Devotion
Saw this news and I had to make a rough sketch about it. 🥹 We humans always underestimate the empathy and care of other animals..
I love this with my whole heart

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"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
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he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
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@silvrang
Devotion
Saw this news and I had to make a rough sketch about it. 🥹 We humans always underestimate the empathy and care of other animals..
I love this with my whole heart
If your lover lives in Hong Kong and cannot get to Chicago, it will be necessary for you to go to Hong Kong. Perhaps you will spend your life there, and never see Chicago again. And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, airlines, earthquake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there. And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win.
James Baldwin, Nothing Personal
happy birthday, gilbert baker. (june 2, 1951 — march 31, 2017)
Hi Kedreeva!! You mentioned that male peafowl get aggressive when hand-raised, why is that?
There is no research done on this to be able to definitively give an answer. I've written about this before, as well, but I'm feeling chatty.
However, according to anecdotal evidence by keepers around the world, after being hand raised male peafowl treat humans the same way as they would treat a rival peacock they hold a grudge against, and the aggression is almost always worse during mating season (exception cases where it's bad all year). This would seem to indicate that instead of seeing themselves as humans, peacocks see humans as "like them" ie: peacocks, and that the aggression is hormone based.
With peafowl, a male will attempt to chase off unrelated rival males. Related males form leks, but even males that have not ever met before seem to be able to clock blood relations (this actually was confirmed in scientific study, which I have talked about before so you can find it in the peafowl tag somewhere), and whatever method they use to do this, it cannot apply to humans (because you're definitely not able to be blood related to them). As such, the solution is only EVER going to be: chase off. But, humans are not going to be chased off by a bird they are keeping in a pen, and so begins a feedback loop of stress and aggression: they try to chase you off, they can't, they get frustrated and stressed and more desperate, rinse and repeat. This eventually, even with no reinforcement from you, leads them to be stressed even just seeing you, whether or not you're interacting.
However, most people I've seen aren't just "not doing anything," they are actively reinforcing the idea that they are a threat to the bird. They yell, they make sudden movements, they kick them, they pin them to the ground, they chase them around/carry them around, they spray them with hoses, they attack them with sticks/rakes/pool noodles... I have seen the gamut. And ALL of it reinforces the idea, to the peacock, that they are DANGEROUS and should be CHASED OFF. The bird physically cannot escape in many of these situations (being penned in a flight pen), so the only option they would see is fighting.
This is ALL solved by just... not hand raising them. When they don't consider you to be a rival cock, then 99.9999% of them will be chill dudes even during mating season. They don't actually LIKE to fight, but there are certain situations which inform their instincts (instincts strengthened greatly by hormones) that they need to in order to survive/reproduce.
There is ONE potential work around I have found for hand-raised males, if it is not already too late, and that is extensive training. Stan was, by necessity, hand-raised due his medical issues early on. I trained him to jump to a treat perch when he was young, and once he got aggressive, I was able to reinforce the treat perch such that when I went into his pen, he would immediately go to that perch and he would get treats when I left if he stayed there. This didn't eliminate his stress over my presence, but it did alleviate altercations between us, and allow me to care for him properly. I have helped two other people do this with their young hand-raised males (ones they didn't know better about, and won't repeat), so I know that it CAN work for some others, but it's never going to be a good solution compared to just not fucking doing the hand raising in the first place. The birds will still be experiencing stress they shouldn't have to, and the owner will experience stress knowing that aggression is sitting just beneath the surface at all times.
Does this defensive behaviour continue if the cock is rehomed? Is it just towards the person who raised them or will this behaviour continue regardless of owner, it just being all people?
It continues regardless of home. On top of new folks not knowing better and being attacked constantly by their sweet baby boy who was SO sweet and loving and cuddly (because they ARE until they are NOT), new people also get absolutely blindsided by acquiring new cocks that were hand raised where the previous owner doesn't disclose this fact up front (usually only after the new owners ask around and get asked by 541 old folks "did you hand raise it" and they go back and the old owner admits it under pressure) or DID disclose it but didn't explain what that entails, so the new owner thinks they're getting a sweet hand raised bird. Wrong!
For the record, it's also considered EXTREMELY irresponsible to rehome a hand raised male that's aggressive, though I assume people do it because they think it will fix the issue (ie: "they just hate ME but they can't hate YOU because they don't know you" which is not the case, they can hate anyone). You (general you) are the one that directly caused the problem, it is your responsibility to either build proper containment and live with the consequences of not doing enough research before getting a pet, or humanely euthanize the bird (which honestly is better for everyone involved; hand raised males are under SO MUCH STRESS being constantly exposed to a Threat they cannot control or flee, it's not great for them).
oh, interesting! this is also an issue in llamas and alpacas (commonly referred to as ABS, Aberrant Behavior Syndrome, or BMS, Berserk Male Syndrome). It’s seen in both males and females, though more common and more serious in males.
It’s basically the exact same issue, the animal is hand raised and thinks humans are also a llama/alpaca. It’s more of an issue in males because intact males can be very territorial and establish pecking order via neck wrestling and biting. I think you can probably see the issue in having a 400 lb animal attempt to neck wrestle with you.
My family actually has a female who was somewhat hand raised (she was premature and required tube feeding and extensive care) and we are careful with our training of her. She has grown up to be extremely friendly and affectionate, but she absolutely struggles with boundaries. We have to be far more strict with her in terms of her behavior when haltered. I wouldn’t call her an ABS alpaca, however she’s definitely at risk of becoming one.
Males with ABS are commonly castrated to try and reduce some of the territorial behavior, but there’s little that can be done and it’s effectively “incurable”.
I’m curious if peacocks who are hand raised will always suffer from this or if keeping it strictly “business” when hand raising will prevent it? This is the case with llamas/alpacas. When hand raising we refrain from coddling or snuggling the animal and keep contact to a minimum. This helps prevent ABS.
Yep it's also called berserk male syndrome in peafowl!
And "hand raised" is not the same as human raised, for birds at least. Incubator chicks that don't imprint or aren't interacted with heavily don't get aggressive. It's the people that imprint them or handle them excessively and cuddle them a lot from a very early age, particularly if they continue to do it to maturity. It's the difference between hand feeding and bonding with a bird as a parent figure and the rearing wildlife rehabbers do to allow birds to go back to the wild... The former is what a lot of people do, because in many other fowl it makes a friendlier bird. It's just that generalizing this to peafowl will land you in hot water, which is why it's important for anyone wanting to get a new animal, even (or perhaps particularly) if it's similar to one they've kept before.
Because for peas, once they're imprinted/hand raised, there's no going back. You can't fix it by keeping it business only. It doesn't get better. But you CAN raise them in brooders with minimal interaction and be just fine. Food, water, bedding changes, and <30 minutes of interaction time a day is usually a good method, and ALWAYS raise multiple chicks together (even if you have to sub in a chicken for a solo hatch) so you're not the only creature it interacts with.
I will also add that it's just males that are aggressive, typically. I've hand raised several hens and they've always been sweet. Not always great, socially, with the other birds. Not very interested in the boys. But sweet to people.
Does cross-fostering/having a Chicken foster-mother raise a peacock, make the peacock weird towards chickens?
I don't actually know- a lot of folks use chickens to hatch peafowl but they aren't usually keeping the birds in with chickens afterwards, they're just more effective at incubating than incubators.
Chicken hens WILL squat for peacocks though, so I suspect that in the "mate or rival" categories, the hens that raise them would fall into "mate" categories rather than rivals, and I don't know if anyone risks the peacocks by hatching them where roosters can get them. Considering I have seen instances where chicken roosters kill peachicks it's not advisable at all.
But honestly I think other birds probably have ways of communicating that they're not the same. It's how you get 15 different duck species on a pond and they all choose their own species to mate with. Humans just don't know how to effectively communicate that in this instance. We don't understand the birds well enough to avoid that if the birds are being hand raised with imprinting on us.
Guy for whom two antennae aren't adequate to find the number of ladies required for all the love he has to give
(Argidae sawfly)
A HANDY CHART FOR THOSE OF YOU WONDERING WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THESE. NOTE THAT THESE ARE ALL THE INFORMAL AND YOU IS THE FORMAL SO LIKE YOU WOULD ALWAYS ADDRESS YOUR SUPERIOR/ OLDER PERSON/ SOCIAL BETTER WITH YOU BUT WITH YOUR BUDS YOU CAN USE THESE.
I think this is just a trend everywhere but I've been very frustrated this week by how much admin work is being outsourced to me as the patient/customer.
My orthodontist tells me I can make an appointment with the surgeon. I call the surgeon. They tell me I need a new referral. I call the orthodontist. They do a referral. I call the surgeon. Referral didn't come through. They tell me about their special unique system we have to use. I call the ortho again and walk them through the referral. I call the surgeon. They say the referral was missing some details so they have to do it again. I call the ortho.
The insurance company calls me about repair shops. I give them the name of the repair shop which I already gave them yesterday. They say they're not in their system but I can use them, but I have to call the repair shop to ask them to contact the insurance company. I call the repair shop and they say the insurance company is supposed to email them.
I feel like at a certain point these constant fetch quests become unreasonable?? Is it too much to expect these groups to communicate with each other instead of making me run back and forth between them???
Made this post and then the new property manager (who started on Monday and only finally emailed us today because I sent a vaguely professionally hostile email to her boss because I hadn't heard anything and was not convinced she existed) asked for a list of open action items which her predecessor should have had but apparently wasn't keeping track of, which I learned when I met her boss and provided her with the list of open action items, which I guess tragically died in a fire in the last 2 weeks since she was sitting at my kitchen table, being menaced by the skull. How many people's jobs am I doing now
The phrase arrived in my head so completely formed and concrete that I couldn’t believe it wasn’t already established in the lexicon, but at
It has a name!!!
Female birds with confusing names.
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make this poll look like a tree vers 2
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make this poll look like a tree vers 2
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Please stop being nonbinary too. God only created one gender. You must conform to that.
THERES ONLY ONE NOW?????
I like when Pheidole ants do the thing with the head
I was curious about how accurate this is and am pleased to report it is extremely accurate
there's art inside me trying to get out
It’s clawing at the bars of my brain
This weekend we started a new series on #Paleostream!
Pocket Prehistory is a project in which I draw small extinct critters as museum specimens, life sized, on post card formats.
I only do adults so don't expect a T. rex fetus or something ;)
We plan to sell these as postcards on Dinocon in Birmingham this year.
THIS SET UP?
Western hercules beetles
male (red jello) female (pudding?????)
Proboscis Bat Rhynchonycteris naso
It is found from southern Mexico to Belize, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia and Brazil, as well as in Trinidad. The bats are nocturnal, sleeping during the day in an unusual formation: most of them line up, one after another, on a branch or wooden beam, nose to tail, in a straight row.
In the photo, the two bats on the lower left are carrying young.
img source
I really love how dedicated these guys are to queuing.
PRACTICE URGE SURFING
Huh, didn't know there was a term for it. This explains why I haven't been drinking as much lately.