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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Science News from the Animal Kingdom

Posted by Charles Mudede on Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 10:56 AM

Animals have no clue:

State biologists have confirmed a second wolf pack in Washington state, this time in a remote area of Pend Oreille County.

The Spokesman-Review reports biologists were able to confirm the presence of at least one adult wolf and three pups by playing digital recordings of howling. The wolves, then, howled back.

How can humans not laugh at this sorry situation: real wolves howling at digital wolves. When will the damn things realize that absolute nature is over? They are not out in the woods; they are in Disneyland. Wolves should give up this howling nonsense and try something new.

Comments (30) RSS

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If this is supposed to be comic, well, I smiled a bit at least. But if this is serious, it's a fail. I'm sure that a good digital recording of human speech in that environment would make a person think that there was someone else out there, not a loudspeaker.

Posted by Matt from Denver on July 15, 2009 at 11:02 AM

Perhaps Charles prefers vinyl for the nice warm sound.

Posted by pragmatic on July 15, 2009 at 11:03 AM

It's like jacking off to internet porn.

Posted by paulus on July 15, 2009 at 11:07 AM

This thinking is an illusion. Absolute nature is held back by the thinnest of membranes. Our entire species evolution has been dedicated to thickening this membrane, but we can never fully control nature. It will only take a disease we can't cure or irreversible changes to our environment for us to learn how true this is.

Posted by Westside forever on July 15, 2009 at 11:12 AM

You're now pointing at WILDLIFE and declaring how much smarter you feel than it?

Posted by Ackham on July 15, 2009 at 11:13 AM

HAHAHA stupid wolves

Posted by NaFun

on July 15, 2009 at 11:14 AM

Maybe they can go to Branson?

Posted by Baconcat on July 15, 2009 at 11:19 AM

Your last sentence could be equally well applied to the Republican party.

Posted by eric (the other one) on July 15, 2009 at 11:23 AM

I wonder how long Charles would last in a remote area of Pend Oreille County? Seriously, Charles, you should go camping somewhere, it would make a great article.

Posted by Fnarf

on July 15, 2009 at 11:25 AM

Perhaps they know it's a recording, I've often howled at Howlin' Wolf myself. Knew it was a recording, so what?

Perhaps they were demanding MP3.

Charles' corpus of work is on a level with lupine vocalization. Enjoyable, poetic, strange, an inexplicable urge to be heard for the joy and angst of it. However, often wrong about globalization.

Ask Romulus and Remus.

Posted by PC on July 15, 2009 at 11:31 AM

@9: "This middle class desire to be among nature, but not of it, I cannot grasp. When one holds the Jiffy Pop above the flame, is the beast within unleashed, or is our capitalist construct of nutritive substance turned on its ear?"

Posted by laterite on July 15, 2009 at 11:35 AM

this is pretty standard. when i worked as a natural resource tech in arizona we surveyed for goshawk fledglings with a tape. you go to the sample point, play the tape for a predetermined time, and listen for a response. i also went on some mexican spotted owl surveys in the middle of the night with a guy who had learned to do owl calls. both methods were successful in getting a response from the species of interest.

Posted by taint on July 15, 2009 at 11:44 AM

I never understand what you're talking about.

Posted by very bad homo on July 15, 2009 at 12:01 PM

Chalres:

Per #10; how do you know they're not yelling back, "Turn off that wolf recording, it sounds terrible"? Or perhaps we're just a part of a large wolf experiment to see if we can figure out the meaning of life, the universe and everything (instead of mice a'la HHGTTG)? Who's stupid now?

Posted by Banna

on July 15, 2009 at 12:21 PM

@9 - YES.

Charles, I demand you go backpacking, alone, in the mountains. But you won't.

Posted by STJA on July 15, 2009 at 12:22 PM

@9 YES!

Charles, I demand that you go backpacking in the mountains, alone. But you won't.

Posted by STJA on July 15, 2009 at 12:23 PM

This method severely undercounts hearing impaired and speech impaired wolves.

Someone should sue on their behalf.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on July 15, 2009 at 12:31 PM

9, 15 (& 16 hee hee) - You guys beat me to it.

Charles, if you're serious that "absolute nature is over," I cordially invite you to go back-packing in the Alaskan interior sometime... 'Absolute nature' will gladly school you in the errors of your thinking.......

Posted by merry on July 15, 2009 at 12:56 PM

I'm with everyone who thinks you should go camping, Mr. Mudede. You went to Italy to look for Amanda Knox and got an interesting essay out of it; why not go to Pend Oreille and look for wolves?

Posted by Andrew Cole on July 15, 2009 at 1:26 PM

What the hell? This is among the stupidest posts I've ever read by Charles, and that's saying a LOT.

'Real wolves howling at digital wolves.'
Dude, they're RECORDINGS of real wolves. They're not digital wolves, they're recordings, and once they've exited the speakers, they're fucking analog just like actual wolf howls... It's considerably more real than the skanky airbrushed photos of mildly attractive hot-dog colored women you seem to drool over and then post on this blog.

Unless you have a fetish for two dimensional, digitally altered, tiny women, I'd say the wolves are suffering from far fewer delusions about 'reality' than you are.

Posted by You you you you on July 15, 2009 at 1:35 PM

Did no one watch my movie Police Beat? I, like the hero, do not like camping.

Posted by Charles Mudede on July 15, 2009 at 2:20 PM

well then you're a pussy

Posted by taint on July 15, 2009 at 2:51 PM

@21, I don't want you to like it. I want you to NOT like it, preferably at about 20,000 words.

Posted by Fnarf

on July 15, 2009 at 2:56 PM

I want Charles to take Fnarf camping and then see what happens when they both get lost ... wolves are vegetarians, aren't they?

(chuckles)

Posted by Will in Seattle

on July 15, 2009 at 3:11 PM

I absolutely love that Mudede is the only human left alive that seems to believe we are still engaged in some zero-sum survival epic with the rest of the animal kingdom. "Hahaha, foolish wolves! They will never catch up with us!" "Damned intelligent crows! How I hate them!" Basic traits of common fauna are not black eyes or feathers in your cap, Charles.

Posted by freeamnesiac on July 15, 2009 at 3:12 PM

I get it: wolves=Charles. Reread post.

Posted by oxyala trio