All the Things: More cute animals!
Behold, here are more excellent animals for your quarantine enjoyment! Because you can interpret “nature is healing” two ways.
Cats
Oh cats. Sometimes they are not smart. Other times, like when they are making friends with deer, they are the goddamn best.
“Sara had seen her hose a cat once, just to get it out of the yard.”
Cats can give each other coronavirus, it seems, but the good news is that they don’t seem to get sick from it or pass it on to humans.
One of my cats has made an appearance in every video chat I have had so far during this quarantine. I personally am delighted when pets (and cute kids) pop into the chats, so I hope my coworkers feel the same.
Dogs
“Mike, a Labrador in California, shared, ‘You know how the world is in turmoil right now? I have noticed that the people who open their hearts and share love are the ones that teach others to share love. What happens is they share love and not diseases.’”
Weren’t able to get a pandemic puppy? Make yourself a robot version!
Dogs have been trained to detect bedbugs by scent, and cancer. Next up: COVID-19.
Ocean Creatures
Some people on YouTube are VERY good at putting together aquariums, and the videos are surprisingly relaxing to watch. I love finding new and robust YouTube subgenres.
Sea otter populations are recovering along the west coast of North America, and Indigenous leaders are working with ecologists to manage the impact.
A Japanese aquarium asked visitors to videochat with its garden eels, which were beginning to hide when people walked past because they were no longer used to visitors. I love their grumpy little faces.
The pandemic is giving whale populations a break from the activity of whale-watching tours — which can be done responsibly, but aren’t always. However, it’s also impacting research and conservation activities.
It’s not clear if these dolphins actually miss human interaction — they might just be bored — but what is clear is that I love them very much.
Birbs
Even the Audubon Society knows that racism is bullshit.
A recent study showed that climate change is shifting bird breeding habits. The research team found that 32 different bird species in North America had already shifted their breeding range.
You can’t call these forager birds in the crow family picky eaters — they’ll eat fire in order to drink the melted clarified butter in candles.
Cold-Blooded Friends
Two leatherback sea turtles tagged on the coast of Nova Scotia travelled 12,000 km, all the way to Trinidad.
Tired: Sourdough bread
Wired: Frog bread
Other Animals That Are Also Good
It turns out that squirrels are good for something after all. So are shrews, which have an unusually strong backbone.
Zoo webcams have become a popular distraction and source of entertainment during isolation. The Oregon Zoo’s cameras are just one delightful example.
90 percent of the flora and fauna found on Madagascar is not found anywhere else on earth.
Want to know what it’s like to be a bat? A mustang? A wombat? These meditations will take you there.
In Japan, murder hornets are fearsome but also delicious.
In Thailand, the drop in tourism means people are sending elephants back to their natural habitats. The well-documented healing of nature is lovely, but it is also sometimes bad for social distancing.
The University of Manitoba is leading a global effort to study the effect of decreased and changed human activity on wildlife. We already know that is appears to be good for some of them, less good for others.
In addition to being very cute and excellent lashes inspo, llamas could play an unexpected role in fighting coronavirus.
Earlier this month, a pygmy hippo was born in captivity for the first time in 30 years. The species is endangered. Hippos are terrifying but baby pygmy hippos are adoooorable.