This is a sideblog i made just to put all wildlife and reptile specific posts.
I like hiking but I live in the chicago region so i spend a lot of time hiking short trails and small forest preserves. I try to document the wildlife i find there, even in areas full of humans.
For a little bit this blogll probably be mostly reblogs since its winter in my hemisphere, but I might post old photos or photos from wildlife centers and zoos etc.
Dinovember 2024 Day 11: The Ancient Herds
A scene inspired by the bonebed finds of the Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta, Canada - As the dry season hits hard, a herd of Centrosaurus apertus daringly cross a river in order to reach a pasture of green ferns on the other side, and only a lucky few of these ornately-horned ceratopsians will succeed in completing this arduous task.
this might be a really stupid question, but i'll give it a go anyway
when people draw ducks, they tend to choose pure white ones, which i know as aylesbury ducks. is there a reason for this that you know of? i would imagine that maybe there's a lot of aylesbury ducks in america, but when i think of the quintessential duck, the duckiest duck one could say, i think of a mallard (male or female)
also, thank you very much for all the work you do on this blog, i get to send my bird friends loads of cool pictures and engage in their interests even though i know fuck all about them <|:3
White Ducks
You're welcome kumquat.
So, in the United States, most of the farm ducks, and many of the domestic ducks that are put in parks with ponds and lakes are the Peking White aka American Pekin. The original birds that became this breed came from China in the 1800s.
The Peking White is a domestic breed of the Mallard, and is a different breed from the Aylesbury (which is usually kept in the UK and other parts of Europe, along with the German Pekin). Many American Pekins have some Aylesbury genetics.
For many people who grow up seeing ducks in parks or farms, this is the quintessential appearance for a duck.
The aforementioned are just a few domestic varieties of mallard.
Peking Whites (photograph: Martin Backert)
Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), wild, L/T - female, R/B - male, family Anatidae, order Anseriformes, Germany
photograph by Richard Bartz
PEKINS ARE MALLARDS???
...and if you're at the park and see an extra-large Mallard with spots of white:
its a hybrid x domestic mallard!
i'm writing a piece for Earth Island Journal on how mushrooms can fight climate change, and sadly, I've had a few interviewees dip out on me. I'd love to do short virtual interviews with a few folks who:
have directly studied mushrooms & climate (+1000 bonus points)
have studied only mushrooms, but can answer questions on how mushrooms relate to climate health
work with mushrooms (for food, faux leather, etc) and can speak on how mushrooms are eco-friendly
if you don't see yourself up above, but you think you can help, please do reach out! DM me by 1/9/25 if you are able to complete a short list of questions within the next 2-3 days :) thank you!
it’s 1/10/25, but I still don’t have many folks - I’m still looking for help !
11/2 Today Goofus the Peacock killed a mouse and instead of eating it right away, decided to wander around the pasture carrying it in his beak. The feral cats always appreciate dead-rodent-based performance art, so they followed behind Goofus single file to make a Very Exciting Dead Rodent Parade.
At one point Goofus stopped and put down his rodent and one of the feral cats dared to sniff at it, and Goofus unleashed The Most Terrifying Honk, something along the lines of I WILL END YOU AND EVERYONE YOU LOVE AND YOUR BONES WILL BE FORGOTTEN ON THE FROZEN EARTH WHEN I SNUFF OUT THE SUN AND SING THE STARS TO DARKNESS I AM THE DEVOURER AND DESTROYER OF ALL THINGS
The feral cats, previously unaware that the Death Of The Universe And End Of All Things is currently living as a peacock, ran off at about fifty miles an hour and hid under the barn for the rest of the day. They didn’t even come out at milking time to beg for goat milk, which is a first.
We probably should not have named the Death Of The Universe And The End Of All Things “Goofus,” actually.
Income and tree canopies: In US cities, access to clean air, cooler air, shade, and greenery segregated by income.
At the end of October, I adopted a ball python, who I named Dandelion. He was being kept in a horribly tiny enclosure with substrate that had never been cleaned, and was dealing with a patchy shed. He was very small for his reported age, but I was very hopeful that with vet care and an appropriate substrate, he would be okay. He was in a completely different room from my other three snakes (an Amazon Tree Boa, a Children's Python and a Bullsnake), I was careful about handwashing, and no tools were shared between rooms.
I tested him for IBD as a precautionary measure, and that test came back positive. I was devastated, but felt that humane euthanasia was the right choice. I decided to test my other two boids for IBD, but I felt relatively okay about my quarantine measures.
I shouldn't have. I don't know how I fucked up, but my Children's python is also arenavirus-positive. I'm really struggling with what to do, because I really don't want to put down an apparently healthy animal whom I desperately love on the basis of one blood test. I also don't want her to suffer.
I've moved her into a room away from my tree boa that's not the room I used for quarantine, and I am trying to decide what to do next. I really want the answer to be careful monitoring and only to put her down if she's actually sick, but I know this may be wishful thinking, and the best course of action for her wellbeing may well be to end her life gently.
This has been an intensely traumatic experience. I honestly don't know if I'll ever be able to get another pet snake again. I am desperately hoping my boa remains okay, even though she's a face-baiting asshole, unlike my Children’s, who is the sweetest snake in the world.
I don't want to discourage people from adoption and rescue, but, please, please, be careful about your quarantine, be really mindful about bringing boids into established collections, and take the risk of this illness seriously. This is a nightmare I wouldn't wish on anyone.
I retested her through the University of Florida lab, which is one of the best and most reputable testing services in the country. We sent three separate samples - blood, cloacal, and oral swabs.
They're all negative for arenavirus.
Iris is just fine. I've been alternately crying and giddy all day. ❤️🐍
Hooray I'm so happy for you!
Was anyone going to fucking tell me that electric eels have their anus directly under their heads because their head is basically their entire main body and they're actually like 90% tail
Or was I just supposed to casually stumble across that information
EXCUSE ME????
YEEEAAAH GO ORDER GYMNOTIFORMES GO!!! ANAL FIN ALL THE WAY DOWN BABY!!
Hey then you'll love Pirate Perches!
They start off life with a pretty normal anatomy and then the anus just makes it's way uptown over the lifespan of the fish to just behind the head. Like how flounder fry start off normal then migrate one eye to the other side.... but also kinda weirder than that because I understand why in the case of flatfishes.
I can't think of why the anus does that for the Pirate Perch.
@plaguedocboi as the resident marine biologist, what the fuck?
Basically fish will just do whatever
Bug's Enrichment Box in action
I giggle when people cite that Dinosaurs Would Not Do That re: indominus rex killing other dinos, the raptors hunting humans for sport, the flying guys raining down death and destruction from above etc. because Yes they would. Every time I let Eris interact with Other Birds, she takes one look at them and goes "I am going to kill that" for no reason! And she can't because she weighs 8lbs and can't fight her way out of a wet paper bag, but that doesn't mean the spirit isn't willing. Every time I put a head of romaine or kale out for the birds, even when they have huge flight pens full of other greens, they zero in and come over to rip it apart. You give fowl something to destroy, particularly if it might be tasty or fun, and they will destroy it. Ask any parrot owner if their birds crave destruction and chaos, I will assume you get zero negative answers. The hot second that large ground birds get bored they just start looking for things to vandalize, and if you don't give them toys or other forms of enrichment, they will make their own. And sometimes that will be hunting you for sport, if they're big enough and have teeth and just got brought back from a few million years of extinction.
official boob post
a few days ago I started my college class with "goldfish have long memories, Einstein never failed math in school, and the brain does not stop developing at 25, these are all things people just repeated until they sounded true, so let's talk about media literacy" and I could tell I had broken every brain in the room
The repost added to this plays rent free in my brain whenever I think I know something and then learn it’s false or a myth. Genuinely
- Dinosaurs aren’t extinct
- Every single bird is a dinosaur
- Every single dinosaur is closer and more similar to birds than to any lizard or crocodilian or turtle or snake
- Extinct doesn’t mean failure
- Evolution is mostly due to randomness, not survival of the fittest
- Ecological interactions and cooperation fuels the functioning of the biosphere more than competition
- Fish aren’t real unless you include all amphibians, mammals, reptiles, and birds in your definition of fish
- kingdom phylum class order family genus species is a very outdated way of organising life. Scientists now mostly use evolutionary relationships instead.
- Cooperation is evolutionarily beneficial. The math’s been done. Being selfish isn’t actually a great long term plan for a species.
- Species don’t really exist and hybridisation is a powerful evolutionary force
- Humans and monkeys share a very recent common ancestor that was superficially monkey like. That’s why monkeys are still here.
- actually, because monkeys fall into two groups and one is closer to humans than the other, humans are actually monkeys under evolutionary relationship classification (all apes are monkeys, and humans fall within apes)
- humans and chimps are more similar to each other genetically than the HIV virus inside of a person at the start of their infection compared to a year later
- nothing is more or less evolved than anything else because we all evolved from the same universal common ancestor and evolution is a function of time
- evolution is not geared towards anything it is a response to changing environmental conditions or just random change and things absolutely can “go backwards” if the pressures and/or genes are there
- every organism is adapted for its niche. Being different is good and necessary for the planet
FIFTEEN beans fit inside of that mouse.
Re: the tags - how did you decide which ones went back to the nest and which go to Bug?
So litters are best culled to 4-6 babies if you want Big Babies. They can still easily take care of more, they just won't be as big and it will be more work for Mom and potentially shorten her life (and since I retire the breeder ladies to pet homes, this isn't ideal). Which means, if I don't need replacement boys, the boys go first due to their inclination to hog milk (pushing other pups away, especially the does) and their inability to be adopted (and I rarely ever get asked for males, usually people looking to get a solo male they can keep by himself, thinking they can make up for mouse to mouse socialization by overhandling the shit out of them, and I wouldn't send a mouse to their lonely doom under any circumstances). They don't handle attrition replacement, and are more prone to fighting in same sex groups, so you always end up with a solo male at the end that's miserable/stressed, and sometimes you end up with injured solo males. Not good for them.
If I still have too many, I will cull the smallest girls first. If by miracle there's no smallest or weaker looking girls, then I start by lining them all up in my hand and looking to see if any of them freak out, then I look at whisker bed width (is there a pinch behind the whisker bed? That's bad. Is the whisker bed really pointy? Bad), and tail sets (does the tail slope gently out from the butt, or does it look like someone smashed it onto a square butt?), and remove the worst offenders until I am left with 4-6 or at max 8 babies for mom to raise.
Once they're weaning age, I temperament test them and then from the ones who pass, I pick the best (if there's any I like or that are better than what I have) for breeding and the rest will get pet homed when they've shown they're doing okay away from mom.
The ones that don't pass at any point can go to Bug, up to about 15 grams- and she knows it. She dances on her perch and big stretchies out her neck out trying to get them while I'm weaning or sorting pinks. It's a great protein boost for her (especially since peafowl are omnivores that thrive on animal proteins), as well as having a lot of good vitamins and stuff that may not necessarily be the same in her processed chow.
#if you ever think of it when you have a litter I would love photos of the structural differences#it could really help me in the future! (via @noodlebutts
I will forget if I wait for a litter, but I took one of the pinks from this one and grabbed a couple of quick photos and just drew on them
So here is a mouse pinky head- a clean photo and one with markings. green is the skull, the blue are the eyes, the yellow is the whisker beds. They appear redder in the first image because there's no bone beneath the skin.
A good whisker bed will be broad, making the face appear rounded at the tip instead of pointed. The red arrows point to the rear of the whisker beds, where they join the rest of the face- the "base" of the bed.
The base of the whisker bed should not pinch inwards, as shown by the blue outline. You want a nice, broad base that blends smoothly, like shown by the green line.
You also don't want the whisker bed to be narrow/flat to the skull- this leads to a mouse face that is super pointy. I didn't draw lines for that but here are three different mice from my bins to demonstrate how these translate into adult mice.
First photo- flat whisker bed, pointy head shape. Second photo, pinched whisker bed, hourglass head shape. Third photo, wide whisker bed, smoothly contoured head.
The last is the goal for show-type mice. It's not a problem for them to have the other shapes, like there's no ethical consideration between any of these, which is why it often takes a back burner in my mice as one of the last selection qualities. If I have two mice who are "all else being equal" (equally good in all other qualities), then the better whisker bed will win to remain as a breeder. But, personality often wins first.
As for tails, this can be trickier on pinks, because the shape of their tail set can vary GREATLY depending on what their legs are doing at the time. Ideally, you want to gauge tail set when the pink's feet level under them or kicked out behind them, but the mouse is relaxed, not trying to move forward or backward. Moving forward can make the tail set look better than it really is, and moving backward can make the tail set look worse than it really is. So bear that in mind.
Here is a mouse pinky butt, in a relaxed stance with the feet under her.
Ideally, you want a thick, long, smooth lead out of the rump to the tail, as shown in red. However, a lot of mice have box butt, where their rump is flat and their tail looks like someone just jammed it on there, like with the green outline.
As you can see, mine are middle of the road on this- they could use better rumps, but they're not flat assed either. You want this because firstly, it looks nice and provides that smooth whole-body contour that's desirable in showy-type mice, secondly it provides more stability for them with better musculature/attachment as they use their tails when climbing/moving, but thirdly and perhaps more importantly than the other two reasons, these are domestic animals that will be handled. When you lift or hold a mouse by the tail, you should only ever be lifting or holding from the BASE of the tail, and if that base has a long lead out, then you have more surface area to hold, making it easier on the mouse and practically eliminating the risk of degloving.
You also want no kinks in the tail. This doe doesn't have a hard kink in her tail, but depending on how 'stiff' that curve is, it might be something you'd see reflected in an adult mouse, and MIGHT be cause for docked points in show. Or, it might be a growth issue that will even out as she grows and her tail muscles/tendons develop. It might also just be that she was flexing it during the photo. Trust your eyes over a photo on that front, but a lot of times taking a photo can help clear up differences in mice, since you can get control of the lighting and positioning better in a still frame.
So yeah! That's a look at mouse pink whisker beds and tail sets for quality, while breeding!
some low-quality images of some Aussie shrimp
Someone else keeping paratya on shrimpblr? Hell yeah!
Cant remember if there's still any paratya in this tank but here's a big preggnant longirostris of mine
I appreciate you starting a conversation about the harms of homeopathy, and I just want to mention that homeopathy/alternative medicine is also largely BS when it comes to treating our pets. A lot of essential oils and herbal remedies are toxic to cats and dogs even in small quantities, but people still try using them as flea and tick prevention because they don’t want to use “toxic” medicine that actually works. CBD isn’t FDA approved for dogs because it’s not been proven to be effective and safe, but a lot of folks have pushed me to try it for my dog because he’s on medication for extreme anxiety. Some folks will seek out animal chiropractors to “treat” their dog’s IVDD or hip dysplasia instead of pursuing pain management or surgical treatment. People think that vets look at their pets and see dollar signs instead of an animal needing treatment and turn to snake oil salesmen instead. It’s maddening.
Yeah that makes me fucking crazy.
@drferox and @why-animals-do-the-thing are great resources on tumblr who have spent a ton of time discussing animal woo in the past; both have slowed down on posting because life is hard and tumblr is tumblr, but both have done a lot of excellent writing about things like animal training, raw pet food, vaccination, and how to be a good human to your pets. If you've got questions about animals, search their archives and you're probably going to find a ton of useful information.
Folks, I swear veterinarians aren't coming for your wallets and they are generally criminally under-compensated for the work that they do. They're brilliant professionals who are driven by passion and fucked by the market.
Sorry i went to go find some studies on dogs and cbd and i ended up finding a reprint of a small study from the american holistic veterinary medical association and I found this on the pdf and i'm going to murder somebody
for those who are not aware young living is an essential oil mlm largely targeting mormon housewives that was started by a man whose child died being drowned at birth in an at-home-water-birthing incident and who himself likely died of cancer he tried to treat with essential oils.
This is one of those things that's like a big flashing neon sign that the study/journal you're looking at is a hot pile of bullshit.
Anyway. Yeah. Research supporting the safety and effectiveness of CBD on dogs is pretty thin on the ground. Your pets depend on you. The choices you make determine their health and wellbeing.
Listening to woo-peddlers who tell you not to vaccinate, or who hype up untested "healthy grain free diets," or who promote and sell cbd in absence of evidence of its effectiveness is putting your pets hands in the health of someone who doesn't care about your pet, they just care about profit.
Also, while I'm here: don't feed your dog grain free foods unless they have a diagnosed allergy, grain free foods can lead to liver and kidney problems, dogs are more omnivorous, not obligate carnivores like cats and grain is not bad for their diet nor unnatural for them to eat, and there are very few brands that have done decades of feeding tests on dogs (Royal Canin, Hills Science Diet, Pedigree, Eukanuba, and Iams) and none of them are Blue Buffalo.
Appeals to nature are extremely common in online woo discussions of pet food and vet care. Your dog is not a wolf and does not need to eat like a wolf. Your cat is not a lion and does not need to claim territory like a lion.
Vaccinate your pets, don't let them wander, feed them tested diets, and listen to your vet's advice on their care.
This is one of those ‘kind of sorry I get it’ jokes…
oh, no
A cute, snuggly pile of Massasauga rattler besties
The box turtle was 100% face down in the dirt asleep. The little rattlesnake didn't even notice them and slithered right over their head and woke them up.
I know they look grumpy, but it's only because all box turtles just look like that. And they look like that because all box turtles are actually always grumpy all the time.
