skeleton of eurasian wolf
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Introducing The Skull Index - A public collaborative resource website.
You might have seen the post @dread-doughnuts made a while back!
While there are various skull resource sites on the web usually dedicated to a certain museum collection or a few museum collections of skulls. This is the first public collaboration skull resource website led by a small team of 5 individuals.
Do you collect skulls? Enjoy collecting and sharing helpful data such as measurements to help compare against other specimens? Consider becoming a collaborator! We currently have over 400 confirmed species on the index, and many more to come!
We are also in touch with various museums and educational institutions across the world, and hope to add some rarer specimens and hopefully extinct vertebrates at the end of the year!
Our hope is that this website will be helpful for anyone. From researchers to students and artists, or to people who are simply interested in bones and skulls and just want to look at neat photos or compare skulls against their own collection for identification help!
Please note that the Skull Index is a work-in-progress website! Most pages for species have not been made yet, our team is working hard on editing photos, compiling the information, and adding new content every day.
Keep up to date with news, join the community hub of visitors, and collaborators, and network with people from the museum industry in our DISCORD SERVER (Please note our server is 18+ only due to privacy and safety).
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Sometimes I forget that the existence of heritage turkey breeds isn't common knowledge. The first nations developed so many varieties of heritage turkeys and more continue to be developed to this day, y'all. Broad breasted aren't all there is.
Narangansette
Royal palm
Slate (chocolate in the background)
Bourbon red (very popular)
Chocolate
Black
Beltsville small, my beloved
Slate and royal palm toms
Blue palm and fall fire projects by Porter's. Check out more of their projects here.
Porter's is an indigenous owned and operated hatchery, with the goal of re-creating, preserving, and making new varieties of heritage turkeys.
Heritage varieties can breed on their own and live long, happy turkey lives. Additionally, turkeys are very intelligent- honestly even the broad breasted are pretty smart. No, they don't drown themselves in rain, poults are susceptible to cold and need more time to learn how to bird than chickens but that isn't a result of human interference- their mothers are very attentive, even wild poults can become sick if they don't have somewhere warm and dry during the rain. They're more susceptible to illness and need a bit more care which is where the myths about that comes from.
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> looking for a bone store
> ask the locals if their shop sells correctly identified ethically sourced parts or oddities crap targeted to witchblr
> she doesn't understand
>pull out illustrated diagram explaining what is ethical and what is exploitative
> she laughs and says “it’s a good shop sir”
> goes to the shop
> its oddities
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Phew. This one took, uh… a bit longer than expected due to other projects both irl and art-wise, but it’s finally here. The long-awaited domestic animal infographic! Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough space to cover every single domestic animal (I’m so sorry, reindeer and koi, my beloveds) but I tried to include as many of the “major ones” as possible.
I made this chart in response to a lot of the misunderstandings I hear concerning domestic animals, so I hope it’s helpful!
Further information I didn’t have any room to add or expand on:
🐈 “Breed” and “species” are not synonyms! Breeds are specific to domesticated animals. A Bengal Tiger is a species of tiger. A Siamese is a breed of domestic cat.
🐀 Different colors are also not what makes a breed. A breed is determined by having genetics that are unique to that breed. So a “bluenose pitbull” is not a different breed from a “rednose pitbull”, but an American Pitbull Terrier is a different breed from an American Bully! Animals that have been domesticated for longer tend to have more seperate breeds as these differing genetics have had time to develop.
🐕 It takes hundreds of generations for an animal to become domesticated. While the “domesticated fox experiment” had interesting results, there were not enough generations involved for the foxes to become truly domesticated and their differences from wild foxes were more due to epigenetics (heritable traits that do not change the DNA sequence but rather activate or deactivate parts of it; owed to the specific circumstances of its parents’ behavior and environment.)
🐎 Wild animals that are raised in human care are not domesticated, but they can be considered “tamed.” This means that they still have all their wild instincts, but are less inclined to attack or be frightened of humans. A wild animal that lives in the wild but near human settlements and is less afraid of humans is considered “habituated.” Tamed and habituated animals are not any less dangerous than wild animals, and should still be treated with the same respect. Foxes, otters, raccoons, servals, caracals, bush babies, opossums, owls, monkeys, alligators, and other wild animals can be tamed or habituated, but they have not undergone hundreds of generations of domestication, so they are not domesticated animals.
🐄 Also, as seen above, these animals have all been domesticated for a reason, be it food, transport, pest control, or otherwise, at a time when less practical options existed. There is no benefit to domesticating other species in the modern day, so if you’ve got a hankering for keeping a wild animal as a pet, instead try to find the domestic equivalent of that wild animal! There are several dog breeds that look and behave like wolves or foxes, pigeons and chickens can make great pet birds and have hundreds of colorful fancy breeds, rats can be just as intelligent and social as a small monkey (and less expensive and dangerous to boot,) and ferrets are pretty darn close to minks and otters! There’s no need to keep a wolf in a house when our ancestors have already spent 20,000+ years to make them house-compatible.
🐖 This was stated in the infographic, but I feel like I must again reiterate that domestic animals do not belong in the wild, and often become invasive when feral. Their genetics have been specifically altered in such a way that they depend on humans for optimal health. We are their habitat. This is why you only really see feral pigeons in cities, and feral cats around settlements. They are specifically adapted to live with humans, so they stay even when unwanted. However, this does not mean they should live in a way that doesn’t put their health and comfort as a top priority! If we are their world, it is our duty to make it as good as possible. Please research any pet you get before bringing them home!
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There's something morbidly fascinating about old zoo architecture built with this aesthetic of grandeur or elegance that is also not a great place for that animal to be living in now
But it's also really cool when that architecture is repurposed and incorporated into new, proper exhibits, like the Lincoln Park Zoo's lion house
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A frustrating part of the mainstream vegan “love all animals and protect the environment” mindset is the fact that things need to die in real-life ecology all the time but deer hunting season makes icky feelings and carp culls aren’t cottagecore
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Just so everyone is aware:
An international group of qualified mushroom identifiers who do worldwide identification in emergency cases have identified the Shroomers App as a potentially very dangerous system that could kill you if you try to use it to identify edible mushrooms. They use AI to generate almost all of their content, including their identification profiles on their app as well as their books and other materials. Not only is this unethical from a content creation standpoint, it is also extremely dangerous.
DO NOT USE APPS FOR IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES BEYOND SIMPLE CURIOSITY. A MISTAKE WHEN IDENTIFYING AN EDIBLE COULD COST YOU YOUR LIFE. DO NOT EAT ANY FORAGED MUSHROOM YOU CANNOT IDENTIFY YOURSELF BY SIGHT OR HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED IN PERSON BY SOMEONE WHO CAN.
ONLY BUY BOOKS FROM REPUTABLE SOURCES AND AT THIS POINT THAT MEANS ASKING EXPERIENCED PEOPLE WHAT BOOKS THEY USE.
Mushrooms are fun, amazing organisms. Enjoy safely.
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I've bought a c.at skull and I can't wait for her to arrive, she's gonna have pride of place on my main shelf
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Dog (cocker spaniel mix i believe) skull with cancer. Looks like osteosarcoma. It grew into the braincase 😭
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Eyes the color of fallen leaves
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Christmas gift came early! Bull terrier skull. This individual has some pathology and missing teeth. The dog probably suffered from dental disease or broken teeth. I just need a dolichocephalic dog skull now lol.
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X-ray of an opossum and her babies. She was by a car and taken to a vet clinic. She survived with no broken bones [source].
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