Thursday Things: Dusty Archives Edition
15 December 2022. Vol 4 No 50 By Dan McGirt. #175
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Dusting off the archives
Most Thursday Things items come from my often aimless, though sometimes purposeful, ramblings around the internet. I bookmark many, many items that catch my eye because they are weird, funny, interesting, inspiring, or otherwise appeal to me. Many go into a bookmark folder especially for Thursday Things. Others I save into dozens of other folders — research for books or blogs, helpful tips, topics that interest me like science, history, psychology, literature, etc.
Usually, the Thursday Things items in a given edition were bookmarked in the previous week or two. But not every item I save makes it into Thursday Things within a couple of weeks! Those old items get pushed further down the list as I accumulate new bookmarks from the endless cornucopia of the Internet. So this week, as an end of the year exercise, I decided to scroll back through my bookmarks and take a new look at items that didn’t quite make it before.
Let’s see what’s lurking in the Thursday Things attic…
Leave it there! Please?
First up, giant vampire bats! If there is one thing we can count on scientists to do, it’s to go poking around in places man was never meant to go and disturbing things better left undisturbed.
Remains of Giant Vampire Bat From 100,000 Years Ago Found in Argentinian Cave
The jawbone of a bat that lived 100,000 years ago has been confirmed as belonging to an extinct species of giant vampire bat.
The discovery of the jawbone of the species Desmodus draculae, found in a cave in Argentina, is helping fill in the huge gaps in the history of these amazing animals, and could provide some clues as to why these bats eventually died out.
I assume they died out because brave prehistoric vampire hunters paid a terrible price to seal them into this cave you just blundered into, scientists.
"[Vampire bats] are the only family of bats in the world [that] arouses curiosity from the legends of the Transylvania and its creepy Count Dracula," said paleontologist Mariano Magnussen of the Paleontological Laboratory of the Miramar Museum of Natural Sciences in Argentina.
Okay, I must pause here and say “Mariano Magnussen” is the coolest paleontologist name ever. Sounds like the name of a guy who is going to survive to the end of the horror movie he just accidentally started.
And he’s got a website: http://www.grupopaleo.com.ar/web/marianomagnussen/principal.htm
Yeah, Mariano is the guy you want on your side when the prehistoric giant vampire bats wake up. Now back to the article:
"But in reality they are peaceful animals that feed on the blood of animals, and sometimes humans, for a few minutes without causing discomfort… The only bad thing is that they can transmit rabies or other diseases if they are infected. Surely their prehistoric representatives had similar behaviors."
Sure, what’s a little blood-drinking and rabies between friends? A minor discomfort, really. Wait a minute — whose side are you on, Mariano Magnussen?
Fossils from extinct vampire bat species can help us unravel why today's species survived. And the new D. draculae discovery has a lot of significance for a small bone.
Well, that’s certainly some interesting scientific … wait, what?!? Did you say the species is called “D. draculae”? Are you serious with this right now?1
"The significance of the fossils are several, to start with, fossil bat remains are rare in Argentina," paleontologist Santiago Brizuela of the National University of Mar del Plata in Argentina told ScienceAlert.
Santiago Brizuela … Argentinians have the most awesome names! And as I look closer, it was Santiago who excavated the vampire bat fossils. The plot thickens…
We've known about the existence of D. draculae since it was first formally described in 1988, although we don't know much more about it. It lived during the Pleistocene in Central and South America, up until fairly recently: some remains have been discovered that are recent enough not to have fossilized, suggesting that it may only have died out a few hundred years ago.
A few hundred years ago? Curiouser and curiouser.
It was also the largest vampire bat known to have existed – it was around 30 percent larger than its closest living relative, today's common vampire bat, with a wingspan estimated to be around 50 centimeters (20 inches).
20 inch wingspan doesn’t sound like much — until it’s flapping in your face while the bat feasts on your blood (and possibly gives you rabies). Or demanding human sacrifices.2
This could be a huge clue as to how the bats lived. Some researchers think that D. draculae fed on rodents or deer, but others suspect that its prey was megafauna. Finding remains of a bat so closely associated with Mylodontidae [giant sloth] habitat could mean that the latter is correct.
These things could take down a giant sloth. Just leave the bats in their bat cave, Santiago! I know it’s only bones but that’s all it takes. You get one drop of blood on the bones and those giant prehistoric vampire bats could come back to life and swarm across Argentina! That would destroy Argentina’s economy and … oh, well, never mind.
All kidding aside, this is a cool story from last year that never made it into Thursday Things and you can read all about the vampire bat bones in Ameghiniana “New Record of the Vampire Desmodus draculae (Chiroptera) from the Late Pleistocene of Argentina” for a mere $25. Because information wants to be free, but Ameghiniana wants twenty-five bucks.
Tales of Zanzibar!
Next up — folk tales from Zanzibar.3
Folktales from the Zanzibar archipelago of Tanzania bear traces of the centuries during which the islands served as a center for trade in the Indian ocean, the complex history of intracontinental cultural exchange on the East African coast, and the influence of Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit stories on Swahili narratives. As such, it is difficult to reconstruct the history of these tales. … Presented here are ten stories adapted by George W. Bateman, which some claim inspired Disney’s Bambi and The Lion King, although we have been unable to find the resemblance.
This item is from Public Domain Review. I love the site as a place to discover interesting items — as I love the public domain in general. Longtime Happy Subscribers know that Thursday Things often features public domain collections of maps, songs, films, illustrations, texts, and on and on. (I will almost certainly do an item in January about famous and not so famous works that enter the public domain in 2023.)
Thou Duke of Limbs!
Here’s another item from the archives that hits two recurring Thursday Things themes — listicles and interesting words. In this case, a list of insults of yore!
25 Great Insults From 18th-Century British Slang
I won’t list all 25 — go read the article! — but here are the first few to give you the flavor of these colorful insults:
1. Addle Pate: “An inconsiderate foolish fellow.”
2. Back Biter: “One who slanders another behind his back, i.e. in his absence.”
3. A Blowse, or Blowsabella: An unkempt woman: “A woman whose hair is dishevelled, and hanging about her face; a slattern.”
Check out the list and find creative new ways to insult any jolterheads who need insulting in 2023.
Thank you!
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Dead serious: “Desmodus draculae is an extinct species of vampire bat that inhabited Central and South America during the Pleistocene, and possibly the early Holocene. It was 30% larger than its living relative the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus). Fossils and unmineralized subfossils have been found in Argentina, Mexico,[1][2] Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, Belize, and Bolivia.” — iNaturalist “Giant vampire bat”
“It has been speculated that D. draculae was part of the inspiration for the Mayan bat-god Camazotz. D. draculae could have also inspired legends of the Mura people, an indigenous people in Brazil, about the Caoera—a blood-eating bat the size of a vulture.” Ibid.
Vampire bats the size of a vulture, people!
I just love saying Zanzibar. If I were a bazillionaire, I would buy Zanzibar and rename it Danzibar, because that the sort of egomaniacal thing bazillionaires do.