‘French Spiderman’ Crawls up Barcelona Skyscraper in Climate Action

 French "Spiderman" Alain Robert climbs a building to raise awareness about drought and climate change, in Barcelona, Spain, May 5, 2023. (Reuters)
French "Spiderman" Alain Robert climbs a building to raise awareness about drought and climate change, in Barcelona, Spain, May 5, 2023. (Reuters)
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‘French Spiderman’ Crawls up Barcelona Skyscraper in Climate Action

 French "Spiderman" Alain Robert climbs a building to raise awareness about drought and climate change, in Barcelona, Spain, May 5, 2023. (Reuters)
French "Spiderman" Alain Robert climbs a building to raise awareness about drought and climate change, in Barcelona, Spain, May 5, 2023. (Reuters)

An urban stunt climber known as the "French Spiderman" for his daring ascents conquered another landmark by scaling a 166-metre (381-foot) Barcelona skyscraper on Friday in a bid to raise awareness about climate change and drought.

Sixty-year-old Alain Robert crawled up the exterior of the glass and steel-covered Melia Barcelona Sky Hotel, the Spanish city's fourth-tallest building, with just a bag of powdered chalk and climbing shoes to aid his ascent.

"I would like to pass on a message on climate change and the problem of soil dehydration in Spain (for it) to be resolved quickly" by the government, he said after reaching the rooftop. The climb was not authorized and police detained him at the top.

Spain is facing a persistent drought and parts of southern Europe are in the grips of unseasonably warm temperatures that scientists say have been exacerbated by global warming.

Before the climb, Robert told Reuters the structure was "quite aggressive", and half-joked that he would be feeling the effects of climate change and drought himself due to the heat.

He draped his fingers with climbing tape to prevent burns from the sizzling surface - heated by strong sunshine even through the maximum temperature in Barcelona on Friday was a relatively balmy 23 Celsius (73.4 Fahrenheit).

Dozens of onlookers gathered outside, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of Robert, sporting a bright-red suit and a cap, as he made his way upward in about half an hour.

Robert began climbing in 1975 on the cliffs near his hometown of Valence. Two years later, he took up the high-risk "free solo" feats, climbing alone and unaided by ropes or harnesses.

Since then, he has climbed more than 150 structures including the world's tallest building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, Paris' Eiffel Tower and San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.



Killer Whales Found Sharing Food with Humans

FILE - Whales swim past as a fisherman stands in his boat at Boat Harbour north of Sydney, Australia, on June 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Mark Baker,File)
FILE - Whales swim past as a fisherman stands in his boat at Boat Harbour north of Sydney, Australia, on June 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Mark Baker,File)
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Killer Whales Found Sharing Food with Humans

FILE - Whales swim past as a fisherman stands in his boat at Boat Harbour north of Sydney, Australia, on June 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Mark Baker,File)
FILE - Whales swim past as a fisherman stands in his boat at Boat Harbour north of Sydney, Australia, on June 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Mark Baker,File)

Killer whales sometimes offer to share their prey with people, a new study finds, hinting that some intelligent orcas may be attempting to develop relationships with humans.

Pet animals such as cats sometimes leave prey at their owner’s feet or doorstep, often as a display of affection or as a sense of sharing food with “family.”

But such behavior hadn’t been documented among animals in the wild. Until now, that is.

The new study documenting orcas offering food to humans in the wild challenges assumptions about animal social behavior, revealing a poorly understood interplay between marine mammals and humans that’s playful and social.

In the new study, published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology, and reported by The Independent newspaper, researchers from Canada, New Zealand, and Mexico document 34 interactions over two decades involving orcas attempting to offer food to humans. These incidents took place across the world, in the oceans off California, New Zealand, Norway, and Patagonia.

“Orcas often share food with each other. It’s a prosocial activity and a way that they build relationships with each other,” study lead author Jared Towers said. “That they also share with humans may show their interest in relating to us as well.”

The researchers analyzed each of the 34 instances of food sharing and found that people were in the water when the orcas approached them on 11 occasions. In 21 instances the humans were on boats and in two instances they were on the shore.

In each of these cases, the killer whales approached the people on their own and dropped their prey in front of them. “This behavior may represent some of the first accounts of a wild predator intentionally using prey, and other items, to directly explore human behavior,” the researchers wrote.

“These features all suggest that killer whales possess the capacity and motivation to share for multiple reasons which could include short– or long-term tangible, intellectual, or emotional benefits, none of which are mutually exclusive.”

The researchers also found that the orcas waited around to see what would happen after they made the offering to humans in all but one instance.

The marine mammals also tried to be persuasive, offering the food more than once in seven cases after the people initially refused it.

Since orcas are intelligent and social animals, the researchers suspect food sharing may be a way to build relationships with kin and unrelated individuals.

As the killer whales often hunt large prey, they have food to spare.

“Offering items to humans could simultaneously include opportunities for killer whales to practice learned cultural behavior, explore or play and, in so doing, learn about, manipulate or develop relationships with us,” the study said.

The study also showed that, “Given the advanced cognitive abilities and social, cooperative nature of this species, we assume that any or all these explanations for, and outcomes of such behavior are possible.”