There Are No More Dogs in Antarctica
chrisdobo.com
chrisdobo.com
Did this apply to both polar regions? Is the Arctic one enormous, 35,000-year-old frozen pet cemetery?
Edit: come to think of it, this applies to humans too, at both poles.
It’s also been the least accessible, making it historically impossible to resupply, in turn making it non-colonizable until diesel generators and the airplanes and (sometimes nuclear) icebreakers required to feed them.
The Arctic on the other hand isn’t a continent, but pretty much every winter becomes physically connected to multiple inhabited countries that already have populations, and these days road and rail, within their Arctic and sub-Arctic regions.
So while the Arctic is definitely a frozen pet cemetery, it’s been a LONG time since it was devoid of dogs (or at least wolves, who colonised it without our help).
I think I'm just coming to terms (in a public forum) with the bleak fates of animals that humans transport, ie. to the ends of the Earth.
Your odds of dying while climbing it are better than while attempting suicide. And most of the bodies just...stay.
(Note: that link contains photos of frozen human corpses, so maybe don't click it if you're squeamish.)
My understanding is that many of these bodies are clearly visible from the trail as you climb the mountain. Imagine seeing the well-preserved corpse of someone who previously attempted the dangerous feat you're now attempting... I don't want to find out what that feels like.
The reason one does such things, though, is because they're difficult, so I'd imagine the bodies are motivating - focus or you'll be the next milestone.
I also wonder, with so much money going into these expeditions for many decades, how hard would it be to build some kind of safe house not too far from the summit, with oxygen / heating supplies delivered by drone?
The density of the air on Mount Everest is about 3/8 of that at sea level. So getting enough lift would be difficult. To the sibling commenter's point, I think a drone would be a lot easier than a piloted helicopter, since you can make the whole thing out of beryllium if you have to.
You also have a stream of hundreds of people climbing it daily. If each one carries a few hundred grams payload to help with construction, or a sherpa takes an extra O2 cylinder every once in a while...
I know nothing about climbing, but thought, given the volume of people and money, it doesn't look like a "greatest feats of engineering"-level project to save a few dozen lives.
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/eve...
Really takes the mystery and wonder out of it, but maybe the Nepal government will sell a FastPass.
But I was questioning my own assumption there and as it turns out there's "only" a few hundred people a year that try to make it to the summit, with a total of about 12.000 people that did since the 50's. That said, the surrounding national park gets 100.000 visitors per year, and 500 people a day go up to Everest Base Camp, which is already over five kilometers high up (although people can start from a town with an airport at 2804 meters high).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Delsalle?wprov=sfti1#Mo...
Above that in Nepal it's just tents carried by human porters. In China/Tibet there's an advanced base camp which is like a village supplied by yak but without shops/public facilities, just expedition tents.
The trek to the 5200m stuff on the Nepal side is a nice trip and cheap once you get to Kathmandu.
Andean and Ethiopan populations also have separate such mutations of their own.
Academic article: https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/46/1/18/661204
Grunt work (porters, cooks, etc) is done by migrants from lowlands, on poor wages, with poor equipment and often effectively at higher risk despite not being involved in, for example, summit pushes. They do not benefit from the biological adaptations, nor noble savage mystique payday.
I think the death ratio is down now there are pretty much fixed ropes the whole way to the summit on the south side. The 'Into Thin Air' deaths were because they lost their way in a storm but now you just clip onto the guide rope and walk up/down.
The attempt to death ratio is probably more like 0.5% or 0.2% though there aren't really proper figures on number of attempts.
I'm assuming by "summit attempt" they mean something like ascending above the high camp, so that wouldn't include people who abandon the climb lower down the mountain?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_on_eight-thousa...
From 1924 (Mallory's death) and 1952 (Hillary's summit) it was infinite deaths per summit as summits were zero.
It does make sense that this figure would evolve over time.
At some point some artifacts or bodies will reach the glacier edge and drop into the sea.
And for the north, most of it is just ice shelfs anyway.
Then again, not that many people died in arctic expeditions. As someone mentioned, mountaineering is a slaughterhouse in comparison. Particularly compared to the size of the Antarctic continent.
One example of the case you mentioned though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9e%27s_Arctic_balloon...
But (1) the preserved Scott dog in the article is on Cape Evans maybe not too far from the coast? and (2) now I wonder if I'm wrong about penguin habits. I'd like to hear more.
The Antarctic conditions preserve bodies for a long time - in the dry valleys, there are freeze-dried seals who have been there for tens of millennia - the only thing that wears them down is the relentless wind.
Is it actually stinking? I'd assume no, both as most smells are associated with decay and our ability to smell is somewhat hampered in the cold, but I have no idea how much blubber normally stinks.
One of the people I was with had to run outside and vomit - and then carefully scoop up all of their vomit into a plastic bag, because you only leave footprints in the Antarctic, and take nothing but what you brought with you - including your stomach contents.
Also, humans have been in the Americas for far more than ten thousand years, which is itself a small amount of time compared to how long humans have been present elsewhere in the world.
Much of the evidence is probably underwater now though.
Sounds crazy. Does someone know, how realistic this was. Is there more evolutionary pressure in Antarctica to make that happen? Are those seals closer genetically? Could this happen elsewhere?
> The domestic dog has largely been responsible for introducing canine distemper to previously unexposed wildlife and now causes a serious conservation threat to many species of carnivores and some species of marsupials. The virus contributed to the near-extinction of the black-footed ferret. It also may have played a considerable role in the extinction of the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) and recurrently causes mortality among African wild dogs. In 1993-1994, the lion population in the Serengeti, Tanzania, experienced a 20% decline as a result of the disease. The disease has also mutated into the phocine distemper virus, which affects seals.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/avian-flu-mammals-birds-seals
That movie messed me up as a kid. Fantastic OST, though!
I will say that watching the bonus footage on the DVD/BluRay is highly worth the time. Most of the scenes were filmed in the extreme Canadian cold, which was a logistical nightmare for the filming crew and actors. Today, the same movie would be basically all green screen and CGI.
I still don't grok how they trained the dogs to "act" as well as they did. Absolutely phenomenal work from the trainers and dogs themselves.
> In view of their genetic similarity to seals there was a fear that dog distemper might mutate and cross over into the seal population.
/j