28 June, 2024

Dogs are being offered boat and rail season tickets to ease their path to walkies in the Lake District.

Ullswater Steamers and the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway have introduced £20 annual “Rover” season tickets, which include a 10% donation to animal charities.

The cost for a standard doggie day ticket is £2.50 for the railway and £1 for a boat trip.

…

Pamela Tickell (BBC News)

In a world where the news is dominated by war, cyber attacks, or imminent elections, it’s nice to be distracted by a nonsense bit of news. And this one’s just delightful.

For a fee of £1 – £2.50, dogs can travel on the boats and railways of Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway and Ullswater Steamers. So far, so good.

And now they’ve introduced a season pass for people who take their canines on the ferries or railways more often. Also good.

And they’ve called the season pass for dogs… a “Rover” ticket.

Excellent.

You’ve probably been taught that you can tell the difference between African Elephants and Indian Elephants by looking at their head and ears. The larger African Elephants have a rounded cranium and big ears (with a shape somewhat like the continent of Africa itself!), whereas the smaller Indian Elephants have a two-lobed skull and diminutive ears that tuck tidily alongside their heads.

An African Elephant and an Indian Elephant, with the different head & ear shape clearly visible. — If you’re *inside* the elephant or have access to an extraordinarily-large X-ray machine, you can also differentiate by counting the ribs: African Elephants tend to have 21 pairs, Indian Elephants only 20.

But suppose you don’t manage to get a glimpse at the front end of the elephant as it passes you. What hope is there of identifying the species? Well: you can look at its back!

Concave back of an African Elephant. — Never forget: this back belongs to an African Elephant.

African Elephants, it turns out, have a concave back, whereas Indian elephants have a convex back (a bit like a hump)!

Convex back of an Indian Elephant. — You could probably come up with some kind of mnemonic if you wanted, like “African Elephants back down when Indian Elephants back up.” But perhaps a better one than that.

I was having difficulty sleeping one night during the UK‘s current heatwave, so naturally I opted to practice my newfound ability to distinguish elephant species by their spines. Indian, Indian, African, Indian, African, African… etc.

And then I came across this one: