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It's the home stretch for supporting Science Education

Oh hi. It's me again, the squid biologist on a mission to make it easier for people to connect with science. I run a small nonprofit called Skype a Scientist! We match scientists with classrooms, scout troops, robotics clubs, libraries, and more for virtual Q&As about science. We serve 4000-5000 classrooms every year! We offer this FOR FREE. We also run the tumblr-coded Squid Facts Hotline.

To support our program in 2025, we're selling FROG FACTS advent calendars. Every day you can scratch-off the sparkles to reveal facts about frogs! Please buy one! They're cute and fun and help me give science education away for free.

I unfortunately haven't gotten any grants to support our program for 2025, BUT!! these advent calendars are helping us keep the lights on! If you already bought one, THANK YOU! If you have shared a post about these calendars, that has been INCREDIBLY helpful. If you can't help us financially, reposting is so so helpful!

If you want to support our program, you can donate directly here. We're a 501.c.3 so if you live in the US, donations are tax deductible!

You can also read about our work in detail in our 2023 annual report here!

Thank you all for your support 💕🦑💕

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i hate viruses so fucking much. literally getting attacked by a fucking shape. a concept. consumes no energy. responds to no stimuli. its only existence is to fuck with you. like fuck offf

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I also want bugs please

ive gotten maybe 200 trick-or-treat asks so far which conjures the imagery of my front door being swarmed with children while i desperately throw bugs and yell "TRICK!!! TRICK!!!!"

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The only thing scary about Halloween this year are these temperatures! Ha ha ha! *pulls the mic close* I'm going to start killing oil executives

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Bobcat with an interesting bite! Custom clean for a customer.

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I was walking on a rather remote beach when I came upon this Whip eel drying up in the sun. These are intertidal eels that can actually handle themselves out of water for a bit, but it’s not normal for them to be fully exposed in direct sunlight like this. The tide was at least six hours from coming in and I felt like this eel was in distress, so I made the decision to dig him out and return to the ocean. His body was too delicate to be simply pulled from the hole without injury, so I got to digging.

This endeavor took about 40 minutes as the eel was quite long and difficult to excavate. Also had to continually refill my temporary eel pond to keep him from drying out entirely while I worked.

If you are an eel aficionado like myself, please enjoy this silly little video of the relocation process set to some jaunty royalty-free disco music.

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My son!

Do you currently have a pet that isn't a mammal?

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MY SON!

Do you currently have a pet that isn't a mammal?

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It was indeed a batfam fic

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When I was in vet school I went to this one lecture that I will never forget. Various clubs would have different guest lecturers come in to talk about relevant topics and since I was in the Wildlife Disease Association club I naturally attended all the wildlife and conservation discussions. Well on this particular occasion, the speakers started off telling us they had been working on a project involving the conservation of lemurs in Madagascar. Lemurs exist only in Madagascar, and they are in real trouble; they’re considered the most endangered group of mammals on Earth. This team of veterinarians was initially assembled to address threats to lemur health and work on conservation solutions to try and save as many lemur species from extinction as possible. As they explored the most present dangers to lemurs they found that although habitat loss was the primary problem for these vulnerable animals, predation by humans was a significant cause of losses as well. The vets realized it was crucial for the hunting of lemurs by native people to stop, but of course this is not so simple a problem.

The local Malagasy people are dealing with extreme poverty and food insecurity, with nearly half of children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. The local people have always subsisted on hunting wildlife for food, and as Madagascar’s wildlife population declines, the people who rely on so-called bushmeat to survive are struggling more and more. People are literally starving.

Our conservation team thought about this a lot. They had initially intended to focus efforts on education but came to understand that this is not an issue arising from a lack of knowledge. For these people it is a question of survival. It doesn’t matter how many times a foreigner tells you not to eat an animal you’ve hunted your entire life, if your child is starving you are going to do everything in your power to keep your family alive.

So the vets changed course. Rather than focus efforts on simply teaching people about lemurs, they decided to try and use veterinary medicine to reduce the underlying issue of food insecurity. They supposed that if a reliable protein source could be introduced for the people who needed it, the dependence on meat from wildlife would greatly decrease. So they got to work establishing new flocks of chickens in the most at-risk communities, and also initiated an aggressive vaccination program for Newcastle disease (an infectious illness of poultry that is of particular concern in this area). They worked with over 600 households to ensure appropriate husbandry and vaccination for every flock, and soon found these communities were being transformed by the introduction of a steady protein source. Families with a healthy flock of chickens were far less likely to hunt wild animals like lemurs, and fewer kids went hungry. Thats what we call a win-win situation.

This chicken vaccine program became just one small part of an amazing conservation outreach initiative in Madagascar that puts local people at the center of everything they do. Helping these vulnerable communities of people helps similarly vulnerable wildlife, always. If we go into a country guns-blazing with that fire for conservation in our hearts and a plan to save native animals, we simply cannot ignore the humans who live around them. Doing so is counterintuitive to creating an effective plan because whether we recognize it or not, humans and animals are inextricably linked in many ways. A true conservation success story is one that doesn’t leave needy humans in its wake, and that is why I think this particular story has stuck with me for so long.

(Source 1)

(Source 2- cool video exploring this initiative from some folks involved)

(Source 3)

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the experience of animal in your house never gets old. fuck yes dude there's an animal in here. did you guys know about the animal

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i deserve to be an eel. in a crevice with a bunch of other eels. opening and closing our mouths over and over

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Leg

Leg

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it’s gardening season! please don’t plant lettuces/greens directly into the ground in an urban area or close to a building without getting a soil test. the risk of lead poisoning is very high. if you can’t afford a soil test and you must plant into the ground, try to grow something where you will only be eating the fruit and not the leaves & stems (i.e. tomatoes, cucumbers, etc) bc there’s less of a chance that heavy metals will migrate to the fruit tissues. better yet, build a raised bed or plant in pots!

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Sometimes I think Tumblr is functional and then it goes and proves me wrong

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Glue Traps and Why They Suck

⚠️ CW: Animal Cruelty and Death ⚠️

I saw a terrible video a few hours ago. Throughout the video, five or six mice and a snake were stuck to a glue trap and died a very slow, painful death over the course of a few days. It was horrible to watch but what was worse to see were all the comments cheering for it.

Glue traps are an incredibly inhumane type of pest control. They work by using a very sticky glue that traps animals such as rats, mice, snakes, bugs, and other small critters. The animals don't die immediately. Instead, they suffer and die a painful death of starvation and exhaustion. There have even been cases of them chewing through their own limbs in an attempt to escape.

These traps also end up trapping many animals other than the intended targets. There have been cases of harmless snakes being caught in traps intended for spiders, birds being caught in traps intended for insects, and even some threatened and endangered species being caught.

With all these awful consequences, you'd think that the traps would have to at least work well. Nope. Glue traps have been proven to have little to no affect on infestations as they don't target and address the source of the problem. People have also reported being bitten by some of the animals stuck to the trap while trying to dispose of the traps.

If you do have a problem with infestations or pests, there are so many better options out there. You can call a local professional to relocate animals, use humane traps that don't kill the animal, or even those that offer a quick death. I'm against killing animals as a general rule but at least a quick death would be better than these cruel and inhumane contraptions.