Posts Tagged ‘pets’
“Cause I wuv you!”*…
From Rusty Blazenhoff‘s Sad and Useless (“the most depressive humor site on the internet”), a look at chelonian couture…
This marvelous fashion collection has been created by the leading American tortoise fashion designer Katie Bradley. Unfortunately it looks like her Etsy store is taking a break, but you can still purchase patterns to create your very own crocheting masterpieces…
More at “Winter 2022 Tortoise Fashion Collection by Katie Bradley,” from @Blazenhoff
See also : “Winter 2022 Chicken Fashion” (“Are you looking for a fashionable and stylish outfit for your pet chicken? Of course you are….”)
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As we keep it stylish, we might note that today is Cinco de Marcho. Unlike it’s better known counterpart, Cinco de Mayo (which commemorates the anniversary of Mexico’s victory over the French Empire at the Battle of Puebla in 1862), the 5th of March marks the beginning of a 12-day drinking regimen for anyone who wishes to “train one’s liver for the closing ceremonies on St. Patrick’s Day.”
“We are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open and which will forever be closed”*…
There’s a variety of “preservation” that can blind us to the lack of genetic diversity and the threat of extinction…
The small salamander known as the axolotl, whose cartoonish face resembles a smiling emoji, is among the most widespread amphibians on Earth. You can buy them as pets online, collect them in the game Minecraft, and watch them perform on Instagram and TikTok. Often pink in color with feathery external gills, axolotls are also popular in laboratories: Scientists love studying them because they can regrow limbs, spinal cords, and even portions of their brains. Roughly 1 million are under human care worldwide, according to some experts.
Yet in their home country of Mexico, where they’re celebrated as cultural icons, axolotls are critically endangered and on the verge of extinction. The only place you can find them in the wild is in a watery borough of Mexico City, the second-largest city in the Western Hemisphere. There are fewer than three dozen per square kilometer here, down from 6,000 in the 1990s.
This paradox — that axolotls seem to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time — raises a vexing question. If an animal is thriving in labs and aquariums, should we worry that it’s dying in its native waters? Or, asked another way: How important is the “wild” in wildlife?…
Axolotls are among the most widespread amphibians on Earth. In the wild, they’re almost extinct: “The animal that’s everywhere and nowhere,” from Benji Jones (@BenjiSJones) in @voxdotcom.
* Elizabeth Kolbert
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As we back biodiversity, we might spare a thought for Gerald “Gerry” Malcolm Durrell; he died on this date in 1995. A British naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author, and television presenter, most of his work was rooted in his life as an animal collector and enthusiast… though he is probably most widely known for his autobiographical book My Family and Other Animals and its successors, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods... which have been made into television and radio mini-series many times, most recently as ITV’s/PBS’s The Durrells.
“Now I wanna remind everyone of the House of Mouse Rules: No smoking. No villainous schemes. And no guests eating other guests.”*…
In addition to being home to men with questionable decision-making skills, Florida also seems to have some issues with bizarre animal behavior, whether it’s freezing iguanas dropping from trees or alligators battling pythons in the Everglades. When it comes to those animals, however, Floridians can truly put the blame on non-natives. Neither pythons nor green iguanas made the Sunshine State their home until we brought them there as pets.
In fact, there are lots of problematic invasive species that have spread through the pet trade, from predatory fish that can drag themselves between bodies of water to a crayfish that clones itself to reproduce. Those high-profile cases lead to some obvious questions, like whether pets really are more likely to be invasive and, if so, why?
Two Swiss researchers, Jérôme Gippeta and Cleo Bertelsmeier have now attempted to answer these questions. And their conclusion is that yes, our pets are more likely to be problems.
To answer the question of whether pets really are problematic, the researchers generated some basic statistics for different groups of animals (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish). These included estimates of the total number of species, as well as the number of those that are classified as invasive and the number that are part of the pet trade.
If pets were no more or less likely to be invasive, you’d expect to see the invasive ones occupy similar fractions of both the pet trade and the total number of species in that group. But that’s not what we see in any of the groups. Invasive mammal species were present at five times the rate in the pet trade as they are in the wild around the globe. There was a similar result in birds; for amphibians, invasive species were eight times more common in the pet trade and about 10 times more common in fish.
Overall, invasive species were 7.4 times more likely to be kept as pets than you’d expect based on their frequency among vertebrate populations.
But cause and effect can be difficult to disentangle. Do we choose species that are more likely to be invasive as pets? Or have pets ended up with more opportunities to invade new environments because we transport them around the world?…
Spoiler alert: it’s the former… A new study finds the factors making them easier to keep also help them spread: “Unfortunately, we like pets that are likely to be invasive species.”
* Mickey Mouse
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As we ponder proliferation, we might recall that it was on this date in 1964 that a different kind of “invader,” the Beatles, set a record: they became the first artists to hold all top 5 spots on the Billboard Hot 100 on the same week, on April 4, 1964.
#1. Can’t Buy Me Love
#2. Twist and Shout
#3. She Loves You
#4. I Want to Hold Your Hand
#5. Please Please Me.
More Beatles on the Charts that week: #31 – I Saw Her Standing There, #41 – From Me To You, #46 – Do You Want To Know a Secret, #58 – All My Loving, #65 – You Can’t Do That, #68 – Roll Over Beethoven, #79 – Thank You Girl
At the time, the best-selling piece of Beatles merchandise was the “I Love Ringo” button.
“Three meals a day are a highly advanced institution”*…
The typical American “breakfast, lunch, and dinner” pattern is a product of the Industrial Revolution.
Early U.S. dining habits were shaped by those of English colonists. And, as Anne Murcott, a British sociologist specializing in food, writes, for centuries, up until about 1800, most English people ate two, not three, meals a day. The larger of these was often called dinner, but it wasn’t typically an evening meal. During the reign of Henry VII, from 1485 to 1509, the day’s big meal normally took place around 11 am.
In both England and the U.S., dinner became the large afternoon meal for farm families—which is to say most families—in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It might be preceded by breakfast—the meal to break the nighttime fast—and followed by some kind of light meal or meals, variously called supper or tea.
Lunch is the newest addition to the triad of U.S. meals. Back in 1968, the English-language scholar Anne Wallace-Hadrill traced the etymology of the word itself, along with its close relation, “luncheon.” One possible origin of the words is from “lump.” A 1617 source mentions “eating a great lumpe of bread and butter with a lunchen of cheese.” In 1755, one dictionary writer defined lunch or luncheon as “as much food as one’s hand can hold,” but not as a specific meal. Somewhere in the first half of the nineteenth century, the word “lump” seems to have merged with “nuncheon,” a light midday meal (with the “nun” coming from “noon.”)
As workers and kids left the farms for factories and schools over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, eating patterns shifted. Workers and children might shove a lunch of bread into their pocket to eat during the day or return home for a quick luncheon, but dinner now had to wait for the end of the day, creating the set of mealtimes we know so well…
The origin of the familiar breakfast-lunch-dinner triad: “Why Do Americans Eat Three Meals a Day?”
* E.C. Hayes, Introduction to the Study of Sociology (1913)
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As we dig in, we might recall that it was on this date in 1999 that the Russian Duma (its legislature) voted 273-1 to pass an animal rights bill that prohibited Russians from eating their “animal companions”– their pets. Shortly thereafter the newly-elected President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, vetoed the bill.
“To me, an airplane is a great place to diet”*…
Have we reached peak delivery service? Just in case you had a craving for airline food for some reason, there’s now a company in Germany that will bring it to you. Air Food One is a subscription food delivery service that has teamed up with grocery company AllYouNeed.com and LGS Sky Chefs to bring leftover airline food right to the door of anyone living in Germany – the service is only available there for now…
The rest of this tasteless tale at “Air Food One Delivers Airline Food Right To Your Door.”
* Wolfgang Puck
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As we ask for the vegetarian option (which is available from Air Food One), we might recall that it was on this date in 1999, at the urging of animal rights activist (and actress) Brigitte Bardot, that the Russian Duma passed legislation forbidding Russians from eating their pets (or slaughtering them for their furs/skins). On January 6 of the following year, Vladimir Putin, in office for less than a week, vetoed the bill.
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