The employees of World Bird Sanctuary recently built a snowman for birds to enjoy. Recently, they shared a clip where an Andean condor has a fun time playing with the snowman. They captioned the clip, “Another bird that had fun in last weekend's snow was Inca, the Andean condor. She really enjoyed checking out the snowman that the staff made for her.” The clip has received over 15000 views so far and still counting.
Image Source: Twitter | WBSSTL
According to National Geographic, the Andean condor is a massive vulture from South America. They are among the largest in the world that can fly. They are so heavy (up to 33 pounds), that even their enormous 10-foot wingspan has a hard time keeping them aloft. With their sharp eyes, they usually feast on large animals, wild or domestic, and in picking the carcasses, they are the wilderness's natural clean-up crew. Along the coasts, condors will feed on dead marine animals like seals or fish. These birds do not have sharp predator claws, but they will raid birds' nests for eggs or even young hatchlings. Andean Condors have the longest wingspan of any raptor. The footage that the World Bird Sanctuary shared shows a black and grey condor featuring a white collar and bald head, roaming open-winged inside a habitat of wooden poles and sticks. There are flakes of snow scattered on the brown, soil-caked ground. The condor is seen circling the snowman as if examining it. Then, it starts fiddling with the snowman, pecking at the balls of snow with its beak.
Elizabeth (@DearBlueEarth) commented, “Isn't that one of the biggest birds in the world that can fly? I remember some sort of thing that the Andean Condor was known for! She looks magnificent!” Another woman, Katherine (@KMR31871) wrote, “This is really cute. She seems to realize the snowman isn’t quite so scary once it’s de-limbed. Lol.” The same clip was shared on Facebook as well, where it received thousands of likes. Many people suggested that their staff could also add some crumbs of food or treats attached to the snowman to make the bird more attracted to it. In a previous post on their Facebook page, World Bird Sanctuary described how many of the birds in their sanctuary are having a good time during the snowy days. Among these birds were the American white pelicans, in addition to condors, who were seen enjoying the snow.
World Bird Sanctuary is an environmental conservation organization based out of Bald Eagle Ridge Road in Missouri. According to Ladue News, the World Bird Sanctuary is on a mission to protect and preserve birds and their habitats through conservation, rehabilitation, education and more. “We not only have the opportunity to educate through our events but also raise money for our mission and give guests actionable steps that can help wildlife as a whole,” said Kelsey Rumley, director of education for the World Bird Sanctuary. The organization hosts regular events displaying their birds to the guests. “Our events all include up-close views of live birds, allowing guests to make a connection to species they could see around the world or in their own backyards,” Rumley said. “This is something that simply cannot be experienced in many other places. Fostering that connection between people and wildlife is fundamental to saving species.”
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Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.