Ecologist Anne Hilborn (@annewhilborn) of Virginia Tech joined RealScientists for CHEETAH WEEK in January. To say we were a little bit excited would be an enormous understatement.
Anne started off by doing a pretty good job of introducing herself
Hello Everybody,
I'm Anne Hilborn and I work on cheetahs. pic.twitter.com/eZ6h9tqFTP— realscientists (@realscientists) January 24, 2016
And wasted no time in telling us why cheetahs are so so great
Cheetahs are the fastest land mammal, reputable sources clock them at 64 mph.https://t.co/jjtucbH49Y pic.twitter.com/5POIR7ACa1
— realscientists (@realscientists) January 24, 2016
WOW THAT’S FAST.
Cheetahs have a number of physical modifications that make their speed possible.
One is a super flexible spine pic.twitter.com/sFXL70LxIZ— realscientists (@realscientists) January 24, 2016
And if you have never seen a cheetah sulky pout, well you have now!
The face of a hungry cheetah who has failed to catch a tasty gazelle pic.twitter.com/rUObG3qGpu
— realscientists (@realscientists) January 24, 2016
Additional highlights of Anne’s week were in depth discussions of poop, including poop reasons why baboons are total assholes.
All food in the kitchen open, thrown about and crapped on, poop all over the place, even smeared on the walls. A baboon break in is awful.
— realscientists (@realscientists) January 25, 2016
Anne kindly returned our post-curation survey, and her reflections are below.
In general terms, how did you find your week as a curator?
Fun, a lot of work, interesting to see how much more interaction you get with a larger audience
It can be a shock talking to so many. Did you find the sudden rush of interactions (good and bad) daunting?
Not daunting but unexpected.
What were the highlights? Were there any lowlights?
Seeing many of Biology twitter join in on a discussion of why poop is so important for biological research. And how many non scientists seemed to enjoy it.
Also seeing so many join in on the conversation about menstruation and fieldwork.
Is there anything you wanted to get out of / do on the RS account that you didn’t manage to fit in?
I planned on covering a few different topics than I ended up doing. I had planned to talk more about conservation, but it didn’t really take off and would have required more research that I had time for, so I dropped it.
Did you have a plan? If so, did you stick to it?
Yes I had a plan, no I didn’t really stick to it. People asked questions about certain topics or suggested things, and I went with those than my original plan.
Do you have any tips or advice for future RS curators?
Use lots of pictures, interact with people, and thread your tweets
What other people or accounts should people follow if they enjoyed your tweets this week?
@hmk_oneill
@serengeticheeta
@RallidaeRule
@Rob0Sullivan
Thanks once again Anne from all of us here at RealScientists HQ. If you missed anything from her week, the tweets are all collated at the following link.