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alithographica:

I chose to draw an impaled insect to keep the image relatively tame, but there are some gnarly photos of impaled lizards and mice out there. They’re easily found on Google if you’re curious.

Fun only-tangentially-related fact: Parrots also have a slight tomial tooth.

Extra fun fact: Falcons are more related to parrots than they are to hawks and eagles. (Falcons and parrots are still very distant, but a weird finding nonetheless!)

Transcript below the cut.

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If you ever find barbed wire or a thornbush or something like that with small animals impaled on it, it’s probably one of these guys responsible. They usually kill their prey before impaling it, the impaling is just to keep it out of reach of thieves for later. Also for the reasons listed above. 

Also, loggerhead shrikes are little round guys and are far cuter than you’d expect them to be.

arahir:

so just in general with fandom, but good life advice, too, is: if you pay for a zine or product or service and it never gets sent and oh… say it turns out their art account is actually a sockpuppet for a known scammer with 30k+ followers, call your credit card company and cancel the charge. they will go after the scammer directly and return you your money immediately. please don’t put up with being treated that way. fandom economy is the wild wild west right now, but you do have recourse. likewise, artists, keep receipts of services delivered and accepted because i know people have tried the reverse (cancelling charges on legit deals) as well.

It annoys me to no end when people say animals are mean for no reason. One time I was talking to someone in class about groundhogs (I just think they’re cool) and this girl sitting next to us said “Groundhogs are actually really evil. There was one in my backyard with her babies and I walked towards them and the mom started hissing at me.” And it’s like …how does that make them evil. She was protecting her babies.

zoologicallyobsessed:

It’s amazing how little empathy people have towards animals and how little knowledge they have of animal behaviour. 

There’s so many people with comments like “Oh i was sleeping and it stung me for no reason!” like no dude, it was trapped in your room got frightened and stung you in your sleep, or landed on you and you rolled over or touched it while sleeping causing it to sting you or a million other reasons. 

Wasps don’t have the capability (that we know of) to go “I’m going to sting this person for zero reason cause I’m a wasp.” Animals don’t think or behave like that.

I’ve only been stung by a bee/wasp/etc once, and that was because I somehow got a bee in my shoe. Not shockingly, it didn’t like that. I’m actually not even sure it stung me on purpose- it was a honeybee, but there was no stinger in the sting. I think it might have scraped me with its stinger instead of actually stinging. Is it possible for that to raise a welt like a sting would? 

I’ve gotten up close to plenty of hives and nests, and if you move kinda calmly, you can usually get moderately close. Plus, if you watch them, they warn you that you’re too close. They buzz louder and move faster and clearly display that you gotta go. 

Stinging costs venom, energy, and risk. For a honeybee, it costs that worker’s life. They always, always have a reason to spend that energy, effort, and venom.

Finally, “evil” implies intentional malice. For something to be evil, it has to understand that it’s causing significant distress, and continue doing that, for no other reason than to cause distress. I can think of a very few animal species which are maybe, maybe intelligent enough to be capable of that, and most of them are things like cetaceans and elephants. Definitely not groundhogs or any sort of invertebrate. An animal can be needlessly aggressive if made to be by genetics or circumstance, but animals are incapable of evil.

a-fragile-sort-of-anarchy:

radio-girl1:

@pizzafallon

I want this as an aquarium. Not even for the coffin thing, that’s just a great shape and size. Put a big piece of driftwood in, with a wide, branching, preferably root-y end in the wide part and a long projection towards the narrow bit, and it’d look amazing. Discus might look nice but are too tricky for me. Native fish, maybe? 

Or go with the death thing and keep, say, ghost catfish, longfin black skirt tetras (they look like veils), and I’m sure a few other possibilities of X-ray-lookin’ fish and spooky shadowy bois. Put an entire skeleton (though maybe not a human one, not sure about realism) in there. 

Did you know a lot of large weevils have such tough shells that people who want to pin them for collections have to use a tiny drill to get through the elytra? You physically cannot push a pin through the elytra with your bare hands, nor with any thimble-related efforts. I tried to pin one, and I kid you not, I bent pins on that thing. I finally just held it in place with two pins across its body because I didn’t have a tiny enough drill bit.

zoologicallyobsessed:

Yep! Hence why I do not have any weevils in my taxidermy insect collection yet.  have a hard enough time pinning beetles and getting them soft enough to pin through the elytra let alone with weevils and I’d be worried I’d ruin it if I tried to drill through it.

It works pretty well to just place them firmly against the foam underneath and pin them with two pins crossing over the junction between thorax and abdomen. They aren’t all nicely pinned through, but it holds them in place. 

You could probably also relax one, spread the elytra and wings, and pin it unusually low on the body, through the abdomen, avoiding the elytra entirely. Beetle wing spreading takes some practice, but it can make nice displays. Start with cockroaches as easy-to-get practice bugs. Lift the elytra up and out, spread the wing underneath (you’ll need tweezers) until it’s fully spread and in a mostly natural position, trap it that way, and wait. 

Semi-related question: is it really taxidermy, since it’s just a dead thing without anything else? I feel like it’s not taxidermy just like a mummified mouse or a clean animal skull isn’t taxidermy. Taxidermy is stuffing an animal hide to make it look lifelike. I always see dried insects referred to as taxidermy, but I feel like that’s not the right word for it. I’m just not sure what other word to use, aside from “pinned”. 

fuzipenguin:

dirtydragonthoughts:

fizzy-dog:

damianwaynesuggestions:

Friendly reminder that if your furry friends get scared In thunderstorms you should try and comfort them or better yet get them a thunder coat, or just hug them really tight, whatever you do remember that they have feelings too and if you can help them, do.

i thought this post was about furries and i’m fucking sobbing

If you guys ever need hugs, let me know. ❤

@duncandahusky @keialaar

If this is truly about dogs in thunderstorms:

Actually… thunder shirts, yes. Otherwise, you should ignore them. The more you comfort and coo at them the more you are reinforcing the anxiety behavior. Unless they are hurting themselves, another animal, or really destroying something important, leave them alone. Let them hide behind the toilet or in the bathtub, whatever it is they want to do. If it’s curled up in your lap or on top of your head (I’m speaking from personal experience on that one), still ignore them- don’t talk to them or acknowledge them as much as possible.

nanonaturalist:

In celebration of my HAVING INTERNET AT HOME, allow me to share one of my new babies.

This is a Walnut Sphinx caterpillar. They scream when you touch them. It’s to scare off birds. It works on humans too.

October 18, 2018

I found one of these once! Only I didn’t know they could do that.

Lemme tell ya, trying to pick up the seemingly innocuous caterpillar on the sidewalk, only to have it shriek and wrap around your finger, is very startling.