of A Blackberry

source? it was revealed during my nature walk.

Birders: do you ever wonder if this happens?

Original on my site | Patreon

Dewerstone Woods Dartmoor UK

If your life is horrible and you need a new source of meaning and direction.... Do NOT find religion. Learn to identify plants.

more things i’ve discovered after 2 years of raising garden snails:

- they will wiggle their eye stalks in excitement - they have favorite places to sleep and favorite friends to sleep with - they’re good for your skin so let them run around on ur face!!! - they can feel their shells, which means they can feel u pet them (pet gently!!) - u can help a snail with a broken shell by giving it eggshells or cuttlebones to scrape (the calcium helps them patch up!) - they like a change of scenery and will explore all day if u change something - absolute cuddle bugs. love to snuggle with u, with friends, with dirt - u can hear them chew!! listen closely when u feed them….. asmr - as distinct as snowflakes, every single one is different!! i can tell all of my snails apart easily - babies. absolute baby children - speaking of babies, baby garden snails are no bigger than raindrops and translucent… delicate!! keep in a separate enclosure until they’re bigger!! baby jail!!! - some snails are shy……… kiss them. they are important

New Scientist

Nectar-loving Ethiopian wolves may be the first carnivore pollinators

Endangered Ethiopian wolves feed on the nectar of red hot poker plants, and may transport pollen from flower to flower as they do so

Ethiopian wolves feed on the sweet nectar of a local flower, picking up pollen on their snouts as they do so – which may make them the first carnivores discovered to act as pollinators.

The Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) is the rarest wild canid species in the world and Africa’s most threatened carnivore. Endemic to the Ethiopian Highlands, fewer than 500 individuals survive.

Sandra Lai at the University of Oxford and her colleagues observed wild Ethiopian wolves lapping up the nectar of Ethiopian red hot poker (Kniphofia foliosa) flowers. Local people in the mountains have traditionally used the nectar as a sweetener for coffee and on flat bread.

The wolves are thought to be the first large carnivore species ever to be recorded regularly feeding on nectar.

“For large carnivores, such as wolves, nectar-feeding is very unusual, due to the lack of physical adaptations, such as a long tongue or specialised snout, and because most flowers are too fragile or produce too little nectar to be interesting for large animals,” says Lai.

The sturdy, nectar-rich flower heads of the poker plant make this behaviour possible, she says. “To my knowledge, no other large carnivorous predator exhibits nectar-feeding, though some omnivorous bears may opportunistically forage for nectar, albeit rarely and poorly documented.”

Some of the wolves were seen visiting as many as 30 blooms in a single trip. As they lick the nectar, the wolves’ muzzles get covered in pollen, which they could potentially be transferring from flower to flower as they feed.

“The behaviour is interesting because it shows nectar-feeding and pollination by non-flying mammals might be more widespread than currently recognised, and that the ecological significance of these lesser-known pollinators might be more important than we think,” says Lai. “It’s very exciting.”

Lai and her colleagues at the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme now hope to dig deeper into the behaviour and its ramifications. “Trying to confirm actual pollination by the wolves would be ideal, but that would be quite challenging,” she says. “I’m also very interested in the social learning aspect of the behaviour. We’ve seen this year adults bringing their juveniles to the flower fields, which could indicate cultural transmission.”

If your life is horrible and you need a new source of meaning and direction.... Do NOT find religion. Learn to identify plants.

It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.

When I say "connect with nature" I don't just mean the aesthetic forests with deer and beautiful flowers.

I mean the weeds growing through concrete, the fungus that grows on the rotten shed, the nettles that always seem to return and the scary, spindly cellar spider in the corner of the bathroom.

Nature is not always pretty or magical - the pigeons and seagulls you swat at are nature too, the wasps and flies that hover by your meals are animals too, store-bought strawberries and the leaves that fall from your neighbour's tree are not all that different from the Giant Sequoias and it's seeds.

If you want to connect and understand nature, I mean *really* connect to it, in it's entirety, you have to seek out and learn about the ugly, scary and mundane things as well. You don't have to like it, just don't forget that it's there.