oberon-king-of-the-cherries

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

#man I’m suddenly overcome with the desire to draw my high school eelman oc doing this #video #moray eel

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

Horrible thing with legs?

That’s an unkind judgment to pass on this salt-of-the-earth farmer, he’s my son who is 208 years old and every day he hand milks those shrimips . It’s a great idea 🙏 it’s a great idea 🙏 god bless 🙏

#what…what was the prompt for this and why #ai

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

ID: sketches of a shrimp and a prawn wearing black turtlenecks, labeled "shrim possible" and "prawn stoppable" in messy green block letters. end ID

rufus is a tardigrade. i dont know

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

im sorry seals molt? my association with that word is insects so i am confused and intrigued

They do! I’d say most species of animals sloughs off “old” parts of their bodies at some point of their lives in some capacity. The word “molting” is used as a catch-all term for this process, although exactly what body part they shed and how they do it varies from animal to animal. Arthropods grow an entire new exoskeleton and shed the old one, but for most other animals, this process only involves shedding the outermost layer of their bodies, the pelage and/or their first layer of skin. Reptiles are quite famous for this because they sometimes manage to come out of their old skins and leave them almost fully intact as if they were kigurumi pajamas:

Mammals tend to mostly only shed fur or hair, growing thicker fur during colder months and losing it in favor of shorter fur during warmer months. How obvious this is depends on the climate, though. It’s quite perceptible in mammals that live in the arctic whose fur changes color depending on the season:

But even the difference between the summer coats and winter coats of domestic dogs can be palpable if you live in places with colder climates!

(I’m quite fascinated by this because I was born and raised in a tropical country and my dogs look the same all year round heh)

But back to the seals. Pinnipeds don’t really use their fur to keep warm like other mammals do, but they still have it, and they have to shed their old coats and grow new ones accordingly, which they do once a year!

In elephant seals, this process is so sudden and so extreme it’s called catastrophic molting. They don’t only lose their fur, but also a layer of dead skin all at once and this forces them to stay on land for a full month without swimming (and therefore, without hunting and eating) until the process is fully done. Because molting requires redirecting blood flow towards the skin instead of to their vital organs as usual, if they swam in the cold waters they’re usually accustomed to while molting, they’d freeze!

Bonus fun fact: despite having lost their fur during the evolution process, cetaceans like whales and dolphins also go through a molting process where they lose a layer of dead skin, which they scrape off by rubbing against rocks and rolling on sand banks.

It’s been recently discovered (as of 2020!) that the reason whales migrate annually from arctic waters to tropical waters is the exact same reason elephant seals spend a month on land: to molt! It’s much easier for a whale to keep warm while shedding its skin in warm waters than it is in cold waters.

#remember our childhood molt when we sloughed off our teeth? #they should hire me to go out and peel those seals #not fish

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

Yknow, I know this blog subject of keeping NA native fishes is about as niche as it gets in the fishkeeping community, but I'm glad it resonates with nearly 4000 people. That's far more than I would have thought when I started Thenativetank in 2015.

Hoping in 2024 to have more fish based adventures and finds to share with you!

Edit: looks like I started this up in Nov 14. Going on a decade of native fishkeeping!

#:)

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

#this one goes on both blogs

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

It's dangerous to go alone, take this

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

#a cherry go round #video #shrimpblr

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

I’m thinking of sewing a sock with Velcro to put on Chloe’s bad paw, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea, let alone feasible.

#she could probably just yank it off anyway and it would inhibit her walking as a three legged cat #I’m running g out of options. the wound on her foot is slowly encompassing the whole paw pad #sick pet #not fish

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

Guinness book world record holder for Oldest Baby in the World

#not fish #dogs

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

No one is safe from shrimp facts during shrimp week! 🦐

#shrimp #shrimpblr #monterey bay aquarium #video

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: Shrimp Edition! 🦐

How do you get from Kevin Bacon to shrimp? 🤔 Join us as we shellebrate the interconnectedness of our world, from the silver screen to the shimmering seas. 

#video #shrimp #shrimpblr

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

#this makes me so anxious as a fish keeper #fishblr #video

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

[oberon-king-of-the-cherries]

It’s him….

It’s Shrimp who fries the rice…