You cannot learn if you are not vulnerable

PETA: They’d rather spend their money on publicity campaigns than on the animals in their care. PETA killed 73.8% of the animals in their care in 2015 (x)

FCKH8: Is a for-profit company that exploits oppressed groups for money. They’re also wildly uninformed, and spread misogyny, cissexism and bi/panphobia, as well as stealing their posts/designs (x)

Autism Speaks: They spend most of their money on researching a way to eliminate autism, heighten the stigma against autism and don’t have a single autistic person on their board (x)

Karen Knorr - India Song

They’re like if bears had knives protruding from their closed mouths and Didn’t Know When To Quit. Their survival instincts when they’re wounded aren’t “run away and minimize injury” it’s “take the thing that hurt you down with you” They also make sounds like someone crossed a pig with an alligator.

Their head and neck alone can be like the size of an entire human torso.

Also forever laffin’ at people who think pigs are tiny, ‘cause we designed those things can get in the neighbourhood of a thousand pounds in ideal circumstances. 

It’s like when people assume Tuna must be small because they’ve only ever experienced them in hockey puck form.

Keep pet me

This always makes me happy, because the source video shows that the shark actually wanted this. It experienced it once and then kept coming back for more petting.

(also, because i’ve seen comments about this: the shark is able to breathe while still, not all species need to be in motion to pass water through their gills. If you look closely, you can see its gills pumping)

I would very much like if more people would pet sharks and be good to them instead of trying to hurt them please

Sharks are very lovely and should get pettings like these more :)

MythBusters did an episode on how to survive a shark attack and a shark’s nose is so sensitive that a gentle tap is all you need to drive it away. The guy sat on the ocean floor with a bucket of chum and didn’t get attacked once, when hungry sharks swam up he’d give them a boop on the nose and they’d swim away. So if the shark is friendly, pet the snoot. If the shark is dangerous, boop the snoot. Either way, no one dies. 

Boop the snoot

One, I’m pretty sure this is more overstimulation or sensory overload than “enjoying being petted” and this may be in a tank environment where natural behaviors can be altered by habituation. Where the diver is touching the shark’s face is absolutely packed with sensory organs called ampullae of lorenzini that are used for picking up electrical stimuli from the environment. I’ve seen it totally shut down movement from sharks - even large sharks, like this one, who have to keep swimming to breathe effectively. Pelagic sharks just don’t settle and chill out like this one is doing, which makes me think it’s not a totally voluntary behavior and may be more along the lines of tonic immobility. 

Two, don’t pet sharks in the wild, ever. Don’t try to touch them, don’t try to approach them, seriously jeez please just leave them the hell alone. It’s rude, it’s stressful, and it sets you and the shark up for tragedy. If they’re being a little investigative and curious and you’re uncomfortable, just bop them wherever you can reach - sharks are not used to being touched by anything not involved in predation and will likely go away no matter where you hit, and trying to reach towards the teeth of an animal you’re about to scare off is really unwise.

Please leave sharks alone and stop anthropomorphizing the behavior of a large predator that lives in an alien environment to us as “liking us touching it”, I am so sick of the mentality that everything should love people and it is good for us to touch all of them when they don’t literally try to kill us for doing it. 

See below: images of ampullae of lorenzini. 

The fact the gills are pumping so hard actually tells you that the shark can’t breathe well. Large sharks use their motion to pass water over their gills, and the gill slits are normally pretty still. It isn’t able to pass enough water through to stay still like that and it’s working really hard to try.

weavemama:

MINORITIES CAN STILL BE CAPABLE OF OPPRESSING OTHER MINORITIES