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Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

bbc.com

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Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#41

Post by fnord77 »

hirundo wrote: post #4

Compare the fox's journey of 2,176 miles in 76 days to the average Pacific Crest Trail through hiker's 2,660 miles in 152 days. That's 29 vs 18 miles per day. The PCT record is about 50 miles per day. So an athletic human could have kept up with this canine. Of course the humans don't have to scavenge their meals along the way and the fox doesn't have to carry supplies. Typically dog companions don't do well on such…

> kept up with this canine.

Vulpine, actually.

(Foxes are canids, but not canines.)

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#42

Post by jbob2000 »

howdydoo wrote: post #40

You might also like: - Polar bear shot dead in Iceland I can't say that I would. I guess this is as good a place as any to ask – what's the value of interrupting the article halfway through to link me to other articles? It's something I expect from the likes of Buzzfeed, but now the BBC is doing it too. Did they think I'd get bored halfway through?

Their metrics are for “articles viewed”, not “articles that the reader read and enjoyed”.

They don’t care if you get bored halfway through, they probably don’t even care if you read the article. As long as the numbers for the money metrics go up, they’re happy.

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#43

Post by PhantomGremlin »

tanakachen wrote: post #26

It’s fascinating to see. But what about the plastic pollution as a result of this (from the GPS tracker that will now become permanent plastic garbage). I don’t mean to say the pollution isn’t worth the fox study. But why isn’t anyone asking if it is? Who determines, or at which point do we say, yes this study is worth creating this amount of pollution?

But what about the plastic pollution as a result of this (from the GPS tracker that will now become permanent plastic garbage).

You need a little perspective about the true extent of the problem. A GPS tracker probably weights 4 ounces. For comparison, the Yangtze river alone dumps 1.5 million metric tons of plastic per year into the Yellow Sea.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#44

Post by jacquesm »

debatem1 wrote: post #38
jacquesm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason that you should be able to set up a tent, cook a meal, write some software and repair some piece of kit that you need. It's the kind of thing that comes in handy all the time. Of course you could rely on all kinds of technical gizmos to cover you but that stuff can break, run out of battery power, be lost and so on. Good luck finding your way out of the national park with your empty phone.

Hah, tents. Those can be broken or lost, utterly unreliable. Best just cover yourself in leaves when the rains come. Sarcasm, of course. But this manly-man "gotta be self sufficient" thing always strikes me as so peculiarly limited. Why assume that this piece of gear will be lost but not that one? Why should we believe that, when all the restaurants have gone and civilization has collapsed, the grocery stores will st…

It's nothing to do with manliness, but just common sense. If you don't know the sun sets in the West and is at its highest point roughly at noon in your local timezone what else is there that you don't know? Basic practical knowledge comes in handy all the time. There isn't a skill that I have that I have not used (and not just to use it when some better alternative was available) and there are still plenty that I'd like to acquire and it has nothing to do with the end of the world but mostly with living in the one I am in right now.

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#45

Post by oska »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #30

This makes me wonder: could a human who is totally attuned to this cold environment do the same thing at the same speed? This would mean not being able to get any supplies, carry clothing and tent if needed and basically live off the land. Can humans do that?

Your question reminded me of the purported efforts of one of the male children of the Lykov family (the family separated from civilisation in deep Siberia):

> Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion. Dmitry built up astonishing endurance, and could hunt barefoot in winter, sometimes returning to the hut after several days, having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost, a young elk across his shoulders.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-rus...

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#46

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

amluto wrote: post #11
euroclydon wrote: post #2

It’s even more impressive when you consider she was rubbing her shoulder on the ground the entire 2,700 miles trying to get the transponder to come off.

Surely you mean that she checked several social media feeds on the smartphone she was outfitted with every half mile. And that at least five ad companies and twenty trackers followed her journey, none of which correctly deduced that she was a fox.

It's true what they say then. On the internet, nobody knows you're a fox.

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#47

Post by sandworm101 »

oska wrote: post #45
Ididntdothis wrote: post #30

This makes me wonder: could a human who is totally attuned to this cold environment do the same thing at the same speed? This would mean not being able to get any supplies, carry clothing and tent if needed and basically live off the land. Can humans do that?

Your question reminded me of the purported efforts of one of the male children of the Lykov family (the family separated from civilisation in deep Siberia): > Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion. Dmitry built up astonishing endurance, and could hunt barefoot in winter, sometimes returning to the hut after s…

A few years ago I read travel by a man who spent a summer with nudists/naturists in Europe. His intention was a travel article about about the nudist subculture, but towards the end of summer he found himself hiking nude beside a frozen lake. "I didn't even feel the cold." The article then became about the ability of the human body to adapt. He realized that by wearing so many different types and layers of clothes we deny our natural ability to adapt.

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#48

Post by bigiain »

jacquesm wrote: post #22
jacobush wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most aren't. Some are.

It's scary how inept people are in general at navigation. Telling the time and obtaining a rough compass heading by the position of the sun should be something anybody can do but surprisingly few people can do this.

I'm pretty good at this at home in the southern hemisphere, but I'm much worse when visiting the northern hemisphere and the sun "goes the wrong way"...

My instinctive sense of direction doesn't work with "the sun in the south midday" thing, and I need to pull that up into the intellectual part of my brain all the time.

"Ummm, I'm in SF, if the sun's over _there_ and it's mid morning that much be, ummm, south east-ish I think. Yeah. So north must be (turns around) _that_ way".

I _never_ end up thinking those things at home, I just "know" which way north is. It doesn't even occur to me to question how or why I know that.

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#49

Post by bigiain »

mirceal wrote: post #27
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's scary how inept people are in general at navigation. Telling the time and obtaining a rough compass heading by the position of the sun should be something anybody can do but surprisingly few people can do this.

why? why do humans nowadays need this skill?

Yeah, I know right? Because we've _all_ got Google maps in our pockets!

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3078087/google-map...

(And our phone battery never runs flat! And cellular reception in ubiquitous and reliable!)

(BRB, off to write a blog post titled: "Falsehoods hackernews readers believe about being human"... )

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#50

Post by tedunangst »

daniel_iversen wrote: post #14

Wow, I assumed that there was so much water surrounding Greenland that it would be impossible for a fox to swim or get there by themselves. Any idea how much of the path to Greenland from the poles and Canada is covered by ice and how far is pure water?

The article also says Iceland is connected by ice?

> The shrinking of the polar ice pack is having an impact on Arctic foxes - they can no longer visit Iceland, for example

When was Iceland regularly connected by ice?

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