Some very sweet elephant behaviours I read about in Carl Safina’s Beyond Words:

1. a young elephant kneeling down in front of their car in a playful way and throwing zebra bones at the researchers, trying to get them to play with him
   
2. an 8-month-old elephant trying and failing to pick up some grass with her trunk (the author: “it reminds me of someone learning to use chopsticks”) and whose mother then pulled a sheaf of grass and ate it while making sure her daughter was watching the demonstration
3. baby elephants suck their trunk for comfort (as we all know!!) but also like to swing and whirl it around as they try to figure out what it can do and how to use it, and sometimes accidentally step on their trunk and trip over it
   
4. “often, babies reach with their trunks into the mouths of family members, taking a bit of what they’re eating”
5. all the female elephants in a family rushing over to help when someone’s baby trips and falls, while making comforting vocalisations
6. an enormous adult male elephant walking up to a family group and making an exaggerated display of nonchalance, with his trunk casually draped over his tusk, to show the other elephants that he’s not scary
7. researchers messing with an elephant family by collecting a bit of urine when the elephant walking at the back of the group stopped to pee, then driving some distance to leave the urine ahead of them. “When they encountered fresh urine from an elephant they knew was behind them, they seemed truly baffled, as though thinking, “Wait a minute—how’d she pass us? She’s back behind us!”
8. mothers instructing their babies to switch to the other side of their body and walk in their shade when the day is very hot
9. an elephant child trying to climb all over a bigger male teenager who was lying down for a nap, receiving a kick in response, and running back to its mother in alarm—then the teenager followed and lay down flat beside them as if to apologise and invite the child to climb onto him again
10. elephant children throwing tantrums when they are being weaned and their mother blocks them from nursing (“He got so upset, pushing her, poking her and tusking her, […] it was like, ‘Ooh, I hate you!”)
11. researchers followed a family that included a baby who was born disabled, with twisted forelegs that he couldn’t straighten. The entire elephant family (from the adults to the baby’s 8-year-old sister) nurtured him, patiently helping him up every time he fell over, “slowing their pace to his disabilities, continually turning to watch his progress, waiting as he caught up from behind” until (after a few days) the little one managed to straighten his legs and learn to walk normally
12. a researcher once saw an elephant pluck up some grass and place it in the mouth of another elephant whose trunk was badly injured. Also adults are sometimes seen carrying sick baby elephants on their tusks
13. a researcher saw a baby elephant who was wary of going into the water, wrap her trunk around her mother’s tusk as her mother patiently entered the river with her, like a child nervously grabbing her mother’s arm
14. “little elephants show lots of concentration while working to master such tasks as picking up sticks. A youngster might twirl and twirl its trunk around a single blade of grass, finally grasp it, drop it and have a hard time getting it back, then simply place the grass blade atop its head”
    

The Wilds alignment charts part 3

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 (here) Part 4 Part 5

I offer textposts to pacify all of us waiting for s2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagramma_della_personalit%C3%A0

Shelby: I’m just still so nervous I’m gonna mess this all up and make you hate me.

Toni: Shelby, i couldn’t hate you when I was trying my absolute best to. And I’m great at hating.

Toni: I'll unfriend anyone, I don't care. Ask my ex grandma

Fatin: What’s the easiest way to steal a man’s wallet?

Toni: Knife to the throat.

Rachel: Gun to the back.

Nora: Poison in his cup.

Martha: You’re all horrible.

“I tend to see the glass as being half full, you tend to see the glass as being something to hit people with!”

Martha to Toni

Toni: A fly flew into my ear! It’s gonna eat my brain!

Rachel: It’s gonna starve

the trailer for the wilds s2 got me thinking again about the way the girls function as a COLLECTIVE

specifically: i’m fascinated by the fact that there’s very rarely a collective effort to sanction an individual for a mistake/fuck up. if there’s a conflict, it’s between a few of the girls, and they may harbor resentment and/or react harshly because of it, but the group is very forgiving, and not really interested in any kind of, i don’t know how to say this but, punishment structure? which i think is due in part to dot’s influence. they may consider themselves a group, but they have not invested this group with real power over the individual

as far as i recall there’s only three instances in season 1 of a collective reaction to one person’s actions:

1) everyone refusing to give Fatin extra water in episode 4 when she drank all of hers and asks for more

2) everyone icing out Shelby after her homophobic outburst

3) that one line from Rachel in episode 10 which seems to imply that the group decided to put Leah on a “watch list” after she ran into the ocean

but we never see the girls discussing these group reactions - almost as if it’s more of an implicit agreement, not something explicitly enacted by the group in response to a particular event. and almost always there’s the sentiment that, rather than focusing on penalizing whoever messed up, it’s better to make sure the person remains a part of the group. they never cast anyone out, they never totally deprive anyone of support, and i just love that take on the group dynamic, and wonder if it’s going to change at all in season 2

crash

You know how sometimes you see a character and you’re like “okay I know I have a type but jesus c h r i s t”

Toni: I can do whatever I want, I don't need anyone's permission.

Fatin: I'm telling Shelby and Martha you said that.

Toni: No, no, no! Wait!