• Flowers Vibe •

Sitting on PJ is a free activity anyone can enjoy

One of the most beautiful scenes of a nature documentary I saw years ago…

Footage of a dying deer and the eye slowly freezing…

Does anyone have snake sheds they could donate to me?

They dont have to be unravelled or stretched, just as long as they’re mostly one piece and free of feces or urine!

Shoot me an ask!!

Hormones are funny sometimes and when “love is in the air” even a big male common toad (Bufo bufo) is a good candidate for a male Mediterranean treefrog (Hyla meridionalis) to get in amplexus. #amphibian #sex #amplexus #breeding #toad #treefrog #hyla #bufo #herp #herping #italy #photography @ilcp_photographers

gynandromorphism in spiders

a gynandromorph is an organism that exhibits male and female characteristics. bilateral asymmetry can occur wherein one “side” of the animal is female and the other is male, mosaicism can occur wherein the characteristics are distributed in patches. in spiders, this phenomenon can present itself through presence of both testes and overies and split colouration. cases can also occur where, although parts of the spider are clearly male or female, the divisions can be less definite; certain reproductive organs like the palps and epigyne may be very poorly developed or completely absent. these individuals are referred to as intersexes. gynandry and intersexuality can occur in the same individual.

pictured: lampropelma nigerrimum, pamphobeteus sp. mascara, poecilotheria ornata, thyene imperialis.

This is my primary blog (even tho i don’t use it much), but i mainly use @voooorhees so check that one out for slasher content :)

Extremely beautiful springtail, Lepidocyrtus paradoxus. Totally covered in iridescent scales - my photos do a poor job of capturing just how shiny this animal is.

Can i be completely honest?

I wasnt sure the display enclosures I built were the best choice. Even though i am pro enrichment and larger enclosures, i had my doubts that a ball python would use all that space.

The behavior im seeing is so awesome though. Like Khaleesi, who is 6-7 years old now, raised and bred entirely in a typical rack system for most of her life, is a very different snake. She would hide pretty much exclusively, even in my larger tubs. If you check the past posts- i believe i excitedly posted a photoset seeing her out for the first time ever a few months back. That alone was amazing to me. Now, my mind is blown. Youve seen the pictures, but im not sure you know how proud of her i am.

Look at that. Confidently chilling up top where the hotspot is about 95.

Part of me wasnt going to put her in a display. Not because ball pythons do poorly in large enclosures, but because i was certain she wouldnt use the space, whereas the animals i raised with enrichment would put it to better use. It sounds funny but i was scared i would find out animals treated like breeder would never take advantage of enrichment and thusly would not “need” it. That would make all of my efforts pointless.

Despite all that, I intuitively felt that she needed to be in the first completely finished display enclosure.

You can see, that was the right choice and she has expanded her behaviors.

I see her out and about, but shes also more confident. For example:

She started to periscope when the door was closed, and i was able to open the door and snap this picture without having her shirk away in fear or immediately seek a hiding spot to escape.

Watching her and the other females use their enclosures to perform different behaviors has encouraged me again.

And now, when i get responses like this:

I can smirk and laugh, because my animals are healthier.

Oh i also saw Asteria and Prometheus mating out in the open 🤷‍♀️

Do you have any cursed facts about deer? They are my favorite animal.

there’s an entire subset of deer that have sabre fangs instead of antlers!

this is because the very earliest deer on the planet had both antlers AND fangs, but over time deer diverged into two separate lineages that had either antlers OR fangs and they’re both still around today!

hand over the cursed Sphenodon facts.

sure, but PUT THE GUN DOWN. 

the Tuatara is a medium-sized reptile native to New Zealand.

it looks like a lizard but it IS NOT- the Tuatara is actually a very basal reptile related to snakes and lizards but belonging to an entire different branch of the tree of life, of which it is the sole surviving member.

and it may look like a lizard on the outside, but the inside is what really counts! and on the inside, the Tuatara is basically a reskinned amphibian.

they only have a single lung, their heart is the most basic of all reptiles, and their nervous systems shares more in common with our friend the axolotl than with its lizard kin!

so if you happen to see one at the zoo, take a moment to stop and really appreciate the uninterrupted 240 million years of reptilian history you’re lucky enough to be looking at!