Once, the future was spaceflight. Now it's cat videos and status updates. It’s an immensely strange thing, the end of the space age. Imagine telling the vast audience who, in 1969, watched a live broadcast of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon that they would lose interest in the endeavour within three years. Spaceflight was the very embodiment of the future, yet the moon program came to a quiet end. Over the decades, manned spaceflight went from a defining human achievement to a very expensive niche interest. Those viewers may or may not have recognized that the marvel that was going to describe their futures wasn’t on the moon, but right in front of them: the broadcast itself.
The future ain’t what it used to be. A generation ago, humans were sending ambassadors into the sky. We’re worrying about our attention spans and wondering if smartphones are addling our teenagers’ brains. The Internet is, in a not entirely appealing way, a victory of mind over matter. Alas. And more and more, the work of being an individual has moved online. Rare sand cat kittens born in Israel. Rotem, the zoo’s female sand cat that arrived from Germany in 2010, gave birth to the kittens about three weeks ago. “In the beginning of August, we were very happy to find two tiny kittens in the depth of the den with Rotem. On the next day the keepers already saw three and on the next one they were surprised to find a fourth one,” says Sagit Horowitz, a spokeswoman for the zoo.
Rotem was paired with Sela, a male cat from Poland, as part of a European breeding program for sand cats, a species listed as “near threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Sand cats typically give birth to an average of three kittens, and at first zoo workers were concerned that four might be a bit of an undertaking for Rotem. “We were very worried in the beginning if she could deal with four kittens. Now that the kittens are a few weeks old, they’re leaving the den and exploring their exhibit, much to the delight of visitors. Sand cats are native to both Asia and Africa. 10 of the world's biggest unsolved mysteries: Go figure.
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