Erin
@esp4.bsky.social
No one but me cares about this
February 12, 2026 at 4:21 PM
No one but me cares about this
it doesn't show up in the Rstudio preview!! it exclusively exists if you save the graph!! it has haunted me for years and i'm NOT STANDING FOR IT ANYMORE
February 12, 2026 at 4:17 PM
it doesn't show up in the Rstudio preview!! it exclusively exists if you save the graph!! it has haunted me for years and i'm NOT STANDING FOR IT ANYMORE
Your guess is as good as mine. Probably SOME of them are as with most mammals (we saw one female perform typically male courtship behaviors to another female) but the whole species wouldn't last very long if they all were...
February 1, 2026 at 9:37 PM
Your guess is as good as mine. Probably SOME of them are as with most mammals (we saw one female perform typically male courtship behaviors to another female) but the whole species wouldn't last very long if they all were...
Unfortunately most people take away "evil stupid ugly scavengers" from that movie (which I otherwise love!) so you end up having conversations about why folks think hyenas are "mean" and "cruel" when they do the exact same thing every other predator in the world does
February 1, 2026 at 6:27 PM
Unfortunately most people take away "evil stupid ugly scavengers" from that movie (which I otherwise love!) so you end up having conversations about why folks think hyenas are "mean" and "cruel" when they do the exact same thing every other predator in the world does
That guy came to the talk after this conversation and then slept through the whole thing. Net neutral interaction, zero information learned on either side, but I think of him often
February 1, 2026 at 1:18 PM
That guy came to the talk after this conversation and then slept through the whole thing. Net neutral interaction, zero information learned on either side, but I think of him often
shout out to the guy who came up to me and said "my buddy told me hyenas are gay" and I went "???? People thought they were hermaphrodites for a long time, is that what he meant?" And he went "no no, he said they were gay." And then neither of us knew how to proceed the conversation from there
February 1, 2026 at 1:14 PM
shout out to the guy who came up to me and said "my buddy told me hyenas are gay" and I went "???? People thought they were hermaphrodites for a long time, is that what he meant?" And he went "no no, he said they were gay." And then neither of us knew how to proceed the conversation from there
I blame the Lion King for a huge amount of anti-hyena bias, at least among Westerners. It was gratifying tho because most people, after being shown sufficient baby hyena photos and told some fun facts, pivoted pretty quickly to excitement/interest and away from knee jerk disgust
February 1, 2026 at 1:09 PM
I blame the Lion King for a huge amount of anti-hyena bias, at least among Westerners. It was gratifying tho because most people, after being shown sufficient baby hyena photos and told some fun facts, pivoted pretty quickly to excitement/interest and away from knee jerk disgust
When I was studying hyenas, we gave weekly educational talks at the local tourist lodge. It was remarkable how often those talks veered from "general hyena biology" to " humans love to assign human morals to animals and why we should stop"
February 1, 2026 at 1:08 PM
When I was studying hyenas, we gave weekly educational talks at the local tourist lodge. It was remarkable how often those talks veered from "general hyena biology" to " humans love to assign human morals to animals and why we should stop"
I spent a large portion of today trying to align a bunch of R plots in a grid that were like "what if we were always 5 pixels misaligned 👀" so 🤝 for sleeping on it
January 29, 2026 at 1:40 AM
I spent a large portion of today trying to align a bunch of R plots in a grid that were like "what if we were always 5 pixels misaligned 👀" so 🤝 for sleeping on it
If it makes you feel any better, I've scared off a hyena by raising my arms and going "YAAA", and we often saw them get startled by songbirds flying over head
That said, they're the only predator that can take lions in a fight (with sufficient numbers) so buddy system was probably a good idea
That said, they're the only predator that can take lions in a fight (with sufficient numbers) so buddy system was probably a good idea
January 5, 2026 at 8:57 PM
If it makes you feel any better, I've scared off a hyena by raising my arms and going "YAAA", and we often saw them get startled by songbirds flying over head
That said, they're the only predator that can take lions in a fight (with sufficient numbers) so buddy system was probably a good idea
That said, they're the only predator that can take lions in a fight (with sufficient numbers) so buddy system was probably a good idea
A Canadian hostel owner in a Kenyan beach town warned my group we'd start to burn in about 20 minutes under the equatorial sun, then looked directly at me and went "Well. Maybe 15 minutes."
December 26, 2025 at 2:50 PM
A Canadian hostel owner in a Kenyan beach town warned my group we'd start to burn in about 20 minutes under the equatorial sun, then looked directly at me and went "Well. Maybe 15 minutes."