The Animal Thread

I keep seeing these threads about different animals popping up every now and then, so I figured I would just make a thread were people can talk about animals in general.

Grolar bears!

‽‽‽‽ ^These are interrobangs. Love them. Learn them. Use them.

So, let's talk about rats.

"Dr. Strangeloid, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Cleanlink" - thespacephantom

Rats are cute!◊

But not when there's tons of them.◊

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It's more quality than quantity. Many pet rats are cute. Many wild ones are not.

"All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice." — Joseph De Maistre.

There's a VERY noisy fox screeching right across from the house right now. Likes to go one for an hour or so before it quiets down, it seems.

This one time, I looked outside to my backyard, and there were at least thirty turkeys walking around back there, maybe even more. True story.

‽‽‽‽ ^These are interrobangs. Love them. Learn them. Use them.

My neighborhood basically has roving gangs of wild turkeys. This started a few years ago, and before that they were pretty much unheard of.

My sister's car has been sitting in our backyard unused for some time, and apparently some squirrels decided to build nests there: The animals in question weren't home when my mom opened up the hood of the car, but there were big piles of what looked like furniture stuffing on either end of the motor, with a bunch of acorns underneath.

Earth is the only planet inhabitable by Nicolas Cage.

Portias, I think, are the best spiders.

What's the frequency Kenneth?|In case of war.

I've read that some species of ants and termites have their worker caste subdivide further into subcastes that are each specialized for particular tasks — there's your run-of-the-mill worker who does most food gathering as well as the colony-building and -maintenance, there is the "replete" worker who has an oversized abdomen that it uses to store nutrients (i.e. honeypot ants), there are "major" workers who largely focus on defending the nest (i.e. what we know as "soldiers" among ant species, but not termites^note Termite soldiers are a wholly separate caste.), and there's the "supermajor" workers with even more oversized bodies and heads who are dedicated to foraging those sources of food that none of the minor subcastes could tackle (like comparatively huge seeds).

But what about subcastes of a dedicated soldier caste? Do any ant or termite species have such a thing?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I'm a little confused about how the casting system works for ants. I thought the queen lays a bunch of eggs and they're fertilized by several male ants? How are castes determined then?

I am tempted to flood this thread with links to pictures and videos of pine martens, because they are adorable and really cool little beasties, but I bad with producing links out of thin air...

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

The Fennec fox◊ is the cutest thing    EVER.   

x4 Daddy long legs are the best spiders.

edited 11th Dec '13 10:32:39 PM by BaconManiac5000

what do you mean I didn't win, I ate more wet t-shirts than anyone else

Not quite. The male ants — who are called "drones", BTW — mate with the queen, who stores their sperm inside special sacs. She then determines which eggs get fertilized by said sperm; those that do get fertilized give rise to female ants, which then develop into either sterile workers (which includes "soldiers") or fertile queens depending on the type of diet that they receive during their larval stage (a general rule is better nourishment leads to queens). Unfertilized eggs, on the other hand, always give drones.

As a side-note, this means that drones are chromosomally haploid (one set of chromosomes), while workers and queens are diploid (two sets of chromosomes).

edited 12th Dec '13 1:08:09 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

A pink elephant!◊

Or rather,an albino elephant.

New theme music also a box

I've seen the Square-Cube Law being cited as the reason why larger-sized dog breeds have generally shorter lifespans than smaller ones. How does that work exactly, given that there are much larger mammals (e.g. gorillas) that have lifespans measured in several decades^note In contrast, the longest-lived dog breeds only go as far as the vicinity of 15 years, though there are a few individual dogs that were recorded to have lived to almost twice that much.?

edited 17th Oct '14 10:57:26 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

From what I understand they have innards better suited for a smaller animal in a large body, so they're kinda inefficient.

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

Really? Can you elaborate?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

On another note, a stray Russian female cat is hailed a heroine for saving the life of an abandoned baby in Obninsk, Russia.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

That in itself is quite heartwarming, such a good cat.

In an anime, I'll be the Tsundere Dark Magical Girl who likes purple MY own profile is actually HERE!

Yeah. Who said that cats can't be nice?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.