theclasscalico

[theclasscalico]

An aquarium in Japan was closed for renovations, and their resident sunfish got depressed not seeing visitors. So the staff put some uniforms with printed faces against the tank, and it immediately recovered.

[theclasscalico]

Fun fact: there’s a virus that makes bugs iridescent

disease that makes you beautiful then kills you

[theclasscalico]

Psps, I have a Bluesky if anybody is interested. Please be warn that, although the content that I post/repost is mostly light over there as well, I am a wee bit more likely to discuss serious subject matter than I am on this blog.

Also, expect a whole lot of reposted naturalist/nature-themed artwork.

[theclasscalico]

Hey

Hey Americans.

The federal government is about to get useless for at least a bit. This is a GREAT time to get involved in state level environmental orgs. That's where you're gonna be able to do the most for the next few years. Even a bit of casual volunteering can make a big difference.

I've done this off and on for years and when we go local we WIN. And friends winning feels good. This is how a lot of progressive agendas have won in this country. The whole US isn't out of this. People ARE still fighting climate change all around you.

You could be one of those people, in community with other people who are doing something.

doom and gloom "oooh everything is pointless oooh I'm so deep and edgy because I love trying to be the death of hope" people will just get blocked. I'm not talking to your crab-bucket ass.

[theclasscalico]

a commissioned trivet!

one thing I’ve learned from this kind of sgraffito is to start with the foreground

here I start with the collar and chain, then the unicorn, before carving the fence. the shape of whatever is in the foreground should follow the lines of my sketch

(keep in mind it’s a little different if you’re carving away the space around your subject instead of the subject itself)

[theclasscalico]

I'd welcome them.

“When Insects Rule the World” series by Bill Mayer

[theclasscalico]

Thank you for indirectly introducing me to these figures. I ADORE them.

study of this cute winged cat figurine!

[theclasscalico]

Off the coast of Australia Macroctopus caught the shark, wrapped all its tentacles around it and soon released it. Most likely, he scraped all the parasites off her.

[theclasscalico]

[theclasscalico]

I promised you some lions! Let's talk about manes, males, and management.

This is Tandie, the current male lion at the Woodland Park Zoo.

Notice anything odd about him? He's got one of those hilarious awkward teenager manes. Except... this cat is nine years old.

I was, of course, immediately curious.

Manes serve a lot of purposes for male lions, including being an indicator of health and fitness - it's actually a sexually selected trait and a social signal. Mane texture / hair quality / length is dependent on nutrition and the body having energy to grow (and carry around!) that much hair! The color is also a signal: males with darker manes have been found to have higher testosterone levels.

In one research report, wild males were much more likely to avoid a lion decoy when it had a longer or darker mane - but the girls really loved a dark mane. It's thought this is because a long, dark mane is an indicator of mate quality. Males with longer, darker manes have higher testosterone and were pretty healthy: meaning they had more energy for fighting, had a better chance of recovering if they got injured, and generally had a higher rate of offspring survival. Manes matter!

So, back to Tandie. He was actually born at the Woodland Park Zoo in 2014 alongside two brothers, to dad Xerxes and mother Adia.

This was Xerxes (rip).

Obviously, a very large, dark, lush mane on Xerxes here. So where did these blond muttonchops come from on his son?

I asked the zoo docents and got an answer that didn't make a lot of sense. They told me that after the three cubs grew into adolescents, they were moved to the Oakland Zoo together. But living together suppressed his testosterone, and he never grew a mane.

Hmmmm.

Here's a photo from 2016, when the brothers debuted at Oakland. They're a year and a half old in this photo.

(Photo Credit: Oakland Zoo)

And here's from an announcement for their third birthday.

(Photo credit: Oakland Zoo)

Okay, so these dudes obviously all were growing manes as of 2017. I think Tandie is the one on the left in the first photo, and laying down in the middle on the second. What happened?

I was just in the Bay Area for a zoo road trip, of course I went to Oakland and tracked down a docent to ask some questions.

It turns out that shortly after the brothers turned three, they started acting like adult male lions: they started scuffling regularly. It's a normal social thing for male lions to live in groups, called coalitions, but according to my lion experts there's generally a baseline level of some social jostling within them. It wasn't quite clear from what the docent said if they couldn't manage the boys together, or if they just wanted to avoid the scratches and small wounds that result from normal lion behavior. Regardless, they put all three of the boys on testosterone blockers in order to be able to keep them together as a social group.

Now, I don't know a lot about the use of hormone alteration as a form of captive animal management, except in the case of birth control. I don't think it's something that's unethical - there was just a webinar on it that I saw go by - but I don't think it's commonly done with big cats. Lions have kind of complicated reproductive cycles, and for instance, we've been learning that female lions can take much longer to come into estrus again than expected after coming off hormonal birth control.

In males, testosterone blockers (or being neutered) means they lose their manes. This is why a lot of rescues will do a vasectomy on their males instead of a neuter - it allows them to keep their mane and the social signals that accompany it.

Tandie returned home to Woodland Park Zoo after Xerxes passed in early 2022, and the docent told me all of the lions had been off their blockers "for while." I'd guess those things happened around the same time, since bringing the trio down to a duo at Oakland would reduce some of the social tensions.

Hormones are such interesting things, though. One of Tandie's brothers has a full mane again, and the other is still totally mane-less.

As for Tandie, his mane is growing back in, and it looks like he might rival his dad for length and coloration.

He started here, in February:

Yesterday:

What a difference four months (and maybe proximity to a girl) makes!

[theclasscalico]

Please check out Crow Time on Webtoons!

[theclasscalico]

Orb.

Pink Robin (Petroica rodinogaster), male, family Petroicidae, order Passeriformes, SE Australia

Photograph by Deepak Karra

[theclasscalico]

Me researching a special interest.

[theclasscalico]

The eyestalk looks like a long, sauropod-esque neck. I love them.

Oh my god this person found a leopard slug with its eyestalks fused together??? One super long stalk but it still has two eyes on the end. That's the cutest thing in the entire world. And then it had a ton of babies but JUST ONE baby inherited the mutation!!

[theclasscalico]

Potato...

Snot nosed little worm

[theclasscalico]

He's innocent!

[theclasscalico]

Quetzalcoatlus! poised to spear her prey!