Welcome to the vortex! It's filled with many random and fandom things. (Disclaimer: While mostly tame, mature content may show up at times and will be tagged accordingly. Enjoy!)
I want a dachshund or other small dog because it seems like a good middle ground
Sorry for the unsolicited advice, but please do think it over. Dachshunds (and many other small breeds) actually require quite a lot of activity and exercise (mental and physical)*. If those needs aren’t met, that can cause so many difficult behavioral problems. They’re working dogs, after all: if they aren’t given a job, they’ll find one themselves (and it’ll be likely something very annoying or unpleasant to you)
*yes, it does depend on the individual dog, but the general tendency points to those breeds being high energy
Also, a lot of people who do like cats want a Maine Coon because they’ve seen pictures of mine or others’, and they’re majestic! Huge!! Fluffy!!! Such a good kitty!!!!
Maine Coons are dog-smart, and basically tiny thumbless toddlers who will never grow up. They have long memories, they hold grudges, and they want things the way they want them. What you want is probably not a Maine Coon. I love them, but jumping from “cat” to “Maine Coon” is like jumping from “dog” to “border collie”. Don’t do that unless you know what you’re getting into.
If you think you want a Maine Coon but what Seanan has said above does not appeal, what you probably actually want is a Ragdoll, or actually actually a domestic longhair.
If you want the middle ground between ‘cat’ and 'dog’ in personality, you want one of the big sighthounds. Greyhounds and up are couch potato buddies BUT now you need the physical infrastructure and financial resources to contain and support a carnivore the size of a small pony that has a seven-foot vertical leap, all the common sense and impulse control god gave a garden hose, and land speeds exceeding 35 miles per hour. So maybe reconsider a cat.
and don’t get a Ragdoll (or scottish fold or munchkin) unless you’re 100% sure you’ll be able to afford years of buying pain medication (and if failing that bad behaviour like peeing places and agression) because these breeds have joint pain built into them.
My new favorite genre of picture is a very special thing that most animals (and humans!) do: face nuzzling as an act of greeting/comfort/intimacy. thank God that this is happening all over the world right now
pom pom crabs are some of the most unethical animals in the ocean
this man is a serial abuser
His pom poms are two sessile invertebrates he holds in his hands and starves so he can punch stuff with anemones who are so desperate to eat that they’ll use maximum sting on anything that gets close to him. When they starve to death he just finds more
ACTUALLY, IT IS WORSE
The crabs will force the anemones to clone themselves if one dies OR steal others’ anemones if both die
They haven’t found these anemones in their free-living form, so, as far as we know, this anemone species is these crabs’ slave species—it’s only known in association with pom pom crabs
Cool paper on this: Schnytzer, Y., Giman, Y., Karplus, I., & Achituv, Y. (2017). Boxer crabs induce asexual reproduction of their associated sea anemones by splitting and intraspecific theft. PeerJ, 5, e2954. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2954
So if I understand this right, “slave species” is a biology term only used for this ONE SPECIFIC CREATURE OF ALL THE COUNTLESS LIVING ORGANISMS ON THIS ENTIRE PLANET?!
Oh, the slave species thing is outdated information from the original study in the 90’s. To be fair, that study is still very very respected, it was just wrong about this specific thing.
Their anemones aren’t a unique species, they are only visually distinct because the crab farms them in a very specific way - making a fragment of a larger hawaiian anemone, or finding a newly spawned one. When they carry it around, they force the anemone to adapt to an entire new lifestyle. The crab’s nocturnal behavior slowly kills the anemone’s photosynthetic symbionts, from which it gets its color. After that, the crab can control how much food the anemone actually gets by using it to mop up food off the sea floor, and take excess out of its mouth. Since it doesnt have to reach for sunlight, or reach to catch food, this encourages dense, but short tentacles.
The shortcoming of this study was just that its very hard to get the anemone away from the crab without killing both, and its equally hard to get an anemone to bounce back from this state.
Due to their introduction into home aquaria, we now know any anemone they take will end up in this state, (bubble tips, aipistasia, haitian anemones, the list goes on) and we also know they are not bound to carrying anemone’s specifically. They’ve been seen collecting zoanthids, palythoa, and euphyllia (though euphyllians usually don’t survive).
A spotless giraffe was recently born at Bright’s Zoo in Limestone, TN and was just announced in the media this morning. They’re starting a public naming contest for her, of course.
ALT
I’d love to know what type of mutation causes this lack of of pattern, but I don’t know if we have genetics on that for giraffes the way we do other species. As far as is known, she’s the first spotless giraffe ever documented!
“Tony Bright said she is acting like many other giraffe calves they’ve had, eating rocks.” - from the article
Glad to see she’s thriving!!!
Unfortunately, Kipekee passed away on November 26th, 2025. So far her cause of death is unknown - the latest statement from the zoo I’ve seen indicates that they’ve had a necropsy (autopsy but for animals) conducted. The results of those often take a while to get back, so I don’t know when we’ll know more, but the director said they’d update the public when they know more.
Please be kind in your comments: the dedicated zookeepers who care for her lost a very special animal the day before a major holiday and just before one of the busiest weekends of the year.
Kind of fucked thinking about the fact that there is one single American legally authorized to research the critically endangered pygmy raccoon in Mexico and it is, in fact, the same person who did Dashcon.
This person is also this person
And is currently the only person from the United States legally permitted to research the critically endangered pygmy raccoons (Procyon pygmaeus) in Cozumel, Mexico.
For reference, this is me, BTW! I was 15 when I started Dashcon and 17 when it actually happens, and now study tourism’s impact on the critically endangered pygmy raccoon. I’ve been researching them before now, but due to Mexico’s laws, I’ve only been allowed to do data collection from abroad (so think surveys to tourists and video analysis on social media.) But now I’m authorized for in situ research!! Yippee! I even got a grant through my university as well to fund the whole project 🥺
This is the reason this hellsite is truly a homesite. We grow here. You can go back and see how it happened. I was a Bachelor’s student when I started my tumblr. Now I’m an Associate Professor and Curator, with my own lab and Denmark’s national collection of 70,000ish reptile and amphibian specimens in my care.
Goddamned Mezolithic Megafauna’s what that is. Goddamned warranty expired on those things centuries ago, but do they care? Do they go decently extinct, like the ground sloth, gigantopethicus, or wooly rhino? Fuck that, they’re doing downhill runs on your favorite skiing course is what. Because Fuck it, is why.
Now I understand why moose are built the way they are.
It’s so they can gallop untrammelled through six-odd feet of snow.
Jesus Christ I read those mother fuckers could run 55km an hour but seeing it is another thing especially plowing through the snow
DASHING THROUGH THE SNOW GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY
why haven’t I seen anyone posting about that giant fucking baby penguin in Melbourne that’s bigger than some of the adults already
his name is Pesto <3
this bastard weighs 46 lbs at 9 months old. he’s 22 lbs heavier than his PARENTS
OMG I SAW THIS LAD IN PERSON AND LOST EVERY OUNCE OF SHIT I’VE EVER POSSESSED
Look at him!
Also he was separated with one of his parents when I saw him but obviously wanted to Be Where The People Penguins Are so they’d set him up with a little rock stool so he could gaze upon his brethren:
Which enabled me to capture the single funniest video I’ve ever taken of anything in my life:
All hail Pesto! The king of chonk!
He’s adventurous, cheeky, sings to the caretakers who clean his enclosure and has been seen CANOODLING with a penguin named Pudding.
And fucking handsome too—look at him striking a pose with his new look!
And fucking handsome
too—look at him striking a
pose with his new look!
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
video description: a small bird stood on wooden flooring, singing the iconic high staccato bit from the queen of the night aria. he doesn’t perfectly hit all the notes but still does a pretty good job. there is a human hand shaking a container full of cotton buds next to the bird for some reason.
Is this rabbit playing? No, but nothing bad is going on.
This bunny is showing familial behavior by digging a burrow in connection to yours :)
In case anyone is curious/wants some closure, since yes that is NOT a wild rabbit (you an tell by the coat, wild rabbits are like. brown)
I checked the comments on the source, OP said it belonged to a neighbour who released it when they decided they didn’t want it. OP adopted it after it was attacked by a cat.
Also the rabbit’s name is Josie. (and going by a comment the OP made, it sounds like she has other rabbits as well, so Josie won’t be alone either).
So a happy ending. The bunny is no longer a stray.
Well. There’s a colony of multicoloured and variable sized rabbits (or was for at least 20 years before I left there, anyway) on Mitcham Common which seems to have resulted from a small group of escaped pets who, well, did what rabbits do.
There were A Lot of them, and most would have been born there and never known captivity, so… Are those wild rather than stray or is there an Official Definition which says they’re not?
you may also notice that the babies have tiny little nubbin beaks! they hatch like that so they fit in the eggs- the beak doesn’t actually grow in for another week or so.
ALT
