Australia fires: Carrots and sweet potatoes dropped from the air to feed starving animals

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/13/australia-fires-carrots-and-s.html

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I really do hope this is useful and doesn’t create more problems than it solve.

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Such as…?

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Let’s hope carrots don’t displace the local wildlife?

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Spreading a non-indigenous plant species? Making animals dependent? Causing a boom and bust population?

Just examples. Not my belief that this will happen though.

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Rats?

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Wallabies getting beaned and knocked unconscious by carrots dropping from on high?

:thinking: Imagine this event entering the collective wallaby memory and going down in wallaby lore…That’s right, Sonny, I lived through the Great Carrot Beaning of 2020. You should have seen them, carrots raining from the sky! Why, a wallaby wasn’t safe anywhere!

Also, what brand of plastic storage bin is that in the picture?!?! These are things we need to know!

And on the subject of carrots and sweet potatoes, woe to the person who comes to the potluck with a dish of Baked Carrots And Sweet Potatoes. Carrots are carrots, and sweet potatoes are sweet potatoes, and never the twain shall mingle, masquerading as each other to the unwary diner, I say!

(Apologies if anyone is bothered by this bit of humor in a topic about such a tragic situation.)

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I do think this is an extreme situation. More than a billion have already died.

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Agreed.
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There is a restaurant near my workplace that serves an insanely good carrot, sweet potato and ginger soup. With huge lashings of garlic.

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To wallabies?

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What is the airspeed velocity of a plummeting carrot?

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It’s in Canada, so not currently, but I’m sure delivery could be arranged. The recipe might be proprietary, however.

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Sadly I can’t tell you much about carrots. But strawberries, there I can help. See Physical properties of strawberries as related to pneumatic sorting. Figure 3 shows the measurement apparatus, which you should be able to adapt to carrots. Although I imagine you’ll have to blow a bit harder. I look forward to your report detailing your experience.

(Man, that turned into a rabbit hole - who knew so much effort goes into characterising the aerodynamic properties of fruit and veg?)

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Let’s hope so - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_rat

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:question:

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Needed 9 characters to satisfy boingboing

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In good news

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Ah  

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