THERE IS A POLAR BEAR QUICKLY AMBLING TOWARDS ME OH MY HEART
“Hup hup hup hup”
lol so Nigel Farage was spewing lies about the Muslim ban in the EU parliament today and Seb Dance was having absolutely fuckin none of it
RIGHT so when I started my sociology course in college, my teacher stated us off with
‘well I guess we have to do icebreakers. i’m Jon, and I fear bears. why do I fear bears? because bears can run at 30 miles per hour and Chester Zoo is 30 miles away. that means a bear can be outside this door in an hour. why would a bear be here? because they can smell fear and I fear them.’
dare i say that stuffed animals are one of the single greatest inventions of all time and im thankful every day for the fact that someone thought to make animals but in huggable plush form…..saved me from a lot of bad nights and nightmares as a kid, i love you stuffed animals
i just wanna thank stuffed animals for existing, thank you for being stuffed pals for all these years
I thank my stuffed animals every day! :D they are the best
BABIES
THOSE TINY LITTLE MEOWS OH MY GOSH SO PRECIOUS
THE BABIES ALL THINK THEIR NAME IS “BABIES”
This video never fails to make me smile so I’m sharing it with all of you on this day
there’s a big difference between animal rights groups and animals welfare groups.
Oh god yes, most animal rights groups are absolutely insane.
not to mention that they don’t actively help animals or at least animals beyond an individual aspect.
For example: I’m helping with research within a national park. In the park there are rangers that are attempting to control and reduce the kangaroo population (because it is out of hand. They are over-populating). So unfortunately these animals need to be darted and euthanised. But decreasing the population it reduces lack of resources and helps the ecosystem of the park.
A bunch of animal rights activists however have been out setting the captured kangaroos free or are stopping rangers from darting them. These kangaroos then go out and over-graze, breed and over-populate. They’re actively damaging the ecosystem and hurting other animal species to save a few individual kangaroos.
paigealert asked:
why-animals-do-the-thing answered:
You ask a really good question! It’s hard to define exactly when animals are extinct. I’m going to quote this Slate article, but it’s worth reading the entire thing for a much more nuanced view:
“The World Conservation Union will label a species extinct only if “there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died.” In general, scientists must now show that repeated efforts to survey a species’ known habitat failed to turn up any individual sightings or evidence of its continued survival.”
Some animals, like passenger pigeons, we’re pretty sure are gone because their migratory behavior made them very easy to observe. Others, not as much - there’s a great book called Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger that details the people who are still searching for Tasmanian tigers, hoping they retreated to the really inhospitable terrain in the center of the island.
For the most part, scientists are very careful to prove that animals are extinct before declaring them so - but they’re not always right. Black Footed Ferrets were thought to have been extinct… and then someone’s dog came back with a freshly killed one, and led us back to the last surviving population… and now we’ve got more than 300 reintroduced to the wild and a highly successful conservation program for them. It doesn’t happen often and isn’t something to put a lot weight on hoping for, but sometimes miracles do happen.
[DIRECT STARE AT CRESTED GECKOS]
talking ‘bout u, u little shits
it’s actually really really cool. They were thought to be extinct until 1994 when a small population was discovered after a tropical storm. Now they’re hugely popular in the pet trade.
Their population in the wild is decreasing; it’s thought to be primarily due to the introduction of the electric ant. Anyone who owns a crestie can talk about how… uhh… well… dumb these potato lizards are. They’re easy prey for ants, who ALSO go after the same food sources as cresties.
i’m gonna talk a bit more about this because ‘re-discovered extinct animals’ are pretty much my favorite thing. There are a lot of examples, so I’ll just focus on whatever ones are the most interesting to me, personally, because reasons.
Cuban Solenodon (Solenodon cubanus) are so weird. Like really, really weird. They’ve got venomous saliva which might explain why it’s ‘totally extinct’ period was so short. It was declared extinct in 1970, but quickly rediscovered in 1974. There actually might be a reason why there’s so much activity every four years.
Now, I’ve got some personal theories about this, so bear with me: solenodons are closely related to shrews and everyone who’s worked around shrews undergo four year cycles where their populations boom every four years. Why? I don’t know. But I’m guessing that solenodon may go through similar 4 year cycles.
Here’s one that a lot of people have talked about: Ivory billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) aka “oh god bird” because most people would say “oh my god is that a FUCKING BIRD???” because it was/is so huge. I use ‘is/was’ because we’re not even sure if it IS still out there. It’s gone through this cycle a few times of ‘yeah, i’m totally extinct PSYCH I’M STILL OUT HERE’.
The most concrete evidence has only come around recently: in January, 2017, the
Naval Research Laboratory
has published reports of at least 10 sightings, three of which were substantiated with video footage of behaviors and flight patterns that don’t match other known species.
The extinction-rediscovery-extinction cycle has been a financial boon to the area. Brinkley, Arkansas has embraced this pecker (u knew it was coming. u knew) completely, with festivals in its honor. Economic tourism is becoming bigger and, if it can actually benefit the environment, I’m all for it. Unfortunately, it’s likely that the Ivory Bill is functionally extinct. There might be some individuals out there, but they’re not going to be genetically diverse enough to survive long-term.
but u know, i wanna talk about bugs today, so let’s turn our eyes towards ‘thought-to-be-extinct bugs’: the giant palouse worm (Driloleirus americanus) is up first because it’s just??? so weird???? the name means ‘lily-like worm’ because it was rumored that they gave off the smell of lilies when agitated. Buuut since they were assumed extinct, it was kind of hard to verify this. When a few were found in 2010, the first things scientists did was go, “no, they don’t smell like lilies’. Good show, science. They’re still hard to find, presumably because they find our worm-sniffing habit really really creepy.
Lord Howe Island stick insect (Dryococelus australis)- these guys are only found on the humorously named Ball’s Island, probably because they have a sense of humor and really, really want privacy. The really, really cool thing about these bugs (aka tree lobsters) is that they can reproduce parthenogenically! No males needed!! So idk what they need privacy for. Probably stick insect scary stories.
They were assumed extinct until 2003 and two breeding pairs were collected from this highly vulnerable population (which was 24 bugs at the time). These pairs were sent to two zoos (one in Melbourne and one in Sydney). By the beginning of 2016, the Melbourne Zoo had bred 9,000 adults!! Specimens were sent to different zoos. Zoo conservation in action.
I guess the moral is that this happens a LOT. Even if we’re pretty sure a species is extinct, our best bet is to keep protecting their environment. We were (probably) too late to save the baiji, but we can still protect the Yangtze finless porpoise.
Species thought to be extinct only to be rediscovered later are known as Lazarus taxon, named after a biblical figure who was raised from the dead, and imo that’s the coolest shit ever.
Baby gator feeding frenzy.
handler: whose next?
these babies: :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V :V
❤️🐊❤️🐊❤️ 🐊❤️
Can I bring all of these scaly babies home please?!
Some animals don’t know other animals exist. For example, lions have no idea squids are a thing.
its weird to think horses were ever ‘prey animals’ because what fucking predator looks at a 8 foot tall ENORMOUS beast with pitch black devils eyes, terrifying teeth and extremely powerful legs and think ‘yeah lets go attack that one’
well moose are still prey animals so
thats fucked up, a moose is like a horse with extra weapons
Would you rather they be predators
SHIT SHIT SHIT IM SO SORRY
I blocked them. I blocked them all. They’re blocked, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children, too. They’re like animals, and I blocked them like animals.
