Anadromous cyprinid!!! Also it's so pretty! Cyprinids are such beautiful fish

Daily fish fact #736

Pacific redfin!

It is one of the only cyprinids that occur in saltwater! They spawn in freshwater rivers, but maturing juveniles (once about 7 cm, ~3 inches, in size) and adults who've finished spawning return to the sea and live along the coast.

So I was watching a video on ptarmigans and it was mentioned that they dig burrows in the snow for shelter and protection. Which, cool! Burrowing bird! Then they showed this picture and

It's perfect

Happy Welwitschia Wednesday

If you say "religion and science are contradictory" I don't trust your opinion on either

People are so stupid about snakes. If there's a little black racer chilling outside just leave it alone, you don't have to kill it, it's probably dealing with all your pests for you, jesus christ

I feel like if God didn't want us messing with His creation He wouldn't have made the code open-source

I feel like if God didn't want us messing with His creation He wouldn't have made the code open-source

I think this is why they call them jumping worms

Where are the Guianas. What happened to them. Nicaragua and Cuba are merely greyed out but the Guianas have been consumed by the ocean

Opinion of the United States in Latin America.

by maps_black

I know I'm the weird one here, but I actually like hot weather.

A few years ago there was a heat wave up in Canada, got up to 45 C (113 F). I was working at an outdoor petting zoo at the time. Everyone else was miserable. I was fine, as long as I was drinking water and staying in the shade. You just have to be willing to let yourself sweat, and make sure you're drinking enough water.

I think my body just runs cooler than other people, though. The heat wave was during covid, and every time the manager would come out to take the staff's temperatures she'd always comment on how low my temperature was.

I still like to stay around 21 C (70 F) for daily comfort, like most people, but I feel like I'm more tolerant of high temperatures than others.

saw a poll about dry/humid heat and like OBVIOUSLY everyone preferred dry heat but. would love to know what everyone considers to be “too hot”

me personally it’s a hard cutoff at 75°F. don’t need anything more than that thank you 🫶🫶🫶

Woodpeckers are insane creatures if you stop to think about it like honestly the aye aye freak finger is conceptually more sane than evolving to smack your head on trees. Glorious animal

I am loving everything about this mini-series. The concept of "watchdogs" coevolving with goats into a symbiotic relationship and mimicry, adapting to drink milk as adults, is a stroke of genius - I may borrow some ideas there. OP, I hope you find the inspiration to continue this!

We have finally identified one of our mystery animals!  We still don't know what the Large Herbivore is, or what killed the macawk in the grass, but we have a face for the Night Screamer.

Having made an uneasy peace with our fowl neighbours, we resumed poking around cataloging the local flora.  In the process we discovered our second ungulate, a cute little fellow only about thirty centimetres tall at the shoulder.  Like the hookhorns it appears to be some kind of goat, though its horns are very short and rounded, kind of like a giraffe's.  There turned out to be four of them - and a dog.

Yes, these things have their own watchdog. Like the ones that accompanied the hookhorns, they are very similar to the goats in build and colouration.  All five animals were under the cover of low plants and appeared to be sleeping until we discovered them.  That woke them up, and the watchdog took up a defensive position between us and its charges and began to bark and snarl furiously.  Not wanting our toes to be savagely gnawed, we retreated.

Wang wants to call the ungulates Cabruahuas, like a cross between Cabra (goat) and Chihuahua (chihuahua). There's still no sign of any other humans here, so the dogs probably aren't trained... but if they just do this, then why?  They don't seem to be getting anything out of it.

This has been bugging me ever since Kibwana and I first saw the hookhorns, so I did what any sensible person would clearly do. Figuring these must be nocturnal, I sat up in a nearby broccotree half the night to watch what they did - and I still don't believe what I saw.  After dark the cabruahuas came out to start nibbling on low foliage, while the watchdog caught mice and birds that the herbivores disturbed.  Then when the goats settled down to do some cud-chewing, the dog went to two different ones and nursed.

I'm pretty sure the dog is an adult, so why is it drinking milk?  Most adult mammals can't digest milk, humans are actually weird that way.  Fresh milk doesn't seem like a good enough reason for the dogs and the ungulates to stick together like this, so there must be something else going on.  We're just not seeing it yet.

After a short rest the little herd and their companion wandered off further into the woods and I decided to head back.  I didn't want to nod off and fall out of the tree.  I had just touched the ground when the Night Screamer started its yowling, sounding like it was right next to me.

I don't even remember climbing back up the tree.  I clung to the trunk as it got louder and louder, and closer and closer.  I thought I was about to be killed by Bigfoot or something.  Then it emerged from the rhubarb and revealed itself to be this bizarre koala-cat thing, no bigger than the goats, that proceeded to howl like a tortured soul six or seven more times.  It swiveled its huge ears listening to a reply that came from somewhere out across the grassland, and then seemed satisfied and started climbing the tree.  For a moment it was startled to find me there, but I was evidently not threatening, because the little tree gremlin just gave me a contemptuous look and continued on up.

The noise may be a way of establishing territory or something.  I really don't care.  I'm just glad it wasn't big enough to eat me.  This one doesn't need a new name, it's been a Night Screamer since day one, and a Night Screamer it may stay.

Horned Toads a medio dia/ Pedacito de mi corazon by Carmen Lomas Garza (1987), Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

I'm 100% a wizard, apparently. Not gonna lie I forgot that was a class. I was sure I was gonna get Paladin or Druid

I was expecting anything but not Bard

Anyway here’s a poem I wrote about my cat

After “Do not stand at my grave and weep”, author disputed:

Do not stand at your bowl and meow. I gave you food. It’s in there now. I feed you at the dawning light, I feed you at the fall of night. I feed you kibbles mixed with meat And wet food for a special treat. I feed you even though you scoff At all the food within your trough. I feed you and still yet you yell Like as a beast from deepest hell. Do not stand at your bowl and cry. I gave you food. You will not die.

I apologize for the rant but I'm procrastinating writing my lab report and this is an ideal distraction:

It kind of bugs me when science communicators try to impose phylogenetic rules on vernacular language. The word "fish" isn't a technical term. It isn't supposed to be a technical term. It's a conventional word people use to describe a set of animals with gills that live all or most of their lives in the water, and in this capacity it is an excellent word. When someone tries to "well, actually" the entirety of Tetrapoda under the word "fish", they are (A) failing to understand that everyday language has a completely different purpose from scientifically rigorous terminology, and (B) forgetting that we do, in fact, already have a technical term for the group that includes both "fish" and Tetrapods. That word is Euteleosts, by the way. Sarcopterygians if you just want to just focus on Coelacanths and Lungfish, Gnathostomes if you want to include the cartilaginous fish in there as well. Science writing is all about clarity and word choice.

No, humans are not "fish". We are Sarcopterygians, Euteleosts, and Gnathostomes. By the same token, snakes are not "lizards"; they are Toxicoferan Squamates. Ants and bees are not wasps; they are Aculeate Hymenopterans. Birds are reptiles, but that's only because the word reptile has an additional taxonomic definition besides its vernacular one. If Laurenti had chosen any other word for the clade Reptilia, birds still wouldn't be reptiles even though they most certainly belong to the Theropod Dinosaurs.

The words "fish" and "lizard" and "ant" and "bird" all have vernacular meanings that are distinct from the taxonomic nomenclature of the animals they describe. When someone says they're going fishing, you don't expect them to take a gun and go out hunting deer, even though technically a whitetail has more in common with a largemouth bass than a shark. When someone asks if you want to see a picture of their pet lizard, you don't expect to see a ball python. Science communicators treat paraphyly as a cardinal sin when it's actually just an incredibly useful tool for everyday life. Trying to say there's no such thing as a fish because it's indefinable scientifically without including non-fish things is - in my opinion - kinda stupid.

"There's no such thing as a fish because you can't define it phylogenetically without also including things that aren't fish"

Man I have bad news for you about lizards. And reptiles in general. And wasps, but I guess that depends on your opinion on wasps. And I don't think you're ready for trees.