Let's Learn Everything!

Today we're rebroadcasting our appearance on Just the Zoo of Us as we prepare for an episode coming NEXT week for the MaxFunDrive!  On this episode we combine our shows formats to bring you a full Topic, Question, and misc, all about one of the most misunderstood, intelligent, and rascally animals: the rat!

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Is it really possible to bring back the Dodo, and what even really happened in the first place?  Are there any games left that humans can beat computers at, and why might that be okay?  And what can art forgery tell us about art and the art world?

Images/Videos we Mention:
The TinkerToy Tic Tac Toe Computer
The Rock Paper Scissors Robot

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We also learn about: 

The Cherished Dodo, tinction, what does a dodo taste i mean look like, dodo art telephone, only 1 full skeleton, actualy lots of things die this way, invasive species also killed the dodo, Alice in Wonderland’s trendsetting the Dodo, Caroline’s clearly a Dodo person, Dodo DNA, Jurassic Park was a Documentary, I hope to die in a funny way, bringing the Bucardo back, the first De-extinction, and the first Double Extinction, DNA vaults, the nicobar pigeon, Cloacas are “Fun” according to Ella, let’s reintroduce the Dodos too why not, “bring a little bit of magic back to the mauritious”, ancient egyptian tic tac toe, the Shannon Number, The Mechanical Turk, TuroChamp, Chess was the Drosophila of AI, bad AI predictions, Deep Blue vs Kasparov, The Googolplex of Go games, Dr Fill the Crowssword AI, 100% Rock Papers Scissor Win Rate, Poker AI, this really cool game called Superluminauts, what’s “unfair” in AI? the power of art comes from yourself, the art of forgery, Han van Meegeren, Dodo in Gearl with a Pearl Earring we all make the same dumb joke, new Vermeer, don’t arrest me it’s just a forgery, there could still be Elmyr de Hory forgeries, F is for Fake, “if my work hangs in a museum long enough, it becomes real”, Tom makes a totally normal and not embaressing mixup of Van Gogh and DaVinci, how to spot a forgery, carbon dating forgeries, just look at it closely, identifying craquelure, mass spectrometry, so much of this is just about money, Salvator Mundi Ship of Theseus, were these reviews forged? Go check! the laughing people

Sources:

Sources:

NHM: Dodo De-Extinction Announcement Causes Debate

NatGeo: The Dodo is Dead! Long Live the Dodo

Smithsonian: Article on Colossal Biosciences

Colossal Biosciences: The Dodo

Nature: What Would it Take to Bring Back the Dodo

The Atlantic: Article on the Dodo

NatGeo: First Extinct Clone Created

NHM: Frozen Banks

TedTalk: De-Extinction

Britannica: Gene Editing

Video on CRISPR

Revive and Restore Website

MIT: The Plan to Bring Back the Passenger Pigeon

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The TinkerToy Tic Tac Toe Computer

The Shannon Number

TuroChamp Chess AI

Newell & Simon AI Predictions

NYTimes Deep Blue Predictions

Kasparov on Deep Blue

A GoogolPlex of Go Games

Dr Fill Crossword AI

Rock Paper Scissors Robot

Poker AI

Starcraft AI

AI Survey

Angry Birds AI Paper

Another Angry Birds AI Paper

Angry Birds AI Competition

AI Birds Competition Blog

Chess.com 100 Million Users

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Authenticity and Viewing Art Study

Intent to Deceive

Detecting Art Forgery

Detecting Art Forgery 2

Art Forgery Detective

Forgers Reveal Secrets of Paintings

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Is psychology doomed, or could the reproducibility crisis a good thing?  How many senses do we really have?  And what's the history behind all the pride flags you see?

Check out:
Maintenance Phase's Episode on Brian Wansink's Downfall
Strange Aeons (on My Immortal Authors)

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We also learn about: 

We’re already learning! god i hate the stanford prison experiment, the four horsemen of the reproducibility crisis, the file drawer effect, honestly this horseman sounds like capitalism, what if we stopped saying “statistically significant”, Brian Wansink’s food studies and The Grad Student Who Never Said “No”, Brian this is a joke right? P-hacking the topic itself, failure to replicate isn’t the end of the world, “I Read ALL 100 Replications”, differences between the social and biological sciences, D.A.R.E for science! pre-registering a meta-analysis on pre-registration, the many good horses that work against the apocalypse, my eyes are named Dex and Sid, gustation, grilling my friends about guessing the 5 flavors, taste subclasses, touching our fingers together for half an hour, different receptors for light and hard touch, referred pain, feeling temperature in our bones, we have more cold receptors than heat, don’t test proprioception if you’re driving, it’s 10 o clock do you know where your limbs are?, the real sixth sense, losing proprioception, interoception, the holiday paradox, animal senses, ancient Egypt invented the rainbow flag, the RGB values of flags, Gilbert Baker, Harvey Milk “we needed something beautiful, something from us”, volunteers coming together to construct the first flag, oh they couldn’t just amazon a flag they had to make it, the pink is just impractical guys, the mile long flag, the Philadelphia Eagles Pride Flag, one flag to rule them all, lavender menaces, lesbian flag losing its lips.

Sources:

Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science
Nature Survey on Reproducibility Crisis
The Four Horsemen of Irreproducibility
Vox on Replication Crisis
Wansink's Blog Post
The Cut on Wansink's Downfall
Arstechnica on Wansink
Spurious Correlations
Analysis of Wansink's Errors
Gelman & Loken on P-Hacking
Science Reaction to Psychology Replication Study
Open Science Foundation Data for 100 Replications
Science on Preregistration
Nature Analysis on Pre-registration
Science on Retraction Watch
Lessons from Retraction Watch
Retraction Watch's Earliest Retraction
Meta Analysis of the Retraction Penalty
Kurzgesagt Retractions
APA Teachable Moments from the Replication Crisis

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Kokumi
Taste Buds
The Man Who Lost His Body
Thermoreceptors
Referred Pain
Why Does Time Seem to Speed Up with Age?
The Emerging Science of Interoception
Alexithymia
Hygroroception
The Weirdest Senses Animals Have That You Don't

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Stradley Ronon: Evolution of the Pride Flag
Britannica: The Rainbow Flag
BBC Culture: History of the Rainbow Flag
Gilbert Baker's Website
The Harvey Milk Online Biography
Insersex Inclusive Pride Flag
Progress Pride Flag
NCYLGBTSites: Lavendar Menace
Biangles - Liz Nania
Biscuit: Bi Flag Histroy 
Strange Æons: History of the Lesbian Flag
Heckin Unicorn: The Gay Man Flag
UONC: Other Pride Flags

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Is immortality possible in humans or other animals?  What was on Earth before trees?  And what can we learn from emoji?🤔

Things we talk about:

The First Emoticons

Kurita's Emojis

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We also learn about: 

Halloween in January, stories of immortality, the epic of gilgamesh, MR BEAST GRANTS IMMORTALITY IF YOU STAY UP FOR 6 DAYS, the first story of facing AND accepting mortality, teen alexander the immortal, shooting down 9 suns, making your own immortality serum, spoiler alert we don’t find immortality in this topic, the first blood transfusion, oh nevermind not really, testicle rejuvination solves all problems, how do we die? programmed death and antagonistic pliotropy, accumulating insurmountable damage, the Hayflick Limit, shoe telomeres, four nobel laureates behind atlos labs (aaaand also jeff bezos), we’ve never recorded a naked mole rat dying from old age, transdifferentiation in the immortal jellyfish, surprise immortality! the slow and old greenland shark, having to go through puberty and pay taxes is not worth immortality, “I sort of like that the animals are winning, and we haven’t quite got there yet”, you’d make a great tree, Caroline makes us define a tree, trees are “a human concept based on visual criteria”, NOTHING EXISTS, trees put oxygen in the atmosph- wait no that was algae, Caroline wants our bewilderment and fear in the questions, the Cambrian explosion, fossils of a tree fight, sharks are older than trees, what are these spires of life, cockroach t-rex, it really is the second Halloween episode, lovecraftian Earth, letters are pictures, emojis are language, our most used emojis, emoticons, codepoints, the first emoji, standarized emoji, no more flag emojis, people assume the internet keeps records of itself.

Sources:

Royal Forestry Society Tree Definition
Encyclopedia Britannica Tree Definition
Natrual History Museum First Trees
World's First Tree Reconstructed
Giant cladoxylopsid trees resolve the enigma of the Earth’s earliest forest stumps at Gilboa, Stein et al, 2007 (Paper)
Timeline: The evolution of life
Smithsonian Magazine: The Top 10 Greatest Survivors of Evolution
Live Science: Prehistoric Mystery Organism a Humongous Fungus
Rotted wood–alga–fungus: the history and life of Prototaxites Dawson, Hueber 2001 (Paper)
Smithsonian Magazine: Giant Mushrooms

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Nineveh
The Eternal Life of Gilgamesh
The Search for Immortality
History of the First Blood Transfusion
Serge Voronoff
The Long and Gruesome Hstory of People Trying to Live Forever
Theories of Ageing
What Is Antagonistic Pleiotropy?
Evolution and the Biology of Aging
DNA damage—how and why we age?
Hayflick limit
Telomeres
2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Naked Mole Rats
Greenland Sharks
Immortal Jellyfish

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Unicode Emoji Stats
Lauren Schwartzberg's The Oral History of the Poop Emoji
Swiftkey Regional Emoji Data
Emojipedia Stats
Early Emoticons
Unicode's Emoji Principles
Unicode's Stance on New Flag Emojis
Correcting the Record on the First Emoji Set

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What's the story of how we successfully saved the ozone?  Why and how can owls turn their heads around, and who else can?  And can Ella convert Tom to the wonder that is Eurovision?

Listen to Ella's Full Eurovision Playlist

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We also learn about: defining ozone, not wrong but not right, the ozone layer is miles thick and not full of ozone, the sun is a deadly laser, tom feels stupid about the ozone, accidentally finding out about the ozone layer depleting, the dobson ozone spectrophotometer, “being an ignorant physicist”, this is why we monitor things, we need more metaphors actually, CFCs and HCFCs, the impact of humans on the planet, WARNING: MAY CAUSE DEATH FOR ALL FUTURE HUMANS, wait legal proceedings were slow??? supersonic flights between france and the UK only, you’re doing colonialism on US ACTUALLY, 198 parties ratified the Montreal Protocol, early action is important, why don’t we talk about this enough!!! thank your local environmental researcher today, owl 360 no scope, side-eyed Tom, pigeon slander, side and front facing, owls don’t have eyeballs, cone of death, I love it when there’s a but, the guiness book of world records is dumb, breaking the rule of 7, why hang upside down, the first Eurovision was formal, no english songs allowed, the big 5, bicameral voting, Britain’s losing streak, “nobody hates the british entry more than the british”, international politics and Eurovision, it’s like We Didn’t Start the Fire,  “what else would we sing about”, it’s always been political, Ella’s favorite entries, Abba surprises Tom, how eurovision changes with the times, from ballrooms to tiktok, our future plugs.

Sources:

National Geographic: Ozone Layer 
EPA: Basic Ozone Layer Science 
UNEP: Ozone and You
J. C. Farman, B. G. Gardiner & J. D. Shanklin, 1985 (Paper)
The Evolution of Policy Responses to Stratospheric Ozone Depletion (1989 Paper)
The Impact of High Altitude Aircraft on the Ozone Layer in the Stratosphere (1994 Paper)
Impacts of a Near-Future Supersonic Aircraft fleet on atmospheric composition and climate (2022 Paper)
The Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer
The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer
UN - The Climate Crisis

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Krings et al Owl Neck Rotation & Anatomy
McGill on Owl Eyeballs
Owl Eye Mobility
Human Eye Mobility
Kok-Mercado & Gailloud Poster on Blood Flow Adaptations
NatGeo on Owl Head Turns
Guiness World Record for Mammal Head Rotation
Buchholtz & Stepien Sloth Spine Paper
Sloth Conservation Foundation on Why Sloths Hang
Study on Sloth Muscles
Becky Cliffe on Sloth Evolution

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Ella's Excellent Eurovision Playlist
The Weird and Wonderful Hisotry of the Eurovision Song Contest
More History
An Actual Academic Paper On Eurovision Voting
Toward Data Science: Eurovision Voting Blocs
Armenia–Azerbaijan Relations in the Eurovision Song Contest
Eurovision During the Bosnian War
Carnation Revolution

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To round out the year we learn about the most interesting thing: each other!  We talk about the process of researching and writing an episode, future sciences and science fiction, and laugh and cry reflecting on our favorite things from 2022. 

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We also learn about: our favorite topics, this is why we don’t do topics on colors, topic lists, science ruining movies, science is just a job, anything goes as long as you don’t explain it to me, hacking the mainframe, the one flaw in the big bang theory, how do we research and when is it done? asking yourself questions, researching vs writing, research wormholes and topic duds, Caroline’s natural defense colors, London and NYC recommendations, religion and science, dealing with burnout, defeating Ella in battle, how we record, our Hollywood writers room, start a podcast if only to try, MUNA and Stromae and AJR, our favorite things this year, Everything Everywhere and Elf, Fortnite and Pokemon, Our Flag Means Death and Succession and Fleabag and Craig of the Creek and Dragula, Yotsuba, Two Headed Calf, making ourselves cry, Scoob & Shag, pandan and coke zero, our favorite pokemon, I am displeased with your lack of brevity, how each of us takes over the world, our personal take and our interest is more important than topic overlap, futue sciences, the birth of a topic, projected to finish everything soon so we can stop talking to each other, asmr speedrunning, today's topic is this pad of sticky notes, our podcast spotify wrapped, what we’re looking forward to (Breath of the Wild 2), really dumb content.

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On a very special holiday episode, Tom, Caroline, and Ella give the gift of learning!  We've wrapped up our favorite fun facts to give to each other, and even gotten a few presents from some special guests!

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We also learn about: the the gin craze, no free gin advertisements, gin street and beer street, wrapping paper foley work, pumpkin toadlet balance, silly UK laws, yeah and maybebeallowedtoshootacrossbowatacathedral, keep your kite flying private, kite footloose, beached whales for the queen, suspicious salmon makes sense, honey tummys, more grenades on mars by 2025, dinosaur time breaks caroline’s brain, hey these brussels sprouts aren’t bad now, brussels sprouts hipsters, Britain’s dedicated tv popularity analyst, tom regifts a fun fact, and now I’m thinking about animal genitals, Cotesia and Drosophala: like a good cheese and a fine wine.

Vine Pair: The Gin Craze
History: The Gin Craze
William Hogarth’s Beer Street and Gin Lane
Smithsonian Magazine: Pumpkin Toadlet
Semicircular canal size constrains vestibular function in miniaturized frogs
Insect Orientation: Stay on Course with the Sun
NIH: Vestibular System
Wright Brothers Flight
Odd laws you may unknowingly break
Legislation.org: Salmon Act 1986
Bee Bubbling
Human Objects on Mars
Why it's Hard to Land on Mars
Perseverance's 10 Million Names
Phoenix Lander Mini DVD
Wright Flyer Cloth on Mars
Tyrannosaurus Rex
Stegosaurus
The Brussel Sprouts Renaissance
TV Pickup
TV Pickup Quotes
The Length of a Short Sperm

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What is the science of scientific naming, and could it actually be life saving?  How many cells are in a human body, and why is it important to know?  And how exactly did the British Museum... "acquire" all these artifacts?

Watch Tom's PowerPoint Comedy Show!

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We also learn about: what does tom smell like? naming is hard for computer science, naming is a science, reading 12 million paper titles by hand, single use acronyms, polynomial naming, Ranunculus mother of dragons, the dino hip mixup, smooth transitions, the fermium wars, we all know what happened to element 102, berkelium californium americium, should we name elements after living people, Ella is the only true Swiftie, half of all exoplanets are named Kepler, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now, why? she’s a millipede, Ella will get an answer, humans have 1 cell technically, c elegans has exactly 1031 cells, don’t embarrass yourself by saying how many cells are in a mouse, we enter the wheels and doors debate, Ella sperm fact rick rolls us, the number of kinds of cells, tom is bad at math, every time a scientist questions a number an angel gets its wings, Livers Georg, Ella is heartbroken we don’t have a number, what’s the point of counting cells? the British Museum keeps 99% of things in the disney vault, offering a replica of the rosetta stone instead, Britain legally cannot return items without government approval, all the stuff we never knew about Moai statues, what does queen Victoria need with a Moai statue, her majesty declares finders keepers, actualy these stolen things mean as much to Britain now, most Britains want the items returned, there is so much to learn from this!

Sources:

Judith Winston's Review of Binomial Nomenclature
The Growth of Acronyms in the Scientific Literature
The Long and Short of Abbreviations (UA Medical Acronym)
Dinosaur Hip Naming Mixup
How Many Named Species are Valid?
Review of the Transfermium Wars
IUPAC 1994 Naming Decision
Naming Exoplanets
A Flu by Any Other Name
Nature on WHO Naming
Taylor Swift's Millipede

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Number of Bacteria In Your Body
Sperm
Types Of Cells In The Human Body
An Estimation Of The Number Of Cells In The Human Body

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Human Remains in the British Museum
British Museum: Rosetta Stone
British Museum: Moai of rapa Nui (Easter Island Statues)
CNN: British Museum Discusses fate of Easter Island Statues
British Museum: Benin Bronzes
The Guardian: British museum ‘Has Head in sand’ Over Return of Artefacts
British Museum: The Parthenon Sculptures
British Museum: Maqdala Collection
YouGuv: Should Britain Return Historical Artefacts to Their Country of Origin?
Culture war: the case against repatriating museum artifacts
NYT: Investigators, Citing Looting, Have Seized 27 Antiques From the Met
CNN: Manhattan DA returns 58 antiquities to Italy, including 21 seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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How can you study a brain without a brain?  In what ways is a cat actually like a liquid?  And why do we say The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread?

Images we Discuss:

Rat Brain

Cats Sitting in Things

Bread Crumbs

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Watch the SciShow Episode Ella Wrote!

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We also learn about: brains are complex and hard to access, organoids, organettes, organittos, induced pluripotent stem cells are cool, Madeline Lancaster, DNA is amazing, scientific serendipity, try to make a brain and accidentally make a heart, human neurons in rat brains, ethical concerns, that does not make Caroline feel better, brain-on-a-chip, dish brain, great words, Pong, sentience, liquid cats, solid cats, gas cats, Slime, Ig Nobel, first make you laugh then make you think, atoms, God made cats a solid so you can pet them, mountains flow, Ella does not, the joy of the surface, scientists communicating science well, bread was invented in 1954, bread archaeology, cooking is a kind of fossilization, archaeobotanist, that’s what it means to specialize in bread, throwing it all into the bread business, SLICED BREAD IS MADE HERE, sound, sensible, and a progressive refinement, bread innovation, twin style bread, Caroline is not a world leader in bread innovation, a delicious stick of butter, idioms, a manifestation of the peculiar, irreversible binomial, to sell something for a song, don’t shit in the blue cupboard, the burnt bread crumbs of language.

Sources:

First Brain Organoids Paper
Stem Cells @ Lunch Digested Podcast
The Use of Brain Organoids
First Electrically Active Brain Organoids
Human Neurons Transplanted Into Rat Brain Study
Human Neuron in Rat Brain Image
Brain-On-A-Chip Review
Neurons Play Pong

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On the Rheology of Cats
Ted Talk on the Rheology of Cats
PBS: Are Cats Liquid?
Crustal Melting and the Flow of Mountains
A Hydrodynamic Approach To Cancer

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NPR on 14,000 Year Old Bread
Paper on Analyzing the Oldest Bread
Arranz-Otaegui's Presentation on the Prehistory of Bread
Invention of Sliced Bread
First Sliced Bread Ad
Sliced Bread Ads
Thick & Thin Bread
Dated Bread
Twin Style Bread
Fowler's Modern English Usage
Saeed's Semantics
Polish Idiom Translation

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Today our guest Ashlen Campbell asks us: how do you stop a seagull from stealing your chips?  And what can that teach us about the wild world of kleptoparasitism?

Our Favorite Ash Videos: Erythrism, Blathers Exposed

Ash's Kleptoparasitism List

Ash's Follow Recommendations: @luccasbiohub  @drkyliesoanes @zoe_kean_sci @sarawebbscience @astrokirsten

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We also learn about: Majored in zoology minored in chips, temperature effects on fish, dam spreadsheets, mosquitos don’t like skrillex, bee gom jabbar test, the beach scene, Miriam Rothschild & Theresa Clay coined Kleptoparasitism, bullying birds to throw up, not having a chip and getting hit by Ash’s ford fiesta, peacrabs have to steal to survive, messy definitions are interesting, stealing from siblings isn’t kleptoparasitism, neon cuckoo bees steal candies from babies, snails grabbing food from your throat, fossils caught stealing, mother feed me, taking care of other fishes babies, “he’s such a good father”, sneak spawning, The Real House Nest Husbands of Chesapeake Bay, swat raiding bees, kleptothermy, the answer is a seagull economy, kleptoplasty is eating batteries, floral larsony, hyenas change their sleep schedules to avoid thieving lions, green goblin otter hostage situations, eat worse chips, weighing the complexities of stealing, studying chip stealing, only you can stare at seagulls, the adorable and horny antechinus, “nothing here is okay”, nitpicking jurassic park, am I misrepresnting data? at least I have rainbow fish in animal crossing. being wrong on the internet, erudoot.

Sources:
Fleas, flukes, & cuckoos; a study of bird parasites
Iyengar’s Kleptoparasitism Review
Kleptobiosis
Pea crab (Pinnotherida)
Neon cuckoo bee (Thyreus nitidulus)
Wentletrap (Epitonium clathratulum)
Brachiopod fossils
Barn Owl Nest Switching
Three Spined Stickleback
Lestrimelitta Niitkib (toxin producing bee)
Fork-tailed drongo
Garter snake (2001)
Garter snake (2012)
Kleptopredation
Photosynthetic Sea Slug
Toxomerus Larva Stealing from Sundew
Floral Larceny
Plant Stealing Pollinators from Other Plants
Lions and Hyenas, Change in Activity Patterns
Cougar/ Black Bear Compensation
Gulls and plovers
Gull gaze

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