Untitled

Velvet Ant (Odontomutilla haematocephala), female, family Mutillidae, Thailand

Velvet ants are actually wasps. The females are wingless, and the males are winged.

They are known for having exceptionally painful stings!

Brilliant Carpenter-Bee Mimic Hawk Moth (Sataspes tagalica), family Sphingidae, Chiang Dao, Thailand

Anna's Eighty-Eight or Finita Burrasca (Diaethria anna), family Nymphalidae, found in much of Central and South America

Fast Fauna Facts #1 - Common Hoopoe (Upupa epops)

Family: Hoopoe Family (Upupidae)

IUCN Conservation Status: Least Concern

Widely distributed across temperate Eurasia and western Africa, Common Hoopoes live specifically in areas which provide both plentiful open ground (which they need to feed, using their long beaks to poke through soil in search of insects and seeds) and a small number or large trees in which to nest. Hoopoes nest in naturally occurring tree holes and work in pairs to raise their chicks, with females incubating the eggs and guarding the chicks while males provide food. When threatened during nesting both chicks and adult females of this species will produce a strong and unpleasant smell that has been likened to manure or rotting flesh, but if this initial deterrent fails the mother will jab at threats with her beak's sharp tip.

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

Image Source: Here

Marvelous Spatuletail (Loddigesia mirabilis)

Get to know the crocodile monitor (Varanus salvadorii)! One of the longest lizards in the world, this hefty reptile grows on average around 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) long with a weight of about 44 pounds (20 kilograms). It inhabits New Guinea, where mangrove swamps and rainforests are its preferred terrain. This arboreal critter enjoys spending the day sunbathing and munching on small mammals, birds, and reptiles. Photo: cuatrok77, CC BY-SA 2.0, flickr

we like to poke some good-natured fun at pelicans on this website, with their awkward gait, doofy faces, and pragmatic "if it fits, a snack is its" attitude towards any animal that it can physically fit into its beak!

HOWEVER. there is one VERY IMPORTANT FACT that we regularly fail to consider here:

pelicans are fucking Ginormous.

these fuckers can be up to five feet in length, with 10-foot wingspans, putting them right up there with SWANS in the Fuckoff Huge waterfowl tier!

HOWEVER, (again! that's two uppercase "however's" in one post!) while pelicans are comparable to swans in terms of sheer bonkers size, the two are not at ALL similar in terms of temperament!

while swans are unpredictable, easily angered, and dangerous animals, pelicans really... aren't.

they're really just dudes, is what I'm saying here.

yeah, the worst you might get off a pelican unprovoked is an accidental wing bonk, or an experimental beak nibble to see If You Fit In The Beak.

"you do not. my apologies, have a good day."

a pelican is more likely to steal your phone than to do you any serious bodily harm!

hooray?

That caterpillars and other larvae can’t lay eggs or make babies

That termites are not related to ants

That not all wasps sting

That insects even have distinct sexes and need to mate

That ticks and fleas are different things

That crustaceans count (as arthropods) just as much as insects or arachnids do and are not in fact “their own thing”

That scorpions are arachnids

That there are arachnids other than spiders

That “venomous” isn’t synonymous with “dangerous”

That bed bugs are a specific kind of insect (some people assume the old rhyme is broadly referring to biting pests in general)

That not every introduced species is necessarily invasive and needs to be killed on sight

That not everything in your house is a pest

That winged ants exist

That winged ants aren’t a species, but a special caste of a typical ant colony

That fleas, lice and ticks are all totally wingless

That there are no winged arachnids

That there are virtually no insects that live in the ocean

That mosquitoes breed in water

That spiders do not lay their eggs in or on other living things

That “bugs” have brains

That they have any organs at all and are not just walking shells “full of juice”

That they breathe oxygen like we do

That they have muscle tissues

Fishy fish

Birds are reptiles 

Or crocodilians (and probably turtles) ARENT 

Because you can’t group (lizards, snakes, tuatara, turtles, crocodilians) without also including (birds) 

So if you don’t want to include birds in reptiles then you have to leave out some things we’ve called reptiles 

And, the common ancestor of [lizards, snakes, tuatara, turtles, crocodilians] by definition is also the common ancestor of birds. It is NOT the common ancestor of mammals. 

…which evolved from amphibians

My evolutionary bio professor took the class to a museum of natural science once and pointed out that of, like, a dozen skeletons in the “dinosaur” exhibit only one was actually a dinosaur. There were more dinosaurs next door. In the bird room.

Fishy fish

The Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit: A Big Plan to Save a Tiny Rabbit

For two decades scientists have fought to rescue America’s smallest bunny.

For thousands of years, these rabbits have lived on the Columbia Plateau, which stretches across eastern Washington and Oregon and into Idaho. Under normal circumstances, they play a critical role in the local food chain: They feast on the plateau’s pungent sagebrush for at least half of their diet, and in turn raptors, weasels and coyotes feast on them.

But human presence has battered their existence. The rabbits’ native habitat has been fragmented by development and farming. In 2001, biologists monitoring the rabbits could only find one colony, landing the species on the federal endangered species list. With fewer than 50 individuals left, the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit was a whisker away from extinction.

In the last two decades, hopeful state and federal wildlife biologists, rabbit fans, farmers and ranchers, conservation research zoos, and nonprofits have all come together to give the rabbits a fighting chance against seemingly insurmountable odds. It’s not easy—even when the species they’re trying to save can breed like, well, rabbits…