#and i love rats

[great-and-small]

The majority of the Earth’s rodents: How do you survive environments with practically zero oxygen, feel no pain, and live for decades when none of the rest of us can???

Naked mole-rats:

[spaceraceart]

au where eggman is some egotistical unethical tech ceo that visits his local coffee shop everyday and harasses the customers and employees, but for some reason the owner is head-over-heels for him and keeps letting him get away with it

[bucket-of-amethyst]

HAPPY NEIL BANGING OUT THE TUNES DAY EVERYONE!!!! 🎹🐀🌈🎶

[snowspot]

hecate 🔪

[reasonsforhope]

"For most people, a rat is at best an unwelcome guest, and at worst, the target of immediate extermination. But in a field clinic in Tanzania, rats are colleagues—heroes even.

Far from a trash bin-dwelling NYC street rat, the African giant pouched rat is docile, intelligent, easier to train than some dogs, and for East Africans, the performer of lifesaving tuberculosis diagnoses every day.

400,000 new cases of tuberculosis (TB) were estimated to have been prevented by these rats, whose sense of smell would make a bloodhound take notice. As [TB is] the number-one killer among infectious diseases worldwide, many of those 400,000 can be translated into lives saved.

“Not only are we saving people’s lives, but we’re also changing these perspectives and raising awareness and appreciation for something as lowly as a rat,” said Cindy Fast, a behavioral neuroscientist who coaches the rodents for the nonprofit APOPO.

“Because our rats are our colleagues, and we really do see them as heroes.”

APOPO uses giant pouched rats to sniff out traces of TB in the saliva of patients. In parts of Tanzania, a saliva smear test under a microscope by a human may only be 20-40% effective at detecting TB.

By contrast, a giant pouched rat like Ms. Carolina, a now-retired service rat who worked for APOPO for 7 years, raised the rates of detection on TB samples by 40% in the clinic where she worked.

Pictured: An APOPO employee with one of their trained rats

It would take 4 days for scientists to analyze the number of samples that Carolina could screen in 20 minutes. For that reason, when Carolina retired last November, a party was thrown at the clinic in her honor, and she was given a cake.

TB is sometimes thought of as a thing of the past—a disease for which doctors used to prescribe “dry air,” leading a modern sense of humor to muse at the antiquated, pre-antibiotic medical advice.

But it remains the number-one cause of death globally from a single infectious pathogen, and Tefera Agizew, a physician and APOPO’s head of tuberculosis, told National Geographic that once people see what the nonprofit’s rodents can do to slow the spread, they “fall in love with them.”

3,000 times in her career did Carolina detect one of the six volatile compounds that can be used to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and she got a hero’s send-off to a special compound to live out the rest of her days with her closet friend and sniffer colleague Gilbert, in a shaded enclosure dubbed “Rat Florida.”

“We’ve made special little rat-friendly carrot cakes with little peanuts and things on it that the rat would enjoy,” Fast said. “Then we all stand around and we clap, and we give three cheers, hip hip hooray for the hero, and celebrate together. It’s really a touching moment.”

APOPO has made headlines for its use of these rats in other lifesaving tasks as well: landmine clearance.

One of the world’s great underreported scourges (a lot like TB, coincidentally) is landmine contamination. There are 110 million landmines or unexploded bombs in the ground right now in about 67 countries, covering thousands of square miles in potential danger. Thousands of civilians are killed or injured by these weapons every year.

GNN reported on APOPO’s demining efforts using pouched rats back in 2020. One rat named Magawa alone identified 39 landmines and 28 items of unexploded ordnance across an area the size of 20 football fields.

If at the start of this story you didn’t like rats, maybe Magawa and Carolina will have changed your mind."

-via Good News Network, March 31, 2025

[star-anise]

I really wonder if trauma theorists who say things like "Humans are the only animal that will be in a fright state when physically safe" or "the rest of the animal kingdom doesn't get PTSD" have ever, like

Do you think they've actually ever met an animal?

[oversizedhoodielovingboi]

Doofus forced to wake up

[inkieflame]

Ren is my favorite content creator. He's gorgeous, he's a geek, he's a theater kid, his world building is amazing, he's adored by lesbians, he accidentally doxed himself on stream once, he "yes and"ed himself into a queer situationship with someone he barely knew at the time (Martyn), he's a furry, he's a king, he's a pirate captain, he's a wet dog and a boyfailer, he's got the undying loyalty of a married man with two daughters (Martyn), he's a freak, he's the coolest person we know, there is NOBODY doing it like this man

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

HOT, SINGLE, UNSTUDIED SPONGES. 3000 NAUTICAL MILES AWAY. Come sail the distance and read Tiger Tiger!

[arkangelo-7]

The dichotomy of Batman and Robin is so fucking funny because on one hand you have a brooding, dramatic millennial with a rigid moral compass and a sense of extensional dread, and on the other you have an emotional support child that is somehow the literal embodiment of both sunshine and straight-up murder.

[ewwww-what]

Ugh. Literally just let her go home???

[dungeonclown]

ye murph spectrum

(he who makes my favorite characters. and cody is there)

[zillychu]

hmmm. I think the mask should also get to be. freaky

[bedupolker]

Just wanted to say, I love your Mouse mom and Rat dad. The artwork gives me Ghibli vibes and love how you draw eyes and expressions.

But I do have a few questions. Does Mariela have/had parents? I recall that her cousin is a grasshopper mouse, so is Mariela adopted? If her parents are still around, how would they react to her being a mother?

Mariella's own mother was sickly and passed away when she was a baby, she doesn't have brothers or sisters which is very unusual for a mouse. Her grandparents raised her and she had aunties and uncles of course but she quietly longs for the mother and siblings she didn't get to have

[namesarehardforme]

[cornysarthours]

They weren’t lying. She really is one bad apple…cookie.

Latest CRK update absolutely bangs. Cant wait for what’s next with this one!