MindfulMenagerie

“The patient: this 3-day-old little boy was born with torn upper and lower wings. Let’s see how we can help!”

Today the Department of Awesomely Good Deeds salutes costume designer and master embroiderer Romy McCloskey who used her fine skills with delicate materials to help a monarch butterfly she’d raised and who’d emerged from his cocoon with damaged right wings.

“The operating room and supplies: towel, wire hanger, contact cement, toothpick, cotton swab, scissors, tweezers, talc powder, extra butterfly wing”

“Securing the butterfly and cutting the damaged parts away. Don’t worry it doesn’t hurt them. It’s like cutting hair or trimming fingernails”

“Ta-da! With a little patience and a steady hand, I fit the new wings to my little guy”

“The black lines do not match completely and it is missing the black dot (male marking) on the lower right wing, but with luck, he will fly”

“FLIGHT DAY! After a day of rest and filling his belly with homemade nectar, it is time to see if he will fly”

“With a quick lap around the yard and a little rest on a bush, he was off! A successful surgery and outcome! Bye, little buddy! Good luck”

The Google Cultural Institute documents the world’s art and other cultural treasures. At the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Google workers took a series of photos of these skulls (and over 200 others), and stitched the photos together so that you can view them at any angle.

If an insect wore a mask would he wear it like this or like this? (get it? get it? bc  insects breath through holes in their sides called spiracles)

animals tend to evolve towards gigantism over long periods of time, so at any given point in earth’s history when tetrapods had shown up and the climate had been stable for a while, you absolutely find giant animals.

and remember, animals were actually still pretty giant until fairly recently on the geologic scale, a mere ten thousand years ago!

the reason there are very few giant animals around now is that we’re actually living in a post-apocolyptic world. 

SOMETHING happened ten thousand years ago to wipe almost all of the ice-age megafauna off the planet, and we’re still not sure what. (and no, it wasn’t us.) but the first animals to fall in a mass extinction events are always the giants, because they require so much food! and it takes them tens of millions of years to show up again after a mass die-off. but give it another twenty million years or so, and giant animals will appear once again!

until then, please take a moment to appreciate whales.

Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus)

The monarch butterfly is a milkweed butterfly (subfamily Danainae) in the family Nymphalidae. It may be the most familiar North American butterfly, and is considered an iconic pollinator species. Its wings feature an easily recognizable black, orange, and white pattern, with a wingspan of 8.9–10.2 cm. The eastern North American monarch population is notable for its annual southward late-summer/autumn migration from the northern and central United States and southern Canada to Florida and Mexico. During the fall migration, monarchs cover thousands of miles, with a corresponding multi-generational return north.The monarch butterfly undergoes four stages of complete metamorphosis. Eggs, larvae, pupa and adult. Although larvae eat only milkweed, adult monarchs feed on the nectar of many plants. Monarchs obtain moisture and minerals from damp soil and wet gravel, a behavior known as mud-puddling.

octopuses turn white when they’re afraid, so if you see a pale octopus in a video you can be sure it’s not having a good time!

Cant’ speak on how credible and reliable RSPO is as an organisation but their basic stances are trying to change the way palm oil is harvested and produced so it is sustainable.