The wolves at Wolf Park Indiana were given paint as a form of enrichment and as a
fundraiser to make “original wolf art”. Most of the wolves were happy
to step in the paint for a piece of hot dog and make nice paw prints on a
page, but this guy decided rolling in it was way more fun.
It might seem a bit odd for a tech at a shelter to be excited about a pregnant dog about too give birth, but i helped nurse her through pneumonia and emaciation so I’m happy that she’s healthier and finally going to not be full of 10+ puppies. She arrived at about 50 days along and this is day 63. She also was found running loose with an intact male husky that we are assuming is dad.
So the entire shelter is basically on puppy watch and demanding updates from the foster mom and were all going nuts over puppies. We’re human and well… Puppies.
So apparently she waited for my coworker to get off work (she’s super bonded and won’t sleep unless my coworker is snuggling her), was let out to pee, and then dragged foster mom to the whelping box and went into labor proper! I should have puppy pictures to share tomorrow morning!
I seriously love this mama dog. She’s so sweet and just wants to be loved and even dad is unusual calm and affectionate for a husky. The babies should be really good tempered with such parents. And they’re gonna be little potato pups and I hope they’re all sorts of colors and patterns and eeeeeeeeeeeee
The first puppy has landed!
He has husky face mask! Looks like husky is indeed the daddy!
puppy #2 and it’s a little boy. Looks like he’s going to take after dad.
Mama dog is popping babies out left right and center now. There was a 2 and a half hour break between the first 2 and now there’s five total, 4 of those born in the last hour. Four of the pups are pale, leaving the first born girl sticking out like a sore thumb.
Final tally was 13 puppies! I was sure there was at least 12 (vets thought 10 so HA!). When foster mom sends me a family pic ill post it. Most puppies are pale colored apparently.
shoutout to those random peacocks you find in places that are probably unsuitable for a peacock to inhabit in the first place
what the fuck kinds of lives are you guys leading. i’ve never seen a peacock in my life. where are u guys finding them.
Random neighborhoods in Florida
a gas station in morocco
middle of a busy road in england
middle of the woods in a rural town in Mississippi
Irish farms??
Roof of a house in a tiny English village
Screaming their heads off in abandoned fuel stations in the back-blocks of the Rangitikei
with a group of pheasants in the woods in maryland
Strutting outside the window of an elementary school library in Texas.
Walking down the street of a California suburb on a hot summer afternoon like he owns the place
At a golf club in Long Island
At a strawberry festival in SoCal
Outside a café in Ayia Napa
Walking thru my neighborhood in nebraska
watching over fish near a pond in switzerland
walking around the zoo parking lot
on a car roof pulled over on the interstate on the way to Myrtle Beach
Friend’s neighbor’s yard in suburban Maryland
Stealing the dog food off our back porch in rural Oregon.
There’s a big house on a major road across from a college in Salt Lake. They must own peacocks because I somewhat regularly see them on the sidewalk in front of that property.
A cattle farm in rural Australia.
In a buddy’s back yard fighting with a neighborhood cat in Arizona in the middle of fucking summer.
Walking through Lisbon Castle like a tourist.
Chastising its cat friend while strolling along a reforestation trail in northern Ontario, Canada.
Pub garden in England
At the Los Angeles Zoo. He doesn’t belong to the zoo, he just walks around displaying his plumage and posing for pictures. Occasionally chases small children with snacks.
chasing childhood me in Stanley Park in Vancouver. probably because I had snacks.
A hotel lobby in central Mongolia
The Glendale, Arizona library
Chasing dudes down a country highway in Northwest Washington.
At a campsite in South Carolina
Buddhist temple in West Virginia
My backyard in michigan
My cow field s i t t i n g on a back of one chilling, North Carolina
standing right in the middle of the sidewalk in san diego, like he was waiting for me
a viking village in western norway
Casually strolling through an open-air Celtic Festival just outside of Las Vegas.
They wander around inner city Cincinnati. They escape the zoo, and the keepers have to go with nets and grab them on occasion.
The zoo has officially stopped supporting the population because there are too DAMN MANY of them. They reduced the flock from 40 to 6 in 2008. I think they have more now.
They just LEAVE.
Roosting in our barn in Ohio. Roosting in our trees, roosting in our pool shed, just hanging out on our back porch. Look we just had peafoul everywhere for something like four years, and we’ve no idea why.
A breeding pair or two must’ve made it across the river from Cincinnati because I’ve seen a few wandering around northern Kentucky
Grass farm in Texas
suburban roof in small-town Saskatchewan
Southwestern college back in Chula Vista when I was attending an child development conference. Went outside for some fresh air and there was a couple peacocks chilling in the middle of the quad at 6pm. Guess they had a conference too. 🤷🏾♂️
cow farm in rural southwest virginia. it’s a convenient street to cut through, but they used to charge at cars that went through too slowly so you kinda had to watch yourself–it was a delicate balance between being wary of not wanting to accidentally hit them as you went over a blind hill, and not wanting to be going slow enough to suddenly attract them to risk that happening anyway.
Gibsonton, Florida. aka Gibtown. aka the place where circus performers have, traditionally, lived when not touring.
(they seemed to belong to this REALLY LARGE FANCY HOUSE that was settled between two trailer parks)
Also the phoenix zoo.
A tiny diner in southwest Michigan
In the backyard of my childhood home in suburban SoCal when we first moved in; they disappeared and I don’t know why or to where.
Hanging out next to a dairy farm in Louisiana, just chilling on the fence and watching the cows.
Outside the window of a high class hotel in Texas
In a hedge maze in England.
Sahuaro Ranch Park, a public historical park where I got married
The terrace of a restaurant in Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands
guess what, it’s time for another episode of Weird Biology! today we’re going to learn about a creature that looks like a stained-glass window, but stalks the oceans with toxic might powered only by the wind like a sailing ship of old.
that’s right, it’s the devil’s own shopping bag-
the name is almost longer than the animal.
The Portuguese Man o’ War is a floating jellyfish relative called a Hydrozoan. it was named after the 18th century sailing ship, apparently by a blind person. “oh, it looks like a sailing ship under full sail” no it doesn’t, shut up. it looks like a rogue walmart shopping bag that blew into the Atlantic and makes a living by strangling innocent sea turtles.
but like the aforementioned plastic bag, the Man o’ War uses its lovely blue-purple air sac to catch the breeze. it wanders in groups through the warm waters of the Atlantic, driven along by the wind and tides. kind of poetic, really.
as long as you don’t look underwater, anyway.
I’m about to ruin it for everybody, hang on.
like so many other things in life, it’s not what you see on the surface that’s important but what is underneath that counts.
in this case, what’s underneath is up to 165 feet of venomous tentacles. it’s like that thing they say about icebergs, where you only see the top 10% and the rest is an invisible ship-killing nightmare? it’s exactly like that.
except with poison tentacles.
the Man o’ War is basically a biological fishing trawler, trailing these stupidly long tentacles like a fine mesh net through the water. and when an innocent fish who probably has a family at home comes into contact with this “net”, specialized cells called Nematocysts are triggered to fire tiny poison harpoons into the victim, causing instant death or paralysis.
the tentacle then reels itself upward into the body of the Man o’ War like a fishing line, dragging its helpless victim upward to be digested.
so, uh, actually not like a fishing trawler then, not like a fishing trawler at all.
unless the fishing trawler was designed by Junji Ito.
though the Man o’ War may look like a jellyfish, it’s definitely not. in fact, it’s not even a single animal! it’s actually four separate organisms jammed into a venomous trenchcoat like three best friends trying to sneak into an R rated movie.
“how the fuck even”, I hear you say. and that’s a valid question! it’s not everyday that we discover that what we thought was a single animal is actually four smaller animals living communally to form a larger, more dangerous animal. it would be like discovering that opossums are actually comprised of 17 rats each.
no word on if they do a silly dance and tap their fingers together to fuse or what though.
in the Man o’ War’s case, these four individual kinds of “polyps” that comprise the complete final form are the air sac polyp (gets the gang around), the digestive polyp (converts murdered fish into energy for the whole gang), the reproductive polyp (makes small clones of each individual gang member), and the tentacle polyp (murders things indiscriminately for the sheer joy of it).
that’s right, the tentacles are a separate animal! you might be wondering if they sometimes come loose, wander off, and just sting people/animals randomly when they drift into populated areas. what a silly question!
yeah, happens all the time.
SHIT.
while rarely fatal, Man o’ Wars stings can seriously injure humans. this is a big problem in areas where Man o’ Wars are common, because storms and predators can knock the tentacles right the fuck off. the tentacles drift away, only to wash ashore and sting a hapless beachgoer weeks later. that’s right, rogue tentacles can still sting for days or weeks after separation! even if the Man ‘o War is beached! isn’t that neat! fuck!
the discovery of a beached Man o’ War usually closes the entire fucking beach, for this reason. would YOU want to go fuck around in the sand if it might be full of over a hundred feet of poison spaghetti too fine to notice with the naked eye?
if the answer is yes, I have great news about a bridge I’d like to sell you.
if all this information upset you, I’d like to offer my deepest condolences. but buckle up for one last upsetting fact, and here it is: Man o’ War are spreading.
usually restricted to warm waters, climate change has driven the Man o’ War as far north as Great Britain. that’s awful awful awful news for any country that touches the Atlantic ocean, which is lots of them.
luckily, we have dependable allies in this fight: sea turtles and the Mola Mola! (which I’ve written about before) unfortunately just about all we can do at this point is to cheer these awesome devil-balloon-munchers on from the safety of shore, while trying to invent a Man o’ War-proof barrier net.
for now, watch out for anything that looks like a floating plastic bag.
and for god’s sake, watch where you step.
–
thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series here.
if you enjoy my work, maybe buy me a coffee or check out my Patreon to see extra content and support Weird Biology.
–
IMAGE SOURCES
img1- National Geographic img2- The Garden of Eadon img3- Sean Nash img4- Enrico Villa img5- livescience.com img6-
Steel Phoenix Studios 