While today's post isn't about AI, I still found a way to work it in. Today's post is about a fairly recent, but popular social media image. However, I couldn't find an image of it that wasn't copyrighted. So... I used AI with the simple prompt "create an image of a dent in a sidewalk in the shape of a rat" and... behold, my very own, AI generated image for this post.
The story behind this image is interesting. In January 2024 a mark in a Chicago sidewalk began to go viral on social media, It looked like a rat had fallen into wet cement on a sidewalk, died, decomposed, and left its mark in the concrete. The concept was sort of a like a fast fossil. People took photos and even left little rat toys, etc in the spot. Online it became known as "The Chicago Rat Hole" or (my favorite) "Splatatouille".
The tale takes an interesting turn when the evolutionary biochemist Dr. Michael Granatosky was in Chicago doing postdoctoral research. He decided to try to identify the type of animal that made the imprint and after quite a bit of work, determined that it was not made by a rat, but a squirrel.
Personally, being a science nerd like I am, I was fascinated by the fact that someone decided to look into this. We're all driven by different things that interest us. My fascination with tech started when I was a kid and took apart toys to see how they worked. I eventually grew up and began taking computers apart and it completely changed my career. So I salute Dr. Granatosky for his work!
For the full story, which is a great read, follow this link to the New York Times article. And, in case you can't get enough of oddball stories like this, Dr. Granatosky also published a scientific article about this in the journal Biology Letters. The NYT story goes into much greater detail than I'm providing here and I really enjoyed reading it. Funny how things like an implanted image in a piece of concrete can become a phenomena that makes it into an internationally read newspaper *and* a journal read by experts.
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