No one ever comes to me for help, not with bugs or anything like that. usually i'm the one who hides in terror, shakily waiting for someone to chase the enemy away (yep i hate insects, especially spiders, and yep I'm a huge drama queen ahahah) but today my mom came to me terrified by a lizard who, to quote her, took control of our terrace. i'm not brave, I had to wear work gloves but I felt so incredibly powerful as i threw the little beast off the balcony saving the day.
obviously the little lizard is fine, i think it enjoyed the flight. we saw it run to hide in the grass once it hit the ground, hope it'll find it's way back home. I would have never hurt it.
I don’t even care if it’s macaroni, ramen or those little bowls you stick in the microwave. Please, I need reassurance that most of the population on tumblr WOULDN’T STARVE TO DEATH if their parents couldn’t fix them food or they couldn’t go out to eat.
Its always way easier to motivate myself to make a stupid fucked up lil guy, then it is to start a multitude hour project that takes too long cause I'm being a perfectionist.
Alligator Body Language and You, or: How To Know When An Alligator On Social Media is Being Stressed for Views
Alligators are wild animals. Despite the idiotic claims of animal abusers like Jay Brewer, they cannot be domesticated, which means they are always going to react on the same natural instincts they've had for millions of years. Habituated, yes. Tamed, yes. Trained, definitely. Crocodilians can form bonds with people- they're social and quite intelligent. They can solve problems, use tools, and they're actually quite playful. Alligators are also really good at communicating how they're feeling, but to somebody who doesn't spend much time around them, their body language can be a bit mystifying. And it doesn't help when social media influencers are saying shit like this:
That is not what a happy gator looks like.
That's a terrified, furious gator who isn't attacking because the ogre handling her has her in a chokehold. She's doing everything she can to express her displeasure, and he's lying about it because he knows his audience doesn't even know how to think critically about what he's doing. He knows that because his audience doesn't know anything about these animals, he can get away with it. This I think is why I hate him so much- he deliberately miseducates his audience. He knows what he's doing is factually inaccurate, he just doesn't care because attention means more to him than anything else in the world.
Let's change that! Here are two really important lessons for understanding alligator body language on social media.
Lesson 1: Alligators Don't Smile (in fact, most animals don't)
So what's going on in this video? Jay Brewer is aggressively choking his white alligator Coconut while scrubbing algae off of her with a toothbrush. And make no mistake, he is digging into the creature's throat while she is visibly distressed. He claims she's happy- but she's not. He is willfully misrepresenting what this animal is feeling. That's a problem, because people... well, we actually kind of suck at reading other species' body language. The reason for this is that we tend to overlay our own responses on their physical cues, and that's a problem. For example, let's look at an animal with a really similar face to ours, the chimpanzee. Check out Ama's toothy grin!
Wait, no. That's not a happy smile. That's a threat display. When a chimpanzee "smiles," it's either terrified and doing a fear grimace, or it's showing you its teeth because it intends on using them in your face.
How about a dog? Look at my smiling, happy puppy!
Oh wait no, this is a picture of Ryder when he was super overwhelmed by noise and people during a holiday party. He'd hopped up in my sister's lap to get away from stuff that was happening on the floor and was panting quite heavily. See the tension in the corners of his mouth and his eyes? A lot of the time when a dog "smiles," the smile isn't happy. It's stress! Why Animals Do The Thing has a nice writeup about that, but the point is, our body language is not the same as other species. And for reptiles, body language is wildly different.
For instance, look at these two alligators. Pretty cute, right? Look at 'em, they're posing for a Christmas card or something! How do you think they're feeling?
Well, I'll tell you how the normal one is feeling. He's annoyed! Why is he annoyed? Because the albino just rolled up, pushed another gator off the platform, and is trying to push this guy, too. I know this because I actually saw it happen. It was pretty funny, not gonna lie. He's not gaping all the way, but he was hissing- you can actually see him getting annoyed in the sequence I took right before this shot. Look at him in this first shot here- he's just relaxing, and you can see he isn't gaping even a little bit.
By the end, he's expressing displeasure, but not enough to actually do anything about it. He's annoyed, but he's comfy and that's where one of the best basking areas is, so he'll put up with it.
Reptiles open their mouths wide for a lot of reasons, but never because they are actively enjoying a sensation. Unless they're eating. No reptile smiles- they can't. They don't even have moveable lips. If a reptile is gaping, it's doing so because:
It is doing a threat display.
It is making certain vocalizations, all of which are threats. Alligators are one of the rare reptiles that do regularly vocalize, but most of their calls aren't made with a wide open mouth.
It is about to bite something delicious or somebody stupid. Check out this video- virtually all of the gaping here is anticipatory because these trained gators know darn well that the bowl is full of delicious snacks. (I have some issues with Florida's Wildest, but the man knows how to train a gator AND he is honest about explaining what they're doing and why, and all of his animals are healthy and well-cared for, and he doesn't put the public or his staff at risk- just himself.)
It's too hot and it has opened its mouth to vent some of that heat and thermoregulate. This is the main reason why alligators will often have their mouths part of the way open, but sometimes they'll open all the way for thermoregulation. This is what a thermoregulatory gape looks like- usually it's not all the way open, kinda more like < rather than V, but you can't say that 100% of the time. Additionally, a thermoregulatory gape... typically happens when it's hot out. If they're inside, maybe they've been under their basking light for too long. Heat's the dominant factor, is what I'm getting at.
There is another reason that a captive crocodilian might be gaping, and that's because it's doing so on command. Some places have their gators trained to gape on cue, like St. Augustine Alligator Farm and other good zoos. They have the animals do this in presentations that are genuinely educational. They ask the animals to open their mouths so that they can show off their teeth and demonstrate how their tongues seal off the back of their mouth. They'll also do it as part of routine healthcare, because looking at their teeth is important.
In this case, the animals aren't gaping because they're stressed, they're gaping because they know they're gonna get a piece of chicken or fish if they do it. And what's more, they're doing it on cue. They have a specific command or signal that tells them to open wide. It's not an instinctive response to a situation. It's trained. If the animal provides the behavior after a cue, the situation is much less likely to be negatively impactful.
It's also important to remember that there's a difference between a partially open mouth and a gape! As discussed above, alligators will often have their mouths a little bit open just to maintain temperature homeostasis. It helps them stay comfy, temperature-wise. These guys are all doing thermoregulatory open-mouthed behavior- that slight open and relaxed body posture is a dead giveaway. (That and it's the hottest spot in the enclosure.)
Lesson 2: A Happy Gator Is A Chill Gator
So if alligators don't smile or have facial expressions other than the :V that typically signifies distress, how else can you tell how they're feeling? One way is stillness. See, alligators subscribe to the philosophy of if it sucks... hit da bricks.
Basically, if they hate it, they'll leave. Unless, y'know, somebody has their meaty claws digging into their throat or is otherwise restraining them. (Restraint isn't always bad, btw. Sometimes the animal is going through a medical thing or needs to be restrained for their safety- which a responsible educator will explain.)
Let's look at a very similar scenario, in which a captive alligator is getting his back scrubbed.
As you can see, it's quite different. First, he's not being restrained at all. Second, look at how relaxed he is! He's just chilling there vibing! He could simply get up and leave if he wanted to, because he's not being held. Towards the end of the video, as he lifts his head, you can see that his respiratory rate is very even as his throat flutters a bit. I'm not sure what this facility is, so I can't comment on care/general ethics, but like. In this specific case, this is an alligator enjoying being scrubbed! And you can tell because he's not doing anything. A happy gator is content to be doing what they're doing.
Why Should I Listen To You?
Now, you should ask yourself, why should you listen to me? Why should you trust me, who does not own an alligator, versus Jay Brewer, who owns several?
Well, first off, there's no profit for me in telling you that what you're seeing on social media is in fact not what you're being told you're seeing. I'm not getting paid to do this. That's the thing with people who make social media content. The big names aren't doing it just for fun. They're doing it for money. Whether that's profit through partnerships or sponsorships, or getting more people to visit their facilities, or ad revenue, you can't ignore the factor of money. And this is NOT a bad thing, because it allows educators to do what they're passionate about! People deserve to be paid for the work that they do!
But the problem starts when you chase the algorithm instead of actually educating. A "smiling" alligator gets the views, and if people don't know enough to know better, it keeps getting the views. People love unconventional animal stories and they want those animals to be happy- but the inability to even know where to start with critically evaluating these posts really hinders the ability to spread real information. Like, this post will probably get a couple hundred notes, but that video of Coconut being scrubbed had almost 400,000 likes when I took that screenshot. Think about how many eyeballs that's reached by now. What I'm saying here is that it's just... really important to think critically about who you're getting your information from. What do dissenters say in the comments? What do other professionals say? You won't find a single herpetologist that has anything good to say about Prehistoric Pets, I can tell you that right now.
Another reason you can trust me is that my sources are not "just trust me bro," or "years of experience pretending my pet shop where animals come to die is a real zoo." Instead, here are my primary sources for my information on alligator behavior:
Dragon Songs: Love and Adventure among Crocodiles, Alligators, and Other Dinosaur Relations- Vladimir Dinets
The Secret Social Lives of Reptiles- J. Sean Doody, Vladimir Dinets, Gordon M. Burghardt
Social Behavior Deficiencies in Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Z Walsh, H Olson, M Clendening, A Rycyk
Social Displays of the American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)- Kent Vliet
Social Signals and Behaviors of Adult Alligators and Crocodiles- Leslie Garrick, Jeffery Lang
Never smile at a crocodile: Gaping behaviour in the Nile crocodile at Ndumo Game Reserve, South Africa- Cormac Price, Mohamed Ezat, Céline Hanzen, Colleen Downs (this one's Nile crocs, not American alligators, but it's really useful for modeling an understanding of gape behaviors and proximity)
Thermoregulatory Behavior of Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Cheryl S. Asa, Gary D. London, Ronald R. Goellner, Norman Haskell, Glenn Roberts, Crispen Wilson
Unprovoked Mouth Gaping Behavior in Extant Crocodylia- Noah J. Carl, Heather A. Stewart, Jenny S. Paul
Thank you for reading! Here's a very happy wild alligator from Sanibel for your trouble.
But I'd love to see a story about what happens after you emerge from the time loop.
When, after months or years of repetition, you have to learn how to live with a choice you can't redo tomorrow.
When you meet someone new for the first time and have to figure out how to navigate this brand new conversation.
When you reach for the same day's clothes and realize that you can't wear them because they got dirty. Your laundry, your dishes, your body, your teeth, all the tasks that reset with the loop are suddenly stacking up and you need to set aside time to do them.
When you reach that first weekend and your schedule radically shifts and you don't know what to do with yourself, which is terrifying but also exhilarating in ways you can't explain.
When you casually drop facts learned from those books you spent a dozen loops reading, and you realize you retained something worth keeping.
How your memory gets weirdly good all of a sudden, despite not having all that repetition to fall back on, because suddenly every experience is fresh and new.
And when the seasons change, and your hair grows long enough that you want to cut it, and when you realize it's shocking because you didn't think you'd ever see something as incredible as the passage of time.
Okay so they thought the emergency department might get slammed later in the night so they put me, someone who is ED trained a little, in the role of house resource in case they needed to suddenly drag me to the ED. Which means my job is to go around to each floor and be like “hey I’m here do you need help?” and the floors were like “I mean nothing I can think of right now,” and I go “cool well call me if anything comes up” and they say “for sure” and never call me. So I was responsible for no patients and no one needed anything from me and the ED was doing fine. I’m basically just doing rounds every couple hours to make sure everyone is continuing to not need me so I can get back to reading.
I go up to neuro and find them (again. quiet night) dressing up a container of cleaning wipes in a baby onesie someone must have lost. They shoved wash clothes in the limbs to give it structure. Someone says “oh if only it had a little hat.” And me, person who is doing nothing and also knows we have a maternity flood, is like “I mean. I can get a hat.”
So I go to the maternity floor which is on the other side of the hospital, and it’s a locked unit which means I have to go in through the front desk where someone asks me what’s up. And I’m like hmmmm. I didn’t think of what to say. And in retrospect, I probably could have just asked for a hat. They got a lot of lil baby hats. Instead, the conversation went like this
Maternity nurse: how can I help you?
Me: need a hat. For a baby. His head is cold.
Maternity nurse who is staring at me with frankly more confusion than I think she needs to be expressing: a…baby?
Me: yup. real human baby.
Maternity nurse: how old is the baby?
Me, apparently deciding to “yes and”: one month. He’s a visitor’s baby. He is small.
Maternity nurse: our hats aren’t going to fit him.
Me:
Me:
Me:
Maternity nurse: but I can give you a hat if you want to try?
Me: neurology is doing an art project and I promised them a baby hat please give me a baby hat
The maternity nurse agrees and takes me back with her to a room full of actual babies that I am ROBBING with my entirely unnecessary lies. And I’m like great, forget you ever saw me, and go back to neuro. And I’m so psyched to show them the hat.
But I get to the floor and there five nurses standing around a room with a comfort care sign on the door, which means a patient who is no longer receiving curative treatments and is now on hospice. And again. There’s just a whole group of nursing standing outside the room of just such a patient. I’m like “oh my god now is not the time to dramatically reveal the baby hat, someone just DIED,” but then the door to the room opens and a cloud of tobacco smokes rolls out as the charge nurse emerges. Because presumably the comfort care patient was like “what are they possibly going to do about it” and smoked a cigarette, which you super can’t do in the hospital, and then got rid of the still burning butt by flicking it out of his bed and into the nearby sink where it started melting a bedpan someone left there.
(I think one of the reasons that this event was so baffling to all of us is that people smoke in the hospital all the time, it’s just fentanyl and meth. So we’re all like “just a cigarette? Like a normal cigarette? Nothing added? Do we need to…do something???” Meanwhile there’s a second theoretical discussion going on about well, the guy is dying. Maybe we can take him to like a special room to smoke? Like clearly we’ve identified an important part of palliative care for him. Surely we’ve got like one abandoned smoker’s lounge left over from the 80s.)
Anyway I presented my baby hat, we dressed the child who now had a homemade hospital ID band, and then gave it the confiscated lighter and cigarettes. Behold the spirit of the new year, technically the first baby delivered at our hospital in the year 2024:
My car got towed on NYE, so after unsuccessfully trying every number programmed into my phone, I called my dad’s ass up at 2 AM to pick up myself and my friends to go get my vehicle out of impound (my dad is awesome. More on that later.)
Included in my group of friends was my friend Anna who had recently come forward as trans. She had very recently started presenting as a woman, and was pretty insecure in it, and had never met my father previously, so it wasn’t as though I had time to brief him on the situation. Anna was pretty shy during the whole ride, tucked in the back and letting her friends talk over her. She only spoke up after I had gotten my car back, thanking him for helping out.
The next day, I called to thank him for that night, and he asked me who was the girl with the deep voice. At first my heart sink in my guts, but without missing a beat, he started raving about how he LOVED her voice. He listed off a few actresses from his day who had had very deep voices, and how he adored it, and that kind of slow sultry speaking had been fading more and more as pop culture pushed for childish voices in women.
Your deep voice is gorgeous trans friends (and cis friends too.) it is warm and low and smooth like honey and perfect in every way. It is smoldering and evocative and absolutely beautiful.
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
yousharknotpass
