I love that I'm can always still find out about cool animals that I never knew existed. Like today I learned that brush-tailed porcupines exist and straight up look like giant rats with spines
You ever think about how weird hippos are ecologically speaking?
There's literally no other megafauna on earth that spends the entire day lounging around in water, mostly just socializing, only to come onto land to feed at night.
I remember when I used to do education programs on hippos, most people assumed they ate aquatic plants, and that that's the whole reason they were in water. Meanwhile, hippos are basically just giant nocturnal cows that eat only grass.
The unique ecology of hippos also has huge impacts on their environment.
All their travelings from water to land create trails that expand and divert waterways, creating new habitats. It's actually pretty similar to what beavers do, just with a bit less purpose behind it.
Hippos bring a TON of silicon from their grass diet back with them to water in the form of poop. This change in nutrients can have both good and bad effects.
During drought, hippo poop can cause dramatic drops in fish diversity (x), but over longer periods of time and in large water bodies, hippo poop benefits fish communities. The overhunting of hippos in rivers that feed some of the African Great Lakes may be a big factor in the nutritional decline of those water bodies (x).
Basically, less hippos means less poop, means less diverse aquatic ecosystems.
I am particularly fond of the snakes known as hognose snakes, and my reasons are both understandable and correct.
This is a hognose snake:
(They received their name by having the sweetest lil snoot to ever require a boop – image source)
They use these adorable snoots to burrow under sandy soil using a sort of nuzzle-y motion. They then use these burrows as a place to sleep at night, hibernate in the winter, and lay their eggs.
(you could say they’re into… the Underground Scene! …ok yeah i’ll show myself out – image source)
Plus, they come in a variety of delightful colours!
(pretty sneks! – Here’s all the image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
And, to be clear, the snakes pictured above are wild snakes. No selective breeding by humans in these noodly bois! At least, not in these specific individuals. probably. I guess a few of them could be escapees…
But most importantly: These snakes know the true meaning of DRAMA
Hognose snakes are actors, first and foremost. When they feel threatened, the first thing they do is puff out their neck into a hood.
(like cobras, this hood is made by FLEXING THEIR NECK RIBS. which: gross – image source x)
This superficially makes them look like a cobra, but what they’re actually trying to do is make themselves seem bigger, and therefore scarier. Possibly those dark spots on their neck helps with that!
Any resemblance to real-life Eurasian cobras, real or fictional, is purely coincidental
Also, it makes its mouth do this:
(Snakes that SCREAAAAAAAM. – image source)
honestly, if I didn’t already know that hognose snakes were harmless, this would ABSOLUTELY make me leave it the hell alone
But if all of that^ is unsuccessful at scaring away the predator, the hognose snake pulls its signature move: playing dead
If you think that is a lame signature move, then you are wrong, because hognose snakes put EVERYTHING into their performance and I love them for it.
(they’re serious, they’ll do it! – image source)
((I’m actually going to stick the rest of this under a read-more, bc the pictures of the alive-and-physically-fine hognose snakes do kind of look like a legitimately-dead hognose snake, if you don’t know what to look for.
So, uh: cw for a snake being too good at pretending to be dead))
The Woodland Park Zoo had a spring event this past weekend, which I had to hit up for the fun enrichment. My favorite of all is the maned wolves - who you rarely ever get such a good chance to see!
One moment, they're elegant and ethereal. Then there's enrichment, and you realize they're just long-legged stinky goofballs [affectionate].
every single day I think about how american black vultures are known for engaging in allopreening (preening between different species)
and they have a specific relationship with crested caracaras, in which the black vultures assist them by not only preening them after meals but also leading them to food in the first place— due to their superior sense of smell— while the caracaras assist the black vultures by acting as a warning signal in case of danger
and while this is more typical of black vultures, this is not common at all for any member of the falconidae family— it’s a special bond!
yet another post in favor of vultures everyone , hope you enjoy:) and I implore you to do some more research on these incredible birds !!
The Bearded Vulture is the only known animal whose diet is almost exclusively bone.
The bone-eating giant bird which coats itself minerals like copper to get its rusty hue for unknown cosmetic reasons, most likely to show dominance. The brighter the hue, the more dominant the male.
They probably need the copper because its anti-bacterial properties. useful if you’re a carrion eater.
The bird has a 9 ft wingspan.
Bearded Vultures provide an indispensable service to the ecosystem, checking the spread of disease by consuming corpses. But the bearded’s diet is 95 percent bone. It can wait for the other scavengers to strip the body clean, then stroll in at its leisure to take its fill.
The Bronx Zoo has just released Flaco's necropsy results.
He was not thriving, as the people championing the ideal of "freedom" claimed.
He was poisoned.
He was sick.
He was suffering.
"Freedom" would have eventually killed him. A building just happened to do it first.
"Postmortem testing has been completed for Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl that was found down in the courtyard of a Manhattan building a little over a year after his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo was vandalized on February 2, 2023. Onlookers reported that Flaco had flown into a building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on February 23, 2024, and acute trauma was found at necropsy.
Bronx Zoo veterinary pathologists determined that in addition to the traumatic injuries, Flaco had two significant underlying conditions. He had a severe pigeon herpesvirus from eating feral pigeons that had become part of his diet, and exposure to four different anticoagulant rodenticides that are commonly used for rat control in New York City. These factors would have been debilitating and ultimately fatal, even without a traumatic injury, and may have predisposed him to flying into or falling from the building.
The identified herpesvirus can be carried by healthy pigeons but may cause fatal disease in birds of prey including owls infected by eating pigeons. This virus has been previously found in New York City pigeons and owls. In Flaco’s case, the viral infection caused severe tissue damage and inflammation in many organs, including the spleen, liver, gastrointestinal tract, bone marrow, and brain.
No other contributing factors were identified through the extensive testing that was performed.
Flaco’s severe illness and death are ultimately attributed to a combination of factors—infectious disease, toxin exposures, and traumatic injuries—that underscore the hazards faced by wild birds, especially in an urban setting."
The naturalistic fallacy kills animals in horrible ways. The romanticism of what humans want to think of as a "free, wild, pure life" cannot be allowed supplant the reality of injury, sickness, and death. Releasing captive animals (or keeping them from being recaptured) because it's "better" for them to suffer untethered than live a healthy, safe, captive life is inhumane and horrific.
Flaco's life didn't have to end in pain, sickness, and suffering.
Flaco's death didn't have to be tragic.
But once the idea of "freedom" entered the chat, Flaco's fate was unavoidable.
From the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife page on Facebook, based in Australia…
The three-eyed snake warns The Dry is coming!
Our Rangers found a three-eyed snake on the Arnhem Highway near Humpty Doo just out of Darwin. It was a juvenile, approximately 40cm long.
The snake is peculiar as an x-ray revealed it was not two separate heads forged together, rather it appeared to be one skull with an additional eye socket and three functioning eyes.
It was generally agreed that the eye likely developed very early during the embryonic stage of development. It is extremely unlikely that this is from environmental factors and is almost certainly a natural occurrence as malformed reptiles are relatively common.
This is an adorable young hognose snake exhibiting natural behavior. They’re not the smartest snakes in the world, and they’ll happily spend all day exploring the same place over and over if you let them. Mine loves to weave between my fingers like this.
She survived. None of the kittens did, but that's expected.
They would be premature and also have blunt force trauma.
This is called a crural hernia. I've seen it before while working on deer.
There's a viral video circulating from the Fort Worth Zoo, of two keepers who ended up in a habitat at the same time as a silverback gorilla. Spoiler for good news: neither the humans nor the gorilla got hurt. It's a bad situation that ended extremely well, and that's why I want to talk about it.
The audio for this video is mostly someone praying loudly, so if you need to turn the audio off to watch it, you won't miss anything relevant. If you don't want to watch it, here's the summary: it starts with a keeper running around the corner into the main exhibit, pursued by a large male gorilla. She is quickly able to get into a doorway at the back of the exhibit, but does not completely close the door because the gorilla is standing across from her, watching. He eventually moves off to the right hand side of the exhibit, where we can see a keeper is trapped in the corner at the front. She was trying to move towards the exit as he moved to the right, and she stops, standing very still behind a tree, while he stays along the far right wall. They stay like that for a minute, and then the gorilla runs to the front right corner, and the keeper is able to run to the door in the back of the exhibit and get to safety.
Let's start with basic information. Even though it's just going viral now, this video is from October of 2023. It was taken not by a guest, but by the zoo security officer responding to the situation. Hmmm, seems like he maybe should have been doing something else during that situation, instead of than taking a phone video. It's going viral now because the guy (who is no longer employed at the zoo) decided to post it on TikTok for his five minutes of fame. This guy immediately started giving all sorts of media interviews, answering questions like "why no tranquilizers" inappropriately, making memes out of his own video, generally distasteful shit.
Zoo spokesperson Avery Elander gave a public statement that "thankfully, there was no physical contact between keepers and gorilla, and all staff and animals are safe." A comment from the zoo has also indicated that the incident was due to keeper error. (As opposed to, for instance, something in the fencing breaking.) According to the guy who posted the video, a lock was left unsecured and the gorilla was able to open the door to the habitat. I don't know if I buy it, and again, this just... is probably why he doesn't have a job anymore. By sharing that detail - real or not - he places a ton of public scrutiny and blame on that keeper team. (If that's what happened, I can promise you it will have been dealt with internally.) He also was nice enough to say he wouldn't name the women in the video... but verified they're still staffers at the zoo... which means they're eminently identifiable! Excuse me while I ragequit for a second.
So there's two reasons I wanted to talk about this. The first is to make sure it is well known that this guy is purposefully and intentionally exploiting the worst day of someone's life for media attention. Their lives were in danger, and he's using it for fame. His name is in the media articles - I'm not going to share it because he doesn't deserve that attention. The second reason, though, is because this video is a masterclass on how to survive if you end up sharing space with a gorilla. Every zoo person I've spoken to or seen comment on the video is so, so impressed with how the keepers handled themselves.
The gorilla in this video is 34-year-old Elmo. All apes in AZA zoos are managed in protected contact, so keepers are supposed to be separated from them by a barrier at all times. The zookeepers were in the habitat putting out a mid-day meal when he got out. Watching the video, you can see he's not actively being aggressive towards them - he's not making threat displays or trying to approach them. Mostly, Elmo seems like he doesn't know what is going on and he's kinda freaked out about it. (This is confirmed in the zoo's press statement, too). The staff stayed calm, and importantly, watched and waited to see how he'd move and act.
The zoo did say one thing, though, that's a bit misleading. In one article, their press person I quote as saying “In general, gorillas are considered the “gentle giants” of the great ape species.” Just because this may be true in comparison to other great ape species doesn't meant gorilla aren't still incredibly dangerous. This type of messaging always worries me, because I think it leads people to misunderstand the risks of being close to megafauna. Gorilla are extremely strong animals, and their social norms/behaviors are very different from that of humans. That's why it's such a big deal any time people end up in gorilla habitats, and why sometimes in those circumstances lethal measures have to be taken to protect human life.
These keepers are incredibly lucky to be unharmed. These women stayed safe specifically because they're trained professionals who knew how to act around gorilla, they knew this particular animal well, and they'd learned the escapes from the exhibit just in case this ever happened. We should applaud them for their cool heads and quick thinking.
As for the guy who posted the video? As a colleague put it, may he always step on a Lego.
The keepers did everything right- they must have a really good sense of the big guy's body language, because it looks like they were taking really good care not to excite him any more than he already is. This could have been an extremely bad situation, and the fact that the security guy just stood there and filmed it and then put it on TikTok...
well, I think he deserves harsher than stepping on a Lego. Blacklisted from the industry seems appropriate because even if he wasn't going to use tranqs, the fact that he pulled out his phone and started filming means that he was willing to be distracted in an extremely risky situation. By filming instead of giving his undivided attention and being ready to react, he made a dangerous situation worse!
What the security guy should have been doing: keeping the public calm, getting them out of there. Commotion from people at viewing windows absolutely could have upset Elmo and exacerbated the danger of the situation. (This is actually what happened with Harambe - witnesses noted that the screams of the people watching spooked him.) He also should have been keeping an eye on the situation and reporting back to management as needed - for instance, on if the situation devolved and they might have needed to call up the dart/gun team.
The responding security officer would not have been the person using tranquilizers. Zoos have specifically trained DART teams (dangerous animal response teams) that respond to situations like this. There's a lot of complicated factors to using tranquilizers: they don't knock an animal down immediately, and they can be come more dangerous when aggravated by being hit with a dart before it takes effect; tranquilizers have to be dosed for the animal's body weight and must be prepared by vet staff; tranquilizers and dart guns and also actual guns are always stored safely and require some time to access (e.g. in safes). The first person on the scene, even if they were part of the dart team, needs to stay and monitor what's happening.
There's always safety protocols for all of this stuff. Zoos put a ton of time into contingency planning and doing drills for possible adverse events. This dude did not follow any of it.
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