scriptdogtor

[scriptdogtor]

The funniest thing in the world to me is when people write mermaids that are bothered by humans eating fish. Like do you think fish don’t eat each other? The ocean is full of little freaks that will eat whatever or whoever the fuck will fit in their mouths. If the mermaids haven’t been eating fish this whole time what do you think they’ve been eating? If the answer is humans, that doesn’t make it any less funny. They’ll eat the species that looks like the top half of them but won’t eat a species that looks like the bottom half? Peak comedy.

[scriptdogtor]

Sometimes when people ask about animals in heat behaving oddly I want to be like "Do you not get really weird when you're horny too?" but then I remember I am a professional and I should probably rephrase

[scriptdogtor]

New Zealand, home of the orbs

[scriptdogtor]

Dimitri Sirenko, “Faith and Fate”, 2020 Oil on canvas, 60 x 91cm

[scriptdogtor]

Blue and black ink with gouache portraits of horses. I was inspired by how Lena Furberg depicts black horses in her comics, often only using blue and black to create an absolutely stunning look. I've mentioned her before but she was one of the first artists whose style I fell in love with.

[scriptdogtor]

She looks like those screwed up panorama pictures people take of their dogs. Oh boy

[scriptdogtor]

Ever looked at an octopus and wondered… what's going on in their head?

While we may never know exactly what goes on in the mind of an octopus, we do know that they express themselves by changing colors. Enter the wonderful world of chromatophores and join our aquarist Candace to learn more about octopus communication! 🐙💙

[scriptdogtor]

albatrosses will wipe the floor with any species of bird you choose to compare them to. they’re the Most, or at least Extremely, by almost every metric

[scriptdogtor]

love how they used the most orbular photo ever

[scriptdogtor]

today my wisdom is: the ecological crisis of our planet is not a thing that will Suddenly destroy us sometime in the next century—it has taken decades of continuous work for our biosphere to be preserved thus far, and it will take decades more of continuous work to continue preserving it.

The apocalypse is not a single event hovering in the future bearing down on us while we sit helplessly. We are at least 150 years into an ongoing "apocalypse."

Things will continue to steadily get worse without steady action, but "augh! it's already too late to stop climate change and mass extinctions!" is specifically the worst response

[scriptdogtor]

the mountain lions are unwittingly practicing witchcraft to improve their hunting chances and leaving patches of terra preta behind

[scriptdogtor]

Gave Hobie a cardboard box to use as a tunnel, for Enrichment Purposes. He has exclusively chosen to flatten it by sitting on it and then rest his little chin on it while the rest of him is buried in the substrate

[scriptdogtor]

having my evening cucumber

I offered a portion to this large and mannerly horse

[scriptdogtor]

They documented a second recently, too, but in the wild! Just by a lodge in Namibia:

photo source: Giraffe Conservation Foundation, photographed by Eckart Demasius

ETA: Pigment in domestic animals is linked to a whole lot of other body processes, but all the research I know of is for dilution or lack of pigment. I don't know about giraffe coloration either.

New weird horse just dropped, folks.

A spotless giraffe was recently born at Bright’s Zoo in Limestone, TN and was just announced in the media this morning. They’re starting a public naming contest for her, of course.

I’d love to know what type of mutation causes this lack of of pattern, but I don’t know if we have genetics on that for giraffes the way we do other species. As far as is known, she’s the first spotless giraffe ever documented!

[scriptdogtor]

some other taxonomic facts for you to get mad at evolution for, instead of "birds are dinosaurs"

"Insects are Crustaceans" (Pancrustacea)

"Dolphins are Hoofed Mammals" (Artiodactyl)

"Mushrooms are closer to Animals than they are to Plants" (Opisthokont)

"Hyenas are Cat-like" (Feliformia)

"Herpetology is a LYING BASTARD since Amphibians are equally close to Mammals and Reptiles, and there's no reason it should be included like that. if anything, Herpetology should be a parent science of Ornithology, since birds are reptiles. why the fuck are toads here??" (Amniota, Sauria)

"really, we're all just fish" (Sarcopterygii)

[scriptdogtor]

i also don't see zoos as like, a "necessary evil" that will go away when we've ended capitalism and learned to live more sustainable lives or whatever.

for starters, i don't believe conservation is an issue that will ever end. for example, certain species are inherently more vulnerable to extinction, and those species may need a helping hand if disease or natural disaster strikes their populations. this is especially true of species with slow reproductive cycles or small populations, or extremely limited habitat. working with these animals and having a captive stock of them will be vital should something happen to their wild populations.

but also zoos serve another function beyond conservation, and that's education. zoos offer people the ability to really connect with animals they may not ever see in the wild, whether because the animal is very secretive, it doesn't live near the people visiting the zoo, or the people don't have the ability to go out on hikes or whatever and observe them in the wild. it's hard to become passionate about something that only exists in the abstract, and it's hard to want to learn about something you have no concept of. people are also scared of things they don't understand, which leads to conflict between humans and animals. good zoos create a space where people can safely observe happy and healthy animals and get to know them without either party being pushed past their limit. this fosters passion for, interest in, and respect for animals that people might not care or even know about otherwise.

[scriptdogtor]

Scientists in the 1800s: dinosaurs are this particular group of related reptiles

Non-scientists: *nod*

Scientists in the 2000s: turns out that group of reptiles has some cousins we forgot to account for, so -

Non-scientists: HOW DARE YOU CHANGE THE DEFINITION

Scientists: we didn’t change it, we just learned more-

Non-scientists: YOU CHANGED IT YOU TRICKY SCIENTISTS

Scientists: why do you even care wtf is happening