Ask Lemmy

I saw a tiger pacing back and forth and thought "yup, predator" and then it rolled on its back and exposed its fluffy belly and I was immediately disarmed.

Bobcats and lynxes in particular.

Skunks really are deceptively adorable. There's a family of them that hang around the area between my home and the gas station I sometimes walk to at night, and I've caught them out there crossing the street and thought "Aww, how cu- ohfuuuuck walking back home, walking back home, runningbackhome"

I used to work with somebody who says she kept a de-glanded (not sure what the term is) skunk as a kid, and apparently they make good pets and allegedly have "fat ferret energy". But apparently they still stink even without their gland.

Yes ?

as you feel your body just stop doing things that keep you alive (like breathing)...

As I understand it (and to be fair, I'm no octopus scientist or human medical doctor) it's pretty much just breathing that's the issue. It doesn't really directly cause any damage on its own (though the consequences of not breathing can and will of course cause quite a lot of damage in pretty short order)

The venom causes paralysis, basically by (someone correct me if I'm wrong) clogging up the receptors your body uses to send signals to your muscles. It will all get cleared up in about 24 hours or so though.

Problem is that you use some of those muscles to breathe. But if you make it to shore (you also need some of those muscles to swim) and if you get put on a ventilator right away (to do the breathing for you,) your prognosis is actually pretty good and there's a nearly 100% survival rate (although that has to be two of the biggest "ifs" in all of medicine)

Another thing that comes to mind is your heart also uses muscles to do its thing, and I'm not totally clear on why that doesn't seem to be a factor here, since paralyzing those muscles is basically just instant cardiac arrest. I did a bit of googling, but I'll be honest I was in deep over my head in medical jargon and couldn't make heads nor tails of it. I think my takeaway is that tetrodotoxincan affect the heart muscles, but I guess for whatever reason (dosage? Different kinds of muscles? The way your body processes the venom and moves it around your body? I really don't know) it just kind of doesn't, which I guess is lucky for us. I'm kind of hoping someone who speak doctor will maybe see this and give an ELI5 answer to that.

I suspect there's probably a lot of minor consequences, like I bet your next trip to the bathroom once you recover in going to be some sort of event after your bowels stopped moving for 24 hours, but otherwise it seems like if you hang out on a ventilator for a day unable to move (which, to be fair, is probably one of the last ways I'd want to spend a day, but I guess it narrowly beats out a refrigerated cubby in the morgue) you're pretty much in the clear to get on with your life.

And they smile like fucking maniacs.

I got to meet a sloth at a an event sponsored by an animal preserve. They do seriously have murder claws.

Sloth Facts: despite their wicked claws, the sloth's primary defence is to be unappetizing. They're so sedentary that algae grows on them, which makes them smell and taste bad to predators in addition to not being particularly nutritious.

Every few days, a sloth might leave the tree to defecate. This is because while predators might not be particularly interested in eating them, if their droppings fall on a jaguar it might be pissed enough to climb a tree and settle accounts.

They are wild animals, but are almost eerily human.

They are incredibly smart and highly emotionally intelligent. Their families are very much like our own human families, and knowledge is passed down through generations. Some families pass down specialized knowledge that puts them on par with hunter-gatherers. I'd put wolves on the short list of intelligent species who could eventually evolve into a species that could be capable of much more, given a long enough timeline where they self-select for intelligence. Same with elephants, ravens, dolphins, chimps, and whales.

Though that would have to exist on a planet where we didn't kill most of them and wreck the environment.

Big cats can also be more-or-less tamed if they're raised from a very, very young age by people. The issue, most of the time, is that big cats play just like house cats, and that kind of play can easily be fatal when the cat is the same size or larger than a human. House cats aren't actually domesticated; they're just tame, most of the time.

There are a number of IG accounts of wild cat rescues, or other big cats that live with humans, and they're quite friendly because they were raised with and by people. But they're still potentially deadly.

Look at the bones!

Caerbannog?

Their talons are wicked too. Got me as w Child and now I have scars across my cheeks.

Theyre extremely faint now, but if I was any older when it happened, they'd definitely affect how stunningly beautiful I am.

Apparently they can accidentally inhale you too.

You don't see them. You are on the ice and so are they. They hunker down and purposefully cover their nose with their paw when you look in their direction. When you look away, they creep closer until your head starts to turn again. They don't want you don't see the little black spot getting closer and closer. If you are lucky and looking around while you are out on the ice, you will see a little black spot disappear. If you do. GET OUT NOW. If the spot was big enough to notice, the bear is probably close enough to charge. I hope your snow machines are close and ready to go.

I flipped on bees a few years back and stopped being afraid of them altogether. I get relatively close to them now while weeding my garden and they pay me no mind. Wasps and hornets will always be enemies, but I won't air my true thoughts on them, as the last time I did on Lemmy I was downvoted greatly and reviled.

I know what you mean, but the phrasing suggests you aren't allowed within 500 yards of a playground.

I don't think that OP meant 'close to' the same way you do

This triggered a memory. When I went to university one of my flatmates bought a fancy frisbee that you could throw super far, so as a form of exercise we used to walk to a large park nearby to play.

Come spring when the weather started getting better, the park started getting busier. On one occasion it was full of kids (like 5-6 year olds?) and parents who ignored them. We tried to stay away but the kids kept getting lured by the frisbee that flies far. At some point one of my flatmates tried to hide the frisbee under his shirt to get them to leave, but one of the kids saw him do it and ran to him trying to grab it from under his shirt and yeah.. as soon as my flatmate realised the kid was going to try grabbing at him at the bottom of his shirt he immediately threw the frisbee on the ground and held up his hands as if he was at gunpoint and walked away.

It was pretty funny from the outside but damn.. do I hate parents who let their kids harass other people. It was a much better experience when a bad dog owner was there at a different occasion and we had a dog chasing us around for 20 mins..