Category: Uncategorized

zookeeperproblems:

montereybayaquarium:

May your Monday be motivated like these baby sting rays attempting to scale their window

*your Monday, whatever it may be

For anyone curious, this is a very common behavior among stingrays in aquariums. Stingrays normally flutter along the bottom of the water, and they rarely, if ever, encounter steep walls. When it finds the side of the tank, a stingray in an aquarium simply keeps going as though the tank wall is the bottom of the tank. This is why you see rays in touch tanks coming up to the surface and sticking out a little bit- they’re programmed for “swim along solid surface”. It’s not going to do them any harm, it’s not stressful, it’s just what they do. 

In other words, these lil guys, who do not have swim bladders to keep them still in the water, are probably pretty confused as to why they keep sliding along the ground. They can’t just hover in place like most fish do. 

drferox:

Anonymous said to @ask-drferox : I’ve seen a couple of vet shows on TV where people seem to opt
against amputation any time a limb is still attached, and it doesn’t
make any sense to me. A vet talks about months of healing time and the
potential that it will never heal at all, and someone goes “okay, yeah,
that sounds good”, but I see all these Youtube video of 3-legged dogs
and cats seeming perfectly happy. Seems to me like healing a shattered
leg is probably rougher on the animal than just removing it. Right?

On the one hand, amputating a leg takes about 2-3 weeks to heal, while healing a fracture takes at least 8. So certainly amputation looks like faster healing time and with potentially less pain depending on how mangled the leg is.

But, if you amputate a leg for injury, you can’t do that again in the future if the animal mangles another leg. If you are talking about a breed prone to arthritis, or an individual with other joint pathology, they may not cope as well on 3 legs as they would have on 4, even if the 4th leg isn’t perfect.

Some people also have very strong aversions to amputating their pet’s limb, which is a fair initial assessment, it is a big deal, or figure they can always try to heal the leg first, and amputate if they can’t get it to heal adequately. You can always change your mind and amputate later.

Sometimes you don’t have a choice, for example if there’s a bone cancer or no nerve function. But if you have the choice, it’s reasonable to try to preserve normal function as much as you can.

Those happy Youtube videos certainly have a place, they’ve vvery helpful in convincing people who were otherwise trying to choose between amputation and euthanasia, but trying to save the leg isn’t unreasonable when you consider the future of that animal. What if it tears its cruciate when it’s only got one hind leg?

Both a bad fracture and an amputation require major surgery, and the initial post-op recovery period is similar for the first 2 weeks or so, but a fracture repair requires more confinement, and possible bandages, for a longer period of time than an amputation does.

cydraulics:

thinking bout Roddy doing his level best to cuddle Megatron. Roddy is sure that in his entire evil life, nobody’s ever held him in their arms because, well… Megatron. It’s not easy, he can’t cover enough surface area. Megatron is way too large and there’s only so much of him. 

tired of Rodimus aggressively starfishing on him, Megatron barks at him cease this. you know I’m capable of mass displacement. and he knows he’s made a huge mistake when Rodimus’s optics dilate until they’re taking up his whole face. his existence is a farce now, just a never-ending series of capitulations to rodimus’s every whim, and the only thing he can do is sigh and wait for Rodimus to tell him how small. 

doyourequirefirstaid:

six-wings:

sniproscope:

doyourequirefirstaid:

*drinking coffee out of a lab beaker* i mean, i require about as much care as any other relatively unkillable species of succulent

[currently drinking a mimosa out of a lab beaker marked “acid”]

succulents are weak organisms doomed to perish in the sunlight they worship. go above that.

become the unkillable virus hiding within tainted soil.

[drinks acid out of a coffee mug] What he said.

…this was more of a metaphor for how it only takes a kind word to keep me going

but i will accept this wisdom, despite the fact that one of you is drinking acid

See, the important part is the STRENGTH of acid. Plenty of things are technically acids without being strong enough to be particularly corrosive. 

glumshoe:

highclass-spacetrash:

jabberwockypie:

glumshoe:

monster-rok:

glumshoe:

glumshoe:

fam-hauser:

glumshoe:

fuck this hotel blanket in particular

What the fuck am I looking at

blanket from hell, texture made of evil

the satin edges are there as a cruel joke to really emphasize just how coarse and scratchy and weirdly dry the rest of the blanket is

Those blankets are fine if they aren’t old. You just don’t know how to properly use a blanket I guess

Yeah, I was under the impression that “using a blanket” involved putting it on a bed, sleeping under it, and occasionally coming into physical contact with it. After encountering many instances of this specific blanket, I have come to the conclusion that the proper way to use a blanket is to:

1.) put on thick rubber gloves to minimize contact with coarse fibers
2.) pick up blanket (carefully!!!)
3.) place blanket into wood chipper 

Honestly I think these particular blankets are woven from the utricating hairs of a tarantula.

Gotta agree with Glumshoe on this one.

I am offended that y’all don’t love these blankets, my baby blanket was this type of blanket like honestly if a baby can live with this type of blanket so can you

Babies cannot eloquently express their displeasure. If babies could write irritated posts on the internet about their least favorite textures, I’m sure they would.

Also, like, sensory issues exist for some people?? 

Given the high probability for things in Jurassic Park to go 100% haywire, would you still take a job there in order to treat a stegosaurus?

drferox:

drferox:

I would most definitely take a job at Jurassic Park, IF I got to make recommendations that would be actually listened to and wouldn’t be fired for swearing. The job of a veterinarian should not be to do what you are told by your employer, it should be to solve problems and advocate for the welfare of the animals in your care.

  • Misuse of the clicker in clicker training will result in the device being inserted somewhere uncomfortable.
  • We are not feeding Jurassic carnivores meat from mammals which they are likely ill-suited to digest and metabolize. We know aquarium fish, which are not adapted to eating mammals, develop cardiac and fat distribution problems if their protein is supplemented with beef so let’s aim for a slightly more ‘natural’ diet of bird and reptile proteins (crocodile, anyone?)
  • Like, seriously, let’s not train a prehistoric reptile, brought back to the modern world with no parents to teach it about food, to see mammals as a source of food. It shouldn’t have any innate instincts to do so, so lets leave well enough alone.
  • In fact, let’s not give them live prey at all. I think not training the dinosaurs to hunt is probably a good idea.
  • Lets get somebody who knows what they’re doing to design enclosures so we can see the animals, and give them enough space to not go stir crazy.
  • While we’re at it, the enclosures for larger animals can have more safety features – bolt holes for humans that the biggest critters can’t fit through,  honestly we even have these in livestock handling facilities, it’s not that hard!
  • We are not going to introduce DNA from modern species which are potentially parthenogenic
  • So, so much quarantine.
  • Some modern reptiles would need to be kept in order to seed the local environment with suitable microflora and microfauna for the dinosaurs to pick up. You might have cloned a dinosaur, but I’d bet dollars for donuts you didn’t clone it’s intestinal flora!
  • Quarantine again. Nothing is getting off the island, and ideally nothing from visitors is contacting anything in the exhibit.
  • Ian Malcom has to walk around being opinionated about everything, and suitably paranoid.
  • The roof of every building gets an evacuation point for a helicopter.
  • The stegosaurs get extra treats.

(Image reads: #there would be fewer catastrophes #and boring movies #but I’m here for this)

Oh no no, we could have the best movie ever.

We just need a really good, enthusiastic, Steve Irwin type character who just thinks these dinosaurs are wonderful, let him do whatever he wants, and make Ian Malcom follow him around.

Steve: This is a T Rex.

Steve: She’s a beauty.

Steve: I’m going to wrestle her.

Ian: I, uh, must politely protest.