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The pattern is emerging....

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very tiny animals fill me w both love & anxiety

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TIPS FOR PEOPLE WITH ADHD

[long list of things that require you to remember things and focus]

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Try this buzzfeed quiz it’s fun.

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So like, dyslexia isn't less common, it's just that English is notably bad for dyslexics, due to our shit as fuck spelling, making the same brain-thing less disabling. I mind reading a study some years ago that found that Italian children with dyslexia basically found it way less of an issue than English children, because Italian orthography is pretty clearly matches pronunciation.

Which y'know, makes sense, a lot of non-dyslexic English speakers struggle with aspects of reading a writing English, it's just bad even without a disability. I was talking to my uber driver yesterday actually and something similar came up. She's Spanish but her daughter, raised in England from a young age, and her daugher finds that English is easier to speak due to grammar and stuff, but Spanish is easier to read and write. Which makes sense, Spanish orthography is basically perfect.

Also, on the autism in the past thing, I'm just thinking about a common autism meme about "the big light". Y'know, a lot of autistic people fucking hate having the big ceiling light on, but love a bunch of lamps around the place? Just thinking that like, if you go back 70+ (?) years or whatever you generally wouldn't have a big electric light on the ceiling, in-home illumination would be smaller lamps, candles, rush lights etc. instead.

“If autism isn’t caused by environmental factors and is natural why didn’t we ever see it in the past?”

We did, except it wasn’t called autism it was called “Little Jonathan is a r*tarded halfwit who bangs his head on things and can’t speak so we’re taking him into the middle of the cold dark forest and leaving him there to die.”

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today i read with my two eyes someone who typed with their god given fingers

"I was born in the 80s and I never knew anyone who was lactose intolerant back then"

my dude. my man.

YOU WERE A CHILD. maybe your mom's friend Matilda was lactose intolerant, but did your ten year old ass cared or listened? No!!

**this is a post about everyone who claims things were better when they were younger.**

OF COURSE THINGS WERE BETTER, YOU DIDN'T PAY TAXES.

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If your life is horrible and you need a new source of meaning and direction.... Do NOT find religion. Learn to identify plants.

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Tbh OP has likely seen this info plenty but another important predator you'll likely want to build your cages around is rats. Because rats are 1: absurdly good at getting through small spaces/into things, 2: easily chew through wooden boards and 3: fully capable, willing and motivated to kill adult quail.

I built an outdoor run on the ground, and I never personally had a rat problem but that was largely because I dug up the whole 2.5x3m area of ground to a depth of 15cm and laid coated, weld mesh wire under the whole thing. And then poured a full concrete rim at ground level to embed the wire for the walls and the underground stuff. Tbh, a raised cage system is a better option though as it avoids a number of problems and is much easier to rat- and cat-proof in the long run. And even with 6 feet of headroom I still had a quail fatally bean himself in a panic flight one time.

hey guys i've been doin' a bunch of research on raising and keeping quail (specifically coturnix quail) and I want to start putting down plans for building an elevated hutch

what I want to know- for anyone who currently takes care of quail- what building material, wire gauge for standing on, sand/dirt, etc is ideal for adult quail? Like things I wouldn't easily find out about while searching online (I know that they have to be built smaller than 18 inches or taller than 6 feet)

also i'm open to learn more in general if anyone has niche tips for quail care 👀

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common origins of suffering, euphoria, and ferret

substack

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Green herons! The green heron (Butorides virescens) is known to use bait when fishing, including live insects it's caught, to attract fish.

I just watched the first ep of that 'magmell' show, and the centipedes made me wonder- are there any real life animals that try to lure in prey using another living thing, like how we can use worms to catch fish?

I can't remember any that do so with living bait, but I know some assassin bugs will prey on bees or termites right near a nest entrance, so the alarm pheromone of the first one they kill keeps attracting more workers to try and help! There was also the case in which some dolphins at an aquarium learned to spit up their fish so they could catch and eat seagulls.

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There are various evil branches to taxonomy but dandelion taxonomy is on another level. If some taxonomic situations should go to jail, dandelion taxonomy should be tried at the Hague.

For your reading pleasure: an iNaturalist forum thread about how dandelion taxonomy is so fucked up that no researcher wants to even touch it

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My neighbour's been raising chickens from eggs and some of his lil guys got over the shoulder-high fence between our properties and got lost in my garden trellis. There are no holes under the fence (I check regularly because he has dogs), they went over it. He said they went over with enough certainty that I'm pretty sure he witnessed it. They're too young to have their proper feathers yet, they shouldn't be able to fly. How did they do this.

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Aye, like, the rest can wait but being able to yeet yourself skywards to avoid a cat and to Sleep In Trees With Mama as early as possible is a good thing.

I've never raised chickens from babies myself but from what I know, when a broody does it they often switch to sleeping up on the roost with her at about 2-4 weeks of age, basically when she decides it's time to do so. Please enjoy this image from facebook of someone's broody, covering her babies in a tree:

Peafowl, I've learnt from @kedreeva, are actually hatched with flight feathers in sheathes that they just need to clean off, and they can fly up to roost at night by like, 4-5 days old I think? Or at least by one week?

My neighbour's been raising chickens from eggs and some of his lil guys got over the shoulder-high fence between our properties and got lost in my garden trellis. There are no holes under the fence (I check regularly because he has dogs), they went over it. He said they went over with enough certainty that I'm pretty sure he witnessed it. They're too young to have their proper feathers yet, they shouldn't be able to fly. How did they do this.

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Just a funny for you ke, my poor turkey sweatpea discovered the greatest evil she has ever known, me, but wearing a bike helmet.

Girl went full attack mode fluffing and making the angriest alarm call iv ever heard out of her. Until I took the helmet off. Then it was all cuddles again. Helmet on, rage mode. Helmet off cuddles, did it a few times becuase I seriously couldn't understand why she hated it so much XD

What are we gonna do with these dang birds?

we shall love them for being silly. I've worn a weird (ie: not purple or black or white) color a few times in front of the birds and they do NOT like that. They're very visual creatures, I assume identification of an individual is largely by sight and then by sound.

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when i was a tiny baby queer (aka a 24-year-old), i went to my first pride festival probably three months after i kicked ex-gay therapy to the curb and came out to my parents. being the people they are, my parents came with me. they weren’t really sure about this whole gay thing, but they loved me and wanted me to be safe and happy and wanted to be involved in what was important to me, so they came along. (i also think my mother still might have thought i might get drugged or murdered or beaten by a protester of which there were plenty.)

anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.

i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”

and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.

“What?” i say.

“…it’s a cock and a pussy, Jules,” she says flatly, and that is the story of how i died at the age of 24 while attending my first pride festival.