Poland in photo riddles - part 2

youtu.be/GXFSK0ogeg4

Yes, Wojciech Fortuna, a gold medalist from Sapporo at the age of 19 which was a record then.

No wonder, she's pretty and I like that photo portrait :) I've never heard of her though. I was thinking of rhythmic gymnastics, but you confused me with calling her discipline "sort of feminine" - I think it's very feminine since basically almost only women compete in this sport :)

Meh, but I see I forgot about my Riddle 3 from this post #921 ;P:

https://polishforums.com/travel/poland-photo-riddles-part-85223/31/#msg1809835

It isn't a well known "anniversary", it isn't something of great historic importance, but rather a niche thing, but as I wrote before in my hint:


And the answer to Riddle 2 is:


So, what do you think happened for the first time 30 years ago?

And next riddles:

Riddle 1: What is it?

Riddle 2: What do these animals have in common?
More advanced: can you name all of them? (in English or Polish)

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  bugready.jpg
  
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Dolphin, buffalo, owl, wolf, trout, porcupine , bobcat.

Polish Grom Rainbow Six
Rainbow Six: Siege, Ela Female Soldier Poland GROM
Elżbieta Zawacka - The only woman to serve in the Cichociemni Poland's elite World War ll Commando Unit.

coffeeordie.com/elzbieta-zawacka-polish-resistance/

And that`s unfair coz a lot of males would like to do it too but are too embarassed. I prefered to be more reserved not to scare off potential sportsmen.


The first photo shows turkuć podjadek - EU mole cricket.
The other - animals which are protected in Poland.

harbour porpoise, EU bison, wolf, hedgehog, lynx, owl

Now, a famous sportsman from 1980s. He was an international champion dozens of times.
Hint: he was quite old for a champion but age doesn`t matter in this sport. Experience and the guts do.

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You've guessed owl and wolf, but the rest are animals living in Northern America, not in Poland. That photo collage is made into the shape of Poland, because it shows animals that are native to Poland - and that's one thing they all have in common. Another thing is that, as pawian wrote, they are all protected species in our country.

Dolphins, buffalos, porcupines and bobcats aren't native to Poland. Dolphins sometimes visit the Baltic Sea, but that's it. And there's no trout in that photo - that's a blurred tree branch :)

But you can still have a try at guessing my previous Riddle 3 - I think it should be pretty easy after Ironside gave the answer to Riddle 2... 🤔 Use the power of deduction! :))


True, but I've read that men are practicing this sport in Japan, Spain and France, I think, so I guess things are changing...


I see. I must admit I didn't realise there are a lot of men who would want to practice this discipline. I remember that when I was a kid I was watching Japanese anime TV series about this sport and it made me want to do it too :) I tried to practice it at home with some makeshift artifacts ;D So I can understand the appeal - it's a cool sport :)


Yes, that's a funny name :)) It's one of the biggest insects in Poland. It's a garden pest and the best fishing bait for catfish.


Yes, awesome, correct! :) Btw, can you guess which owl it is? Hint: it's really small and it's name both in Polish and in English indicates it.

My guess is Waldemar Marszalek.

Is it a Pójdźka zwyczajna (Little Owl)?

Or maybe a Pygmy Owl (Sóweczka zwyczajna)?

@jon357, yes, bingo! :D It's sóweczka zwyczajna (Eurasian pygmy owl) - the smallest owl in Poland (and in Europe) :):



Lynx, on the other hand, is one of the biggest predators in Europe.

The most endangered species among the animals in that photo collage is harbour porpoise (morświn zwyczajny) - there are only 500 left of them in the Baltic Sea. Pity... They're so cute :)):





Since hedgehog is under protection in Poland you can't keep it as a house pet... which can be tempting, because hedgehogs often aren't afraid of humans and they're cute :):

werandacountry.pl/data/articles/jak-pomoc-jezowi-2.webp

When my father was a boy he had a hedgehog as a house pet and called him "Tuptuś", because of the sound it was making when walking on the floor. A few weeks ago when my parents went to the countryside to visit my grandma they discovered a hedgehog living in the garage or somewhere nearby. My parents would leave food for the hedgehog and it wasn't afraid of people at all. Once when it was trotting through the yard my aunt started petting it - the hedgehog stopped, waited and when my aunt finished petting the hedgehog resumed the trotting :)

Owls are lovely. I hear them here on the northern edge of Warsaw probably most nights in season, but never actually see any.


Amazing animals.

I did too. My dog would find them . Few times my father judges them too small to survive winter.

Yes, a multiple champion in water motor racing. And a multiple patient in hospitals - I remember he crashed regularly and once he was in a fatal condition. But he always came back! One of my role models. :):)

You can see that amazing determination in his face:

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Natural. You didn`t live then while I did. :):) And I remember her coz she was on TV during major events and was voted Miss Olympics of 1988.

Besides, I remember she had a sense of humor .I already said men were infatuated seeing her. In one interview she mentioned one foreign guy during an international event who harassed her for her phone number. So she gave him some numbers which were her body measurements. hahahaha

Not totally true and that wasn't your question.


A Bobcat is a lynx, Paulina.
North American mammal of the cat family Felidae.
The bobcat (Lynx rufus) is a North American cat.
The most obvious difference between a lynx vs bobcat is its size.
Most lynxes are much larger than a bobcat yet a Bobcat is of the lynx family and here in America are called lynx.
As for the Bison, Bison are found in North America and Europe.
The terms Buffalo and Bison are often used interchangeably even though the Buffalo and Bison are distinct animals.
The porcupine and hedgehog are found in different areas of the world. Both are native to Europe.
However you are correct here, Hedgehogs and Porcupines are not the same thing even though they both have quills and have similar looks.
So we are back to Polish terminology vs. American terminology which makes your riddles tuff on us Yanks. :-/

Actually a good point. Many Poles assume that English terminology is unified the same way it is in Polish (and centered around British usage) but English is a pluricentric language with more than one official version. Many would be surprised at how little people in the US know of (or care about) British norms...

In line with this, there are some terms for plants and animals that were taken around the world but attached to different things. Where I grew up 'daisies' and 'perriwinkles' were completely different plants from the originals.

With that in mind, the terms bison (or wisent) are acceptable to refer to the Polish animal while bison or buffalo refer to the North American beast...

For me, lynx and bobcat are similar but differ by habitat (I think of lynx in the mountains and bobcats in scrubland or forest though.....)

OK, I guess my Riddle 3 was too difficult after all:


The answer to this riddle is: first selection for GROM. At that selection the first generation of GROM special operators was chosen - they were the ones who created this unit from scratch with the help of new allies: Americans and the British. Americans equipped and trained them (Delta Force) and later on they were trained by the British SAS.

Americans only asked Poles not to waste it all away and they didn't. They passed all the knowledge and skills to future generations. GROM has become the most elite special forces unit in Poland and is on par with the best special forces in the world :)

Btw, yes, I've read about Elżbieta Zawacka :)


Lucky you, I've only ever heard owl's hooting while being in or near a forest at night... And I've never seen one live in the wild :/

@Lenka, that's cool, I've never even seen a hedgehog in real life, everyone seem to be seeing them, even in the city, except for me lol ;P


Good one lol


It is true and that was one of my questions ("What do these animals have in common?").

I know that the Eurasian lynx (the one that lives in Poland) and the bobcat belong to the same genus (Lynx) - I've checked everything before I posted my response to your answer. But that isn't a bobcat in the photo. Bobcats live only in the Northern America, not in Poland. So, if you wrote more generally - "lynx", instead of "bobcat" - then it would be correct. But you didn't - you wrote "bobcat".

In short - every bobcat is a Lynx, but not every lynx is a bobcat :))

Also, you wrote yourself that bisons and "buffalos" are distinct animals. Yes, I know that they belong to the same genus (Bison), but that isn't a "buffalo" in the photo. It's an European bison (Bison bonasus) - in Polish it's called "żubr". American bison (Bison bison) is called "bizon" in Polish. We don't mix their names up in Poland, because they even look different:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison

Since "buffalo" is the standard name used in the US for an American bison I figured you meant the American species. If you wrote more generally - "bison" - I could count that as the correct answer.

Porcupines live only in Southern Europe. There are no porcupines in Poland, only hedgehogs (and that's a hedgehog in the photo).

You were simply too American-centric in your answer :)) Don't forget that this thread is about Poland.


It isn't about that. The problem wasn't in that the same species have different names in American and British English, but the fact that those are two separate species (of the same genus). And it wasn't a general riddle about animals, but about specific animals native to Poland. So, I couldn't recognise "bobcat" and "buffalo" as correct answers, because there was no "bobcat" and no "buffalo" in that photo collage. And there are no dolphins and porcupines living in Poland. Johnny_reb should've done some research.

For example, I had no idea that there are no hedgehogs in the US and that they are considered to be "exotic" animals over there :):

treehugger.com/pet-hedgehogs-are-a-prickly-issue-for-some-states-4863969

I guess this is why johnny_reb mistook it for a porcupine.
Funny, for me the hedgehog is such a typical and obvious animal that I thought they're common also in Northern America :)

and rightly so... and porcupine was very, very wrong.


There are, they're just kept as pets and not found in the wild (and I don't know how well they'd survive if set free....). And porcupines are not even very similar (and are at least five or six times the size of hedgehogs).


But it seems that people keep some African variety as pets (I had a student with a pet hedgehog a few years ago). One problem is that at present breeding is based on looks rather than temperament so they look nice but often don't like interacting with people....

Yes, that's what I had in my mind - that hedgehogs aren't native to the US.


Yes, one can't keep as a pet only those native to Poland. Having African pygmy hedgehogs at home is legal though :):

polki.pl/dom/aranzacje-wnetrz,jez-jako-zwierze-domowe-nowy-trend,10040739,artykul.html

Neither are they (AFAIK) invasive... there are lots of non-native species in the US that now have self-sustaining breeding populations in the wild, from pythons in Florida to snakeheads (type of fish) further north...

What about invasive animal species in Poland? I know of at least one.... anyone recognize it?

johnny will cdrtainly misidentify it....

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No, actually it was not as I solved it back in post #938 if you have time to check that FACT.
Technically Ironside guessed it though.


Post # 938
And where I live we call lynx bobcats and a cup of coffee a cup of joe or a cup of mud which are all one in the same.

Come on now Paulina, give me my gold star for solving your riddle or I am not going to play anymore. Hoot !

Raccoon dog! In Polish it's "jenot (azjatycki)". It looks "raccoonish", but it's a canine... How interesting...

@johnny_reb, I'll respond to you later, I have no time right now.

Yes., they are. I hired one to deal with water pipe installation a few years ago. It was really wild!

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I will take your word for it lol


Nope, he just guessed Riddle 2. And you in your post #938 only wrote that there are special forces that came into being 30 years ago (in reality GROM was created 31 years ago - that nice round anniversary was celebrated last year, not this year) - I already made a riddle about GROM's creation - the badge riddle, remember? Riddle 3 was about the first selection though.


I'm afraid I don't respond well to blackmail :))

But today is another anniversary and another chance for guessing a riddle :)) - which military unit is in the photo and what anniversary/important date for this unit?:

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Oh lord P, here we go again with spitting hairs on American terminology.
Why such a stick in the mud all the time ?
I was plenty close enough to answer your question and you know it.


Is the hour and minute required to get it right ?

Sorry, but this is the photo riddle thread - you won't "win" here by using demagogy :) You either guess the riddle or not. It isn't about "American terminology" - the creation of GROM (13th of July 1990) isn't the same as the first selection for GROM in the mountains.


Close, but you didn't guess it, even though I repeated my hint more than once. Come on, quit whining, private, get up and keep up :)))


Nope, this one is easy - there's a big clue in the photo :)

Polish Grom Tactical Unit


October 8th for the expats of Grom to have a drink in remembrance of Polish heritage of Grom.
I bet you wish you had a boyfriend that was in the GROM so you could go into a Pub and after a few yell out, "My boyfriend can kick your ass !"

Nope.


Nope!


Oh, johnny_reb, the world of Polish special forces doesn't revolve only around GROM lol (that's a hint for the riddle, btw :)).

Is that not a GROM banner hanging in the picture ?


Should I have said, October 8, 2018 ?