These are the famous “dancing lemurs” that have generated a whole bunch of creative You Tube videos, such as the one at the bottom of this post. If you need a laugh or a smile, or another example of being amazed at the weirdness of our planet, then watch the video. About a minute and half.
Excerpt:
Lemurs in Madagascar have been under pressure from deforestation, poaching, drought and other challenges for years. Now, in the much-visited Berenty Reserve near the island’s southern tip, one species faces a mysterious new threat.
In the last month and a half, at least 31 Verreaux’s sifakas (Propithecus verreauxi) have died in the reserve. Most were found already dead; others were found gravely ill and later died from respiratory failure. Berenty staff and local scientists have reached out to veterinarians and primatologists across the world. The experts believe that a parasite or tick-borne disease is likely to blame, but the exact cause remains unknown.
This is the one of largest lemur die-offs that scientists in Madagascar can remember. “We haven’t seen something like this before,” Patricia Wright, a lemur expert and the founder of Centre ValBio, a research center in eastern central Madagascar, told Mongabay.
Verreaux’s sifakas were struggling long before this outbreak. The white, fluffy lemurs were already listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The population is highly fragmented and has been declining for decades, according to the IUCN. The species is found in the dry areas and spiny forests of southwest Madagascar.
By coincidence, a large IUCN Red List Primate Specialist Group meeting took place last week in Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital, and reassessing the endangerment status of all lemur species was a top agenda item. The group decided to uplist all nine sifaka species from endangered to critically endangered, according to people in attendance. The status change is not yet official, but during the meeting the Facebook page of the specialist group’s Lemur Conservation Network project mentioned it: “We are very sad to announce that all sifaka species are now under the Critically Endangered criteria.”
its the list we’ve been waiting for *its a meme dont call me out
American toad (Anaxyrus americanus)
that’s my baby Hippolyta!
Pros -chubby orbs -small faces -love to burrow in the dirt Cons -hard to find as pets -sometimes they’re all the way in the soil and you can’t find them -its really hard to find their poops
Pros -look like fruit -always kinda look like they farted really loudly and dont want ppl to know it was them -stance Cons -actually the false tomato frog, true tomato frogs aren’t in pet trade -no one breeds them which makes me so sad -they look like great pillows but theyre frogs and not pillows
Pros -sticky -really have that stereotypical frog shape from cartoons and stuff -it doesnt hurt when they bite Cons -kinda basic and they know it, theyre smug -sometimes bite each other cuz theyre bad at eating food -they dont live in the dirt like other self respecting toads and frogs
Oriental fire belly toad (Bombina orientalis)
its my Sparky son
Pros -semi aquatic -extremely little!! -orange belly Cons -very bad at mating, sometimes drown each other -can’t hold these boys, they jumpy -always try to eat the tongs!!!! its not food!!
Pros -so very big -tenacious -hold him like a baby Cons -heavy -will eat ur shoe if you give it access -you can’t train them to come when called. i just think a recall trained frog would be neat.
Pros -not poisonous in captivity unless u feed em the poison gathering food -very tiny….. -stance!!!!!! Cons -imagine if they were huge. wouldnt that be fucked up or what. -eat rly little foods -come in too many morphs, species ID is going to kill me, dart frogs have killed me.
why isn’t anyone allowed to be wrong anymore? it’s okay to be wrong. no one should be terrified of every tiny little mistake they might make. being wrong, and realizing you were wrong, is how you learn and grow and change.
The fish to be protected by the prescribed burn is the Owens speckled dace. Here’s what it looks like. Kind of grumpy.
Excerpt:
It may seem strange to burn the area around the wetland as a habitat restoration technique, and even more oxymoronic to do so in order to save an aquatic creature in the desert. But for a nearly extinct species of fish in the arid Owens Valley, a prescribed burn is exactly what the doctor ordered.
After years of planning, the Eastern Sierra Land Trust, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Cal Fire executed a prescribed burn this past December in order to create a sustainable habitat for the Owens speckled dace, a small fish that is listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.
Fish in the desert might sound impossible, but there are several species of desert fish in California. During geographically transformative events that occurred thousand of years ago, these fish found their way to tiny pools and streams that punctuate the dry landscapes during wet periods. As landscapes changed over time, the desert fish have adapted into unique species specialized for their environs. According to Peter Moyle, a biologist at University of California, Davis, genomic testing suggests that the Owen speckled dace’s prehistoric ancestors came from around the Mono Lake basin, where volcanic activity blew out the waters and dropped the common ancestor of the Owens speckled dace and other dace species into surrounding areas.
“These fish have been going their own way for a very long time and adapted to very difficult conditions,” Moyle says. “If we can restore the speckled dace, you’ll have brought back a significant part of the fish fauna in that region. It just belongs there.”
Over the past 80 years, the Owens speckled dace has been in steep decline due to water mismanagement, pressures from agriculture, and encroachment by non-native species. Streams and seasonal ponds in the Owens Valley are expected to decline further with climate change-related temperature increases and less snowpack, and what has not evaporated will continue to be diverted for agricultural use. Thirsty cattle, a linchpin of the valley’s ranching history, are especially hard on area streams. The little water that does remain is often overrun with invasive plants and non-native fish species.
“Sorry but euthanasia is cheaper and doesn’t make everyone a slave to the Government [sic].”
“The ones who are disabled and can’t work…why are we required to keep them?” the Chrisforgov account responded. “Sorry but euthanasia is cheaper and doesn’t make everyone a slave to the Government [sic].”
Defending his now-deleted comments, the account admin mused as to why American taxpayers should “have to keep up people who cannot contribute to society any longer?”
“Obviously, I’m not saying the Government [sic] should put these people down,” the Chrisforgov account wrote, contradicting its earlier statement. “I’m just saying that we shouldn’t keep them up.”
Even if you do not believe the Facebook comments came from him, his own campaign website is bad enough. Given what I read there (I won’t link to it) I’d say it’s plausible he made those posts himself.
This is what a significant percentage of conservatives (and yes, even some “liberals”) believe: that people like me are worthless and should be put down for our own good.
Better dead than a slave to the government, right?
Opponents of the controversial Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would carry fracked natural gas from West Virginia through Virginia’s Highland Country and into North Carolina, won a reprieve Tuesday when a federal appeals court invalidated a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) review of the pipeline, The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
The ruling was issued by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in Richmond, VA and agreed with environmental groups and their lawyers that the incidental take statement made by the FWS, which limits the number of endangered species that can be killed during construction and operation of a project, was not clear enough in the case of the pipeline.
The case was argued by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and Virginia Wilderness Committee. The pipeline opponents argued that the ruling meant the pipeline had to halt construction.“ This fracked gas project has been proven to be perilous to our health, our communities, and wildlife, and now, thanks to tonight’s ruling, must be stopped,” Sierra Club attorney Nathan Matthews said in a press release.
But Dominion Energy, the company leading pipeline construction, disagreed with that interpretation of the ruling. “[W]e will continue to move forward with construction as scheduled,” Dominion Energy director of communications Jen Kostyniuk said in an email obtained by U.S. News and World Report.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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