Conservation Curiosity

nature, conservation, wildlife // nature recording by smart phone // occasional drawings // the personal scrapbook of a queer biologist & aspiring conservationist

[herpsandbirds]

[calder]

vegans make peace with honey

no shut up do it

vegans will pretend not to hear when natives tell them their agave products are unsustainable because they have whimsical feelings about, and i cannot stress this enough, the freedom of hive insects

Honey is literally murder but go off

[kasaron]

Prove it.

They literally puke their guts up to make your honey

[kasaron]

I have not seen any evidence tonsugges they are harmed or die in the process of production. They do regurgitate the nectar as part of the process to concentrate it into honey (an interesting process) but they do not suffer any injury during this process. If they did, the cost to produce honey, which is done naturally as a measure to survive over winter and through times of lower availability, would outweigh the benefits. If you kill several bees to produce enough honey to make one more bee, It makes no sense. Any animal that did that would die, even with human intervention.

Do you have any sources which suggest otherwise? I’d be interested to hear of this (relatively publicly available) information was false or misunderstood.

Bee farmers use whats called a honey maker. It’s a crude devices. It similar to a meat grinder. They force the bees in and grind them up. What comes out is a paste. That paste is later filtered into what we know as honey

[hematite2]

This is the funniest thing I’ve ever read

[leonardo-nierman]

@zoologicallyobsessed please show us pics of your bee grinder

[gemstone-gynoid]

they might be falsely thinking about a honey extractor machine. but all these do is you place the beehive frames inside and a motor rotates it at a speed that removes the honey, which is then tapped through a tap at the bottom. 

[darkenedyeastextract]

…do they think they put bees in that and spin them around until they vomit…?

[demonius-darkblade]

bee carnival

[yeah-yeah-beebiss-1]

bad and naughty bees get put into the b e e c e n t r i f u g e to extract their honey

[bastlynn]

Vegans coming after beekeepers is one of my major teeth grinding annoyances. For many reasons, because there’s so many lies. And to go one step further because it’s such a waste. You see, the strongest vegan argument is that they don’t want to exploit animals or take from them without their consent.

… but… Bees consent. NO. I’M NOT KIDDING.

How? Bee hives aren’t kept on leashes. They’re outside, the bees can travel miles every day. They follow their queen. Who is also outside, not on a leash, and can travel miles every day. If she doesn’t like the hive for any reason - for example: it got too hot, too cold, too messy, too filled with sugary stuff and they need more space… then the queen leaves. And with her the hive.

The queen stays in the hive because the hive is the best place to live. Period. Done. End of. If the hive is staying with the beekeeper it’s because the keeper is doing their job correctly and keeping them happy because the bees can, and do, leave bad beekeepers.

Of all the animals we have domesticated as livestock, bees are the ones you can most easily argue are consenting participants in their keeping.

[mystical-mew]

Here it is. The bee post is back

[korrasera]

I feel compelled to explain the misconception part for anyone who doesn’t know anything about beekeeping and finds any of this confusing. This might be a little redundant, but I’m scratching an itch.

Harvesting honey does not murder bees.

The device pictured above does not mash up bees or their hives.

There’s no ethical concern when it comes to eating honey, it’s totally ethical as food is concerned.

Bees manufacture honey using pollen. They store it in the cells of their hive, where it’s used as food for the colony, particularly the larvae growing into the next generation of bees.

When you harvest honey, you remove parts of the hive that are being used to store the honey, without taking any bees along for the ride. Those parts of the hive are then put into a device, like the centrifugal extractor shown above by gemstone-gynoid, where the parts are spun really fast to pull extract the honey. The honey gets collected on the walls of the extractor, drips down, and can then be filtered and bottled for human use.

So.

It turns out that bees love making honey and can make more of it than they’d ever need. It also turns out that beekeepers taking care of hives and harvesting their honey keeps bees healthy and thriving, more so than they’d normally accomplish on their own. And we really need bees healthy and thriving because they help us grow an astonishing amount of food by pollinating plants.

Like, there’s no need to have a conversation about this, anyone who claims that harvesting honey requires that you kill bees is lying. Either they don’t know anything about beekeeping and are just repeating a lie someone else told them, or they know that they’re lying and they’re just straight up trying to deceive people. Neither is a good look.

[ariaste]

And just one more point of clarification – “cells of the hive” doesn’t mean the anatomical cells of the bees’ bodies, it means the little holes in the honeycomb of the physical structure of the hives, which they build using beeswax. Think of it like a bee pantry. They put their honey in the pantry, but since they’re working hard every day, they often make wayyyyyy too much of it. So the beekeepers come along and take the extra honeycomb that the bees don’t need and aren’t going to use, but they leave plenty behind for the bees to eat. Additionally, if anything happens to the hive’s honey supplies in the winter, the beekeepers can supplement their food by either giving some honey back or giving them sugar water. Also, fun fact! When beekeepers extract the honey from the comb, they often leave all their equipment out afterwards so the bees can come along and clean up, re-collecting any traces of honey or wax left behind, which get put back into the hive and recycled. Any leftover waste (dirt and grime from old comb, for example, or bees that died natural deaths of old age) makes great fertilizer for the plants that produce the pollen the bees make next year. No waste!

Vegans, the bees are not going to stop making honey if they’re left to their own devices in the wild. The bees are just doing a thing that bees do. Eating honey is not exploitation, it’s sustainability. That said, if you’re still worried about the ethics, I’d recommend looking up some local beekeepers/honey farms in your area and reaching out to them for more education! I’ve known a lot of beekeepers that are really excited about doing education and outreach to teach people about the importance of pollinators, the partnership between bees and beekeepers, and the process of how honey is collected. Some honey farms will even give you a tour of their process so you can see in person how it’s made and that it’s not a harmful or exploitative process for the bees at all! (and of course eating local honey gives you an amazing connection to your local environment, both spiritually and physically?? like apparently eating local honey can help with seasonal allergies??? it’s really cool)

[conservation-curiosity]

More the consider though…

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.13973

Controlling the impact of the managed honeybee on wild bees in protected areas - Scientific Reports

In recent years, conservation biologists have raised awareness about the risk of ecological interference between massively introduced manage

Mounting evidence that managed and introduced bees have negative impacts on wild bees: an updated review

Worldwide, the use of managed bees for crop pollination and honey production has increased dramatically. Concerns about the pressures of the

Introduced honeybee may pose threat to native bees

A study has found the introduced European honeybee could lead to native bee population decline or extinction when colonies compete for the s

[niqvassieart]

5-10 min nightjar studies to help me with a book illustration i was working on. Such beautiful and weird birds!

[niqvassieart]

Hello! My online shop is finally open again this week, until end August 24th (UK time).

I still have copies of all three of my books plus riso prints, postcards and stickers. And options for original animal drawings in any of the books!

Thank youuu, very grateful for all the ongoing support on here ❤️🌱✨

[ladyoftheteaandblood]

I absolutely love this.

@ms-cellanies @nuggsmum @ourladybinxthings @alexakeyloveloki @booksandcatslover @dangertoozmanykids101 @fairlightswiftly @feelmyroarrrr @wolfsmom1 @inkededucatednnerdy @messy-insomniac-bookgirl @lokihiddleston @lolawashere @kaogasm and all not got my list

[expressions-of-nature]

Dusk at Ulster Heights Wetlands by Gerald Berliner

[expressions-of-nature]

expressions-of-nature: Dusk at Ulster Heights Wetlands by Gerald Berliner

[kedreeva]

Indoor Cats: Leashes

Leashes for the Cat Enrichment Masterpost

While allowing cats to free roam can be done with supervision, unlike most dogs, cats can be difficult to recall and if they escape beyond an owner’s ability to recover them, the chances of them being found and safely returned are very slim because folks that see a cat out currently assume it’s supposed to be out (another good reason to turn away from unsupervised cats outside… less lost cats that never come home).

Instead, it is becoming increasingly common for owners to train their cats to a harness and leash (or lead) in order to allow them to safely experience some outdoor time, as well as facilitate bonding; cats trained to a harness and leash often learn to associate the items and the person carrying it with the enjoyable experience of going outside.

This does not necessarily mean that your cat will enjoy the leash immediately. It takes time for an association to be formed, and repeated exposure and consistency are often the key. Patience is also a virtue in this endeavor, as it is generally recommended to train slowly, by familiarizing them with the harness first and adding the leash later.

There are many good guides out there on how to train your cat to use a leash, but I will direct you first toward adventurecats.org. They are also home to a wealth of articles pertaining to gear choices and taking your cat on an adventure/traveling etc. Chewy also has a guide, as does the cat behaviorist.com. There are also plenty of video guides online that show examples. Do some exploring! Familiarize yourself with the process and the idea behind the process before expecting your cat to go through it.

The other thing to be aware of is that there are DOZENS of types of harnesses. Some cats will take the easiest one and do great. Others are escape artists and require a more secure harness. Because cats have such a huge variance in body type, a harness that comfortably fits one cat may not fit the next one. How the leash attaches and where it pulls comfortably on one cat may not suit another. You may have to do some trial and error to find a leash that works for your cat, so don’t abandon all hope if it doesn’t work immediately on the first try.

Here’s one made for harness escape artist cats: 

Lead training can also lead to socialization. A lot of folks tend to think of wolves as pack animals and cats as solitary loners, when in fact many cats - including housecats - enjoy being part of a pride or colony. In your home, you become the cat’s family, but while humans spend a lot of time socializing dogs to be friendly to folks outside of their family, cats generally get the short end of the stick because they either don’t leave the house or they leave the house unsupervised and thus have no opportunity to be purposefully exposed to socialization.

A harness and leash can change that, particularly for kittens! Taking your cat out on a leash can help you to take them to various places and maintain control over them the way you would a dog, which can familiarize them with new stimuli and make them overall less prone to stress when there’s a change, as well as help them to be more outgoing toward people because they won’t be as afraid of meeting new ones. It can also make it less scary for things like going to the vet, something a lot of cat owners struggle with because car rides = scary and new places = scary and new people = scary. But that can be way less true if they’re trained early on to use a leash and come visit new places and people while leashed. Now it’s just a new adventure the two of you can share!

And I have to share one last leash photo, which is technically an accessory to transporting your cat around so you can use your leashes… the cat backpack! They actually have one that, if I understand it correctly, can be reversed around to turn into a cat cave/bed for a nice little hide while camping/adventuring.

Previous: Catios | Next up: Grass Loungers 

[the-adventures-of-dave]

Catexplorer is another fantastic resource for training cats! They answer a lot of common questions about harness training on their website, and also have a number of “best cat leashes” or “best cat backpacks” compilations with pros and cons. It’s worth checking out if you’re considering harness training your kitty!

[a-book-of-creatures]

Honestly the biggest disappointment I had researching ABC was that medieval authors did not, in fact, see the creatures they were describing and were trying their best to describe them with their limited knowledge while going “what the fuck… what the fuck…”

[a-book-of-creatures]

Instead all those creatures you know came about from transcription and translation errors from copying Greco-Roman sources (who themselves got them from travelers’ tales from Persia and India - rhino -> unicorn, tiger -> manticore, python -> dragon, and so on).

[downinmybeastheart]

So unicorns are real

[a-book-of-creatures]

behold… a unicorn

[gallusrostromegalus]

I always thought animals in medieval manuscripts looked like the result of having to draw say. A Tree Kangaroo, but your only source for what it looked like was your friend who heard it from a fellow who knows a man who swears he saw one once, whilst very drunk and lost, and I am SO PLEASED  to find out this is, in fact, the case.

[glamourweaver]

Questing Beast

- Neck of a snake

- body of a leopard

- haunches of a lion

- feet off a hart (deer)

So is it

Or….

[weaselle]

don’t forget that some of the legendary creatures they were describing were from other people’s mythos which were passed down in the oral tradition for gods know how long. You know what existed in Eurasia right around the time we were domesticating wolves into dogs?

these beasties. For a long time, science had them down as going extinct 200 thousand years ago, but then we found some bones from 36 thousand years ago. Which, y’know, is quite a difference. Since you can bet that any skeleton we find is not literally the last one of its kind to live, many creatures have date ranges unknowably far outside the evidence.

In South Asia there were cultures that described a man-beast/troll forrest giant  who’s knuckles dragged the ground, and everybody from the west was sure it was superstitious mumbo jumbo, but you know what used to live there?

And did you know that some of the earliest white colonizers of the Americas heard accounts that there were natives still alive who had seen and hunted and eaten a great hairy beast, shaggy like the buffalo but much bigger, with a long thin nose like a snake and two giant fangs… so, like, mammoths, you know? but they were totally discounted because europeans of the time were like, elephants live in Africa and aren’t hairy, you can’t fool us, pranksters!

Anyway, the point is between the early writing game of telephone description thing talked about by OP, and the discounting of native cultural accuracy, I’m pretty sure most legendary creatures are in fact real animals one way or another 

[historyisntboring]

It can’t explain every single legendary creature, but yes, this is super important. Because History relies on written sources, it tends to sweep oral tradition under the rug, even if there’s a lot of interesting informations in it.

And it’s not just living animals that were badly described, or which descriptions got exaggerated over the course of centuries or through translation errors. Sometimes, people finding fossil bones of extinct animals might have also influenced some myths!

By now this is pretty well-known but it has been theorised that the Greek myth of the cyclops was started when people found Deinotherium skulls. Now you might say, uh, how is it possible to think a cousin of the elephant is a huge human dude with one eye?

Well-

- the big nasal opening kinda looks like an eye if you have no idea what kind of animal had this kind of skull (you can read more about this theory in this old National Geographic article if you like).

Here’s a less well-known one; the griffin is a mythological hybrid with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. The earliest traces of this myth come from ancient Iranian and ancient Egyptian art, from more than 3000 BC. In Iranian mythology, it’s called شیردال‌ (shirdal, “lion eagle”). Now, it’s been the subject of some debate and it’s not confirmed, but there’s a theory that people might have seen some Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus fossils in Asia and might have interpreted it as “a lion with an eagle’s head”:

Check the “origin” part of the wikipedia page for “griffin” if you want to find more sources for this theory and for the arguments against it! Again, it’s just a theory, but I think it’s super cool.

[excessively-english-jd]

This is a pretty well accepted theory for why dragons (or animals we group as like dragons, eg wyverns and drakes) are seen in mythos almost worldwide - because people found dinosaur bones, looked at them, and went “oh fuck what’s that? some big…. lizardy thing?” and then created dragons.

[ferrific]

Adrienne Mayor’s The First Fossil Hunters is basically all about this premise.

[great-and-small]

A jellyfish might not be what you think of when it comes to Alaskan wildlife, but spotting this little red-eyed Medusa jellyfish was one of the highlights of my time on the pacific coast. There’s something so mesmerizing about the way these animals move in the water and I feel like their gracefulness is highly underrated!

The red ocelli (eyespots) that you can see around the base of the bell are light sensitive, which allows the jelly to orient itself. It feeds on benthic zooplankton, small crustaceans, and worms. Isn’t it adorable how this little one boops the surface of the water with their bell?

[rumade]

Gardening Which magazine, Jan 2021 (UK publication)

Beekeeping could damage wild bees

Research has found that honey bee colonies kept by beekeepers in cities harvest so much nectar and pollen that there's little left to sustain wild bees. According to RBG Kew's State of the World's Plants and Fungi report, there isn't sufficient forage to sustain the number of honey bee colonies, let alone wild relatives in large areas of central London. Many bees feed only on a few species and so can't swap to other plants, while honey bees also risk infecting wild populations with disease.

The entire report is free to read as an online PDF.

My takeaway from this is that urban dwellers shouldn't underestimate the impact of their gardening efforts. Bees need flowers, so get planting, sowing, campaigning, going guerilla...

Flowers for cities!

[botanyshitposts]

enamored by the singular corn kernel that fell down the grate in the back room of my work where we wash all the sequipment (seed equipment) and immediately started growing on a little pile of sand that fell down there too and now it’s like 6 inches tall poking one of its leaves through the slats

[botanyshitposts]

ah to be a singular corn plant growing in a damp laboratory floor drain....

[cartoonfreack]

Same exact thing happened at my work just two days ago. I noticed a plant growing in a drain and I'm even sure it's corn too ( movie theatre not a lab tho )

[botanyshitposts]

you’re the second person to mention feral movie theatre corn in this thread and my guess is that it’s popcorn! popcorn and sweet corn are both specialty corns/crops, so they’re bred to look a bit different than field corn (what the drain corn i posted is) and have to be harvested differently, too. popcorn ears tend to be a lot smaller and more compact with much smaller kernels, and they breed the plants to make kernels with a specific protein/starch ratio that makes them pop under heat (field corn, sweet corn, and popcorn all have slightly different ratios for optimum corn abilities, depending on what it’s being used for). i think you would have to grow a spontaneous second drain survival corn to try for a full popcorn ear, though.

this is really interesting, honestly i never considered the possibility of escapee popcorn. the other possibility would be a sunflower, maybe? those are the only movie theatre seeds I can think of. wild how we don’t think of some seeds as being seeds until they go stupid and crazy in a drain or something

[conservation-curiosity]

Alder fly, April 2021

[bunjywunjy]

A crossword magazine told me that "... Giraffes don't have vocal cords". Idk why the ominous ellipsis was necessary, but they put it there

the crossword was lying to you, giraffes actually DO have vocal chords! that fact is an old wives tale that spread around because giraffes are a pretty quiet bunch. but they’re just the strong and silent type. 

giraffes have a larynx the same as other ungulates, which they occasionally use to bleat, honk, chortle, chorble, and.... make a horrifically ominous humming noise at night. look, there’s your cursed fact right there.

(horror movie sounds-effect humming starts at 0:23)

[damnfool-of-a-took]

I know they're massive, but somehow I expected giraffe voices to be higher pitched than that.

[fuzzynecromancer]

when it’s 11PM and you wanna eat leaves and summon the Blood Lord

[youhaveaguineapigwhere]

Huddle with us

[conservation-curiosity]

Ladybird larvae on the seed-head of some kind of carrot-family plant

[conservation-curiosity]

Comfrey

The main ID feature of common comfrey is seen on the stem... Did I take a picture of the stem? no I did not. Did i learn this fact completely coincidentally mere hours after taking the photo? yes I did. So this may or may not be common comfrey. I’ll try not to let the dreadful mystery fester away at me...

[conservation-curiosity]

A beetle is trying to get that massive ectoparasite (ectoparasite: parasite that’s on external body surfaces) off their leg but it is not happening for them today. I want to know more about what on earth is happening here. Like what evolution led to that parasite bug having such interesting-looking hind legs.

The plant is called cleavers.

[turnipot]

#19 Enormous - Chinese giant salamander