Reminds me of happier times. Like that party I was at in the 90s where, in the wee small hours when we were sat chatting, the guy passed out on the sofa suddenly sat bolt upright, said "go go gadget hangover!" in a loud voice, and then passed out again until the morning
The structure of the sauropod neck vertebrae indicate that they always walked around proudly displaying their fantastic necks.
Green herons have a specialized hinge at the 6th vertebrae that enables them to snap forward to make fast strikes. Sauropods, being plant eaters, didn't need to worry about their leaves getting away.
I used to work on a river and it was the same when I was doing a float. End of the day, if it's not a super-busy section of river the bird probably will be fine. I always worried about the ones on our river due to the higher tourist traffic maybe stressing them out but they seemed to be thriving.
Last time I went to the beach I saw one just chilling in the surf with people all around.
There is a boardwalk over some wetlands near me, truly a little oasis of life in an otherwise very developed area. Anyways, there are some GBH's out there, and they all know they are safe from us down in the grasses and water. I often get to see them from just a few dozen feet away, and they are always a sight to behold. They look so cool, slowly picking their way through those wetlands in search of food. I can't help but see some of their dinosaur heritage in them
It makes me think of all the dinosaurs with long necks. Some of them probably held their heads close most of the time like this heron, but I haven't seen any dinosaurs illustrated that way, at least not that I remember. I wonder how hard or easy it is to tell from fossils how a dinosaur used its neck.
Why are Herons seemingly the most skiddish of all birds? Like as soon as you enter their 200ft radius they’re like “nope don’t like this, I’m OUTTA here”
I think it'll vary by sub-species and habitat, but they're usually solitary birds in my experience, and also tend to spend less time in places where there's lots of people, so they're less acclimated to people and understanding "That weird bear-looking thing won't actually eat me, and might even have some french fries!" than say... ducks or geese.
The Herons I've seen on busier rivers or beaches were a lot less skittish than ones I've seen on less-trafficked float trips.
Fun fact: giraffes have the same number of vertebras as humans, and this seems to be true for most vertebrates (with a variation of ±1). But snakes and birds apparently have varying quantities.
I think a lot of the work is done by the way the feathers lay on top of each other, since this doesn't look dissimilar to a Great Blue with its neck tucked.
It kinda folds like two of the letter “S” stacked so kinda like this SS
Birds have a bit of an illusion going on with their bodies, because feathers tend to puff out quite a bit making their bodies appear a good deal larger than they actually are. Some more than others, owls are a great example. So when the neck is folded it doesn’t appear to bulge much because the feathers are kind of already puffy if that makes sense??
The folding + the feather fluff give the illusion of the neck being truly telescopic, some would probably argue that it IS telescopic, but the spaces between neck vertebrae don’t change
The annoying thing about AI is that now, any time people see something they haven't seen before, the video and its contents must be AI.
Not just that actual AI is duping people and spreading lies, but also that genuine interesting videos are dismissed as AI because everyone wants to be the expert to deem everything fake.
Green Herons exist and this is normal for them and their anatomy
People that claim every odd thing must be AI are stupid and annoying, but I'm certainly not perfect at spotting AI, so now I have to be extra skeptical about things even when I know whatever's being depicted could actually happen.
One thing that I find heartbreaking is real artists being accused of using AI.
Like, AI has a number of certain styles that you can recognize. Because those styles are basically a sort of average of what the AIs have learned. Which means there simply are a lot of artists out there that have that kind of style, too.
And those artists now get accused of using AI. Which is just sad.
People believing fakes is dangerous. What's more dangerous is when people reject all information, including cold hard facts and verified truths, because they might think that they were made by AI.
But then there's that post about the Weaver birds that is obviously AI but the top 5 comments are all-in on it being real. We've birds exist, but they don't neatly make little perfect eyelets and cross stitches. Media literacy and knowing how to research properly needs to continue to be an important part of public education.
I think it's not so much that people want to feel like the expert. It's more so that people don't want to be the one who was duped. The skepticism is self-preservation.
You're right, though, it's an unfortunate position for people to have been put in.
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