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Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

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

#61

Post by Buttons840 »

crispinb wrote: post #25
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.

Human navigation is cultural. Urban culture (for better or worse) tends to cut people off from physical reality. Spend a few days with a Cape York indigenous person and find out how amazingly good people can get at this. John Huth's The Lost Art of Finding Our Way is a good read for anyone interested in improving their navigation skills.

For those who don't know: The natives of the Cape York area speak a language with no words for front, back, left, or right, they only have words for compass directions. Thus, speaking their language forces you to be aware of compass directions at all times.

See: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.htm...

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

#62

Post by crispinb »

Buttons840 wrote: post #61
crispinb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human navigation is cultural. Urban culture (for better or worse) tends to cut people off from physical reality. Spend a few days with a Cape York indigenous person and find out how amazingly good people can get at this. John Huth's The Lost Art of Finding Our Way is a good read for anyone interested in improving their navigation skills.

For those who don't know: The natives of the Cape York area speak a language with no words for front, back, left, or right, they only have words for compass directions. Thus, speaking their language forces you to be aware of compass directions at all times. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.htm...

Thanks for that link. Fascinating. I had no idea of that linguistic aspect. My comments were just based on having spent some time in Cape York (in the bush & on the water) a few years ago.

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

#64

Post by tanakachen »

perfmode wrote: post #35
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?

you are asking.

It’s sad that I’m the only one

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

#65

Post by recursive »

dmitriid wrote: post #59
jacquesm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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? And how many more things I do know > Basic practical knowledge comes in handy all the time. It doesn’t. The ability to strike a tent, roast a grizzly bear, read weather from moss and bird patterns comes in handy about 0% of the time. Even knowing that the sun sets in…

> Even knowing that the sun sets in the West has zero practical applications in urban settings.

Certainly not zero. If I know I'll be coming back to my car in the late afternoon, knowing roughly where the sun will be means I can park in a spot where the shadow will probably be, possibly even in an unfamiliar lot.

Here's another one. The first step in cell phone navigation is frequently something like "Head West on such-and-such street". In the absence of any other markings, the sun can tell you which way that is.

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

#66

Post by k6k7f7uky8ki »

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…

That's less than 2 miles an hour.

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

#67

Post by chousuke »

tanakachen wrote: post #58
PhantomGremlin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Some oceanic science experiments drop thousands of ocean drones into the oceans to track currents. I’m not saying it’s not worth it, but how come nobody questions if it is worth it?

Perhaps because it's obvious enough that the drones are being used for something useful (research) and also that the amount is so small they don't even register compared to the sheer amount of actual waste that is being constantly generated.

You'd probably have to do millions of there experiments to even show up on the radar

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

#68

Post by undershirt »

sandworm101 wrote: post #47
oska wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

would love to read this. can you remember the source?

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

#69

Post by TeMPOraL »

irrational wrote: post #60
School-Cotton wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...should be something anybody can do... Why? Certainly anyone could learn to do this, but is there any practical reason for someone like me who absolutely never goes to the wilderness to spend time doing this?

I can't tell you how many times I've told my wife something using cardinal directions (it's due west of here) and she has no idea which way that is. Frankly its frustrating. Cardinal directions are so very useful that not knowing naturally which way is which is self-limiting.

I'm so annoyed when somebody gives me cardinal directions, because it requires me figuring out where the north is, when half the time I couldn't even tell you where the sun is due to high buildings and cloud cover. There are countless better ways of giving directions when you're within 100 miles of civilization.

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

#70

Post by ahje »

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 not about preparing for the Zombie apocalypse, it's simply a matter of attaining and retaining skills that might come in handy in one or several fairly unlikely scenarios. Very few preppers expect to actually survive armageddon on their own; if the shit hits the fan for real then then only way to survive AND thrive will be as a part of a group.

Being able to set up some basic shelter and navigate in the wilderness is more likely to be handy if your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and your cell phone battery is flat.

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