I needed this.
Put a human sized one in a public place with no context and no explanation. Guarantee there will be a line of people waiting to use it.
Until you get sued for “not warning people about the dangers of giant hamster wheels” by people who lack any critical thinking.
Lawyers are why we can’t have nice things in this world.
Yeah, but a slug has a different brain than most humans.
The paper for anyone interested: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.0210
Last Spring, a litter of squirrels were raised in a burrow outside my kitchen window. I happened to look on the day they emerged. Very cute to see the little guys coming out. Methinks I could put a wheel out there, attached to the fence, near the ground. It seems like a good, safe spot, maybe they’ll be back next Spring. I could put a camera in the window to catch them being cute.
What’s a snail gonna do in that thing? I feel bad for whoever was in line for a turn behind them
“Fraction of wheel turning per species”?
This is a highly biased graph. Of course the mouse is gonna have more turning than the slug or the snail.
The fuck kind of science is this?
Makes sense if they are researching this as an energy source.
Sounds like a biologist need to talk to a physicist
Get a botanist and a dietician in the room and you might solve most the worlds problems.
Don’t invite the economist though. That’s not a real science and they’ll just fuck everything up anyway.
This made me curious so I searched out an article about it . It’s an interesting read and includes a couple videos of the critters using the wheel.
This is so wholesome. I’m really happy for them and it makes me wonder if maybe we could make environmentally friendly hamster wheels outside for animals to use.
They missed me on that chart
Hermit crabs love them too
we yearn for the wheel
Keep in mind the y axis has been shortened, so slugs only took up ~7% of wheel usage
I mean, that’s still 7% more than I expected lol
This is fraction of wheel turns per species.
The fact that the slug, arguably one of the slowest species on the chart, got 7% is god damn impressive.
It probably didn’t even realize it was on a wheel. It probably sensed the frog was there earlier and kept trying to run away.
I haven’t read the original paper, but the graph says “wheel running”, which I’d assume means ‘% time spent on wheel’
It’s good that we’re giving animals hints about how to develop technology but you’d think we’d start by handing out matches or something 🤷♀️
Squirrels will eventually enslave snails for their own 0.01 Hz electrical grid.
The wheel must turn
At least it’s something other than boiling water.
The electricity will be used to boil water.
That is how you get pyromaniac slugs.
I just looked it up and your average slug lives for about six years, so even at slug speed that’s quite a lot of damage that slug could do.
That is way longer than I expected a slug to live… I would have though less than month but I never claimed to be a slugologist
Most animals live longer than seems reasonable. There a spider that lives in the corner of my garden shed and it still there after five years.
Otoh small songbirds seldom live beyond 3 years in the wild :(
Herring gulls in extreme cases can live into their 30s. There’s probably a haggard old gull somewhere which remembers the '90s.
No gulls remember the 90’s, they barely remember yesterday
Not necessarily true, they’re clever birds and can certainly hold grudges.
TERRIFIC.
RADIANT.
HUMBLE.
I’d prefer a cytomantic slug, thank you very much. DOOMSLUG!!
cytomantic
Cytowhatnow?
It’s a made-up word from a Brandon Sanderson young adult novel that includes magic-enabling slug familiars.
magic-enabling slug familiars
I can’t decide whether that would be a cute or a disgusting description of a flaccid penis. Specifically that of one of the Puppetry of the Penis guys 😁
By etymology that would mean cellular magic, make of that what you will
Mantic means magic? 🤔
Yes, it’s the adjective form of -mancy, so cytomancy would be cell/cellular magic, and a cytomantic slug is a slug with a cellular magic property of some kind. Think of necromancy/necromantic.
TIL! Thanks 🫶🏼
I should get a wheel for the chipmunks and squirrels in my yard.
The bird feeder that spins when a squirrel gets hold of it. Who’s to say holding on for dear life is exactly the kind of thrill seeking behavior squirrels craved?
I have a mirror in my garden, I don’t know why it was there when I bought the house, and the local squirrels are obsessed with it, they definitely know it’s a mirror and not another squirrel and they like to pose in front of it.
Unfortunately it’s at the far end of a relatively long garden, and if I get close to it they run off, so I can’t really get a picture.
Unfortunately it’s at the far end of a relatively long garden, and if I get close to it they run off, so I can’t really get a picture.
(Not my OC, just to be clear. Pretty sure I found it here and thought it was neat so I saved it)
Also, you could set up a trail cam or a web cam or something
That squirrel is playing chicken with the cameraperson. They’re eating off a bird feeder - they’re gonna stay and take food until the very last second, then dash off.
Though the point is fair otherwise. Some squirrels will let people get ridiculously close to them. Another option for OP is to just wait a small distance from the mirror, the same way people sometimes wait for animals to approach when birdwatching, fishing, or hunting. It could take time, but at least that time is spent enjoying the peace of nature.
The photos are all taken from the same spot, just with different lenses. The number in the caption of each photo is the size of the lens.
But yeah sitting outside and waiting long enough for wildlife to approach is a nice meditation in and of itself. If you’re flustered they won’t approach, and you have to sit relatively still and quietly for an extended time, so it’s a nice metaphor for how to observe the mind and let it naturally calm to a restful state.
Also squirrels will approach pretty close if you’re sitting still enough. It’s pretty magical to see the curious little guys checking you out. Anyone who claims animals don’t have sentience has simply never looked one in the eyes…
Move the mirror or add more mirrors.
What kind of camera are.you using?
Well then. A big part of Science is replication. I gotta do it.
