Always a Lost Cause

Today's animal of the day is the Purple-Winged Ground Dove (Paraclaravis geoffroyi)!

Photo credit: Carlos Keller

This critically endangered species of dove is believed to inhabit the Atlantic Forest, a large region that consists of broadleaf rainforests along the Atlantic coast of South America. It has historically been observed in parts of southeastern Brazil, eastern Paraguay, and in the Misiones province of northeastern Argentina. However, the species hasn't been seen in years, and it's feared that these rare birds may have already gone extinct.

Image credit: Martin Elliott

These pigeons were specialists that relied on the mass fruiting events of two very specific species of bamboo, Guadua chacoensis and Guadua trinii. Groves of these bamboos would take turns simultaneously flowering, producing seeds, and then dying, and the purple-winged ground doves would travel from grove to grove to feed on all the seeds. By only feeding on these two specific species of bamboo, they avoided competing with other species of seed-eating birds, such as their close relative the maroon-chested ground dove, which also feeds on bamboo seeds but only those of Andean bamboo. However, it also made them totally reliant on the bamboo, and as a result, they were always pretty rare outside of groves that were undergoing mass seeding events.

Photo credit: Luiz Claudio Marigo

This specialization made these doves extremely vulnerable to deforestation. More than 85% of the Atlantic Forest region has been cut down by humans to use as lumber, firewood, or to turn into farms and pasture lands. This has caused the extinction of countless species of plants, animals, and probably many other types of organisms, including those that hadn't even been discovered yet. Because the purple-winged ground dove filled such a specific niche, it likely was hit harder by the loss of its forest compared to species with more generalist lifestyles. There have been no verifiable sightings of this species since 1985, though they haven't been declared extinct yet, since there have been a couple of unconfirmed sightings, with the latest one being in 2017 in Argentina. Though even if they are still alive somewhere in the rainforest, it's feared that their population might be too small for the species to last much longer.

Image credit: Coenraad Jacob Temminck

Devil’s Tower in northeastern Wyoming is an igneous intrusion. Tribes including the Arapgo, Crow, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Lakota, & Shoshone have had cultural and geographical ties to the monolith. 

Their names for the monolith include: Aloft on a Rock (Kiowa), Bear’s House (Cheyenne, Crow), Bear’s Lodge (Cheyenne, Lakota), Bear’s Lodge Butte (Lakota), Bear’s Tipi (Arapaho, Cheyenne), Tree Rock (Kiowa), and Grizzly Bear Lodge (Lakota).

First Cow is a true Western, not in the sense that it obeys the rules of that classic film genre, but because it portrays the west of that era in its truest form. It’s like the whole film is a time machine, transporting us in a period where civilization was not a given, where people lived in shacks to keep the wolves out, and when putting milk in your tea required an actual cow to be around. Baking milk butter cookies and selling them at the local flea market was a whole different matter. The film talks about capitalism and how access to natural resources could become an asset you could build an empire upon. More than that, there’s a theme about the relentlessness of time and how history is passing by the personal stories of unknown people, their friendships, and their little dreams, insignificant as they seem, in the face of the ageless rivers, flowing by. The film is particularly slow and framed at 4:3; it further enhances the feeling this is real footage of a bygone era, captured ages ago.


B+


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50% of mental illness manifests before the age of 14, and 75% manifests before age 24. Because of this, teens and young adults (and people who work with and care for them) need to be able to recognize early warning signs of mental health conditions.

In kids:

Young kids usually aren't great at recognizing, identifying, and expressing emotion verbally unless they've been specifically taught to do so. So if they're in distress emotionally, it is usually shown via behavior.

Frequent temper tantrums in children who should be too old for temper tantrums

Changes in school performance

Fighting to avoid school or sleep

Frequent aggression

Nightmares

Children often have magical thinking and imaginary friends normally, so the positive symptoms (hallucinations/delusions/paranoia) of psychotic disorders are harder to identify. However, if a child is in consistent distress due to strange or bizarre fears, or their magical thinking is getting in the way of age-appropriate functioning, consider getting them checked out.

Psychosis isn't just hallucinations and delusions- it has a wide range of symptoms. Especially early on, these include:

Sudden difficulty making and keeping friends

Neglect of personal hygiene

Mood swings or appearing completely emotionally numb

Sleep and appetite disturbances

Confusion or difficulty following conversations

Flattened affect (not being able to show emotion)

First episode psychosis typically occurs in late teens through 20's (somewhat older for those assigned female at birth), but can occur in younger teens and even, more rarely, pre-pubescent children. About 75% of people will have milder symptoms or warning signs like the symptoms listed above for weeks, months, or even years before this happens.

Daily Monster 181: Tailypo

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A bit of July 5th history…

1687 - Isaac Newton’s work Principia is published, outlining his laws of motion and universal gravitation

1775 - Second Continental Congress drafts the Olive Branch Petition to King George III

1811 - Venezuelan Declaration of Independence from Spain

1937 - Spam, the luncheon meat, is 1st introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation 

1946 - Louis Reard’s design for a bikini swimsuit debuts at the Paris fashion show (pictured)

1994 - Amazon.com founded in Washington by Jeff Bezos

2003 - SARS is declared “contained” by WHO after affecting 26 countries

July 5th 1996: Dolly the sheep cloned