#animal researching

[mountain-lion-gremlin]

Just to comment on the recent discourse about researching your species -

YOU DONT.

It cam be helpful, yes, incredibly so. It sucks to not be informed on certain things that may have misled you to thinking you were one thing but you aren't, BUT that doesn't mean that you arent who you say you are because you made a mistake on one or two details.

Ive personally always been someone to heavily research things. If I am researching something I will spend HOURS focusing on it and trying my hardest to get my facts straight. I have an innate fear of getting things wrong lol.

But like listen

I found out i was a cougar one day just because I just knew i was. The only thing I knew about them was they were elusive cats that lived in my area.... and that was from the very basic amount of research i did of animals in my area.

I will always hold research to the highest esteem, and believe it's really helpful for those to connect with your animal. But it's also incredibly daunting of a task, believe me - it took me TWO YEARS to finish my research because it felt like such a big task. Ain't no way you have to do as detailed as I did lol.

All of you are valid whether you do research or not. I know research can be tough to do when you are new to it, and I know what it's like to constantly be scrabbling to want to know as much as possible about yourself and your other side.

Doesnt help that nobody really gives much help on HOW to Research your other side :/

but also I see the point in how important it can to know the basic indicators between animals, so you don't run in circles and can identify what you are feeling. That's why research happens, but that's also why when we get corrected online it is very similar to doing research.

Think of research like teaching yourself through what others have put out there. When someone corrects you, they are also teaching you (don't get me wrong this is flawed logic people do lie but it alerts you of what you MAY have wrong.)

Both of you (I know that it involves at least two blogs but not sure how far it reaches) are sort of on the mark but being a bit extreme about your points :b

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

average United States contains 1000s of pet tigers in backyards" factoid actualy [sic] just statistical error. average person has 0 tigers on property. Activist Georg, who lives the U.S. Capitol & makes up over 10,000 each day, has purposefully been spreading disinformation adn [sic] should not have been counted

I have a big mad today, folks. It's a really frustrating one, because years worth of work has been validated... but the reason for that fucking sucks.

For almost a decade, I've been trying to fact-check the claim that there "are 10,000 to 20,000 pet tigers/big cats in backyards in the United States." I talked to zoo, sanctuary, and private cat people; I looked at legislation, regulation, attack/death/escape incident rates; I read everything I could get my hands on. None of it made sense. None of it lined up. I couldn't find data supporting anything like the population of pet cats being alleged to exist. Some of you might remember the series I published on those findings from 2018 or so under the hashtag #CrouchingTigerHiddenData. I've continued to work on it in the six years since, including publishing a peer reviewed study that counted all the non-pet big cats in the US (because even though they're regulated, apparently nobody bothered to keep track of those either).

I spent years of my life obsessing over that statistic because it was being used to push for new federal legislation that, while well intentioned, contained language that would, and has, created real problems for ethical facilities that have big cats. I wrote a comprehensive - 35 page! - analysis of the issues with the then-current version of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2020. When the bill was first introduced to Congress in 2013, a lot of groups promoted it by fear mongering: there's so many pet tigers! they could be hidden around every corner! they could escape and attack you! they could come out of nowhere and eat your children!! Tiger King exposed the masses to the idea of "thousands of abused backyard big cats": as a result the messaging around the bill shifted to being welfare-focused, and the law passed in 2022.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act created a registry, and anyone who owned a private cat and wanted to keep it had to join. If they did, they could keep the animal until it passed, as long as they followed certain strictures (no getting more, no public contact, etc). Don’t register and get caught? Cat is seized and major punishment for you. Registering is therefore highly incentivized. That registry closed in June of 2023, and you can now get that registration data via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Guess how many pet big cats were registered in the whole country?

97.

Not tens of thousands. Not thousands. Not even triple digits. 97.

And that isn't even the right number! Ten USDA licensed facilities registered erroneously. That accounts for 55 of 97 animals. Which leaves us with 42 pet big cats, of all species, in the entire country.

Now, I know that not everyone may have registered. There's probably someone living deep in the woods somewhere with their illegal pet cougar, and there's been at least one random person in Texas arrested for trying to sell a cub since the law passed. But - and here's the big thing - even if there are ten times as many hidden cats than people who registered them - that's nowhere near ten thousand animals. Obviously, I had some questions.

Guess what? Turns out, this is because it was never real. That huge number never had data behind it, wasn't likely to be accurate, and the advocacy groups using that statistic to fearmonger and drive their agenda knew it... and didn't see a problem with that.

Allow me to introduce you to an article published last week.

This article is good. (Full disclose, I'm quoted in it). It's comprehensive and fairly written, and they did their due diligence reporting and fact-checking the piece. They talked to a lot of people on all sides of the story.

But thing that really gets me?

Multiple representatives from major advocacy organizations who worked on the Big Cat Publix Safety Act told the reporter that they knew the statistics they were quoting weren't real. And that they don't care. The end justifies the means, the good guys won over the bad guys, that's just how lobbying works after all. They're so blase about it, it makes my stomach hurt. Let me pull some excerpts from the quotes.

"Whatever the true number, nearly everyone in the debate acknowledges a disparity between the actual census and the figures cited by lawmakers. “The 20,000 number is not real,” said Bill Nimmo, founder of Tigers in America. (...) For his part, Nimmo at Tigers in America sees the exaggerated figure as part of the political process. Prior to the passage of the bill, he said, businesses that exhibited and bred big cats juiced the numbers, too. (...) “I’m not justifying the hyperbolic 20,000,” Nimmo said. “In the world of comparing hyperbole, the good guys won this one.”

"Michelle Sinnott, director and counsel for captive animal law enforcement at the PETA Foundation, emphasized that the law accomplished what it was set out to do. (...) Specific numbers are not what really matter, she said: “Whether there’s one big cat in a private home or whether there’s 10,000 big cats in a private home, the underlying problem of industry is still there.”"

I have no problem with a law ending the private ownership of big cats, and with ending cub petting practices. What I do have a problem with is that these organizations purposefully spread disinformation for years in order to push for it. By their own admission, they repeatedly and intentionally promoted false statistics within Congress. For a decade.

No wonder it never made sense. No wonder no matter where I looked, I couldn't figure out how any of these groups got those numbers, why there was never any data to back any of the claims up, why everything I learned seemed to actively contradict it. It was never real. These people decided the truth didn't matter. They knew they had no proof, couldn't verify their shocking numbers... and they decided that was fine, if it achieved the end they wanted.

So members of the public - probably like you, reading this - and legislators who care about big cats and want to see legislation exist to protect them? They got played, got fed false information through a TV show designed to tug at heartstrings, and it got a law through Congress that's causing real problems for ethical captive big cat management. The 20,000 pet cat number was too sexy - too much of a crisis - for anyone to want to look past it and check that the language of the law wouldn't mess things up up for good zoos and sanctuaries. Whoops! At least the "bad guys" lost, right? (The problems are covered somewhat in the article linked, and I'll go into more details in a future post. You can also read my analysis from 2020, linked up top.)

Now, I know. Something something something facts don't matter this much in our post-truth era, stop caring so much, that's just how politics work, etc. I’m sorry, but no. Absolutely not.

Laws that will impact the welfare of living animals must be crafted carefully, thoughtfully, and precisely in order to ensure they achieve their goals without accidental negative impacts. We have a duty of care to ensure that. And in this case, the law also impacts reservoir populations for critically endangered species! We can't get those back if we mess them up. So maybe, just maybe, if legislators hadn't been so focused on all those alleged pet cats, the bill could have been written narrowly and precisely.

But the minutiae of regulatory impacts aren't sexy, and tiger abuse and TV shows about terrible people are. We all got misled, and now we're here, and the animals in good facilities are already paying for it.

I don't have a conclusion. I'm just mad. The public deserves to know the truth about animal legislation they're voting for, and I hope we all call on our legislators in the future to be far more critical of the data they get fed.

[fesenmoon]

no fucking way

[psie-smutki]

Goofy tyrannosaurid playing in the snow ☃️

[beemovieerotica]

the cognitive dissonance from people who want the products of modern medicine but get weird about animal research. like im sorry but this is necessary for the survival of the society we currently live in. and the scientists who work on these things are not evil cackling psychopaths. anyone you talk to in animal research has incredibly complex feelings about their work and incredibly complex relationships to the animals in their care. there are regulations and oversight and penalties in place to make the work as humane as possible and scientists are overwhelmingly the ones enforcing and advocating for better care.

[notbrucewayne48]

"aphobia doesn't exist"

bitch literally not that long ago an aroace youtuber animator was insulted by almost half of its community for being it

[amnhnyc]

One small step for leeches, one giant leap for leechkind! For the first time, we have concrete evidence that at least one species of terrestrial leech in Madagascar can jump. Mai’s work is important to conservation efforts because leeches are increasingly being collected to survey vertebrate biodiversity. By analyzing their blood meals, researchers are able to identify other animals living alongside the leeches, ranging from wildcats to frogs to ground-dwelling birds. Read more about Mai's research in our latest blog post.

Have you ever seen a leech jump? Let us know in the comments!

[blackynsupremacy]

black girls,

make the content you want.

i’m serious.

idc if you think it’s gonna flop.

idc if you think you’re a terrible writer or artist.

idc if you believe that character/celebrity/athlete/whoever likes black girls or not. (who cares what the fandom says anyway!)

idc if you’re the first and only one to start that _____ x black reader tag.

make the content you want to see!

do it for you most importantly! (you will inspire others ofc)

in conclusion, you won’t get it if you won’t make it.

[outragedslime]

When the first Archaeopteryx fossils were found, some people thought they were angels. They were right

[encyclopika]

Hi everyone - I am a marine researcher and I'm writing a paper about a fish and it's fishery local to where I live (New York). If you live in the US, and especially if you live in the coastal states between Maine and New Jersey, I would LOVE IT TREMENDOUSLY if you would answer my VERY SHORT survey here:

https://cornell.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d9VO97cruosRmjI

It should take *maybe* two minutes for you to do!

Thank you!!!

[reality-detective]

* * * News Interruption * * *

[alleyesony0u]

i think the sacrificial lamb take on evbo is nice and very cool to play with but might i offer my cent?

evbo is a calf.

there is something inherently holy about the sacrifice of a lamb. it is innocent and pure and you give up its life in worship. there is nothing holy about what the iron swords do to evbo. they open the door, they torture him, they slaughter him. they farm him. cattle are farm animals.

some calves are born to be killed for veal. there are multiple different ways veal calves are raised, with a range in ages at which they are slaughtered for their meat. one process for raising veal calves, which is particularly inhumane (and really quite disgusts me), involves placing the calf in a small pen and feeding it barely sustainable food until it reaches around eighteen weeks old. they are then killed for veal.

there is no worship when it comes to slaughtering the trembling calf staring down the barrel of your gun. you simply watch as it falls limp to the ground, blood pooling beneath its body, before you drag it off to be turned into the meat that sits on your plate.

why would you ever worship the creature that only ever lived to die?

[silversoulsociety]

Kirishima Miyama

Raise wa Tanin ga ii E1

[informationatlas]

Parrots learn to make video calls to chat with other parrots, then develop friendships with each other

Researchers from Northeastern University, in conjunction with scientists from MIT and the University of Glasgow, conducted a study exploring the impact of teaching a group of domesticated birds to communicate using tablets and smartphones. The findings indicate that utilizing video calls may assist parrots in mimicking the communication patterns observed in wild birds, potentially enhancing their behavior and overall well-being in the homes of their owners.

via smithsonianmag.com

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

"What do you mean their name isn't Beef?"

(for @moondal514)