• RBWells@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    We live near a park with alligators in an exhibit, they are well fed and lounge on the banks of a little pond, with some turtles, sunning themselves - so I always let my kids lean over the railing, not touch them or anything but I didn’t worry about it since they were fed & lazy.

    Until one day, we saw one of them lunge at a turtle and grab it, moving so fast! Crunch crunch gulp. Which disabused me of two wrong ideas. One, that these alligators did not care to have a snack, and two, that nothing but eagles could eat turtles. Someone had told me that no animal could bite through a turtle shell, but that eagles would drop them from a great height to crack them open, and since I’d never seen another animal eat a turtle, I bought it.

    So after that, no more leaning over.

    • sepi@piefed.social
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      3 days ago

      Always always always always always always always always always always always be wary of all crocodilians. ALWAYS. Pseudosuchians have been around for 250 million years, and it’s not because of their personality or good looks.

      • RBWells@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Part of the exhibit. They fed the gators chicken, the guy would stand on a platform and dangle the chicken on a pole, and get the gators to jump for it from the water. Like cats, it was kind of amazing. I always thought they were full of chicken. But maybe only one or two of them knew to jump for the chicken, who knows?

        There’s an alligator in the pond at my office park, and one day riding in on my bike I saw him grabbing breakfast, very exciting. But everyone knows not to feed them, and to to be careful of them out in the wild! I did not know to be careful of the ones that were behind a very low fence in an exhibit!

        Here is the one I see on my way to work sometimes.

        • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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          3 days ago

          I’m always impressed how different things can be normal depending on where you live. Alligators on the way to work! It never crossed my mind someone’s daily commute might include alligators

          • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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            3 days ago

            in London urban foxes were a daily nuisance, then i briefly lived on an ostrich farm in Poland, now I live in America and regularly have deer in my back yard.

            • RBWells@lemmy.world
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              3 days ago

              I have only once seen a fox, but we do have city coyotes. And amazing birds, whomping big herons and storks, and flocks of ibis, and in my neighborhood peacocks, downtown there is a flock of green parrots. I feel bad for them, sure they’d all rather have the space without the city but they have adapted. And we do have a lot of green space, mitigation is mandated when you pave over land otherwise flooding would be so much worse in the rainy season.

              Ostriches can live in Poland? It seems so cold there.

              • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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                3 days ago

                I guess they have a wider range than we usually think.
                I’ve seen ostrich farms in Hungary and Serbia. Southern than Poland but still far outside of typical ostrich habitat.

  • ceenote@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    A gator yelling at a careless parent for putting their child in a precarious position is a weird thing to put on a sign…

  • Dr. Unabart@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    That sign’s there after learning the hard way that gators will leap up and eat a juicy baby if you dangle it out there like a piece of chicken.

  • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    In Europe the red circle means “no [whatever is inside the circle]”. It took me a while to figure that out as a Californian.

    And to make matters more confusing, a red circle crossed out means “cancel the No from before” so like the end of a loading zone or the end of a no parking zone.

    • Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 days ago

      On German streets, a red circle means prohibited, but a red triangle is a warning. For parking, crossed out ones means you can stop for a few minutes, keeping the car in sight, and crossed out twice means you’re not allowed to stop at all. To mark the beginning and end of a no-parking zone, we use arrows.

    • Pommes_für_dein_Balg@feddit.org
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      3 days ago

      The meaning is the same in all of Europe, and has been for a hundred years.
      It’s also taught to everyone before they are allowed to drive.
      It doesn’t need to be intuitive, and crossing it out would make it much harder to see what’s actually crossed out.

    • FishFace@piefed.social
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      3 days ago

      There are different meanings of “intuitive”. One is that anyone with experience of the world should understand it, even without education. By that definition, this is not intuitive. But nor would it be with a slash through it: the world does not teach us that slashes through things mean “don’t do it” except through education.

      By the other meaning of intuitive, that it aligns with other things which hopefully you have been educated about, this is pretty intuitive. Red circle means “don’t” and there’s a picture of a motorbike.

      • 9point6@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Funnily enough, I’ve never needed to drive, which resulted in me never bothering to actually get a licence. So I’d have easily missed that memo at many points in my life. I don’t need a licence to walk or ride a bike on roads where it might be valuable to expect everyone on them to understand the signage in non-opposing ways.

        Now I’m gonna preface this with: I can comfortably pass a driving theory test with no issue whatsoever, before anyone assumes I’m coming from a place of complete ignorance.

        Slashes, crosses & bars through something are commonly understood by everyone to kinda mean the opposite of the thing that’s got a line through it. When a kid wants to erase a mistake in school, they’re taught to cross it out. Basically making that concept intuitive to everyone who made it through the first year of school.

        Now, when other circles with crosses, slashes and bars exist in the same signage design language, it heavily implies an icon in an open circle is intuitively a signal something is permitted and not prohibited.

        The only people you can guarantee that a red circle means “don’t” for, are people who have a driving license in a country that isn’t the US

        That’s far from everyone out there. Which feels like a fairly clear failure for a sign that would typically be important

        • FishFace@piefed.social
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          2 days ago

          I have always assumed that there is no slash because it vastly impedes how easy the sign is to read, which is critical for road signs where you’re almost certain to be moving at speed and soon out of sight.

  • ceoofanarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    Ahh so location please been looking for where to dispose of my unwanted infants it also is a plus i will be helping feed the local wildlife.