Beavers Have The Lifestyle That Most Children Dream Of. Dig And Travel Through Underwater Canals. Dam

This is the Paucidentomys vermidax, the edented Sulawesi rat. It lives in remote rainforest areas on the Indonesian island that is part of its name. It is the only rodent without molars, which it doesn't need because its diet is likely entirely made up of soft, easy to chew earthworms.

Discovered only in 2012, it is one of the most recent species of rodent (and mammal) to be described.

Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel Callospermophilus lateralis

9/25/2023 Tahoe, California

kind of perverted that microwave will spin your food for you. showing you all its angles for your freakish lustful gaze

Currently crying about Yoso-Tama-No-Kakehashi, a Japanese guidebook from the 1700s about raising rats. It's the first known rat guidebook in the world :)

They were raised as pets and for show animals, and it's mentioned in the guidebook that "one can call out and rats will come to hand". They were referred to as "nezumi" and it was considered important that they have large cages to live in. There was also a variety of rat that had a fox-like coat!

Rats were domesticated in Japan from the 1600s to the 1800s - it's unknown if any of those domesticated strains are ancestral to the current domestic rats today. They were domesticated again in Europe in the 1800s (initially for much crueler reasons than just for being pets) and I think it's just so sweet that we as humans fell in love with rats so much that we had to domesticate them at least TWICE...

You can download an article about the guidebook here. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/expanim/60/1/60_1_1/_pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwioidaLs5z6AhUojIkEHRI1BvEQFnoECAkQAg&usg=AOvVaw3aarTW0iy1HybCcrxtp4ww

i love prairie dog. he is like a brother to me. i hope they get well soon

hi! love what you do! can we hear more about the massive black tailed prairie dog colony?

Sure!

So, for a bit of context, black-tailed prairie dogs organize themselves first into coteries, or small family groups usually consisting of one adult male, three to four adult females, and pups. Up to a dozen of these coteries make up a 'ward' centered around a natural landmark like a hill; these wards are like neighborhoods, in which coteries are aware of each other but don't interact much. Sometimes a colony consists of a single ward, but more often there will be multiple wards that make up a colony (also called a town). Towns can house miles of interconnected burrows and tunnels which its inhabitants use to move underground.

The largest of these colonies was first described by naturalist Vernon Bailey in the early 1900s. At the time, the colony extended from the city of San Angelo to Clarendon-- a distance of about 430 km (250 mi). Bailey described the inhabitants of the town as "...comparatively tame, standing at the entrance to their hole, flipping their tails, and steadily barking." He also noted that, "When properly prepared and cooked, they are a delicacy."

Unfortunately, disease and extermination regimes have decimated black-tailed prairie dog populations, and it's now estimated that less than 10 million live in the state of Texas.

who let biologists play dnd

i ate a sentinel berry and became watchful

Mice straight up go on missions and no body talks about it

rat gif for the rat gods

I LOVE THE MANED RAT ALSO KNOWN AS THE AFRICAN CRESTED RAT

they have a bald spot much like myself

hey how come I'm autistically obsessed with strange animals but missed the entire existence of maned rats?????

They part the hair down their sides as a threat display, exposing special hollow spongy hairs that they soak with deadly poison ??????