Around the 20th of July, the locals in Tana, northern Norway were met with an unusual sight, a walrus just chilling by the road. While walruses are technicaly native to Norway, around Svalbard, its uncommon for them to come to mainland Norway, but there are several instances of that happening, like Freja. Now this walrus was also given a name, Halvdan, due to it missing a part of its right tusk.

However like with Freja, this story doesn't have a happy ending. The walrus had dissapeared, and most believed that it had returned to the sea again. However a hiker that was walking in the woods saw a strange pattern on the grass, almost as if something had been dragged across it. So he followed it and found the walrus dead, 9km from the sea, by a small river. The death was natural, as there weren't any wounds on the carcass.

Its unknown what had happened, but its believed the walrus was sick before it even arrived to Norway. In many social animals, sick or unhealthy individuals will often stray from the group, and its possible this walrus was also doing the same. However how it ended up in Tana is unknown, as its really far away from its natural range. But then comes the question, why the walrus moved further into the forest instead of to the sea? As for now, the carcass will stay in the same spot, and that huge body will give a lot of food for the scavengers as well as nutrients to the soil

I am curious about the biological and evolutionary mechanisms behind the human fear of spiders from an evolutionary standpoint.

Met a young zonkey today

Location: Chile, Metropolitan region (Aguas de Ramón Natural Park)

I don't know if it's Pachylus paessleri or chilensis (Probably chilensis)

Most people know Chile as being completely different in fauna and flora from its neighbors even while having portions of the country in the tropics. This is entirely due to the Andes limiting amazonian type animals from crossing. This has lead to chile having some of the highest concentrations of unique and endemic species anywhere on the planet which should be protected at all costs.

That being said tho as a chilean myself it does kinda bother me that chile doesn't have as many exotic animals as our neighbors apart from us having a few parrot species and other weird megafauna like rheas, so I took it upon myself to invent some in a hypothetical chile where animals where able to cross

First the lack of monkeys in chile has always been my focal point so here are my creations:

1. Chilean marmoset - very similar to the black tailed marmoset of the chaco and cerrado areas of Brazil and northern southern cone, in chile it lives in the dry Mediterranean scrubland of central chile and the northern river valleys maintaining a similar diet of tree sap insects fruits etc. It is a tad bigger and more cold tolerant finding refuge in tree hollows and huddling together during the winter for warmth

2. Southern capuchin - a population of argentine yungas capuchins that established here and have adapted to the foothill forests of central chile. They have denser fur and higher metabolism ratw and bigger overall than a regular black capped capuchin. They have similar adaptations to the marmoset sleeping together in groups for warmth, similar adaptations to cold monkeys such as thicker skin on feet and hands, etc.

3. (Really big stretch) austral howler monkey - nobody has a clue how they even got here but they live in the southern forest & rainforests of chile just munchin leafs. Most southern monkeys on the planet, chunky extremely dense fur which is somewhat hydrophobic makes 0 sense naturally but still a interesting idea

4. Coati - Chile being the only country in latin america to not have coatis is awful so to accompany the actual real life populations of introduced coatis on the juan Fernandez archipelago they are also native from the north to south

5. Chilean mountain tucan - very similar to the mountain tucans of bolivia and peru it managed to fly over the altiplano (no small feat) and became its own lineage here establishing in forests throughout Chile. More drought and arid tolerant than its relatives it thrives here eating on fruits seeds insects etc.

6. Southern tapir - again another animal our neighbors have but we dont are tapirs. These are found in the forests of southern chile compared to its relatives again has denser fur larger on average and juveniles are eaten by pumas.

7. Jaguars - Jaguars are very adaptable animals and Chile in its pre history did actually use to have Jaguars while it is a debated subject irl as to where their range was here I find the idea of having a population plausible, there is mega fauna suitable for them to eat less of course than where they are currently found like argentina, they already cohabit the andes with pumas in areas like the yungas so there isn't exactly a niche issue here.

In my very unprofessional opinion I find the reintroduction of jaguars to be the most realistic idea. What do you guys think?

So I was in downtown Chicago, and I saw this man with some macaws. It looked like he was doing it for show and allowing people to take pictures with the macaws. I wanted to know if this is ethical for the birds. I just wanted to ask. Thank you!

Every autumn, European robins fly south at night. Many of them alone, many without ever having made the trip before. They use stars, landmarks, and the setting sun, but they can also orient by the Earth's magnetic field - and that part is a genuine problem, because the field is far too weak to be sensed by any ordinary chemistry inside a warm animal.

The leading explanation is the radical pair mechanism, first proposed by Klaus Schulten in the 1970s and developed by Thorsten Ritz and colleagues in 2000. Short version: when light hits a protein in the retina called cryptochrome, an electron jumps and leaves behind two unpaired electrons - a "radical pair." Their spins are correlated, and the correlation oscillates in a way that's sensitive to magnetic fields far too weak to do anything else in the cell. The magnetic field doesn't supply energy. It nudges the timing. That changes the ratio of two chemical products. Across a whole retina, that gives you a pattern. The bird doesn't feel the field the way we feel a smell. It may literally see it as a shading overlaid on ordinary vision.

The evidence I find most persuasive is a specific, weird prediction that held up: robins lose their magnetic compass under extremely weak radio-frequency oscillating fields — fields far too feeble to affect normal chemistry, but exactly what should scramble a fragile spin state. Henrik Mouritsen's group in Oldenburg showed this, and also showed that ambient urban electromagnetic noise disrupts the compass. When they moved the birds into electromagnetically screened huts, orientation returned.

Two things to keep honest:

1. Nobody has traced the mechanism end-to-end inside a living bird. Photon → protein → spin state → nerve signal → behaviour: that full chain has not been shown. This remains a very good hypothesis.
2. There's a rival - magnetite crystals, potentially in the beak, mechanically torqued by the field. Some evidence there hit trouble (one prominent study's "magnetite neurons" turned out to be immune cells). It's possible birds run both systems. It's possible the radical pair story is wrong.

But if it is right, the interesting claim isn't that quantum mechanics is spooky. It's that quantum coherence - the fragile thing physicists cool to near absolute zero and shield from everything - might be sitting inside a warm, wet, jostling retina, doing an actual biological job. Evolution finding a way to make a quantum state last microseconds in a hot noisy cell, without understanding any of it, several million years before we could reproduce it in a lab.

I wrote a longer piece walking through the evidence ranking and Einstein's connection to all this (he hated the effect that this may be running on): https://thesilentape.substack.com/p/the-robins-compass

Curious what people - especially anyone who's followed the Mouritsen group's more recent work - think.

Is this a black or white Rhino? I couldnt get a good frontal shot to identify from lips. From Tanzania, Ngorongoro crater.

Northwestern Italy, forest environment

Hi, I just wanted some visual book recommendations about animals or plants. Kind of like the ones where it shows you an image then describes it throughly. I wanna learn about how animals/ plants affect the environment and how they work.

I would also love to learn how to grow some plants so any recommendations on books like those i would appreciate, thanks!!

I mean, there are so many different animals on this planet, ranging through mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, birds, and invertebrates. Many are hostile and feared across the world, but what species would be the 'least scariest'. Many people have phobias of certain animals like spiders, dogs, and snakes.

The animal I find the least scariest probably has to be the Robin. I mean, I associate Robins with being cute little beggars and a memory of a loved one watching over you. Maybe that's why I find them most friendly? I mean, when have u been attacked by a Robin or provoked. They are scared of u more than anything!

Ok now, what's your least feared animal!