Tag: animal friday
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Meet the hooded pitohui
This week’s animal comes courtesy of one of my old lab mates. I was chatting with her about science when she mentioned hearing about a poisonous bird. My reaction: what??? A poisonous bird???? I need to know more! It is with great pleasure that I introduce you to said poisonous bird, the pitohui. The name…
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Meet the European mink
Do you remember the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. I know, it’s hard to forget. But think hard. Do you remember when there was a big outcry about Covid-19 and mink farms? If you can’t recall, basically there was an outbreak of Covid-19 jumping from humans to mink and back to humans again. So Denmark…
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Meet the wandering albatross
Have you ever heard the saying, “there’s an albatross around your neck”? It’s a phrase that comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It’s a long poem (~77 pages, would take the average reader ~28 minutes to read). But the TL:DR version is that a sailor killed an albatross that…
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Meet the green turtle
This past October, I went to the New England Aquarium in Boston for the first time with some visiting friends. You should go if you’ve never been; it’s a solid aquarium! One of the coolest parts was this giant tank in the center. We’re talking four stories tall. 40 feet wide. 200,000 gallons of salt…
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Meet the central rock rat
As you may know, I studied rodents in during my PhD work. While I specifically studied prairie voles, I did some field work that exposed me to other rodents (i.e., rats, mice, shrews, etc.). So I thought I had a good handle on the types of rodents out there. But guess what? I just found…
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Meet the flamingo
I’ll admit, I had trouble deciding what animal to tell you about this week. Since its New Year’s Eve, I knew I wanted one that symbolized a new year and a new start. My head immediately went to the phoenix, the mythical bird that bursts into flame upon its death only to be reborn from…
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Meet the reindeer
It’s almost Christmas, so I thought the obvious animal for this Animal Friday was the reindeer! Scientists (sadly) haven’t found any reindeer with a glowing red nose. But that doesn’t mean that reindeer aren’t super cool! Check out these cool reindeer facts: Reindeer and caribou are the same I always thought reindeer and caribou where…