Tag: animals

bitter-notbetter:

gluelock:

lazyevaluationranch:

1/13/17 @coldsunnyday The ducks aren’t actually green. They’re untrustworthy creatures, and they’re lying about what color they are. Don’t listen to them.

It’s an optical illusion called “structural color.” Their feathers are black. The fluffy side bits of the feathers (barbs) are also black. The little hooks that keep the barbs all lined up (barbules) are also black. There are microscopic little ridges (tubules) on the barbules that are also black. But the tubules are exactly the same size as a wavelength of green light, so instead of absorbing green light the way a black object should, they reflect it and the ducks look green. 

If you put one of the ducks under a good enough microscope, you’d see that no individual part of it was actually green in any way.

Avian biology generally can’t produce blue or green pigments. Birds that look blue or green are lying about it. Don’t trust them.

Except for turacos. They’re actually green, and very pleased with themselves about it. Look at this guy, here’s a bird you can trust:

image

@bitter-notbetter I thought you’d enjoy some birb science

I LOVE IT

batter-sempai:

teressabee:

darthmelyanna:

ekjohnston:

ironychan:

Thousands of years ago, somebody looked at a flock of sheep and went, “well, they aren’t cold.”

Guys. Guys.

It’s so much better than that.

So once upon a time, goats and sheep were essentially the same animal, and all of them had hair. Now, you can do some stuff with hair, but you can’t do a lot, so mostly sheep/goats were kept for meat and milk.

Except then a mutation showed up, and some of the sheep/goats had WOOL instead. And someone realized that 1. you could spin that shit, and 2. then you could WEAVE that shit, and 3. IT GREW BACK.

Generations of selective breeding ensued. Two visibly discrete species emerged, one primarily for meat and milk, and the other primarily for wool. They also have different behavioural characteristics, because independence was not helpful in a sheep, so it was bred out of them. Sheep remain one of the few non-draft animals that we farm even though they are not delicious.

The most similar part of sheep and goats that remains today is their skeleton. On an archaeological dig, you find THOUSANDS of bones and bone fragments that can only be identified as “sheep/goat”. It’s incredibly frustrating, but also kind of hilarious after you’ve spent enough time in the sun.

ANYWAY, human beings have always been smart and surprisingly good at changing nature because they want a sweater.

The entire knitting community needs to hear this.

Oh man I’m so glad I can add this to my arsenal of responses to people who say all GMOs are made of poison.

Oh my god so THAT’S why the Chinese word for goat and sheep are the same word, they used to be the same species. Despite being Chinese I’ve been confused over this for years. Thank you so much.

passivefan:

passivefan:

jenniferrpovey:

ultrafacts:

Source Want more facts?, follow the Ultrafacts Blog

50 species of lizard and one species of snake reproduce through parthenogenesis (that’s the fancy word for producing offspring as a female without having sex).

Except.

Whiptails are stimulation ovulators. That is to say, they can’t ovulate without having sex.

So not only do they are give birth through immaculate conception, they’re ALL LESBIANS.

There are two kinds of parthenogenesis seen in reptiles. That used by whiptails and the other all female species is true cloning – the egg contains the female’s full genetic material).

Other species including komodo dragons use another form of parthenogenesis where they actually fertilize themselves, with a haploid polar body used instead of a sperm. Because of the way reptile sex chromosomes work, this form of parthenogenesis can produce males as well as females – however, the females produced have weird sex chromosomes and can only lay other females. It’s used as a backup reproductive strategy if they can’t find a mate. This works because in reptiles, unlike mammals, its the males that have two sex chromosomes the same (ZZ) and the females different (ZW). Females produced by parthenogenesis are WW – and that’s what happened to the whiptails. They lost the Z chromosome and now are all WWs.

IOW?

Reptiles are fascinating.

YOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOO

So that means that bit I talked about on skype about lesbian dragons being able to reproduce in LotS has a basis!

#THERE AR E LESBIAN LIZARDS HOW CAN PEOPLE STILL SAY HOMOSEXUALITY IS NOT NATURAL

hillyosaurus:

yowulf:

This HAS to go viral. This pathetic movie is abusing animals in order to film cheap scenes for human entertainment. The dog is clearly terrified but the “trainers” have no regard for her safety.

Please share and encourage your friends not to spend money on a movie that uses animal abuse to film!!!

http://www.tmz.com/2017/01/18/a-dogs-purpose-german-shepherd-abuse-video/

Hi yes, ACTUAL dog trainer and dog behaviorist here. Sorry to interrupt your pitchforks and torches fest but this article is extremely misleading and is presented as a shock factor rather then presenting an actual, studied opinion of the video.

If you watch the clip, which I did, there is a lot of subtle stuff going on. First of all, rushing water is scary to ANY sort of animal, let alone a German Shepard who isn’t really a water dog like a Lab. You can see how the trainer is constantly touching the dog gently on the side and loin. He is reassuring the animal while keeping a snug grip on the collar. (Which is a flat collar btw so it can’t really do any damage to the dog even with him holding it) He is also down on the animals level, not hovering above the dog. And if you look closely, you can see that this man is constantly talking to the dog, obviously reassuring the animal. Furthermore, this is a movie dog, they have dealt with all sorts of scary situations before. This is probably the very first time that this animal was introduced to this situation and I bet you money that if we saw more of the clip, you would see them repeat this process slowly and gently until the animal relaxed.

Finally, you see the animal try to pull away. Again, perfectly normal for an animal that is scared, but again, you see the trainer pull the dog back (not yank it sharply back or drag it back) and then place the dog in the water. The actual time in the water is extremely brief and you can see that the trainer doesn’t let go of the dog and immediately pulls the animal out again after a few seconds. Just like putting a child in the bath tub for a little bit, the trainer is establishing that the water won’t harm the dog and kept the training session brief. Convenient that the clip stops before it shows you the trainer rewarding the animal in some way, which I can guarantee you they did.

Finally, I will leave you with two things. One, if the dog was actually being abused it would be responding by trying to snap at the person holding the collar and the body language would be pure terror with the tail language and hackles. German Shepards are not scared to tell you when they don’t want to do something and this dog is no different. Two, there are so many laws and regulations in place to stop the abuse of animals in movies. There is ALWAYS a representative of these organizations on site during filming whenever there is any sort of animal involved.

Don’t spread misinformation and misunderstanding please. Just like your mom forced you to eat your veggies when you were young, sometimes working with animals means encouraging them to go into situations that is way outside their instincts.

OKAY. I was going to ask about dropping dogs into frigid temperature water. Winnipeg Novembers are COLD. But apparently, November 2015 was in the top 10% of years in regard to weather. Mean temp was -1°C (30°F)! And if this is a pool, it might even be heated.

So doggie is probably fine.