great-and-small

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Hi! Long time follower and saw your post about Florida animals and I was actually there in the middle of February! It was amazing and I actually saw a bunch of animals that you don’t see here in California! We even went to a state park called Homosassa Springs. 10/10 would recommend going to Florida to just see animals.

I’m so excited you were able to come visit Florida! I myself am dying to make a trip to California to see redwoods and go looking for a chance to see the California Condor. Y’all have some truly spectacular flora and fauna out west 🤩

You were in Homosassa Springs in peak manatee season so I really hope you got a chance to see our charming state mammal (marine). If you missed them, you’ll just have to add that to the bucket list next time you’re back!

Thank you for appreciating our awesome critters <3

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A nine month old filly named Olwina, recorded by @merilver. From what I can tell she’s a Friesian x Comtois x Menorquín cross.

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some florida scrub jays i forgot to post!!!! getting to meet these guys was such an honor, they have been one of my bucket list species for years!!!!

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How many studies have been done on heron intelligence? There's records of multiple species fishing with bait, they seem pretty smart but never get included in pop sci conversations on avian intelligence

I’m not sure if I can think of an experimental study on heron intelligence specifically but I know there are plenty of observational studies describing the bait luring you mentioned as well as other behaviors we humans like to associate with intelligence, like play activity, tool use, and problem solving. I personally feel that a black heron’s canopy feeding behavior is one of the most remarkable displays of practical intelligence in the animal kingdom! The best place to explore this literature imo is HeronConservation.org which is an amazing resource for any Ardeidae enthusiasts. They have tons of fully accessible articles from their journal (Journal of Heron Biology and Conservation) and the website is just very visually nice to look at and easy to navigate while also being extremely informative! Here’s an article from their website about a heron using a stick as a fishing lure, super good stuff on this site.

As for me, while I completely agree that herons are underrated for their smarts, the more I think about our concept of intelligence in animals the more I struggle to confidently declare one species of wild animal smarter than another. As world-renowned crane expert George Archibald said on crane intelligence “Sure, if you put them in front of a computer they don’t do much, but if I dropped you on the tundra in spring you wouldn’t do much either. It’s all relative”. If a toad has evolved a brain that perfectly serves its purposes in regard to being a toad, is it really fair to say that toad is less intelligent than something like a dog? Either way, the toad doesn’t care because it’s perfect at being a toad.

That said, it is curious that herons aren’t often included in popsci discussions of bird intelligence (which are in my experience nearly dominated by the ever-popular corvids). I would say herons are probably one of the families of birds that most people around the globe have some opportunity to witness their hunting behavior, which is where their intelligence shines the most. It would be hard for anyone to watch a heron fishing or stalking and come away completely unimpressed. Back in the day, people used to think that Great Blue Herons excreted a fish-attracting oil from their legs as they thought this was the only reasonable explanation for a heron’s spectacular success when fishing. But nope, they really are just that good! I suppose the type of practical intelligence and hunting adaptations that we see in herons are maybe not as flashy as stuff like crows voting to make group decisions, but I agree that the herons deserve a little more attention!

One last little story on the complex inner lives of herons just because I think you’ll like it- a British biologist named Julian Huxley was studying herons in Louisiana in the 1920’s and specifically observing the courtship displays of tricolored herons. He recounted seeing two courting birds suddenly in perfect synchronicity lift their wings and call out, then intertwine their necks in a graceful movement as they preened one another’s feathers. Huxley’s comment on seeing this display is a quote I think about all the time:

“Of this I can only say that it seemed to bring such a pitch of emotion that I could have wished to be a Heron that I might experience it."

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Please enjoy this delightfully ridiculous mating display from a Snowy Egret in peak breeding plumage. That signature gurgling call you can hear at the start of the video is one of my favorite noises in the animal kingdom! This is maybe the best time of year to go birding where I live as the swamps and wetlands are simply electric with activity and life. Everywhere you turn your head there is something remarkable to behold.

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happy neil banging out the tunes day!

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When I was in vet school we had a Good Samaritan bring in a critically injured gopher tortoise that had been nearly crushed by a vehicle. Her injuries were severe enough that we were not able to save her and she passed away. However, one of the residents realized the turtle was gravid with a large number of eggs. We removed the that were viable and placed them in a medical incubator where they were checked on daily. A few weeks later we had dozens of baby gopher tortoises and were able to release them near where their momma had been headed to lay her eggs.

If you can, please always get that injured turtle to someone that can help. You never know what will happen when you give animals a fighting chance!

I wish every turtle who must cross a road a very safe journey.

I saw a box turtle crossing a highway this morning and my heart dropped. It’s that time of the year again.

If it’s safe for you to help a turtle cross the road, make sure to move them in the direction they were already going in.

If it’s a snapping turtle only touch the back 1/2 or 1/3 of its shell, you can pinch the carapace above their legs or put one hand on the plastron and one on the carapace (like a pizza box). Just don’t grab behind their head, not all snapping turtles are alligator snapping turtles and that’s a good way to lose a finger.

If you find a turtle on the side of the road that has been hit (even if it appears dead) please note your coordinates and check for local rehabbers. Turtles will survive things that no animal should. Even if it’s not survivable, they will stay alive and suffer a gruesome death without someone to help them go peacefully. Sometimes they look dead but aren’t. Either way, if you can bring them to someone to check them out and help, it’s worth it.

Turtles are too good for this world man. Please help keep them safe

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Via TheFlyGuy

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I am really hoping that they specifically address this whenever they officially get the paper on this project published. Lots of people are saying it’s just for the Game of Thrones connection which is particularly silly considering only one dire wolf in that franchise is white and that wolf is canonically albino.

I will probably not have a fully developed opinion on the entirety of this project until a publication comes out but I do find Colossal’s morphological definition of the species extremely goofy. Especially if it turns out their idea of what a dire wolf looked like was influenced by pop culture.

This is unrelated to anything else with the silly “Dire Wolf” controversy but them putting these images in all the articles give me the weirdest uncanny valley discomfort. Like it is hard for me to take these photos seriously. Do you know why?

Wolf pups just do not look like that. Because wolves typically have their pups in underground dens, it is an evolutionary advantage for the vulnerable pups to blend in with the dark earth of the den. If they were born white, they’d be sharply contrasted and easier for predators to spot. Even arctic wolves are born dark and gain their typical white coat a little later (though not all arctic wolves are white either).

Fun fact in Game of Thrones they used domestic dogs to play the dire wolf pups; puppy Ghost is cute but he’s clearly no wolf!

Giving birth to pups that are darkly colored is a pretty basic adaptation in a lot of canids that litter underground. Red foxes and arctic foxes are also born a very nondescript shade of dirt. Exceptions exist, but this is just a thing that a lot of wild canines do. Here are various canids (red fox, Ethiopian wolf, maned wolf, and African wild dog) that do this

I don’t know if we have any proof that dire wolves had their pups in dens but it would be kind of weird if they didn’t. So even if the dire wolf had a light coat as an adult they would likely still be born with a darker color to act as camouflage.

So when I keep getting this image

blasted on all my feeds you can understand why my brain has trouble registering it even as a gray wolf pup. It’s just weird. It looks like what chat gpt would spit out if you requested an arctic wolf pup. That thing would stand out like crazy in an underground den. You can make something look like something else all you want but the evolutionary history of a species is too complicated for us to ever faithfully recreate from scratch.

[great-and-small]

This is unrelated to anything else with the silly “Dire Wolf” controversy but them putting these images in all the articles give me the weirdest uncanny valley discomfort. Like it is hard for me to take these photos seriously. Do you know why?

Wolf pups just do not look like that. Because wolves typically have their pups in underground dens, it is an evolutionary advantage for the vulnerable pups to blend in with the dark earth of the den. If they were born white, they’d be sharply contrasted and easier for predators to spot. Even arctic wolves are born dark and gain their typical white coat a little later (though not all arctic wolves are white either).

Fun fact in Game of Thrones they used domestic dogs to play the dire wolf pups; puppy Ghost is cute but he’s clearly no wolf!

Giving birth to pups that are darkly colored is a pretty basic adaptation in a lot of canids that litter underground. Red foxes and arctic foxes are also born a very nondescript shade of dirt. Exceptions exist, but this is just a thing that a lot of wild canines do. Here are various canids (red fox, Ethiopian wolf, maned wolf, and African wild dog) that do this

I don’t know if we have any proof that dire wolves had their pups in dens but it would be kind of weird if they didn’t. So even if the dire wolf had a light coat as an adult they would likely still be born with a darker color to act as camouflage.

So when I keep getting this image

blasted on all my feeds you can understand why my brain has trouble registering it even as a gray wolf pup. It’s just weird. It looks like what chat gpt would spit out if you requested an arctic wolf pup. That thing would stand out like crazy in an underground den. You can make something look like something else all you want but the evolutionary history of a species is too complicated for us to ever faithfully recreate from scratch.

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sorry to be like this and I'm very much not loving it, but tumblr loses around 30M a year. divided by the cost of yearly subscriptions, it means half a million ish people on premium undoes that loss. I saw stats claiming more than 300M users. That sounds super not right since even the sacred texts don't often cross 1M notes. I know there are around 12M posts a day. Yeah, yeah, we post multiple times a day, but there's a quantity of lurkers out there, and I'm trying to goldilocks a number to do math without having real data to pull from, leave me be.

If there are 12M users, it needs around 4% of users. If there really are 300M (still don't believe this) it would be .16%

You know what portion of Spotify is paid accounts? 40% ish (can't find data from the last year)

But, because we are the worst, and so probably will end up with a sundowning social platform... If someone knows of another platform that has this kind of reblog with added comments that doesn't put your comment first, lmk, cause every alternative someone has suggested aint been it for me. Bluesky and pillowfort aint it. TT is video based. Reddit is.... almost? except that there's a reason we got refugees.

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Great egret doing a great scratch

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I don't know. I just don't know

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That is fantastic camouflage on those eggs! I genuinely love how fearless and tough killdeer are; they’re absolutely unflappable. Hopefully you’re able to keep the horses away from the nest for everyone’s sake 😅

@great-and-small the killdeer kept pestering the horses and I discovered the cause. I can't believe how big their eggs are!! and so cleverly disguised

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Ya know, I think the birds who live in Alaska during the summer and Florida during the winter are on to something

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I was very pleased to spot this younger gopher tort hanging out around his charmingly sized burrow.

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It’s a very special day 🥹

I’m a simple creature I see @great-and-small gopher tortoise posts and I hit reblog