chickenkeeping:

so fun fact. you know how Rock Doves (Columba livia) are the ancestors of  domesticated pigeons? they look like this 

notice the two bars on the wings. all rock doves look like this. but if you go observe a flock of feral city pigeons you’ll notice birds with checkered wings, like Indigo’s in the first picture. 

where did this pattern come from? how did it get there? 

Columba guinea, the African Speckled Pigeon, is a close relative of the Rock dove. sometime after the domestication of rock doves humans decided to cross the two species. or maybe it was a natural hybridization? its not impossible but the two species had VERY different ranges, C. guinea occurring mainly inland in central and south Africa and C. livia inhabiting seaside cliffs in the Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa. it was probably intentional

Either way humans took a liking to the resulting (fertile!) hybrid offspring, which inherited the checkered wing pattern of an African Speckled Dove, and the checkered pattern is now extremely widespread in domestic populations. because this increased melanism proved advantageous in an urban environment you’ll see checkered birds much more often in cities. so when you see one like this in the city

just know his great great great x6,000 grandpa looked like this

continent-of-wild-endeavor:

continent-of-wild-endeavor:

Apparently since city pigeons are not wild, but feral domestics, you can legally just … take them. Snatch a pigeon or 5 and walk home.

I don’t know what to do with this information. I know what I *want* to do with it, but “should”?

@creekfiend​

smallrat36wagon:

dogy

Large sharp patriotic chicken?

something is off about that chicken, but I cant quite…..

whatthegeck:

neoncomets:

you may not like it but this is the ideal form

Oh I like it

theartofanimation:

Xi Zhang  -  http://atara.lofter.com  -  https://www.instagram.com/zhangxii_art  -  https://www.weibo.com/zhangxii?is_hot=1

My sculptures will be in the Mt.Dora public library for the next two months, you can stop by and check them out if you’re in the Orlando area~

Rating the 6 types of comments the Aphaneramma received across various social media over the last week according to quality

1. “He looks polite”

2. “Worm on a string” Like 3000 people already made that connection but hell yeah, make it 3001

3. “New amphibian dropped”

4. “Feel like shit, just want them back” Same

5. “Is this real?” I’m sorry, it wasn’t my intention to released a new cryptid into the world but the damage is already done and I’m not replying to all of these

6. “Giraffe fucked n crocodile???” Pls stop

Bonus

* At least 2 people were horny about the weird salamander

* A small number of people straight up hated it in the way people do about spiders or snakes

theartofanimation:

Woonyoung Jung  -  https://woonyoung.tumblr.com  -  https://www.facebook.com/woonyoung.jung.9  -  http://woonyoung.blogspot.com.es  -  http://woonyoung.bigcartel.com/  -  https://www.instagram.com/woonyoungjung

cuteness–overload:

destroyingitself:

despazito:

vaporwavesimulator:

vaporwavesimulator:

what if we were both vultures from different species and we’re sitting in the rain together

that’s an adult and juvenile king vulture but may I offer pictures of a black vulture gently preening a crested caracara

what if we were this

Crested Caracaras are apparently known to join Black Vulture flocks and benefit from their ability to locate food by smell. The Black Vultures reciprocally benefit from the Crested Caracara’s ability to vocalize and alert to danger, which the black vultures lack. That’s why they’re preening each other. :) (x)

I love your stuff so much! Keep up the good work

Thanks~ I intend to. :3

pangur-and-grim:

gendercontender:

tinysaurus-rex:

congrats to the ARAs who got facebook to ban animal sales. shortly before then, many rare heritage chicken breeds were getting much needed attention to save the breeds thanks to various agricultural facebook pages highligting them. but now, with the ban of animal sales on facebook, those heritage breeds have become damn near impossible to find again. guess what that means? the breeds will begin dying out again. people will go back to hatcheries who mass produce unhealthy chicken breeds in horrible conditions. folks will always buy chickens, but now instead of buying them from ethical breeders on facebook they’ll be supporting a terrible industry, woohoo.

hope y’all are proud.

We are, actually!

Slowly but surely your industry will go extinct, just like those breeds of chicken!

thanks for the love and attention uwu

I think this interaction is very important for people to see.

animal welfare advocates work to make sure heritage, healthy breeds survive as an alternative to corporate breeds like the Cornish X, which grow so quickly that their legs eventually collapse under their own ballooning flesh. heritage breeds like the Brahma, Cochin, and Legbar (left to right below) grow and lay at a normal life, and can happily scratch about, dig holes in your grass to nap in, rip the leaves off your garden plants one by one, and make very funny sounds with their functional beautiful bodies, all while providing you with food.

‘animal rights’ advocates like @gendercontender​ would prefer a world in which the relationship between chickens and their keepers (and the chickens themselves) did not exist. I would go ask Tallgeese, Yennefer, Anzu, Milkshake, Henny and Perchy what they think of all this, but fortunately they’re too busy tearing apart a fresh green head of lettuce like the tiny funny velociraptors they are.

falseredstart:

This is a ruby-crowned kinglet (Regulus calendula) . Images like this are frequently passed around the internet as “round borbs”, “birb”, or “smol friend”. 

However, it is incredibly import to remember: your smol friend is a dirty liar.

How does this wizardry work? The magic is all in ptiloerection, or contracting special muscles that raise and lower feathers. The majority of a bird’s body is actually completely bare of feathers– instead, feathers grow from special tracts (or pterylae). 

Thanks to the feather erector ptili muscles, these feathers are strategically arranged across the body for thermoregulation and communication. Some feathers are specially adapted for tactile sensory input, too! They can help a bird find prey, or detect air current shifts to alter wing angles for flight efficiency.

peujeune:

bookrat:

solidagosempervirens:

yourg4mem4sterth3whit3r4bbit:

bookrat:

Aphaneramma, a marine temnospondyl amphibian with a cute crocodile face

Giraffe crocodiller

This looked just a bit too close to an amphibious muppet, so I did a duckduckgo search and the Aphaneramma is a real animal but it’s been extinct for a really long time. So the coloring is simply conjecture, and OP didn’t credit someone who not just took a photo but created a model so lifelike that it’s easy to mistake for a living animal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphaneramma

OP didn’t credit someone because OP made and photographed it.

I mean give the commenter some credit, at least they actually cared enough to get made about the possibility of stolen artwork.thats far than you can say for most people.

I don’t think I could possibly have made that rebuke more gentle than it already was.

They aren’t doing the cause of preventing art theft any good by casting doubt on me so anyone who reblogs their comment chain thinks I’m a reposter and therefore there’s no point checking out the rest of my work

todaysbird:

BIRDS: EXPOSED

SERATONIN: RISING

solidagosempervirens:

yourg4mem4sterth3whit3r4bbit:

bookrat:

Aphaneramma, a marine temnospondyl amphibian with a cute crocodile face

Giraffe crocodiller

This looked just a bit too close to an amphibious muppet, so I did a duckduckgo search and the Aphaneramma is a real animal but it’s been extinct for a really long time. So the coloring is simply conjecture, and OP didn’t credit someone who not just took a photo but created a model so lifelike that it’s easy to mistake for a living animal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphaneramma

OP didn’t credit someone because OP made and photographed it.

murakel:

gretchensinister:

Giving someone six geese (a-laying, and thus in full protect-the-nest mode), much less SEVEN SWANS, does not seem to me, to be, per se, an act of true love

Aphaneramma, a marine temnospondyl amphibian with a cute crocodile face