#Tw animal death

[cricketclan]

WOOO moon 55.. good and bad things again tho updates will be spotty BUT im getting back into doing these (hopefully bc i miss my silly little creatures a lot)

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[sammylovesbendy]

how do ben d and toony like life in the human world? i imagine it must have been a bit of a culture shock upon arrival

since theyre kinda stuck in audreys house they started out mostly watched tv and the ink demon hunted small animals if he could reach them

[autitm]

Hares

[gacha-incels]

[floweroflaurelin]

Rest in peace, Jellie. I’m glad she’ll live on in every minecraft world ❤️

2006-2024

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

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.

[jenny-jinya]

HAPPY HALLOWEEN :) WEBTOON - INSTAGRAM

[nezhanetwork]

it's only a matter of time... ♥

[rainbow-gend3r]

Sputnik 2, launched on November 3, 1957, carried the dog Laika, the first living creature to be shot into space and orbit Earth. Laika was a stray dog found on the streets of Moscow. There were no plans to return her to Earth, and she lived only a few hours in orbit. …

taken from @gallivantsofgillis on tiktok

[tortol]

parasitism

poem by @growrotten

[pangur-and-grim]

yeaaaah, I saw that too.

it can be hard for people to understand that every species of animal has a unique set of physical and mental needs, and that (FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT) they should not be treated like human beings.

here's an example: when a horse breaks its leg, often the kindest thing you can do is euthanize it. that is because horses have lightweight bones that tend to shatter, rather than simply snap, and all those sharp pieces can sever blood vessels and nerves, which leads to tissue death. your average horse weighs 1,000 pounds. that amount of weight redistributed to 3 legs leads to pressure necrosis on the remaining hooves.

the reason the horse would require euthanasia isn't because it's life isn't the same as an able-bodied horse. it is because its leg would rot off and then its hooves would rot off and then it would die.

I currently have a broken leg, and will not be euthanized because I am a human being. if I had both legs amputated, I could still have a wonderful life, because I am a human being.

similarly, if my cat broke a leg, or had to have a limb amputation, that would be fine (well, not fine, but you get the idea) because she weighs 9lbs and could scurry about just fine as a tripod.

if you understand what an animal needs, you'll be better equipped to know when it has a fighting chance. you'll also know that sometimes, the kindest thing you can do is put it to rest.

[fuckingwhateverdude]

12.17.23

[pintsofguinnesmakeyoustrong]

pet cemetery in yorkshire. it was the biggest stone in the lot 🐁

[doe-prince]

Now finished below!

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Welcome to my Tuesday morning PSA about plastics!

So--I was walking along the Bolstadt beach approach sidewalk here in Long Beach, WA yesterday afternoon, and I started seeing these little orange pellets on the ground that looked a little bit like salmon roe (but probably weren't). So I picked one up, and it was most definitely rubber. I went around picking up every one I could find, and while I didn't keep exact count I probably amassed 50-60 of them. I took this picture before depositing them in the nearest trash can.

These are airsoft gun pellets, and you can buy them in big jars containing thousands of them. That means that someone who decided that the beach was a great place to shoot their airsoft guns could easily litter the place with countless little bits of plastic rubber in less than an hour. We already have a huge problem here with people leaving trash, including tiny bits of plastic, all over the beach (you should see the gigantic mess after 4th of July fireworks when thousands of people come in from out of town, blow things up, and then leave again without picking up after themselves.)

But these airsoft pellets have a particularly nasty side effect. You know how my first thought was "wow, those look kind of like salmon roe?" Well, we have a number of opportunistic omnivore birds like crows, ravens, and several species of gull that commonly scavenge on the beach, especially along the approaches because people often feed them there. If I can catch the resemblance of an orange airsoft pellet to a fish egg, then chances are there are wildlife that will assume they're edible.

Since birds don't chew their food, they probably won't notice that the taste or texture is wrong--it'll just go down the hatch. And since they can't digest the pellets, there's a good chance they might just build up in the bird's digestive system, especially if the bird eats a large number of them--say, fifty or sixty of them dropped on the ground along the same fifty foot stretch of sidewalk. The bird might die of starvation if there's not enough capacity for food in their stomach--or they might just die painfully of an impacted gut, and no way to get help for it. If the pellets end up washed into the ocean, you get the same issue with fish and other marine wildlife eating them, and then of course the pellets eventually breaking up into microplastic particles.

You can get biodegradable airsoft pellets; they appear to mainly be gray or white in color rather than bright screaming orange and green. But "biodegradable" doesn't mean "instantly dissolves the next time it rains." An Amazon listing for Aim Green biodegradable airsoft pellets advertise them as "Our biodegradable BBs are engineered to degrade only with long-term exposure to water and sun and will degrade 180 days after being used." That's half a year for them to be eaten by wildlife.

I don't know, y'all. That handful of carelessly dropped rubber pellets just encapsulates how much people don't factor in the rest of nature when making decisions, even on something that is purely for entertainment like an airsoft gun. We could have had a lot of the same technological advances we have today, but with much less environmental impact, if we had considered the long-term effects on both other people and other living beings, as well as our habitats. We could have found ways from the beginning to make these things in ways that benefited us but also mitigated any harm as much as possible. Instead we're now having to reverse-engineer things we've been using for decades, and sometimes--like the "biodegradable" airsoft pellets--they still have a significant negative impact.

But--at least there are people trying to do things better, thinking ahead instead of just on immediate profit. We're stuck in a heck of a mess here, figuratively and literally, and changing an entire system can't be done in a day. Maybe we can at least keep pushing for a cultural shift that emphasizes planning far into the future--if not the often-cited "seven generations ahead", then at least throughout the potential lifespan of a given product.

[die-rosastrasse]

I've been seeing lots of fascinating animals in nearby forests lately, so I'm doing some evening reading on local fauna 🦋