Do any of you camp out in potential hot spots?...

[hiflier]

16 hours ago, wiiawiwb said:

My hope is that thermal imagers will help to level the playing at night -- a bit.

 

And, depending on ambient temperatures they are a good tool for daytime use as well The cooler the day, even as high as 75-80 degrees in deep shade the better because most animals will be 20-25 degrees warmer when fur "shines" from body heat as well as solar gain so mornings when the environment is cooler would be a better time to things check out. This is where different color palettes can be used more effectively. The general point, though, is that thermals have the advantage of not being only a night time device. I mean, animals can see very well in the dark so it's not like we have an edge where we think we're invisible out there at night, right?

Edited October 14, 2020 by hiflier

[MIB]

2 hours ago, Huntster said:

We may be part way there. Sykes claim that Khwit/Zana showed a sub-Saharan human line not before recognized suggests that eventually, we may find a similar hit one day. 

 

There are two pieces to that ... clearly modern human (Homo sapiens sapiens) by the markers used for that identification, but by comparing mitochondrial mutations, there were a set of mutations shared with current African populations, a set of mutations common to all current African populations that are missing in Khwit's DNA, and additional mutations in Khwit's DNA not found in modern Africans.   Mito mutations are added at a pretty steady rate, a sort of heartbeat, so by comparing what is shared, what is missing, and what is unique to Khwit & family, it isn't too hard to put a ballpark timeline of when their ancestors were last mixing genes with the folks who stayed in Africa. 

 

We believed that the Sahara provided a substantial barrier to migration north out of Africa, but we are learning that not that long ago, 5000 years or so, that area was much more wet.    Archeologists considered the Sphinx to be roughly the same age as the pyramids.   The Sphinx shows some signs of water erosion not present on the pyramids.   Indications now seem to suggest the Sphinx could be about twice as old and date to the time when the Sahara was tropical rain forest .. jibing with the erosion, perhaps.     There's some indication that the Nile used to have a branch that went west quite a long ways and drained the area south of the Atlas (?) Mountains (sorry, my African geography is weak). 

 

Anyway ... Zana/Khwit DNA could support paradigm shifts in our understanding of the "out of africa" migrations.  

 

Edited October 14, 2020 by MIB

[wiiawiwb]

18 hours ago, hiflier said:

 

And, depending on ambient temperatures they are a good tool for daytime use as well The cooler the day, even as high as 75-80 degrees in deep shade the better because most animals will be 20-25 degrees warmer when fur "shines" from body heat as well as solar gain so mornings when the environment is cooler would be a better time to things check out. This is where different color palettes can be used more effectively. The general point, though, is that thermals have the advantage of not being only a night time device. I mean, animals can see very well in the dark so it's not like we have an edge where we think we're invisible out there at night, right?

 

When in the woods, I am almost always under the canopy of trees. It is darker there and especially difficult to see things 50-yards away.  That's  especially true if you're in dappled light while the area you're focusing on is the darker woods.

 

I've also found that even during the day using the thermal useful when at a pond to scan the woods around it's perimeter.  From across the pond, it is too dark to see anything even 5'-10' in the woods.

 

Here is a good example how much easier it is to see someone during the day:

 

 

[wiiawiwb]

I was at a location today where it would have been helpful to have my thermal with me during daytime.  I was scanning the pond area and couldn't see anything in the woods across the pond. Something could be standing three feet inside the forest's edge and I wouldn't see it without the thermal.

 

 

Edited October 18, 2020 by wiiawiwb

[Madison5716]

@wiiawiwb Dang, that's beautiful! 

 

And that thumbnail gave me a shiver. That's almost exactly the silhouette I saw on the FLIR, except it was more sideways. Whee!

Edited November 26, 2020 by Madison5716

[Drew]

On 10/14/2020 at 8:57 AM, Huntster said:

Anybody looked into any genetic differences between chimps and bonobos in DNA samples?

 

Yes.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11128