the most effective means of preventing dog homelessness are 1) providing material support to impoverished and marginalized pet owners and 2) preventing and addressing behavioral issues before they become cause for relinquishment 

but that’s far less fun and takes way more effort and human compassion than self-righteously chirping “adopt don’t shop!” 

Yep

Something that ties into #2 that would go a long way: a culture of education around getting the right dog for your situation, about training and enrichment, and about breed traits, rather than “dog people” treating them as some weird ego thing

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hey everybody, im sorry i sound so desperate here, but my landlord and my roomate want danny gone. hes disabled (his leg is deformed) and hand raised, so he wont survive on his own outside, and i desperately need to find a home for him. i live in philadelphia and cannot drive but i am willing to take the busses wherever i need to! if you can come pick him up yourself though he comes with a cage and a diaper (just the diaper is coming w him if i have to drop hom off though, as im disabled and bringing such a huge cage on the busses and trains would be impossible.

it has more in it now, but im at work and i cant take a picture of it right this second. ill be updating this post with pictures of his current setup that he would be coming with, but because this situation is so desperate hes literally free. the cage cost like 150$ off craigslist, and buying it new would be close to 400$ just because its so large. it’s a little old because its double used, but its better than nothing

if you cant help me find a new home for him, please please reblog this. if you do youre helping save this birds life! we really really need the help.

some important memes abt keeping animals and being humble

’3 friendos - red tail boa, milk snake, & gargoyle gecko!’ Transparent Sticker

this is a sticker design comm for courty! aren’t these lil guys cute?

‘Komodo Dragon Witch’ Sticker

i’m really excited about this one guys! i LOVE komodo dragons, and this comm came it just in time for halloween ^u^ go get this lovely lizard over on my redbubble as a sticker or all sorts of other cool stuff!!

gonna keep commission slots going thru november (5 slots a week)! we gotta save up for moving expenses : p same-day doodles are unlimited and don’t count as a slot used up! ( i gotta update it manually tho) :D

thedragonwoodconservancy on ig

laser gun gator boys

oh my god i didn’t realize this video had audio

Okay as adorable as this looks, I’m pretty sure that’s a distress sound?  A “mommy help me I’m scared come save me!” sound?

@why-animals-do-the-thing

This video is from Dragonwood Wildlife Conservancy, and they are yearling (last year’s babies) Cuban crocodiles. Good news for you, this isn’t actually a distress call! According to @kaijutegu​ (and her giant bookshelf full of reptile resources), the laser sounds are an affiliative social call that young Cuban crocodiles use to communicate with their parents. They normally stop making the noise at around two years old, which is approximately when they start dispersing from the family group.

See, Cuban crocodiles are a super social species - and one of the few where the fathers stick around and provide paternal care for the babies! In the wild, babies would regularly interact with both parents, including when they provide food. This call is basically the type of vocalization that the babies use to communicated with their parents.

These crocodiles are being hand-raised as part of a private-sector breeding and reintroduction program (because the parents are so protective of their offspring that if you left them the babies to raise, you’d never be able to safely get close to them), and so they’re responding to the guy in the video the same way because he’s constant known safe individual and also the provider of food. He’s not a threat - his presence is a good thing, and he’s worth interacting with because it normally means food. You can also tell from their behavior and body language that they’re not stressed: some of the crocodiles are actively climbing on him and interaction of their own volition, but the ones that aren’t don’t show any indicators of hyper-vigilance. If that were a distress call, every crocodile that heard it would be alert and on edge looking for the threat. Distress calls tend to only happen once or twice, because in the wild continuing to make noise makes a baby more vulnerable: so these crocodiles wouldn’t be continually vocalizing if they felt threatened. There’s no snapping or gaping or freezing, all of which would be behavioral indicators of distress or discomfort. (Here’s a video of a baby nile crocodile being harassed by photographers which will give you a visual reference for both freezing and gaping.)

So, hey, this is certifiably cute - and good for conservation!

When harness training your kitty, don’t expect him to walk the same as a dog! This is about how well my cat walks on a good day. It takes him about two minutes to walk to the next door neighbours house.

@celestial-lens it’s a combination of things!

If you can get your cat to have good recall and come when called, you can walk ahead of him a bit and call him so that he will walk forwards. To branch off of that, I was reading of a different owner who taught her cat the command “go ahead”. Whenever he would walk where she wanted, she would say that and reward him, so he learned that “go ahead” meant to continue in the direction he was going.

If your cat is a playful cat, you can also lure him in the direction you want him to with an object like a toy, long blade of grass, branch, etc dragging behind you.

Another thing you can do is to prevent him from moving in the direction you don’t want him to with the leash. If he walks where you want him to, reward him! If he tries to turn around (or go up a driveway like Dave at the end of this video) hold the leash taught and wait for your cat to realize he can’t go there. Eventually he will choose a different direction to walk in.

Like I said, this is Dave on a good day walking the same route we do daily, so he knows where he’s going. Some days all he wants to do is sit in our backyard and eat grass too. We can use these ways to encourage our cats to walk, but at the end of the day, this is for them! If your kitty is content in the backyard and wants nothing to do with the sidewalk no matter how hard you try, then that might just be what’s best for him.

We need to better educate kids on the importance of animals that are typically hated because otherwise you end up with adults who think hating wasps is a personality.

Trufax: hatred of wasps is so widespread that it’s prevalent among biologists as well. An entire field full of people getting excited about species that nobody else has heard of, and many have collectively decided that wasps don’t need to be researched, even though they’re threatened by the same things that are threatening bees, and disappearance of wasps will spell bad things for the number of pests found in gardens and farms.

I have a friend wasp named Queeny. She built her nest on a really inconvenient area where I often dump my birds’ uneaten seed or shake towels out. She would come out angrily and buzz at us, ready to defend her home from the strange giants.

Queeny didn’t know that it was our porch she built her home on, she saw a nice ledge and decided that it was a suitable spot to begin her life as a lone female.

So instead of removing the nest and poisoning her with bug spray, you know what I did? I moved the area where I dump my things and started feeding her. I would tap three times on the railing before leaving a treat like fruit, honey, dog food, or pesky beetles I find in my garden, then move away to give them lots of space. At first she would buzz out, wings spread and ready to fight, but after doing this for just a few days…she stopped!

Now when she comes out, it’s slowly and non-threatingly. She tilts her head at me before gingerly inspecting the offerings. She doesn’t threaten my mom any more either, she’s learned that we mean no harm. We’ve started using that ledge to shake sheets out and dump bird seed and she doesn’t mind at all! She just watches quietly.

She even has a family now! Five daughters and one lad- a husband or son, not sure which lmao -who greet us the same, she must’ve taught them that we’re not enemies (or they just grew up used to us). They even protect my garden, since Queeny’s family has grown the invasive Japanese beetle population has plummeted! They really are delightful neighbors.

This cute little foot is attached to an appropriately cute frog. The Penton’s toad [Schlerophrys pentoni] is a medium-sized toad with olive skin and powerful hind legs, which aid in digging. They spend much of their lives below ground. They can be found in Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Arabian Peninsula, and possibly other regions nearby. Images by Alberto Sanchez-Vialas.