[Pic Of Devils Having Sex With Girls
Amancio Mccrae
This is the personal ministry blog of Jen Oshman. My mission statement as a writer is \"To honor the Lord and serve the reader.\" Here you'll find a variety of posts related to my primary passion in writing, which is fostering a deeper faith and Biblical worldview, especially for women.
Tomorrow a saint and a handful of devils and angels will visit my kids' classrooms. December 5th is Mikulš Day. St. Mikulš will visit all the kids in our local school accompanied by angels and devils. Once it is determined if each child has been naughty or nice, the nice ones will be given candy from the angels and the naughty ones will be carried off to "hell" in the devils' bag. Seriously, I can't make this stuff up!
We Oshmans have been gathering information about Mikulš Day for well over a year. We've been asking everyone we know what we should expect. Both Czechs and expats alike have shared their experiences with us--always recounting both the silly and fun sides of the tradition (customary candy, costumes, songs, and gifts left by St. Mikulš on the window ledges of each home), as well as the terrifying-please-mommy-save-me-I-don't-want-to-go-to-hell side of the the holiday.
At our local school the characters will be played by 5th graders who are Zoe's classmates. We've been debating about whether or not to even send the girls to school tomorrow, as the grisly masks the devils wear are sure to terrify them. The girls vacillate between wanting to experience Mikulš Day and wanting to stay home, under their beds. We did arm them with an appropriate Mikulš song, so they will have a response for the angel if they are asked for something in exchange for the candy. Zoe has also warned the 5th graders to be nice to her little sisters.
The Mikulš tradition is kind of like our American Santa tradition on steroids. In America we also talk about being naughty and nice and earning your good Christmas gifts from Santa, rather than getting a lump of coal. We don't have the devil dragging you off to hell part--but the bottom line is the same--be good or else!
As we dissect the Mikulš tradition and navigate it with our kids (just like we did with Santa a few years ago), we're reminded again that we're all on the naughty list (Romans 3:23) but Jesus Christ--the babe in a manger--has set us free (Galatians 5:1).
In a display of skill, determination, and breaking gender norms, three teenage girls have become integral members of the North Delta U15 A1 hockey team. Sofia Sangha (goalie), Myelle Johnson (defence), and Maddie, (right wing), have shattered a few stereotypes and proven their prowess on the ice in a sport traditionally dominated by males.
It was talent he was looking for. Females have always been able to play with the boys. The North Delta Hockey Association currently have a very large female enrollment, especially in the younger levels.
Wild female Tasmanian devils have mating habits that could pose a challenge for conservationists trying to maintain genetic diversity in species recovery programs, found Morris Animal Foundation-funded researchers at the University of Sydney.
The research team discovered that Tasmanian devil females can be polyandrous, or have multiple mating partners, and their male partners can be younger than once thought. The team published their findings in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.
Devil facial tumor disease 1 (DFT1) and the recently discovered devil facial tumor 2 (DFT2) have decimated wild Tasmanian devil populations. Save the Tasmanian Devil Program, an initiative by the Tasmanian and Australian governments, was established to maintain an enduring, ecologically functional population of Tasmanian devils in the wild with a captive, insurance population of animals free from DFT1 and DFT2.
"The good news is that these devils may be changing their life history to adapt to life with the disease in their midst," said Dr. Tracey Russell, biologist at the University of Sydney and lead author of the paper. "There are benefits to multiple paternity, including increased genetic diversity of offspring, but this may be problematic in a captive situation, where females have access to more than one male, making the parentage of the offspring unknown and needing to be determined."
Multiple paternity of litters has been recorded in numerous marsupial species but had not been reported in Tasmanian devils. Dr. Russell's team studied a population of devils on the Forestier Peninsula, in southeast Tasmania. Researchers extracted DNA from samples of each individual and compared those of the pups to those of potential fathers to identify sires.
The researchers discovered four out of the nine litters tested showed multiple siring of offspring. Even more interestingly, some of the sires were yearlings. Devils are thought to be sexually mature at 2 years old. While females have been observed to breed as yearlings in disease-ravaged areas, this is the first record of males doing so.
As this is a newly discovered phenomenon, it's not yet known if multiple paternity increases offspring survival in the wild. However, in many species, polyandry offers potential benefits, such as reduced risk of male infanticide of offspring and increased genetic diversity of offspring.
DFTD1 and DFT2 are highly unique forms of transmissible cancers that are passed from one devil to another through biting, a common behavior that takes place during feeding and mating. Most infected Tasmanian devils die within three to six months of developing visible tumors. Primary tumors typically develop on the face or inside the mouth, and quickly grow into large tumors that metastasize to the internal organs.
When these cancers ravage a population, it is usually the older devils that succumb to the disease, since they tend to be the ones inflicting penetrating bites to each other. As the older devils die, younger devils are left without competition from larger males to breed with the females.
"This newly discovered potential adaptation is an important finding, in addition to efforts to find a cure for both diseases, as we seek to save the Tasmanian devil from extinction," said Dr. Janet Patterson-Kane, Morris Animal Foundation Chief Scientific Officer. "The devils are in an evolutionary arms race with devil facial tumor disease and we continue to do all we can to increase their odds of success."
A first glance at the Wickliffe girls basketball roster suggests the Blue Devils have potential.With only two seniors on the 10-person squad and the rest of the roster being filled out by four freshmen and four sophomores, the future is bright.
Under the direction of first-year coach Jason Moulton, young-ish in his own right as a 2017 graduate of Wickliffe, the Blue Devils are off to their best start since 2006 with a 4-0 record. Moulton & Co. will go for win No. 5 on Dec. 12 at Cuyahoga Heights.
Moulton admitted there was some uncertainty early as to who would be on the team and how the season would unfold. The successful girls soccer team made a nice tournament run, which delayed a bit the start of the basketball season.
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Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD), a highly contagious cancer, has decimated Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) numbers in the wild. To ensure its long-term survival, a captive breeding program was implemented but has not been as successful as envisaged at its launch in 2005. We therefore investigated the reproductive success of 65 captive devil pair combinations, of which 35 produced offspring (successful pairs) whereas the remaining 30 pairs, despite being observed mating, produced no offspring (unsuccessful pairs). The devils were screened at six MHC Class I-linked microsatellite loci. Our analyses revealed that younger females had a higher probability of being successful than older females. In the successful pairs we also observed a higher difference in total number of heterozygous loci, i.e. when one devil had a high total number of heterozygous loci, its partner had low numbers. Our results therefore suggest that devil reproductive success is subject to disruptive MHC selection, which to our knowledge has never been recorded in any vertebrate. In order to enhance the success of the captive breeding program the results from the present study show the importance of using young (2-year old) females as well as subjecting the devils to MHC genotyping.
The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) has been shown to be one of the key molecular determinants of mate choice in numerous vertebrates including humans1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Class I and II MHC molecules are responsible for the processing and presentation of intra- and extra-cellular peptides derived from invading pathogens to cytotoxic T cells and helper T cells and, hence, constitute a crucial part of the vertebrate immune system8,9. Due to the ability to recognize and present peptides from a wide array of rapidly evolving pathogens, the MHC encompasses the most variable set of genes with heterozygosity values exceeding those predicted by neutrality10.
Relationship between female age and the success of reproduction in Tasmanian devil pairs (a). Points with error bars depict reproductive success (95% CI) of pairs across female age. Grey line shows the binomial model prediction of this relationship with the 95% confidence interval (grey polygon).
(a) Mode prediction of the interaction between the number of male and female heterozygous loci. The color scale (within the data range) and contour lines (across the entire range of female and male heterozygous loci) indicate the probability of being successful according to the combination of the number of male and female heterozygous loci. (b) Diagonal section of the model prediction shown in (a) across the optimal pair combinations with 95% confidence interval.
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