[kayandp]

Another big bug from the BOXED series - you can a print or sticker of it in my INPRINT store - check it here!

[botanyshitposts]

so was anybody gonna talk about the new ecology paper proposing Ethiopian wolves as potential pollinators of native nectar-rich flower inflorescences positioned on stalks conveniently within wolf enjoying height AND that it includes photos of said wolves doing said unconfirmed alleged pollination (delightful) AND that it has observational evidence suggesting some wolves do like 1 flower and are done and other wolves just get really into it and spend upwards of an hour going between 20 and 30 flowers for up to 4-5 minutes per cluster just utterly going at it, lost in the nectar sauce? because I cannot BELIEVE I haven’t seen something on this webbed site about it yet. it just has everything this site enjoys

[botanyshitposts]

Canids as pollinators? Nectar foraging by Ethiopian wolves may contribute to the pollination of Kniphofia foliosa - Sandra Lai, Don-Jean Léandri-Breton, Adrien Lesaffre, Abdi Samune, Jorgelina Marino, Claudio Sillero-Zubiri, November 2024

[vamptits]

I can't keep having the same conversations about love languages, mbti, iq, bmi, "brain fully formed at 25" and shit over and over again...

[vamptits]

these things exist on a spectrum from untrue to straightforwardly racist btw. so if we could retire them forever that'd be nice.

[hareofhrair]

“Love Languages” are just common couples therapy techniques mangled and repackaged by an unqualified homophobe. Relationships generally need all 5 love languages to be fulfilled, which is to say, everybody needs to communicate with, spend time with, and do things for their partners, and that’s got nothing to do with any special way you communicate affection.

MBTI has been proven completely ineffective at predicting anyone’s success at a particular job, and half the people who take it twice will get different results. Reputable psychologists do not recognize it, and the company that owns the rights to it uses it to scam people. People don’t adhere to strict binaries in basically anything. Very few people are going to be exclusively introverted or extroverted. It’s just astrology repackaged as pseudoscience. Shockingly enough, you can’t boil the complexity of the human experience down to a dozen Types of Guy.

The concept of IQ is flawed from the start— “intelligence” is an abstract concept that encompasses many different skills, from social intelligence to emotional intelligence to the very narrow kind of problem solving intelligence IQ tests generally measure for. It cannot predict how fast you learn, how much you know, or how logical and well read you are. It mostly measures how good you are at solving puzzles. Coincidentally, it’s also a pretty good predictor of income and education level, take a guess why. Most people’s IQ will change throughout their lives, because it’s inconsistent bullshit we’ve only held onto this long because we’re still kinda hoping we can breed the ubermensch. IQ tests and the way they attempt to categorize people are explicitly eugenicist and racist.

BMI was developed by a man known as the grandfather of eugenics, who first of all was a mathematician, not a doctor, and second never intended the formula to be used to categorize individuals. It’s intended to give a rough estimate of obesity in populations, and it’s not even good at that. It hangs around because of fatphobia and insurance companies who want it as an excuse to charge fat people more.

The study which determined people’s prefrontal cortex was still developing at 25… stopped measuring at 25. Evidence suggests your brain probably never stops developing. Stop infantilizing grown adults. This is a branch off from the larger mess of misinformation surrounding fMRIs.

If you haven’t put together what all these things have in common yet, here’s the moral of the story: STOP TRYING TO CATEGORIZE PEOPLE. STOP TRYING TO PUT PEOPLE IN A GODDAMN BIOLOGICAL HIERARCHY. EUGENICS IS BAD, AND WILL ALWAYS BE BAD, NO MATTER WHO’S DOING IT.

[anipgarden]

Some of you may have heard about Monarch butterflies being added to the Threatened species list in the US and be planning to immediately rush out in spring and buy all the milkweed you can manage to do your part and help the species.

And that's fantastic!! Starting a pollinator garden and/or encouraging people and businesses around you to do the same is an excellent way to help not just Monarchs but many other threatened and at-risk pollinator species!

However.

Please please PLEASE do not obtain Tropical Milkweed for this purpose!

Tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica)--also commonly known as bloodflower, Mexican butterflyweed, and scarlet milkweed--will likely be the first species of milkweed you find for sale at most nurseries. It'll be fairly cheap, too, and it grows and propagates so easily you'll just want to grab it! But do not do that!

Tropical milkweed can cause a host of issues that can ultimately harm the butterflies you're trying to help, such as--

Harboring a protozoan parasite called OE (which has been linked to lower migration success, reductions in body mass, lifespan, mating success, and flight ability) for long periods of time

Remaining alive for longer periods, encouraging breeding during migration time/overwintering time as well as keeping monarchs in an area until a hard freeze wherein which they die

Actually becoming toxic to monarch caterpillars when exposed to warmer temperatures associated with climate change

However--do not be discouraged!! There are over 100 species of milkweed native to the United States, and plenty of resources on which are native to your state specifically! From there, you can find the nurseries dedicated to selling native milkweeds, or buy/trade for/collect seeds to grow them yourself!!

The world of native milkweeds is vast and enchanting, and I'm sure you'll soon find a favorite species native to your area that suits your growing space! There's tons of amazing options--whether you choose the beautiful pink vanilla-smelling swamp milkweed, the sophisticated redring milkweed, the elusive purple milkweed, the alluring green antelopehorn milkweed, or the charming heartleaf milkweed, or even something I didn't list!

And there's tons of resources and lots of people willing to help you on your native milkweed journey! Like me! Feel free to shoot me an ask if you have any questions!

Just. PLEASE. Leave the tropical milkweed alone. Stay away.

TLDR: Start a pollinator garden to help the monarchs! Just don't plant tropical milkweed. There's hundreds of other milkweeds to grow instead!

[raindropsonwhiskers]

This!!

Also, if you're invested in monarch conservation and you're a USA citizen, please please please consider leaving a comment on the federal register. This is how the federal government hears your opinions, and the updated listing of the monarch is a bit controversial, so your input is really necessary!!

If you want to do more to help, I would suggest looking into the Monarch Joint Venture, Monarch Watch, the Xerxes Society, or looking into pesticide/herbicide reduction and sustainable agriculture initiatives in your area.

I literally just wrapped up a semester-long case study on this topic, so I have some additional details on why tropical milkweed/OE is an issue below the cut

To go into a bit more detail, tropical milkweed (native to parts of Mexico/South America but NOT the USA) is higher in cardenolides than most milkweed species native to the USA. Cardenolides are the compound that give monarchs their toxic defenses, but they're still ultimately a defense mechanism for the milkweed - and overconsumption of cardenolides can harm or kill monarch caterpillars. The concentration of cardenolides in milkweed has been shown to increase as temperatures rise, so putting an already high-cardenolide species in a warming area can create major problems for monarchs.

As for OE, this parasite can cause monarch wings to tear or crumple (making them unable to fly), split their proboscis (which they need to feed), or cause them to straight-up explode. Infection happens via consumption of the spores while the monarchs are still caterpillars, and higher spore consumption correlates to more intense effects. These spores are dropped by the adult monarchs, typically onto the milkweed plants where those adults lay their eggs. Those eggs then hatch and consume the spores alongside their normal diet of milkweed.

Native milkweed dies back every year, meaning that the OE spores die (or become inaccessible to monarch caterpillars), too. Tropical milkweed blooms year-round and will NOT die back unless manually cut, which allows those spores to build up year after year. This leads to higher infection rates because those OE spores stay dormant and can last for YEARS until they reach the gut of a caterpillar.

Tropical milkweed can also lead to migratory monarchs losing their migratory behavior, essentially tricking them into thinking that they've reached the endpoint of their migratory cycle. This can, again, lead to more OE infection, as well as increasing the transmission risk for other diseases.

If you're interested in learning more about this stuff, look up the resident monarch population in Florida (a hotbed for tropical milkweed plantings thanks to its climate). The OE infection rates there bounce between 50-100% depending on the year, while the average infection rate across the migratory population is about 10%.

[iamheavymeta-lll]

Mary Wilson, the first African American senior zookeeper at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, 1966.

[herpsandbirds]

Pin-tailed Sandgrouse (Pterocles alchata), family Pteroclidae, order Pterocliformes, Israel

photograph by Moshe Ben Artzi

[grifoncito]

One of these is not like the others

[herpsandbirds]

Pennant-winged Nightjar (Caprimulgus vexillarius), male, family Caprimulgidae, order Caprimulgiformes, South Africa

photographs by Manfred Suter

[fastman27]

Dinovember day 4: Argentavis

[milanesa42]

fran fijap running from leftists into a pizza shop (2024)

Argentinian libertarian influencer gets hit by the people at the university protest in argentina and runs away to an empanadas store.

[itsoofluffy]

My puppy is rather malleable when she’s napping. Decided to make a quick stop motion animation with her!

[madohomo]

will you... fry this rice with me?

[universalequalityisinevitable]

David Suzuki, from this video.

[stavrosskundromichalis]

Asfaltovenator vialidadi ponders the topic of today’s hunting lesson in Early Jurassic Argentina

[thelvadams]

ALIEN: ISOLATION (2014) • Creative Assembly

[demonicotakuman]

[kaijutegu]

It’s so fascinating to me that we’ve only been breeding Komodo dragons in captivity for thirty years. In that time, our understanding of them has actually really revolutionized the way we understand the social lives and behaviors of lizards in general, and it’s mostly thanks to this lady right here, who was born 30 years ago on September 13, 1992.

Kraken was the first Komodo to be bred in captivity. She hatched out at GMU, but was raised at the National Zoo. Her parents were wild-caught dragons- there’s still WC dragons in the AZA today- and this one specific individual probably did more to revolutionize lizard care in professional settings than any other individual lizard throughout zoo history.

Until Kraken, social enrichment wasn’t a thing people thought about. It wasn’t something anybody felt was necessary for lizards, because they were just… lizards. Sure, some keepers would play with their favorites, but it wasn’t until the National Zoo started documenting what she was doing that anybody realized how much Komodo dragons like to play with us too.

Kraken’s not in that video, but she’s the one who inspired all of the social studies that have been done on captive Komodo dragons. When she was at the National Zoo, her keepers  started getting curious when, for no apparent reason, she kept gingerly stealing things from peoples’ pockets and tugging on their shoelaces. So they started giving her stuff- Frisbees, blankets, soda cans, anything she showed an interest in.

She played with them, just like a mammal might. The way play behavior is described in psychology is a given activity that’s voluntary, repeated, and conducted under “relatively benign” circumstances. Keeper staff found that her conduct during the study met all of these criteria. “Kraken,” they wrote, had clearly demonstrated “play-like behavior with objects and even with humans (tug-of-war).” Moreover, she “could discriminate between prey and nonprey” while showing “varying responses” with different items (rubber rings, shoes, etc.). (There’s an excellent book on Komodo dragons that has an entire chapter devoted to her.)

Kraken died several years ago, but her legacy continues today. There’s several of her descendants still in the AZA, and the intelligence and social needs she demonstrated led to the improvement of life for these guys- and other lizards. The Komodo dragon program has been an eye opener, not just for reptile conservation, but for understanding reptile intelligence and how this incredible clade of animals functions.

[spacelazarwolf]

[kaijutegu]

Happy birthday to the lizard who changed it all.

[kaijutegu]

Here’s another baby picture of Kraken! This is her with Dr. Geoffery Birchard, the George Mason professor who supervised her hatching:

She was five weeks old in this picture, which ran in the GMU student paper.

[papayajuan2019]

two things

buenos dias