Tag: animals
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Wigglin’ In The Rain: Why Do Worms Come Out When It Rains?
Why do worms come out when it rains? Unfortunately, we can’t ask the worms, but we have some pretty good ideas!
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Do Penguins Have Knees?
There’s something about penguins, isn’t there? They evoke our curiosity, our affection—nay, our adoration—at levels that other members of the animal kingdom would be hard-pressed to compete with. Perhaps it’s their wobbly gait. Maybe it’s the stark contrast they have with the often otherworldly habitats in which we often mentally…
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Wide-Eyed | Why Goats & Cuttlefish Have Weird Shaped Pupils
Who doesn’t love goats? Especially baby ones. Their gait, their bleat, their tiny horns. But there comes a time in any goat interaction I’ve had where we lock eyes and I’m struck with a mixture of curiosity and unease.
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Sea Otters Have Secret Skin Pockets in Their Armpits
Yes, you read that right. Move over marsupials, you’re not the only mammals with skin pockets.
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Crocodiles Would Bankrupt the Tooth Fairy
Crocodiles go through an extraordinary amount of teeth in their lives, and the how and why are just as spectacular.
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What Animal has the Highest Blood Pressure?
Typically when we think of high blood pressure, we think of the negatives like high stress and a variety of high-risk health conditions. Yet for some in the animal kingdom, high blood pressure is a mere fact of life. So, what animal has the highest blood pressure?
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How to Build An Animal | Part Three
Life is full of branching points on the tree of animal life. The coelom is the next stop on our journey of how to build an animal..
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How to Build an Animal | Part Two
There really is no shortage of ways to build an animal, but there are rules to be followed. What better place to start than the beginning?
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How to Build an Animal | Part One
There really is no shortage of ways to build an animal, but there are rules to be followed—rules with deep roots.
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What Are Animals?
There are 1 to 2 M species of animals described today in every form imaginable. Here are some key traits they all share.
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The Wild Life of the Horseshoe Crab
Horseshoe Crabs are some of the most fascinating creatures on the planet, and they are connected to us in ways you never imagined.
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Turns Out There’s a Reason for Rudolph’s Red Nose
Not every reindeer has a red nose. After all, that’s part of what makes Rudolph so special—and he’s not alone.
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Do Fish Blink?
“Do fish blink?” is a reasonable question to ask, but it raises another— “do fish have eyelids?”
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Shooting a Lion
In the case of the lion, a picture represents hundreds of years of colonialism, a de-wilding of nature, and the narcissism of the human race.
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Dispatches from Somewhere #5| American Alligator
This is one of my favorite shots I’ve ever managed to capture. I snapped this in 2015 at one of my all-time favorite parks, @brazosbendstatepark near Houston, TX. It sorta looks like she’s lunging forward, but in reality, she was sitting in a quickly flowing stream with her mouth open against the…
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Dispatches from Somewhere #4| Antheraea polyphemus
Admittedly, this photo isn’t from any time recently. I took this during the summer of 2014 at Springbrook Nature Center in Fridley, MN. It was while I was working for a nonprofit organization called Tree Trust building a 180-foot swamp foot boardwalk with local high school students. It was also…
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Behind the 𝗦𝗖i𝗘𝗡c𝗘𝗦 with Dr Mariela Gantchoff
Meet this week’s guest before the episode airs! She is an ecologist at the intersection of theoretical and applied ecology, currently working on landscape and quantitative ecology in relation to the conservation and management of terrestrial wildlife. A lot of her current research involves working to understand wildlife use of…
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Book Club| Dr Jessica L Ware’s Picks!
Each episode, we ask our guests for their personal book recommendations. Our latest guest was Dr Jessica L Ware! She is the assistant curator in invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Ware’s research focuses on the evolution of behavioral and physiological adaptations in insects, with an…
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Nature’s Pooper Scooper (Dung Beetles!) with Professor Marcus Byrne
Professor Marcus Byrne teaches us about the fantastical and unexpected world of dung beetles, their ecological importance, their connections to human culture and history, and how this lowly creature finds its way home by looking to the stars.
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Dispatches from Somewhere #1: What a Wasp
I’ve had this picture on my camera roll for almost a year now and I figured I should finally get to posting it. If you’re wondering what this scorpion looking flying insect is, it’s the Pelecinus polyturator, a type of wasp. The adults drink nectar and are pretty harmless, unless…
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Joe the Pigeon on Death Row
A fascinating journey that sounds the stuff of an animated movie or a children’s book is about to come to a rather different sort of end. On December 26th, a man by the name of Kevin Celli-Bird discovered an understandably exhausted pigeon resting in the backyard of his home in…
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The Wild Life of the Nicobar Pigeon
Order| Columbiformes While it may come as a shock, the Nicobar Pigeon (Caloenas nicobarica) is indeed a Pigeon. It’s also the closest living relative of the now extinct Dodo bird! These birds are named for an island chain of the coast of India where many of them live, though they…
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The Journey So Far
The other day, I was going through a pile of junk (which I have a lot of) and came across this. This intentionally blurred piece of paper was the very beginning of #TheWildLife. It’s just a bunch of notes and ideas that I was jotting down while I tried to…
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The Wild Life of Red Pandas
Red Panda Order| Carnivora Family| Ailuridae Red Panda’s, like the Giant Panda, eat mostly bamboo (and are impossibly adoreable). But here’s the thing, they aren’t pandas. They’re actually more closely related to skunks and raccoons, and make up their own subfamily alongside skunks, raccoons, and weasels. Much like the Eau…
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Become a Wildlife Ambassador
So, here’s the thing: we, at this moment, are rolling out a new newy thing. It’s super cool—the Wildlife Ambassador program! Basically, when you become a member at Patreon.com/TheWildLife, you can pick a species of some kind of personal importance to you and we will donate 10% of your contributions…
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Is it a Worm? Is it a Wasp? No! It’s the Elm Sawfly!
This past weekend as I sat below an old oak tree while drinking my morning cup of coffee and looking out on a glassy Lake Darling in Alexandria, Minnesota, something fell from the sky and landed at my feet. Small and curled up like a slightly puff green and yellow…
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Sunday Fish Sketch| Freshwater Elephantfish
This #SundayFishSketch comes from Ichthyologist, Rene Martin. Visit her shop on InPrint to see more of her artwork or to order prints! Meet the Freshwater Elephantfish Mormyridae Mormyridae is an African family of 200 or so species in the biological order Osteoglossiformes. Oddly enough, but fitting in line with the peculiar and…
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When a Spider isn’t a Spider
If you’re reading this right now, you might be realizing that we’re about to be playing a game of semantics (systematics, rather). For many, if it looks like a Spider, that’s all they need to know to shiver in disgust and engage in fight, freeze, or flight. It may be…
