laguna
Well-known member
How to get from walking the dog to Manta rays to false killer whales to the great fen?
I'm not really too sure how it happened... I was watching David Attenborough's great barrier reef but I missed the end as the dog wanted a walk. When I came back the wife said I had missed the best bit! She said some big rays were on and asked me how big they were. Erm hello! it was her that watched it?
So off we go a googling.... manta rays up to 5 metres I said... that's about one and a half the size of our sitting room. But it never stops there on google does it? Wikipeadia, lets check that out while were here see what it says...
Well I don't know what happened after that but found myself looking up 'False Killer whales' and admit never heard of them but just had to follow that link, as suspected its a lookalike but isn't... its a false one. I didn't really want to explain that to the missus as we would've been here all night. So off on a tangent, I read that the species was first described by the British paleontologist and biologist Richard Owen in his 1846 book A history of British fossil mammals and birds. He based this work on a fossil discovered in 1843 in the great fen at the neighbourhood of Stamford, Lincolnshire.
The species was thought extinct until Johannes Reinhardt confirmed it was alive when he described a large pod at the Kiel Bay in 1861. One of these was captured, and others were found the following year, beached on the coast of Denmark. Since then they are found all over the world.
So there we are. Walk the dog, Look up manta rays on Google and arrive at the great fen! Incidently, how's that progressing in the light of recent flooding events? Will it ever be restored fully by buying up farm land... are we allowed to fish it?
its a 50 year project: http://www.greatfen.org.uk/about/introduction
I'm not really too sure how it happened... I was watching David Attenborough's great barrier reef but I missed the end as the dog wanted a walk. When I came back the wife said I had missed the best bit! She said some big rays were on and asked me how big they were. Erm hello! it was her that watched it?
So off we go a googling.... manta rays up to 5 metres I said... that's about one and a half the size of our sitting room. But it never stops there on google does it? Wikipeadia, lets check that out while were here see what it says...
Well I don't know what happened after that but found myself looking up 'False Killer whales' and admit never heard of them but just had to follow that link, as suspected its a lookalike but isn't... its a false one. I didn't really want to explain that to the missus as we would've been here all night. So off on a tangent, I read that the species was first described by the British paleontologist and biologist Richard Owen in his 1846 book A history of British fossil mammals and birds. He based this work on a fossil discovered in 1843 in the great fen at the neighbourhood of Stamford, Lincolnshire.
The species was thought extinct until Johannes Reinhardt confirmed it was alive when he described a large pod at the Kiel Bay in 1861. One of these was captured, and others were found the following year, beached on the coast of Denmark. Since then they are found all over the world.
So there we are. Walk the dog, Look up manta rays on Google and arrive at the great fen! Incidently, how's that progressing in the light of recent flooding events? Will it ever be restored fully by buying up farm land... are we allowed to fish it?
its a 50 year project: http://www.greatfen.org.uk/about/introduction
mg: