A Conspiracy of Lemurs

A harbor seal and her pup (Phoca vitulina) in Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska, USA

Northern Hog Badger (Arctonyx albogularis), family Mustelidae, Kaziranga Tiger Reserve, Assam, India

Once considered to be a subspecies of the Greater Hog Badger, A. collaris, which has now been split into 3 species.

Herbert River Ringtail Possum Pseudochirulus herbertensis

A species of possum found in northeastern Queensland, Australia. The Herbert River ringtail's diet mainly consists of leaves with high levels of protein. This makes them vulnerable to climate change, since when CO2 levels increase, it leads to a change in the metabolic process of trees thus "chang[ing] the balance of protein in their leaves" and leading to an increase in production of tannins by the tree.

Crowned Lemurs (Eulemur coronatus), males, Lemuridae, far northern Madgascar

ENDANGERED.

Anis are bizarre, coal-black cuckoos with long floppy tails and unique, curiously tall, flattened bills. Groove-billed occurs in a variety of open and semi-open habitats in tropical lowlands and foothills, typically staying low in shrubs and grasses. Gregarious and not particularly graceful; usually seen crashing around awkwardly in small groups.

Crowned Lemurs (Eulemur coronatus), males, Lemuridae, far northern Madgascar

ENDANGERED.

Back in 2017, @leotide posted this incredible piece, which is easily one of my favourite scientific illustrations of all time.

An actual photo of a skinless Geckolepis (here a never-before-posted photo of a G. cf. maculata, not G. megalepis) is below the cut. There is no blood or gore, but I could see how this would make some uncomfortable, so I have hidden it.

When ranchers in Utah's Rich County found eighteen sheep killed in March 2022, they assumed coyotes. USDA Wildlife Services flew a plane over the kill site and found something feeding on the carcasses that had only been confirmed in the state eight times in forty years. It was a wolverine. Utah sits at the extreme southern margin of the wolverine's North American range. The animal is built for the deep snow and high alpine of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, country above ten thousand feet where the winters last eight months and the terrain rejects everything that is not specifically engineered to survive it. A wolverine showing up in Utah's ranch country was not a routine predator complaint. It was a biological event. State wildlife managers had no protocol for it because they had never needed one. Biologists set specialized barrel traps near the sheep carcasses. Catching a wolverine in a live trap is considered one of the most difficult captures in North American wildlife management. The animal is trap-smart, solitary, covers enormous distances daily, and operates almost exclusively in terrain that humans struggle to access on foot. The odds of a wolverine walking into a barrel trap were close to zero. The next morning, a sheepherder found one of the trap doors dropped. Inside was a healthy, twenty-eight-pound male, estimated at three to four years old. It was the first wolverine ever live-captured by biologists in Utah's history. The team sedated him, packed his body in ice to keep his core temperature stable during the examination, fitted him with a GPS tracking collar, and released him into the deep snow of the Uinta Mountains. For researchers who had spent careers studying an animal they almost never got to see, that collar was the first real-time data source on wolverine movement the state had ever produced. The data that came back over the next twenty-five days confirmed what wolverine biologists in other states had documented but Utah had never been able to verify on its own ground. The animal logged over 195 miles of travel in less than a month. He did not drift south toward lower elevations or leave the state. He locked into the high peaks of the Uintas above ten thousand feet and ran massive looping circuits through avalanche chutes, rocky ridgelines, and snowfields deep enough to bury a man standing upright. The daily distances he covered would qualify as an endurance event for a human athlete on flat ground. He was doing it through the most physically punishing terrain in the state, in winter, alone, at elevation, without stopping. The eighteen dead sheep that started the whole sequence were never repeated. The wolverine moved into the high country and stayed there, operating in a landscape so remote and so hostile that the only evidence of his existence was the GPS signal pinging coordinates from ridgelines that no person had visited in months. The collar proved what the forty years of scattered sightings could only suggest. The wolverine was not passing through Utah. It was living there, quietly covering nearly two hundred miles of frozen alpine rock in less than a month, completely invisible to every human being in the state.

Happy 100th birthday David Attenborough, you absolute bloody legend 💖💖💖💖💖

And the Stellar's sea lion, which are WAY bigger and live in Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska

Behold the Panamanian night monkey (Aotus zonalis)! Also known as the owl monkey, this pint-sized primate weighs up to 2 lbs (0.9 kg) and can be found in parts of Panama and Colombia. Actively primarily at night, especially around dusk and dawn, this critter uses its huge eyes to forage for food. Its diet includes flowers, nectar, leaves, and insects. It’s a monogamous primate, and mating pairs can remain together for life. 

Here’s a critter you might not recognize: the ring-tailed vontsira (Galidia elegans)! Found in the forests of Madagascar, this small carnivore weighs up to 2 lbs (0.91 kg) and has a varied diet that includes insects, eggs, fish, and small mammals. The ring-tailed vontsira is an agile critter, an excellent climber, and is known to be playful.

it's actually a GOOD thing to have lots of conservation efforts focusing on "Charismatic megafauna," especially apex predators

Because big animals like tigers need a LOT of space

So creating a preserve to save tigers...saves thousands of other species, because the tigers need miles and miles of habitat to live on, and that habitat needs to be healthy to support the tigers

A Verreaux's sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) in Berenty Reserve, Madagascar