Beyond the Bars: Ethical Enclosures for Captive Animals
A series of articles on what science can tell us about the welfare of our captive animals.
- A Background on Captivity
- Stress and Space
- Substrate and Shelter (coming soon!)
- Companions and Rotation (coming soon!)
- Access to the Animals (coming soon!)
Spider Behavior Month!
Creepy Creatures for October!
A series of articles on Halloween-themed critters and phenomena.
Family and Species Overviews
Dogs, dogs, and more dogs. The origin and radiation of all canids, from the bat-eared fox to the maned wolf.
All about this fat, fluffy character- including why all tanuki are raccoon dogs but not all raccoon dogs are tanuki.
It’s a hyena! That eats termites! And smears anal secretions on things!
Showcasing the incredible diversity within a massive family of mammals: the bats.
It’s a bat that walks! Sort of.
All about the ecology of fear, which is a real, scientific thing.
Animals that play dress-up!
A: you gotta make a living and b: lions are certified jerks. How can the little guy fight back?
Why do animals play? This question has had scientists wringing their hands for decades.
Time to debunk the idea that prey animals group together so they can look out for one another. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Also, group selection is a stupid theory.
Why DO dogs pee on things? What do they know that we don’t?? I answer these questions and more.
“Alpha wolf”? What’s that? I don’t think that exists.
Uncomfortable about the fact that Fluffy Lumpkins has a sex drive? Then maybe you shouldn’t get a pet.
While some people still struggle with the idea that animals have minds, scientists have known about animal mental sickness for decades. Knowing about theirs helps us treat our own.
Some marmosets have three parents. Not three adoptive parents- three biological parents. Take my hand and I will show you how.
Why raise your own kids when you can bully someone else into doing it for you?
Actually, why even raise your kids when you can arbitrarily murder them?
A look at several fascinating cases of trans-species adoption.
Homosexual behavior? In my birds? It’s more common than you might think.
Sex isn’t always necessary for success in the animal kingdom. Just ask a termite.
Could somebody tell bats to just stop coming up with new ways to scream into the darkness? Thanks.
Like it says on the tin.
Bats are better than birds in every respect, case closed. I’m definitely not biased.
A journey exploring the evolution of ancient marine reptiles, from the Permian all the way to the Cretaceous.
Why some deer have fangs, and some deer have horns, and some deer have fangs AND horns.
Evolution tends to use what it already has, and sometimes that means tinkering with the developmental clock. Arguably, a bird is just a baby dinosaur.
Round pupils! Slit pupils! Horizontal pupils! Wavy pupils! U-shaped pupils! We talk about ’em all.
Putting the “mammary” back in “mammal” with this evolutionary history.
Can an evolutionary line gain flight, lose it, and then get it back?
This is not an article about love-crazed animals chasing each other. I wish it were. But it is about why some animals have such over-the-top sexual displays.
A ten-year-old Jack Russell terrier and a ten-year-old Saint Bernard are two very different beasts.
They’re way too stinky and kinky for that.
If a mosquito and a chimpanzee experience death in the same way, is it really right to value one life over the other?
We want them because they’re cute, weird, or just plain awesome. But when is that enough to justify buying them?
Think this isn’t a problem? Think again. How humans facilitated a deer population explosion- and how we (and the environment) are paying for it.
The real-life phenomena and the long, meandering process that led to the creation of Darkeye.
Translating what research means for your everyday life can be maddening. That’s because it usually doesn’t even apply.