My favourite thing is when people stick trackers on animals and one does literally nothing interesting and sits in 1 place 99% of the time and the researchers are like oh yeah that weird datapoint is Lazy Geoff, he doesn't ever do anything for reasons we don't entirely understand
— Dr Dani Rabaiotti (@DaniRabaiotti) March 23, 2022
Dr. Dani Rabaiotti, author of the book Does It Fart?: The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence, posted a Tweet that went on to tell the story of tracking an urban fox when she was an undergrad. The fox just sat under a shed for three months, which isn't all that interesting and probably sounded sketchy to her supervising professor. But it is a tale that all animals scientists know, because they have all encountered a "Lazy Geoff."
Tarantulas just walk around in circles?!
— Wesley Brooks (@fartmiasma) March 23, 2022
Yeah, tarantulas just walk around in circles when they are confined to a Tupperware bowl.
I love this pic.twitter.com/O8vp3VBUR9
— Jez Kemp π³οΈπβπΏπ¦π¦π (@jezkemp) March 24, 2022
It's not just wild animals, either.
I bet like twelve of the seventeen steps were when he was having a dream and his lil leggo was going in his sleep. π I love dogs.
— Catherine οΈ»β¦β€β (@2KMockingbird) March 24, 2022
There's a reason the animal kingdom produces examples of the Lazy Geoff.
by @jakelikesonions pic.twitter.com/Qv9wBcMgbz
— Kell Compost Witch (@CompostWitch) March 23, 2022
But why are we making fun of animals that don't move much? Humans act this way, too. I had an incident in which Facebook required me to download a tracking app to my smartphone in order to keep my blog's page. I don't have a smartphone, so goodbye page. They can track my desktop all they want, but it's not going anywhere. But to be honest, my dumb phone doesn't go anywhere much, either.
"OH MY GOD HE'S MOVI -- wait, he just went to get the mail, never mind"
— Jason Lefkowitz (@jalefkowit) March 23, 2022
Read many more stories of animals that don't move enough to justify the expense of tracking them under this Tweet. -via Metafilter