Images

ABM Poster --> Buddhabhushan Girish Salve

ABM Poster --> Ashutosh Sharma

ABM Talk --> Lokdeep Teekas

Ashutosh Sharma == Kadaknath Chicken

Sleeping or Resting or Thinking or Meditating? (Credit: AC)

PhD thesis defended --> Ajinkya B Patil

Bye Bye CEGLAB (Credit: SG)

Rhino (Credit: AC)

AI detection: "most consistent with a black rhinoceros, Diceros bicornis, shown in a three-quarter frontal head portrait

The key clues are the two nasal horns and, more importantly, the relatively narrow, pointed/hooked muzzle. Black rhinos have a prehensile, pointed upper lip adapted for browsing, whereas white rhinos also have two horns but have a conspicuously broad, square muzzle adapted for grazing.

It is very unlikely to be a greater one-horned or Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), despite the strongly folded skin in the drawing, because that species has only one horn. A Sumatran rhino also has two horns, but typically has noticeably more hair and quite different head proportions."

“Africa’s four species of zebras are even worse. Efforts at domestication went as far as hitching them to carts: they were tried out as draft animals in 19th-century South Africa, and the eccentric Lord Walter Rothschild drove through the streets of London in a carriage pulled by zebras. Alas, zebras become impossibly dangerous as they grow older.”

“Zebras have the unpleasant habit of biting a person and not letting go. They thereby injure even more American zoo-keepers each year than do tigers! Zebras are also virtually impossible to lasso with a rope—even for cowboys who win rodeo championships by lassoing horses—because of their unfailing ability to watch the rope noose fly toward them and then to duck their head out of the way.” 

“Hence it has rarely (if ever) been possible to saddle or ride a zebra; and South Africans’ enthusiasm for their domestication waned.” 

From Chapter 9, “Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna Karenina Principle,” in Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Drawn on the board (Credit: SH)

AI detection: "likely a fulmar chick, specifically a Northern Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) chick, although I would keep the species-level call slightly less certain than the rhino identification.

The combination is quite distinctive: a very rounded, down-covered chick, a large dark hooked bill, tiny visible feet, and especially the apparent droplets or expelled material from the bill. Northern Fulmars are petrels, not gulls, and have the characteristic stout body and hooked, tubular-nostril bill of Procellariiform seabirds.

The behavioral clue is the giveaway. Fulmars, including chicks, defend themselves by ejecting foul-smelling stomach oil from the mouth. This is a well-documented defense mechanism, and young fulmars can direct the oily fluid toward predators or other intruders. (DISCHARGE OF OILY FLUID BY YOUNG FULMARS.)

ABM Talk --> Buddhabhushan Girish Salve

Hyderabad MeetUp --> Abdullah Abdul Kareem

ABM Talk --> 2026

ABM Talk --> Buddhabhushan Girish Salve

ABM Talk --> Buddhabhushan Girish Salve