thagomizersshow

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People keep commenting that hippos aren’t herbivores, they’re omnivores, but I’m going to be semantic and disagree.

Yes, they definitely eat more meat than most herbivores, but I feel like that’s ignoring the fact hippos cannot survive without the vast majority of their diet being plant matter. I haven’t been able to find a single diet study of hippos using fecal samples that shows even a little bit of animal matter. The one study that hyped up hippos as omnivores was based mostly on observation of predation and scavenging. It didn’t indicate what proportion of their diet is meat from any sort of direct evidence.

There’s a reason hippos in zoos aren’t given meat — with a properly balanced plant diet, they don’t need meat on a nutritional level. This is very different from most true omnivores, like bears, pigs, or raccoons, which need a combination of animal and plant matter to stay healthy.

TLDR, just because hippos aren’t obligate herbivores that doesn’t mean calling them omnivores makes more sense.

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.

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Bruh,,,,

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A turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) spreading its wings in Cuyamaca Mountains, California

by Robyn Waayers

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Kestrel-dad not sure how to dad but he’s trying his best.

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Arizona by blue5011b

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Hi. Good morning. This morning while doing a routine herring gull impression while brushing my teeth I accidentally mentally transposed the birdwatching term “jizz” (a bird’s characteristic motion, gesture, posture, and expression; familiarity with which means it can be identified by a leaf moving in the corner of your eye) with “rizz.”

How about it. Should we try it out. Should we goncharov the birdwatching community into calling it the bird’s distinctive rizz.

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In the midst of a rainforest in northern Borneo.

Unfortunately, not a forest with orangutans. ☹️

go to this random coordinates generator and say in the tags how you would fare if you were dropped where it generates without warning. i’ll go first i’d be dropped in the middle of the fucking south atlantic ocean and perish

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Huge Eastern Coyote (Canis latrans var.) sourced from Nova Scotia, Canada.

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you know that phenomenon where you learn a new word then suddenly begin noticing it everywhere? that also happens with birds and plants once you ID it

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Do you think he ate the dandelion?

Gorilla

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It's my genuine opinion that people who find insects or reptiles ugly looking are choosing to do so, even if they don't realize it. If you look at anything in nature, anything at all, with the intention of seeing beauty you will see it immediately. That goes for dirt and decay and diseases or deformed things too, there's beauty in all organic formations. Some people are just black hearted and stubborn about things they're culturally conditioned to identify as weird.

This is in response to a post that disappeared off my dash where someone in a screenshot was grossed out by cute weevils, and someone I talked to on here just yesterday DISGUSTED by..... axolotls

I'm not talking about fear here, but people seeing "aesthetic ugliness." Like hating opossums or bats or crabs because somehow a scaly tail or spooky wing or jointed armor is supposed to be unpretty. I've met people who hate so much as pigs or cows for this nonsense concept. Or snails or moths or, I shit you not, whales. I saw a little girl once cringe at a SLOTH and say it's ugly. If you think any of those sound arbitrary and unfair I feel the very same of all organisms.

An ugly living thing is a fake concept.

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Result from the Crato formation #paleostream!

Many pterosaurs, even more insects.

We could have added even more but the sleepy overcame me. Crato preserves an incredibly diverse assemblage and several seasonal environments. In this case we show the flooded, largely freshwater, lake/lagoon system during the rainy season.

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Ferocity

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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

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Little bat sleeping in the Camas Public Library 🦇📚

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24 species on this morning's birding walk.

Highlight was this lady smacking around a fish: