names Emily! I am a practicing Witch well versed in stone/minerals/crystals I seriously strive to help anyone who needs it :) Feel free to ask any questions
the neurodivergent experience is thinking youāre sharing fun, interesting or helpful information in a normal human conversational fashion while they think youāre an asshole lecturing them or looking down at them like theyāre stupid and also that no matter how many times you have this experience you always think youāre doing it the right way this time
the neurodivergent experience is also hearing a friend going through a rough time but your only way of showing true empathy is by relating it to your experiences but now everyone thinks youre making it about yourself which you arent you just want them to know you understand and hope they can get through the rough times and that they will because you survived similar issues and just want to offer your support and advice but youre worried youre now coming off as condescending or telling them what to do
Many "gold-standard" zoos and aquariums worldwide let visitors pet, feed, and take selfies with animals, a new report finds.
I know a lot of people are seeing stuff about this report, and I wanted to provide some context for the apparent politics involved in it for folk to think about while Iām dissecting the full thing. So Iām not going to comment on the allegations - Iām still doing my research, because theyāre classing a huge range of types of training and interactions into a single category of āabuseā - but thereās some industry politics / purposeful spins on messaging that itās worth being aware of.Ā
1. WAZA (the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums) is not an accreditation body. What that means is that they do not oversee how facilities function, do not inspect member zoos, and donāt promulgate standards that must be met. Theyāre a membership group: basically a fancy professional club. Saying a zoo isĀ āaccredited by Xā tells you a lot more than sayingĀ āX zoo is a WAZA member.ā The article kinda touches on it, but not in much detail. WAZA literally canāt tell member zoos what to do.Ā
2. WAZA does not haveĀ āindirect membersā, which is theĀ ācategoryā World Animal Protection chose that results in such a high number ofĀ āassociated facilities.āĀ WAZA has two relevant membership category types to this topic: regional associations and individual facilities. So the Association of Zoos and Aquariums,Ā Pan African Association of Zoological Gardens, Aquaria and Botanical Gardens, European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, South East Asian Zoos Association, etc, are all regional associations. These are the groups that are tasked with accrediting / regulating / promulgating standards for zoological facilities in their areas, and the actual organizations are WAZA members in their own right. Individual facilities can join WAZA as members (as long as theyāre also members in good standing with a regional association. But that doesnāt mean that if AZA is a member of WAZA, and X zoo is an AZA-accredited facility, that X zoo is a member of WAZA. So when WAP saysĀ ā75 percent of WAZAās 1,241 membersāincluding those defined by WAP as āindirectā members (zoos or aquariums that belong to WAZA-member associations)āoffer at least one animal-visitor interactionā thatās justā¦ a mess. WAZA actually only has 400 members around the world (WAP says 281 direct facility members), and that includes the regional associations. What this tells us is that WAP isnāt just looking to sayĀ āman, there are some zoos doing shit they shouldnāt, letās talk about itā - theyāre directly attempting to target WAZA with this report, because they manipulated the data in order to make a big splashy statement and put pressure on the organization.Ā
3. As far as I know, WAZA has never claimed to be theĀ āgold standardā for zoos. Thatās language from the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums. WAZA /knows/ that not all facilities accredited by and involved with their regional associations are necessarily the best, but they use the relationship they have with those groups to help increase facility quality and animal care throughout those regions. Again, language has been picked by WAP thatās /literally just not accurate/ to make WAZA look bad here: thereās a difference betweenĀ āa bunch of places associated with X membership group arenāt greatā andĀ āthese facilities associated with a group that purports to be the gold standard arenāt living up to it.ā WAP has picked the latter messaging strategy, but WAZA hasnāt ever claimed to be comprised ofĀ āthe best zoos.ā (Again, thatās AZA).Ā WAZA instead says itĀ ā promotes cooperation between leading zoos, aquariums, national and regional associations, as well as with leading wildlife experts, academies, and universitiesā andĀ āprovides support for species-conservation management and husbandry of animals in human care, while encouraging the highest standards in member institutions.ā The accurate language I canĀ find is that WAZA sees itself as a āunifying organisation for the worldās leading zoos and aquariums.ā But, remember,Ā āleadingā is not the same asĀ āgold standard.ā If youāve got a zoo in an area with fairly sub-par animal care culture thatās working really hard to grow above and beyond that, that can reasonably be called aĀ āleadingā zoo in that region.Ā
4. Itās pretty clear this is a specifically targeted campaign, because when you go to the report page, all theĀ āact nowā messaging is about contacting the leadership of WAZA and AZA. Now, the report said it identified issues at facilities all over the world - and only /one/ of the facilities āof most concernā is actually in the US (SW San Antonio), and itās not even actually a member of WAZA. So why arenāt they encouraging people to contact EAZA, or JAZA, or any of the relevant accrediting bodies associated with those other places? Because this is a report targeted at a Western audience and that (so far) messaging about appears to be targeting what American anti-zoo groups care about. For example, the report brings up the fact that captive lions in the South Africa zoological industry are known to be feeding into black market trade - but it doesnāt say you should advocate there, no, it want readers to take action by specifically contacting AZA - a group which has very little power to influence the behavior of zoological facilities in other countries.Ā
5. This report is based onĀ ādesktop researchā - a term which is never defined, but which Iām pretty sure meansĀ āwe googled itā - and 12 site visits. Theyāre alleging animal abuse at 900 zoos around the worldĀ because they looked them up on google. Yes, you can find a lot of information on google, but if youāre an international non-profit putting out a report that youāre hoping will influence the shape of animal use and animal care at facilities around the globeā¦ it seems like youād expect a better quality of research. Unless the focus is more sensationalized viral media, and not accurate scientific information.Ā
6. Guess what? The report doesnāt actually list the facilities and the practices WAP is alleging are abusive. It contains the 12 ofĀ āmost concernā (the ones they actually visited) but past that, thereās no data to look at. So cool, thereās around 888 zoos out there that are doing practices this international non-profit thinks are bad enough to contact major media groups about ā¦ but theyāre not going to actually tell us which ones, or why. Seems like a really great way to actually advocate for the welfare of the animals at those 800+ facilities, not giving the public any information on which to act.Ā
Regardless of your feelings about any specific zoo or aquarium, or any specific animal use practice, itās really important to be aware of how information is manipulated and misrepresented in order to encourage a specific emotional response or action from you. Iāll update about this whole situation once Iāve had time to fully study the report.Ā
It turns out a lot of animals canāt see the difference between orange and green!Ā Elephants, for instance, have dichromatic vision (two types of cones, rather than three like most humans.)Ā
Check out this diagram from ResearchGate.Ā It deals with the color vision of horses, who are also generally dichromatic.Ā (I think, though Iām not sure, that zebras would have the same color vision as horses.)Ā See how orange and green look to them?
It doesnāt matter what zebras see, because tigers are not native to Africa and do not naturally hunt zebra. Ā Tigers are Asian and mostly hunt animals like deer, elk, and buffalo.Ā These arenāt animals with great color vision.Ā They donāt need to have it because they donāt eat fruit and so donāt need to know when the berry is ripe vs when itās not.Ā Good color vision is too expensive to have if you donāt need it.Ā Deer put their vision stats in a wide field of vision that is sensitive to motion, low light capabilities, and possibly seeing UV light.Ā They donāt have great color and lack a lot of acuity, but have a great sense of smell and good hearing.Ā Thatās way more useful if youāre prey.Ā Deer see well in the blue end of the color spectrum and less well in the red.Ā This makes sense because deer are most active in the dawn and dusk periods, when there is more blue in the light.Ā Tigers are taking advantage of deer eyesight by being orange.
WeĀ see tigers are being obviously colored because tigers are fruit colored to our tree ape brains.
I donāt know what the best part of this is: implying that deer chose their attributes on a character sheet, or the fact that we get to see tiger colors because they look like a snack.
Ok but like, I think you underestimate just how well they blend in when actually in the environment. Like, just using tigers as an example.
or how about a leopard?
Itās called ādisruptive colourationā because the markings help to break up the animalās outline against the grasses or rocks. And the rosettes on leopards and jaguars? Sun spots shining through the trees and leaves on the ground.
And this is how hard it is to spot them WITH colour vision. Now imagine the above images but with the limited coloured mentioned above?
like seriously their brain-to-body size ratio is equal to that of a chimpanzee
They vocalize anger, sadness, or happiness in response to things
they are scary smart at solving puzzles
some crows stay with their mates until one of them dies
they can remember faces
SIDENOTE HERE BECAUSE HOLY SHIT.Ā They did an experiment where these guys wore masks and some of them fucked with crows.Ā Pretty soon the crows recognized the masks = douchebag.Ā But the nice guys with masks they left alone.Ā THEN, OH WEāRE NOT DONE, NO SIR crows that WERENāT EVEN IN THE EXPERIMENT AND NEVER SAW THE MASK BEFORE knew about mask-dudes and attacked them on sight.Ā THEY PASSED ON THE FUCKING INFORMATION TO THEIR CROW BUDDIES.
They remember places where crows were killed by farmers and change their migration patterns.
A colleague of my dadās lives next to a lake, and looked out the window one morning to see a duck trapped in the ice. A crow swooped down. āOh hell,ā she thought, expecting carnage, because crows are opportunists. But the crow chipped at the ice with its beak until the duck was free.
Idk of this counts but a few crows saved me from a magpie swooping attack once ,theyāre bros who can tell when magpies are being unreasonable and need to chill
I love crows so damn much. When I was fifteen, I hit a pretty serious bout of depression, to the point I was in my room for months. Well, a family of crows made a nest in a tree outside my window. There were two parents and two chicks. One chick was healthy and strong. One was weak, and had a caw like something being strained. It sounded more like a rooster crowing and so my parents jokingly named him āBuckā.Wellā¦ months passed and Buckās sibling was taught to fly. His parents focused on the sibling because the sibling was strong. The father stayed behind to try and teach Buck, but I saw him try to fly, fail, and crash to the floor. His father helped him back up into the tree.
Every day, I would watch Buck from my window until one day I opened it and started talking to him. He was small and gangly and he couldnāt caw right. His feathers were all over the place and I felt a kinship. So I made a deal with him. I told him that if he could do it, if he could fly, then I could find the strength to get up. Wellā¦ near the end of the season, after talking with him every day, I finally saw him get out of the nest. He went to the edge of his branch, braced himself, and jumpedā¦ and just before he hit the ground, he soaredĀ back up into the sky. I cheered harder than I ever had before.
That winter, Buck left the area. I was crestfallen. I felt like Iād lost a friend. But I was so damn proud of him.Ā
Cut to the next spring? Iām walking up the driveway one day when suddenly I hear a soundā¦ a broken caw. I look up, and Buck is sitting in a tree above my head. He stared at me and puffed his feathers, then hopped down in front of me and cawed again. I was so damn thrilled, and I told him how proud I was of him. He ruffled his feathers and then soared off into his old tree.Ā
That summer? I heard two broken caws. One from Buckā¦ and one from his chick.
Cut to ten years later? We have a family of crows who all have a very distinct caw and they come here and spend every spring, summer, and fall on our property. Buck still greets me every spring.
this one morning i kept hearing really loud caws, i remember it was like 5am, LIKE REALLY LOUD AND ANNOYING AND AGGRESSIVE, so loud that i could hear it through a closed window, and i eventually went outside to check it out. there was a crow on my front lawn, it had an injury on its head and couldnāt fly and there were two other crows circling right above it, and they were cawing like mad.Ā
i tried to get close and take a better look and one of them dived super low and tried to attack me. so i went back in the house and chopped some sliced raw meat and tossed it at him from a distance.
a few more times later, very soon after, they could tell i was trying to help, and did not attack me. i was āallowedā to walk up close and pick him up, he couldnāt drink water properly so i had to dip my finger in a bowl and stick it in his mouth.
i did this few times a day and it went on for about a week before he disappeared, i thought he recovered and left, but he came back the next day and lands on me, and i see him around the block quite often, and he would come sit on my shoulder for a few minutes and then fly away again. i feel like iāve adopted a son.
Like, I wouldnāt want to be on bad terms with a crow, but they are a really smart animal, they arenāt scary You just want to be nice to them because they will know and they will remember, and they will pay you back if you treat them a certain way.
As a side note, I volunteered at a rehab (Hope for Wildlife), where they were rehabbing a crow with a broken wingāwho was named Russell Crow. He kept pulling his bandage off so a sleeve was cut off some old clothing and put on him like a little sweater.Ā
Crab walks around with Jellyfish on its back to protect it from predators
These #jellyfish Cassiopea (upside-down jellyfish) partake in a symbiotic relationship with photosynthetic dinoflagellates and therefore, must lay upside-down in areas with sufficient light penetration to fuel their energy source. Where found, there may be numerous individuals with varying shades of white, blue, green and brown.
Sometimes this jellyfish is picked up by the #crab Dorippe frascone and carried on its back. The crab uses the jellyfish to defend itself against possible predators.
Okay but whats great is that the common name for this species of crab isĀ āurchin crabā orĀ ācarrier crab.ā Normally, this species picks up urchins with long, hollow spines and carries them around as protection (the urchins benefit because they get taken to new feeding grounds).Ā
(Photo Credit: Sylke Rohrlach)
Iāve found a couple sources that say carrier crabs also carry jellyfish around, but some that say thereās actually a distinct but morphologically similar crab that specializes in carrying jellyfish.Ā
The other day I got a bug up my ass about lake Natron, because Iāve seen the photos of the calcified remains of animals that died on the lake (contrary to popular rumor, the lake doesnāt outright kill them as soon as they touch itĀ but it probably doesnāt help), but Iāve only seen those photos in black and white. Iām sure youāve seen them.
This particular photographer posed them for the photos, but I thought, you know, calcified remains should be really interesting to see in color, so I tried to find some that had been taken by others, in color. It was not nearly as visual stunning, they were just white rotting remains.
But what caught my eye wasnāt the dead. It was the fucking lake.
Itās BLOOD fucking RED.
Itās super alkaline (typically 10, but can get up 12, and just so weāre clear, pH13 melts skin, go look up Lye), blood fucking red (terrifying), and oh, it gets to be 106F/41C in the waterĀ (which is not scalding but still unreasonable for a LAKE). Red spirulina cyanobacteria (toxic!) thrives here and provides food for the main denizen of the lakeā¦. fucking lesserĀ flamingos.
Look at their fucking mud nests! They have to build nests out of mud because thereās nothing else and the water is caustic enough to kill their babies before those babies are tall enough to stand out of the water! The parents are feeding them crop milk that contains BLOOD.
Additionally!! The chicks often get soda anklets from soda and other minerals collecting and hardening around their feet and legs, which is the major killer of lesser flamingo chicks! Theyāre so hard that they would need to be hammered off! Like with a hammer or a smashy rock!! Humans had to do this for thousands of babies one year just to keep them from all dying off after we screwed with the balance of minerals in one of their lakes!
Look at this place! What is that black void!!
You need to leave!! You have found flamingo Silent Hill!! What are you still doing here!! Iāll tell you!! Theyāre still doing there because literally the death lake protects them from predators, nothing big enough to be a threat to them gets across the lake to get them. There are millions of them living there safely.
What the fuck. what the FUCK nature. This is some of the most amazing shit youāve ever pulled and hardly anyone knows about it. Iām on to you. I see your blood lake with your pink goth bird decorations. I see you.
no one but professional trainers has a full team of 6 in the pokemon universe because it would be a fucking gigantic hassle to deal with 6 animals, let alone different types that need different things
some people donāt evolve their pokemon because imagine having a fucking cat and then you can choose to make the cat five times as big and strong. would you do this if you werenāt battling.
Technically if your cat isnāt battling it doesnāt evolve.
That does however give cat owners a strong incentive to not let their cat outside, because realistically any cat that is allowed to roam free is gonna rack up exp until it evolves.
Daenerys targaryen was nothing but a name and a girl with silver hair and she became something. She rose from literal ashes and birthed dragons from fire and blood. She freed slaves and answered injustice with justice. She changed the dothrakis ways and gave the unsullied a chance at freedom. She inspired thousands to follow her to the ends of the world. She sacrificed the throne to help those in need and lost everything because of it. She lost her friends her advisors her children. She lost her love and died by his hand. So I will remember her as she was. A strong and caring ruler who put others sufferings before her own. To Daenerys stormborn of house targaryen breaker of chains and mother of dragons.
Shockingly, itās almost like Japan and America have very different narratives surrounding nuclear fallout. Now, if we all think very very hard, maybe someone could think of why this might be.
theartofmadeline
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