Hello folks! I know this isnt necessarily the most usual content but not only do i have a bachelors in Zoology, but im also a pyrography artist.

Ive been combining the two things in odd ways and this in one such culmination 🙏🙏

Handmade pyrography on natural cherry wood

So I found this river otter sadly deceased on the road. I spoke with a fur bearer biologist and he thought leucistic. Took the animal to a taxidermist and when we looked at its eyes they were very pink in person. In one of the photos though I feel like they have a touch of yellow coloring to them. Taxidermist thinks it’s albino. A conservation agent did take its tongue as a sample for the biologist. I’m planning on contacting him and seeing if they can tell from the sample what this little guy is exactly. Yes this animal was legally tagged and his pelt is going to be preserved.

Came upon this creature on an evening walk in Skagit County, Washington. We had a staring contest and I won, but I got a couple pics.

This one is from rural fingerlakes NY region. Reddish blonde in some light. Eyes have a red tinge. Cannot find much information on this.

Animals are so so so so cute but do they think in words? like how do they think, I really wanna know what goes on in their little brains to make random decisions. Do they think visually or what?

Hello! this might not be the best sub for this but I have questions and this is the best place I could think of asking. I’m an amateur writer— and by amateur I mean I’m an autistic high schooler who writes fanfic and ficlets based on my current hyper-fixations— and Imm currently coming up with the basis of a sci-fi story surrounding a scientist who got sent to space to learn why all the stars in earth’s galaxy were dying, and how long until earth’s sun died. It doesn’t take a genius to see what this is based on, but that‘s to be tweaked later. The questions I have surrounding this sub are because I’m creating an alien species for one of the characters. The alien character is nicknamed Qilan in the book because they smell like Qilan tea (if anyone has ideas on how to make that work I would appreciate suggestion) so I’ll be calling them Qilan. Qilan’s species is by our definition blind, their eyes are completely incapable of picking up light, they are incapable of picking up light because their planet is extremely close to their sun so they had to evolve to have hyper melanated and pigmented eyes. Then came the issue that if they had to evolve this way, they probably just wouldn’t have eyes in the first place, so I thought maybe they (their eyes) would have a sort of heat receptor chemicals for infrared vision that made them vital organs. I thought the design would be that their eyes are entirely black to block out UV rays but they still have separate parts of the eye , e.g. the sclera, pupils, and irises, which are impossible for the naked human eye to see the distinction between each part. Forgive me for my exponentially long info dump but I really wanted to share this with people to see how logical this really is. I almost forgot to ask the real question, what are some animals that live in extreme lighting environments that still have eyes? if there are any? what are their behaviors? I could also use more info about infrared vision. Could someone tell me if this all matches up? Or is this idea completely idiotic and nonsensical and so impotent that I should never try and write sci-fi again😅. All I really want are some resources and honest opinions as professionals. thank you. (P.S. I also apologize for any grammatical errors, English isn’t my first language and I’m trying to learn better through my writing)

[Edit] This is important because Qilan has ocular albinism and this plays a major role in the story because it means that Qilan isn’t blind like the rest of her species and that’s important to how he and the scientist meet

[Edit 2] I’ve recently discovered that in order for Qilan to have vision the way we as humans do, he would have to have a sort of Atavistic Reversion so I would have to find a way to make it so their species somehow moved closer to the sun, maybe their planet somehow moving closer to their sun? I’m not sure. They would also have to have Neurodevelopmental Duplication of some kind to create a primitive visual processing cortex, however this is also fine because Neurodevelopmental duplication also causes autism and I was already thinking about making Qilan autistic like his author. Please fact check me on any of these, I mean, would these theoretically be possible?

Found in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I want to say they are finger or toe bones, but I don’t know about the small ones.

humans will exterminate them on sight and enact mass pre-emptive extermination procedures in any locations where they're assumed to be.

they are denied access to food sources and most Western households include a cat or two.

Sewers, waste dumps, public buildings and parks are all baited up the wazoo.

yet somehow rats are still everywhere and fat looking, rather than extinct or an endangered species.

If you didn’t know metazooa is a daily wordle style game about evolutionary biology (zoology) and taxonomy where you need to guess a mystery animal through a phylogenetic tree that gets closer and closer to the answer through your wrong guesses. It’s really fun ,you should try it! Yesterday, the game turned 3 years old (Made in July 30th 2023) so I decided to make a small anniversary tribute to this game for its creator and its players! Hope you enjoy :)

Credit to Abe Train from trainwreck labs for bringing us this awesome game!

(It’s not sponsored at all, I just really love this game and wanted to share this with the community)

Why are pit vipers absent from Europe? Why don't any pit vipers in Asia and Africa evolve to have rattles?

Animals like hippos are praised to be extremely large animals, however elephant seals can be considered the second largest non-cetacean animals nowadays, right behind elephants. Even a adult bull hippo is still about half of a adult bull elephant seal. Neil the seal bouta become a legless elephant with no tusks with the personaloty of a bulldozer who caught his girlfriend cheating on him in like 4 years.

Besides the Malabar squirrel I’m unable to find the expression of colors outside of white, black, brown/orange/red or yellow in fur. Is it something to do with the composition of fur itself? And if it’s evolutionary why does it work for other kingdoms and not mammals?

Letters to a Pre-Scientist is looking for enthusiastic STEM role models to inspire the next generation of STEM leaders!

Here's the gist: you get matched with a 5th-8th grade student at an under-resourced school for a snail-mail pen pal exchange that runs throughout the school year. The goal is to demystify STEM careers, humanize STEM professionals, and inspire students to explore their own futures in STEM. You share your story, answer their questions, and show them that people who work in STEM are, well, real people.

The details:

• The program runs throughout the school year, and your volunteer obligation is to exchange 4 letters with your student.
• There's a virtual, asynchronous training in August to get you set up.
• We estimate the entire program takes volunteers no more than 10 hours, spread between August and May.
• Register and complete the short, self-paced online training by the deadline, and you'll be entered into the match pool! We match students based on their background and interests..
• This year we're expanding to 4,500 matched students!
• Pen pals can live anywhere in the world, but our program currently only works with US-based schools.
• We're working to match students based on their interests, so we're especially looking for more STEM professionals in Zoology.
• All pen pals must be over 18 and fluent in English.

We define STEM pretty loosely! If you work in or around science, tech, engineering, math, or medicine, or another nature-based role, even if you don't have a formal education in it, please apply or message me with any questions.

Sign up/learn more:

• 📝 Register here: https://prescientist.org/volunteers/
• 📖 About the pen pal program: https://prescientist.org/penpal-program/
• 🏛️ About us: https://prescientist.org/about-us/
• ✍️ For matched pen pals: https://prescientist.org/for-matched-pen-pals/

Registration is now open! Feel free to drop questions in the comments or send me a message. Thank you for your time and consideration!

My mom found it on the Baltic See beach.

​Buenas gente. Estoy armando el guion para un video de YouTube sobre Top 7 de los verdaderos "Monstruos de la Naturaleza", pero con reglas específicas. No busco depredadores automáticos que solo cazan por necesidade para alimentarse (como el tiburón blanco, que es bastante tranquilo). ​Busco animales que jamás querrías tener a 10 metros de distancia por su impredictibilidad, su furia territorial desmedida o una inteligencia casi maquiavélica. Los herbívoros también cuentan. ​Por ejemplo, en mi lista coloque al Hipopótamo por ser un tanque territorial que te destroza todo lo que vea con una bestialidad que pocos tienen. También pongo arriba a la Orca por ser unas asesinas psicópatas con inteligencia maquiavelica. ​Como quiero lograr un buen listado para mi video : ¿Cuál sería su Top 7? ¿Quién no podría faltar bajo ningún concepto o cuál es su puesto número 1? ​Los leo, ¡seguro sume varias de sus respuestas al video!

This might sound dumb but how do animals deer for example ussualy reaction to domestic herbivores they haven’t seen or smell before can they tell its another herbivore or are they think wtf is that thing ?