[restinthewest]

May snow my beloved

[thedogsnstuff]

[markothehusky]

[havanese-headquarters]

GIVE ME YOUR BLOOD 🩸

[havanese-headquarters]

These breeds are more likely to be universal donors and therefore especially valuable HOWEVER:

If you have any medium or large dog that behaves at the vet I am *begging* you to search up local canine blood banks and see if your dog is a good candidate for donation. Even one donation could actually save multiple lives!!

If blood banks are not available in your region, you could also just give you vet a heads up that if they ever require donors they are welcome to to give you a call. We used to have a roster on hand and I am eternally grateful for the people who answered the phone at ass-o-clock in the morning to bring other peoples' pets back from the brink of death.

[chollapup]

CH ✨SHR✨ Cavern Mercury Queen TKE DN FTI CGCA CGCU RN

5 years! How have we covered so much ground? My dearest love, whose coat has long become my favorite color. A gentleness immune to rough waters; kindness I can only try to emulate. My tireless reminder I am where I am meant to be.

He who, after a weekend without a minute apart, comes home and lays across my lap when I’m so certain he should be sick of my company. Who nudges his muzzle beneath my hand. Who pushes the toy back to tug. Whose happiest words are “good morning!”

To think I could have held him in my palms. Now, he has two white whiskers. To many more years of Freddie. 🤎 What an honor it is to try to do right by such a creature.

[thedogsnstuff]

I’ve been more active this year, maybe I should track our hikes.

[snailspotter]

Today's snail: Prunum carneum

(source)

[salmonella-destroyer-of-worlds]

Actual roman epitaph for a dog

[disgruntled-foreign-patriarch]

humans are the same

[mornington-the-crescent]

[bedlamsbard]

I’ve seen this one doing the rounds a few times (and it makes me cry every time I see it), but was curious about the original Latin text, so I did some digging: it’s a shortened version of CIL 10, 00659, a tombstone from Salernum (modern Salerno, Italy). (source; CIL is the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum).

Portaui lacrimis madidus te, nostra catella,

     Quod feci lustris laetior ante tribus.

Ergo mihi, Patrice, iam non dabis oscula mille

     Nec poteris collo grata cubare meo.

Tristis marmorea posui te sede merentem

     Et iunxi semper manib(us) ipse meis

Morib(us) argutis hominem simulare paratam,

     Perdidimus quales hei mihi delicias.

Tu, dulcis Patrice, nostras attingere mensas

    Consueras, gremio poscere blanda cibos,

Lambere tu calicem lingua rapiente solebas,

     Quem tibi saepe meae sustinuere manus,

Accipere et lassum cauda gaudente frequenter

And here’s my translation:

Wet with tears I have carried you, our little (female) dog, just as I did in happier times fifteen years earlier (lit. “three periods of five years).  For myself, Patrice, now you will not give me a thousand kisses nor will you be able to lie lovingly around/against my neck.  I have sorrowfully placed you, merit-worthy, in a marble tomb and I have joined you always to myself in death, as by your cleverness you matched a human.  Alas, we lost such pleasures for myself!  You, sweet Patrice, were accustomed to join us at our table, to beg charmingly for food (while sitting in our) laps.  You were in the habit of greedily licking our cups with your tongue, which my hands often held for you.  Frequently and joyfully (you) receive a weary one with your (wagging) tail...

tl;dr: this dog was named Patrice and was very, very loved.  (another translation with some glossing of the text.)

[red-faced-wolf-deactivated20251]

[ospreyonthemoon]

It's the fact she's joined to them in death, it's the fact that she sat in her owner's arms and ate their food. That he held the cups down for her to drink from....

Hundreds of years and we still know she was loved. We still know how she liked to sleep. All these years!! Loving dogs is the same!!!!

[thaylepo]

gonna point out too that 15 years is an INSANELY long lifespan for a dog in ancient Rome. This dog was both well loved and well cared for to have lived so long. Obvs there's going to be some statistical overlap with ancient dogs with loving epitaphs having longer lifespans, but in a world without modern vetrinary science or medicine, no canine vaccines, and no nutritionally formulated dog food, this Roman's beloved pooch exceeded even the average pet dog lifespan today.

[herpsandbirds]

“El Diablito” Poison Frog (Oophaga sylvatica), "flame morph", family Dendrobatidae, Pacific Coast of Colombia

Photograph by Jesse Hosman

[herpsandbirds]

“El Diablito” Poison Frog (Oophaga sylvatica), "flame morph", family Dendrobatidae, Pacific Coast of Colombia

Photograph by Jesse Hosman

[great-and-small]

One of the things I really like about Tumblr is there seems to be a healthy appreciation for invertebrate biology here, which I don’t always see as much on other social media websites. Tumblr users overall seem to love bugs, and it’s important to me that every person who loves bugs knows the name Charles Henry Turner. If you’re not yet familiar with this man, I’m delighted to introduce you to one of the most remarkable minds ever born of this earth, and a true pioneer in the field of entomology and animal behavior.

Charles Turner was born in the United States just a few years after the end of the civil war. His brilliance was evident from the start, and after graduating valedictorian of his high school class he quickly went on to earn his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in short order. While in school, Turner’s relentless curiosity became his greatest advantage. He was drawn to and fascinated by topics that were largely ignored by modern science at the time, namely the cognitive behaviors of insects and other invertebrates. While many of his colleagues believed insects to be mindless automata acting on instinct alone, Turner felt deeply that the brains of these oft overlooked animals were far more complex than the scientific community suspected. He performed extensive experiments to test his theories and found overwhelming evidence of problem solving and individualism among organisms as small as ants and spiders.

By the time Turner earned his zoology pHD in 1907 he had published dozens of papers in highly esteemed journals and had even co-authored a book. It is likely that Turner was the first African American to earn a pHD from the University of Chicago. With such a sparkling academic reputation and enormous body of research, one would expect this candidate to have no issues obtaining a professorship at a prestigious school. Though by every right Turner should have been head of science department at a top university, the systemic racism that permeated academia meant that doors a white man would have walked through were locked and bolted shut for Charles Henry Turner.

Turner did not allow this prejudice to dim in any way his blindingly bright passion for knowledge. He took a job as a high school teacher, and continued to perform and publish research on his own all while he instilled his students with a love for zoology. He published more than 70 papers in extremely respected journals and he remained passionately curious for the entirety of his life. If I tried to list here all of the incredible discoveries Turner made in his lifetime it would take me days to sufficiently express the impact he had on the field of invertebrate behavior. His experiments were so ahead of their time that entomologists today marvel at his research and wonder how much more we would know if Turner’s work had been given the attention and respect of other scientists working at the time. Turner’s mind was about a century ahead of those entomological contemporaries who had no interest in giving him a seat at the table. His tombstone simply reads “scientist”

Like many people of color throughout history, Turner’s exceptional contributions to our world have been unfairly overlooked by many. His name has historically been left out of entomology textbooks and courses, despite laying down groundwork that is still used today. I really recommend that anyone interested in entomology or even biology in general read up on Charles Henry Turner and his works. This is an excellent article that discusses his many challenges and triumphs in the field.

[ierotits]

I really enjoy the way the spinoff explains things. great journalism

[thedogsnstuff]

[marinella-ela]

[mammalianmammals]

Short beaked Echidna

[higlicoart]

dog!

[despazito]

Really cool graphic broadly explaining how we've selectively bred dogs over millenia for different jobs. Drives like herding and guarding prey animals may seem counterintuitive to the dogs' nature but these actions are in fact rooted in ancestral hunting instincts, we've just "muted" down the rest of the hunt sequence resulting in a kill (but even well bred dogs need training!). This is also why crossing dogs belonging to different job types should be carefully thought out, if your breeding goals are a calm nonworking companion animal the last thing you want is to breed is a royal flush of this predatory sequence.

[sonnengoldgsd]

Evening walkies