vulture-cultist

[vulture-cultist]

Back with the Black-footed Ferret

The black-footed ferret, also known as the American polecat or the prairie dog hunter (Mustela nigripes) is a species of mustelid native to central North America; its historical range stretched from southern Canada to northern Mexico. Its habitat overlaps with that of prairie dogs, and largely consists of prairie, scrubland, and steppe environments.

Black-footed ferrets rely on grasslands for food, and the average adult maintains a territory of 148 acres (60 ha). They are highly solitary, and both males and females will fiercely defend their space from other ferrets. Within this range, the prairie dog hunter feeds almost exclusively on prairie dogs; when prairie dogs aren't available, their diet is supplemented with mice, squirrels, and rabbits. Adults hunt mainly at night, and during the day they will shelter in abandoned prairie dog burrows. While fearsome fighters, both adults and kits are vulnerable to predation from birds of birds of prey, owls, coyotes, badgers, foxes, and bobcats.

Though they generally are not social, American polecats do interact with other polecats once a year to mate, generally in March or April. Females will actively seek out and entice males, and individuals with both sexes likely mate with multiple partners. After mating, the female returns to her territory, and after a 45 day pregnancy she gives birth to a litter of 1-6 kits. The young are blind and deaf at birth, but grow quickly and are weaned at about 6 weeks old. In the fall, they leave their mother to establish their own territories, and reach full maturity by the following year. Adults can live up to 12 years in the wild.

Both male and female black-footed ferrets have similar appearances. Like other ferrets, they have an elongated body and triangular head, to better help them squeeze into small burrows in search of prey. The paws, the tip of the tail, and patches around the eyes are marked in black; the rest of the body is tan, russet, or brown with a light cream underbelly. The average adult measures 50 cm (19.7 cm) long and weighs 650 g (1.43 lb); females are slightly smaller than males.

Conservation status: M. nigripes is considered Engangered by the IUCN. Threats come from habitat destruction and the decimation of their primary food source, as well as human-introduced disease. There is only one known wild population left, though there are a number of captive-bred populations in zoos and reintroduction programs. One group, currently run by Native Americal tribal biologists, is raising funds to continue their work restoring black-footed ferrets to their native habitats (April 18, 205).

Photos

Clyde Nishimura

J. Michael Lockhart

Chris Prague

[vulture-cultist]

iNaturalist is truly such a win for autism

[vulture-cultist]

your world really does get bigger when you love bugs/inverts. I can't remember how long ago, but at some point I made the conscious decision to start learning as much as I could and making a point of noticing and appreciating them and it fills your whole day with pleasant surprises! I woke up this morning and saw a tiny pseudoscorpion on my wall and immediately thought WOW a little guy!!! he's visiting!!!!

[vulture-cultist]

Vernal Fairy Shrimp (Eubranchipus vernalis), family Chirocephalidae, order Anostraca, NE US

note the egg sacs, full of eggs.

photographs by Twan Leenders

[vulture-cultist]

collectes my bug drawings and made a stickerpack mostly cuz i myself wanted to have some bug stickers :)

[vulture-cultist]

Dinosaur Paintings of Charles R Knight

Brontosaurus and Diplodocus, 1897 Laelaps, 1897 Triceratops, 1901 Hadrosaurus, 1897

[vulture-cultist]

Cavity-nesting birds decorate with snake skin to deter predators

When a bird drapes its nest with snake skin, it isn’t just making an interesting home décor choice. For some birds, it keeps predators at bay.

Researchers combined new and historical data to show birds that nest in cavities – covered nests with small openings – are more likely to use shed snake skins in their construction than birds that build open-cup nests, and this practice helps deter predators from eating the eggs. “What do snakes eat? They eat a lot of mice and small mammals,” said Vanya Rohwer, senior research associate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and lead author of “The Evolution of Using Shed Snake Skin in Bird Nests,��� published Dec. 17 in the journal The American Naturalist...

Read more: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/01/cavity-nesting-birds-decorate-snake-skin-deter-predators

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Mexican treehopper, Membracis mexicana, Membracidae

Photos by magazhu

[vulture-cultist]

oh another fun buddhism thing, bugs are in a kind of purgatory, where it's very difficult to accrue enough karma to reincarnate out of the bug realm, so when you see a bug you're supposed to say a prayer for it to help it gain karma. also, i say a lot of prayers for my cats, because they are so selfish and badly behaved that i'm almost certain they're going to be reincarnated as dust mites or something.

[vulture-cultist]

"Fears that Nebraska’s annual spring migration of sandhill cranes could be the avian equivalent of a “superspreader” event have been completely abated, as a record-setting stopover in Nebraska of thousands of birds was enjoyed without any sign of a bird flu outbreak.

Three-quarters of a million cranes migrating north to their spring habitat landed in the Platte River in Nebraska. The number is deemed an underestimation, but you try counting more than 700,000 birds.

Fears that the highly contagious new strain of bird flu H5N1 could carry over to the cranes from livestock have been assuaged as the birds are beginning to move off again without a single dead crane being observed, local news reports.

Aside from the mini celebration of bird flu’s absence, the real celebration—that this year was the largest on-record for the sandhill crane migration—can begin.

The official estimate of 738,000 animals was made during aerial surveys by the Crane Trust, a nonprofit whose raison d’etre is to protect these magnificent birds and this unforgettable spectacle.

Pictured: Crane migration in Nebraska

These cranes have been visiting an 80-mile-long stretch of the Platte River, braided in some sections, for 9 million years, which these days lies between the towns of Chapman and Overton, Nebraska.

“What makes the central Platte River valley attractive to sandhill cranes is the river that we help manage,” says Matt Urbanski, a spokesman for the Crane Trust, to KSNB’s Madison Smith. “We will make sure that there’s not a ton of vegetation choking the river out. We’ll make sure that it can widen, so the sandhill cranes have six to eight inches of water to sit in during the nighttime.”

The sandhill crane stands between 3 and 4 feet tall, and is easily identifiable for its crown of red feathers and their rattling bugle-like call. It is one of only 2 species of crane that live in North America...

Interestingly, though the cranes have visited this site for eons, they did so even before there was a river there. Additionally, they now spend much of their time feeding on spare corn kernels leftover from nearby harvests, and spend the night standing in the water where they’re safe from predators.

Arrivals and departures are staggered over several weeks, but at peak stopover, it’s one of the great sights of natural America.

“There is nothing else like it in the world,” says Marcos Stoltzfus, director of the Iain Nicolson Audubon Center at Rowe Sanctuary in Gibbon, Nebraska, to News Channel Nebraska."

-via Good News Network, April 3, 2025

[vulture-cultist]

It's hilarious to me how Colossal Biosciences wants to be movie-version John Hammond but are 100% book-version John Hammond. In the Jurassic Park novel, it's very clear: John Hammond is a con artist who gives people an illusion, not the truth. He knew from the beginning that what he was making weren't dinosaurs, but he didn't care because he had a story to sell. He wasn't just "filling in gaps" with the frog dna, his scientists were basically making things up from whole cloth and he had no pretence about it- but he also knew what the public wanted to believe.

Case in point: https://time.com/7274542/colossal-dire-wolf/

These are not dire wolves. These are GMO gray wolves. Dire wolves aren't even in the same genus as gray wolves, and we know this from genetics.

What Colossal is doing is scamming the public. They want you to believe that they can pull off miracles. They can't. It's the flea circus where everything is mechanised, but because you want to believe, you "see" the fleas. They might be good at genetic modification and they might be good at hyping themselves up, but they haven't de-extincted the dire wolf. They didn't activate mammoth genes in a mouse. They are lying to you and they're going to keep doing it. Don't believe the hype.

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Walking around my neighborhood wearing my sick as fuck custom T-shirt that says "I STEAL EVERY FRIENDLY CAT I MEET WITH NO REMORSE I DO IT ALL THE TIME DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK I BEEN HERE FOR YEARS KEEP THAT BEAST ENCLOSED LEST YE FACE MY LIGHTNING CAT GRASP" and smiling politely while my neighbors' indoor-outdoor cats gently trot down the sidewalk towards me as the neighbors themselves read my shirt with a growing sense of panic.

[vulture-cultist]

birthday weevil 788

via

[vulture-cultist]

Animals are not enslaved or exploited. You can talk about abuse and neglect in different industries, ways that animals are denied their natural instincts and needs for the ease of humans, animals being put in dangerous or unhealthy circumstance, and animals being kept in captivity by humans who are incapable of fulfilling their needs.

But animals have no concept of slavery, exploitation, or freedom. They care about having their needs met and that's about it. Focus on things that animals in captivity actually need instead of on vague and very human concepts.

[vulture-cultist]

I maintain an observation beehive for the museum I work at in order to teach people about animal domestication, the honey industry, and biodiversity. I just wanted to add a little point-by-point debunk to this post so people can reference it if they need. I'm by no means the Ultimate Bee Expert, but all of the following information will be researched and sourced to the best of my ability.

For the purpose of my reply, I'll only be discussing Apis mellifera, or the western honeybee. This is the most common honeybee species in the world and can now be found on every continent except Antarctica. It's difficult to pinpoint the exact time they were 'domesticated,' but we have evidence of human-bee interactions through ancient Egyptian iconography (2400 BC) and even Neolithic rock art, in addition to beeswax in lipid residues preserved in pottery vessels. Ours is a very old relationship.

Photo by Puzzler4879 on Flickr. All creative commons.

It's also true that the western honeybee is an introduced species in North America. They were imported from Europe around the 17th century. They owe a good part of their success to human help, but Apis mellifera are also known to be a highly intelligent and adaptable species, changing their behaviors to take advantage of new environments. They are truly remarkable! Insect intelligence and cognition is definitely a field of science that needs more love. I don't have a PDF, but I highly recommend reading The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka for an excellent overview of hymenopteran behavioral research.

Now, let's get to it!

"Actually, beekeepers take many precautions to keep their bees from leaving."

As a standalone statement, this is true! A hive costs time, money, and effort, so ideally you want to convince those bees to stick around. Many of us also have a fondness for our hives and want to see them thrive by taking some basic precautions. These are things such as ensuring adequate hive airflow to prevent fungal diseases, situating the hive in such a way that it is protected from predators, providing supplementary food for your bees in times of scarcity, monitoring for diseases and parasites, and maintaining a balance of full and empty frames so that the hive isn't overcrowded and uncomfortable. If the bees have all of their needs met, they don't have reason to go rough it in the woods (similarly to how you and I are not abandoning our warm, safe houses and access to fresh food and water to sprint off into the wilderness. Well, I think about doing that a lot. But I shan't.)

But why all the fuss to prevent a hive from leaving? Swarming is a natural and predictable behavior. It's a colony's way of reproducing and tends to take place in the spring, and it can actually indicate the good health of a hive. In a swarm, the old queen takes herself and the majority of her daughters to find a new nesting location, leaving the rest of the workers behind with their provisions and new queen. The problem for both the beekeepers AND the bees is that most swarms fail and every single one of those bees dies. Less than 25% of swarms make it through their first year. It's more time, energy, and cost effective to manage swarms; be ready to collect the swarm and place it in a shiny new hive, or artificially split the hive beforehand to prevent overpopulation.

"many clip the wings of the queen, destroy new queen cells, cull queens they don't like and use bee pheromones to prevent a hive from naturally swarming or absconding."

Okay, so this is contentious. All of those ARE technically hive management practices. 'Queen clipping' is the practice of notching a single forewing, making sure to avoid the nerve and only clip a veined area filled with haemolymph. This reduces a queen's ability to fly, but not her ability to begin a swarm. The reason some keepers practice queen clipping is so the queen 'swarms' just outside the box, making the swarm easy to retrieve and place back into the box, split, whatever needs to be done. Queen bees only really fly during their nuptial flights and during swarms; their large bodies make it a cumbersome task, and they spend most of their life inside the hive laying eggs.

Now, I don't wholly agree with the author of that article I just sourced. Do insects feel pain? Do they feel fear? These are interesting and important questions that are difficult to study because both of those things are ultimately subjective. I tend towards 'yes'. In chapter 11 of his book, Lars Chittka writes "it is now clear that many invertebrates (and certainly all insects) have specialized sensory mechanisms to register tissue damage, and segregated neural pathways for nociception and regular mechanoreception" (245). Overall, there isn't much scientific literature on queen clipping as of now, so it's not something I would personally practice. But I can understand why other keepers might see this as the responsible thing to do to give their hive the best chance of survival.

Removing cells with unhatched queens, culling lackluster queens-- yes, these are things beekeepers may do. If the queen is not thriving the entire colony may die. It's like the trolley problem sometimes. The thing is, while I have personal proclivities about interfering with my queen unless absolutely necessary because I am a weak crybaby human, her subjects certainly do not. Welcome to honeybee regicide hour!

The queen is not a purely benevolent ruler; she secretes a pheromone that hinders the development of reproductive organs in her workers (the queen mandibular pheromone (E)-9-Oxodec-2-enoic acid (9-ODA) is responsible for this), and she seeks out and slaughters other prospective queens from the moment she hatches. Likewise, her daughters aren't messing around. When workers detect a drop in pheromones by an old and failing queen they will kill her (this is called supersedure). If the queen is not laying enough eggs, they will feed royal jelly to new brood to raise a rival queen. They will also starve, kill, and/or expel all of the drones, or male bees, at the end of the season, because they contribute nothing to hive defense or foraging and represent only a drain on the hive's food stocks (this is called drone ejection). Those aren't human decisions. Those are natural behaviors honed by over 80 million years of evolution. If anything, we take a page from their books when we employ these hive management practices. They are one of the world's most successful eusocial species for a reason.

"They also try and prevent mating with the African honey bee, which makes them less docile among other things."

I'm assuming this person is talking about the Africanized bee, which is a hybrid between A. m. scutellata (East African lowland honeybee) and various European species such as the Italian or Iberian honeybee. I'm going to lazily direct everyone to this Wikipedia article because there's a lot to know and I'm running out of steam.

Essentially, the hybrid was created with the goal of increasing honey yields, which has backfired because these bees tend to be more aggressive and prone to swarming. They also kill people. Which I suspect is the main reason people don't want their Apis mellifera boinking them lol. Makes the beekeeper's job a lot harder.

"Not to mention that honeybees are an invasive species in most places, competing with native pollinators and spreading disease"

Now we're getting somewhere! This is a very hot topic at the moment. As I previously said, Apis mellifera is invasive in a lot of its range. They receive a lot of attention from conservation campaigns and good PR, when really, it is our native and often solitary hymenopterans that need our help most. I'm going to quote Lars Chittka again. From the final chapter of his book:

"[Honey bee keeping] is not a contribution to nature conservation. The western honey bee, to the extent that it is kept in hives, is a domesticated animal that, despite media reports to the contrary, is not under threat. A hive of 40,000 bees will deplete floral resources that could otherwise feed 40,000 solitary pollinators, many of which are at the risk of extinction." (272)

But, recall, humans and honeybees have coexisted for centuries. The honeybees themselves are not, alone, the cause for native bee species' decline. Restoring habitats and reducing or banning pesticides, I wager, would do more for our native bees than if every honeybee simply vanished tomorrow. I could write a whole other post on this issue lol but it's a whole other can of worms, so I'll leave it.

I guess my takeaway here is that insects perform innumerable and incredibly vital roles in our ecosystems, which all living things share. Humans are animals. We are not separate from nature. Everything exists in a cycle of give and take, life and death, and humans and honeybees have been dancing that dance for thousands of years. I'm sure that at some point while checking my hive for chalkbrood I have replaced the lid and accidentally crushed a worker, prematurely ending her 5 to 7 week life. Someday I will also die and my body will be reconstituted into nutrients that feeds and meadows and flowers that the bees harvest from. And so it goes.

Wild that folks keep saying beekeepers abuse bees as if bees are not both venomous flying animals and fully unionized

[vulture-cultist]