Skip to main content

Kittens!

Image
By
 
Yesterday the family cat gave birth to four babies. They're tiny, a bit hard to see in this picture. Their eyes are still closed, and they can't walk or stand up. Some people might hate me for saying this, but I really do like cats better than dogs (maybe because the runty, flea-ridden bastards bark every night for hours). The cats seem to have fewer fleas than the dogs as well--I think it's a different species that lives on cats. I find myself considering adopting one of the kittens for my time here. It would be nice to have a companion, and a cat would be so much less hassle than a dog. No doubt as they get older they'll be less attractive, but for now they're awfully cute.

The whole birthing process was interesting to watch. This was the mother's first litter, yet she knew exactly how things should go. When the baby came out, she licked it clean, then bit off the umbilical cord. When the afterbirth came, she ate it immediately. A model of efficency.

It's odd how animals can have that kind of complex behavior programmed into them already. The story with humans (as far as I know) is that as we evolved larger and larger brains, more and more development had to take place outside the womb because the baby had to pass through the mother's pelvis. One could imagine an alien species where there was no such structural restriction (or perhaps a egg-style gestation) and more genetic memory could be retained.
Posted by Picasa
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept?

By
So Reality Winner, former NSA contractor, is in federal prison for leaking classified information — for five years and three months, the longest sentence of any whistleblower in history. She gave documents on how Russia had attempted to hack vendors of election machinery and software to The Intercept , which completely bungled basic security procedures (according to a recent New York Times piece from Ben Smith, the main fault lay with Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito ), leading to her capture within hours. Winner recently contracted COVID-19 in prison, and is reportedly suffering some lingering aftereffects. Glenn Greenwald has been furiously denying that he had anything at all to do with the Winner clusterfuck, and I recently got in an argument with him about it on Twitter. I read a New York story about Winner, which clearly implies that she was listening to the Intercepted podcast of March 22, 2017 , where Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill expressed skepticism about Russia actual...
Post a Comment
Read more

Varanus albigularis albigularis

By
That is the Latin name for the white-throated monitor lizard , a large reptile native to southern Africa that can grow up to two meters long (see pictures of one at the Oakland Zoo here ). In Setswana, it's called a "gopane." I saw one of these in my village yesterday on the way back from my run. Some kids from school found it in the riverbed and tortured it to death, stabbing out its eyes, cutting off its tail, and gutting it which finally killed it. It seemed to be a female as there were a bunch of round white things I can only imagine were eggs amongst the guts. I only arrived after it was already dead, but they described what had happened with much hilarity and re-enactment. When I asked why they killed it, they said it was because it would eat their chickens and eggs, which is probably true, and because it sucks blood from people, which is completely ridiculous. It might bite a person, but not unless threatened. It seems roughly the same as killing wolves that...
4 comments
Read more

Russiagate and the Left, Round II

By
Corey Robin has responded to my article arguing that the left should take the Trump-Russia story more seriously . I do appreciate that he considers me an ally, and I feel the same towards him. However I am not convinced. The points I want to make are somewhat disconnected, so I will just take them one at a time. What should be done? Robin complains that I don't give much attention to the question of how we should respond to Russian electoral espionage. As an initial matter, the question of whether a problem is an important one is logically distinct from what the response should be. There is a sizable vein of skepticism about Russiagate on the left, and the argument of the post was that skepticism was misplaced. Solutions can be worked out later. This point is rather similar to the centrist argument that you can't talk about Medicare for All unless you've got a fully costed-out bill detailing all the necessary taxes and regulation. However, I have advanced some pol...
4 comments
Read more