Invertebrate Medicine Is Wild

Invertebrate medicine is wild

Guys, omg. Something happened at this conference that I never ever thought would happen–I found invertebrates super interesting. And I kind of want to work with them. I didn’t even know that was an option! Also I’ve always been terrified of insects and arachnids but THEY’RE SO COOL I’VE BEEN SO WRONG ABOUT THEM. Look at this:

Look at that anatomy!!! How cool is that?? Their heart is just…dorsal. Like why?? And you can hear it with a doppler! You can anesthetize a tarantula with isoflurane and monitor their heart rate with a doppler. That blew my mind. You can perform surgery on them and suture them with 6-0 ophthalmic suture! You can give them IV and sub q fluids. That’s crazy!! And look how they drink:

Apparently they just drink like that?? I dunno why but that’s kind of cute?? They use hydrostatic pressure to move (which is crazy cool) so dehydration is actually a serious issue with them.

He also talked about scorpions, snails, shrimp, roaches, centipedes, crabs and a bunch of other animals I never would have even imagined you could treat. And honestly, I never imagined I would care enough to want to treat them but they were actually so interesting I ended up grabbing his email! Am I gonna be a spider vet?? Like that’s the last thing I EVER thought I would want do but hey, if I’m gonna treat exotics might as well include invertebrates, right?

More Posts from Leafyfern and Others

leafyfern

5 years ago

House Finch Variety. The One With The Orange-golden Tones Has Been Around For A Bit, And I Love All The

House Finch variety. The one with the orange-golden tones has been around for a bit, and I love all the colors on him. The other one I would have thought was a lady, but the blush is confusing.

847 notes View Post

leafyfern

5 years ago

Ripley Has Figured Out How To Ask For Cheek Scritches By Holding Her Foot To Her Face And Making Her

Ripley has figured out how to ask for cheek scritches by holding her foot to her face and making her baby cockatiel begging for food noise

560 notes View Post

leafyfern

5 years ago

did you know that teeth actually evolved from scales hence why they have a coating when the rest of our bones don't and why they have nerves in their pulp

bones started out that way too! once upon a time, tiny vertebrates just wore everything on the outside

312 notes View Post

leafyfern

5 years ago

Here’s An Odd One: The Skull Of The Only Known “narluga”, A Possible Narwhal/beluga Whale Hybrid.

Here’s an odd one: the skull of the only known “narluga”, a possible narwhal/beluga whale hybrid. It was killed by a Greenlandic hunter around 1987 and the skull was lying on top of a toolshed in 1990 when it was noticed by a visiting scientist. According to the hunter, the animal was a uniform grey color (as opposed to the mottled narwhal and the white beluga), with the tail of a narwhal but the pectoral flippers of a beluga whale.

The skull is larger than both parent species’ and its teeth a strange mixture of both. Narwhals don’t have teeth except for the single large tusk of the male, while beluga whales have a full set of smaller teeth. The narluga seems to have a full set of teeth but some of them are strangely elongated and oriented like narwhal tusks, as seen in the third picture. The unusual dentition didn’t seem to bother the animal since it reached a great size but it would presumably have been sterile as most hybrids are. No other examples of narwhal/beluga whale hybrids have been found.

The skull is currently housed at the Zoological Museum of Copenhagen.

2K notes View Post

leafyfern

3 years ago

Now that college students no longer have access to their libraries in the same way we used to and have to do most of our learning at home it would be just terrible if we all knew about https://1lib.eu/ a website which has books on basically every topic ever available for free including college textbooks. Imagine if people were researching their thesis without paying for it.

DO NOT USE THIS SITE AND DEFINITELY DO NOT NOT TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT THIS SITE, THEY MIGHT START DOING THESIS RESEARCH FOR FREE OR JUST START READING BOOKS THEY FOUND ON THERE FOR FUN BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE INTERESTING. This would be terrible :( :(

Reblog to spread the word so that everyone knows to avoid this site!

62K notes View Post

leafyfern

3 years ago