Unholy Bird Matron

Bri/24/Bird enthusiast #Daenerysdeservedbetter

[violetsandshrikes]

To start the week off right - here’s some partially leucistic kiwi from the National Kiwi Hatchery Aotearoa!

[yehudah]

compilation

[tami-taylors-hair]

Happy Hanukkah to all my Jewish human friends and Happy Hannukkat to their cats!

[octiolus]

[crazy-brazilian]

[mother-aschen]

[tracing-rivers]

[catgirlcaliphate]

OK this is just getting silly. Everyone knows if it bites you and you die, it's science fiction. If you bite it and you die, it's fantasy.

[birdghost]

for #avianaugust I am celebrating in multiple ways, here’s some art and a goof

[konoko]

[chuchilo]

[savedgame]

For fucks sake

[todaysbird]

[picsthatmakeyougohmm]

[sincerethoughtsblog]

jane austen is timeless because the line “i’m 27 years old, i’ve no money and no prospects. i’m already a burden to my parents and i’m frightened” is as relevant today as when she published pride and prejudice in 1813 😭

[bunjywunjy]

why are cheetahs not technically big cats? is it just because they're weird as hell or do they not meet some big cat criteria?

so the thing about Big Cats is that they’re all closely related members of the genus Panthera! 

because they’re all part of the same lineage, they share a lot of traits like the ability to roar.

and cheetahs are actually members of a completely different cat lineage altogether, the genus Acinonyx!

they’re not very closely related to the big cats at all and are actually most closely related to Pumas, which you can totally see if you stack them up next to each other and squint really hard. 

it’s okay though, the cheetah can still be the biggest cat in our hearts :’)

[bunjywunjy]

also some of you may have picked up on this, but the reason that the cheetah’s closest modern relative is a family of cats on an entirely separate fucking continent is that… drumroll please… cheetahs actually evolved in North America!

B-DM TSCH!

about nine million years ago in North America, cheetahs and pumas split off from the rest of the small-cat lineage together and evolved into their separate groups! different species of now-extinct ancient cheetahs thrived in North America for millions of years, streaking across the prairies and clobbering the everloving shit out of any herbivore too slow to get out of the way.

<art src: Peter Schouten>

(this is why the North American pronghorn antelope is actually the second-fastest land animal alive today, despite not having any current predators even vaguely in their speed range! once upon a time, not that long ago, they had to dodge a prehistoric cheetah that could pull highway-level speeds.)

cheetahs were successful enough that they even made it out of North America and into Eurasia via the Bering Land Bridge, only making it to Africa after conquering their way across the steppes!

<art src: Velizar Simeonovski>

but things changed, as they always do, and global climate disruption led the the extinction of all cheetah species except the one in Africa, effectively terminating the entire cheetah dynasty.

do they remember? I hope so.

pumas are doing JUST FINE, though! guess there’s something to be said for being a mid-sized hypergeneralist predator in the face of global change.

[fuckyeah2000s]

[sunflowermp4]

[t-clairevirus]

[gay-thoughts-blog]

[violetsandshrikes]

I can’t stop cackling at this post my friend tagged me in...what have they done to my Boy

[gormbus]

the worst thing ive probably ever done to a group of other human beings was getting the aux for the big speaker at a party while on ecstasy and putting on an audiobook of dune from where i'd last left off

[animeshittalk]

imagine getting this review