"In these burrows, sometimes you get the feeling that there's some creature waiting around the next curve"
Laydeez.
The diagram consisting of "Dig, rest, dig, rest, dig, rest" makes me think April Fool, but the publication date is wrong.
I'm glad I don't have to interact with animals capable of digging those holes. They wouldn't need to be more than mildly irritated by you to cause significant injury.
The article says people are wondering why the tunnels are so wide. The article also refers to Giant Sloths the size of elephants. Burrowing elephants would need wide tunnels. Also, burrowing elephants is a scary thought.
Giant Sloths the size of elephants
I now have Old Hundredth as an earworm.
Some scientists think giant sloths were predators, which would make them a lot scarier than elephants.
How fast would an elephant-sized sloth run? Move? Ooze?
I imagine about as fast as an elephant, which is about 15 mph. Faster than me. I think your best hope would be to zig zag and force sharp changes in direction. Or accept that the novelty of being eaten by a giant ground sloth is worth the horrible death.
I'm assuming giant sloths are not at all slothful in the sense of the ones that make Kristen Bell cry. You'd think they'd have to be at least a little fast to be predators. Unless they only ate really slow things like turtles.
I imagine about as fast as an elephant, which is about 15 mph.
I imagine about as fast as a sloth, which is about 2mph.
Unless they only ate really slow things like turtles
Close: the theory is apparently that they may have flipped over glyptodonts (heavily armoured armadillos the size of a small car) and disembowelled them. How fast would a giant armadillo move?
We need to make animatronic models of the creatures involved to see how fast they are likely to have moved. Google is useless on how fast a glyptodont could run. I suppose we could simulate it but I'd much rather build life sized models and ride around on them.
Would it still have a giant cute smile like little sloths do?
I bet a sloth-sized elephant would be faster than an elephant-sized sloth?
Would it still have a giant cute smile like little sloths do?
Yes. As it ate you.
It's obviously viral marketing for the next Godzilla movie.
Now I'm angry at myself for having overestimated the land speed of a sloth. Its actually 1.2 mph, according to the google.
The other 0.8 miles will arrive later.
14: If we're choosing life-size animatronic Miocene creatures to ride on, I want a terror bird.
Looks like the work of a badgermole.
23: You realise that they probably ate cats? Take that, Margaret Atwood!
25: because:
Margaret Atwood didn't think they ate cats?
Margaret Atwood likes cats?
Margaret Atwood eats cats and now she has a rival?
8,9 reminds me of the very good "The Quest for Blank Claveringi" which I found and read on LB's recommendation.
It's odd that sloth is the only one of the seven deadly sins to have an animal named after it.
OR SO I THOUGHT because apparently another name for the wolverine is "the glutton" which is what its scientific name, Gulo gulo translates as.
But I don't know any animal called (in Latin or English) the "wrath" or the "envy".
Lions qualify, but only collectively.
If we include aliens, there's Greedo.
Speaking of, Logan is pretty good but dear God is it violent.
It sounds as though you ought to be able to have a fury of some sort of animal, but apparently not.
You can have Furies, but only mythologically. (I wonder if I can persuade my brother to call his daughter Alecto. Nice name I think.)
Giant fruit bats are Pteropus alecto. Though they aren't actually very furious at all.
In compensation, there's a doubly lustful subspecies of black-striped capuchin classified as Cebus libidinosus libidinosus
Nice -- I was thinking something like that must exist, but didn't know what.
Huh, weird brainfart. You meant pride, of course, but for some reason I was stuck on wrath. Weed is the most insidious of the noncardinal sins.
Also, cardinal? There's not even Aleph-null of them!
38: I expect the other 6 are out there, but too few biologists are willing to do fieldwork among Franciscans.
26:3 I thought that was the one thing everyone knew about her.
But she is also campaigning to get cats kept do they can't kill birds: indoors or out only on leashes.
Birds immigrate illegally like twice a year.