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URGENT! DO YOU WANT TO HELP THE SOUTHERN RESIDENTS? PLEASE HELP US WRITE, CALL AND TEXT!

A lawsuit, National Wildlife Federation vs National Marine Fisheries Service, may finally determine the fate of the 4 Lower Snake River Dams, the salmon who spawn there and the remaining 75 Southern Resident Orca who desperately need salmon to survive. Biden needs to know that we want those dams breached. He's broken enough of his climate promises - let him know that, and the extinction of these amazing animals, isn't an option!

Public comment is also being sought on the matter. Please visit our page, BidenBreachNow, for talking points, social media shareables, and extensive information about why the dams need to go. This is a critical time. Please call, text, write or email, every day if you can, until August 31st. Even if you already have acted and/or shared, please do it again. Please keep sharing because every voice counts! The Snake River was once one of the top salmon rivers in the world. That is sadly no longer the case. Four deadbeat dams on the Lower Snake River have cost an estimated 8 to 9 billion dollars in failed salmon recovery attempts - taxpayer money! - and they lose millions more every year generating unstorable surplus energy. What they do sell is often sold at a loss. The dams continue to get older and costlier to maintain, while solar and wind energy have replaced their power output; energy efficiency alone has done the same seven times over.

These dams aren't even clean energy! Their reservoirs emit huge amounts of methane, which contributes to the climate crisis. Please help spread this if you can, and join in. We have a real chance here to get this done - so let's do it.

As the late and great Ken Balcomb said: "We're at a point in history where we need to wake up to what we have to consider: do we want whales, or not?"

He never stopped fighting for the Southern Residents, and neither should we.

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Almost 5 years later, we still need to fight.

Their children are dying and their people are starving. The Southern Resident Killer whales (SRKW) need our help, and they need it now. It won’t make a difference if we wait too long.

Here is a helpful post full of resources on the breaching of snake river dams. Humans are the only ones that can solve this problem. We owe it to these orcas.

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It just about is the only stimulus they get.

Animals will generally enthusiastically participate in shows because it’s really the only form of exercise and stimuli they get on a regular basis. They do not always have access to toys, and their tanks are largely, if not entirely, barren. They are generally kept separated from one-another in small groups that consider which animals are “compatible” with one another, and sometimes this means certain animals are kept by themselves due to previous incidents. They are not allowed to freely access all of the pools at all times. Not every whale is used in every show.

"these animals enjoy the one bit of stimulus they get so it's not cruel 🤪"

it isn’t the only stimulus they get lol do you think they place them in deprivation chambers when not showing?

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While it’s not always self-mutilation, a lot of injuries do occur in captivity directly as a result of captivity. Not only through rough contact with the tank environment, but also in interactions with their tank mates that would be unlikely to occur in the wild.

Lesions on the tip of the rostrum are quite common

Tooth wear from chewing on concrete.

And not only bottlenose dolphins. Captive orcas frequently wear their teeth down flat through concrete chewing, to the point that their teeth have to be drilled out and flushed regularly.

As for more blatant occurrences of self-mutilation, here’s a bottlenose dolphin repeatedly hitting its head on an aquarium window.

An orca ramming a gate head-on.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2411542575785658https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2411542575785658

Aside from this there are general displays of boredom outside of performing or working with trainers, such as logging (floating motionless in one spot, sometimes for hours, which is something wild dolphins do not do unless something is wrong), repeated regurgitation, fighting to the point of severe injury and even death, bobbing at the surface, etcetera. These animals aren't receiving a fraction of the stimuli they would experience in a natural setting, and as a result their frustration manifests in ways that cause them harm.

Most bottlenose dolphins in captivity show self destructive behavior

Fascinating claim but I’m not seeing the source you surly intended to link.

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Sorry, you’re wrong here.

Cetaceans travel hundreds, even thousands of miles not only for food but for migration, breeding, calf-raising, exploration, curiosity and recreation. Over millions of years they’ve evolved a complex brain, and an incredibly strong body to maximize efficiency in traveling through the water. The “they stop traveling if their needs are met” rhetoric is often spewed by pro-captivity advocates to justify the tragically inadequate housing of captive cetaceans.

Here are some examples of cetaceans traveling or having traveled for reasons not motivated solely by food:

Northern Resident Orcas at a “rubbing beach,” a shallow area near the shore with smooth stones that they rub themselves on.

Video of a “super pod,” usually occurring in the summer months. The Southern Resident Killer Whale matrilines (J, K, and L) will gather together in a sort of annual reunion celebration.

Dolphins surfing in waves. This behavior is not coincidental; they will go back to catch another wave. They also ride the bows of traveling ships.

Now a baleen whale species. Not kept in captivity, but another good example of cetaceans not being purely food motivated when it comes to traversing the ocean. This video shows a southern right whale “sailing;” sticking its tail vertically out of the water and catching the wind with its massive flukes, riding the wind as it blows. They’ve even been seen swimming back to their starting point and sailing again.

Orcas riding the waves left in the trail of a boat.

Regardless of this, you cannot sincerely believe that because food is readily available, all other stimuli are unnecessary. The life of a cetacean isn’t just travel - food - travel - food, there are many complex interactions and behaviours intermingled with all that that are essential enough to their existence that it’s persisted for millenia.

bottlenose dolphins travel 100 kilometers a day, there is absolutely no way to properly house them

They travel that distance to search for food, not because they just love going nonstop. Nomadic animals tend to stop traveling if they find a reliable source of food and their other needs are met.

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A trifecta of artworks featuring the Type D orca characters from my story. They may be appearing in a comic near you soon. Each image has a caption about the characters!

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Been a while hasn’t it?

12 years ago I started writing a story centered around the birth and life of a little orca named Zar. I had to invent a family for him, which I did in writing, and then later drew them in PS.

After some time I expanded on Zar’s story, gave the characters some ACTUAL character and turned them into Type D orcas; the subantarctic ecotype. I started drawing a comic about them, but after 20-some pages I stopped. I would really like to restart the comic with a more solid idea of what I want to do.

Anyway, here’s the fam! 12 years later, with some name and design changes.

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Highly speculative feathered ankylosaur. Not meant to be any existing species.

I posted the white version on twitter but I also made a red version!

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Grizzly of the Cretaceous

Tyrannosaurus rex

I’ve been drawing a whole shwack of paleoillustrations recently but haven’t shared any here. Here’s the latest.

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The new girl at work is pretty cute

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Regaliceratops petwerhewsi, one of my favourite ceratopsids! Discovered in Alberta, my home province.

Its crest makes me think of the sun, so I wanted to give it some fiery colours.

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A fall-themed piece from the ARPG Primeval Age on Deviantart. It’s set in a post-human world, so Pumpkin here has stumbled upon an abandoned farm with gourds gone wild.

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So I watched a few clips of that god-awful Walking With Dinosaurs movie from 2013 except the voiceover was removed. Let me tell you, it was a GAME-CHANGER. The purely visual storytelling is so much better than what ended up getting released in theatres, and if I remember correctly, the voiceover was a last-minute addition anyway. The visuals are stunning and I actually find myself really liking the story and characters when they're presented this way. Anyway, here's my headcanon: Patchi is female and her and Juniper are the lead matriarchal pair of the herd.

If you pay attention to the design conventions of the Pachyrhinosaurus herd, you'll notice that the males are all an olive grey-green in colour while the females are sort of peachy-orange. The males also flush their frills with bright red and sulfur yellow colouration when they're fighting one another. Patchi, though presented as male in the voiceover version, starkly contrasts with the other males of his herd in the sense that he appears much more... *feminine.* Being that, unlike his brother Scowler, Patchi is the same peachy-orange as his sisters and the other females in the herd. His frill also never flushes with colour like the other males' do in his adulthood, and he never changes to match the grey-green of the adult males. If you had only ever watched the narrator-less version, you'd likely assume Patchi was female when you see how dissimilar to Scowler she looks. There's really nothing in the film itself that implies Patchi is male aside from what's stated in the voiceover, and of course the generally assumed heterosexuality of characters in media. Patchi is shown as being interested in another young Pachyrhinosaur, and fights Scowler for her and for leadership of the herd. Because of this, based on how people perceive animal behaviour, people assume Patchi is male. A few other things that can support Patchi actually being female is that she's generally shrugged off by Scowler and Bulldust when she tries to participate in activities with them; knocking over small trees, rolling in the dust, or sparring. Scowler actually *chases* after Patchi at first before the two of them bonk heads, implying Patchi initially had no drive to engage in headbutting with Scowler. All of these things could be interpreted as Patchi having the desire to lead the herd and prove her strength and cunning against the males, but because she's female, she's met with looks of disapproval from her contemporaries. This could also be why Scowler so vehemently despises her in their adulthood; making a show of driving Juniper away from Patchi when he first takes over leadership of the herd, and ignoring Patchi's calls when crossing the frozen lake. After she usurps his leadership through saving the majority of the herd from the breaking ice, Scowler finally gives her the fight she wants and she loses. Though she gives up briefly, she's spurred into action by the memory of meeting Juniper for the first time (that's some lesbian passion right there), and in the end, she wins leadership of the herd not through brute strength in a fight with Scowler, but through her boldness and encouragement of the herd to fight back against the Gorgosaurs. She proves herself as a reliable and strong leader without a show of physical prowess. The nest of eggs at the end is interpreted by most people to belong to Patchi and Juniper, but the two of them have clearly left the nest almost entirely unattended, so I personally don't think it's theirs. Patchi runs off a Troodon and Juniper is seen grazing a pretty decent distance away, appearing to be pretty unbothered that a nest of what people assume to be *her* eggs was almost decimated by a predator. At this point, I think the pair of them have taken on the duty of being the herd guardians, watching over the year's brood and chasing off predators from nests whose mothers have gone off to forage. So yeah, these dinosaurs are gay. I reject the voiceover version because it sucks, and the 25 minute long Bendytick Crumbledump version as well because that one was only shown in museum theatres and I've never seen it, so it doesn't exist.

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Do you like dinosaurs and hate capitalism?

Then boy do I have shirts and stickers for you!

Featuring Fuck Capitalism Triceratops, Eat The Rich T-Rex, and ACAB Pterosaur! There will be more dinos and phrases coming in the near future! These are specifically drawn in a retrosaur style, taking inspiration from early paleoart depictions of these animals.

https://www.redbubble.com/people/Shiverdam/shop

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There are 58 orcas in captivity worldwide (19 of which live at one of the three SeaWorld parks). There are 74 Southern Resident orcas left. Do with this information what you will.

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anyways skyla did not die due to a broken heart because she was in captivity, stop that

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Wild orcas with collapsed dorsals get by just fine in the wild as far as I’ve read, seen, and heard. I‘d also like to see those sources.

anyways skyla did not die due to a broken heart because she was in captivity, stop that