Day 4151: AI and Deadly Cat?

 

   

"Connections: junk collage, acrylics, digital.

 

  

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2GN2S

Artificial intelligence did a lot of weird things this year — like write papers, make digital art straight out of the uncanny valley, and bring M3GAN to life — but it made good on its potential when it decoded a word on a scroll recovered from a village reduced to ash in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius over 2,000 years ago. The word was “πορφυρας” or “porphyras,” which is the Greek word for purple! Now if AI can decipher the rest of the scroll, we’ll find out what was so fascinating about purple in 79 AD. 

A cute, killer cat: The deadliest cat in the world

 Gaia, a black-footed cat, peers out from her enclosure at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024. Gaia is 9 months old and weighs 2.6 pounds. The breed is the smallest species of wild cat found in Africa

“She is small in size but large in her feisty personality,” Hogle Zoo said about its newest resident: a cat named Gaia. At first glance, Gaia looks like a tabby cat that you could find in your home. She’s a petite wisp of cat, weighing only 2.6 pounds at 9 months old. The average weight of a house cat is around 8 to 12 pounds, according to WebMD. So, Gaia is around one-fourth of that size.

Specifically, she’s a black-footed cat: a species of endangered cat with black or dark brown spots across their fur. Even though Gaia has big eyes, rounded ears and soft fur, and barely exceeds the size of your average teapot, she’s considered the deadliest cat in the world.

If you think that title should belong to a bigger, more menacing cat like a lion or a puma, think again: the black-footed cat has earned that title because they have a 60% success rate when they hunt, according to PBS. They also have earned the honor of being Africa’s smallest cat. By comparison, a lion hunting by itself has a success rate of 17% to 19%. If the lion hunts in pairs or a group, then the rate increases to around 30%, per the African Lion and Environmental Research Trust. In other words, the success rate of a black-footed cat is double that of a lion in a pair or group. Black-footed cats tend to lurk around at night, per PBS. These cats can leap to capture their prey and prefer to eat a diet of locusts, birds, gerbils and other small rodents.

Gaia, a black-footed cat, peers out from her enclosure at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024. Gaia is 9 moths old and weighs 2.6 pounds. The cat’s breed is the smallest species of wild cat found in Africa.

According to the University of Michigan’s Animal Diversity website, black-footed cats hide out in burrows, caves or dense shrubs to take shelter. They are solitary animals who scientists believe can live up to 13 years in the wild and 15.6 years in captivity.

 

 

 

  

 

A 3 minute video, Optical Illusions here.

 

 

  

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Double-collared Sunbird

 

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