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whiskeyinthejar

WhiskeyintheJar Romance

Romance book talk, reviews, recipes, and dog pictures

Blogger Site: WhiskeyintheJar Romance

Guest Reviewer at:  Reading Between the Wines book club

Currently reading

Heiress for Hire
Madeline Hunter
Doctor Sleep
Stephen King
Progress: 50%

Kyraryker’s quotes


"She thought it over, but couldn’t see any immediate loopholes other than the threat of her inner slut emerging, and she could darned well control that little bitch."— Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Reading Update: Intro-Ch 1

Furry Logic: The Physics of Animal Life - Liz Kalaugher, Matin Durrani

The eel doesn’t understand electric currents, but we don’t need to know anything about transistors or circuits to use a smartphone either. As long as the phone is smart, we don’t have to be.

 

Just saying the term physics makes me gulp, I'm not a math person, at all, but I'm liking how the authors decided to relay the analysis/information through physics and a little bit of biology. They're, giving me at least, a different angle to look at how and why certain animals function the way they do and it is pretty cool. 

 

For physics lovers, the key thing to remember about biology is that pretty much everything is centered around sex or food.
 
Physics, despite its obsession with the Big Bang, less so.
 
The ever present humor that authors tend to include in these types of books, I imagine to try and get away from being called "dry", makes an appearance right away. Personally, I enjoyed this Big Bang joke :)  I thought once we got into Ch1 and the actually explaining, their focus was great and side humor tangents were, for the most part left behind. Like I said though, this tone works for me, I don't want to be reading a text book toned relay of information in this particular instance.  
 
Its sole purpose is to mate before it runs out of energy and dies.
 
If you think I'm not going to start calling some guys my single friend has been meeting lately, male fig wasps, you don't know me at all.
 
Y'all, I did it. I went to YouTube and typed in "red-sided garter snake". Helpfully(?!?) "mating ball" after snake came up and.....I clicked. Slithery crawly skin goodness. I felt eeked out for an hour. 
 
If it wasn't winter, here is where you'd get a picture of Raiden shaking off water from the hose I sprayed on him. For Science!
 
Crazy as it sounds, the idea was that the sweating would relieve the disease; the nine-year-old received this ‘cure’ a total of 10 times in two months. Somehow Rattanarithikul survived this agonizing and pointless treatment.
 
So, I know they said they didn't post that horrific treatment done to Rattanarithikul as a child for sensationalism, but there really wasn't any depth to it, for me. It didn't feel like there was a purpose other than "Look at this horrible act!". Too rushed to be done emphatically and for reasonable learning from. The military and doctors seem a great place to hide if you're into tortuous actions.
 
Bloated and hot, the female may even become a victim of blood-sucking herself, with another female plunging her proboscis into her rival’s freshly acquired stock of blood.
 
This was news to be about female mosquitoes attacking other one, along with the weeing on me while they're sucking my blood. Night time is such a wild dangerous world.
 
Umm, ok, so this whole part:
First the Japanese giant hornet sends out a scout hornet to track down a promising-looking beehive or bees’ nest and nab a few bees. This envoy rips off the bees’ heads and legs with her powerful mandibles (jaws) and brings their juicy, nutrient-rich torsos back to the hornets’ nest to feed the larvae. After a couple of return trips, the scout heads back to spray pheromones (like the signals used by garter snakes to reveal – or fake – their gender) onto the bees’ home. Other hornets pick up the scent and assemble at the beehive. They hunt as individuals until at least three are in position. Then they attack together, in what biologists have bluntly dubbed the slaughter phase.
 
 
doesn’t realise this is a trap. As soon as she crawls into the nest, the scout meets an ambush. A thousand worker bees have abandoned their honeycomb duties to defend their home. Up to 500 of them cluster around the hapless hornet in a tightly packed bee ball just a hand’s span across. After 20 minutes of this sinister group hug, the bees disperse and the scout lies dead, alongside two or three of the honeybees. Guard bees drag the corpses away and all evidence of the hornet’s invasion attempt is gone.
 
Holy s#%$! Is there an action movie staring Jean Claude Van Damme, The Rock, or Sylvester Stallone about this??? Because I think there should be. Obviously, The Rock would be on the bees' side. 
Nature is wild, yo'. I could read a whole book on just Japanese giant hornets and the bees that try to fight back. How does evolution even start processes like this??? Who first started the plan of sinister group hug??? Who believed them and decided they'd try it???? I can barely even think about the hornets and how freaking smart and deviously coordinated they are. 
 
*Edited to add:
I had to get a look at these hornets and YouTube delivered. They have the hornets killing the bees - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ1eAM8CChc
The bees killing the scout hornet - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P8svtzTRuI
This stuff is crazy! The first video at around the 25 sec mark a bee gets attacked by a hornet and when it is laying there helpless, his friend bee tries to pull him back into safety! 
 
Also, the bees GO for it when they are sinister group hugging the wasp, happens faster than I thought, was thinking slow and sneaky.
 
 
The ash-bestrewn remains of a smoking, black-stumped forest don’t sound romantic, but for fire beetles they’re perfect. The females beetle about, laying their fertilized eggs under the bark of the freshly burnt trees.
 
There is no way these beetles aren't fans of Edgar Allen Poe. Death, ashes, and birth? I mean come one, so darkly poetic. 
 
Enjoying this one so far, not laid out how I thought it precisely would be, the whole first chapter on heat but learning some things and easy to follow along with.