Many species of birds use shed snake skin in nest construction, but this behavior remains poorly understood. Ecological context is likely key for understanding how this unusual, but widespread, behavior evolved. We use comparative and experimental approaches to suggest that the evolution of this behavior is mediated by nest morphology and predator communities. First, we reviewed the literature and found that 78 species from 22 families have been reported to use shed snake skin in nest construction. All but one of these species are passerines and, using comparative analyses, we show that this behavior is disproportionately observed in cavity-nesting species. Second, we examined a subsample of North American species, all of which are reported to use snake skin in nest construction, to see whether the proportion of nests with snake skin differs between cavity- and open cup–nesting species. This analysis suggested that the proportion of nests with snake skin is roughly 6.5 times higher in cavity- than in open cup–nesting species. Finally, we used a series of experiments and comparisons to test four hypotheses whereby snake skin could award fitness benefits (nest predation, nest microbiotas, nest ectoparasites, social signaling) and found support for the predation hypothesis. Snake skin reduced nest predation in cavity, but not open cup, nests. These unequal fitness benefits highlight different ecological conditions between nest morphologies and likely explains why, across species, cavity-nesting birds show this behavior more frequently than open cup–nesting birds.
29 January 2025
Some birds protect their nests with snakeskin
"Shrimp fraud" in Gulf Coast cities
Restaurants throughout the Gulf Coast are serving imported shrimp but telling their customers they're feasting on fresh crustaceans fished in the Gulf of Mexico, a series of new studies found.SeaD Consulting, a food safety technology company, tested shrimp from randomly chosen restaurants in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Biloxi, Mississippi; Galveston, Texas; and Tampa Bay, Florida. Researchers found a significant number of the restaurants were passing off their shrimp as locally sourced, even though they were grown on foreign farms and imported to the U.S.The cities with the highest "shrimp fraud rate" were Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg, Florida, at 96%, according to SeaD Consulting. Only two of the 44 restaurants sampled were serving authentic shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico, a study found...The consulting company behind the research says the rampant misrepresentation hurts not only customers – who are put at higher risk of consuming tainted food – but also harms local fishermen struggling to compete with the low cost of imported shrimp from countries like India, Vietnam and Ecuador...Earlier this month, a new law went into effect in Louisiana requiring restaurants selling imported shrimp to include a notice on their menus telling customers the shrimp is imported and listing the country of origin. A similar law went into effect in Alabama in October.
An interesting specialized tool
"Thin yet heavy metal pen-shaped object with a removable clip. One end is ball-shaped (but no ink could possibly flow), and the other end has a fishing-line-type loop."
"It's a tool to remove foreign objects from your eye, used most often in welding and machine shops. The other end is a nylon loop that holds a drop or two of sterile water to attract non magnetic debris in the eye."Optometrist here. If you have a medical eye doctor nearby you can save the ER trip. I've removed a ton of these in office myself, and any ophthalmologist can. Just don't go to a lenscrafters or pearl vision etc. and expect anything beyond glasses/contacts."
26 January 2025
xoxoxoBruce has died
I am totally shocked. Bruce was just at my house on the 10th. He had just picked up his newly painted SSR. He spent a lot to fix it up but never got to enjoy it. It was done at my old shop.I just noticed that he texted me last Thursday the 17th, the day they said he past away, about coming up next week to fix some things on his truck.Man this is hard too take. π’He would send flowers to my wife every year on our anniversary saying what a mistake she made marrying me. He was such a jokester.Going to miss all his emails and conversations.RIP my friend π«π
"I was saddened to learn via TYWKIWDBI that Bruce, who contributed links to this blog for the past two decades, has died. We never met in person but over the years we communicated regularly. When I was travelling he would send extra links because he knew I would have less time to round up my own. He sent me homemade Christmas cards and never forgot my birthday. A few years ago I posted a story about the world’s smallest bar which is about an hour from where I live. He sent me a gift certificate for cocktails there. I have often written about my love of Scotland so last year he sent me a bottle of Arran Gold liqueur. I mentioned to Bruce that my dad was suffering from dementia but still enjoyed corny jokes. For many years Bruce sent me jokes to pass along to him. He also forwarded articles on antique firetrucks for my firefighter husband. I know he will be missed by the many friends he so easily made. I plan to pull out that bottle of Arran Gold and raise a toast to Bruce in front of the fire tonight."
"Bruce was a regular contributor to the comments section here, sent me links, and was a regular correspondent. I just received his Christmas card the other day, postmarked December 11th but for some reason it took more than a month to get here. Bruce was always ready with a joke, ready to be friends, and quite generous. Bruce helped keep me afloat a few years ago when I got laid off from Mental Floss and times were tough. I couldn't be more grateful."
25 January 2025
Humor for English majors
Queen Elizabeth was visiting sick children in a Scottish hospital, and after performing her planned duties, she wandered off to other parts of the hospital. Walking into an unidentified ward, she went up to a patient in bed and asked him how he was doing. He replied:Reposted because January 25 is Burns Night.
"O, my luve is like a red, red rose,Finding the response somewhat inappropriate she wished him good day and moved down the ward to a room where another man was sitting quietly. In response to her inquiry, he began singing:
That's newly sprung in June.
O, my luve is like the melodie,
That's sweetly played in tune....."
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,Somewhat baffled by this sequence of events she found a third room, where her greeting was met with:
And never brought to min' ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' lang syne ?"
"Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie,She gave up, and left the ward. On her way out, she encountered the head nurse. "Is this the psychiatric ward?" she asked.
O, what a panic's in thy breastie ...."
"No, your majesty," the nurse replied. "It's......the Burns unit."
24 January 2025
"Daughters"
The world's largest flower
Although Rafflesia is a vascular plant, it lacks any observable leaves, stems or even roots, and does not have chlorophyll. It lives as a holoparasite on vines of the genus Tetrastigma (most commonly Tetrastigma augustifolia). Similar to fungi, individuals grow as a mass of thread-like strands of tissue completely embedded within and in intimate contact with surrounding host cells from which nutrients and water are obtained. It can only be seen outside the host plant when it is ready to reproduce; the only part of Rafflesia that is identifiable as distinctly plant-like are the flowers, though even these are unusual since they attain massive proportions, have a reddish-brown colouration, and stink of rotting flesh. According to Sandved, the flower opens with a hissing sound.The flower of Rafflesia arnoldii grows to a diameter of around one meter (3.3 feet), weighing up to 11 kilograms (24 lb)...ecotourism [note the photo] is thought to be a main threat to the species. At locations which are regularly visited by tourists the number of flower buds produced per year has decreased.
Speaking truth to power
Following the sermon, the president attacked Budde online, labelling her a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” in a lengthy social media post early on Wednesday. He argued that she had “brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way” and described her tone as “nasty”.Trump characterized the service as “boring” and “uninspiring”, and asserted that Budde and her church “owe the public an apology.”
Trump's allies joined in the criticism -
The Georgia representative Mike Collins suggested on social media that Budde “should be added to the deportation list”, while the Fox News host Sean Hannity called her a “so-called Bishop” who turned the service into a “woke tirade” and described her prayer “disgraceful” and filled with “fearmongering and division”.
Budde said an interview with the New York Times that she felt her sermon offered a “perspective that wasn’t getting a lot of airtime right now” and a perspective of Christianity “that has been kind of muted in the public arena”.“I wasn’t demanding anything of him. I was pleading with him, like, can you see the humanity of these people?
22 January 2025
A person leaves a nickel on their balcony...
I could be totally overthinking this. I have a small balcony facing a small wood. I have a few birdefeeders and I get all kinds of birds everyday. Basically, is it possible one of them pecked this perfect circle into my nickel?I left it out there one day after seeing my first crow. That was a couple weeks ago and it didn't move at all til just a few days ago. I thought it may have been frozen to the deck. Eventually it had been moved and I noticed this hole! The back side seems to have the metal still present and folded over, I thought that might help confirm what had happened here. Anyone know how easily a bird could do this? Thanks!
"A bird would not do that but it’s possible it took your nickel away and brought back another that it found. I would continue to experiment."
Other replies:
"My crows brought me a bullet casing and a child’s Jack among other things they love shiny!""I had a murder of crows I left roasted peanuts (unsalted) and nickels out for. The nickels disappeared and one time, there was a very shiny dime and a silver gum wrapper in the spot where I fed them! Prized possessions.""The Xmas tree fell a few years ago, and the string of beads broke. Wife had the brilliant idea to put them and peanuts in a flower pot hung from a tree limb. The crows rolled in. I get gifts almost daily. Glasses, coins, beads, metal shot glasses, a car key to a jeep wrangler, dog tags, a medical alert bracelet, silver crosses, necklaces. They hang out to see my reaction. They harass the crap out of the local hawks, who think they want one of our chickens. And, I might give them leftover hotdogs when I'm grilling."
"Teen Paranormal Romance"
When I initially encountered this, I dismissed it as rubbish, but based on a comment by a reader of this blog I've looked into it further and discovered that this may be a case where I jumped to a conclusion too quickly (a not-uncommon occurrence when blogging rapidly).
The category is explained in some detail at Wikipedia:
A type of speculative fiction, paranormal romance focuses on romance and includes elements beyond the range of scientific explanation, blending together themes from the genres of traditional fantasy, science fiction, or horror. Paranormal romance may range from traditional category romances, such as those published by Harlequin Mills & Boon, with a paranormal setting to stories where the main emphasis is on a science fiction or fantasy based plot with a romantic subplot included. Common hallmarks are romantic relationships between humans and vampires, shapeshifters, ghosts, and other entities of a fantastic or otherworldly nature.Romance is not my cup of tea, but since I am a science fiction fan, I need to give this category its due. For a deeper discussion of the genre from the viewpoint of someone in the publishing business, see "What is Paranormal Romance?" (pdf).
Beyond the more prevalent themes involving vampires, shapeshifters, ghosts, or time travel, paranormal romances can also include books featuring characters with psychic abilities, like telekinesis or telepathy.
Paranormal romance has its roots in Gothic fiction.
A few paranormals are set solely in the past and are structured much like any historical romance novel. Others are set in the future, sometimes on different worlds. Still others have a time-travel element with either the hero or the heroine traveling into the past or the future...
Thanks for the heads-up, Kirsten.
Fans rush for hotly anticipated fantasy book sequelFans have queued up for Onyx Storm, the hotly anticipated new book by best-selling US fantasy author Rebecca Yarros, in one of the publishing events of the year."Onyx Storm is the third novel in Yarros's Empyrean series, set in a world of dragons, magic, warfare and steamy romance... In the US, some avid readers waited until 3am for the online release of an exclusive special edition from Target - but many who had stayed up complained on social media that the store's website couldn't cope with the demand...In anticipation of Onyx Storm's release, the first two Empyrean books, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, went back to the top two slots in the New York Times fiction bestsellers list...
20 January 2025
President Eisenhower's farewell address (1961)
Wikipedia summary.
Best known for his precient comments on the military-industrial complex, the speech also cautions against mortgaging the future of our grandchildren for immediate gains:
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.Fulltext here.
Related: His Republican administration imposed a 91% marginal tax rate on millionaires, and in 1963 he opined that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unnecessary.
Amazing science fact of the day: aquaporins
Further investigation showed this expansion happens as a natural part of the plankton’s cell cycle. Once a single-celled plankton divides into two, an internal structure called a vacuole, a kind of flexible water tank, filters in fresh water, causing the two new cells to massively grow in size. These two daughter cells, now swelled with the lighter freshwater, sail upward. “What we realized is that this is a very clever way to essentially slingshot in the ocean during cell division,” Prakash says. “So, what happens during normal time? You’re making a lot of proteins, you have tons of sunlight, and you make a lot of biomass until you get heavier and you sink. Then, you do cell division in the deeper waters and use inflation to get back to the size of the mother.”
Who makes up etiquette rules ?
"The only correct way to butter and eat your bread is to:Using a knife, put a bit of butter on the side of your bread plate first;Then, tear off one bite-sized piece of bread at a time and butter that piece only, right before putting it into your mouth.Many people make the mistake of buttering the whole slice of bread and then biting into the slice."
"Touch" (2024 Icelandic film)
"Based on the Icelandic best-selling novel by Γlafur JΓ³hann Γlafsson, Touch is a romantic story that spans several decades and continents. Touch follows one widower’s emotional journey to find his first love who disappeared 50 years ago, before his time runs out."
18 January 2025
Word for the day: steezy
"A snowboarder term that combines the word "style" with "ease" to create the act of doing a trick with style and ease to make it done with super steez. A rider with steez, such as myself, would be referred to as "steezy" whether it be because of his/her sick tricks, gangster apparel, or watevs."
17 January 2025
"Invisible second patients"
"Not long after his wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, Tom Lee picked up a book on caregiving, one of the many he’d devour in those early, frightening weeks, when the future felt suddenly impossible to imagine. Amid all the information and advice, he read a line that stopped him cold. “It said, make sure you take care of yourself, and leave at least 15 minutes to yourself every day,” he remembers. “I thought, 15 minutes? Are you kidding me? That’s not even enough time to open a book. When I read that, I really started to wonder what I was in for.”He first noticed something was wrong in 2017, when Antoinette was 69. She started repeating questions and sometimes struggled to grasp complex ideas. For years, she’d done the couple’s taxes, but that fall, for the first time, she had trouble with the calculations. “I sat down with her, and we went over it a dozen times,” Lee says. “And she just couldn’t get it.” By the following summer, they had a diagnosis.Six and a half years later, she is in what doctors refer to as mid-stage Alzheimer’s. “That’s when things start to really fall apart,” he says. Patients begin forgetting who they are and where they live. They become moody, withdrawn, combative. As their sleep and circadian rhythms unravel, patients sometimes stay up all night, requiring their caregivers to stay up, too. Routine tasks such as getting dressed become difficult without help, and speech gets more confused. “Toni went through a period where about two-thirds of her words were uninterpretable,” Lee says. “They were words she made up, and she would rhyme things as she spoke.” These days, almost nothing she says makes sense. “You ask her if she’s hungry, and ‘no’ could very well mean ‘yes.’” This middle period is also when patients begin to wander, or fall. One day last summer, Antoinette walked away while Lee was out watering tomatoes in the garden. He found her a quarter-mile down the road, talking to a neighbor’s mailbox.“As a caregiver, you watch bit by bit as your time slips away,” he says, “and then one day you look up and realize that things you once took for granted, like finding an hour to read or listen to music or go for a run—all that’s gone. You become totally absorbed in caring for this person, making sure they are safe and secure and that their basic human needs are met.”Across the country, there are more than 11 million people like Tom Lee: unpaid caregivers for someone with dementia. Usually, that someone is a family member or a loved one—the burden falls disproportionately on women—and the majority of caregivers spend one to three years in that role. Often they spend many more.They are all part of an accelerating crisis. Nearly seven million Americans over 65 have Alzheimer’s, the most common cause of dementia. As the population ages, that number is growing—to a projected 13 million by 2050...
Your living room couch is like a "block of gasoline"
Plastic is made from petroleum, and petroleum burns fast and hot. A retired Maryland state fire marshal told Newsweek that, from a fire perspective, a typical couch is akin to a block of gasoline...
In 2020, the Fire Safety Research Institute set two living rooms on fire, on purpose. Both were identical in size and full of furnishings in an identical arrangement. But in one room, almost everything was synthetic: a polyurethane-foam sofa covered in polyester fabric sat behind an engineered-wood coffee table, both set on a polyolefin carpet. The curtains were polyester, and a polyester throw blanket was draped on the couch. In the other room, a wood sofa with cotton cushions sat on a hardwood floor, along with a solid-wood coffee table. The curtains and throw blanket were cotton. In the natural-material room, the cotton couch appeared to light easily, and then maintained a steady flame where it was lit, releasing little smoke. After 26 minutes, the flames had spread to the other side of the couch, but the rest of the room was still intact, if smoky. Meanwhile, in the synthetic room, a thick dark smoke rose out of the flame on the polyester couch. At just under five minutes, a flash of orange flame consumed the whole room all at once. “Flashover,” firefighters call it—when escape becomes impossible. In the natural-material room, flashover took longer than 30 minutes. Perhaps that difference helps explain why, although the rate of home fires in the U.S. has more than halved since 1980, more people are dying in their homes when they do catch fire.
15 January 2025
"Gated reverb" explained
13 January 2025
Why does this exist ? - updated with some answers
The one at Target is a glue-on, like a PopSocket. I found an article at Vox that discusses the trend in lip gloss:
By all accounts, it seems like lip products have become more than just cheap, everyday essentials to mindlessly throw into your purse. In the post-pandemic era, where our mouths are unmasked most of the time, they’ve evolved into miniature status symbols for influencers and casual “makeup girlies” alike...Lee notes another important selling point for lip augmentations: “Fuller lips are not only a feature of beauty; they’re also a sign of youth.”... Right now, Gen Z seems to be experiencing a collective crisis over looking old, which has resulted in an interest in so-called anti-aging skincare for many tweens. That said, it’s not a surprise that young people are running to lip products that offer color and a sheen but promise dermatological benefits...Aside from the skincare aspect, there seems to be excitement among people on social media who collect these lip products in large numbers. MacKenzi Nelson, art director at beauty PR company Helen + Gertrude, says this current hoarding of lip gloss represents a pre-existing consumer trend....Additionally, Nelson says that the “sensory” element of these products has a lot to do with their popularity, as they provide “a moment of ritualistic self-care, comfort, and play.” Li agrees with this sentiment, stating that the lip products are “definitely habit-forming.”...Other brands, like Topicals, include their lip glosses alongside other items you would find in a wealthy person’s bag, like a Louis Vuitton wallet and a roll of cash, on their Instagram... Chanel’s foundation can range from $55 to almost $80, while its Rouge Coco Gloss retails at $40. Non-drugstore but not-exactly high-end brands like Rhode and Summer Fridays offer lip balms and oils are under $30...In a moment of economic downturn and general doom about the world, it’s comforting to know that we can impulsively spend money on the latest it-girl item and delight in the same vain activities as Kylie Jenner or Hailey Bieber.
12 January 2025
Denmark's coat of arms includes an elephant
The Danish king has shocked some historians by changing the royal coat of arms to more prominently feature Greenland and the Faroe Islands – in what has also been seen as a rebuke to Donald Trump.Less than a year since succeeding his mother, Queen Margrethe, after she stood down on New Year’s Eve 2023, King Frederik has made a clear statement of intent to keep the autonomous Danish territory and former colony within the kingdom of Denmark.For 500 years, previous Danish royal coats of arms have featured three crowns, the symbol of the Kalmar Union between Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which was led from Denmark between 1397 and 1523. They are also an important symbol of its neighbour Sweden.But in the updated version, the crowns have been removed and replaced with a more prominent polar bear [upper blue arrow] and ram than previously, to symbolise Greenland and the Faroe Islands respectively.
The Order of the Elephant (Danish: Elefantordenen) is a Danish order of chivalry and is Denmark's highest-ranked honour. It has origins in the 15th century, but has officially existed since 1693, and since the establishment of constitutional monarchy in 1849, is now almost exclusively used to honour royalty and heads of state.
The elephant and castle design derives from the howdah, a carriage that is mounted in the back of an elephant. This type of carriage was mostly utilized in the Indian subcontinent, and the Danish knew about and thus had the ability to adopt this design since they ruled certain parts of India as part of their small colonial empire. The unfamiliar Indian howdah has been replaced in this instance by a familiar European castle, although the Indian rider has been kept on the elephant.
46,000 years old... and alive
Organisms from diverse taxonomic groups can survive extreme environmental conditions, such as the complete absence of water or oxygen, high temperature, freezing, or extreme salinity. The survival strategies of such organisms include a state known as suspended animation or cryptobiosis, in which they reduce metabolism to an undetectable level. Spectacular examples of long-term cryptobiosis include a Bacillus spore that was preserved in the abdomen of bees buried in amber for 25 to 40 million years, and a 1000 to 1500 years-old Lotus seed, found in an ancient lake, that was subsequently able to germinate. Metazoans such as tardigrades, rotifers, and nematodes are also known for remaining in cryptobiosis for prolonged periods. The longest records of cryptobiosis in nematodes are reported for the Antarctic species Plectus murrayi (25.5 years in moss frozen at -20°C), and Tylenchus polyhypnus (39 years desiccated in an herbarium specimen).
In summary, our findings indicate that by adapting to survive cryptobiotic state for short time frames in environments like permafrost, some nematode species gained the potential for individual worms to remain in the state for geological timeframes. This raises the question of whether there is an upper limit to the length of time an individual can remain in the cryptobiotic state. Long timespans may be limited only by drastic changes to the environment such as strong fluctuations in ambient temperature, natural radioactivity, or other abiotic factors. These findings have implications for our understanding of evolutionary processes, as generation times may be stretched from days to millennia, and long-term survival of individuals of species can lead to the refoundation of otherwise extinct lineages. This is particularly interesting in the case of parthenogenetic species, as each individual can find a new population without the need for mate finding, i.e. evading the cost of sex. Finally, understanding the precise mechanisms of long-term cryptobiosis and cues that lead to successful revivals can inform new methods for long term storage of cells and tissues.
10 January 2025
The movies of 2024
07 January 2025
Phrazle is a variant of Wordle
It is not necessary that your entry be an actual phrase, so in a long mystery phrase one has the opportunity to test a good proportion of the commonly-used letters -
Note that if you solve one of the words on the first try but don't know the whole phrase, you can use that space to test out other letters (see above). Sometimes solving one word will reveal the answer, as in this case where the second word had to be "thick" -
The hardest one I have encountered was "Butterflies in my stomach" because only 11-letter words could be entered in the first spaces and I don't have a lot of those in my head.
05 January 2025
Carl Sagan's foreboding (29 years ago)
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
-- The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Random House, 1996
Reposted from last year because it's so damn accurate and needs to be read more widely.
03 January 2025
Surprisingly valuable collectible coin
Food for bears
Biologists estimate about 200 [grizzly] bears each year feast on moths in the eastern portion of the carnivores’ range. Each gram of moth offers bears about eight calories, which means some bears will eat up to 40,000 a day.“A bear could, in about a month’s time, get one-third of the calories they need to build up fat for hibernation at these moth sites,” says Frank van Manen, leader of the interagency grizzly bear study team with the US Geological Survey...At a time when other food sources, such as whitebark pine nuts and cutthroat trout, have been hit by global heating, disease and invasive species, the army cutworm moth population has remained remarkably stable, making it a critical ingredient in the grizzly bears’ continued recovery in the US...Researchers believe the army cutworm moth population remains healthy, and because they arrive from many locations as far east as the Missouri River and as far north as the Northwest Territories, no localized issue, such as pesticide use or flooding, can crash their populations..."
"Grizzly bears are mostly vegan"
Before Europeans arrived on the West Coast in 1542, the bears thrived on diets that were roughly 90 percent vegan, as Alagona and his colleagues found in a study published this week. (The typical modern American, meanwhile, derives about a third of their daily calories from animal-based foods.) In the decades after colonizers began to introduce new settlements and animals to the West Coast, the bears probably did start eating more meat. And humans were likely the ones to blame.California grizzlies, like most other brown bears, were never averse to eating meat. Chemical signatures in the skulls, teeth, and pelts of museum specimens, analyzed by Alagona and his colleagues, reveal that land animals made up just under 10 percent of the bears’ diet, even in the precolonial era—on par with the tastes of grizzlies elsewhere. (Marine meat made up less than 2 percent of the menus of the bears sampled.) And if modern brown-bear habits are any indication, what land animals the grizzlies were eating were probably mostly small, sluggish, newborn, or already dead. Grizzlies, for all their heft and roar, are kind of crummy hunters. “By and large, they’re just too slow,” Garth Mowat, a bear biologist at the University of British Columbia, told me.Then, European colonists made meat-eating much, much easier—and perhaps more necessary. Livestock proliferated around California, many of them untended and unfenced. Indigenous populations dipped, which likely led to a bump in some wild-animal populations, Alagona told me. Swelling settlements thinned woodlands and pared back grasslands, potentially chipping away at the bears’ vegetarian menus. By the early 17th century, California grizzlies were probably eating quite a bit more meat—as Alagona’s team found, maybe nearly triple what they were consuming before.