I JUST REREAD YOUR BRUJAY AU TALK AND WAS LIKE WAIT. TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE FOOD TRUCK AU

please I’m picturing crack so much crack but it’s the ‘very earnestly’ that really kills me

buddy your timing is immaculate i got to eat a real good shrimp po’boy this weekend past and between that and this ask i wrote down the following:

in between their Big Important cases bruce and the gang take the time to invest in small-scale crime, and for this month it’s to address how police officers keep shaking down food trucks for bribes so that they won’t arrest them or throw their food out claiming it’s a health and safety violation, all of that kind of misery.

everyone loves their late-night food trucks, so they’re like ok we gotta address this, and jason is tasked to go undercover bc he’s the only one who’s a reasonably good cook, and because despite being a 6′3 tank-built man, out of uniform he’s got good-boy energy so For Sure all the elderly aunties selling tamales and chupe and the gruff uncles selling falafels and chicken-and-rice will include him in their fold and tell him what/who to watch out for

b drops by regularly as a civvy ostensibly to get his favourite shrimp po’boy w spicy slaw, but really it’s because he’s a disaster and despite them being in an established relationship he’s more comfortable flirting and being affectionate as Bruce Wayne The Man The Myth, and jason thinks this is insane but is also 100% smitten whenever he purposely makes bruce’s order too spicy and the man’ll stand there w his eyes watering and go ‘this is delicious and also you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me’

this p much becomes Date Night for them, and bruce always shows up around 5:30 and is always gone by seven at the latest, which Crooked Cop Men notice. couple of weeks in CCM show up at 8 PM, tossing over carts and threatening to arrest the illegal immigranty-looking ones (their words), and jason’s there working real hard not to tear a CCM’s throat out through his nose and he’s raging and raging and raging and he has access to a cleaver when the Big Boss comes to survey his lil cart and jason WILL choose violence, he’s on a hair trigger ready to explode and-

and there bruce is, looking handsome and rumpled in a 3-piece suit with a relaxed smile that’s all teeth in the eyes. ‘hey my guy’ he says to a police officer who’s got a gun but also looks like a startled chihuahua when he’s grabbed around the collar by a man famous for making out w JLo in his undies who now looks like he’s ripped people’s throat out through their noses, ‘funny ol’ thing you guys are doing, here at my favourite food truck corner. who gave you guys the order to terrorise some good honest Gothamites? don’t worry about telling me the answer, i’m sure you have warrants and orders etc., but lucky us that half of WE’s legal team are here for dinner tonight, hey? so you all can have a fun little chat haha. oh, no, this isn’t all of them, maggie and corena and shehreen are by a few, oh, hoho, a few of your cars, in fact, for being illegally parked in disabled parking spots. what a conundrum. still, i’m sure you’re not doing anything illegal.’

and he’s still smiling and he still sounds jocular but the lawyers are descending like wolves unto lame caribou and the CCM are scattering but their cars are being towed As We Speak and bruce is just there and calm and still and Smiling and he’s like ‘i’m surer that if you were doing something illegal, oh, that you will regret it, won’t you, officer insert-name-here? on private property too, isn’t that a doozy.’

it’s like a rhetorical question but it comes out as a threat, and it’ll come to pass that the little park’s always been private property (bruce’s) and he sues the pants off of the Crooked Cop Men and they sure!! did!! regret it!!

throughout this exchange jason is white-knuckling his cleaver bc if anyone pulls a gun out on bruce to scare him jason’s 101% ready to pay them back 100-fold, but bruce’s inexorable calmness has the situation under control so mostly jason’s thinking ‘this man looks good in streetlight’ and ‘i’d eat cured ham off almost any part of his body’

anyways in an effort to make sure food trucks that aren’t on wayne land also aren’t facing harassment jason opens his lil sandwich foodtruck at different locations at random and b keeps on being a lovestruck dumbass cosplaying as a lovestruck dumbass who keeps coming after him and the punchline is that jason’s undercover name is dominic exclusively so that his business can be called ‘dom’s subs’ and the week after b takes down 5 of GCPD’s worstest he puts up a menu item called ‘dom’s best (po’)boy’ but it’s not a menu item it’s just a picture of bruce and it’s disgusting/embarrassing/terrible but it also becomes a meme for people to take a picture under bruce’s picture and tag it with ‘god i wish that were me 🙏’

and now that i’ve thrown all this at u there’s little chance i’ll actually write it down, but despite how i’ve described it the bulk of it would have been jason making his lil sandwiches for bruce 😌 also knowing me there also would have been so choking somehow somewhere in there but i hope this bare-bones account of lovestruck food truck shenanigans is everything you thought it would be ;)

Hello my friend! I just wanted to say that I love your stories and everything! I also wanted to know if you are doing any stories requests or anything? 🤗🤗🤗🤗

Hello!!! Aaaab you’re too kind 💜💜 thank you so much for reading my stories!

I’ve never done story requests before, but I shall do my best 😁😁 request away!

im sorry seals molt? my association with that word is insects so i am confused and intrigued

They do! I’d say most species of animals sloughs off “old” parts of their bodies at some point of their lives in some capacity. The word “molting” is used as a catch-all term for this process, although exactly what body part they shed and how they do it varies from animal to animal. Arthropods grow an entire new exoskeleton and shed the old one, but for most other animals, this process only involves shedding the outermost layer of their bodies, the pelage and/or their first layer of skin. Reptiles are quite famous for this because they sometimes manage to come out of their old skins and leave them almost fully intact as if they were kigurumi pajamas:

Mammals tend to mostly only shed fur or hair, growing thicker fur during colder months and losing it in favor of shorter fur during warmer months. How obvious this is depends on the climate, though. It’s quite perceptible in mammals that live in the arctic whose fur changes color depending on the season:

But even the difference between the summer coats and winter coats of domestic dogs can be palpable if you live in places with colder climates!

(I’m quite fascinated by this because I was born and raised in a tropical country and my dogs look the same all year round heh)

But back to the seals. Pinnipeds don’t really use their fur to keep warm like other mammals do, but they still have it, and they have to shed their old coats and grow new ones accordingly, which they do once a year!

In elephant seals, this process is so sudden and so extreme it’s called catastrophic molting. They don’t only lose their fur, but also a layer of dead skin all at once and this forces them to stay on land for a full month without swimming (and therefore, without hunting and eating) until the process is fully done. Because molting requires redirecting blood flow towards the skin instead of to their vital organs as usual, if they swam in the cold waters they’re usually accustomed to while molting, they’d freeze!

Bonus fun fact: despite having lost their fur during the evolution process, cetaceans like whales and dolphins also go through a molting process where they lose a layer of dead skin, which they scrape off by rubbing against rocks and rolling on sand banks.

It’s been recently discovered (as of 2020!) that the reason whales migrate annually from arctic waters to tropical waters is the exact same reason elephant seals spend a month on land: to molt! It’s much easier for a whale to keep warm while shedding its skin in warm waters than it is in cold waters.

Can you elaborate the story of the ”Free Willy” orca (forgot his name). From my understanding the orca couldn’t survive in the wild and imprinted on hunans to the point that he seeked out human compaionship

Oh Keiko. His is a sad story. In 1979, he was tragically captured from his native Icelandic waters as a calf and, after bouncing around for several years, was sold to an amusement park in Mexico City that would eventually become Six Flags Mexico. It was here that he found fame as the star of Free Willy, a very sweet and very fictional story (a favorite of mine as a child!) that later spawned a trilogy, all while convincing the public that it’s easy to free a whale.

The tank you see in the movie is the same tank Keiko lived in during his time in Mexico. Intended to house dolphins, it was incredibly undersized, and the water was far too warm for an orca. Worst of all, he was isolated from others of his kind, with only the companionship of his human caregivers and a few bottlenose dolphins. The years of poor husbandry took their toll on poor Keiko, and he was lethargic and in ill health when his story because known throughout the world.

Although many parties were involved in what happened next, Warner Bros. studios (the filmmakers behind Free Willy) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS, my beloathed) were at the forefront. Once it became public knowledge that the real Willy was not, in fact, returned to the wild to live with his family and was still living in that too-tiny pool, many of Keiko’s fans (mainly children) began writing letters asking for their favorite cetacean movie star to be released.

Doesn’t that warm your heart? *she says sarcastically*

Some time—and an incident in which Michael Jackson (yes, that Michael Jackson) tried to purchase the whale for his personal collection—later, Keiko’s owners relented. It was decided by the newly formed Free Willy-Keiko Foundation, founded by Warner Bros. and cell phone mogul Craig McCaw (and still in operation to this day, unfortunately), that it was time to make fantasy a reality and set Keiko free. In 1996, Keiko was transferred to the Oregon Coast Aquarium for rehabilitation, where he would spend two years.

Under the quality husbandry and veterinary care Keiko received in Oregon, his health began to improve. In my opinion, this beautiful habitat, with trainers who loved and cared for him, should’ve been his forever home. One would think this was the plan all along, considering his trainers were still doing waterwork with him. That doesn’t exactly scream “this animal is a candidate for release!”

But the HSUS and Free Willy-Keiko Foundation had promised the children of the world that Keiko would return to the wild. Think of the children, people.

In 1998, Keiko tasted the crisp saltwater of the Icelandic seas for the first time in nearly two decades. For the next four or so years, Keiko lived in a sea pen, with the intentions of gradually habituating him back to his native environment. Over time, his trainers took him on longer and longer “walks” in the open ocean. One day in 2002, the walk didn’t end.

Keiko was free.

15 months later, he was dead.

The cause of death was pneumonia, the most common disease of cetaceans both in the wild and in human care. He was 27 years old (average life expectancy of a male orca is about 30 years).

Perhaps it would’ve been worth it, had Keiko spent those last 15 months with his long-lost family. But he didn’t. Though he was occasionally observed trailing pods of orcas, Keiko never rejoined a wild pod. Instead, he spent those 15 months traveling the coasts of Iceland and Norway seeking out the only family he knew. Humans.

Keiko would approach swimming children, allowing them to ride on his back as he had with his trainers over the years. He would follow boats in search of food and companionship, as his caregivers had interacted with him from boats during his ocean walks. These escapades became so frequent that the local government passed ordinances to stop its citizens from interacting with the whale. Although the HSUS claimed otherwise, Keiko was never again a truly wild whale. He was a whale dependent on humans, humans who ignored the advice of experts and tried to bring fiction to life. In 2009, the journal Marine Mammal Science did a retrospective review of Keiko’s rehabilitation and release. They determined it was a failure.

Despite this, Keiko remains a poster child for anti-zoo activists. The still-hypothetical Whale Sanctuary Project (my even more beloathed) uses Keiko as an example of why their experiment is a good idea, tugging at heartstrings of well-meaning animal lovers like HSUS did all those years ago.

In reality, Keiko was quite possibly the worst candidate imaginable for release. He was a fully mature male, with a history of poor health, who had spent decades in the care of humans with absolutely no contact with others of his kind since he was basically a toddler. The decision to release him was made entirely on emotion and carried out by movie executives and animal rights activists. For further insight into the political and financial woes of the release, I highly recommend Killing Keiko by Mark Simmons, one of Keiko’s caregivers throughout the rehabilitation process.

RIP Keiko. You were a beautiful, sweet man who inspired millions 🐳

🐳🐋🐳🐋 hello these mrx God

I have a question

What's the best fruit of all the fruits you've created

Aziraphale and Crowley.

Thank you for the whales, anon.

Whats everyones’ favorite sea creature?

Mine is a Zebra Shark

OHHHH ANON, THIS IS ASK IS SO CUTE SHAHSAHSAASHHAS (you gave me Animal Crossing flashbacks, frfr)

SO let's start with Old Man Price: tbh i think if you'd ask him yourself, he'd probably just say the first creature that comes to mind, which is likely to be shark. he won't say what kind of shark, just SHARK.

darling Gaz tho, idk why but i'd think he'd find turtles fascinating! he also gives me the vibe that he probably had a pet turtle as a kid (also the type to scold you if you confuse the terminology between turtle, tortoise, and terrapins.) like Price tho, i don't think he'd specify what type of turtle he likes most and would prolly just say "they're all my favorite. cuz they're all cool"

Soap suds here tho... you gotta admit, he'd probably mention the biggest sea creature he heard about. maybe a coelacanth or a whale shark. BUT I think he'd also find dolphins kinda cute. like he's the sort of mfer that went to an ocean park and volunteered to feed the dolphin in front of the crowd.

hhh ok i couldn't decide with Skelly Boi but i think he'd be an octopus guy- specifically a stauroteuthis octopus. either that, or the most stupid looking thing, like the blobfish. im not gonna elaborate because i have a feel y'all would understand what i mean if you search them up LMAO

i truly hate the fact that cetaceans are considered even toed ungulates

what's your white whale you mentioned?

Concerning a previous remark.

In November of 2018, the Vocaloid and UTAU producer KIRA released the UTAU voicebanks Akarui Kouki and Akarui Hikari, created and voiced by him.

Each voicebank features a mascot character of the same name, with concept art provided by seica.

In the following days, as is the usual for such a momentous occasion, KIRA would receive several messages and comments on Twitter, to congratulate him on the release, including edits as well as drawings of these characters.

I crossed paths with one such message—a drawing of Akarui Hikari, with a peace sing on each hand, head tilted to the side, and with her tongue sticking out a bit, captioned "Queen for the gays", if memory serves.

I though "Oh, cute", gave it a like, and went on my way. I would never see the full drawing again.

Some time later—not sure when I started—I remembered the image and figured I ought to see it again. To my dismay, I could not find the tweet anywhere.

"Surely, it must still be somewhere!" — I thought, naively, as I typed the caption I remembered on Google.

No results.

"Okay, maybe it will show up on Twitter..." — It didn't.

"Just drop her name on Images, something gotta show up!" — Many things did, but not what I looked for.

"Did anyone upload it to a booru?" — No.

"Okay. Okay. There's no need to be lazy, I'll just read every single tweet by and to KIRA since the release date. It has to be there!" — It wasn't. But the effort was not wasted.

I was able to find many replies by KIRA to tweets that have since been deleted, or that belong to missing or suspended accounts, which may explain the disappearance. Unfortunately, not a single one of those replies appears to have been archived.

But. But! In an unrelated reply, I found an old screenshot of a tweet KIRA. In that screenshot, as the portrait of the accomplice, three parties that inadvertently conspired to my torment, in that frozen moment in time, there she was.

To this date, this highly compressed circle-cropped 135x135 ordinary collection of pixels has stood as the single proof of my sanity, the simplest marker of my ineptitude, and the sterling token of my regret.

At this point I'm not sure that I'll ever find it, that it can even be found.

Should I even want to find it?

To finally get to it and lose this strongest reminder of the transience of all things, that you should hang tight to all that you hold dear.

It is said that you are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed, but what about that which tames you?

Maybe if I just asked KIRA if he still has it and remembers who made it, but what then?

To hear a "Yes" and crystalize my incompetence for all eternity, or to hear a "No" and lose even this last speck of hope.

It's just another drawing. It's the most important image in my life.

Hi! Any cool facts about orcas

Hello my friend! Of course!

The name killer whale derives from their original name ‘whale killers’ given to them by sailors who saw them hunting whales. Over time, the name eventually switched around.  The name ‘orca‘ comes from their Latin species name Orcinus orca, where orcinus translates to mean ‘Kingdom of the dead’.

Since moose dive up to 6 meters (~20 ft) to find aquatic vegetation to eat, Orcas have become one of their natural predators.

While their name suggests that they come from the whale family, they are actually the largest of the dolphin family. The real question however, is do they share the same freakish behaviors some dolphins exhibit?

What are dire beasts? I have seen you mention them in some of your posts and was wondering what they were.

Excellent Question!

Dire Beasts are essentially animals where, instead of a temporary transformation with a catalyst much like humans/werefolk, they have a gradual, permanent transformation that alters their bodies toward obtaining colossal sizes.

It is also a potential double-edged sword, as dire beasts can be divided to "naturalized" and "feral".

Naturalized dire beasts are ones that, after reaching a certain size, their metabolism stabilizes and becomes just one with the environment, like the Dire Elephant and Dire Sperm Whale depicted here.

Feral dire beasts never stop growing, and a continuous competition between the need to eat to maintain its size and the energy burned to maintain said size eventually creates a very vicious, very aggressive creature, causing erratic behavior eventually leads it to fights that it either just cannot win or starves to death.

dearest of whale, i don't know if you've seen this before but it seemed like it something you'd enjoy: duckytree.tumblr.com/post/692170769853251584/i-drew-my-thing-here-click-on-image-for-better

hi anon!! that post made me laugh, mostly because i could not stop imagining what you thought would appeal to me more: the scorching hot art, bruce looking incredible but ALSO like he has been crying, the phrase '200 pounds of billionaire tiddies', or the fact that an endangered bird species is coming out as a winner in all of this :')

the answer is of course all of the above. thanks for sharing!

counting down to the holidays now for real... i love boy with luv, it's such a fun concept and jimin really crushes it on that choreo every time. so in his element! since you like the rapline (and esp. yoongi) - what's your favorite solo song? and also, because i have all the question, which comeback would you go back and witness live if you could? love of love, peppermint

My fave solo song is Moonlight from D-2!

Oh man… I guess comeback would be mots7

I remember when the album dropped, i thought it showed the growth of the group, from no more dreams to persona- like you can really hear the growth and maturity in the songs and concept? And ON is such a masterpiece!

Hope you’re having a good week Peppermint! 💜

all kidns of strange and wonderful beafts in the world. how do we even know them all. wh

That’s the beauty of it: we don’t know them all! We’re constantly discovering new species! Granted, some of these discoveries weren’t completely unknown to science and were only misidentified as a different animal, but they’re still pretty cool nonetheless. Here are some mammals that were discovered in the past few years:

The Popa langur (Trachypithecus popa), first described in 2020.

The northern greater glider (Petauroides minor) and the central greater glider (Petauroides armillatus), upgraded from subspecies of the southern greater glider (Petauroides volans), to their own species in 2020.

The Ramari’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon eueu), described from a single beached specimen in 2021!

The striking Halloween colored Nimba myotis bat (Myotis nimbaensis), described in 2021.

The southern maned sloth (Bradypus crinitus), first described in 2022.

The Benin tree hyrax (Dendrohyrax interfluvialis), first described in 2022.

The eastern Mindanao gymnure (Podogymnura intermedia) and the Kitanglad gymnure (podogymnura minima), first described this year, in January 2023.

And the Talpa hakkariensis mole, described just last month in August 2023!

When horses end up with severe leg/hip injuries, they are almost always put to sleep. The odds of recovering full mobility from such injuries are slim and the odds of reinjury are high, so even if the horse is perfectly healthy in all other aspects, it is generally recognized to be more humane to put them down than to keep them alive just to live the rest of their lives limping around a small paddock or stall. A life for a horse in which s/he cannot gallop, leap, explore and play is no life at all. Why not apply the same logic to cetaceans? A life for a cetacean in which they can’t dive hundreds of meters, make meaningful autonomous choices (“should I play with the rubber ball or the puzzle feeder today?” is not a meaningful choice; research has shown that autonomy is crucial for animal welfare), echolocate and experience the rich biodiversity of the ocean is no life. I really don’t understand why it’s so horrible to think it more humane to euthanize a confused and sick orca calf if there is no chance of rehab and release than to take her/him permanently into captivity. It’s not disparaging or hateful to cetacean trainers to say so—I know they care about animals—it’s simply a logical ethical stance. Instead of searching in vain for orca conservation organizations that aren’t “radically anti-captivity”, maybe pro-caps should look inwards and ask themselves why all the major orca organizations (Center for Whale Research, Orca Behavior Institute, OrcaLab, Wild Orca, Orca Conservancy, Far East Russia Orca Project, etc.) as well as some cetacean organizations (ex. Whale and Dolphin Conservation, Cetacean Society International) oppose captivity. Is it because all of these esteemed groups, which if you look them up are all staffed by credentialed scientists, have been duped by the “animal rights agenda”, or could it be because maybe, just maybe, they know what they’re talking about? If captive orcas are so different from wild ones that wild orca biologists have no credibility to speak about their welfare, then that’s a clear indictment of captivity already.

Hi. I'm sorry for not answering right away, I was still at my externship when I got your ask, and I wanted to be able to sit down and give you a proper answer. So unfortunately, I don't think what I say will satisfy you. I don't expect to change your mind, nor is that my goal here. I only want to explain why I believe the way I do, so that you or others reading this can at least understand that it's not a position I take lightly, nor do I think it's infallible.

(Long post below the cut):

To start off, as an (almost) veterinarian, there are absolutely plenty of circumstances where I find euthanasia to be the correct decision. Euthanasia is our final gift to our patients, a swift and painless death in the face of prolonged suffering or poor quality of life. A large dog with debilitating osteoarthritis. A cat with terminal lymphoma. A down cow. A raptor with an amputated leg. Or like you mentioned, a horse with a fractured hip. These animals would live in a constant state of pain that they don't understand, and death can rightly be considered a kindness to them.

But an otherwise healthy orca calf? I would consider that a false equivalence. I agree that life in the wild should be prioritized whenever possible, and that captive orcas lead very different lives than their wild counterparts. But if that orca cannot return to the wild (orphaned and unable to be reunited with its pod, habituated to humans, non-painful disability such as deafness), and there is a facility willing to take it on, I do not think euthanasia is an appropriate option. In human care, that calf can still swim, breach, and dive, even if not to the same depths as the ocean (it's also worth noting that these are all costly behavior energetically and are not performed for no reason). It can still socialize and form family bonds with an adopted pod of whales. It can still (theoretically) mate and rear calves. It can still engage its big brain in problem-solving through training and enrichment in the place of hunting. And as a bonus, it will never go hungry and has access to veterinary care if ill or injured.

This is not a wild life. This is not the same life they would've, or should've known. A pool, no matter how well-appointed, is not the ocean, and we should not claim they're comparable. But I don't think it's a fate worse than death. I truly don't. But if it is... if freedom really is worth more than life, then all captive whales need to be euthanized. Even in a sea pen setting, they will not be free. They will not choose their food, their companions, their enrichment, their comings and goings. Those choices will still be made on their behalf by caregivers, and they will still have pretty much the same levels of autonomy as in their tank habitat. They will still be captive. (While some people do advocate for this, I don't think it's a popular outlook. Even SOS Dolfijn, a historically anti-cap organization, recently announced plans to build an aqauarium as a permanent home for non-releasable cetaceans rather than continuing to euthanize them).

Speaking of autonomy, yes, it is very important. But I truly don't think the orcas are distressed by the lack of meaning in choosing between enrichment devices. I think that's why we disagree on this topic... we have different worldviews. We both see orcas as beautiful, intelligent creatures, but I do not see them as people. They are animals, and for all their complexity, I interpret their behavior the same way I do any other species... they are motivated by food, reproduction, and (since they're highly social) companionship. Because of that, I still think we can give them a good life in human care, which is why it frustrates me to see the zoo community throw up their hands and give up rather than trying to improve our current less-than-ideal setups (*shakes my fist at the Blue World project*).

Now, I don't think it's wrong to be emotional about animals. I most definitely am! And it's very clear to me you love orcas and care about their wellbeing deeply. I admire that about you, and I appreciate your passion.

On to the next point... in the cetacean world, I've found that there is an unfortunate divide between researchers and caregivers who work with cetaceans in human care and those who study them exclusively in the wild. And that schism far predates the Blackfish era. Most of those organizations you listed are indeed legitimate, and I fully support their vital work and encourage others to do the same. A few of them, though, share things like this:

I think you can understand why this hurts me. And it's a lie. I've now interned at three aquariums (two of them AZA-accredited) that house various species of cetacean, and it's impossible for me to reconcile what I know and have seen to be true and what Whale and Dolphin Conservation wants the public to believe: that these unbelievably loved, vivacious animals are drugged and tortured by their greedy captors. It's not true, and I do not appreciate WDC for spreading this creepy artwork around. Nor do I think that fighting captivity is a beneficial allocation of resources when there is an overwhelming number of genuine threats to the survival of wild cetaceans.

Anyway, back to the scientists. Personally, I don't consider researchers who work exclusively with wild orcas to be either superior or inferior to those who work with captive whales. And sometimes I wonder how much of their position is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if someone opposes captivity on moral grounds, they won't work with captive whales, so they'll never get to know what their lives and care are like beyond maybe a single tour of the park or memories of how things were done in the 1960s (like Dr. Spong, who worked with some of the very first captive orcas at the Vancouver Aquarium).

I also don't think it diminishes the expertise of wildlife biologists to say that they are not experts on husbandry, training, or medical care... those are very different fields, and ideally, they should all inform each other. And of course, there are folks who work with both wild and captive whales. One of the reasons I linked SR3 in my previous post is they have staff with backgrounds in both managed care and research of free-ranging populations (I actually have no idea what the organization's official stance on captivity is, it's not something they address).

Maybe I'm wrong. I try my best to keep an open mind, but I know I'm also swayed by my own preconceptions and experiences. When I started this blog in December 2020, I was a first year vet student with minimal actual experience outside of domestic animals and some herps, and had only recently adopted the pro-captivity outlook. Now, I'm much more deeply involved in the zoo and aquarium world. These are people I know and respect, people who have written me letters of recommendation and comment on my Facebook posts, people I've had dinner with and showed up with after hours to care for a sick animal. And I recognize that biases me. The zoo world is often resistant to change, especially folks who have been in the industry for many years. And that doesn't do anyone, especially the animals, any good. I don't want to get stuck in an echo chamber, so I make it a point to read anti-captivity literature, even when it upsets me. If there is anything I can do to improve their lives, I want to learn about it, regardless of the source.

I try to adapt to new information. For example, in the past few months alone, I've become a lot more favorable toward the idea of sea pen habitats. My concerns about "sanctuaries" are more logisitical* and philosophical** rather than the idea that artifical habitats are inherently superior to pen habitats (they're not), especially when plenty of traditional facilites already make great use of ocean pens or enclosed lagoons. There are pros and cons to both, and a lot of it depends on the needs of the individual animals.

*funding; maintenance; lack of land-based backup pools and fully-equipped medical facilities; introducing immunologically naive animals to pollutants and infectious agents; disruptions to native wildlife; staffing activists and wildlife biologists rather than those with relevant husbandry experience

**villainizing aquariums; promoting the project as a "release to freedom" to the public when it's really another form of captivity; claiming the animals' lives will be "natural" when they will still require training, artificial enrichment, contraceptives, and social management if done correctly; downplaying or completely denying the very real risks of such a transition and insisting the animals will automatically be better off when Little White and Little Grey have proved that's not the case

If you made it to the bottom, thanks for reading. I wish all the best for you, and I mean that genuinely ❤️ even if we disagree, I hope you can appreciate our shared love for these animals and a desire for their wellbeing. Best of luck in all your endeavors!

does the almighty enjoy earthly pleasures (other than whales, of course)? chocolate, fluffy pillows, lavender, etc?

I do.

You owe me a whale now.

Meg I have a shark question!

Do you like shark plushies that are anatomically correct? Like these 2 (bonus points if you know the species)

Or these chonky bois (idk why cartoon sharks are so chunky but im not complaining)

Or ykno, shark is shark, and all sharks deserve to be loved

BOTH ARE LOVELIES!!!!

There shan't be any discrimination against the anatomy of a shark plush, ALL ARE LOVELY CUDDLY BLORBOS!!!