#thinking about animals

[ikrutt]

Duckrabbit moment

@thornpuck's recent concept art made me realize that stone-curlews and hares are basically the same kind of animal.

[gawki]

Royal Pigeon

[cupcakeshakesnake]

Uncaring

[canisalbus]

✦ Fashionably late ✦

[nefelibatat]

So if I were to take away from this moment something deeper than “man Sevika's a freak”, I'd point out that we've seen the same tactic not long before.

What does this say about Caitlyn? She's fighting dirty. She's fighting like a cornered rat. She's fighting like a Zaunite.

And first of all there's hypocrisy. Caitlyn's been calling these people animals and monsters and whatnot but when placed in an identical situation she responds identically. Case in point: getting so mad at Jinx for terrorizing people out of grief that she goes ahead and starts to terrorize people out of grief. Sevika's expression afterwards is mostly “joke's on you I'm into that” but there's some surprise there too — you wouldn't expect that move from a Piltie.

Then there's desperation. Because she needs revenge; she needs it or she'll never ever forgive herself for what happened. So she'll throw away her morals and her dignity and just do whatever it takes to achieve the goal, whether it means chomping on someone like a feral raccoon or becoming a military dictator… which puts her in the same mindset as Zaunites, all of whom are desperate to survive and a lot of whom could never afford morals and dignity in the first place.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

If there was one animal literacy thing I could change with a wave of a wand, it would be increasing people's understanding of how dangerous megafauna are. I think that in the US (and probably other Western countries too), we're so removed from wildlife and even large domesticated animals that people really have no perspective on how much a big animal can fuck you up. Even if they're "gentle."

This is a discussion going on on Twitter, too, the last few days: there was a thing where an Iditarod musher shot a moose to protect their team, and a lot of people are confused as to why that needed to happen. Apparently this moose had been hanging around the course for quite a while and was becoming quite dangerous to the sled dog teams. Moose are territorial and not to be fucked with. Everyone from Alaska or areas with moose are like "yup, that's just reality."

Same thing with the bison birth I watched last year. Folk really thought the staff should be in the habitat on the ground with the bison herd, helping with the birth. Sure, that's what we do with cows if we have to, but... bison are definitely not cows and, again, will squish you.

People tend to get it more with the predators. Few people will argue that a cougar or an alligator or a bear isn't dangerous. I think people kinda go both ways on wild pigs / boars depending on their experience. But herbivores or things that don't look traditionally pointy... it just kinda doesn't click.

Any large animal is probably stronger than you think and more likely to hurt you than you realize. Be it a dolphin, an elk, a sea lion, or even an emperor penguin... just don't go near them, buds.

[doctorsiren]

OBJECTION! - Ace Attorney, but in Legos that I 3D modeled myself

[dunmeshistash]

One of the things I really appreciate about Dungeon Meshi is how the text is so clearly full of love for animals. Like the true kind of love Laios feels for the monster where he wants to know everything about them, but most of all he respects them and loves them as animals.

One of the chapters I can't stop thinking about is the one about Anne the Kelpie. It's kind of impressive how well it illustrates the different kind of love people have for animals. And how someone that loves an animal isn't necessarily an animal lover. If that makes sense.

When Senshi calls out Anne what he says is "Don't worry Anne's Harmless" but she isn't, she's a wild animal.

Marcille immediately reacts positively about it thinking it's cute she accepts the treat Senshi has for her. And hers and Chilchuck's reaction to Senshi wanting to cross the river on her back is more surprise while Laios immediately realizes how bad of an idea it is.

But Laios is the animal monster lover so how come when he finally is faced with a "docile" monster he doesn't react positively like the others? Marcille even calls him a monster. That's because Laios loves monsters, and Senshi loves Anne.

I've seen this attitude around me several times, where people love a specific animal but what they love is their idea of that animal, they don't really know them because they don't love the animal part of them.

It becomes a "this one is special because I love them" that can quickly become an issue for the animal as much as it is for the person. It's something unfortunate I see time and time again irl.

Anne wasn't wicked, Anne wasn't mean, Anne didn't trick him. Anne was a wild animal and Senshi loved her as Anne but not as a kelpie.

She acted on instinct, maybe she did love Senshi in the way kelpies can love, but animals are still animals and must be respected and treated as such. Climbing on top of Anne's back was the equivalent of putting your arm inside a alligator's mouth, the mouth is gonna close because that's what they're designed to do.

The real life equivalent I see the most of "I love this animal but I don't love the animal part of them" is with dogs. If you insist on loving an animal without acknowledging they ARE an animal they might hurt you, you might hurt them, it will only end in grief.

The best way you can love an animal is by understanding they're an animal.

That is all to say I don't mean that the love Senshi felt for Anne wasn't real or that it's all his fault. He couldn't have known with the information he had and unfortunately it came down to the worst outcome.

I just love dungeon meshi dearly.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Hey now, Let her cook!

[baconplasm]

Very excited for his anime debut

[sparrowlucero]

The greatest injustice ever faced is that I almost certainly started the still thriving "clown husbandry" tag on here, but any discussion about it (from a know your meme page to a youtube video with 500k views) says it's a joke of "unknown origin" or credited to this post, likely bouncing off of mine (which was actively circulating at the time with like 30k notes):

This is a tragedy for many reasons, most of all because it wasn't just an offhand joke but actually a direct response to some of the funniest online hate I ever got:

They're erasing the truest history of tumblr: its desperate need to seethe and argue over every obvious joke with more than 10 notes.

anyways here is the canonical pet clown. according to me

[chloesimaginationthings]

Vanny is actually pretty scary in FNAF..

[anneliis18]

definitelynottober day 5 - heavy is the hunger

[valtsv]

humanising a machinegirl by treating her like a person: based

"humanising" a machinegirl by turning her into a generically pretty waify anime girl: killing you with a hammer until you are dead

[cozylittleartblog]

not that we didn't already Know belos was full of shit, but it's even funnier knowing the titan was still alive the whole time and probably judging him

[miasma-my-asthma]

I wonder if other animals that dont have a very good sense of smell like dogs, and depends mostly on vision to perceive the world like we do (most birds like eagles and stuff for example) can tell each other apart by sight alone just like us. Like, we can differentiate each other by sight alone without much effort by noticing a wide range of things in someone's appearence: height, width, hair shape and color, nose shapes, lip shapes, skin color, scars wrinkles etc, those things are very apparent and obvious to us.

But a lot of animals arent as explicitely different visually for us, if I showed you an specific white sheep named betty and 5 minutes later asked if you could tell which sheep of the 30 white sheeps in the flock was her, most of us would struggle to tell if we didnt noticed a really specific discerning detail from her like a scar or a really dirty part of her wool. I wonder if its easy for those sheep to immediatly tell each other apart and notice each one's uniqueness. I wonder if the seagulls can notice and recognize another seagull they saw last week flying in the distance.