Writing what i know

the unholy trinity of piss-poor caretakers, tag yourself:

quiet, meaning "has been yelled at or ignored a few too many times and now considers all attempts at communicating with others to be pointless"

precocious, meaning valued for their beauty alone and inappropriately sexualized.

i think one of my fave shark facts is this thing that some species of sharks do where they sorta peek their heads out of the water to see whats above the surface…..its called spyhopping and great white sharks do it all the time

#dont they reckon they learned this from whales?#bc whales have been doing this for as long as weve been observing them but sharks have only started doing it in the last decade or so#OH HEY THAT REMINDS ME#ON THE TOPIC OF SHARKS LEARNING THINGS FROM OTHER SPECIES#theres a pod of orcas that have recently started hunting sharks off the coast of south africa#started with one orca with a collapsed dorsal who reportedly HATES sharks and was the only orca on record to hunt them routinely#WELL#he taught his buddies and now theres a whole pod that hunt them#and the sharks (who arent used to being predated by anything) USED THE SAME EVASION TECHNIQUES THAT THEIR OWN PREY USE WITH THEM#so seals and turtles and etc will try to evade a GWS by swimming in a tight circle and keeping the shark in their line of sight#the GW has a larger turning circle than the prey so if the turtle/seal/whatever is able to got into the right position then they can evade#the shark. well the orcas started hunting the sharks and the sharks TRIED EMPLOYING THE SAME TACTIC THAT THEIR PREY USES#this is huge in terms of lateral learning bc its not as though the sharks have an instinctive orca evasion technique bc if they did it#would be something different. given that sharks are solitary hunters but orcas are pack hunters and the smaller turning circle method#will only work with a solitary hunter and definitely HAS NOT worked when applied to pack hunters. BUT THIS MEANS!! that the sharks are#intelligent enough to recall the behaviour of their own prey’s successful evasion techniques AND TO THEN MIMIC IT THEMSELVES.#incredible!!!!!!! but yeah as stated it very much only works against solitary animals so the sharks that employed it did not get away and#the orcas have killed a handful of GWs and literally all the other sharks have fled the area entirely - like - there’s not a single#one to be found and the ones with tracking devices show them getting the fuck out of dodge and of course this is having a big negative#impact on the local economy which runs largely on shark tourism. but yeah like the facinating thing here is that an adult orca has taught#fellow adult orcas how to hunt sharks AND the sharks have tried to employ evasion techniques that they have known to work in the past#its two instances of lateral learning and ONE OF THEM IS CROSS SPECIES LATERAL LEARNING#its amazing!??!? (via @bundibird)

A genie grants three wishes to an old lady.