Thanks for your patience during our recent outage at scalar.usc.edu. While Scalar content is loading normally now, saving is still slow, and Scalar's 'additional metadata' features have been disabled, which may interfere with features like timelines and maps that depend on metadata. This also means that saving a page or media item will remove its additional metadata. If this occurs, you can use the 'All versions' link at the bottom of the page to restore the earlier version. We are continuing to troubleshoot, and will provide further updates as needed. Note that this only affects Scalar projects at scalar.usc.edu, and not those hosted elsewhere.
1media/pigs in a flood in thailand in 2011.jpg2019-04-07T22:30:06-07:00Sam Henrickson5cd0ff97c337b26d01e84db58bdb9506b40fff7a335195Xplain2019-04-20T18:55:21-07:00Sam Henrickson5cd0ff97c337b26d01e84db58bdb9506b40fff7aX is the manifestation of a superhuman power, one that is inexplicable but changes the existence of all its subjects as soon as it is discovered. In the Mesozoic era, an asteroid (probably) hit the Earth at 64 000 kilometres an hour and both the immediate effects and the elusive after-effects destroyed roughly 80% of all life. Currently, the best idea of some kind of X-like force that could be making unwitting subjects of modern-day animals is the weather and natural disasters. Animals are constantly subjected to the weather, and are consistently linked to nature and the seasons. Groundhog Day in North America is Febrary 2nd: humans watch a groundhog exit its home, and if it can see its shadow, six more weeks of winter are said to be on the way.
Obviously this is a crock of shit, as scientists have found zero relation to the weather on a specific day, a species of rodent and temperature and climate changes, but there are some animals that are extraordinarily in tune with weather and natural disaster prediction. Due to their different sensitivities and physiologies, birds like robins can sense barometric and temperature changes throughout the day, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac. Animals are extremely sensitive to anything more than the constant, slight natural changes in barometric and hydrostatic pressure, which is often why dogs can indicate though "abnormal" behaviour that a hurricane may be approaching.
For example, sharks during Tropical Storm Gabrielle sensed the barometric pressure drop and swam deeper into the ocean. Black bears may choose different hibernation locations depending on how cold they think the winter may be. I can and do consider this the X of animals because there is a helpless kind of subjection to the events that befall in a bout of strange weather, and the mystery and inexplicability especially for animals of changes in the weather. All an animal can do in the face of their X, just like humans in the face of ours, is wait it out and take what may come. There isn't any evidence that animals attribute the weather changes to a higher being the way humans do, but it would make sense to consider the weather to be seen as a kind of fearsome overarching power that sways the world as we know it, working in mysterious ways.
