Treat. Yo. Self.

“My cat got a cold and the vet recommended a warm compress for his eyes. I think he’s enjoying his spa time.”

As the California pipevine plant was displaced from San Francisco by urban sprawl, the California pipevine swallowtail, which relies on the pipevine plant to feed its caterpillars, also disappeared. That is, until a biologist named Tim Wong made it his mission to repopuplate the species in his own backyard.

Armed only with a cutting of California pipevine from the San Francisco Botanical Garden, Tim created a screened in butterfly enclosure in his backyard and began to reproduce California pipevines.

As new butterflies were born, Tim would donate them to the San Francisco Botanical Gardens where their pipevine host plant could still be found.

“At first he brought them in by the hundreds. Now he brings them in by the thousands every few months.”

While most of us don’t have the power to create habitat for endangered rhinos or tigers, anyone with a little bit of outdoor space can help create habitat for endangered insects!

You can:

-plant a pollinator garden with native nectar-producing plants

-plant host plants of local butterfly species

-leave piles of fallen leaves or sticks in your yard as habitat for native bees

-avoid using pesticides (or use them as sparingly as possible) around your home and yard

The newest release of magic cat, episode 4! 🥳 Thanks for stopping by, as magic cat has been preparing this trick for a long time!

The hyena biologist that arranged for Disney animators to come sketch captive  hyenas for The Lion King film (Laurence Frank) was so incensed when the animals were depicted as villains in the movie that he later included boycotting the film on a list of ways the average person could help hyena conservation.

Though it’s commonly known that Charles Darwin’s distaste for parasitic wasps played a role in his development of evolution theory (since he felt no loving God would create animals with such a disturbing life cycle), the biologists who study these wasps find it an unfair characterization. When they were tasked with coming up with a common name for the family of parasitic wasps (Ichneumonidae) that old Charles so disliked, they proposed the name “Darwin Wasps” to spite the famous naturalist who had insulted their beloved family of insects.

Parasitologist Tommy Leung was so frustrated with the way people write about parasites to evoke horror and gore that he started writing a Parasite of the Day blog, that specifically avoids inflammatory or unsettling language to describe them. He also illustrates different species in colorful anime art on Twitter in a series called Parasite Monster Girls—which he calls his “love letter to parasites.”