Went to the zoo today and they had these Arabian Oryxes but one of them found a hat somebody presumably dropped in the enclosure and was playing with it
He managed to get it on too. Looking stylish my friend
An archivist found a long forgotten 8mm film reel in an old metal box, marked “Philippines 1942”. Thinking it was lost WWII footage, he sent it in to be restored/digitized. When he got the footage back, he found puppies instead (via)
This is so freaking profound. Like, this was before the advent of the personal camera. Not just anyone owned a camera in these days. Cameras were expensive, and so was the film. When you were recording shit, it had to be stuff you were willing to shell out a pretty penny to have preserved. Someone so deeply and profoundly loved these dogs and found joy in them that they decided to preserve them for future generations to see, after these pups are long dead and gone. This camera operator wanted to preserve the joy these dogs brought them and to share it with others. How incredible is that?
A bird explaining to a hedgehog crossing so it doesn’t die.
!!! ok but that’s legitimately what it’s doing!! That’s a corvid right there (looks like a hooded crow, to be precise), which means it’s intelligent enough to recognize, a) cars are dangerous and streets should be treated with a certain degree of caution, b) this car’s slowing down for them–cars do that sometimes–which means they’re not in imminent danger, so it doesn’t have to fly away just yet, c) that hedgehog’s still gonna get killed if it doesn’t MOVE, FAST (cars can change speed very quickly and the hedgehog’s still in the way), and almost certainly also d) if the bird does nothing it gets a free lunch.
Y’all, Y’ALL. This bird is consciously deciding to put itself in danger in order to save the life of a very stupid creature. A creature which, if the bird did nothing, could be free food.
i can’t – look if you follow me you know I have a thing for corvids, but this is – like!!! People are always saying “ah yes they have sub-human intelligence and don’t consider anything that isn’t immediately necessary for their own survival/pleasure,” but! Whether or not it can do philosophy, this crow is clearly demonstratingcompassion. Even if it’s just the kind of compassion a toddler shows to a snail, a social creature that instinctively recognizes the potential for emotion in other beings, that’s still huge and cool and important and corvids!!! are! neat!!!
The fact he’s named kinda brushes over the fact this is a wild elephant. Born in the wild, raised in the wild, the only human interaction is watching the safaris. And after mean humans shot him, he decided the best course of action was to go visit the nice humans who just take pictures in hopes they’d help him. And then, even though they didn’t help him right away, he trusted that because they continued to be nice, he was safe, and they would help him.
also the people saw an elephant and were like “that’s a ben”
i hope he tells the other elephants where they can get help
Orphans who were rescued, raised, and released by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya have communicated that it is a place of safety to other elephants who’ve never even been there.
Injured animals will show up there when they have been harmed by poachers because they know it is a place where they can get help!
i am very glad elephants have a functioning yelp system
that snorlax .gif reminded me of one of my favorite animals ever, an elephant seal called Homer who went on a months-long rampage of car-humping destruction in a new zealand town
some highlights of homer’s odyssey:
causing tons of property damage by attempting to fuck cars, boat trailers, trees, and trash cans (did i mention that he weighed two tons)
he was apparently particularly attracted to red cars
at one point, the population of Gisborne attempted to contain him by putting barriers on the boat ramp he’d been using to get on land
his response was to wait for a swell to move the barriers, get back on shore, cross the road, and fuck a power box, cutting off the electricity to a local restaurant and the coast guard building (and presumably tasering his own dick in the process)
accidentally offset some of the property-damage costs by bringing in busloads of japanese tourists who were at the time visiting a city a few miles over
(there was one claim that he also squished a person who got too close to him, but i can’t find anything backing this up)
he was later revealed to have been the same elephant seal who had previously terrorized the town of Christchurch, hundreds of miles away
in Christchurch, he was recorded climbing a two-meter wall, breaking into a mall, and humping more cars and trash cans
(this isn’t even the first time something like this has happened, as an elephant seal in Coromandel became a local celebrity in the 80s after coming ashore and trying to fuck cows; Humphrey was later immortalized with a fiberglass statue)
Gisborne’s local radio station created a (now-defunct) website for him called “Homer’s Home,” complete with a forum for people to track his amorous adventures and a page where kids could send him emails of support
