Grizzly vs. Silverback

[Shadotwist]

[bluedot]

Boom, headshot. That bear looks like it’s got claws, teeth, and electricity. Like my grandpa used to say, don’t fight an electric bear.

[nShade]

God Hyenas are such nippy little bitches, dude. I've watched so many videos of like 20 hyenas surrounding Lions and trying to take them down/steal their kill. Nothing is more satisfying than watching a lone lion struggle vs hyenas and then out of the brush a big fucking single male or a pair of females come trotting onto the scene to answer the distress calls. 1 lion vs 20 hyena is bad news for the lions, 2 lions vs 20 hyenas is bad news for the hyenas.

Hyenas were definitely given cosmic karma for being such ruthless little pricks though. IIRC, they have one of the most horrific sounding birthing methods I've ever heard of. Pretty sure they give birth like a dude passing a kidney stone or something super fucked up. Honestly, I can't remember exactly, and I'm not going to look that up because all I remember was that I came away feeling uncomfortable about hyena love life.

But guys, I like talking about animals. Keep it going. Lets get an ex0 ramble in here about something.

Killer whale vs Humpback whale: Good animal fight, but even better is that this seems to be a real life, documented animal blood feud. There was a case where 2 humpback witnessed a pod of orcas attacking a gray whale and its baby. The baby was eventually killed, but just after it's death 14 more humpbacks had arrived on scene and a 6.5 hour standoff between the humpbacks and killer whales took place. Every time the killer whales would make an attempt to feed on the calf they had killed, the humpbacks would retaliate with force and drive them away. Eventually the killer whales left.

This isn't a lone incident either. There was another where it was believed humpbacks attempted to stand between two ocean sunfish and a pod of whales, though they ultimately failed. Overall there have been 100+ incidents of humpbacks showing up to disrupt killer whale hunts. For an animal that big, using that much time and energy for seemingly no benefit is a pretty crazy thing. Two theories are that 1) Humpbacks hold a grudge because killer whales feed upon them when they are young and many have been documented with scars mostly likely inflicted from killer whales. Basically, they were the small kid who got picked on and became a giant and now they want to hunt down the school bully. They believe the humpbacks are reacting to auditory sounds from killers whales and not so much aware of what they are coming to protect (so they just wanna fuck with killer whales basically). And 2) altruism.

[xV.Pa[N]da]

I’ve heard that coyotes have another interesting mechanism for survival which is that when they die they release pheromones that make the females produce more offspring. So they sort of make up for their losses. Interesting stuff.

[nShade]

Coyotes are amazing. I truly believe that they are one of the few species we won't be able to wipe out because they are simply too good at urbanizing.

Here in Michigan, well specifically the UP, we are still deeply buried in the wolf debate, but a HUGE HUGE HUGE part of that discussion that people seem to ignore is that there is a far bigger coyote problem. Coyote take a lot of young deer, and when wolves were removed from the equation back in the day guess who stepped up to take their niche? The coyote. Now, there use to be a 25-35$ bounty on coyote as a form of predator control, but that bounty went away in the late 80s/mid 90s and predator hunting/trapping has had a dramatic decline in participants...thus, massive coyote population. So, you reintroduce wolves and now you have 2 similar animals attempting to compete for the same spot. It actually ends up being a pretty complex debate and how Michigan DNR handles the deer population plays a major role in it as well.

And speaking of wolves. Are you guys familiar with Isle Royale National Park? It's the least visited national park. An island located in superior. Back in the day Superior use to freeze, and Moose and Wolves made their way over the years across an ice bridge. The island for years serves as this isolated place where scientist could watch basically pure wolf + moose interaction and how predator/prey relationship impacted the environment. Well, the ice bridges haven't been forming and the wolves numbers dropped to...one. There was a lot of talk on whether or not to let nature just run its course, which would be the island basically being eaten away by the moose and over run by the beaver. The moose would starve or make a swim for it. In the end they decided to start reintroducing wolves to the island. So far 1 wolf died during transport, and of the 2 they managed to place one died by unknown causes within 2 weeks. I believe they are planning to drop two more pretty soon. Anyway, it's an interesting thing to follow if you're into that sort of thing.

[bluedot]

Shade, I found a game you might love.

The Wolf: Online RPG Simulator

You get to play as animals in an RPG! I haven’t had too much time on it, so I can’t be sure, but we may be able to simulate Bear versus Gorilla. This could be the best thing in my life for the next week!

I have it on iPad, but it may be on other platforms, too.

[nShade]

I dunno man, my fox tail butt plug is one thing, but a mobile game? Seems weird.

I'll check it out! My phone is a piece of shit tho haha.