The Aokigahara Forest is a lonely place to die. So dense is the vegetation at the foot of Japan’s Mount Fuji, it is all too easy to disappear among the evergreens and never be seen again.
Each year the authorities remove as many as 100 bodies found hanging at the country’s suicide hotspot – but others can lie undiscovered for years.
After the novel Kuroi Jukai was published, in which a young lover commits suicide in the forest, people started taking their own lives there at a rate of 50 to 100 deaths a year.
The site holds so many bodies that the Yakuza pays homeless people to sneak into the forest and rob the corpses.
The authorities sweep for bodies only on an annual basis, as the forest sits at the base of Mt. Fuji and is too dense to patrol more frequently.
Distribution, morphology and use of arctic fox Alopex lagopus dens in Sweden
The arctic fox Alopex lagopus is a small canid that inhabits most arctic land areas above the tree line, including islands far away from the mainland (Preble & McAtee 1923, Lavrov 1932, Chesemore 1975, Hersteinsson 1984, Prestrud 1992a). As in most other canids, the use of dens is of significant importance during the breeding season (Sheldon 1992), and arctic foxes generally use the same den throughout a breeding season, unless disturbed (Angerbjörn, Ströman & Becker 1997).
Arctic foxes breed in two types of dens, viz. dens excavated in tundra soil and dens situated in rocky areas, the latter mostly along coastlines (Lönnberg 1927, Macpherson 1969, Chesemore 1975, Anthony 1996, Prestrud 1992b). Although dens in rocky areas may be difficult to detect (Prestrud 1992c, Nielsen, Pedersen & Klintgaard 1994), dens in tundra areas are generally large with conspicuous lush vegetation and hence easily detectable (Chesemore 1969, Macpherson 1969, Garrott, Eberhardt & Hanson 1983, Smits, Smith & Slough 1988, Smith, Smits & Slough 1992). Because of this, den surveys have been used as a reliable census tool for arctic fox populations in tundra areas (Angerbjörn, Tannerfeldt, Bjärvall, Ericson, From & Norén 1995).
On the Fennoscandian peninsula (Norway, Sweden, Finland), the arctic fox population has not yet recovered from a drastic decline caused by over-hunting more than a century ago, and is currently threatened with extinction (Hersteinsson, Angerbjörn, Frafjord & Kaikusalo 1989, Angerbjörn et al. 1995, Frafjord & Rofstad 1998, Löfgren & Angerbjörn 1998). Suggested reasons for this lack of recovery are demographic and genetic problems resulting from very low fox numbers (below 100 individuals), a lack of large predators leaving carcasses, an absence of lemming peaks, and competition from a northerly expanding red fox Vulpes vulpes population (Hersteinsson et al. 1989, Löfgren & Angerbjörn 1998, Linnell, Strand & Landa 1999, Angerbjörn, Tannerfeldt & Lundberg 2001, Elmhagen, Tannerfeldt & Angerbjörn 2002, Tannerfeldt, Elmhagen & Angerbjörn 2002). Red foxes have been observed to take over arctic fox dens for breeding, although arctic foxes in some cases have returned to dens that have been used by red foxes (M. Tannerfeldt & A. Angerbjörn, unpubl. data).
In the present study we describe the distribution and morphology of arctic fox dens in Vindelfjällen, northern Sweden, investigate what characteristics affect den use by arctic and red foxes, and if den characteristics are correlated with arctic fox litter size. Finally, to explore the relative quality of Swedish arctic fox dens, we compare den characteristics from our study area with previously published data from North America, Siberia, Norway, Greenland and Svalbard.
Photo by patries71
I remember when I came out of the closet and told my parents I was Chinese. They’ve never looked at me the same way ever again,
That awkward moment when you realize that you’re Chinese.
“Mom, Dad…I’m Chinese”
“I was born chinese”
“no! the bible says adam and eve not Adam and Ling-Ling!”
adam and eve not adam and ling ling omg
Fucking hell.
I ONLY WANT THIS FOR THE COMMENTS
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SIGN AND REBLOG IF YOU WANT TO SAVE TUMBLR FROM YAHOO
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and, and look at this:
“Mayer [President and CEO of Yahoo] wants to incorporate Yahoo!’s products — including search, email, and its popular homepage — into the “daily habits” of its users.”
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