#animal nerd

[buhyuridevil]

I’m so happy I got to go to the natural history museum

[so-exoticful]

A little blog for all my critters 🐍🕷️🦎🐾

Just a place to share photos, updates, silly moments, and whatever else comes with having a house full of animals. 💕

I post most of everything on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky.

Link for Everything

[lightningshotss]

Pomarine Jaeger (Stercorarius pomarinus)

A little bit of a different style image! The slightly smaller bird with the dark head is the Jaeger. They’re sometimes referred to as the pirates of the sea. They’ll follow other birds around and bully the food they’ve got from them for an easy meal! In this case the seagull wasn’t going to have that.

[onedayillthinkofacreativeuser]

I hate Caribou erasure. Like, ah yes. Let’s use this unfinished taxidermy mount looking thing instead of these fluffy little beings of joy.

They’re so, so different but people are too lazy to differentiate them.

Why wouldn’t you want these little guys why choose

This…

[esdeem]

Pandalorium #4 - A Trendy Diet

Look, there's no easy way to say this. The red panda is, anatomically speaking, not a great plant-eater. In fact, they're still classified as carnivores and are known to eat meat from time to time if the opportunity presents itself... though it must be said, red pandas could best be described as clumsy hunters.

But necessity is the mother of invention, and there are few creators as resourceful as Mother Nature. Bamboo was both an abundant resource in their home range and one with little competition. This is much the same reason that the giant pandas gravitated toward the plant as their staple meal.

Of course, plants aren't nearly as effective a fuel as meat. Indeed, a red panda can consume as much as three pounds of bamboo leaves in a day! In the wild, red pandas will often eat different kinds of bamboo that provide different nutrients as well. Still, consuming such a low energy food source comes at a cost, and that cost is frequent periods of inactivity. If you've ever wondered why red pandas are often sleeping when you see them in the zoo, you can blame the bamboo diet!

Next week, we'll address the red panda's calling card: Its beautiful fur and striking color patterns! How do they help the red panda survive? The answer next week in Pandalorium #5 - A Cryptic Coat!

And a quick aside... I just learned yesterday that Khyana, one of the two red panda cubs, just had surgery at the Oklahoma City Zoo to amputate one of  her hind legs. She’s doing well and learning to deal with this change, thankfully! As the owner of a special needs dog with a bad leg and as someone who has a huge soft spot for amputee animals, I plan to get a TON of photos of her when she’s out on exhibit. If I can chat with a keeper, I might even do a longer blog post about it if people would find that interesting! 

[lilyminer]

Quick question

How do I stop spending all my time thinking about how much I hate economics? How much I hate how money and economic value is placed onto everything in this world? How economics sucks the joy and wonder out of the world by asking questions like “what are the economic benefits of not massacring endangered species for the sake of building another high rise no one can afford?”.

I’m sorry guys, I’ll never see economics as anything but evil incarnate.

[gay-----pisces2]

I'm an animal nerd so it pains me to see jaguar/leopard patterns be marketed as cheetah patterns.

Essentially how to tell the difference is that cheetahs have simple spots, whereas jaguars/leopards have rosettes, and jaguars have spots in these rosettes, whereas leopards do not.