Oh yeah, and we put a snorkel set on Yogi Bear when it gets to his nose. Someone swims out to him in flood water. Country Australia is a place
again. what do i do with this.
Ho boy. I love this one.
Study: Kangaroos Can Intentionally Communicate with Humans
http://www.sci-news.com/biology/kangaroos-intentionally-communicate-humans-09163.html
“Domestication is generally assumed to have resulted in enhanced communication abilities between non-primate mammals and humans, although the number of species studied is very limited (cats, dogs, wolves, goats, and horses),” said lead author Dr. Alan McElligott from the University of Roehampton and his colleagues.
“In species without hands for pointing, gazing at humans when dealing with inaccessible food during an unsolvable task, and in particular gaze alternations between a human and the unsolvable task, are often interpreted as attempts at referential intentional communication.”
“This type of communication is considered a prerequisite for mind reading because it represents a form of mental planning,” they added.
“Finding those behaviors in other species would suggest that the potential for animal-human communication is far more widespread, given the right conditions.”
I, for one, welcome our new macropodal overlords.
i’m watching a british youtuber’s birthday stream and an aussie viewer sent in a comment saying “why was he born so beautiful, why was he born at all? because he had no say in it, no say in it at all” which was received with confused existential horror, and this is how i just discovered that australian happy birthday songs are not universal
oops
do you not sing this in other countries?!?!??
NO we do not sing a lament for someone’s personal beauty wishing they’d never been born. That is some weird Greek tragedy shit.
@internutter is this real????
This is a definite Aussie thing that happens. Especially around a 21st birthday
Aussie Democracy
- Pollsters: Your vote is wanted! Vote for him! Vote for her! Who are you voting for? What are your concerns?
- Me: Sosij
Whenever my mum sees something even slightly wild about Australia in the news she tags me in it so that I can show you all
Soooo….he found a Long Friend on his house?? Nice!
Eh, it’s just a goanna. Give it a sausage and you might make a friend.
[National Parks and Wildlife does NOT recommend that you feed wild goannas. They have been known to predate upon small household pets]
(via neurodivergent-crow)
Getting misty-eyed imagining the future: spaceships exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, going boldly &c., &c., all while triumphantly bearing “ARSE” in large letters on their hulls.
I have never felt more patriotic than I do at this very moment.
The best thing is that absolutely no one is actually sure whether or not this is official or legit.
But no matter what the answer, no matter what the official title, IT IS NOW FOREVER ARSE IN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE
I heartily endorse ARSE in all their endeavours.
(via youve-doomed-us-all-jerk)
my friend left her window open in her bedroom and came back to find this
look at his self-satisfied little face, the cheeky shit
motherfucking australia
if there was a post to describe australia, this is it
wait.
you mean to tell me this isn’t even a pet bird?
that in australia, you have wild birds that just fly from house to house with the express purpose of fucking shit up?
fucking HELL australia, what is wrong with you?
wake up australia
That’s what birds do
They fly around and fuck shit up
Do you have some kind of mysterious nice birds in your weird foreign country
Do birds in America and England fly into your house and make the bed and tidy up the living room a little bit
It’s cold here, so they just bounce off the windows and lie there and twitch spasmodically while you look for the shovel.
Basically hurling themselves at windows is the worst thing birds do
yeah man a kookaburra literally flew into a classroom at my high school and just sat his smug ass down on top of the desk for a good 20 minutes
why has nobody mentioned the fact that in australia there are 3-4 months a year where everybody just accepts that they’re going to get attacked by magpies. It is literally called “swooping season” and these birds will fly down to peck your fucking face, and people get their eyes ripped out and shit, it’s fucking brutal.
My teacher had to go to hospital and have surgery because of swooping season. It was in the parking lot of school and all the kids would do a mad dash towards the car as the magpies tried to kill us.
no but when you’re 12 years old and riding your bike like mad on the way home from school with an icecream bucket on your head with like branches and shit sticking out if it to scare them off and none of this is considered strange
what the actual fuck australia
I am pretty sure all of these Australia stories are a massive, globally-spanning trolling effort, and only the people who have visited the country are allowed to be in on the joke.
Nope.
Went there.
Parrots tried to take our car.
Came home IN A FUCKING HURRY.
Interesting thing about magpies - they’re not great at identifying individual humans visually, but if you make yourself identifiable in some way they’re usually open to reason. We used to have some very aggressive swoopers in our back yard - as soon as they realised that the humans *inside* the fence never bothered them and were the source of the delicious compost heap, they turned into flying black and white guard dogs who would viciously assault any passing stranger but never bothered anyone inside the yard. Several times they swooped at us when we approached from outside, then when we walked into the yard they would pull up and act incredibly apologetic like sorry ma’am I had no idea it was you I would never please don’t stop stocking the food pile.
There was another little group of magpies in the park who would attack any solo pedestrian but never bothered anyone walking a dog or pushing a pram, because apparently those were identifiable traits indicating a non-threatening human. In the spirit of inquiry, I started going out of my way to be polite to the magpies - carefully walking a wide arc around them when they were on the ground, etc - and emitting an identifiable call of ‘hello birdie’ before swooping season started.
I spent the next ten years crossing that park at least once a day and as long as I turned at the first flutter of wings and said ‘hello birdie’ to the magpie waiting to attack as soon as my back was turned, I was fine. Every time, the magpie would stare at me for a minute and then fly off to harass some other pedestrian because apparently the magpies and I, we were cool.
Parrots are a lot less open to negotiation, and the little bastards travel in flocks. Beware the parrots.
(via roryink)
I really want a science fiction story where aliens come to invade earth and effortlessly wipe out humanity, only to be fought off by the wildlife.
They were expecting military resistance. They weren’t counting on bears.
Imagine coming to a hostile alien world and being attacked by a horde of creatures that can weigh up to 3 tons, run at 30 km/h (19 mph), and bite with a force of 8,100 newtons (1,800 lbf).
By the time you realise that they can traverse water, it’s too late. The surviving members of your unit manage to make it back by shedding their excess gear and running for their lives; the slower ones were crushed to death within minutes.
You later describe the creature to one of the humans you captured, wanting to know the name of the monstrosity that will haunt your nightmares for cycles to come.
The human smiles as it speaks a single word, slowly and distinctly, in its barbaric tongue.
“Hippopotamus.”
This is giving me the biggest, creepiest grin I might have ever grinned
Imagine being the next crew to go down to earth and thinking “it’s fine, we got this. We have the weapons and equipment necessary to deal with bears and *shudders* hippopotamuses. We’ll be fine.”
And at first you are, you’ve learned how to dodge. You’ve learned where their territories are. You know how to defend yourself.
But then one night you are sleeping in your shelter. You’re in a tree covered temperate part of earth. It seems benign. There are been no sightings of the dreaded “hippos” around. Not even any bears. But there is a slight rustle of the undergrowth. You try and ignore it telling yourself it is just the wind.
Then you hear the rustle again. closer this time.
You peer out into the darkness but see nothing amongst the trees.
The rustle again and now you realise you can smell something. It’s musky and slightly foul. It’s the smell of an omen, a warning. But what of? Where is this smell coming from.
You sit up, but it’s too late. The foul smelling creature is on you. You are hit with 17kg of coarse fur and vicious bites. Long dark claws tear in to you and you are pinned down white the striped creature tries to bite your throat.
It takes some doing but you manage to wrestle free. Blood drips from your wounds and already they itch with the sign of infection. The creature has a bloodied snout, rust rad, mingling with the black and white hairs. It lets out a terrifying growl from the back of its throat and looks to attack again. It’s between you and your knife, so your only choice is to back away.
Eventually the creature gives up and snuffles off in to the undergrowth, down a hole near your shelter you hadn’t noticed before.
When you make it back to your base you once again consult the captive human.
“Badger.” they say, with a solemn nod.
One word: Moose
“Our vehicles are far superior to the local human models, in range, speed, armament, and any other metric you care to name! Nothing could possibly-”
BAMrumblerumblethumpcrash!!!
“That’s called a moose.”
Wolverines.
Also.. dolphins.
The invasion is going slowly. The humans have caught on and are actively destroying information on the planet’s flora and fauna before Intelligence can capture and process it. All that they have are survivors’ accounts. Bears. Hippos. Badgers. Moose. It is becoming obvious this mudball planet is a full-on Death World to the unprepared, and you are so very unprepared.
You lost Jaxurn to a plant. Not even a mobile or carnivorous plant, just one that caused a vicious allergic reaction on contact that killed him in less than a rai'kor. Commander Vura'ko died to an insect bite, a tiny local pest that sucked a tiny bit of her blood and apparently replaced it with a bit of its last meal, which was full of disease. Backwash. She died to bug backwash. And yet you honestly envy them after that… thing you encountered…
When you got back to base the quarantine officer refused to let you inside. They had to roll a containment tank outside to put you in, because you all knew there would be no chance of eliminating the smell if it got into the ship’s air ducts. Smell. You wonder if your nasal slit will ever recover from this stench.
And the smell would. Not. Leave. After incinerating your gear the Q.O. had you use every cleansing agent they could think of, including a few janitorial ones, and still everyone fled the stench if they were downwind of your tank. Desperate to protect everyone’s nasal slits from the smell the quarantine officer interrogated the humans. From them, a glimmer of hope: there was a cure. Somehow the juice of a certain fruit on this mudball was the only thing that could break up the chemicals in the little horror’s spray. Immediately the Q.O. sent a team to recover buckets of the stuff and made you bathe in it. That was hours ago and it didn’t seem to be working, though. All it was doing was turning your blue skin an interesting shade of purple.
Sighing in frustration you wave the med-assist on duty over, who only approaches after checking the wind direction. Annoyed, you flip on the tank`s vox speaker.
“The humans did say it was “grape” juice that removed “skunk” stench, right?“
Every night.
It came for someone almost every night.
Any soldier alone was a viable target for this native monster that moved unseen by any but the security viewers, usually only spotted in hindsight. They were taken as silently as this earth-monster moved. Sometimes they’d find the remains in the morning taken up a tree and hung there, mostly eaten, as if it were a grisly reminder that the monster was still there, waiting unseen, to strike again.
What little they saw of the monster on the vidfeed showed true horror. Yellow eyes that shone with all the light it could gather. It had fangs as long as his grasping digits. Claws half that size formed curved hooks that allowed it to climb up their fortifications with impunity. And in the underbrush, its spots made it almost impossible to see clearly in the undergrowth, if it could be seen at all.
Even the native sentients, the humans, had a healthy respect and fear for it.
The earth natives called the monster a leopard.
It was a constant fear that muddied the senses, and let the monster hunt even more effectively as the soldiers were always on edge. Sleep deprived with fear, it made them even better targets for the monster.
But rumor was that there was worse on this planet. Rumors of a monster like a leopard but larger, and bigger in every imaginable sense. Stripped instead of spotted, which leaped from the underbrush with a sound.
A sound that burst eardrums, paralyzed entire units, and let the monster kill with impunity. While the Leopard wrestled soldiers down and ripped their throats out. This other monster, the Tiger, killed with its pounce alone.
“We’ve been through this,” Group Leader 455 snapped. “The dissection of an Earth life form will help the scientists make weapons to combat the rest of this planet’s hellbeasts. And these are domesticated. Harmless.”
The troops were not-quite-looking at her in the way troops do when they don’t want to be seen to contradict a ranking officer, but can’t quite muster a correct Expression of Enthusiastic Assent. “The name of this species,” she pointed out, “is synonymous with dullness and slowness in the language of the Earth barbarians.” Well, one language out of several thousand—these creatures needed Imperial guidance more than any other world on record—but there was no point in confusing the rank and file.
More not-quite-looking. 455 bubbled a sigh and consulted her scanner. “That one,” she decided. “Alone in the separate pasture. Scans suggest that it’s a male, which means it’s probably weaker. Possibly it’s kept isolated so that the females don’t eat it before mating season. And yes, I know some of you are here on punishment detail, but you’re still soldiers of the Imperium. This squad is perfectly capable of handling a lone, helpless, pathetic male cow.”
I’m enjoying this immensely. Wait until the aliens try Australia for size…
This island had to be safer than any other land mass. It was, after all, physically isolated from every other land mass on this benighted planet. None of the animals encountered on the rest of this hell-world could possibly reach this one, sufficiently large, island.
Knowing how the Terran rats and dogs behaved now that the human populations were decimated, they settled in areas where no human had been in a long time.
And they soon found out why the humans would not settle there.
First, there were the nigh-saurians. Called in the barbaric tongue, Emu, and Cassowary. There were also marsupials, previously assumed to be harmless. But after fifteen deaths at the paws of a Kangaroo, they seemed less certain of their assumptions.
And then… and then came the reptiles. Snakes. Some of them small enough to be jewellery, were it not for their plain brown colouring. Yet each of them bore enough venom to kill the now-infamous _Bush Pig_. A creature so obstinate that it just refused to die.
Entire troops had opened fire on one, and it trampled them to death before it finally surrendered to its wounds.
But just after they managed to fend off the venomous reptiles, they learned that their base was now infested… with arachnids.
Small, dark ones with bright red markings. Smaller, plainer ones that blended in because they looked like dust motes. Until someone encountered them up close and the bite turned the alien settler’s limbs necrotic.
And then there were the ones that lived in perfectly-camouflaged tunnels that were impossible to spot until the creature within pounced.
The final straw was the big ones. Tan brown, and some were as big as a human’s hand.
The surviving Australians laughed at them. Called those ones Hunstman, and announced that the hand-sized ones were just babies.
(via opalhonors)
I really want a science fiction story where aliens come to invade earth and effortlessly wipe out humanity, only to be fought off by the wildlife.
They were expecting military resistance. They weren’t counting on bears.
Imagine coming to a hostile alien world and being attacked by a horde of creatures that can weigh up to 3 tons, run at 30 km/h (19 mph), and bite with a force of 8,100 newtons (1,800 lbf).
By the time you realise that they can traverse water, it’s too late. The surviving members of your unit manage to make it back by shedding their excess gear and running for their lives; the slower ones were crushed to death within minutes.
You later describe the creature to one of the humans you captured, wanting to know the name of the monstrosity that will haunt your nightmares for cycles to come.
The human smiles as it speaks a single word, slowly and distinctly, in its barbaric tongue.
“Hippopotamus.”
This is giving me the biggest, creepiest grin I might have ever grinned
Imagine being the next crew to go down to earth and thinking “it’s fine, we got this. We have the weapons and equipment necessary to deal with bears and *shudders* hippopotamuses. We’ll be fine.”
And at first you are, you’ve learned how to dodge. You’ve learned where their territories are. You know how to defend yourself.
But then one night you are sleeping in your shelter. You’re in a tree covered temperate part of earth. It seems benign. There are been no sightings of the dreaded “hippos” around. Not even any bears. But there is a slight rustle of the undergrowth. You try and ignore it telling yourself it is just the wind.
Then you hear the rustle again. closer this time.
You peer out into the darkness but see nothing amongst the trees.
The rustle again and now you realise you can smell something. It’s musky and slightly foul. It’s the smell of an omen, a warning. But what of? Where is this smell coming from.
You sit up, but it’s too late. The foul smelling creature is on you. You are hit with 17kg of coarse fur and vicious bites. Long dark claws tear in to you and you are pinned down white the striped creature tries to bite your throat.
It takes some doing but you manage to wrestle free. Blood drips from your wounds and already they itch with the sign of infection. The creature has a bloodied snout, rust rad, mingling with the black and white hairs. It lets out a terrifying growl from the back of its throat and looks to attack again. It’s between you and your knife, so your only choice is to back away.
Eventually the creature gives up and snuffles off in to the undergrowth, down a hole near your shelter you hadn’t noticed before.
When you make it back to your base you once again consult the captive human.
“Badger.” they say, with a solemn nod.
One word: Moose
“Our vehicles are far superior to the local human models, in range, speed, armament, and any other metric you care to name! Nothing could possibly-”
BAMrumblerumblethumpcrash!!!
“That’s called a moose.”
“We should be free of the threat of the ‘moose’ here on our new floating accommodation”
*humans start sniggering*
“… they can swim, can’t they”
*humans start laughing louder*
….
*mid-winter*
‘I DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED! K’T'SURKIK WENT OUTSIDE AND A MOUND OF SNOW ROSE UP AND ATE HIM’“What is this ‘wolverine’ you speak of?”
Tell me the story of the unpleasantly surprised alien invaders and their captive human remnant, getting more smug the more the aliens fail at basic scouting…
I know we’re all talking the big smash-‘em-up type animals, but what about the little ones? Are aliens prepared for spiders? Mosquitoes? Fleas? Ticks? Even humans get sick or die from some of those, who knows what the fuck they’d do to an unprepared alien.
Nobody expects the mosquitoes
I was thinking in terms of the smaller mammals getting organized. It becomes standard to avoid landing in cities because the rats have formed actual armies and can chew through freaking metal. Every single person or thing passing into a vessel is scanned for hitchhikers. A single undetected rat can take down an entire vessel and come creeping completely unharmed from the wreckage.
I would also like to hear from Australia and surrounding islands. We all know they have some formidable wildlife but even the docile creatures are armed.
Let’s see…
There’s all the marvellous wildlife outlined in this charming song…
Most of our macro wildlife is armed to the teeth, regardless of their relative harmlessness. Koalas, the most laid back of Aussie wildlife, can turn into a murderous ball of death at the drop of a hat if they haven’t been socialised.
Most possums (yes, even sugar gliders) can take your finger right off.
Then there’s the Gympie Gympie tree. And in urban areas - Plovers. The only ground-nesting bird to survive the introduction of both rats _and_ foxes, which aught to tell you how tough they are.
Feral species like Bush Pigs are just too damn aggro to realise they’re dead. If you shoot them, you have to run up a tree or they’ll kill you before they die.
Now for your insidious killers, you can’t go much past the insects. Ross River Fever is one of those mozzie-bourne diseases that, once you have it NEVER GOES AWAY. And then there’s the spiders.
And of course you can’t forget that we have nineteen of the top twenty deadliest snakes in the world.
I think the aliens would be better off steering clear of Australia. The whole bloody county’s a death trap.
(via bee-whistler)