It’s Meep! Meep is a bit of a celebrity in the axolotl world. She is believed to have a form of dwarfism and is not significantly overweight, although she looks it especially in this photo.
The owner is a well-known and experienced handler who has four other axolotls that are way more… axolotl shaped lol. But she is healthy, not being overfed or suffering due to poor husbandry.
One of my top sea animals I wish lived all over the place on land. Imagine if you could just be walking in the woods and get this tangled in your hair. God people would HATE them. They would instantly be one of the designated "creepy crawlies" like snakes and bats and spiders. And I'd keep a hundred of them and some folks would see that and go "eewww! Why!" This is because many people are dumb.
#it fucks me up that this dolphin is obviously not trying very hard#is there some kind of fucking Physics happening here? i don't know of any
He's riding the bow wave! The boat, moving forward, also pushes quite a bit of water forward. The dolphin is letting the boat push him with the water, to save on the effort of swimming. It's like birds that fly in a V formation to take advantage of the wings of the bird ahead of them.
i love working at an aquarium i just witnessed a grown man with children enter the freshwater gallery and loudly exclaim “oh shit, piranhas are REAL?!?”
the delights of working with the public continue! just heard someone announce over the radios “hey we have guest wearing an inappropriate shirt that needs to be spoken to, i last saw him in sharks & rays and the shirt says ‘do milfs not drugs’ if a supervisor could take care of that that’d be great cuz he’s not being cooperative” and then a good 5 minutes later i heard a supervisor radio for security backup
Fascinating to see how low energy this ecosystem is. This is the greatest bounty these animals will probably see in their lives, and they’re sleepily shuffling toward it, because their body literally lacks the energy to move any faster than that. To them it probably feels like breakneck speed.
Horseshoe crab blood is used to test vaccines around the world. But while Europe has approved a synthetic alternative, biomedical labs are b
Okay, I know people as a general rule tend to not care about invertebrates as much as cute, fuzzy mammals, but this is a must-read if you care about animal welfare. The short version is that horseshoe crab blood has been used for decades in medicine as a way to test whether something is truly sterile; the blood clots in the presence of bacteria. Since then millions of horseshoe crabs have been captured and drained of blood, even though a synthetic alternative was developed a few years ago.
They go through a pretty brutal experience in the process. They're caught by fishermen who often throw them by their tails into a pile in the open air, and they're then trucked to a bleeding facility where they're strapped down and their blood is removed with needles jabbed directly into their hearts. Over half their blood may be taken, after which they're supposed to be returned to the ocean. However, it's likely many of them never make it back, instead turned into fish bait and sold by the same fishermen who caught them in the first place.
Apart from the fact that this is a horrific thing to put any animal through, the attrition due to fatalities has put a serious dent in horseshoe crab numbers. This is compounded by massive habitat loss, pollution, and the capture of horseshoe crabs as food, particularly as the females of one species are considered a delicacy. And other animals that rely on horseshoe crabs are suffering, too. The American rufa subspecies of the red knot, a medium-sized shorebird, is critically endangered as the horseshoe crab eggs it must have in order to successfully complete migration have become increasingly scarce, and it is likely the bird will become extinct if trends continue.
While there are guidelines for medical horseshoe crab harvest, they're considered optional. The few laws that exist are poorly enforced. Short of a complete ban on horseshoe crab blood in favor of the synthetic alternative, these animals are in very real danger of going extinct after a history spanning over 400 million years on this planet.
Thankfully, this article is not the first to bring forth the issues surrounding horseshoe crab harvest. Here are a few resources for further information and action (US based, though horseshoe crabs are threatened throughout their entire range):
Audio transcript : Hamster balls are like so dangerous for small animals. You know why? Because like, they can't extend their back properly, so their back is like thi-- (cuts off abruptly as the creature in the hamster ball is revealed to be a crab; pauses. The following is said with an affectionate tone like one uses when speaking of a cute animal:) Well, he can't break his spine 'cause he don't have a spine.
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