#it's in zoology

[prokopetz]

I've seen posts going around claiming that petting animals is basically tricking them into thinking they're being groomed, and it's bugging me because, like, there's no trickery afoot. Petting and scritching are grooming activities. They help to dislodge loose fur and foreign objects and more evenly distribute protective oils, among other things. Primates are social groomers, and the human impulse to scritch is the legacy of our primate ancestors. We see an animal we like, even a dangerous one, and the monkey brain says "groom that thing".

[hawkpartys]

[theantiazdarcho]

The Lancetfish is a species that looks like it comes straight out of a realistic fantasy world building project.

[thagomizersshow]

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.

[venusforfran]

oh BTW here's my teeny tiny list of my favourite pigeon species

White breasted ground dove

Nicobar pigeon

Cinnamon headed green pigeon

Yellow footed green pigeon

Pheasant pigeon

Yellow breasted fruit dove

Many coloured fruit dove

Crowned pigeon

[reasonsforhope]

"In one of Africa’s last great wildernesses, a remarkable thing has happened—the scimitar-horned oryx, once declared extinct in the wild, is now classified only as endangered.

It’s the first time the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s largest conservation organization, has ever moved a species on its Red List from ‘Extinct in the Wild’ to ‘Endangered.’

The recovery was down to the conservation work of zoos around the world, but also from game breeders in the Texas hill country, who kept the oryx alive while the governments of Abu Dhabi and Chad worked together on a reintroduction program.

Chad... ranks second-lowest on the UN Development Index. Nevertheless, it is within this North African country that can be found the Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve, a piece of protected desert and savannah the size of Scotland—around 30,000 square miles, or 10 times the size of Yellowstone.

At a workshop in Chad’s capital of N’Djamena, in 2012, Environment Abu Dhabi, the government of Chad, the Sahara Conservation Fund, and the Zoological Society of London, all secured the support of local landowners and nomadic herders for the reintroduction of the scimitar-horned oryx to the reserve.

Environment Abu Dhabi started the project, assembling captive animals from zoos and private collections the world over to ensure genetic diversity. In March 2016, the first 21 animals from this “world herd” were released over time into a fenced-off part of the reserve where they could acclimatize. Ranging over 30 miles, one female gave birth—the first oryx born into its once-native habitat in over three decades.

In late January 2017, 14 more animals were flown to the reserve in Chad from Abu Dhabi.

In 2022, the rewilded species was officially assessed by the IUCN’s Red List, and determined them to be just ‘Endangered,’ and not ‘Critically Endangered,’ with a population of between 140 and 160 individuals that was increasing, not decreasing.

It’s a tremendous achievement of international scientific and governmental collaboration and a sign that zoological efforts to breed endangered and even extinct animals in captivity can truly work if suitable habitat remains for them to return to."

-via Good News Network, December 13, 2023

[violetsandshrikes]

Once the birds had learned how to initiate video interactions, the second phase of the experiment could begin. In this “open call” period, the 15 participating birds could make calls freely; they also got to choose which bird to dial up. Over the next two months, pet parrots made 147 deliberate video calls to other birds. Their owners took detailed notes about the calls and recorded more than 1,000 hours of video footage that the researchers analyzed.

[organicmatter]

guys i just found out about this site that does a daily guessing game, it’s phylogenetic wordle- so fun!!!

[rizzager]

My take on the Shulker

[myjetpack]

My latest New Scientist cartoon.

[platypu]

orb weavers' sexual dimorphism is hilarious to me like.

me and my big beautiful wife

[prokopetz]

Land cryptids: We think it was probably a wolf with mange.

Sea cryptids: So it turns out there really is a creature of the abyss with glowing skin and fifty-foot barbed tentacles that somehow evaded reliable documentation for several thousand years, but we're going to act like these two cases are equivalent because anecdotal descriptions of its appearance have historically been somewhat inaccurate.

[hawkpartys]

i think of this image approximately every day of my life

Magellanic Penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) observation by kiwikiu

[theantiazdarcho]

The Takin is such a whimsical herbivore, like God commissioned Dr. Seuss for this one.

[bnnuyboikase]

feeeesh!!