panthalassaunited
*muffled sounds of Marine Ecology in the distance*
They/them. That one dude beneath the pier covered in Gooseneck and Acorn Barnacles, Alga, and vaguely smelling of salt and woe
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North American Salmon:
The Quiet Love Affair Between Fish and Trees
We all know fish live in water, but many of us don’t realize that their world stretches up onto the banks and beyond. Sure, fish don’t occupy that space. But what happens out of the water can affect them profoundly. This story is about the quiet love affair between fish and trees.
Fish love trees… What happens in the riparian zone — the land next to rivers and streams — doesn’t always stay there. Trees frequently topple over and fall in. Here, they begin a new chapter where fish, not birds, flit about their branches and roots.
A tree that is large enough and falls just right creates a spillway of water that carves out a pool downstream. If you’re a fisherman or woman, you know fish love pools. The slow water offers a place where they can escape the current. For a weary salmon migrating upstream to spawn, this break is welcome. Pools can also provide a watery refuge during drier times of year when channels get shallow.
From a fish habitat perspective, it’s not just the presence of trees along a bank that’s important. Size matters and so does the species. Large conifers stabilize banks with their large root systems. When their big trunks fall in streams they tend to have a bigger impact and stay put longer. Red alders might provide important nutrients to the soils, but are thin and rapidly decay once they fall.
They’re less effective at creating the complex stream habitats that give fish options. For a fish, having options is the key to survival. Diverse habitats can make all the difference for a salmon that needs a moment of rest before finding suitable gravel to lay her eggs. Or a juvenile Cutthroat Trout that would have become dinner for a predator if it weren’t for a rootwad or log jam…
Read more: USFWS Blog
Photographs: USFWS/Katrina Liebich
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The Bronx Zoo has just released Flaco's necropsy results.
He was not thriving, as the people championing the ideal of "freedom" claimed.
He was poisoned.
He was sick.
He was suffering.
"Freedom" would have eventually killed him. A building just happened to do it first.
"Postmortem testing has been completed for Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl that was found down in the courtyard of a Manhattan building a little over a year after his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo was vandalized on February 2, 2023. Onlookers reported that Flaco had flown into a building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on February 23, 2024, and acute trauma was found at necropsy.
Bronx Zoo veterinary pathologists determined that in addition to the traumatic injuries, Flaco had two significant underlying conditions. He had a severe pigeon herpesvirus from eating feral pigeons that had become part of his diet, and exposure to four different anticoagulant rodenticides that are commonly used for rat control in New York City. These factors would have been debilitating and ultimately fatal, even without a traumatic injury, and may have predisposed him to flying into or falling from the building.
The identified herpesvirus can be carried by healthy pigeons but may cause fatal disease in birds of prey including owls infected by eating pigeons. This virus has been previously found in New York City pigeons and owls. In Flaco’s case, the viral infection caused severe tissue damage and inflammation in many organs, including the spleen, liver, gastrointestinal tract, bone marrow, and brain.
No other contributing factors were identified through the extensive testing that was performed.
Flaco’s severe illness and death are ultimately attributed to a combination of factors—infectious disease, toxin exposures, and traumatic injuries—that underscore the hazards faced by wild birds, especially in an urban setting."
The naturalistic fallacy kills animals in horrible ways. The romanticism of what humans want to think of as a "free, wild, pure life" cannot be allowed supplant the reality of injury, sickness, and death. Releasing captive animals (or keeping them from being recaptured) because it's "better" for them to suffer untethered than live a healthy, safe, captive life is inhumane and horrific.
Flaco's life didn't have to end in pain, sickness, and suffering.
Flaco's death didn't have to be tragic.
But once the idea of "freedom" entered the chat, Flaco's fate was unavoidable.
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Compilation of pinnipeds in places they shouldn’t be
None of these are staged; each pinniped is here of their own volition and the authorities were made aware (and moved them away if necessary)
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I like how the one dude had to sit down twice he was so overwhelmed
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Simple lifeform facts I take for granted that I've now seen blowing people's minds on here:
That sea urchins walk around and have mouths with teeth on their undersides
That corals are related to jellyfish
Barnacles being related to crabs and shrimp
Ants being an offshoot of wasps
Termites being totally unrelated to ants and all similarities just being convergent evolution (they're actually a group of cockroaches, but even science didn't know that part until a few years ago)
Starfish having an eye at the end of each arm
That the bodies of ticks and mites are also their heads, essentially big heads with legs (they even frequently have eyes way up on "the body")
Sperm whales have no upper teeth, and also their bodies are flat from the front
Goats also having no upper (front) teeth
Tapeworms having no mouth at all and just absorbing nutrients over their entire body surface
That flies are bigger pollinators than bees
That moths are bigger pollinators than bees
That wasps are just as important pollinators as bees (more important to many groups of plants) and when we say they're "less efficient" at it we just mean individually they get a little less pollen stuck to them.
That honeybees are nonnative to most of the world and not good for the local ecosystem, just good for human agriculture
That earthworms are also nonnative and destructive to more habitats than the reverse
There being no hard biological line between slugs and snails; all slugs aren't necessarily related to each other and there are gastropod groups where some have shells and some don't
That ALL octopuses (not just the blue ring) have a venomous bite
Most jellyfish and sea anemones being predators that eat fish
"Krill" being shrimp up to a few inches long and not some kind of microbe
Blue whales therefore being the deadliest predators to ever evolve as they eat up to several million individual animals per day
That krill are still "plankton" because plankton refers to whatever animals, algae and other organisms are carried around by the sea's currents, not to any particular group of life or a size category
Fungi being no more related to plants than we are, and in fact more like a sibling to the animal kingdom if anything
Venus fly traps being native to only one small area of North America in all the world
Parasites being essential to all ecosystems
Leeches not having a circular ring of teeth anywhere
That algae is not a type of plant
That most seaweed is just very big algae
That enough wood ends up in the ocean that plenty of sea life evolved to eat only wood
Speaking of which the fact that the "ship worms" that make tunnels in wood are just long noodly clams
Butterflies technically just being a small weird group of moths we gave a different name to
That insects only get wings once they reach maximum size and therefore there can never be a younger smaller bee or fly that's not a larva
Spiders not being any more likely to kill their own mates/young than just a cat or dog might, for most species maybe a lot less often?
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imagine you're a fifth-grade teacher and one day a crow just flies into your classroom, steals some food, sits on some kid's head, and shouts "fuck off"
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Any conspiracy theory about people going missing in National Parks is automatically silly to me. Like "Why are National Parks such a hotbed of disappearances???" because they're full of idiots. You've got thousands of people who've never pissed outdoors in their life wandering around the woods/desert/mountain with zero experience and zero gear and zero understanding that this place can kill them. You don't see as many disappearances in wild areas because people don't go to them unless they have some background knowledge. Whereas you get tour buses full of old folks and suburban families shuttling people into National Parks 365 days a year. If you took the same amount of buffoons and dropped them in the actual wilderness the disappearances would be significantly higher than at the parks. Use your brain.
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I think my all time favorite iNaturalist observation is that old man just casually feeding a long-tailed jaeger in the park with a bunch of gulls
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Unstoppable Force vs. Somewhat Movable Object (the Results May Shock You).
#clips from the deep#from davey jones locker#video game#video games#titanfall 2#Titanfall 2 Northstar#Titanfall#video game clips
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Many people are scared of insects, but you know what's scarier than insects...?
No insects
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Quick sketch of Dunkleosteus terreli.
#paleontology#paleoblr#paleoart#dunkleosteus#placoderm#digital drawing#digital art#digital illustration#sciart#from davey jones locker
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Walnut the Crane dead at 42
White-naped Crane Walnut and her keeper/husband, Chris Crowe, in 2021. (Photo: Roshan Patel via NZCBI)
Internet sensation Walnut the Crane became ill on January 2, 2024 and passed away at age 42 at her home at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) campus in Front Royal, VA. A necropsy revealed the cause of death to be renal failure. Walnut far outlived the average life expectancy for White-naped Cranes in captivity, which is 15 years. She leaves behind her husband, zookeeper Chris Crowe, with whom she had 8 offspring, including two housed at the NZCBI: daughter Brenda, age 18, and a granddaughter, age 1.
“Walnut was a unique individual with a vivacious personality,” Crowe said. “She was always confident in expressing herself, an eager and excellent dancer, and stoic in the face of life’s challenges. I’ll always be grateful for her bond with me. Walnut’s extraordinary story has helped bring attention to her vulnerable species’ plight.” (x)
White-naped Cranes are native to Mongolia, northeast China and southeast Russia, wintering in the Korean DMZ, Japan, and China. Habitat loss to agriculture, development, and ongoing droughts are factors in their decline, leaving them classified as Vulnerable by the IUCN. Walnut was an important contributor to efforts to restore the species.
Edit: for those unaware, I refer to the zookeeper as her husband because Walnut was imprinted on humans, meaning she considered him her mate and performed displays and courtship for him. As a zookeeper he was responsible for artificially inseminating the bird. This and more was the source of her viral fame.
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Tiny, planktonic crustacean larvae come in some of the most breathtaking ethereal forms nature has ever birthed. If you could shrink down and watch these phantasmagorical diamond angels dancing in the microcosmos of seawater surely you would weep at the sublime beauty our universe can imbue upon the humblest of lives
Oh yeah then there's Milton I guess who's like, not allowed to have string cheese
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