An extremely tall mouse
Kat Eschner's newsletter about human-animal relationships, Vol. 5 iss. 5
This week’s issue of The Quick Fox is brought to you by the yellow-rumped leaf-eared mouse. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we live and die alongside animals, but today I just want to celebrate this mouse’s existence high, high, high up in the Andes. Per Douglas Main in National Geographic:
It’s incredible that anything could live that high, at 20,340 feet—there is no vegetation, and seemingly nothing to eat. Here, at the edge of the Atacama Desert, there is little rain, and temperatures sometimes plunge below minus 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
“It’s hard to overstate how hostile an environment it is,” says Jay Storz, a biologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and a National Geographic Explorer.
In other news, I keep thinking I’m not feeling all the change and disruption, but: earlier I made a sandwich. I can’t find it anywhere, so I must have eaten it, but I have no memory of eating it. None.
Roundup
Things I read this week, sorted by the amount of time I suspect it will take you to get through them.
Shortish
Newest shortage in New York: The city is running out of dogs to foster (Bloomberg; Bailey Lipschultz & David R. Baker; New York City, United States)
Fake animal news abounds on social media as coronavirus upends life (National Geographic; Natasha Daly; Venice & elsewhere)
Texas baboon troop enlisted in humankind’s war on coronavirus (Bloomberg; Susan Warren; Texas, United States)
Longish
How this invasive snail could save your coffee from destruction (National Geographic; Forest Ray; Puerto Rico)
Preserving dead parrots in order to save the living (NRDC; Jason Bittel; Papua New Guinea)
An emerging threat to conservation: Fear of nature (The Revelator; John R. Platt; Japan, United States)
How China’s ‘Bat Woman’ Hunted Down Viruses From SARS to the new coronavirus (Scientific American; Jane Qiu; Beijing, China)
Fishing for fun? It has a bigger environmental impact than we thought (The Revelator; David Shiffman; District of Columbia, United States)
Interesting/cheery/escapism
Pennsylvania man captures all walks of life crossing log bridge (WSLS 10; Pennsylvania, United States)
Reindeer could trample permafrost thaw (EOS; Kimberly M.S. Cartier; the Arctic)
Beat the COVID-19 blues with these wildlife and nature livecams (The Revelator; John R. Platt; the Internet)
Please read me
My most recent work.
Anti-inflammatory drugs might not actually make COVID-19 worse
Gotta fly? Wash your hands early and often to keep COVID-19 from following you home
The American healthcare system is only making COVID-19 worse
The last word
I’m hosting a Zoom spelling bee this Friday night. I’d love it if you came.
Questions? Comments? Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at my email or on Twitter. If you enjoy this newsletter and would like to tip me, I am on Ko-fi.
All images in The Quick Fox are used under Creative Commons licensing. Efforts have been made to ensure that photographs of living animals or natural scenes have been taken ethically, in responsible pet ownership conditions, at AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums or under safe, non-damaging conditions in the wild. If you see an issue with any image we share, please notify me.