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Screenshot of a blurb from the Monterey Bay Aquarium page on sea hares that says, "The California sea hare is hermaphroditic: it has both female and male sex organs. Mating occurs in the spring and summer; sea hares find each other using chemical cues in the water. Several sea hares may congregate and form a 'daisy chain,' either giving or receiving sperm."

honorable fun fact mention to the daisy chain blurb from the monterey bay aquarium because i have the funny bone of a child

ok yeah this is all over the place lmao. anyway still fun that sea hares with purple ink get that ink pigment from the red algae they eat. and also i really didn't believe that their eggs looked That noodle like but holy shit. That's Spaghetti

trying to figure out why wikipedia says sea hares eat seaweed but the other sites i've looked at are pretty firm about using 'algae'. maybe it's like one of those things where it's a colloquial term and it's not scientifically defined/specific enough to use as a descriptor for things like this

i didn't know that coconut crabs straight up cannot swim or breathe under water after their larval stages and then only use shells during their juvenile stage while their adult exoskeleton develops. and they can live to be like 60 years old that's fucking awesome

admittedly while looking at the alameda whipsnake i did think for a second that i was looking at a garter snake but apparently whipsnakes don't have stripes down their backs.

not a fun fact per se but i've spent the past While staring at pictures of different whipsnakes and they are so gorgeous. snakes in general are often sooo pretty but wow the colors on these eastern coachwhips

i'm not well versed enough in the conservation conversation around bighorn sheep specifically so i don't know if that's a reality or just a "maybe" and i guess maybe an existing population isn't a bad thing if there are ever reintroduction efforts to their native range. but the web of Circumstances.

in places like texas they were introduced to attract hunters apparently. "The exotic sheep were introduced into the canyon to fill a separate ecological niche and to share the vast reaches of the canyon, noncompetitively, with native mule deer" Man.

being taken aback by how many pages on aoudad talk about hunting before learning that, while they're vulnerable in their natural range in northern africa, they're outcompeting native ungulates and may have a negative effect on bighorn sheep conservation efforts in the fucking US.

apparently piping plover chicks leave the nest within hours of hatching to forage? wait oh my god. their little dances for feeding and the courtship display that's so cute. i don't even need a 'fun fact' this week i'm just watching videos of their little feet

black mussurana juveniles have brown or red backs as juveniles :0 and clelia scytalina juveniles look enough like coral snakes to be killed for it before they get to go blue-black..... :(

help. looking at a picture of one eating a pit viper and it feels almost comical. tube eating another tube

but also i was only vaguely aware of like 2 types of tiger (siberian and bengal) fhgjdks. i also forget how BIG big cats are until i read sentences like 'sumatran tigers are the smallest subspecies of tiger with females measuring about 7'1" to 7'7"'

anyway i was not aware of the period where there were only 2 tiger subspecies considered valid until a 2018 study in Current Biology affirmed that the 6 living subspecies of tiger are genetically and evolutionarily distinct.

screenshot of the opening sentence of the wikipedia article for lordosis behavior, reading, "Lordosis behavior, also known as mammalian lordosis (Greek lordōsis, from lordos "bent backward") or presenting, is the naturally occurring body posture for sexual receptivity to copulation present in females of most mammals including rodents, elephants, cats, and humans."

outsourcing my animal choices to friends so i also get a mammal in here occasionally. i knew tigers across the board were endangered and had lost huge swathes of their range and population but ok wait i'm sorry i just got distracted choking laughing about this image. human jumpscare

oh there are no hummingbirds in europe. wait mainland europe has No birds that survive on nectar????

"the british prefer to call [what americans call hummingbird moths] bee hawk-moths" bee hawk??? is it a coloration thing, because i can see that i think.

i think the nile bichir's dorsal finlets make its silhouette kind of look like the way i drew both gators and dragons as a child (badly). like they kind of look like they could walk if they wanted. and apparently they have Smooth Lungs ?

well. i didn't know that old world vultures find their carrion exclusively by sight vs genus Cathartes of the new world vultures which can find food by scent. i am getting mixed search results regarding the range of a turkey vulture's olfactory ability but it sounds impressive as hell regardless

man. wikipedia rabbit hole of old world vultures and the number of wiki articles that end with "and they are rapidly declining partly/largely due to poisoned bait+carrion" :(

wjat do you mean the second largest family of bees is called "sweat bees" because they are often attracted to sweat. that sounds like a lie you tell children who are afraid of bugs to freak them out. like a spiders georg situation.

i feel like a learned a few things clicking around today including that gulf toadfish mating calls attract dolphins (predators) and they stop calling when they hear dolphin clicks + the existence of eel catfish which sure are catfish that look like eels but

spent the last few minutes looking at pictures of shrimp and then crab larvae. funky little guys. some of them admittedly uncomfortable to look at due to Eyes but that is a skill issue on my part.

somehow it did not occur to me that other shrimp have larval stages. idk why. maybe in my head it's like "well they're already so small surely they just come out like that". and these ones specifically do but others Do Not.

looking up red cherry shrimp and clapping my hands at the colorful world of ornamental shrimp in neocaridina davidi they're so prettyyyy though as expected with an ornamental species it sounds like distribution has led to them endangering native species. in hawaii especially :/

chicks are called eyasses, females are just called falcons, and males are called tiercels??? due to size disparity because they're 1/3 smaller than the falcons????? that's kind of funny ngl

i don't know why i thought the peregrine falcon was a smaller bird when it's apparently crow-sized and hunts medium-sized birds like ducks. maybe i was thinking of kestrels. wikipedia lists them as fastest bird in the world with a recorded top speed of 242 mph in a stoop...

too tired this weekend to absorb any facts. making do with trying to figure out the name of a bird i see a lot in the summer and i think it's they're american redstarts :) chippy little guys with orange streaks

stuck on this one for a bit because dromedaries look the way i imagine camels to look. these little guys are like. that doesn't look real

world is a big beautiful place

explains that note about how quickly they able to bury themselves though hsgdjfg there isn't much to bury