Ask the Beasts, and They Will Tell You

I’m not upset or anything, I can kinda see what you mean! If you’re expecting anything cool on the internet these days to probably be fake, yeah, the colors on the meat do look incongruous.

Let’s take a second here and use this as an educational experience for everyone. Fake animal photos are totally an internet scourge these days. If you don’t trust the OP of a post like this saying it’s not AI, how else could you check and try to find out?

Three things to help you verify not slop:

1. There’s a bunch of other photos in series with this one on my website, which allows you to see context for when and how the photos were taken. There’s also other photos of this animal and this habitat in other lighting and weather conditions. That’s generally more work than people will go to if they just want to create a viral photo, and you can look for internal consistency.

2. AI isn’t good enough yet to replicate specific stripe patterns on individual tigers, they get all wonky. The animal and her location are named in this instance and it’s easy to google to see if everything lines up.

3. You can also check to see if the thing in photos actually happens. The meatball throwing demo is a very, very common occurrence at this facility! It’s a regular activity during talks when tigers are in that habitat (it is a multi-species rotational space). They posted a video on their Facebook fourteen hours ago of their curator getting a direct shot into a different tiger’s mouth.

For @sashabarkov, a male American Kestrel! Here he is, scouring the field of dead sunflowers for mice feeding on the fallen seeds. Thanks for the Waymakers donation!

Blue hydrangea.

Laodicea Langston was the daughter of Solomon Langston, Sr. in a family that settled in pretty much middle-of-nowhere South Carolina, what's now in the Upstate, closer to the mountains. Her brothers joined the Patriot militia during the American Revolutionary War, fighting against the British.

Now, in those days, a woman couldn't join the army (at least, not as herself--there are records of women joining under fake identities), but Dicey did her own part to help the war effort. And by that, I mean she was a Patriot spy during the war.

The story goes that her house was under observation by Tories, as they knew the family sympathies were against the crown, so when they heard information about troop movements that would lead to Patriot deaths--an attack on Little Eden, South Carolina--they couldn't do much about it. Except Dicey here decided (as a teenager, you should know) to sneak out of the house in the dead of night, nearly drowned crossing a river, so that she could get that information to her brothers. Little Eden was successfully evacuated before the British troops could raid the place.

Unfortunately, the British quickly surmised that the Langston family was the cause of the leak, even if they didn't know details. After Dicey had gotten home, British troops went to the house and started threatening Solmon Langston, demanding he and the rest of the family tell them information about the Patriots and their troop movements.

Dicey was having none of that, and got between her father and a loaded gun, telling off Loyalists.

Impressed by the pure gumption of the move, the Loyalists backed off.

At least, that's the story. For the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution (...this year??), South Carolina published this paper on Dicey Langston, her legacy, and comparing the records of her life/deeds. We do know she and her family existed, of course, but it digs down into how reliable the stories are and what historical information we can draw from them. Mind, SC has a vested interest in making this woman a hero for the state, given there's a bunch of stuff named after her, and she's a local hero, but still. An interesting paper.

One of the notes under my post

Ah, the bourgeois concepts of * checks notes* 🤔having the right to life, freedom and security of person,to not be tortured,executed or arbitrarily arrested, freedom of religion.....

Earless Monitor Lizard (Lanthanotus borneensis), family Lanthanotidae, endemic to Borneo

ENDANGERED.

Semi-aquatic.

Closely related to the true monitor lizard in the family Varanidae.

The only member of its family.

They do have inner ears, and are capable of hearing, despite the lack of ear openings and tympana.

Eastern Hognose (Heterodon platyrhinos), various color phases, family Colubridae, Red River Gorge, KY, USA

Rear-fanged, mildly venomous.

Galapagos Land Iguana (Conolophus subcristatus), male, family Iguanidae, Galapagos

Pink-eared Duck (Malacorhynchus membranaceus), family Anatidae, order Anseriformes, found in disconnected regions of Australia