their arms are similar to our tongues in that their muscle fibers are oriented in three different directions
octopuses are disconcertingly strong (anecdotal evidence says that a 15 inch wide octopus was as strong as the scientist handling it)
on that note that same scientist said that when her octopuses escaped she would have to run behind them, “like cats” (paraphrased from sy montgomery’s the soul of an octopus)
aquariums have “octopus enriching programs” so they don’t get bored and fuck shit up in their tanks
they are crazy smart like. really. really fucking smart
but we can’t compare their intelligence to ours because our evolution branched from the same common ancestor so long ago we cannot comprehend how they think
it’s believed that their intelligence evolved when they lost their shell, and had to adapt to predict how countless of different prey and predators would act, how to avoid them, distract them, lure them or trick them
they visualize how other creatures are going to act, which means they have have awareness that others are individuals which is a type of consciousness but i can’t remember what it’s called right now
like, they use tools
they have distinct personalities
aquarium octopuses are socialized from a very young age and even though in the wild they are solitary creatures they become extremely friendly with enough human exposure
sometimes they dislike people for no apparent reason and will shoot water at them
they have three hearts
each of their arms has a tiny brain that controls movement and sensory input on its own i shit you not
they are color blind and yet they can camouflage their color and nobody knows how
they can change the color and texture of their skin faster than human eyes can keep up with it
great pacific octopuses are white when they are peaceful, and red when they’re excited
aquarium octopus have escaped their tanks and slithered down pipes into the ocean
escaped their tanks to eat the fish in other tanks
escaped their tanks to go fight other octopuses cuz they were bored
octopus fight club
learned how to take photographs
cost thousands of dollars by flooding new floors
they can feel, taste, and smell with their suckers and all of their skin
they enjoy tasting their food by slowly moving it through their suckers instead of shoving it in their beaks
they can rewrite their rna. no, really
the only reason why they haven’t evolved to take over as the next dominant race is because they’re doing pretty well in the ocean so there’s no need for them to adapt further
there’s a ton more but i’m so overwhelmed by love i can’ think of any at the moment i’m going to cry
read the soul of an octopus by sy mongomery no she didn’t pay me i just love octopuses so much
Also:
learned to shoot out the annoying light over the tank
hid in floor drains when caught out of their tanks by researchers
hid the shells of crabs stolen from a tank under a third, unrelated tank
Sy is a wonderful human and a great researcher. NEAq actually named a GPO after her in honor of all her work on octopuses. (Or octopi, or octopodes – they’re all correct). Definitely read that book.
-liked being splashed. Figured out that spitting water would have keepers splash back in response
– learned to spray 45°F water everywhere to demand splashes
-likes taking brushes from divers. Knows the best way to do this was to sneak up from underneath or reach over the shoulder
-will wait until keepers are looking away/distracted to grab stuff and knows exactly how far to sink down to get out of reach
-seriously octos are huge thieves. If you have something in your hand, they want it. As soon as they grab it, it belongs to them. There’s no food and they have no use for it? Doesn’t matter it’s their thing now.
-we lost a magnet scrubber for three days because one stole it from the interns. Every time she let it go and we reached a net to get it, she would snatch it out of the net and drag it back into the den. By the time we got it back she had torn apart the scrub pad
-honestly it’s like keeping an aquatic possessive 8-legged cat
Hello everyone!! Please take a moment out of your day to give this a quick read!
So, once a week I volunteer at Ninth Life Cat Rescue, which is a rescue based in Southern Ontario. There are LOTS of cats that need a home there (and everywhere else), but this little guy up there is the love of my life, my sweet boy, and the reason I started volunteering in the first place.
His name his Baby, and he’s rough around the edges. He doesn’t trust easily and is rather temperamental- I can’t get too much into where he came from, but it wasn’t a great situation for anyone involved, and his owner wasn’t able to take him with them when they left it. He and I have a routine whenever I get there that he’s come to expect, and it’s led to him trusting me a little more- and I’m only there once a week. I KNOW he’ll become best friends with the right person, though I’m not sure he’ll ever be a cuddlebug. He has to be the only pet in the house (of course, if you’re someone who really, seriously knows cats and how to introduce them to other animals, I’m sure it would be a possibility), and he probably isn’t the best cat for a place with small children. Because of all this, he’s been at the rescue for nearly 5 months now.
There’s SO MUCH more to him, though. He loves freeze dried turkey treats and cat nip. When he gets really into playing, he jumps super high into the air, like a little rabbit. One time he jumped into my lap by accident- another time he went head first into a cat tent (he was wildly embarrassed both times). He’s super curious; there’s never enough time for him to sniff around and investigate. One time a cricket from the reptile area found it’s way to the cats and he had quite the field day with it. When he’s tired, he has this whiny little mew he does because he wants to keep playing but I make him stop to catch his breath and get a drink of water- he goes HARD with the feather toys. He kneads with all 4 paws and it takes him forever to get it just right. He goes to sleep cuddling a stuffed animal. Like most cats, he adores comfy quiet places and is always looking for places to nest. When he’s out chilling with me, he’s always trying to get into the clean bedding drawer while my back is turned.
Yes, he’s angry, growly, and quick to swipe, but I know I would be too if I was taken from my family and put in a cube for 5 months with no explanation. I gained his trust slowly (and with the help of Jackson Galaxy videos) and he knows now that I won’t push him past his boundaries (and also that I’m a turkey dispenser). The first time he flopped over and showed me his belly (a sign of trust in cats for those who don’t know) like in one of the photos above, I straight up started crying. If I could, I’d take him home in a heartbeat, but it’s not in the cards for me right now and likely won’t be for a long time. So, I’m desperately trying to find a home for him. All I want is for my grumpy little man to find a forever home where he’ll be given the love and autonomy he deserves. He’s had a rough time. I want that to come for an end and for him to be the happiest cat in the world, more than anything else right now. And now I’m crying woo
That, ofc, is why I’m making this post. If you’re close, if you think you or someone you know would be a good match for him, please please please consider it. And if not, please reblog this post anyways in hopes someone who follows you will.
You can find more about Baby here, and more about NLCR and the other cats looking for homes here and here. If you’re over 18, have some money to spare, and are feeling generous, you can also donate some money here (though we also take food, toys, litter etc if you live close)! Ninth Life is non profit and relies entirely on donations, volunteers, and fundraising.
If you’ve taken the time to read all this, thank you so so much, and please give this a quick reblog. You have no idea how much I’d appreciate it.
It’s because there have been multiple instances where undereducated owners with Pitbulls, leave them unsupervised with babies and young children… It does not end very well…
Huskies do too.
Actually pit bulls are banned in multiple places because a bunch of fear-mongering assholes who know nothing about dogs started preaching about how evil and vicious and blah blah blah they are like they were experts and idiots believed them. The same thing they say about pit bulls – vicious, locking jaws, driven mad by their brains being too large for their skulls – are just repeated myths that were said about Rottweilers, Dobermans, and GSDs in the past.
Idiots just move on to something new to hate every once in a while and unfortunately now-a-days we have a media that cares more about getting clicks and ratings and attention than they do about facts. Why do I mention the media? Well, that’s because they’ve been known to lie about the breed of a dog involved in an attack on humans. A golden retriever biting a twelve year old child just doesn’t have the same ring as “a vicious pit bull mauls a small child” after all.
On top of that, there’s all these “gangsta” dumbasses who fight pit bulls without any understanding of how dogs work. There’s different types of aggression in dogs – there’s human aggression, dog aggression, game aggression, et cetera. Game aggression is the aggression that hunting dogs have and why you can’t always trust hounds, retrievers, et cetera with cats, ducks, chickens, or other such animals. Human aggression is of course when dogs exhibit aggression towards humans and dog aggression is when they’re aggressive towards other dogs. For fighting dogs, you want them to have dog aggression and dog aggression only. These dumbasses don’t know the difference between the different types of aggression so they starve their poor dogs, beat them, mutilate them, feed them gunpowder, et cetera so a few of them end up fearful and hateful towards humans which can lead them to attacking humans.
(I say “a few” because pit bulls were a breed historically and rigorously bred to have no aggression towards humans whatsoever because of the way dog fighting used to work. It was easy to cheat so the owners of the dogs would take the opposing dog and bathe it before the match to ensure nothing was put on their coat to harm the other dog. Also, they used to separate pit bulls from each other by hand. As you can imagine, a pit bull that was aggressive towards humans couldn’t be tolerated. Any pit bull that so much as growled at a human was culled, so it’s incredibly difficult to make most pit bulls hate humans. This is why if you watch pit bulls being rescued from dog fighting operations, even ones with half their faces ripped off won’t try to fight back or harm their rescuers – and yes, I legitimately did see a dog like that in one of those videos.)
Pit bulls are within the top three of the Canine Good Citizen award while golden retrievers and spaniels statistically bite more than pit bulls, despite pit bulls being put through the abuse, torture, and absolutely horrid breeding they’re put through. Pit bulls are absolutely amazing, loving, loyal dogs. They can be stubborn and require an experienced and firm hand like most bully breeds do, but they’re excellent dogs who don’t deserve what we’re doing to them. They’re absolute sweethearts and to blame them for what we’ve done is disgusting.
Look at the owner not the breed.
I think people should need to register to own dogs
Like a car or a gun sure those are inanimate objects but all the more reason dogs and cats need to be protected from neglectful fucking cunts
“Cats don’t comfort you when you’re feeling down.”
What a load of crap !!! One thing for certain… cats don’t give a rat’s ass what B.S. you tell about them. They refuse to care less, either about what you think of them, or about the people they love.
“Cats don’t miss you when you’re gone” is a ton of bs. Whenever I leave to go anywhere, I can hear my cats meowing at the door within moments trying to find me. They sit in the window watching for me to come home and they are at the door to greet me almost every single time.
Cats also grieve. This cat watches a video of their owner who had passed away and he tries to cuddle up with the phone. The look on his face when they zoom in on him brings me to tears every time.
One of our cats comes and sleeps next to me when he sees that I’m not feeling well. If he’s in the kitchen when I come down for food with cramps or with a cold, he’ll follow me back upstairs and lay down on me and purr.
Cats are aloof animals who don’t put up with nonsense, will defend their boundaries with claws, and sometimes like to push things down to see what happens, but they aren’t jerks.
Step one: let him hide or shy away from you if he wants to. He wouldn’t let me touch him for a couple days after we got back from the shelter. His comfort was more important than me getting to touch him.
Step two: make yourself nonthreatening. In my case this meant being very quiet, bringing food and lying down on the ground within his eyesight as an invitation to investigate.
Step three: watch his body language and don’t do things that make him uncomfortable. Turns out my cat often bit when he was overstimulated so I made sure not to overwhelm him.
Step four: draw lines, but not with brute force. Even though his biting wasn’t meant to hurt, I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t injure anyone in the future. So I decided when he bit me, I’d yelp “ow!” And then withdraw all physical contact for a few minutes, sometimes leaving the room. Now he never bites, but sometimes he puts his teeth on my hand and then thinks better of it.
Step five: provide a good outlet for destructive behaviors. Aka PLAY WITH HIM, SEVERAL TIMES A DAY.
Step six: be patient.
Step seven: get lucky and somehow pick up the best cat in the entire shelter. I don’t know how it happened but he’s a godsend. He’s literally cuddled me out of a panic attack. We both really needed each other.
The Navajo have a unique tradition. When a baby is born, it is regarded as the ultimate, precious gift and must never be abused. From the moment of birth, the child is watched over continuously by family and friends, who patiently wait for the child’s first…laugh.
“Has your baby laughed?” is common question posed to parents who have infants around the age of three months. The first laugh of a Navajo child is a very significant event. It marks the child’s final passing from the spirit world to the physical world, meaning he or she is now fully human. This milestone warrants a party, and what a party it is!
Whichever brother, sister, parent, cousin, aunt, uncle, or passing acquaintance is present at the first laugh is deemed to have caused it. The laughter instigator then receives the honored privilege of preparing a special ceremony to welcome the child into society.
Once a baby has laughed, training in generosity begins immediately—a value held in high regard among the Navajo people. At the party, where the baby is considered the host, the parents or person responsible for the first laugh help hold the baby’s hand as he or she ceremonially gives the rock salt, food, and gifts to each guest. There are also bags of candy, money, and other presents that the child “gives” along with the food. [x]
Yes it is true. I have had of a few relatives invite me to a A’wee Chi’deedloh "The Baby Laughed Ceremony" however I have not had the privilege to actually attended one personally. The Dine’ peoples believe that babies are of “two worlds” (Earth people & Holy people) when they are born. The first laugh signifies the babies desire to become a part of the Earth People so it is a great cause for celebration.
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