Tits Christmas morning, are you worried that you didn't choose the right gift for that special someone? I always try my best, but everywhere I turn I am bombarded with useless offers. No, I don't need a candle that smells like turkeybecause, well, we're going to cook turkey. I also don't want alarm clock at dawn it mimics natural light because I can leave the curtains open. And I definitely Not I want a jelly mask with pink collagen and salmon DNA (Good Housekeeping's Best for beauty lovers), because said DNA comes from milk. AKA sperm. If I wanted fish sperm on my face, I would tickle the pollock.
So if you, like me, are always looking for inspiration, my advice is to learn from the animal kingdom. People didn't invent donation. This practice exists at least 100 million yearslong before our species evolved. With a little help from natural selection, this gave wild animals plenty of time to perfect the art of giving. Damn, some spiders even gift wrapping!
Excluding exercise-related items and other things I don't like, there are five categories of Christmas gifts: food, household items, decorations, skin care and clothing. The animal world has everything.
Brazilian cuckoos give their mates high protein snacks such as insects, frogs and lizardsbut if you love meat kebabs, then the great gray shrike, also known as the butcher bird, is for you. Males impale preysuch as insects and mice, on sharp thorns and branches to create signature kebabs.
Some insects give their lovers drool balls, but they're not just drool balls. These are scorpion saliva balls, made from the freshest saliva from the swollen labial glands of only the fittest males. The delicacy is rich in nutrients, which is one of the reasons why females prefer males with large eggs.
Another reason is that the fittest men get the biggest balls, and when I say fit, I don't mean look great in a leather jacket (although they probably do). I mean “fitness” in the genetic sense. Gifts are given as a prelude to sex, so by choosing the male with the biggest package, the female is also choosing genetic quality.
She then eats the delicacy during sex, but stops sexual intercourse as soon as it stops completely. Larger saliva globules mean longer copulation times, during which the male can transfer more sperm and the female cannot mate with anyone else. This explains why he is worried about such an elaborate proposal.
Adelie penguins do not give food, but they do give things for the house. In Antarctica, where they live, there is no B&Q, so the birds have to draw gifts from the local landscape. Each breeding season, males collect pebbles and begin to build a nest from them. Vital building blocks are in short supply, prompting some to steal the pebbles from his neighbors, but when the male gives a pebble to the female, it is a sign that he is ready to commit. Think of it as the penguin equivalent of a diamond ring. However, the stone misses her finger. If she also wants to get down to serious business, she accepts the pebble and adds it to the nest. Then, after a few finishing touches, they are ready to start a family.
Speaking of chic, crows do well in this gift category. There are many stories of people who befriend wild corvids and then end up with bottle caps, screws, buttons and other shiny objects. items in return. In Florida, Alberta and Chuck Holloway even got a diamond bracelet They fed regularly from crows. This is especially nice because although most animals give gifts in the hope of winning (sound familiar?), crows apparently just love to give.
Meanwhile, in Western Australia, dolphins have been spotted collecting clumps of sea sponge from the ocean floor and using them in interesting ways. Sometimes when they are rummaging for fish, they wearing sponges on the beak to protect the skin. And sometimes when men want to woo women, they wear them like colorful hats before giving them as a gift.
At the same time, dolphins brilliantly combine the last two categories of Christmas gifts. Sea sponges are clothes And skin care. And if that's not enough, when the males give up their sponge caps, they will often assume a U-shaped “banana pose” and play a little tune through their blowhole.
This isn't half-assed pet donation—my friend Lilly's cat recently gave her a dead mouse, which she then hid in a dark corner of the house—or any people I might mention. Dolphin gifts are thoughtful, multi-functional, sustainably sourced and delivered in style. We can all learn from them. Mariah Carey may have said that all she wants for Christmas is “you,” but if I have one Christmas wish, it's to have a sponge hat thing and a cetacean skin protectant that serenades me with style.
