#jackall(and hydrogen) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

quasarlasar · 2 years

Text

The old giant star had had enough. He had spent 70 million years orbiting in the capital city of the galaxy, the nuclear star cluster. He had wandered through the molecular cloud towers that sparkled with stars like skyscrapers at night. He had spent long eons in the great cathedrals of plasma, listening to the other stars gossip and banter amongst the flying buttresses of magnetic strands. Staying in that orbit would certainly be the easy way out. It took no effort to remain in Keplerian motion. But he had grown tired of the new generation and their strange new words, light-speech imprinted with the myriad lines of metals.

Here, on the other side of the Torus Mountains, he could finally be at peace. Their grand peaks of dust cloud light years high blotted out the light of the city and the garrulous cries of its citizens.

A glowing trail of gas followed him. He had evolved past the red giant stage, to a second, even more swollen phase, the asymptotic giant branch. In this state his outer layers were so loosely bound they slowly sloughed off as he traveled, condensing into motes of dust that cascaded behind him in his stellar wind. He dipped ever so briefly down into the slowly spinning sea of plasma that lapped at his envelope. Where it had come from, he did not know, but the sea was warm, and inviting, and did ever so slightly lessen the discomfort of the thermal pulses that sent him shivering in the night.

He looked up at the twisting winds of hydrogen beyond. Brilliant H-alpha clouds snaked through the Torus peaks, swirling about the isolated clumps of dust that levitated above the sea.

He was dying, all right, but it was at least a beautiful place to die.

Something sparked in the corner of his eye. It stung only like X-rays could. A couple dots were trailing him. Stellar black holes…he thought. They had to have been attracted to him by the mass he was shedding behind.

As they grew closer, they came into view: actinic blue X-ray emitting disks swirling furiously, each with a long, lashing tail. The tail was a jet, launched by the rocket-nozzle shaped complex of magnetic fields anchored in the disk. He couldn’t see the black hole’s shadow, so pinprick was it compared to the accretion disk, but he knew it was there. He had seen this sort of thing before.

In the city the stars had carved out of the Torus Mountains, stellar black holes scavenged the back-alleys like jackals. They scooted through space on the thrust provided by asymmetric jets, wandering between concentrations of space debris to devour. He had seen them snatch away planets several times, but a star? They usually didn’t dare to try. The stars had seen to it with their exotic matter weapons that black holes learned to fear them.

One of the black holes drew in closer, and its tides began to claw at the AGB star. It peeled off a stream of gas from the star’s outermost envelope. The stream collided with itself as it looped down into the black hole’s accretion disk. An ideal source of replenishment.  The star felt nothing. He was so big and so distended that the outer parts of his body were barely in contact with the rest of him at all, no pain signals able to traverse the vast gulf. Stars had decentralized intelligences to make up for their large sizes, but even this came to be inadequate when one had ballooned to 200 times the size of the Sun. The black hole eagerly slurped down the star’s plasma with little resistance.

The second black hole swooped in, diving deeper into the star. This time, the star felt it. A searing course of pain swept through him as the black hole tunneled into the envelope, and he felt the tides compress the thin shell above his core where hydrogen was fusing. Fusion in thin layers of gas was very finicky, and could spike up exponentially. He had already endured his helium shell flashing over several times, and each had been a hundreds-year-long nightmare where his insides turned over and he vomited out nuclear ashes. How bad would it be if a black hole were involved? He didn’t want to know.

Out of his streaming eyes, he heard the light-calls of other stars. Blueshifted, rushing towards him, with sheer terror on their faces. A whole stampede of stars, racing away from the inner reaches of the plasma sea, each one’s gravity bobbing and swinging the AGB star around. The great plane of the sea swung to be above him, then below him, to the side. A thousand forces jostled him, tugging off chunks of his outer layers and sending them flying. The next thing he knew he was plunged into the sea itself. Endless blue light overtook him.

This thing did not just look like a sea; the thing had current. The plasma was swirling around like a vast whirlpool, and he was going the wrong way around. Furious streams gnashed at his face, ripping his eyes from their magnetic anchoring and peeling away his hydrogenous skin layer by layer. Where was he going? He couldn’t exactly tell. Not without his eyes. Still, he had other senses. Electric fields prickled him. Magnetism percolated. His own body began to swirl, winds rushing through his body to redistribute the unholy heat that was basting the forward side of his body.

The tidal tugs from the black holes were gone. They had scattered away, presumably in the same chaos that had brought him here. Still, he took stock in the damage that had been wrought. He was badly wounded, trapped in this awful place. He cried out as much as his luminosity could take him, desperately attempting to shout above the roaring of the headwaters and the formless noise of the plasma’s heat. His own light was getting lost in the maelstrom.

Ever so slightly, he felt it. The weakest little pull, the slightest bit of a tidal tug. His body tensed up, magnetic field lines stiffening. Something was going to rip him to pieces now, he was sure of it.

But the moment never came. The tug was gentle, like a caress. A soft and pleasant force amongst the myriads of other, stronger forces that were wracking him from all sides. The force wrapped itself around him, almost inviting him in.

The stars that had fled called to him, but he had no eyes with which to see their light. He quietly disappeared from view, vanishing into the darkness he could not sense.

-----------------------

My digital drawing equipment isn’t working again, so I’ve been doing more writing in my spare time.

#writing #short fiction #astronomy #astrophysics #physics #star #giant star #black hole #science fiction #the AGB star basically flies into Tartarus' accretion disk and gets swallowed whole

3 notes · View notes

ehyeh-joshua · 4 years

Text

God of Dragons

@greater-than-the-sword - rather than dragging your post further off-topic, I decided to finally get around to writing this up.

If you honestly want to grapple with the Bible, it becomes essential to consider our ancient scaled friend/enemy the dragon. The Scriptures leave no alternative but to declare that man walked with dinosaurs.

The Hebrew word that we translate as “dragon” is Tannin, and like all ancient Hebrew thought, is not a specific species, but a genera – to us, we categorise things by qualities – we use “pencil” and “pen” and “quill” to describe specific classes of objects; to the mindset of Biblical Hebrew, they are all the same; you write with them.

What Tannin refers to is any large, dangerous reptile, whether on land, at sea or in the air, and while it would include them, it doesn't actually mean our modern understanding of dragon, which having being split from it's roots in historical creatures, is now mythical. (although such creatures are mentioned)

In the Septuagint – the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was considered the Old Testament for the Greek-speaking early church – the word Tannin is translated by “Drakkon” which is the root for our word “dragon”.

The word Tannin is used 23 times in Scripture:(note-all the citations are quoted in full at the end, truncated here for brevity)

Singular form:

Nehemiah 2:13; Psalm 91:13; Isaiah 27:1 and 51:9; Jeremiah 51:34; Ezekiel 29:3, Exodus 7:9, 7:10 and 7:12, and Genesis 1:21.

Plural form:

Deuteronomy 32:33, Job 7:12 and Job 30:29, Psalms 44:19, 74:13; and 148:7, Isaiah 13:22 Jeremiah 9:11, 10:22, 14:6, 49:33 and 51:37 and Ezekiel 32:2.

The second word we need to have in mind is Leviatan – this is the creature we think of when we think of dragon. This word is used five times in four verses: Job 41:1, Psalm 74:14 and 104:26, and twice in Isaiah 27:1. Like Tannin, Leviatan is translated in the Septuagint by “drakkon”.

Leviatan has the longest description, having nearly a whole chapter devoted to describing it at the end of Job – this is the strongest evidence, as this is God Himself describing this creature as an example of His own power.

One of the reasons I like Dragons so much is that God has set them as a testimony to Himself.

Sadly, this is perhaps the most mistranslated word in modern English Bibles; most English Bibles insert jackals into these verses wherever the Scriptures undeniably mean literal creatures, doing so because of the wrong belief that dragons are mythical.

The thing is, Hebrew has a word that actually means jackal; it is the same as that for “fox”, and for good reason, as they are known to be able to interbreed, and are therefore the same baramin. That word is “sha’ul”.

Nehemiah 4:3 for example; 'Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, “Yes, what they are building—if a fox goes up on it he will break down their stone wall!”'

He’s trying to say that despite the fact that the fox/jackal is such a small and weak animal, it could crush the walls the Jews were building; he’s insulting them. By contrast, a dragon smashing down a wall is kind of what you would expect to happen, and throughout the Prophets, the threat of dragons overwhelming a city is used to express judgement.

Compiling all these references gives us a huge amount of information about these creatures, some of it (most of it in fact) directly from God describing what we would understand as a water drake.

Firstly, that the purpose of these creatures is to give glory to God.

Secondly, it tells us that these are huge reptiles that are very dangerous; enough that the mere threat of them is enough to put a city of people to fleeing for safety – a quarter of the times Tannin is used, it is referring to this terror.

If a city got overrun with jackals, a single person could chase them out; a decent thickness stick as a club, and they scatter. A host of people working together could do it easily. They are mildly dangerous, but they have absolutely nothing on levyatan, which the Scriptures equate to Tannin. A Dragon however? An armoured, fire breathing dragon?

That is dangerous; one dragon is enough to be a risk to an entire region, they are apex predators, there is absolutely no shortage of stories of the danger dragons possess.

Now, if you had an entire city overrun by dragons? You’re not going to reclaim that. Not on the Bronze/Iron age technology possessed by Ancient Israel. Roman Ballistae might have a chance, and a Macedonian Phalanx could make a melee fight in the open stick, but I wouldn’t want to try that kind of a battle without at least trebuchet, if not cannon. And this is from a guy who knows how to solo a T-Rex; T-Rex has one primary weapon, the bite. The solution is a fuck-off amount of three feet long spikes covering your whole body, that way it can’t bite you without facing it’s own mortal peril. You could probably win with a spear, but I’d rather have the spikes.

Dragons? Fire. The accounts of dragons possessing fire-breathing capability are nearly universal, and it is far more reasonable than you might think; using the Bombardier Beetle as a baseline, to breath fire a dragon needs the reaction of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone, catalysed by catalase and peroxidase; the reactants are ejected from separated storage areas into the front of the open mouth, where the reaction begins in conjunction with the rush of oxygen from heavy breathing out, causing both the reaction and the expellation of the reactants. Range could be comfortably over ten metres and still sufficient to cause burns and scalding on the victim.

Coincidentally, but rather obvious when you think about it, dragon stories generally stop after the invention of cannon, and by the 1800s, almost stop completely outside of Native American tribes.

It is therefore plain that reading the text and allowing the text to explain itself leads to the conclusion that Tannin/Levyatan are a race of immense and dangerous monsters, usually serpent-like but again not always, who’s presence is like the judgement of God, and which God Himself uses to say how awesome He is that He made them and controls their fates. Note also the contrast - the Babylonians had their gods being scared of these monsters, but right from the beginning God takes ownership of them.

The Bible tells us how these creatures lived, where they lived, their diet, their habitat, to an extent their way of life; and it exists as part of material from all over the world that shows that man and dinosaur coexisted. And if humans and dinosaurs coexisted, evolutionary beliefs about ages collapse.

----

Nehemiah 2:13; “I went out by night by the Valley Gate to the Dragon Spring and to the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire.”- presumably, the Dragon spring was a well or spring that was named for a resident/visitor dragon.

Psalm 91:13; “You will tread on lion and viper; you will trample young lion and dragon.” - the point is to talk about the protection of God; the claim about jackals makes no sense, and using serpent instead has already been covered. Further, the Septuagint uses Drakkon here.

Isaiah 27:1; “In that day GOD will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent with His fierce, great, strong sword, Leviathan the twisted serpent! He will slay the dragon in the sea.” Again, entirely pointless unless it refers to either a real animal, or a mythologised version of a real animal.

Isaiah 51:9; “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of GOD, awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not You who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?” Again, a pointless exercise if not referring to an actual event.

Jeremiah 51:34; “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me, crushed me, set me aside like an empty dish, swallowed me up like a dragon, filled his belly with my delicacies, rinsed me away.” Jackals cannot eat even a whole arm, and certainly cannot swallow a whole man as the similie depends on; whereas plenty of large carnivorous dinosaurs could.

Ezekiel 29:3, “Speak and say, thus says the LORD GOD: ‘Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh King of Egypt, the great dragon lying in his rivers, who says: “My Nile is my own—I made it for myself.” The idea is to convey that Egypt believes itself to be extremely powerful, before it is cast down in judgement.

Exodus 7:9, 7:10 and 7:12; “So Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh and did as Adonai had commanded. Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a dragon. Then Pharaoh called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and they too, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts. For each man threw down his staff, and they became dragons. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.” Not much to say here, although the Septuagint again uses drakkon both times, instead of one of the words that means a snake.

Genesis 1:21; “And God created the great dragons and every living soul that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their nature, and every winged fowl after its nature; and God saw that it was good.” This is one of the few times the Septuagint uses keytos (whale) to translate Tannin, however, dragons are traditionally associated with the sea and sky, so it makes sense that they are created on day 5.

Plural form:

Deuteronomy 32:33: “Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.” This also informs us that some dragons were poisonous, a feature noted of certain dinosaurs, and never with jackals.

Job 7:12; “Am I a sea, or a dragon, that you set a watch over me?” Again linking dragons to the sea.

Job 30:29; “I am a brother to the dragons, & a companion to the ostriches.” By this, he is continuing his theme, and he means he is alone, ostracised from the community. Jackals however, operate in packs.

Psalms 44:19; “Though you have broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death.” Doesn’t tell us much this one, as it’s relying on the nature of tanninim to convey the situation.

Psalms 74:13; “You split open the sea by your strength; You broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.” Possibly a reference to the Flood.

Psalms 148:7; “Praise the LORD from the earth, you dragons, and all deeps:” An intriguing statement, given extra-Biblical documentation of dragon intelligence, which some sources put as near-Human.

Isaiah 13:21; “But wild animals will lie down there, and their houses will be full of howling creatures; there ostriches will dwell, and there wild goats will dance.” while it doesn’t say dragon, it says howling creatures, Wycliffe was happy to write dragouns as his translation solely from the sound identified, and it has to be inquired why he did so if humans could not have encountered dragons to record the sound.

Isaiah 13:22; " And the wild beasts shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.” Given the reference is about animals being used as tools for judgement, it’s no surprise that dragons are mentioned.

Jeremiah 9:11; “I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a lair of dragons, and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.” Again, a judgement making the city uninhabitable.

Jeremiah 10:22; “Behold, the noise of the bruit is come, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons.“ again, dragons used as a symbol of judgement.

Jeremiah 14:6; 2and the wild asses stood in the high places, they snuffed up the wind like dragons; their eyes failed because there was no grass.“ This gives us information about how dragons breathed, which is something very difficult to know unless you either witnessed it or heard from someone who had.

Jeremiah 49:33; “And Hazor shall be a dwelling for dragons, and a desolation for ever: there shall no man abide there, nor any son of man dwell in it.“ Again, using dragons as a symbol of judgement.

Jeremiah 51:37; “And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwellingplace for dragons, an astonishment, and a hissing, without an inhabitant.” Jeremiah again uses the presence of dragons as a judgement.

Ezekiel 32:2 “ “Son of man, raise a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt and say to him: “You consider yourself a lion of the nations, but you are like a dragon in the seas; you burst forth in your rivers, trouble the waters with your feet, and foul their rivers.”Not much to say here.

32 notes · View notes

blackbackedjackal · 5 years

Note

Jackal, I have a question for you. I’m a skull collector who’s not such a big part of the vc community mostly because I have agoraphobia (fear of leaving the house) and when I do find a potential new member to my skull family I have issues getting out of the house to regularly change maceration water or any of the other things I can’t do inside the house because of smell. Is there any compromise you think I can do or am I stuck buying skulls instead of finding them?

There are a two indoor methods you can use that produce a minimal smell, simmering and dermestid beetles.

I wrote up an old simmering guide HERE but it’s basically just using a crock pot to cook the meat off of skulls and bones. It’s a safe method that I’ve used to clean skulls rapidly as far as just getting the meat off but you really have to pay attention to the amount of time you have the skull in the crock pot. Simmering is not the same as boiling where the temperature of the water is so hot that it damaged the bone even after a few moments. The temperature is kept right under boiling so the skull can be left in the pot for a longer period of time, but it will damage the bone if left for too long. Generally speaking, when I go to simmer a skull I remove the eyes, tongue, brain, and some of the bigger chunks of meat, and then sit it in the pre-heated crock pot for about 45-60 minutes. After that session, I remove the skull and as much meat as possible, then put the skull back into the crock pot for another 45-60 minutes. Take the skull out, clean off more meat, and then put it back into the crock pot for one more 45-60 minute session. I’ve found any time longer than 3 hours will either cook the natural fats and grease into the skull, making it much harder to degrease afterwards and after three hours is when the bone will start to take heat damage. If the skull is not fully cleaned after 3 hours, you then oxidize the skull by soaking it in hydrogen peroxide for a few days to plump up the leftover tissue and then manually remove it with some tweezers. Then you just degrease and whiten the skull as you normally would c:!! It’s pretty low smell, just smells like some funky cooking meat, but it can be done 100% indoors.

Beetles are a bit more complicated. Anyone who’s had a colony knows that beetles are easy until A. something goes wrong with the colony, B. they find a way to escape, or C. you run out of things to feed them. But setting them up is simple. All you need is a tall plastic bin with a screen lid, a layer of aspen bedding or shredded paper substrate (you can use other substrates but I find these easiest to clean), a sponge, some styrofoam, and a small container to sit your bones in. All the meat you feed them needs to be 100% dry, which you generally can dry in front of a fan. Beetles should not be fed wet food as it can attract flies and mites which will kill the colony. They need a constant source of food and water, food is obviously just the dried meat you feed them, and water comes from lightly spritzing the sponge in their container with a spray bottle every few days. Once again, too much moisture is bad so the less is more in their case. You can also get a heating pad for them or a heat lamp to keep them warm but they cannot be kept anywhere above 85 degrees or the adults will start flying. Anything below about 65 will cause the colony to start to become dormant and not eat/reproduce or as quickly. You need to start off with of a colony of about 2000-3000 to clean anything sizable such as a raccoon sized skull, and you also need to add new genetics to the colony yearly with a booster colony of at least 500-1500 new individuals. It promotes reproduction and keeps the colony from becoming static where they all lay eggs, incubate, and reproduce around the same time. They’re about balance at the end of the day, if the colony is healthy it will stay healthy, but if one thing goes wrong for too long it can kill the entire colony (which I have done before :c ). But they’re something that you can do 100% indoors as well and they’re great little workers and fun to have around. Plus they’re low smell (they only really smell if the substrate is dirty of if they’re eating something funky). But they are animals and you have to take care of them like any other pet

So really it’s just what you prefer to try between the two! The indoor methods are a more high maintenance then doing something like outdoor maceration or rot pots where you can kinda just leave the bones until they’re done, but they are faster methods of cleaning overall. They also have some limitations in that those methods only work with certain types of remains (you can’t really simmer anything too dried/mummified, in the same way that you can’t feed the beetles anything too rotten or too wet). But at the end of the day either method allow you to enjoy your hobby and feel comfortable while doing so which is important

If you have any other questions feel free to ask them! I hope this helps

etsy I insta I ko-fi

#ask #faq

19 notes · View notes

solsarin · 3 years

Text

how to treat dog wounds from fighting

Hello dear friends, thank you for choosing us. In this post on the solsarin site, we will talk about “how to treat dog wounds from fighting “. Stay with us. Thank you for your choice.

Home Care for

Dog Wound

If your

dog

has been

fighting

with another

animal

, look your

dog

over carefully for

wounds

. If a

wound

is visible and bleeding, apply a

clean

cloth to the

wound

or wrap it around the

wound

for added pressure to control the bleeding. Some parts of the body are more vascular than other regions.Wound CareTo clean the wounds at home, you can apply a small amount of petroleum jelly on the wound and clip the fur around the bites. Petroleum jelly will help to keep hair out of the injury and prevent bacteria located on your dog’s fur out of the wound. Once the wound is visible and free of the obstacles or fur, clean it thoroughly with a betadine, iodine, or hydrogen peroxide solution. Whether you are continuing veterinary care or cleaning minor wounds from home, you will need to continue to keep the wound clean with hydrogen peroxide and a gentle gauze several times a day. Applying antibiotic ointment will help keep infection away, keep the wound clean and free of bacteria, as well as help with healing.

InfectionIf, for any reason, you think your dog has an infection, or if a known infection has worsened, contact your veterinarian for an exam or recheck and antibiotics.Three basicThree basic signs of infection in your dog will be swelling, discharge, and redness. Restricting exercise and keeping your dog resting and relaxed while all bite wounds heal is crucial. Your dog’s skin will need time to heal without risk of reopening the wounds.If your veterinarian installed a drain, you will want to keep the area around the drain clean and clear of any pus discharge.Drains can usually be removed after three to five days. After the drain is removed, you will need to follow up at home with hydrogen peroxide and gauze cleaning and home care for several days as the bite wounds heal.

Dog fightsDog fights happen, even to the best of dogs and with the most responsible of owners.Whether your dog is on a leash, roaming free, or at a dog park, other dogs biting your dog is not only possible but a common reason for pet owners to bring their dogs to their veterinarian for an emergency visit.Even animals within your own home could inflict a bite wound on your dog.If your dog has been involved in a fight with an animal you do not know or another dog, you may want to visit withveterinarianyour veterinarian and be sure the other animal is tested for rabies, if possible. In the least, your veterinarian may want to administer antibiotics to fight any infection from the offending animal’s mouth and pain medications to assist with pain.Assessment Some bite injuries are not incredibly apparent. If your dog has been fighting with another animal, look your dog over carefully for wounds.If a wound is visible and bleeding, apply a clean cloth to the wound or wrap it around the wound for added pressure to control the bleeding. Some parts of the body are more vascular than other regions.Head woundsHead wounds will bleed more profusely than leg or trunk lacerations. Once you have control over your dog and have done a quick initial assessment,you will need to decide if your dog needs emergency care right away or if you can wait for your veterinarian to fit you in with an appointment.Wound Care To clean the wounds at home, you can apply a small amount of petroleum jelly on the wound and clip the fur around the bites.

Petroleum jellyPetroleum jelly will help to keep hair out of the injury and prevent bacteria located on your dog’s fur out of the wound.Once the wound is visible and free of the obstacles or fur, clean it thoroughly with a betadine, iodine,or hydrogen peroxide solution.Whether you are continuing veterinary care or cleaning minor wounds from home, you will need to continue to keep the wound clean with hydrogen peroxide and a gentle gauze several times a day.antibioticApplying antibiotic ointment will help keep infection away, keep the wound clean and free of bacteria, as well as help with healing. Infection If, for any reason, you think your dog has an infection,or if a known infection has worsened, contact your veterinarian for an exam or recheck and antibiotics.Three basic signs of infection in your dog will be swelling, discharge, and redness. Restricting exercise and keeping your dog resting and relaxed while all bite wounds heal is crucial.Your dog’s skin will need time to heal without risk of reopening the wounds.If your veterinarianIf your veterinarian installed a drain, you will want to keep the area around the drain clean and clear of any pus discharge.Drains can usually be removed after three to five days.The absolute best preventionThe absolute best prevention for bite wounds is to keep control over your dog and know your surroundings when you are out with your pup.If you are in a public area with other dogs around,keep your dog on a tight leash and within your control.Don’t let your dog roam freely outside around your house or with you on running trails or public areas. Dog training classes are helpful for teaching your dog obedience.However, not all dogs will be as well behaved as your dog might be.Though some dogyou can do your part as a responsible dog owner by following the rules of common sense when you are out in public with your dog or around your home and neighborhood.

Random Posts

how to create a formula in excel to calculate percentage increase

percentage of freshwater and saltwater on earth

what percentage of earth’s water is freshwater that we can use

how many percent of salt water in earth

how many percent fresh water in earth

dog

The domestic dog (Canis familiaris or Canis lupus familiaris)[4] is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. The dog derived from an ancient, extinct wolf,[5][6] and the modern grey wolf is the dog’s nearest living relative.[7] The dog was the first species to be domesticated,[8][7] by hunter–gatherers over 15,000 years ago,[6] before the development of agriculture.[1] Their long association with humans has led dogs to be uniquely adapted to human behavior,[9] leading to a large number of domestic individuals[10] and the ability to thrive on a starch-rich diet that would be inadequate for other canids.[11]

Taxonomy

Further information: Canis lupus dingo § Taxonomic debate – the domestic dog, dingo, and New Guinea singing dog

In 1758, the Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus published in his Systema Naturae the two-word naming of species (binomial nomenclature). Canis is the Latin word meaning “dog,”[13] and under this genus, he listed the domestic dog, the grey wolf, and the golden jackal. He classified the domestic dog as Canis familiaris and, on the next page, classified the grey wolf as Canis lupus.[2] Linnaeus considered the dog to be a separate species from the wolf because of its upturning tail (cauda recurvata), which is not found in any other canid.[14]

resource: wikipedia

0 notes

thewolfarmy · 7 years

Text

DID YOU KNOW?:“The Maned Wolf”

Catch a glimpse of a maned wolf on the prowl and you might feel compelled to do a double-take: It looks like a long-nosed, shaggy-haired fox on stilts. Also, its pee mimics the scent of a certain recreational drug. Here are 10 tidbits about the coolest critter you’ve never heard of.

1. IT’S THE TALLEST WILD CANID

With a shoulder height of up to 35 inches when fully grown, this species is the tallest wild member of the canine family. (Still, it’s nowhere near the heaviest: Full-grown maned wolves max out at just 50 pounds, while the grey wolf can weigh up to 175.) The maned wolf owes its impressive stature to its disproportionately long legs, which probably evolved due to habitat preference. The animals can generally be found in open grasslands in Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, leading scientists to theorize that their legs evolved to help them see above tall grasses and shrubs while looking for prey.

2. DESPITE THE NAME, IT’S NOT ACTUALLY A WOLF.

Nor is it a fox, a fact betrayed by the maned wolf’s circular pupils. Real foxes have elliptical, vertically-oriented pupils that help them ambush prey in low-light conditions. Thanks to numerous anatomical quirks, the maned wolf cannot comfortably be classified as any kind of fox, wolf, dog, coyote, or jackal. A 2009 genetic analysis determined that the species’ closest relative was the tawny-furred Falkland Islands wolf, which went extinct circa 1880. (For the record, it technically wasn’t a wolf either.) The last common ancestor of these two mammals probably lived somewhere around 6.7 million years ago.

Researchers think that, among still-living animals, the maned wolf is most closely akin to the bush dog, another strange, New World beast. Rather stocky in appearance, the bush dog is notable for having webbed toes that enable it to dig more efficiently and pursue a semiaquatic lifestyle. Bush dogs are native to Panama and South America.

youtube

3. IT HAS THREE MAIN VOCALIZATIONS.

In the above video, you’ll hear a maned wolf releasing what is sometimes called a roar-bark. Booming and guttural, the sound is mostly used by mates to communicate with each other over long distances. When angered or distressed, maned wolves will produce a low growl as a warning. They’ve also been known to let loose high-pitched greeting whines. There is only about 2,000 left in the wild. WOW!

4. IT’S AN IMPORTANT OMNIVORE.

Fecal samples indicate that, in the wild, fruit and vegetable matter accounts for a third to one-half of a maned wolf’s diet. The canids will often eat roots and bulbs, but they have a special taste for a tomato-like fruit known as the wolf apple (the fruit's name is derived from the maned wolf’s enthusiasm for it). Also called the loberia fruit, it’s thought to help the animals ward off parasitic kidney worms.

Loberia seeds tend to germinate more efficiently after passing through a maned wolf’s digestive tract. Furthermore, the creatures have a helpful habit of defecating directly onto leaf cutter ant nests. The insects then use this fecal matter to fertilize their in-house fungus gardens. In the process, they cast any seeds they might find into the colony’s garbage piles, where the seeds can easily take hold and grow into fruit-bearing plants. And thus, the whole mutually-beneficial cycle repeats itself. At this point, we should note that maned wolves are still carnivores. They’re very adept at hunting down smaller mammals, with armadillos and rodents being common prey items. Reptiles, birds, insects, and eggs are also consumed when the opportunity presents itself.

5. MANED WOLVES ARE MOSTLY SOLITARY.

Unlike real wolves, these guys don’t form packs. Although adults do live in monogamous pairs and the two mated individuals will defend a permanent territory of around 15 square miles, the male and the female rarely interact outside of the breeding season. For most of the year, they hunt, travel, and sleep alone. Between April and June, however, the wayward partners come together to reproduce. Following a 62- to 66-day gestation period, the female begets anywhere from one to five pups. In captivity, males will help rear the offspring, but it’s unknown if their wild counterparts follow suit.

6. NEWBORNS HAVE DARK BROWN COATS.

These ridiculously adorable puppies have fur that is so dark it almost looks black. As they mature, their coats adopt a predominantly reddish hue, though each leg’s lower half remains dark (they also have a tuft of white on the tail). Then there’s the so-called mane, a streak of dark hair that runs down the neck, terminating just above the shoulders. (More on that in a bit.)

7. THEIR SLEEP SCHEDULES VARY SEASONALLY—AND BY REGION.

Maned wolves are sometimes cited as crepuscular animals, meaning that they mainly come out at dawn and dusk. This is an oversimplification. In reality, activity patterns vary wildly depending on the date and where a particular animal lives. For instance, maned wolves in Bolivia are liable to wander about at any hour during the wet season, but they’re unwaveringly nocturnal in the drier months. The situation is reversed in Brazil, where individuals tend to be diurnal in the dry season and nocturnal in the wet season.

8. THOSE “MANES” SERVE AS A DEFENSE MECHANISM.

When threatened, the thick mane hairs stand erect, making the animal appear larger. To enhance the bluff, an anxious mane wolf will stand upright, lower its head, and threateningly arch its back.

9. MANED WOLVES ARE CLASSIFIED AS NEAR-THREATENED.

The future of these wonderful, stilt-legged canids is very much in doubt. Only around 17,000 mature adults are thought to be left in the wild. Most of these inhabit Brazil, where the local maned wolf population has declined by roughly 20 percent over the past 15 years. Widely suspected of being serial chicken-killers, the animals have long been hunted down and killed by chicken farmers throughout South America. Additionally, maned wolves are susceptible to diseases spread by domestic dogs, many of whom act aggressively towards their distant cousins. But the biggest threat to the animals is habitat loss. As grasslands and forests regularly become farmlands and villages, maned wolves are caught in the middle. Accordingly, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) regards this species as a near-threatened one. This means that, in the not-too-distant future, the maned wolf might well become vulnerable—or worse. Hopefully, increased awareness and captive breeding programs will help turn things around.

You ready for this last one?

THEIR PEE SMELLS LIKE MARIJUANA???

Roar-barks are all well and good, but maned wolves primarily communicate with scent. These canines, like numerous other animals, use urine to mark their territories—but their pee is a lot different from what your pupper sprays onto the fire hydrant. Maned wolf urine releases pyrazines, hexagon-shaped clusters of nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen that create a powerful odor that smells a lot like marijuana smoke.

A Dutch police department learned this fact by accident in 2006. That year, law enforcement officials were summoned to the Rotterdam Zoo in South Holland because guests believed there was a pot-smoker illegally lighting up at the facility. To the surprise of many, their culprit turned out to be a maned wolf who was simply marking its territory.

#Fun Wolf Facts #Wolf #Maned Wolves #I stand for Wolves #Wolf Army #Educational

39 notes · View notes