Lake Malawi

... individual cichlids from those areas.

And this is really in response to those of you, multiple people have asked us to talk about South and Central American cichlids, but unlike African cichlids where they're easily broken off, like you've got Lake Malawi, Lake Tanganyika, Lake Victoria, you got the Riverine cichlids, the Satellite cichlids, uh, Lake cichlids, really easy to break those up.

In the South and Central American cichlid land, it's not quite so easy.

They come from specific locations and certain river systems, but it's not delineated the same way, and a lot of the fish kind of blend together in certain areas, or they can look fairly different.

The region of the interior, which gives birth to the headwaters of the Shire River, is one of the chief of these.

Here lies the great lake Nyasa, which was discovered and partly explored by Dr. Livingstone, and hence flows a perennial stream of traffic to Kilwa on the coast, which traffic at the present time consists almost exclusively of the two kinds of ivory, white and black, the former elephant's tusks being carried by the latter slaves, by which means the slave trade is rendered more profitable.

Towards this populous and fertile region, then, our adventurers directed their course when they turned out of the great river Zambezi and began to ascend the Shire.

And here, at the very outset of this part of the journey, they met with a Portuguese settler who did more to open their eyes to the blighting and withering influence of slavery on the land and on its people than anything they had yet seen.

The first were coupled together with heavy slave sticks which were riveted to their necks.

The latter were attached to each other with ropes, and thus Yusuf in a few days was enabled to proceed on his journey with the goodly drove of black cattle behind him.

This occurred not far from Lake Nyasa, which he intended should be his headquarters for a time, while his men under a new leader whom he expected to meet there should push their victorious arms further into the interior.

On reaching the shores of the noble lake, he found several birds of the same feather with himself.

Um, he was very prominent on YouTube for quite some time.

He traveled, he, he took scuba lessons and went through this whole process to get scu- scuba certified specifically because he was traveling to Lake Malawi to swim in that lake and watch those fish.

And he got underwater cameras and videoed the entire thing and it was absolutely fascinating.

He didn't make a big deal out of it.

I loved that.

That is what I would do.

I, I would absolutely love to swim in Lake Malawi and for some reason [laughs] I'm more drawn to that than the Amazon just 'cause I think the Amazon is nasty and like, I don't wanna be in it.

And potentially dangerous.

Spilt milk represents the sorest of earthly losses, and if either fred townsend or some more inveterate quoter of proverbs tells me that under such conditions i am not to weep i shall demand that he shall state explicitly under what circumstances tears may be shed it's no good crying over spilt milk fred declared last night but isn't it is it not a fact that some of the most impressive lessons we've ever learned have come to us through tears shed under just such circumstances i am very fond of a good biography and i have found few things more profitable than to notice the regrets the apparently unavailing regrets of the men whose lives are thus recorded just now for example i am reading aloud of an evening professor blakey's noble life of livingstone and as we have made our way through the pages of that stirring romance we have been touched almost to tears by two exceptionally pathetic passages in each case livingstone is crying over spilt milk after his children have left him and gone to england he is overtaken by a sad and bitter remorse he feels a pang of deep regret that in spending all his energy in evangelizing the natives of central africa he has not devoted some portion of his time to a romp with his children i was so much exhausted he says with the mental and manual labour of the day that in the evening there was no fun left in me i did not play with my little ones while i had them and they soon sprang up in my absences and left me conscious that i had none to play with The other tears were shed in connection with the death and burial of his wife.

He had thought it best that Miss Livingston should remain in the South until he had prepared for her a home at Lake Nyassa.

He accordingly set out on his solitary enterprise, but after a while he heard of cruel scandals that were being passed from mouth to mouth.

It was hinted that only when men were unhappy at home... did they leave their wives and set out on long journeys by themselves a doctor of divinity was known to have remarked that mrs livingstone was no good her husband could not live with her stung to the quick by such gossip livingstone resolved to silence it by sending for his wife she came she sickened and she died who can forget the inexpressible anguish of that sunday evening in the heart of africa when he sat in the forest holding her dying hand who can forget the scene under that great baobab tree at the panga when he laid her bones to rest his journal becomes a broken-hearted moan a pitiful sob livingstone reproached himself with bitter tears for having taken any notice of the malignant whispers in each case the great traveler was crying over spilt milk the children with whom he had forgotten to play were children no longer and could never be children again his wife was dead dead dead an ocean of tears could not bring her back to him and yet and yet this great drama of african travel has been read by millions and what father ever perused that first entry without turning with a new tenderness to the laughing little faces at his knee again who can read that second entry and listen to the bitter cry without registering a high and firm resolve to follow his own judgment and obey his own conscience in spite of mrs grundy and all her brood could fred townsend tell livingston on either of those heart-rending occasions that it is no good crying over spilt milk why we are all of us better for the tears he shed no good crying over spilt milk tell that story to the prodigal tell it to peter tell it to any penitent in the history of this old world of ours yes tell it to peter peter went out and wept bitterly he was crying over spilt milk most certainly for his wild words of denial could never be unsaid yet his soul was unspeakably softened and sweetened by the tears he shed Or tell it to the prodigal.

Certain cyclades all hybridize very readily.

Mbuna, the rock-dwelling cyclades from late Malawi, are a well-known example here.

Put a male yellow lab with a female of a different Mbuna species, and if there's no partner who's unkind around, he may well pair up with her anyway.

It's actually one of the reasons serious African cichlid keepers are quite strict about only keeping one species per genus, or being very deliberate about their stocking, because these fish don't always discriminate as carefully as you hope, when their options are limited.

So you end up with a fish that exists purely for its appearance, sometimes at the expense of its own well-being, and often it can't even produce naturally.

And then there's the conservation side, which I think gets talked about perhaps a little less than it should.

A lot of cichlid species, particularly from places like Lake Malawi and some of the smaller, more isolated river systems in Central America, exist in incredibly limited ranges in the wild.

Some of these are really under pressure from habitat loss.

They examined lake sediments ice cores, volcanic ashes, pollen, charcoals, pytholiths, archaeological layers, animal layer remains, stone tools.

One particularly interesting investigation examined sediments from Lake Malawi in East Africa.

Researchers looked at environmental indicators immediately before and after the toba ash layer and the result they did find environmental changes you know like none but they did not find evidence consisting with the extreme six years volcanic winter proposed by the catastrophic hypothesis That's a crucial scientific lesson.

Sometimes, something can be huge catastrophically, you know, locally without producing the maximum possible catastrophe globally.

We still got a 2300, but could have been better.

And I guess we also would have worked if we just guessed this part of DRC on the border here with, what is this, Lake Malawi or whatever it's called.

yeah you know you'd think they'd be darker here but i guess uh maybe not all right all right alan porphyry who are these people These are obviously Chinese, but $2.

Forest gives shade, so they're less dark.