There are a few websites that are always reliable for blog topics: Brain Pickings, Studio 360, Only a Game, On the Media, Eco RI News, Arts Journal, and until recently, AndrewSullivan.com (Andrew retired).
Another website I like a lot is the one for the radio show Living on Earth. Here Living on Earth‘s Steve Curwood touches base with writer Mark Seth Lender to learn about lambs that teach themselves to climb (kind of like the kids in the wild playgrounds we’ve noted).
“Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep are born with all the climbing gear they need: feet evolved to grab and hold on near-vertical rock, and an uncanny sense of balance. Writer Mark Seth Lender came across a herd of the sheep near Alberta’s Jasper National Park late last summer and discovered that for the lambs, having the equipment is not enough. They still have to learn how to use it.”
Lender explains, “They are working it out. The lambs, by themselves. Where the mountain tapers smooth and hard off the ridgeline. The rest of the herd, already picking their way among the crags and cracks is heading down. But the lambs upon this unfamiliar terrain, hold back. The ewe by her stance and where she looks has led them here. To the edge. But will not show them how. Down they will learn on their own.
“She stands aside, and waits. …
“They are not full of play. They stand on the high point and look, long, toward the river and the sweet grass far … far … below. They look. And look: To left to right slowly turning their heads. They plan: each move, each angle polished into an extended curve. A calculus: For every way point, every stopping place, the risk of a dead end. …
“Sometimes the only down is up: they scramble against the vertical, grappling with their cloven feet, the ledge where the gamble led too narrow for a bird. Sometimes, what looks easy is impossible: the gradual slope, which ends in a sheer and impassible cliff. Sometimes the granite cleaved along the head grain is the only path and the only safety a headlong run, the living rock inclined too steep for caution.
“The hooves of rocky mountain bighorn sheep are broad as a puck, gray as the living rock (as if the color gives them grip). They hold, like India rubber pads, where purchase seems untenable, a magician’s trick, inertia where there should be none. Up where the trees are far and few and the dead wood outnumbers the living.” More here.
Photo: Mark Seth Lender
The ewe leads them to the edge, but will not show them how to climb down.
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