Art Schallock, a little-known New York Yanke's leftist, who appreciates his late lover because the oldest living former Major League ball player, died on Wednesday on the age of 100.

From 1951 to 1954, Schallock threw a number of dozen games for the Yankees, long enough to depart him with charming and frequent stories from friends like Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle. Schallock spent his last years in a number one facility in Sonoma, California, where he delighted the listeners by turning yarns over Ted Williams or Pitching in game 4 against Brooklyn Dodgers when the Yankees won the World Series from 1953.

“I thought I had two strikes against me because of my size,” said Schallock, who played at 5-foot 9 and 155 kilos when he approached his one centesimal birthday last April. “But I did it. I think you can't be higher than the Yankees-the world in the world.”

After the death of Schallock, Bill Greason, 100 years and 186 days old, turns into the oldest living former major League player. Bobby Shantz (99 years, 163 days) is number 2 on the list.

Check a 1953 memorial fleet with the oldest former Major Leaguer. Art Schallock shall be 100 (!!!) on April twenty fifth and has some fun to recollect teammates Eddie Lopat. pic.twitter.com/2mda8zqayu

– Daniel Brown (@Brownieathletic) April 19, 2024

Schallock's family published a proof on Saturday to welcome his remarkable life:

“As a pitcher for the New York Yankees, he was a part of a historical era in sports and contributed to several World Series championships. Beyond the baseball, art was known for his friendliness, humor and deep appreciation for the people around him. He lived a life stuffed with valued friendships, family and a passion for sport that defined a big a part of his trip.

“As we mourn his loss, we also have fun the memories and the legacy he leaves. We are grateful for the love and support that he all the time received from the numerous communities during which he took part. “

Schallock threw three complete games during a career in which he collected a record 6-7 with an ERA of 4.02. He spent a large part of his 58 career-big League games with the most legendary names of the baseball. Remember that the Yankees made a place on the squad on July 16, 1951 by the minors because of his major League debut on the squad by sending a disappointing rookie called Mickey Mantle.

Mantle called for his playful revenge in 1955 when Schallock was with the Orioles by scored a mammoth -Homerun against him. The mick smiled through the bases. “Lord, he could hit this ball,” recalled Schallock.

Schallock's first roommate on the street was Berra. In this agreement, the veteran catcher announced his wisdom to attack the goals of the American League, while Schallock withdrew it through a daily task.

“The very first thing I needed to run into the lobby to get funny papers for him,” said Schallock. “Hell, I didn't know anything about comics, but he would say: 'Go down and get half a dozen comics.”

Schallock's greatest claim to fame came as a player many decades after his career. He took over the award of the oldest living ex-MLB ball player when the aptly called George Elder died on July 7, 2022 at the age of 101.

When Schallock approached the century mark last spring, he was in national headlines with profiles of his life and his times in MLB.com, The Associated Press and the “CBS Evening News”.

Dusty Baker, the future Hall of Fame Manager, was one of the participants in his birthday party in his high -ranking shared apartment. Baker had never met Schallock, but to appreciate a little baseball story.

“The interaction between Artie and Dusty was really phenomenal,” said Wendy Cornejo, the managing director Cogir on the Napa Road. “Witness of two legends that shake their hand, watch one another's eye, smile and the exchange congratulations was incredibly inspiring.”

Today Yankees players and managers Aaron Boone had the chance to fulfill the previous Yankees Pitcher Art Schallock!

The art that celebrated its one centesimal birthday last April is the oldest life @Mlb Player pic.twitter.com/mx1akyha72

– New York Yankees (@yankees) June 2, 2024

Not long after this celebration, the Yankees invited him to be their guest when the San Francisco team visited a series in Oracle Park. Anthony Rizzo sat down within the shelter and spoke to the hundred -year -old for a number of minutes. Manager Aaron Boone had a spirited conversation with Schallock about impact practice and field exercises.

Before this game, Schallock was now not in an MLB stadium because the early Nineteen Eighties.

Arthur “Art” Schallock was born on April 25, 1924 in San Francisco and opened about 15 miles north within the Marin County City of Mill Valley. His promising early baseball profession took a back seat in 1943 when he was taken to the navy and served as a radio operator on the USS Coral Sea in the course of the Second World War.

Schallock was released in 1946 after receiving 11 battles. Not long after he had returned home, he went with a lady named Dona Bernard a blind date. They were married for 76 years until Dona died in 2023 on the age of 97.

She died on the 99th birthday of art. They had two children and five grandchildren.

“They were incredibly together. A real lifelong love there, wrote Zach Pascoe, one of the grandchildren, in an email last year. “They were the very best friends. They really enjoyed being within the society of the opposite, and as a partner they were even stronger. They complemented one another perfectly. They knew once they put space for one another and once they must be there for one another. “

Schallock spent his last years at Cogir of Sonoma Plaza, where he enjoyed his status as a celebrity. The Senior Living Community published an explanation on Saturday and said that Schallock was not only a resident, but also a friend, mentor and storyteller who enriched our community with its wisdom and warmth. Regardless of whether he can share memories from his time on the baseball field or enjoy everyday moments with his roommates, art had a way to feel all valued and valued. “

In my research As I've focused on the early farmers of Europe, I've often wondered a couple of strange pattern over time: farmers lived in large, dense villages, then dispersed over centuries, later founding cities again, only to desert those as well. Why?

Archaeologists often explain what we call urban collapse Climate changeOverpopulation, social pressure or something similar Combination of those. Each of those was probably true at different times.

But scientists have added a brand new hypothesis to the combination: disease. The close coexistence with animals led to this zoonotic diseases that got here to contaminate people too. Outbreaks could have led to dense settlements being abandoned, at the least until later generations found a option to make their settlement structure more immune to disease. In a brand new study, my colleagues and I analyzed the fascinating floor plans of later settlements to see how they might have interacted with disease transmission.

Earliest Cities: Dense with People and Animals

Çatalhöyükin what’s now Türkiye, is the oldest farming village on this planet with a history dating back over 9,000 years. Many hundreds of individuals lived in mud-brick houses that were packed so tightly together that residents could get in using a ladder through a trap door on the roof. They even buried chosen ancestors under the home floor. Although there was loads of space on the Anatolian plateau, people crowded together.

For centuries, the people of Çatalhöyük herded sheep and cattle, grew barley and made cheese. Impressive paintings of bulls, dancing figures and others Volcanic eruption suggest their folk traditions. They kept their well-organized homes tidy, sweeping the floors and providing storage containers near the kitchen that sat under the trapdoor to permit oven smoke to flee. To maintain cleanliness, they even needed to re-plaster the inside partitions of their houses several times a 12 months.

These wealthy traditions ended around 6000 BC. BC, as Çatalhöyük was mysteriously abandoned. The population dispersed into smaller settlements in the encircling floodplain and beyond. Other large farming populations within the region had also dispersed, and nomadic pastoralism became more widespread. For the surviving populations, the mud-brick houses were now separate, in contrast to the metropolitan areas of Çatalhöyük.

Was disease a consider the abandonment of dense settlements in 6000 BC? BC?

In Çatalhöyük, archaeologists have found human bones mixed with cattle bones in graves and garbage heaps. There was probably a gathering of individuals and animals zoonotic diseases in Çatalhöyük. Ancient DNA identified Tuberculosis in cattle within the region as early as 8500 BC. BC and TB in human infant bones not long afterwards. DNA in ancient human stays dated Salmonella as early as 4500 BC BC. Assuming that the contagiousness and virulence of Neolithic diseases increased over time, dense settlements resembling Çatalhöyük can have achieved a Turning point where the consequences of disease outweighed the advantages of living close together.

2,000 years later a brand new layout

Around 4000 BC In the 4th century BC, large urban populations reappeared within the mega-settlements of antiquity Trypillia culturewest of the Black Sea. Thousands of individuals lived in mega settlements like Trypillia No longer And Maidanetske in today's Ukraine.

If disease was a consider the spread hundreds of years ago, how were these mega-settlements possible?

This time the layout was different than in crowded Çatalhöyük: the a whole bunch of two-story wood houses were arranged usually in concentric ovals. They also grouped themselves into pie-shaped neighborhoods, each with its own large meeting house. The pottery unearthed from neighborhood meeting houses shows many various compositions, suggesting this These pots were brought there by different families come together to share food.

This layout suggests a theory. Whether the residents of Nebelivka knew it or not, this lower density, cluster arrangement could have helped prevent disease outbreaks from wiping out your entire settlement.

archaeologist Simon Carrignon and I got down to test this possibility by adapting computer models from a previous epidemiology project that modeled how social distancing behaviors play out have an effect on the spread of pandemics. To study how a Trypillian settlement would hinder the spread of disease, we teamed up with a cultural evolution scientist Mike O'Brien and with the archaeologists from Nebelivka: John Chapman, Bisserka Gaydarska And Brian Buchanan.

Simulating socially distanced neighborhoods

To simulate the spread of the disease in Nebelivka, we needed to make some assumptions. At first, we assumed that early diseases were spread through foods like milk or meat. Second, we assumed that folks visited other houses of their neighborhood more often than those outside.

Would this neighborhood clustering be enough to suppress disease outbreaks? To test the consequences of various possible interaction rates, we ran thousands and thousands of simulations, first on a network to represent grouped neighborhoods. We then ran the simulations again, this time on a virtual floor plan modeled after actual site plans, giving the homes in each neighborhood a better probability of coming into contact with each other.

Based on our simulationsWe found that the clustering of homes in Nebelivka would have significantly reduced outbreaks of early foodborne illnesses if people had visited other parts of the town infrequently – a couple of fifth to a tenth as often as other houses in their very own neighborhood. This is sensible considering that every neighborhood had its own meeting house. Overall, the outcomes show how the Trypillian arrangement could help early farmers coexist in low-density urban populations at a time when zoonotic diseases were on the rise.

The residents of Nebilevka needn’t have consciously planned the design of their neighborhood to make sure the survival of their population. But it could be that they do, because human instinct is to avoid them Signs of a contagious disease. As in Çatalhöyük, residents kept their houses clean. And about two-thirds of it Houses in Nebelivka were deliberately burned down at different times. These intentional periodic burns can have been a pest control tactic.

New cities and innovations

Some of the early diseases eventually spread through routes apart from bad foods. Tuberculosis, for instance, was in some unspecified time in the future transmitted through the air. If the bacterium that causes the plague was adapted to fleasit could possibly be spread by rats that don't care about neighborhood boundaries.

Were latest disease vectors an excessive amount of for these ancient cities? The mega-settlements of Trypillia were founded in 3000 BC. Abandoned. As in Çatalhöyük hundreds of years ago, people dispersed into smaller settlements. Some geneticists speculate that Trypillia settlements were abandoned resulting from the origin of the plague within the region, about 5,000 years ago.

The first cities in Mesopotamia emerged around 3500 BC. BC, others soon emerged in Egypt Indus Valley And China. These cities, with tens of hundreds of residents, were filled with specialized craftsmen in numerous parts of the town.

This time people within the inner cities didn’t live side by side with cattle or sheep. Cities were the centers of regional trade. Food was imported into the town and stored in large grain silos just like the one within the Hittite capital Hattusa, which could contain enough grain Feed 20,000 people for a 12 months. Wastewater disposal was supported by public waterworks, resembling: Canals in Uruk or water fountain and a large public bath within the Indus city of Mohenjo Daro.

These early cities, together with those in China, Africa and the Americas, formed the foundations of civilization. Their form and performance have arguably been shaped by millennia of disease and human responses to it, all the best way back to the world's earliest farming villages.

In the 15 years since joining the San Francisco Asian American drag troupe the Rice Rockettes, Chi-Chi Kago has witnessed cultural attitudes toward each drag and Asian American representation change dramatically.

Although the group has grown “old and mature,” she said, she hopes it might proceed to bring something “new and fresh” to the table.

“Are we still relevant now that Asian drag is mainstream?” Kago pondered. “I think so.”

The Rice Rockettes are the “premier all-Asian drag group in San Francisco,” says Estée Longah, a Filipino-American drag queen and house mom of the 15-member group. Although Longah says “premier” just means they're the longest-running Asian American and Pacific Islander drag group, the group is a respected institution amongst queer Asian Americans.

It was founded in 2009 by Longah and other drag queens she met while working with AAPI community groups similar to the now-renamed API Wellness Center and the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance.

Longah recalls that there weren't many Asian American drag queens in San Francisco within the mid-2000s. She competed in beauty pageants inside the AAPI community and the mainstream LGBTQ+ community and noticed a difference in the best way each of them operated. She described the mainstream beauty pageants as competitive and focused on getting the job done, while beauty pageants amongst Asian Americans provided a way of community, connection, and camaraderie that she enjoyed.

The Rice Rockettes were in a novel position once they formed. Faced with racist stereotypes that forged them as feminine, passive “bottoms,” many gay Asian men turned to hypermasculinity and rejected drag, seeing it as a stepping stone to gender transition. Several drag queens from a gaggle that predated the Rice Rockettes, the Rice Girls, also underwent gender transition, lending credence to the concept that being a drag queen is a gateway to a transgender identity reasonably than a type of self-expression in its own right.

The Rice Rockettes were founded with two goals in mind, Longah said: to offer a protected space where gay AAPI men can find out about and feel comfortable participating in drag, whether or not they want the gender transition or not, and to recreate the identical camaraderie Longah found at queer AAPI beauty pageants in order that members feel supported of their journey to pull.

“I think what the group excelled at most was storytelling and humor and a kind of crazy, unique San Francisco perspective, and those are things that really appeal to me,” said Imelda Glucose, a Filipino-American drag queen within the group.

Over the subsequent decade, the Rice Rockettes continued to fill an increasing number of bars and clubs with their shows, often acting at the Lookout, a bar in San Francisco. Community involvement was a priority at their shows, hosting fundraisers for local causes and for the victims of Hurricane Haiyan within the Philippines in 2013 and the Tohoku earthquake in Japan in 2011.

Starting in October 2013, the group had their very own monthly show called “Rice Rockettes Presents…” The group also auditioned as a dance group on America's Got Talent in 2011. Kago said that while the experience wasn't entirely positive, it was entertaining and gave the group some exposure. In 2019, the group celebrated its tenth anniversary with a celebratory show, marking the height of the Rice Rockettes' popularity, Longah said.

“We did a 10th anniversary show that was very well received. People really loved watching us play group and solo numbers and sort of a 'best of' and really challenge ourselves to do some pretty difficult things on stage to entertain the audience,” Kago said.

For the queens who joined the Rice Rockettes, the group's unique storytelling provided a possibility to specific their truths in a witty yet provocative way.

Glucose recalled a performance by her drag mother, Doncha Vishyuwuzme, who tackled the stereotype that Asian Americans eat dogs. To the tune of a catchy pop song, Vishyuwuzme revealed that she served dog parts, not chicken parts.

“The way everyone incorporates their identity as Asian into their performances and the way we make fun of the things that others who are not Asian or not part of our community have made fun of us for is, in a way, like a reclamation,” Glucose said.

Another drag queen, Kristi Yummykochi, said drag allowed her to explore her Japanese-American identity with a private number based on a story from her mother's family.

“When you do a drag act about such a personal story, you learn about it. You ask your family members, you research what happened and you ask yourself, 'What was that?', 'How can I tell this story?' And that, I think, brings you closer to your own identity,” Yummykochi said.

When the pandemic shut every part down in March 2020, the Rice Rockettes adapted by hosting two digital shows and keeping in contact with one another through monthly video chats. Although they resumed live shows in 2021, the pandemic had dealt a serious blow to San Francisco's nightlife. Due to the oversupply of drag content, there was little interest of their performances, and the high cost of living kept people from going to bars and clubs. Due to burnout, fewer queens were also willing to perform. The group then modified its direction, and the Rice Rockettes' monthly show was renamed “Estée Longah's Casting Couch,” which regularly featured members of the Rice Rockettes and other guest artists.

Longah said one among the low points within the group's history was when the Proud Boys attacked fellow member Rice Rockette Panda Dulce during a Drag Queen Story Hour event on the San Lorenzo Library in 2022.

The event was interrupted when a gaggle of Proud Boys members burst in and hurled insults at Dulce. One called her a “groomer” and one other wore a T-shirt that read “Kill your local pedophile” and had a picture of an AK-47 on it.

“The right's alarmist, downright fascist bias about who should and shouldn't exist will never override the undeniable reality that we (LGBTQ people) exist,” Dulce said in an interview with CNN.

Longah said the attack affected her deeply since it was not only an attack on a member of her group, but additionally on her drag daughter, who was not within the Bay Area on the time.

“This has really changed the way we work and our attitude towards safety,” Longah said, also advising members to return together and pay attention to their surroundings.

The group tries to tell one another about performances outside the group and, consequently of the attack, now not accepts private bookings.

Vermicelli Versace, a Vietnamese-American drag queen who joined the group in 2019, said that in light of the attack — in addition to recent drag bans and anti-trans laws and the rise of the Stop Asian Hate movement in response to attacks on Asian Americans — the group's work will not be done.

“We are here for a reason. And we are here to continue to be a light for the community,” Versace said.

Longah said many members joined the Rice Rockettes without much drag experience, and now she has seen them grow as people and develop their drag personalities to the purpose where they’ll exit and pursue their individual drag careers. This was true for Siam Phusri, a Thai-American drag queen who joined the group up to now two years. She said her happiest moment was winning Mx. GAPA in 2022, a beauty pageant hosted by the GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance, or GAPA.

Kago said she hopes to recruit recent drag queens and collaborate with other drag performers and groups of color. She added that the group is looking forward to celebrating its fifteenth anniversary, scheduled for Oct. 13. And while there was an influx of Asian American drag representation, Kago said the group is advocating for the art of drag for Asian Americans.

“I'm really excited by how much Asian drag representation there is right now, and I like to think that we were a little bit at the forefront of that and maybe inspired some of these other groups to start up,” Kago said. “I hope that with all this Asian representation in the world, there's still a place for us.”

The Colorado Gay Rodeo Association has hosted a gay rodeo yearly since 1983, making it the longest running event of its kind in history.

Their flagship event, the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo in Denver, is an element of a rodeo tour that has at times spanned all the United States and into Canada.

Despite the cultural resistance these rodeos faced, the legacy of the Denver Rodeo lives on because it celebrates its forty first Anniversary on 12-13 July 2024.

We researched the origins of this rodeo for our book, “Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx on the Gay Rodeo”, It also examines how gay rodeo riders played a pioneering role within the fight against discrimination and the AIDS crisis.

Roots in Reno

The gay rodeo doesn’t have its origins within the Rocky Mountains, but in one other mountain range further west – the Sierra Nevada.

Businessman Phil Ragsdale held the first gay rodeo 1976 in Reno, Nevada, as a fundraiser for local people organizations.

Ragsdale had some difficulty renting space and animals when the world owners and ranchers learned that the event was for queer people.

Nevertheless, Ragsdale's first rodeo went largely easily. Soon generally known as the National Reno Gay Rodeo, The event expanded from the few hundred spectators and participants who got here in the primary yr, to an annual event that sometimes attracted greater than 10,000 people.

In 1981 John King open #18 of 21 places to eat in Denvera gay country western bar run by Wayne JakinoThe venue offered space for Cow Fox – or queer ranchers, rodeo riders and country western enthusiasts of all genders and sexual orientations – to assemble and form a community. Friends who met on the bar traveled en masse to the Reno Rodeo in 1982. 1983 held their very own rodeo in Denverand called it the Regional Rodeo within the Rocky Mountains.

The Denver Rodeo was the primary gay rodeo to happen outside of Nevada, but others soon followed, with 4 more rodeos until the top of 1986 in Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Dallas.

Colorado's leadership

Thanks to the leadership of King and Jakino, the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo helped spawn other gay rodeos throughout the United States and Canada.

When Reno's rodeo faltered and eventually collapsed in 1984, members of the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo formed the International Gay Rodeo Association in 1985. Jakino took over as the primary president of the organization.

Jakino was particularly eager about bringing a certain professionalism to gay rodeo, although this emphasis was at all times balanced with fun, kitsch and sexual freedom. In 1982, Jakino wrote a letter to Ragsdale outlining his goal to advertise “the professionalism of gay rodeo and the fun of our members and rodeo fans alike.”

Controversy within the Rocky Mountains

This emphasis on professionalism has not protected the International Gay Rodeo Association from anti-LGBTQ+ backlash.

The Colorado Gay Rodeo Association explained to its members in a 1988 newsletter that in the primary yr the group hosted the Denver Rodeo, eight arenas turned them away because they were an LGBTQ+ organization – and that their current arena was barely willing to host them. The group urged its members to arrange for this type of resistance and are available together to “be a constructive force for the good of the gay community!”

Anti-LGBTQ+ hostility The disputes became more heated within the Nineteen Eighties because the AIDS epidemic spread across the country. While the Colorado Gay Rodeo Association struggled to stay visible and present, its members were literally fighting for his or her lives. Two of the group's founding members died of AIDS in 1986and the organization focused its fundraising efforts on helping combat the HIV-AIDS crisis.

With the Spread of the Christian Right In the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties, Colorado experienced intense campaigns against the “militant homosexual attack on traditional values,” because the The organization Colorado for Family Values ​​​​put it this manner:.

This group called on voters to Amendment 2which might prevent cities and towns from passing laws protecting LGBTQ+ people and override the ordinances already in place in cities like Aspen and Boulder. Funded by national conservative groups like Eagle Forum and Focus on the Family, conservatives successfully passed the amendment in late 1992. This sparked a nationwide response called Boycott ColoradoThe boycott cost the state around 120 million US dollars in lost tourism. Boycott organizers hoped to discourage other states from passing similar laws, however the boycott also threatened queer businesses within the state, including the rodeo.

While Amendment 2 of Supreme Court in 1996 and never got here into force, Jakino and others were left within the awkward position of getting to call on their supporters to interrupt the boycotts as a way to ensure their very own economic survival.

In 1993, Jakino wrote to his fellow rodeo riders: “We will not be driven out of Colorado or any other state, and we pray that you will be there in even greater numbers as a message to Colorado and the nation: We will fight against discrimination and for our equality!”

For Jakino and plenty of other gay rodeo riders, their continued presence within the rodeo world was a poignant act of resistance.

The way forward for gay rodeo

Having survived AIDS, homophobic laws, and national boycotts, the gay rodeo's future – even at events as wealthy in tradition because the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo – is way from assured. While the AIDS epidemic decimated the gay rodeo in some ways, it also attracted people seeking to raise funds for his or her queer community. Likewise, homophobic attacks united the gay rodeo against outside opposition.

Since the late Nineties, the history of the International Gay Rodeo Association has modified from boom to bustwith more associations closing every year. In 2013, for the primary time within the history of the International Gay Rodeo Association, there have been more defunct associations than energetic ones, and by 2019, the organization was hosting just 10 rodeos, down from 22 at its peak. The COVID-19 pandemic was a serious blow to a bunch already struggling to survive.

But there’s hope for the longer term, because in recent times 12 Rodeos back on the race trackThe Colorado Gay Rodeo Association had packed stands at its fortieth anniversary rodeo in 2023, nevertheless it could possibly be in for a bumpy ride.

MONTEREY – Rosa, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's oldest sea otter, died after age-related health issues were regarded as affecting her quality of life. Rosa was 24 years old.

Rosa was not only the oldest otter within the aquarium, but additionally certainly one of the longest-living specimens of her species. In the wild, female sea otters live for about 15 to twenty years, in response to the aquarium.

According to the aquarium, in the times leading as much as the choice to euthanize her, staff noticed a change in her behavior and a deterioration in her condition.

“She died peacefully surrounded by her caregivers,” Monterey Bay Aquarium veterinarian Dr. Ri Chang said in a press release.

Rosa was found stranded on a beach in Santa Cruz County when she was about 4 weeks old and was added to the aquarium's sea otter program in September 1999. She was released back into the wild in April 2000, but on account of reports of her climbing on kayaks and interacting with divers, authorities concluded that she had an excessive amount of interest in humans. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided that she ought to be faraway from the wild because she posed a danger to herself and to humans.

Rosa, named after a personality in John Steinbeck's “Tortilla Flat,” was permanently placed on the Monterey Bay Aquarium in 2002 and played a central role within the sea otter surrogacy program there, in response to the aquarium. She was one of the crucial prolific surrogates in this system's history, raising 15 pups.

Rosa also acted as an envoy for her species, participating in numerous research studies and contributing to the scientific knowledge of southern sea otters while living within the wild. Both scientists on the Monterey Bay Aquarium and researchers on the University of California were capable of collect data on Rosa's caloric intake, core body temperature and behavior.

During her time on the aquarium, Rosa has built a following online, watching her via Sea Otter Cam livestreams and, lately, participating in virtual birthday parties raising funds for the aquarium.

After learning of Rosa's death, people took to the web to specific their condolences and share the impact she had on them. The aquarium's Instagram post sharing the news received over a thousand comments, while other community members spoke about her death on the aquarium's Discord server and on X (formerly referred to as Twitter) and shared pictures they’d drawn for her upcoming birthday.

Melanie Oerter, curator of marine mammals, said Rosa is one of the crucial playful otters on the aquarium and may often be seen fiddling with the younger otters, even at 24 years old. Although Rosa is frequently patient with staff, she may be stubborn at times and just isn’t easily persuaded to do something she doesn't wish to do, the aquarium said.

“Often she would just look at us or swim away. I think she was the one who really trained us all these years. I definitely learned a lot working with such an incredible otter,” Oerter said on the aquarium's Instagram. “It was a privilege and to say we will miss her is an understatement.”