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https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1472215076735-W2WJFFEQ4NI21ZHWU1Q6/IMG_2798.JPG The Gulf of Maine https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1472215101410-XN44DUU2HTIHB0ZT33U2/IMG_2835.JPG The Gulf of Maine https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1472215120140-ZGE7YFZ5PMUHECAF2H4N/IMG_2838.JPG The Gulf of Maine https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1472215147763-72DAW5QA2LXPIQE15OXP/IMG_2845.JPG The Gulf of Maine https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1472215172537-8AOU397LQZRVK2LS28S0/IMG_2846.JPG The Gulf of Maine https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1472215192264-HBJD7DTF8ZSUN6HM0A2P/IMG_2851.JPG The Gulf of Maine https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1472215213153-BRAS6CJE6L7238590GFY/IMG_2858.JPG The Gulf of Maine https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1472215676395-M2754Q27XT7E26VYLHZE/IMG_2115.JPG The Gulf of Maine https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1523982587410-22NNKX87FENC3S4BRTX1/image-asset.jpeg The Gulf of Maine - AFC Gulf of Maine SALTWATER MARSH http://www.animalfactsclub.org/videos-1 daily 0.75 2019-09-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1523982892379-N6HGWFVYULBGTG9FLEMP/image-asset.jpeg Videos - AFC Gulf of Maine SALTWATER MARSH https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1523982892379-N6HGWFVYULBGTG9FLEMP/image-asset.jpeg Videos - AFC Gulf of Maine SALTWATER MARSH https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1523982933848-W9C7WVCP94G3F5GO3EY6/image-asset.jpeg Videos - AFC - Gulf of Maine Lobster Life and Lobster Love https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1523982983205-H0BJRA11BC1ZI1XR5RB4/image-asset.jpeg Videos - AFC - Gulf of Maine - INTERTIDAL https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1523983111365-XOWRHYH92PDX0TFO6BPG/image-asset.jpeg Videos - AFC Gulf of Maine SALTWATER MARSH https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569538691269-3YJ4HUQ0UNJW2FLKGMWD/image-asset.jpeg Videos - AFC - Endangered Rituals - Attwater Prairie Chicken and Houston Toad The curious mating rituals of the endangered Attwater Prairie Chicken and Houston Toad. The first in a series of 3 Biodiversity of Texas shorts directed by Rachel Bardin. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569538774287-AINJFBBKX9R0QLWWU6H2/image-asset.jpeg Videos - AFC — Strange Defenses — Horned Lizards and Possums The surprising and disgusting defense tactics of Horned Lizards and Virginia Opossums. Part 2 out of 3 shorts based on the Biodiversity of Texas. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569538855762-738Q4DL1Y09A33LK9NWR/image-asset.jpeg Videos - AFC — Humans and Birds — Peregrine Falcon and the Great-Tailed Grackle The impact humans have had on two bird species: the Peregrine Falcon and the Great-Tailed Grackle. The Peregrine almost became extinct due to DDT while the Grackle’s range expansion is widely attributed to human development. The third and final installment of short films based on the Biodiversity of Texas. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1523983335305-KV7B9DPXA89HVO8E6XKJ/image-asset.jpeg Videos - 5.26_AFS_HIGHLIGHT_GRACKLE https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/5ad622056d2a73f6bd6e6dfe/5ad6222c577270035f014ebe/1523982891969/ Videos http://www.animalfactsclub.org/texas-films-gallery daily 0.75 2019-09-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569533322698-ZJWH2RCLSV14OC2P7YRA/forest.png Texas Films Gallery - Endangered Rituals - Attwater Prairie Chicken and Houston Toad The curious mating rituals of the endangered Attwater Prairie Chicken and Houston Toad. The first in a series of 3 Biodiversity of Texas shorts. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569533322698-ZJWH2RCLSV14OC2P7YRA/forest.png Texas Films Gallery - Endangered Rituals - Attwater Prairie Chicken and Houston Toad The curious mating rituals of the endangered Attwater Prairie Chicken and Houston Toad. The first in a series of 3 Biodiversity of Texas shorts. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569533232234-SL5CFSYI76Q0UNNWFBZP/image-asset.jpeg Texas Films Gallery - Strange Defenses — Horned Lizards and Possums The surprising and disgusting defense tactics of Horned Lizards and Virginia Opossums. Part 2 out of 3 shorts based on the Biodiversity of Texas. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569531634634-TQ3XEV5LU4AJHJDGFMHP/forest.png Texas Films Gallery - Endangered Rituals — Attwater Prairie Chickens and Houston Toads The curious mating rituals of the endangered Attwater Prairie Chicken and Houston Toad. The first in a series of 3 Biodiversity of Texas shorts directed by Rachel Bardin. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569534093229-GXEFAT859KUEWNP1YF3S/image-asset.jpeg Texas Films Gallery - Humans and Birds — Peregrine Falcon and the Great-Tailed Grackle The impact humans have had on two bird species: the Peregrine Falcon and the Great-Tailed Grackle. The Peregrine almost became extinct due to DDT while the Grackle’s range expansion is widely attributed to human development. The third and final installment of short films based on the Biodiversity of Texas. http://www.animalfactsclub.org/home daily 0.75 2017-12-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1512487745128-2HED9I19DEAQV1MSLW09/IMG_4532.JPG Home http://www.animalfactsclub.org/contact daily 0.75 2024-05-30 http://www.animalfactsclub.org/about-afc daily 1.0 2024-11-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/138aff69-0c70-46aa-bb49-bc4a070a716c/shieldranch1.jpg About AFC - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. http://www.animalfactsclub.org/texasfilms daily 0.75 2024-05-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569685464936-IAFNWL80FB5KLX6M1TWM/DSC06743.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Bastrop Fire Scene Anna Stewart performs as the fire that devastated the Bastrop pine forest and the habitat of the Houston Toad. Corey Cave wafts in haze. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569685503161-3KUTTZ9BN9BGR7OBMWFO/DSC06459.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Virginia Opossum Jules the possum uses an office chair to wheel across the stage. Audrey makes sure he doesn’t crash. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569686885065-OGH9ECGK3HZRL7TX0GJX/weirdgreenscreen-2595.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Green Screen Hawk Things you do for art. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569685574380-FEOHJ03KIG1MD1F6R3IZ/DSC06684.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Animal Facts Club Crew Many people helped make these films. Pictured here: director Rachel Bardin, assistant director Lizette Barrera, cinematographer Mira Lippold-Johnson, 1st AC Huay-Bing Law, gaffer Sarah Hennigan and grip Chris Burfict and Corey Cave. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569686429549-9I1E9NAD3LATDXWIGFKP/JulesFalcon.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Jules and Peregrine Jules made this cardboard arm to match his shirt and used his real arm to animate the peregrine falcon puppet. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569686865915-B7A6V1P2V0VN4W7IQM19/chingjulesgracklegreenscreen-2589.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Grackle greenscreen Ching Wang assists Jules Buck Jones with some minor Grackle costume repairs. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569686893590-0TSWNEEXN1OHIGEK7X0K/chingfire-2612.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Ching Fire Ching wang provided extra fire performances for episode 1. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569685537877-WEDECEQP36LK7FYXLQF8/DSC06574.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Resting lizard Jules takes a break after performing as the horned lizard. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569685519383-E7ITTI5XWJ4IXBWXCAN6/DSC06570.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Texas Horned Lizard Rachel, Audrey, Lizette and Lauren watch Jules as the Texas Horned Lizard. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569686902055-7WGLQ84GAT8IMKMVU1H5/julesgshawkwide-2591.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Jules green screen Jules and the peregrine on the green screen. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569685702991-RJ7VQJ3IMZARM8NKJC5D/DSC06359.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Playback Jules, Audrey, Rachel, Mira and Lizette watch playback. BTS photos by Maria Luisa Santos. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569687566639-OJ66GBZ05VK09PZDL2UF/IMG_5555.JPG Biodiversity of Texas Films - Moving day Moving the puppets out of the art studio and over to the movie studio. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569687674556-JVK1VM1CNY1V97ZD1KXT/IMG_5608.JPG Biodiversity of Texas Films - Prairie Chicken Select scenes were made in real locations. Here we found a patch of prairie for Jules to do the Attwater Prairie Chicken mating dance. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569689509893-JIPTTOMK52Q1SXN13WYZ/DSC06751.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Fire lighting effect Chris Burfict shakes an arrangement of gels to simulate light from the forest fire. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569689631805-A5ZYLK7GD4MIODYR0G05/DSC06733.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Camera team Mira the director of photography and Huay the first assistant camera. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1569689779624-DEAPB8AU61OPR8MRMCO5/gracklewater-2584.jpg Biodiversity of Texas Films - Grackle getting water Film sets can generate a lot of waste. We tried to lessen the environmental impact of this production by using found materials like discarded cardboard, washing metal utensils instead of using disposable forks etc, and avoiding plastic water bottles. http://www.animalfactsclub.org/gulf-of-maine-films daily 0.75 2019-09-28 http://www.animalfactsclub.org/new-page-59 daily 0.75 2024-05-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/e47ad9b1-cf30-4a9c-90cc-980faeed9df5/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+8.28.36+AM.jpg HEARTS Polar Bear Polar bears have a wealth of what we in the animal fact business like to call POWERFACTS. POWERFACTS are facts that surprise, wow, and maybe even shock. When people learn a POWERFACT—even people who know a lot of stuff about animals—they go “Whaaaa?!” Allow me to demonstrate. Polar bears live in the Arctic, where they are top predators. They are the longest bear at around a cool 8 feet and, along with their brown bear ancestors, one of the biggest land carnivores. Their outer layer of fur appears white, but—POWERFACT—is actually made of clear, hollow air-filled tubes that reflect the light. Patches of fur of some polar bears in zoos have turned green in the past due to the presence of algae inside the hollow hairs. Also, POWERFACT: The skin underneath their fur is black. Polar bears love to rest and eat. They are talented at making comfy beds for themselves and rest up to 20 hours each day. When they’re not napping, they are probably hunting seals. Seals are their favorite food and seal fat is ideally suited for their high-calorie needs. POWERFACT: Polar bears can sniff out a seal’s breathing hole in the ice from over a mile away. Even though you might not think that big bear body was built to swim, polar bears are actually excellent swimmers with their giant partially-webbed front paws. They will swim and dive to sneak up on seals resting on floating bits of ice and to hunt narwhal, beluga whales, and fish. Now, let’s talk about polar bear babies. It’s almost impossible to think of anything cuter than a baby polar bear sliding down a snowy hill (POWER OPINION). To make their babies, females mate with males in the spring and summer. POWERFACT: Scientists think that males can track down females by smelling their footprints in the snow. Although mating takes place in the spring, the embryo does not implant until the fall when the female is fattening up and ready for months in her den. POWERFACT: Pregnant females will go up to eight months without eating, drinking, or going to the bathroom in their dens. Females usually give birth to fraternal twins in December or January, which means that almost every bear is a Sagittarius, Capricorn, or Aquarius (ASTROLOGICAL POWERFACT). Baby bears are only about one tiny pound at birth (compared to 1,000-1,700 pounds as adults) and will stay and grow with mom for their first two to three years. Now comes the hard part. There are only about 26,000 polar bears left in the wild. They are threatened largely by the rapid loss of sea ice that we’re experiencing due to climate change. Scientists are already seeing the effects, including decreasing population sizes and increasing food scarcity. As sea ice continues to decline, polar bears may have to increasingly rely on swimming to travel between their denning, hunting, and breeding areas. One female polar bear paddled as far as 426 miles without rest. She made the journey, but lost her cub and 22 percent of her body weight in the process, demonstrating the high energetic cost and risks associated with long-distance swimming in freezing waters. When the sea ice melts, it also forces bears to go ashore where they’re left to fast or eat garbage out of dumps. Do you want to live in a world where polar bears eat garbage out of dumps? Do you want to possibly live in a world without polar bears? If you drew the polar bear, it’s telling you that, in the same way that the polar bear’s fur is actually clear and not really white at all, things are sometimes different than they appear. Does something sound too good to be true? Does a situation appear fine, but your gut is telling you otherwise? Pay attention to your intuition and balance trust with a healthy dose of skepticism. Are there questions you need to ask about a situation or person before you continue? Be careful to not judge a book by its cover. This goes for the opposite too—you may want to judge a person or situation before you know them, but get to know them before you write them off. CONTRARY The polar bear may be ruling the Arctic as a top predator, but there are also things out of its control—like climate change. If you chose the polar bear upside down, it is telling you to do what you can do to manage things that are under your control. Then, go slide down a snow bank with some buddies and let go of the things that you can’t control. What are some things you can let go of today? What is a baby step you can take to improve a situation that you can control? For instance, you actually can do something about climate change—like carpool or ride a bike, reuse stuff, grow your own vegetables, and buy local. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/567d3004-3f01-4b04-9823-ec48c9b0fc2a/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+9.41.00+AM.png HEARTS Monarch Butterfly Monarch butterflies may be the closest thing we have to real magic in this world, scientifically speaking. (Unscientifically speaking, I’m pretty certain that basically everything is magic). Monarchs start out as caterpillars, then wrap themselves up in beautiful gold-flecked, seafoam-green pupa cases, turn their bodies into soup, and later emerge as gorgeous, poisonous bewinged creatures. You’d think that would be enough magic for one lifetime, but no—monarchs are just getting started. Every fall in North America, large numbers of monarchs, each weighing less than a gram, travel up to 3,000 miles to their wintering grounds in the Transvolcanic Mountains in Mexico. They are the only insects known to make such a journey. The monarchs that make this trip are from the populations that lie east of the Rocky Mountains. Populations that lie west of the Rockies make a shorter trip to spend winter on the southern coast of California. When they reach their roosting trees in Mexico, these east-of-the-Rockies monarchs may cover an oyamel tree in such numbers (tens of thousands to be exact) that the tree looks to be made entirely of butterflies. This fall migration is one part of an annual life cycle that takes the east-of-the-Rockies monarchs five generations to complete. The monarchs that migrate south to Mexico are considered the final generation of this cycle. Once the weather starts to warm up and the days get longer, these monarchs finish maturing and mate. They then head north, laying eggs that will become the first generation of the next cycle on milkweed plants in northern Mexico and the southern US. The second generation repeats a similar cycle, following the growth of milkweed and heading further north into the Upper Midwest and Canada. The third and fourth generations are where things start to change. Monarchs in these generations that are born in late summer stay immature, sucking down nectar and roosting with other monarchs in trees to prepare for the journey south. These great and great-great-grandchildren of the butterflies that migrated north from Mexico will be the generation to return. Amazingly, these butterflies will follow the same migration paths that generations before them took, at times even returning to the same tree on which their ancestors spent the previous winter. Monarchs are all kinds of magic, but there’s one magic trick we don’t want them doing—the disappearing act. Researchers and citizen scientists have been tagging and tracking monarchs in the US for decades. The populations east of the Rockies are threatened by loss of milkweed over breeding grounds and loss of wintering habitat through logging, the clearing of trees for agriculture, and natural disasters. Though monarchs themselves are not an endangered species, this fascinating migration pattern is in danger of disappearing. If the monarch flew into your cards, it has a message about transformation. The butterfly embodies transformation with its complete metamorphosis (new mouthparts, who dis?). It isn’t afraid to digest itself to become what it’s meant to be. Sure it made itself into soup, but the body had a plan. It laid down some organized groups of cells called imaginal discs for each body part to serve as a blueprint for its adult body. Like the monarch, you too have the capacity to radically transform. We transform all the time without even trying. We can also transform intentionally to become the person we’re meant to be. What does that person look like and feel like? What do they do? How do they act? You have the blueprint inside of you to fully realize your potential. It may take a long time. It may not be a direct route. But you can start the journey and see where it takes you. CONTRARY If you picked the monarch upside down, it’s time to think about cycles and your life. We experience all kinds of cycles—daily ones, lunar ones, yearly ones, seasonal ones. Different points in cycles make for great moments to pause and check in with yourself. Maybe you also experience painful cycles related to emotions, relationships, or behaviors. Sometimes it’s harder to check in with ourselves when we’re in the middle of cycles we can’t see. Take time to consider what cycles are present in your life and where you are at within those cycles. Is there a cycle that you’ve fallen into that doesn’t serve you? Make steps to move along on that path. Or, maybe it is simply time to celebrate a solstice or watch the sun come up. Let’s appreciate how we can work with cycles and grow with them. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/33236e00-c9cd-4c14-a55c-66789c7947db/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+9.40.48+AM.png HEARTS Barred Owl The barred owl is a true North American classic. Their trademark hooty “Who cooks for you?” song can be heard in rural and sometimes urban woodlands of the eastern-central US, Pacific Northwest, and up into Canada. There’s also a subspecies of barred owl that lives in Mexico and may turn out to be a different species entirely as we learn more about it. Spotting an owl is a satisfying moment. Even though they’re big, sturdy birds up to 20 inches long, their barred brown and white plumage render them almost invisible when they’re roosting amongst the trees. They are also almost completely silent flyers. Their large wings let them fly with little flapping, and fringe-like structures on the edges of their flight feathers dampen the sound of the wind hitting and moving across the feathers. Their silent flight and other sensory adaptations make barred owls talented hunters. They’ll look and listen for rodents on the forest floor and then swoop down silently to snatch them up in their talons. Like other owls and predatory birds, barred owls can’t move their eyeballs (which aren’t technically eyeballs because they’re shaped like tubes). So to look around and judge the distance of prey, they rely on turning their head up to 270 degrees (more than twice what we can do safely) and bobbing their head to and fro. Why the head bob? We can judge the distance of something pretty well with our eyes, but owls can’t. They move their head around and use triangulation to figure out exactly how far an object is away from them. While you might think this system of figuring out distances by sight is a little clunky (though definitely charming), their ears make up for it. Owl ears are located at different heights on each side of their head and point in different directions, enabling them to locate sound precisely without moving their heads. Their ability to locate by hearing is so good that they can catch a rodent hidden under a blanket of snow. If you pulled the barred owl, it’s telling you to pay attention to see what unexpected delights you might encounter. I once played a barred owl recording while camping in the woods at night in complete darkness to show a friend what they sounded like. When I turned on my flashlight, I found that five barred owls had landed in the nearby trees without a sound. Pause to quietly look and listen. Balance the unexpected with the expected—plan for what you want, but also be open to surprises. An unexpected opportunity could be coming up. Be ready to swoop in when it arrives. Like an owl, this opportunity may sneak up on you—but when you turn your light on, there it is staring right back at you. CONTRARY If you chose the owl upside down, it has a lesson for you about the hidden potential that is present in moments of imbalance. With their asymmetrical ears and head bobbing, owls gather important information about the world from these off-balance ways. Balance in your life is wonderful, but can be unrealistic to achieve at times. What can we gain from being off-balance? What can we learn and how can we grow? If you’re feeling off balance, don’t kick yourself and think that you’re not doing it right and must immediately find the shortest path back to balance. Consider whether this moment of imbalance may be part of a larger transformation. Is it important to get back to where you were when you last felt balance? Or is there something new and valuable up ahead? — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/e673c309-16d8-4237-a47a-0aaf74cb3ab1/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+9.40.38+AM.jpg HEARTS Cuttlefish Holy smokes: cuttlefish. If you find animals even mildly interesting, I bet you’ve been amazed once or twice by a video of a cuttlefish hypnotizing its prey with a strobe-y full body light show, or manipulating its skin in three dimensions to blend in with a poke-y coral landscape. Cuttlefish are a type of cephalopod (octopus, squid, nautilus), which are famous for their ability to change the color, pattern, and texture of their skin to hide from predators, hunt for prey, and attract mates—while supposedly being colorblind. To work their camouflaging magic, cuttlefish use their impressive visual system and a set of neurally-controlled organs in their skin to rapidly change their pattern, posture, and skin texture in as little as half a second. Chromatophores are sacs of pigment (typically red, yellow/orange, and brown/black) hooked up to bicycle spoke-like muscles that expand the color spot when they contract. Because chromatophores are controlled neurally, they can change the color of a cuttlefish’s skin within milliseconds. Cuttlefish also have reflective layers below the chromatophore layer, containing iridophore and leucophore cells. Together these layers interact to create a wide variety of visual effects. On top of that, cuttlefish can contract little groups of muscles, called papillae, to raise bumps on their skin to alter the skin’s texture. Cuttlefish use these tools to fool their predators, and can go from a cuttlefish to a lumpy ocean rock in only a couple of seconds. Maybe the most amazing part of all this cuttlefish knowledge is what we don’t know after decades of cuttlefish camouflage research. A lot of it comes down to a very basic issue—we’re still learning how other animals see the world. We know how we see cuttlefish and how our cameras and computer screens see them, but we don’t know exactly how they see each other or even how a predator, like a seabird or shark, sees them. Do our theories about why animals look the way they do hold up when we find out how they see others of their species and how other animals see them? If the cuttlefish revealed itself, it may be asking you: what is real? Everything we experience in the world, we experience through our limited senses. Is it reasonable to assume that we know how another human being, even one close to us, experiences the world? Sees the same piece of art or flower or bird as we see it? Hears music in the same way? Consider that what you take as fact may not be true for others. It may be time to approach a situation from a new perspective. CONTRARY If you’ve been struggling over a problem or decision in your life, making pro and con lists over and over in your head, the upside down cuttlefish is telling you that it may be time to trust your gut. Can you find stillness and space and listen to what your intuition is telling you? Consider the cuttlefish, who needs to hide from a predator by quickly matching its background to survive. Does it think, “Ooh, what about this color? Let’s try out a couple of patterns here...”? No. It does some insanely fast neural processing and becomes the rock—immediately. Let your gut be your guide. Become the rock. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/9f12f660-70ea-4ebd-bc0f-a5d677acc609/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+9.40.27+AM.png HEARTS Broad-winged Hawk A hawk sighting is always a sign. The other day, I was driving home from work and thinking about moving to the country. Immediately after having that thought, a red-tailed hawk took off from the ground about 20 feet away and flew over my car. Well, I guess we’re going country! A hawk sighting always seals the deal, affirming whatever it is you’re thinking about at that moment—whether it’s a big life move or whether to have pizza for dinner. A lot of confident decisions are made in our household in winter, when the hawks are plentiful along Austin’s roadways. While you may be used to seeing a single hawk perched on a highway lamppost or a few hawks riding a thermal (a column of rising warm air) high into the sky, some hawks gather in huge numbers to migrate. Broad-winged hawks are famous for this. They gather in kettles of up to thousands of individuals as they migrate from North to South America for the winter. Most every fall, we pay a visit to an unimpressive county park on the Texas coast to view the spectacle. If you hit it right, you can see clouds of thousands of hawks, spiraling like slow motion tornadoes. If you chose the hawk card, it’s telling you to do whatever you were thinking about when you picked it. Well, maybe not—but it is there to help you get in touch with your instincts. Hawks are focused predators, zeroing in on their prey and going for it. Allow the hawk to help you zero in on your decisions and goals and go for them. This may mean taking a break from being busy or distracted all of the time and letting yourself dream, be bored, and explore. It may mean doing whatever it was you were thinking about when you picked it, if that feels right to you. Let the hawk and your intuition be your guides. CONTRARY If you picked the hawk upside down, it’s reminding you to connect with your community. Maybe you like to be alone or with your family and close pals. Sometimes, though, you need to embrace your larger community and kettle up. Check out places to volunteer, go to a neighborhood meeting, get in on an aerobics class or sports team at your local rec center—there are lots of ways to get out there and mingle. You’re a beautiful hawk on your own, but together with other hawks? You’re a force of nature. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/8b7152e7-c970-42c7-91b6-32492daa0e46/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+9.40.16+AM.png HEARTS Red Kangaroo Kangaroos might be the swollest animals on Earth—or they at least have the swollest look.* By kangaroos, I’m really talking about the big ones in the Macropodidae, or “big feet,” family. Macropodidae includes your kangaroos, wallaroos, wallabies, quokkas, tree kangaroos, pademelons, and honey possums. The only thing really distinguishing kangaroos from the other macropods is that they’re the big ones. Most kangaroos live in Australia where they hold some records in the marsupial world. The red kangaroo is the largest marsupial on Earth today, with males reaching almost 6 feet tall when standing. They are also the largest animals to use hopping as a means of locomotion. This may not seem like the swollest way to locomote, but kangaroos can hop up to a height of 10 feet and a length of almost 30 feet. Interestingly, they can’t walk backwards. Red kangaroos aren’t born swoll. At birth, they’re about the size of a bumble bee. These helpless, hairless, blind babies crawl into the mother’s pouch where they suckle and hang out for up to 235 days. After that, they’ll dip back in for a snack once and awhile until they’re about a year old. Kangaroo moms can have both a newborn and an older joey suckling at the same time, even though they have different nutritional needs, by simultaneously producing different milk from each mammary gland. If a kangaroo hopped into your spread, it may be telling you to stay invested in an idea or project even if it seems so big that you can’t imagine finishing, or so small and insignificant that it feels unimportant. Something tiny can turn into something grand given enough time and nourishment, and just because we may be blind to the big picture doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Keep on forging ahead, and you may be surprised by the results. CONTRARY Have you been holding yourself back from growth—whether personal, professional, or in a relationship? Staying in the safety of your comfort zone instead of letting yourself grow into all you could be? If you chose the kangaroo upside down, it may be time to push yourself outside of that safe, comfy pouch. You might begin this process by sharing your true self with trusted people in your life. With their support, you can grow as swoll as the swollest kangaroo. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/bd3a9402-4b91-49f9-9b5d-bc6240ad3116/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+9.40.05+AM.png HEARTS Praying Mantis Coming into this essay, I was prepared to lay down some regular, just fine facts about the praying mantis (they’re so many inches long, live in such and such a location, etc.) and then finish it off with the grand finale fact that females eat the heads off of their mates while copulating. Interesting? Yes. Upon closer inspection of the facts, however, it became clear that 1) while females sometimes eat males after copulating, particularly if they’re hungry, it’s not as prevalent a behavior as folks once thought, and 2) there are far weirder things afoot in the world of the praying mantis. Things that are pretty out of this world, if you catch my drift. On that note, first thing’s first: I think we can agree that all 2,300+ species of mantis look exactly like aliens. Second of all, while excavating the ancient Egyptian village of Deir el-Medina, researchers found a tiny clay coffin containing a praying mantis wrapped in linen. I don’t know much about the connection between aliens and ancient Egypt, but I do know that it’s a thing. Third of all, mantises have some unique adaptations that make them shockingly impressive ambush hunters. They rely on camouflage to hide until the moment is right and then snatch up prey with their long, spiny raptorial forelimbs and lightning-fast reflexes. They can time their attacks perfectly by judging the distance of prey using their 3D vision. Not only are they the only invertebrates known to see in three dimensions, but they also have a unique way of doing so—nothing else exists like it on earth. Suspicious? I think so. Lastly, mantises have some intense predator and prey scenarios that don’t quite add up. Animals that like to eat mantises include birds, fish, snakes, frogs, etc. Animals that mantises like to eat include birds, fish, snakes, frogs, etc. There are at least 147 known cases, spanning across all continents except for Antarctica, of mantises ambushing hummingbirds at flowering plants or hummingbird feeders and eating their brains. I’m sorry, what? Yes. Alien faces. Sometimes mate decapitators. Bird brain eaters. Advanced hunters. Ancient Egyptian tomb dwellers. I’m just giving you the facts here. You decide what to make of them. If you picked the praying mantis, it has a lesson for you about patience. As predominantly ambush predators, mantises wait and wait and wait and then pounce when the time is right. Waiting for just the right moment is key. Take the orchid mantis, which mimics an orchid so well that insects will approach it to try to get nectar and get eaten instead. This hunting strategy only works if the orchid mantis can hold its flower pose. Be the flower: wait until the moment is right to strike. That time may be now or it may be a year from now. Consider possible actions and outcomes before you act. What conditions need to be met before you act? How will you know when the moment is right? Patience will pay off. CONTRARY If you picked the mantis upside down, it’s reminding you to be careful. Something that seems all good may not be exactly as it seems. That orchid may actually be a mantis ready to eat you. This of course doesn’t mean that you should avoid things that seem good. It is simply a reminder to manage your expectations and not get trapped in blind optimism. Look at all sides of an issue and identify potential pitfalls before they catch you unawares. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/47e33208-9d04-4f2a-9aa7-094ff358598d/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+9.36.45+AM.png HEARTS Coelacanth Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was born in South Africa on February 24, 1907. She was—perhaps importantly—a Pisces. She was also very into learning about nature. While training to become a nurse, she heard about a job opening at the new East London Museum on the South African coast. Despite having no formal training, she went in for an interview and got the job based on her extensive knowledge as an amateur naturalist. In 1938, several years into her museum job, she went down to the docks to investigate a strange fish that a fisherman had caught. This mystery fish, she said, was the most beautiful fish she had ever seen. She was pumped. She couldn’t fit the 5-foot fish in her fridge, so she asked the morgue if they could hang onto it. When they said no, she had it taxidermied. You can see a photo online of her smiling behind the ragged, taxidermied behemoth of a fish. Marjorie immediately wrote to her amateur ichthyologist friend J. L. B. Smith for help identifying the mystery fish. To his surprise, he found that it was a coelacanth—an ancient fish that, up until that moment, was thought to have gone extinct around 70 million years ago. It took another 14 years for someone to find a second individual coelacanth and another 45 years after that for a biologist on his honeymoon to discover the second species in an Indonesian fish market. Both coelacanth species have the genus name Latimeria, in honor of Marjorie. If the coelacanth swam into your cards, it may be signaling a transition in your life. Coelacanths are exciting to scientists not only because they were thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago, but also because they represent a moment in evolution when vertebrates were transitioning from water to land. Although lungfish are the closest living relative to the tetrapod ancestor that made the transition, as fellow lobe-finned fish, coelacanths hold important clues in their genome about how this transition could have occurred. Unlike bony fish, coelacanths have muscular lobed fins that move alternately like four-legged land critters and could potentially support body weight on land, which would be key for a tetrapod ancestor. In the water, they can move these fins 180 degrees to swim forwards, backwards, and even upside down. Pay attention to the winds of change and what they may mean for your future. It may be a small shift or a major life change. Is the universe sending you messages that all end up pointing in a certain direction? Is uncertainty making you feel anxious and clouding your brain? Watch for signs and integrate messages from your brain and your gut to make a mindful transition to this next chapter. CONTRARY If the coelacanth came to you upside down, it is telling you to be open to the unbelievable. J. L. B. Smith wrote to Marjorie after reading her description and seeing her drawing of the specimen: “It is curious that in spite of all this evidence, my intellect says that such things can’t happen.” We humans are smart, but we have biases and rely on limited senses and tools to understand the vast universe. Science is one important tool that we use to understand our natural world, the value of medicines, and more. Exploring synchronicities and meaning in nature are also important ways of understanding the world and our role in it. As an evolutionary biology graduate student, I would get flak from some colleagues when I’d mention astrology. Pointing out that Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer is a Pisces, the fish sign, may not be science, but isn’t it fun? Being dogmatic in any direction can limit your perspective and make it harder to find truth and joy in the world. Practice trying to see the world in a different way. Experiment with loosening your grip on a tightly held belief. You may be surprised by what you find. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/572b259f-cb06-442b-ab15-ed733d12f5f0/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+9.34.39+AM.png HEARTS North American Beaver Okay, so you’re a terrestrial mammal who’s slow and clunky on land, but you’re a decent swimmer. Land lubbering is tough with all of those predators that move faster than you do. What to do? I got it. How about you fell a bunch of trees using your teeth, drag them into a stream, line them up, and plug them with mud. Then let the water level rise into a nice deep, broad swimming hole, build a domed little home in the middle of the water that you can only access by swimming across your ample moat, and then just live like that! There you go—a simple, straightforward solution. Beavers have been working their tails off for the last 10 million years. When and how beavers’ dam-building behavior evolved is still somewhat of a mystery. However it began, it’s an impressive feat. No other creature besides humans manipulates a landscape so thoroughly. A beaver dam in Wood Buffalo National Park in Northern Alberta, Canada is so large (twice as long as Hoover Dam) that it is visible from space. By building dams, beavers not only create homes for themselves, but also create valuable wetlands that are habitat and water sources for loads of other animals. These wetlands have added benefits for humans and the rest of the world by slowing floodwaters and filtering pollutants. So take a moment to thank your local beaver. Speaking of local beavers, sometimes you think you know a good amount of stuff about animals and then a fact hits you—like the fact that there are beavers living near me in Austin, Texas—and you feel like you never knew anything at all about animals. I always imagined beavers as majestic creatures inhabiting majestic forests in majestic states like Maine and Montana. But no. The American beaver lives pretty much all over Canada and the US (except for southern Florida and the desert southwest) and even dips down into Mexico. Beavers have even been found hanging out around the Round Rock, Texas Wal-Mart if you can believe it, and getting trapped and relocated for chewing down trees along retention ponds in the suburbs. One of the benefits of not knowing that beavers live where I live is that now I have a new animal to go look for, and a mammal at that. What a gift! I want to hear them slap their broad scaly tail against the surface of the water to frighten me away. I want to see a mom carrying a baby in its mouth and walking upright. I want to see it use its double-clawed hind paws like a comb to groom its thick fur and smell its castoreum to see if it smells at all like fake strawberries. Suddenly knowing that I live where beavers live makes my world feel brand new. If the beaver wandered into your cards, get ready—it’s time to get the job done. Often people talk about the engineering skills of the beaver, but from what I’ve read, they aren’t necessarily doing the most efficient, engineer-y job. And frankly, their dams sometimes look a little sloppy. Could they save time and energy by picking a different location to build? Probably. Do their dams end up doing the job just fine? Definitely. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just get started. The lesson for you here is this: don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the great. CONTRARY If you pulled the beaver upside down, it’s letting you know that it may be time to surface after that ten-minute dive to take a breath. Sure you’ve got great lungs and a stellar liver and can hold your breath for a long time, but sometimes you need to allow yourself some deep unhurried breaths. Swim into your lodge. Spend some quality time with the muskrat squatting in there with you and just take ‘er easy. Breaks give us the mental space we need to come up with our best ideas and prepare us for the times we need to work hard. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/56aa1edc-f232-490c-841b-f7ac37079e7d/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+9.32.35+AM.png HEARTS Spotted Skunk A surprising BBC nature video exists on YouTube in which some street youth are breakdancing and spray painting over an “LA Skunks” tag on a building. A spotted skunk emerges out of a shipping crate near a boombox. Then a guy gets into a handstand and starts to walk on his hands. The skunk does the same thing. It’s your classic breakdance-style battle. The interaction takes a turn somehow and the guy goes to spray the skunk in the face with spray paint, but ends up getting sprayed by the skunk instead. It’s a far cry from the dignity and tact of a David Attenborough BBC nature show, but I appreciate them staging this to make the point that a skunk’s handstand looks kind of like a breakdancing move and that its anal glands spray kind of like a can of spray paint. There are four species of spotted skunks in the world. They cover different ranges that together span from just into southwestern Canada, across the US, and down through Costa Rica. They mostly live in forested areas where they sleep in dens by day and forage for little critters and fruits and such by night. They are pretty social and sometimes den up with other skunks if it’s not mating season. Spotted skunks happen to be the only member of the skunk family that can climb trees. (And by skunk family I mean Mephitidae, not the weasel family, Mustelidae, to which they used to belong.) Spotted skunks are known for being active skunks—especially during mating season. If an animal disturbs or surprises a male skunk when he is in a state known as “mating madness,” that animal will likely be in for it. With the least provocation, skunks are ready to rear up in a handstand as a warning and projectile squirt a gnarly oil from two anal glands at the face of the offender from 5 to 13 feet away, depending on whether winds are in their favor. So if you see the most gorgeous skunk you’ve ever seen in your life in March or April, have yourself a quick look and then get out of there. If the skunk slinked its way into your cards, it’s telling you about the power of attraction and repulsion. You may be thinking, “I don’t want to repulse anyone!” I’m going to argue that: maybe you do. We can’t please all of the people all of the time. Not everyone is going to like us. And some who do like us aren’t the type of people we want in our lives. Use your skunk power to repel those who don’t build you up and to attract those who do. You are the only one who gets to determine who you let in and who you keep out. Put that beautiful pelt and odorous oil to work for you. CONTRARY If the skunk card appeared upside down, the skunk image appeared right side up. The handstand, or upside down position for the skunk itself, is its power pose. Choosing the contrary position tells you that it may be time to stand your ground in a situation. Don’t be afraid to speak up for yourself and let your needs be known. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/c5bcf9be-8b2e-4045-8926-86af4775bdef/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+9.22.06+AM.png HEARTS Deep Sea Anglerfish Most of the 200-some species of anglerfish live in the deep, dark sea. You may have seen images of female deep sea anglerfish with their bioluminescent blobs dangling in front of their heads, luring hapless prey to their giant mouths. They look completely terrifying, but in some cases, like Photocorynus spiniceps, these fish are barely 2 inches long. Male deep sea anglerfish don’t look like the females—they lack the characteristic elongated dorsal fin and bioluminescent lure, and are much smaller. In fact, male spiniceps in particular are so small that they clock in as the smallest sexually mature adult vertebrate on record at 0.24 inches.* Male spiniceps are known for their parasitic mating strategy. It’s a lonely world deep down in the ocean. The chances of finding females to mate with are pretty slim. When a male happens to track down a female, he bites her with his toothlike denticles, dissolves his own face and her skin tissue, and merges with her all the way down to the blood vessels. Her circulatory system becomes his, supplying nutrients that keep him alive. He loses fins and some organs, living only to supply sperm whenever she is fertile. This may seem like a pretty wild move, but latching on and never letting go makes more sense when you consider how rare it is to find a female anglerfish in the deep sea. If the deep sea anglerfish entered into your cards, it is reminding you to recognize and give thanks for those best friends and soulmates in your life. In this vast universe, isn’t it incredible that we can find people to connect with and laugh with and cry with and be amazed about anglerfish facts with? If you feel like you’re adrift in the deep dark sea and are having a hard time finding those best friends and soulmates, it may be time to put yourself out there. Join a club or go to a cool community event or volunteer for a cause you feel strongly about. Get out there and into spaces where you want to be so you can find your people. CONTRARY: If spiniceps appeared upside down, it might be telling you to loosen your grip. Are you holding on too tight to a person, object, situation, or dream? Spiniceps may be telling you that you need to step away from an obsession that’s consuming you. — A S *This status is challenged by the teeny frog, Paedophryne amanuenis, whose males and females both clock in around 0.30 inches. Sounds obvious enough that the anglerfish is smaller at 0.24 inches—so what’s the contest you ask? It comes down to the fact that only the male anglerfish is smaller, not the female, and that the male is basically just a sac of sperm. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/387b4f0d-cb2f-4edf-bde6-9e44453b2aa2/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+9.18.52+AM.png HEARTS - Make it stand out Fellow animal fact lovers, if you haven’t met barnacles yet, get ready. They will absolutely blow your mind. The barnacle may be one of the most underrated amazing animals. I guess I just hyped it, which is what everyone tells me not to do when you’re trying to impress someone, but so goes my weakness. These crustaceans start their lives off as wee plankton floating in the water. When it’s time to settle down, they can cement themselves to everything from the pile of a scuzzy boat dock to the face of a majestic whale. They secrete a quick-setting cement that is better than any adhesive humans have invented. It can stick to anything, even under water. Barnacles settle in what we would consider to be an upside down position, with their feathery legs, or cirri, dangling free and waving plankton and other tiny food bits toward the mouthparts housed within their shells. There are more than 1,200 species of barnacles out there, living their best lives on all sorts of ocean stuff. Coronula diadema, for instance, lives only on humpback whales. Whale barnacles are commensals, meaning that they benefit from the relationship and the whales generally go unharmed. A single humpback was host to 1,000 pounds of barnacles according to one record. For the whale, this is the weight equivalent of a human wearing clothes, which sounds normal, but still—impressive. Whale barnacles are so unique that if a particular whale is endangered, it can mean that its barnacle is also endangered. Barnacles in the Sacculina genus have a unique lifestyle for which they get the cool descriptor: “Chemical Castrator of Crabs.” The females of this parasitic barnacle cement themselves to a weak spot on a host crab’s shell and inject their cells into the crab’s hemolymph (aka their version of blood). There they grow as roots throughout the crab’s body, protected from the crab’s immune system and sucking up the crab’s nutrients as they grow. When the host crab finally stops growing and molting, the parasitic barnacle turns its attention to growing a sac filled with its eggs on the crab’s abdomen where the crab’s own eggs would normally be, turning the host crab sterile in the process. If the host crab is a male, the Sacculina infection causes the host to grow a wider abdomen, making it appear more like a female and better able to support the parasite’s egg sac. One day a male Sacculina comes along and fertilizes the barnacle eggs, which the host crab, again acting like they’re its own, then carefully waves into the ocean with its claws to release the spawn. The empty sac then shrinks and withers and the remnants are finally eaten by the host crab. Sacculina isn’t the only barnacle with impressive reproductive behavior. Most barnacles are hermaphrodites. They have the largest penises in relation to body size in the animal kingdom to get around the fact that they can’t walk or swim around to find mates. The penises of Atlantic acorn barnacles have accordion-like folds in their exoskeleton to allow them to expand up to eight times their body length. These barnacles show penis phenotypic plasticity, meaning that they grow different sized and shaped penises depending on environmental conditions. In a particularly wavy habitat, they’ll grow a thicker penis to hold their own against the waves. If conditions change, they can grow a slimmer penis next time. After each mating season, they shed their penis, leading to the possibility of a different penis every year. If the barnacle has appeared in your cards, it is telling you that if you think you’re stuck, think again. You could be making strides without recognizing it. You may just be a humble barnacle, but you may also be stuck to the face of a whale on its way to Hawaii. If things are feeling forced, it could be time to go with the flow and trust in the journey. CONTRARY Okay, you may actually be stuck. If you chose the barnacle upside down, it may be telling you that it’s time to make a move. If you’re stuck in a funk or a rut, think about the things that help you get out of it. Going out in nature to use your senses and find some inspiration? Making a special treat for yourself? Making a cup of tea and reading something for fun even if you can’t imagine finding five extra minutes in the day? Or maybe there’s a bigger issue that’s got you stuck. Whatever it is, take some time to be with yourself and breathe and figure out your next move. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/b401177b-3f3f-4d29-b541-53c549850287/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+9.16.19+AM.png HEARTS - Make it stand out The wolverine—aka the glutton, the skunk bear, or the nasty cat—is a pretty hardscrabble beast. Wolverines live in arctic and subarctic areas in North America, Europe, and Asia where there are vast expanses of snow- and ice-covered wilderness. These feisty weasels are built for this tough landscape. Their stocky bodies sport huge paws with long claws that act simultaneously like snowshoes and crampons, allowing them to cover long distances across snowy mountains with their floppy gallop. They run all over the place, swim just fine, climb trees no problem, and do pretty much whatever else they need to do to TCB. Gulo gulo means gluttonous glutton, named after the wolverine’s enthusiastic eating style—which you would probably adopt, too, if food were as hard to come by as it is during those long icy winters. Wolverines are wildly opportunistic, taking down live prey both smaller and much larger than themselves (like moose!) and scavenging every single bit of the deadest, frozenest animals (including teeth!). Even though wolverines are only as big as medium-sized dogs, they won’t hesitate to fight a grizzly bear for access to food. They will fight for their meal and then spray it with their anal scent glands to deter other animals from eating it. Although they themselves don’t hibernate, they will dig into burrows and eat hibernating animals, no problem. They’re kind of the toughest. If you picked this largest of all land-dwelling weasels, it’s teaching you the value of hard work and grit. While you’re complaining that you don’t want to finish your Brussels sprouts, the wolverine is all, “When I was a kid, we didn’t even have Brussels sprouts—we ate teeth and we liked it!” Recognize where you’ve become used to privilege, and need to put in some effort. It may be in advocating for others. It may be working on a concrete project. Whatever it is, channel the wolverine and get down to business. CONTRARY If the wolverine appeared to you upside down, it may be signaling that you need to slow down or let up. Identify where you may be pushing yourself or others too hard. Are you approaching burnout? Are you being tough on yourself or others, digging into their cozy dens to eat them when they’re just trying to take a snooze? Do you really need to eat teeth? Think about it. — A S http://www.animalfactsclub.org/clubs daily 0.75 2024-08-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/a17efa8a-24fe-4eff-adfc-e4466af29e76/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.57.32+PM.png CLUBS Laysan Albatross I am notoriously not a fan of the wind. I think it is a generally unpleasant weather condition. After meeting the albatross, however, I’m considering changing my tune. Albatross are seafaring birds that need wind, and lots of it. They have evolved a form so well adapted to the wind that they can fly thousands of miles without flapping their wings by using a technique called “dynamic soaring.” The giant wingspan of albatross, like the wandering albatross, means that liftoff can be comically challenging on a calm day, but that once airborne, they can ride the wind to travel close to 10,000 miles in one go and reach speeds of up to 50 mph, all while barely burning any energy. There are 22 species of albatross in the world, all of which live at sea and spend a large part of their lives in the air. Stunningly beautiful, smoky-eyed Laysan albatross start their lives out on an island in the Pacific Ocean. After they are reared, they leave their island and spend up to five years out at sea. They then return to their natal island and shop around for a mate by doing adorable, bill-clacking, neck-waggling partner dances. Once they find a partner, pairs tend to stick together across breeding seasons. Albatross females don’t only form long-term partnerships with males. In populations with female-biased sex ratios, females have been known to pair with other females to do the hard work of raising young. Females may stay with their female partner for decades, well after the population’s sex ratio has evened out. In the albatross’ 40 million years of being on Earth, the past century or so has been a tough one. Fifteen of the 22 species of albatross are threatened with extinction, and six are near threatened. One of the greatest current threats to albatross and other seabirds comes from the fishing industry’s style of longline fishing. The good news is that there are bird-safe fishing practices that, when implemented, have been shown to reduce albatross deaths by up to 99%. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go to get everyone to use these devices. Even when seafood is certified by the Marine Stewardship Council as sustainable, it doesn’t necessarily mean that those who caught it worked to minimize bycatch. With sea level rise expected to flood albatross nesting sites and mountains of plastic in the ocean threatening their health, it’s important we do everything we can to protect these incredible birds. If an albatross appeared to you, congratulations! They are considered by sailors to be good luck. The albatross reminds us to maintain balance in our lives as much as possible. Albatross are dedicated partners and parents—working as a pair to raise young, but also spending much of the year doing their own thing and flying long distances with ease. Be like the albatross and balance work with ease, and caring for others with caring for yourself. CONTRARY In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the mariner kills an albatross and (spoiler!) it does not go well for his crew. Our planet is experiencing significant changes, including the mass extinction of plants and animals due to the actions of humans—but we can help turn this ship around. If you pulled the albatross upside down, come up with five easy ways to help the Earth. Can you skip using single-use plastics? Start a compost pile? Swap clothes with friends instead of buying new? Plant a butterfly garden? With just a little effort, we can be a friend to the albatross and to ourselves. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/baef4b0b-12d3-4d72-8717-4404693d6a05/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.57.25+PM.png CLUBS Moose Moose are formidable, long-legged, floppy-nosed beasts. They are enormous—the largest of all deer. Males of the Alaska moose—the largest subspecies of moose—can weigh up to around 1,500 pounds. (This is impressive as long as you don’t Google how much an elephant weighs.) Given their physique—all gangly, hunchbacked, and slightly off, like those drawings of what the ancestors of today’s mammals may have looked like—you might not guess that moose exhibit real physical prowess. On land, they can sprint up to 35 mph and trot at 20 mph over longer distances. By the time a baby moose is five days old, it can already outrun a human. In water, they can swim up to 6 mph for several miles (the fastest human maxes out at about 5.25 mph over a far shorter distance). They can also kick in all directions including sideways, which comes in handy when fighting off predators like bears, grey wolves, and the occasional orca. Moose range across the boreal forests of the Northern Hemisphere. They’re in places like Siberia, Mongolia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Alaska, Canada, New Hampshire, and Colorado. In the winter, you can find them browsing on twigs (their name originates from Algonquian languages—words like mos and moswa—and is thought to mean “twig eater”), shrubs, tall grasses, mosses, and pinecones. In the summer, moose hit the water in search of tasty aquatic plants. With the help of fatty pads surrounding their nostrils that keep water from getting up their noses, moose can dive deep down and spend up to a minute at a time feeding underwater. Moose typically spend their time alone. But in the fall, females and males come together to mate. In North America, taiga moose are less polygamous than the Alaskan tundra moose and form passing pair bonds. Alaskan tundra moose fully embrace the polygamous lifestyle, with males joining together to fight for dominance over groups of females called harems. Having the opportunity to mate is a big deal evolutionarily-speaking, so males put a lot of energy into their battle gear. Moose antlers are one of the fastest growing animal organs out there, reaching up to 6 feet across, and weighing up to 78 pounds. After mating season, moose shed their antlers and regrow them over the course of three to five months. If the moose has wandered into your cards, it has a lesson for you about endurance. Moose may not look all that graceful, but they are steady and persistent runners anyway. A key to endurance is to maintain a positive outlook to help energize yourself so that you can do the hard work ahead. Take time to pause wherever you’re at on your path and practice gratitude for the strengths and gifts—external or internal—that you already have in your possession. This gratitude will help feed your positivity, and positivity will provide you with the energy to keep trotting along on your journey. CONTRARY If you chose the moose upside down, it’s letting you know that it’s time to take a break and take care of yourself. If you’re overdoing it, take time to rest and refuel. It’s not always about continually moving ahead in life. Say no to some commitments that may not be priorities right now. Maybe try a short meditation, or go camping for a night. Just make sure that you take care of yourself so that when you’re ready to rumble again, you can really go the distance. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/c503e221-a6c7-42bc-b5a2-ae730bea2aa6/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.57.18+PM.png CLUBS Orca Orcas are the largest of the dolphins and one of the most widely distributed mammals on earth, next to humans and probably Norwegian rats. Although they are currently considered one species, orcas are actually multiple ecotypes of orcas: resident, transient, and offshore. These ecotypes exhibit different feeding preferences and strategies, occupy different (but sometimes overlapping) habitats, and don’t interbreed. Orcas are smart, social, cooperative critters that hang out in pods of a few to up to 35 individuals. Maybe the most impressive thing that orcas do with their pods is hunt. Whether it’s the endangered southern resident killer whale population herding salmon or transient killer whales punting seals high into the air, these apex predators are alarmingly good at what they do. Orcas in Antarctica hunt seals that take refuge on floating ice chunks by first popping their giant heads above the water to peep where the seals are. Then, together with their pod, they’ll rush an ice chunk, creating a giant wave that tosses the seal into the ocean and eventually into their mouths. Seals on the shore are no safer than those on floating ice. Orcas are known to beach themselves to grab a seal and then waggle their big bodies back into the water. Some populations of orcas also hunt sharks, including great white sharks. Scientists have found that great white sharks are terrified of orcas. If an orca passes through great white shark hunting grounds, the sharks will flee and not return for up to a year in some cases. What’s to fear, you ask? These are mighty great white sharks! Let’s take a look at how, exactly, orcas hunt sharks. With the “karate chop” method, they’ll force a shark to the surface by swimming to create a strong underwater current. Once the shark is at the surface, the orcas will bring their tails high up out of the water and slam them down onto the shark. They can also flip the shark over, putting it in a paralyzed state called tonic immobility, which causes it to drown. When orcas kill great white sharks, they sometimes make a cut near their liver and suck the liver out as a calorie-rich snack. Bodies of sharks have been found washed up on shore with just their livers extracted. If the orca swam its way to you, it’s reminding you to listen and pay mindful attention to your elders. Orcas are known for spending their entire lives with their moms. Females can live up to 90 years, but stop reproducing around 40. Orcas, along with four other species (humans, belugas, narwhals, and short-finned pilot whales), are the only animals known to go through menopause. That females stay alive long after they can reproduce signals the importance of moms in the success of their adult offspring and grandchildren. Take time to communicate with your elders and ancestors. Record their stories and ask questions. Talk to older folks in your community who are from different families and cultures and learn from them too. They have a lot to teach us. CONTRARY If the orca appeared to you upside down, it has a message for you about how different environments influence behavior. While wild orcas are fierce top predators, they are not known for attacking humans. In fact, it’s possible that they’ve never intentionally attacked a person. Captive orcas, on the other hand, have attacked and killed four people. Decades of being separated from family, confined to tanks, and subjected to stress and boredom has had disastrous effects on the lives and behavior of orcas and many other captive animals. Not surprisingly, we too are influenced by our environments. The environments we grow up in have long lasting effects on how we treat ourselves and others. Work to build compassion for yourself and for those you find most challenging in your life by considering environments. It’s likely that the people you find the most difficult didn’t get like that without going through some tough stuff they couldn’t control. If you are currently experiencing stressful circumstances, hang in there. Seek out a friend or other person you can talk to about it. Be gentle with yourself and others. It can be tough out there for an animal. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/ef35bb23-b93e-4a5b-b6cd-057de9359e77/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.57.10+PM.png CLUBS Common Dolphin Let’s start at the beginning. About 50 million years ago. In Pakistan and who knows where else. Pakicetus, a large dog-sized predator, roamed the land near the ancient, shallow Tethys Sea. It had four regular-looking legs, a long head and tail, sparse fur, and toes that ended in tiny hooves instead of claws. It hunted for meat on land and caught fish from the shore. Meet what we currently think was the world’s first whale. Now, fast forward 50 million years of evolution and we now have more than 80 species of dolphins, porpoises, and whales, which together are known as cetaceans. And they sure are an impressive group of critters. They include such hits as: blue whales (aka the largest animals ever to live on Earth as far as we know), narwhals (aka hard-to-believe-they’re-real sea unicorns), and dolphins (aka those chatty charmers of the sea). As smart and charming critters ourselves, humans have long been fascinated by dolphins in particular. Not only do they enchant us as the beautiful, popular jocks that they are, but they also represent one of our best hopes for meaningful communication with another species. So what makes dolphins such good candidates for interspecies communication? Unofficially, let’s just say who doesn’t want to be friends with the cool kids and hang out with them in delightful tropical locations? Officially, while the brains of cetaceans are very different from those of humans and other primates, they have evolved similar levels of complex cognition. Dolphins have a brain-to-body mass ratio similar to humans and a complex system of vocal and nonvocal communication. Imagine being able to truly communicate with another animal to understand what it’s like to be them. And imagine that that animal is a dolphin and that it can tell you what it’s like to echolocate and also give you relationship advice. It’s the dream. If you chose the dolphin, it’s telling you to think about the importance of communication. The impressively complex emotional processing part of the dolphin brain likely evolved to navigate social interactions, of which dolphins have plenty. Being a dolphin means being part of a group—sometimes a big group. Common dolphins are known for gathering in superpods of up to thousands and working together to herd big schools of fish, while whistling and clicking and jumping their way across the ocean. Are you communicating with your different communities effectively? Do you need to use more whistles or clicks or jumps or fin claps to get your message across and make sure you’re reaching everyone? Listen, get creative, and channel your inner dolphin brain to be the best pod communicator you can be. CONTRARY In the 1960s, NASA funded research to teach dolphins to speak English in the Bahamas as a way to gain insights into extraterrestrial communication. If you picked the dolphin upside down, it’s signaling that clear communication is urgent for some project or relationship in your life. Is something blocking your communication? Perhaps you need a translator? Or you need to try a new and different way of communicating? Find inspiration in one of humanity’s greatest communication efforts—the Golden Record. We shot a collection of photos and diagrams and music and sounds from Earth into space along with a sweet letter from Jimmy Carter so that we might share humanity’s story and befriend any aliens that might receive it. Find and read Jimmy’s letter on the internet, listen to the Golden Record if you can get your hands on a copy, and then go forth and communicate. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/b223d0cf-2483-4cf1-ba1a-afa3712d5d64/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.57.04+PM.png CLUBS Black Vulture Close your eyes and picture a black vulture. Mostly bare black skin on its head, strongly hooked witch’s nail-style tip on its beak, and all black feathers except for a white patch on the underside of each wing tip. Digging its head into a carcass whose toxic bacteria, like anthrax and cholera, would kill most animals if they ate it on a regular basis. Defecating on its own legs to perhaps stay cool or sanitize its legs after stepping in a carcass. Projectile vomiting its super acidic stomach contents that contain flesh-eating bacteria to scare off predators. Impressed yet? Black vultures may have a reputation for being gross, but they are incredibly important decomposers and graceful flyers with charming demeanors. They are social, family-oriented birds who roost and feed with relatives. Pairs are monogamous for many years and hang out together all year long. They dote on their babies, feeding them for eight months after they leave the nest. In college, I interned at a wildlife rescue in the country for three months. It was here that I got to meet black vultures—baby vultures, to be specific, with black vulture faces but lots of goofy tan fuzzy feathers and clownin’ personalities. When I cleaned their cages, I’d let them walk around loose. They’d follow me like puppies, hissing and grunting, and pulling at my shoelaces with their beaks. So charming! If I were their mom, I would definitely let them hang around and feed them for eight months. You’ll see black vultures from the southeastern US down to South America, circling above, riding columns of warm air called thermals high into the sky, where they can look down in search of carrion and turkey vultures. Turkey vultures are great at finding dead animals by smell, but black vultures are not. A group of black vultures will eavesdrop on turkey vultures and follow them to the meal. Although a turkey vulture will outcompete a single black vulture for access to carrion, black vultures find strength in numbers. As a crew, they dominate over turkey vultures at any given carcass. If you’ve chosen the black vulture, it may be telling you that you play an important role just by being who you are. Black vultures are members of the Cathartidae family, which derives its name from the Greek word for “purifier.” You may not think that an animal that defecates on its legs deserves the name “purifier,” but vultures play an important role in cleaning up dead animals from our earth. Maybe you don’t feel like the most important or graceful bird out there. But remember—black vultures are part of the condor family. They come from critter royalty. We all have a role to play whether we defecate on our own legs or not. Do what you’re good at and what is good for the world, and do it well. Even if it’s messy work that doesn’t get you much credit. CONTRARY Black vultures demonstrate the power of teamwork. We are stronger when we work together. Figuring out how to work together takes effort. If you picked the vulture upside down, it may be asking you to work on your communication skills to become a more effective team player. If you could use some help with communicating cooperatively and compassionately, especially in situations where there’s conflict, consider trying the Nonviolent Communication technique. It is based on some basic assumptions like all humans have the same needs, are compassionate, need each other, like to give, and can change. There’s a lot to this technique, but at its simplest, it involves four conversation steps you can use to handle conflict. It goes something like this: Observation: State your observation of the situation. Stick to the facts without adding judgments about why you think it’s happening. Feelings: How does it make you feel when that happens? What are the emotions? Needs: What are your basic needs that are not being met when the situation that bothers you arises? Request: Request that person to do something without demanding it. Be clear and specific. If the person says no, have compassion for that person for being in the position that they’re in and consider your next step. Good luck out there! — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1142dd39-c0d0-46e1-88be-cb33554c7337/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.56.57+PM.png CLUBS Pigeon I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a pigeon from afar and rushed to grab my binoculars because I thought it was a falcon or other exciting mystery bird. Call me a bad birder, but pigeons almost always fool me into thinking that they are something more special than a pigeon. Well, I am here to prove to you—and myself—that no! You do not have to lower your binoculars, shrug your shoulders in disappointment, and say, “False alarm. Just a pigeon.” These animals are not JUST pigeons. They are PIGEONS! THE CASE FOR PIGEONS (aka rock pigeons aka Columba livia, including domestic, homing, and carrier pigeons): EXHIBIT A: Some folks say that you could blindfold and drive a pigeon hundreds of miles away from its home, and it could use Earth’s magnetic field and an internal compass based on the sun, smell, and probably an ultra-low frequency sound map to find its way home, no problem. Exhibit B: The pigeon is one of only several species—including cognitive heavy-hitters like dolphins, primates, and elephants—that have been shown to recognize themselves in a mirror. They can also be trained to recognize whether a kid’s artwork is “good.” Exhibit C: The carrier pigeon G.I. Joe and others like him saved thousands of human lives by serving as messengers during World Wars I and II. G.I. Joe received a medal for his service. Exhibit D: The domestic pigeon helped Charles Darwin come up with the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin bred varieties of pigeons that look crazy and wonderful. Thinking about the differences between the wild rock pigeon and the pigeons he’d crafted over generations helped him solidify his theory. (Also, pigeons just plain delighted Darwin. He once wrote to a friend, “I will show you my pigeons! Which is the greatest treat, in my opinion, which can be offered to human beings.”) Exhibit E: Pigeons can see almost all the way around their bodies (340 degrees), so it’s hard to sneak up on them. They can also process visual information a lot faster than we can. One of our human movies would look like a slideshow to a pigeon. Exhibit F: The reason that I even have a chance of mistaking any bird for a falcon in downtown Austin, Texas is thanks to the pigeon. The fastest animal on planet earth—the peregrine falcon—hangs out on skyscrapers in cities like mine largely due to the presence of one of its favorite foods: the pigeon. I rest my case. If the pigeon has flown into your cards, consider that pigeons are really just doves by another name. Pigeons are famous for being industrious helpers and companions to humans and scrappy survivors in urban environments. Doves are famous for being beautiful, delicate, heavenly creatures that symbolize idealized love. The pigeon asks you to think about love in your life. It’s not always doves and rainbows. It’s also hard work and companionship. How can you be a better buddy to the ones you love? Is there someone in your life who needs your support? Figure out what makes that person or animal feel loved and work hard to show them. Then make sure that the ones you love are also doing the work to make you feel loved and supported right back. CONTRARY It’s awesome that you try your best to help others and that you are such a hard worker. We need people like you. But have you been flying yourself ragged, delivering others’ messages through dangerous territory only to feel tired and maybe even undervalued? Or do you feel like you’re close to running on empty? If the pigeon appeared to you upside down, it is reminding you to direct time and resources toward caring for yourself no matter how busy you are. How about five minutes of deep slow breaths? Or maybe you can walk outside and find any kind of animal or plant or fungus and watch it carefully for five minutes. Take small steps like these on a regular basis to help replenish you so that you can get out there and keep saving the world. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/627c0fd8-bf97-4690-aa22-181624bfbe61/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.56.49+PM.png CLUBS Great Bowerbird We love animals. We love art. So naturally we feel great about a bowerbird. There are 20 species of bowerbirds that live in New Guinea and Australia. Male bowerbirds are famous for building decorative structures, called bowers, that serve no other purpose than to attract females. They decorate these installations with flowers, fruit, insect shells, garbage, rocks, bones—anything they find that they think will impress the females. Different species prefer different colored objects and some even paint their bowers using pigment they make by chewing up plants. Females choose between bowers and their creators, mate with their favorites, and go off to raise the babies on their own. Great bowerbird males of northern Australia have attracted a lot of attention for their particular brand of bower. Males create a 3-foot-long alley with a wall of twigs on either side. They spend the majority of their time collecting and placing mostly white and grey objects like rocks and bones along the alley and on either side of it. They then decorate this pale surface, known as gesso, with a smattering of colorful objects. When a female comes to investigate, she’ll enter the alley and see the gesso bordered by foot-high stick walls. The male will then prepare off stage for his performance—grabbing a colorful something in his bill, fanning his magenta crest—and make his entrance. He’ll peek into the alley, showing off his crest and his object to the female. In one video online, he seems to get distracted and starts to eat his object, but then refocuses, collects himself off stage, and gets back in there. He’ll continue to present himself to her until she’s either into it or heads off. The great bowerbird’s mostly monochromatic style of gesso might not appear as impressive as the piles of brightly colored objects carefully curated by some other species of bowerbirds. The magic of the gesso lies in the fact that males meticulously place these pale objects so that the smallest are closest to the alley and the largest are furthest away. This creates an optical illusion, known as forced perspective, that makes the items appear more uniform in size from the viewpoint of the female. You may have heard of forced perspective from such things as Renaissance paintings or someone holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa in a photo. It’s basically the magic trick of the art world. Researchers tested whether the forced perspective was intentional on the part of males by messing with the placement of the objects. Bowerbirds would then move their objects around to completely restore the illusion in the span of about two weeks. Exactly how this art trick benefits the male is still unknown. Forced perspective may make the colored objects and the male himself appear larger to the female. On the other hand, females may judge a male’s ability to find or steal different-sized objects or his ability to pull off a convincing illusion. If you came upon the bowerbird, it’s telling you to tap into your creativity. Set aside time to brainstorm, daydream, and let ideas and inspiration build. You might take time to see an art show, listen to a new record, read a novel, or visit an artist friend to talk to them about their work. It could be time to grab a pencil or instrument and create. Have some friends over and set up a still life and draw or write exquisite corpse-style stories and eat snacks. If you’re somebody who doesn’t think you’re creative, don’t worry—you are. Don’t be shy, give it a shot, and embrace this special part of yourself. CONTRARY There are three species of bowerbirds that don’t build bowers—catbirds in the Ailuroedus genus. They are all monogamous, compared to the other species of bowerbirds, which are polygynous (meaning males mate with multiple females). If you picked a bowerbird upside down, it is telling you that it’s okay to be different! Listen to yourself and do what feels right, even if it isn’t the popular move. Everyone has to walk their own path. Go with your instincts, not with the crowd. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/362713f2-ccc8-4a19-a215-2531fc11485d/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.56.42+PM.png CLUBS Coatimundi This is a true story that illustrates animal facts-related synchronicities in action. It features the white-nosed coatimundi aka coati aka Nasua narica aka pizote solo (as they call it in Costa Rica). The coati is a relative of the raccoon (family Procyonidae) that ranges from Arizona to Argentina. They have pointy, flexible snouts, white markings on their faces, and long, striped, non-grasping tails that account for more than half of their total 3.5 to 4-foot length. When I was working as a novice nature guide in a cloud forest in Costa Rica, I got to know the pizote solo one lone coati at a time. As their name and my field observations seemed to suggest, they spend their days wandering around by themselves in search of omnivorous grub, mostly invertebrates and fruit. One day, several months into my stay, I was reading up about the coati in The Mammals of Costa Rica field guide over breakfast. I read that the males hang out mostly alone, but that the females and young hang out in bands of up to 40 individuals. Group life can have lots of benefits like protection from predation and improved ability to compete for food resources, so it makes sense that they band together. But how had I spent several months strictly walking around looking for critters and had never seen a big band of coatis? After breakfast, I went on a hike to look at some birds and heard rustling high up in a huge fig tree that stood in a small field nearby. The source of the movement was obscured by the tangle of epiphytes, lianas, and vines that blanketed the trunk. Then I saw the first coati scramble to the edge of a branch, drop onto the ground on all fours, shake herself off, and run into some nearby vegetation. Another one dropped, then another, and another. At least 30 coatis spiraled down this tree headfirst (they can rotate their hind feet to accomplish this). First the adults and then the younger ones and finally the tiny babies all plopped down, gathered their wits about them, and scurried off. After spending several months outside every day, hiking around and looking for wildlife, I had never seen a crew of coatis. But less than an hour after reading about these bands, I saw this. If you saw coatis rain from a tree or saw one in your cards, it is telling you to pay attention to synchronicities. Make a note when they happen. Is the world trying to tell you something? It could point you in a specific direction and offer you insight, or it could just be the universe letting you know that it knows that you know. CONTRARY If you picked the coati upside down, it’s a sign that your ability to notice synchronicities may be blocked. Are you consumed with worry, negative thoughts, or distractions? Do you look down at your phone instead of looking at the world around you? You have to pay attention to be able to receive messages and experience synchronicities. Practice being present on a walk or at the bus stop—listen to the sounds, look around you—and see what the world might be trying to share with you. I pretty much guarantee it’s more interesting than anything on your phone. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/92b00042-bbf2-4fad-9614-abea5a42a674/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.56.35+PM.png CLUBS Kiwi Kiwi are chicken-sized ratites (relatives of emus and ostriches) with barely-there eyes, furry-looking feathers, a charming body shape, and alarmingly sturdy legs. Most of them spend their days in New Zealand snoozing in burrows and their nights defending territories and probing the soil with their long beaks to smell for earthworms and other snacks. They hold quite a few superlatives, including smallest living ratite, only bird with nostrils near the end of its beak, and one of the largest egg-to-body size ratios of any bird around. Kiwi lay enormous eggs relative to their size, equivalent to a 100 pound woman giving birth to a 20 pound baby. Parents, either the male or both parents depending on the species, incubate the eggs for up to three months. Babies pop out of the shells ready to roll with enough yolk in their bellies to at least partially sustain them for a couple of weeks. Most kiwi in the wild don’t make it to adulthood, but when they do they can live up to 50 years. If you pulled the kiwi, maybe you should plan a trip to New Zealand! We hear it’s great. If a trip to New Zealand is not in your cards, then the kiwi may be signaling for you to invest in a long-term project or dream. Even if you won’t see the fruits of your labor any time soon, your work on the front end will pay off down the line. Maybe you’re not happy with your career, so you apply to go back to school. Maybe you want to be an amazing musician one day, so you start taking music lessons. Maybe you start building a nest egg for retirement—or for a dream trip to New Zealand. CONTRARY If you pulled the kiwi upside down, it may be time to take a leap ahead with a project or dream instead of waiting for conditions to be exactly right. Have you become a perfectionist about something when you need to move along to the next step? Do you feel nervous to actually take the plunge and make the next move? Consider that it might be time to move forward with something you’ve already been preparing for and to share it with the world. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/78163b57-fce2-4a1f-ac76-c06cf507145a/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.56.28+PM.png CLUBS Coral Snake Coral snakes are beautiful, shy members of the venomous snake family Elapidae. Related to such heavy hitters as black mambas and king cobras, coral snakes lead a more low-profile existence than their cousins. Coral snakes are split into New World snakes (about 70 species spread out across the Americas) and Old World snakes (about 15 species across Asia). The United States is home to three species of coral snakes: the eastern coral snake (Micrurus fulvius), Texas coral snake (Micrurus tener), and Sonoran coral snake (Micruroides euryxanthus). Unlike other venomous snakes in the US, which are in the family Viperidae (your rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, and copperheads), coral snakes have fixed fangs at the front of their mouths that secrete neurotoxic venom. Because their fangs don’t hinge like vipers, they need to be pretty small to fit in their tiny mouths. While their venom is highly toxic, coral snakes aren’t particularly dangerous to humans due to their typically nocturnal and shy nature and preference for fleeing to fighting when approached. To get bit, you’d have to be either messing with one or so unlucky as to step on one without wearing boots. If you were to get bit, the neurotoxin is slow to act, but would eventually target the respiratory and nervous systems, potentially leading to paralysis and death. The good news is that coral snakes don’t want to bite you—they want to bite snakes and sometimes lizards, and if you’re an eastern coral snake, then sometimes frogs too. In fact, they so don’t want to bite you that sometimes when Sonoran coral snakes are approached, they do what’s called defensive farting, microfarting, or—if you want to be polite about it—cloacal popping. They’ll curl up, bury their heads in their coils, and lift the tip of their tails up. Then they’ll evert the inside of their cloaca (the hole that serves both reproductive and excretory functions) to produce a tiny fart sound. This may be a strategy to draw a potential predator’s attention away from the head and toward the tail, where a strike would do less damage. Folks aren’t 100% sure yet as to the real reason behind the microfarts, proving that there are still exciting frontiers left in this area of research! If you chose the coral snake, it is signaling a transformation. Like a snake shedding its skin, you need to let go to grow. The concept of transformation is noble and magical, but the process can feel awkward, vulnerable, and scary. Dig into these feelings and give yourself room to explore them. You may want to rush through them—take the shortest, simplest path out of there and get back to some solid, familiar ground. We’ve all been there. Resist those urges, and work to tap into your inner strength and resolve to ground yourself on those shifting sands. You are capable of guiding yourself fully and bravely through your transformation. CONTRARY If you chose the snake upside down, it may be telling you to balance internal and external transformation. The snake is a traditional symbol of rebirth, healing, and fertility. It’s time to think not only about your personal transformation, but also about your role in transforming your community. You can work to restore ecosystems by planting native plants that in turn build soil and support a community of microbes, and then insects, birds, and beyond. You can work to transform systems and institutions that are unjust and don’t serve everyone in your community. There’s work to do, and you’re the one to do it. Pay attention to make sure you are balancing the important work of personal and extra-personal transformation. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/de38a5ff-89cc-402c-982f-d790960318f3/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.56.21+PM.png CLUBS Pangolin Picture an anteater covered in overlapping diamond-shaped scales—kind of like an artichoke. Picture it walking around on its short hind legs as some of them do, with its heavily clawed front limbs held up in front of it like a little, hunched over T. Rex. It’s beautiful. It’s strange. It’s also the most trafficked animal on earth. These uniquely scaled mammals look and act like anteaters, but are more closely related to the animals that try to eat them: cheetahs, lions, and hyenas. Residing in Asia and Africa, they spend their time either on the ground or in the trees, licking up ants and termites at night and chilling in burrows during the day. Pangolins have some impressive adaptations, including long front claws for smashing termite mounds and long sticky tongues that can extend up to 16 inches out of their mouths (that’s longer than a typical pangolin’s body!). Pangolins have no teeth, but they have keratinous spines in their stomach and they often swallow stones that help crush food in their gut. When threatened, pangolins roll up in an almost unopenable ball—and they have a bonus ability to stink like a skunk. Sadly, all eight species of pangolins are threatened with extinction due primarily to poaching. Conservationists are hard at work trying to protect this special critter by raising awareness and cracking down on the illegal animal trade. If the pangolin appeared in your cards, it may be reminding you that your energy, time, and feelings are precious resources. Guard them. Do you need to say no to some requests for your time and energy? Next time you find it hard to say no to something you do not want to do, try the sandwich method. It has three parts: The nice part: “I would love to go to your thing/help out with that/do that for you” The but part: “…but I have plans to work on my own thing/stare at a wall/do a face mask” The other nice part: “…so might I suggest this alternative option?/thanks for thinking of me/I hope that goes well for you.” Ta-da! CONTRARY The Tikki Hywood Trust in Zimbabwe has a program where caretakers are assigned a rescued pangolin, and spend 24 hours watching over it as it forages and lives its life. The pangolins and their humans appear to make very sweet friends. The species that is causing pangolins to disappear from the planet is the same species that is trying to save it. If you pulled the pangolin upside down, it may be telling you to work on acceptance and forgiveness. Do you find it hard to accept and forgive those around you for their weaknesses and mistakes? Do you find it hard to do the same for yourself? If you tend to dwell on your own shortcomings, practice saying to yourself: “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” Humans are complicated critters and it takes a lot of strength and courage to be kind and compassionate to yourself and others—but you got this. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/4bd8ea1c-dd9b-49e6-9c67-c6240eb3602c/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.56.12+PM.png CLUBS Orchid Bee When it comes down to it, this is a story about an orchid and a bee helping themselves by helping each other. Orchids have gamed the system when it comes to attracting pollinators. They are master chemists, evolving complex scent compounds that are irresistible to some insects, particularly bees and wasps. Some orchids use sexual deception, mimicking the scent and appearance of female bees or wasps to invite males to mate with them and pick up pollen in the process. Other orchids use a variety of scents from vanilla to mint to rotting meat to attract a particular group of pollinators known as the orchid bees. Orchid bees are mostly metallic, jewel-toned bees that range from Mexico to Brazil. Male orchid bees have beefy-looking hind tibia where they store a special collection of scent compounds. The males fly around for weeks or months, visiting orchids, fungi, trees, and other scent sources to collect volatile compounds in their special leg compartments. Once they have their scents, they’ll gather at a display site on a tree trunk and fly about, wafting the mixture of scents around for the females. Females will then choose a male, presumably based on the scent mixture. While the orchid bee partially depends on the orchid for its perfume, the orchid depends entirely on the orchid bee for its reproduction. In some cases, orchids have evolved pretty extreme ways to ensure pollination. Take the bucket orchid. When an orchid bee tries to reach the scent source on a bucket orchid, he falls into its trap—a bucket of sticky liquid with only one exit. As the bee crawls through the exit, the orchid squeezes him to hold him in place and deposits two big pollen sacks on his back. Then the orchid loosens its grip to let the bee go deliver its pollen to another orchid. If the orchid bee flew into your cards, it has a message for you about teamwork. Orchids and orchid bees have coevolved to form mutualistic relationships that benefit both plant and pollinator. Orchids supply orchid bees with female-attracting scents and orchid bees pollinate the orchids. Could you use some help in your life? Don’t be afraid to ask for support. We are social and cooperative critters for a reason—it has paid off evolutionarily. Identify and give thanks for the positive, mutualistic relationships in your life, and brainstorm how you can nurture and grow them. CONTRARY While orchid bees and orchids have a mutualistic relationship, it is an asymmetrical mutualism. The bee may need the scent from a certain orchid to attract a female, but maybe it could attract a mate without that particular scent in its bouquet. The orchid’s survival, however, truly depends on the orchid bee’s cooperation. If orchid bees were to disappear, that orchid would lose its method of reproduction. This somewhat risky strategy reminds us about the potential danger of needing things outside of ourselves to be a certain way for us to feel complete and satisfied. Maybe you believe that once you have that new job or new toy or new house, then you’ll be complete and you can finally appreciate the moment. It may be hard to believe, but you— yes, you—are complete just the way you are. Be thankful for yourself, your body, your breath, and for getting to exist on a planet that creates amazing creatures like perfume-making orchid bees. For bonus points, name three things you love about yourself. <3 — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1203ff83-c7f4-4fd0-9888-a9b96addfd95/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+2.56.03+PM.png CLUBS - Make it stand out Suriname Toad Spoiler alert: most people are pretty shocked when they learn how female Surinam toads make babies. My guess is that it has something to do with having seen movies like Alien where an alien busts out of John Hurt’s chest (oops, actual spoiler alert!). For female Surinam toads, it’s actually good news to have creatures bursting out from under their skin. It starts off with an underwater mating somersault session, during which a male Surinam toad presses newly fertilized eggs onto the female’s back. She then grows an extra layer of skin over the eggs to protect them. Each egg gets its own little honeycomb-like compartment. The mama Surinam carries the little eggs around under her skin, all the way through the tadpole stage. When the toadlets are ready to roll, they push their way out from under her back skin and go their own way. It may sound weird to some of us, but it’s just another totally normal, totally crazy thing in our amazing animal kingdom. If the Surinam toad hopped its way into your cards, it may be telling you that it’s time to grow some thicker skin and protect yourself. You’re sensitive and that’s wonderful—we need sensitive people in this world. But sometimes, sensitive people need a little extra self-protection. If you find yourself feeling hurt by friends or family in your life, take some time to assess relationships that may be toxic, and consider either stepping away or putting up some solid boundaries to protect yourself. You deserve relationships that make you feel supported and loved. You are deserving of love—even if you have a kind of gross extra layer of skin on your back to protect your babies. CONTRARY After giving birth, Surinam toad females shed their skin. If the Surinam toad appeared upside down, it may be telling you that your skin is too thick and perhaps you’ve been putting up too many walls. We humans sometimes harden after we get hurt as a way to protect ourselves. Hardness that stems from one situation can bleed into other situations and relationships. Our challenge is to set solid boundaries instead of building walls to protect ourselves while staying open to the world. If you’ve been icing out vulnerability or not letting people in, it may be time to open up to others and shed that extra layer of skin. — A S http://www.animalfactsclub.org/diamonds daily 0.75 2024-08-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/f81255bd-6248-4a7a-a0a4-67fab0caef48/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.03.17+PM.png DIAMONDS Mountain Lion My favorite question to ask folks who like to visit wilderness areas is: have you ever seen a mountain lion? Seeing a mountain lion has been my number one wilderness goal for a long time. A friend who was in charge of a citizen science project where folks submit animal sightings across Texas once told me that mountain lions are one of the most falsely reported critters out there. Folks often claim that they saw one, but most of the time, they didn’t. They just wanted to see one. Maybe what they actually saw was a bobcat or coyote obscured by a dark cloak of vegetation and a wishful eye. But the mountain lion is no bobcat or coyote. You would think that they’d be unmistakable with their 3 to 5-foot-long bodies with thick limbs, a shadowed tawny coat, smoky eyes, and 2 to 3-foot-long sturdy black-tipped tails. They are known for their strength and stealth, running up to 50 mph and jumping 40 feet ahead and 18 feet up in the air. They could easily run after prey, like deer or javelina, but instead they typically lay low, wait for the right moment to pounce, and then give one powerful bite to the neck, severing the vertebrae. Mountain lions are the ultimate symbol of wildness in the Americas. They remain elusive throughout their enormous range, which spans from Canada to the tip of Chile. Often we can only trace a mountain lion by the signs it leaves behind—tracks that show the hind foot landing right in front of where the front foot stepped, big segmented scat, or a kill that’s been partially covered up with some grass or has a telltale wound. Just to know that they’re out there somewhere is thrilling. Wandering through a Central Texas suburb once in a blue moon. Stalking mule deer in the wild Chisos Mountains of West Texas. Reminding you that there’s another top predator out there and that the world is alive and it’s not just mini-malls all the way down. As parts of its range become less and less wild, the mountain lion becomes more and more threatened by habitat fragmentation and loss, depredation hunting, and the presence of rat-poisoned prey. With an ever increasing need for housing and infrastructure for humans, how do we live alongside this wild animal who needs huge swaths of connected land to satisfy each male’s 100-square-mile home range with room for populations to disperse? How do we protect this wild animal that many find threatening to humans and their livestock livelihoods? To make room for and protect the mountain lion, we must recognize its important role as an apex predator and appreciate that by protecting land for them, we are in turn protecting that irreplaceable wild for ourselves. Once, a mountain lion walked straight into a person’s home in Oregon, took a nap behind her couch for six hours, and then walked out. If you picked the mountain lion card, it’s time to bring the lessons of the mountain lion into your home. Channel the strength and directness of the puma. They aren’t wasting their energy running after every deer they spot. They’re waiting for the right moment to make their move. Conserve your energy. Make sure that your intentions are clear and that your words and actions are direct. Don’t get caught up in drama or worry or being a busy-body. If you don’t have a clear direction, hang back and take time to consider your next move before you make it—then make it with purpose and precision. CONTRARY Did you forget that you are a boss? If you chose the mountain lion upside down, it’s sending you a reminder. You are a strong, majestic critter who is the boss of your own life. Make sure that other folks know it. Make sure that you know it. Being a boss means advocating for yourself and for others who need it too. You’re a natural leader and it’s time to step up. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/51fa6d8d-c612-4441-a8e9-c398ea744f4f/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.03.10+PM.png DIAMONDS Orangutan Back in graduate school, I traveled to Malaysian Borneo to see about some flying lizards. The research didn’t really pan out, but I got to sweat more than I ever had in my whole life, catch some lizards, meet some friends, and see what I never dreamed I’d ever get to see—a wild orangutan. Semenggoh Wildlife Preserve in Sarawak, Borneo is home to the Bornean orangutan, one of two species of critically endangered orangutans. Orangutans once roamed all of Southeast Asia, but are now only found on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Their populations are at great risk of extinction due to illegal hunting and habitat destruction for timber, paper pulp, and palm plantations. With the slowest breeding rate of all mammals, to remain in the wild they’ll need help from the only great ape not currently threatened with extinction—humans. Semenggoh not only rehabilitates rescued orangutans and gives them a place to live, it also offers them fruit periodically to supplement their wild foraging. Orangutans are known to eat up to 100 kinds of fruit, and a lack of adequate habitat makes it hard for many wild orangutans to find enough food. One day at Semenggoh, I got to watch snack time for these orangutans. I stood quietly by a fruit-covered platform along with other visitors and waited. Before we could see the orangutan, we could see the trees start to sway in the distance. An orangutan was moving from tree to tree by bending the trunks like they were twigs. It would grab a tree, bend the tree toward it, then step onto it and reach for the next, slowly walking its way through the canopy. Adult orangutans can weigh between 60 and 191 pounds, which seems impossibly heavy for tree branches. Yet they move as gracefully as the wind—effortlessly navigating the forest as the largest arboreal animals in the world. Semenggoh offers these snack time viewing opportunities to visitors because it believes that one of the keys to saving orangutans is to get folks interested in them enough to fight for them. Luckily, orangutans are inherently interesting. They share almost 97% of their DNA with us humans. They are incredibly smart. At Camp Leakey in the Tanjung Puting National Park, they’ve taught themselves to do things like brush their teeth and steal and paddle canoes down river to then ditch them once they’ve reached their destination. It takes a long time to get that smart, so orangutan babies stay with their moms for the first four to six years of their lives, learning things like where to find food and how to build a sleeping nest and avoid danger. Orangutans have a reputation for being the most thoughtful problem solvers of the ape world. If you pulled the orangutan, it is telling you to think before you act. Instead of trying to shove that round peg into that square hole over and over until you finally get it right, sit back and take time to think about the best way to approach the problem. Be patient, not impulsive. CONTRARY The name orangutan comes from Malay and means “person of the forest.” If you pulled the orangutan upside down, it is telling you to be like the orangutan and make yourself a person of the forest. Climb a tree. Hug a tree. Lie down under a tree and watch the light filter through the canopy. Take time to connect with whatever forest you have near you in honor of the orangutan. While you’re at it, consider not buying things with palm oil in them and buying recycled paper (and using both sides of that recycled paper). — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/cb36edd7-f462-4fa8-843f-37ba01d27be2/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.03.03+PM.png DIAMONDS Spotted Hyena Spotted hyenas are the largest of four species of hyenas and arguably the coolest. They are basically the eighth wonder of the world. Before we dive into the most exciting hyena facts, let’s warm up with some hyena basics: hyenas live in lots of different habitats south of the Saharan Desert in Africa where they are mostly nocturnal. They are fast, running up to 37 mph, and tough, eating not only meat but also pulverizing bones. Hyenas have a bad reputation for stealing prey from lions, but in reality they hunt most of their prey. Maybe the coolest facts about spotted hyenas deal with their complex matriarchal society in which females rule. Females will fight for dominance in clans of six to 130 individuals. It pays to be a dominant female in the spotted hyena world. Higher-ranking females live longer, breed earlier, and produce more live young than lower-ranking females. Higher-ranking females are also known to contribute more androgen, or male sex hormones, to their young at birth—giving them a better chance of ranking high in the next generation. There’s a clear evolutionary benefit to being on top. If you didn’t know about hyenas and were to watch them in the wild, you might ask yourself, “why am I only seeing males out there?”. Female hyenas are a bit larger and stronger than their male counterparts, but otherwise they look very much the same. Female spotted hyenas are the only female mammals without vaginal openings. Instead, they have a fused, tissue-filled labia that looks a lot like a pair of testicles, and they urinate, mate, and give birth through a 7-inch-long clitoris that looks a lot like a penis. That’s right—they give birth through a 1-inch opening at the end of a pseudopenis. As you might imagine, this is likely painful* and definitely dangerous, resulting in the suffocation of the baby about 60% of the time and sometimes death for first time mothers. So how did it come to this? There are a few theories out there for how the pseudopenis came to be. When females greet, they line up facing each other and size each other up. The pseudopenis could make for an easy visual cue to assess rank. Furthermore, females live a dangerous life of fighting for the top from the very beginning. As cubs, females experience a higher rate of siblicide and infanticide than males. The pseudopenis may have evolved as a form of sexual mimicry, allowing female infants to look like males, thereby reducing their risk of being killed. If you chose the hyena, it’s reminding you not to judge people and other animals based on their reputation and first impressions. Humans are known to persecute spotted hyenas because they think they are evil, dumb, creepy, giggly scavengers who do bad things like steal prey from noble lions. Sure they steal from lions, but lions also steal from them. Also, hyenas are incredibly intelligent and have a complex vocal communication system that includes much more than creepy giggles. So next time you make a snap judgment, think about the hyena and make sure you’re giving folks a chance. CONTRARY If you picked the hyena card upside down, it’s signaling the benefit of social support. Research has shown that social support is a bigger predictor of success in spotted hyenas than aggression. Take a tip from the hyena and don’t go it alone. Make sure that you’re supporting your crew and that they’re supporting you. As hyenas demonstrate, there is power in numbers. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/0dbfe1d2-82b0-477e-a3c9-627d8c5872bf/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.02.57+PM.png DIAMONDS Gray Fox I’ve always had a soft spot for foxes. How many adjectives do we assign to foxes? Wily, clever, sly, crazy. What’s not to like about an animal that can be described in so many different ways? Gray foxes are one of the oldest species of foxes. They diverged from other members of the Canidae family early on and are not closely related to other species of foxes alive today. Though they are found at the base of the Canidae family tree, they are the only American canid that can climb to the top of trees! They have features and DNA that differ significantly from other canids, including semi-retractable claws, which give them the ability to climb trees. To do so, they rotate their forelegs and use their front claws to grasp the tree while pushing up with their back legs. Once they are up in the canopy, they’re nimble enough to jump and climb around looking for food (such as birds, mammals, berries, and reptiles) and refuge. If gray foxes are good at one thing, it’s adaptability. They live in a wide range of environments alongside other predators like coyotes and bobcats, which are both larger than the fox. To avoid predation, competition, and confrontation, gray foxes choose times of the day and places with good cover to hunt and carry out their daily routines. If you pulled the fox card, it may be telling you to diversify! Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Foxes are survivors due to their opportunistic lifestyle and ability to adapt to changes. They make their dens in a variety of locations, including hollow logs, trees, rock crevices, wood or brush piles, and under buildings. They also hunt using a full range of senses, eat a wide variety of foods, and live in many different climates. They can even thrive in human environments, like the perimeters of neighborhoods, cemeteries, and parks. Where in your life can you try new things, change up your routine, and find new experiences? CONTRARY If you pulled the gray fox upside down, it may be telling you not to let yourself be boxed in. Don’t limit yourself by what you think you may not be capable of doing. So, you’re a dog. Dogs don’t climb trees, right? Wrong! Get out those claws, you glorious gray fox, and climb those trees! Be the gray fox and break boundaries, defy rules when they need to be defied, and surprise yourself in the process. — J B J https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/320824c4-e7f5-47ca-9007-ba800ace4675/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.02.51+PM.png DIAMONDS Mexican Fee-tailed Bat On summer evenings in Austin, Texas, hundreds of folks gather on the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge to witness the world’s largest urban bat colony emerge from its roost. Visitors will spend a good hour just looking down off the bridge, waiting for the 1.5 million bats to stream out over the lake like ribbons of smoke. It’s moments like these—friends and strangers looking in the same direction, mostly at nothing, waiting patiently to be amazed by other animals—that make me feel really good about us humans. We weren’t always so ready to be amazed by bats. Back in the 1980s when the Congress Avenue bridge was remodeled, a maternal colony of Mexican free-tailed bats began to roost in the grooves on the underside of the bridge. These pregnant females found the bridge over Lady Bird Lake a great place to give birth to and raise their pups after returning from overwintering in Mexico. The only problem was that the city they chose as a summer home happened to be, like many places, a hotbed of fear of bats. As the bats moved in, people in Austin signed petitions to eradicate them from the bridge. Then came a guy named Merlin Tuttle. Tuttle almost single-handedly turned a city’s fear and misunderstanding into acceptance, and then admiration, and then a world-famous, big time money-making attraction in about five years. How’d he do it? With facts! And art! And community! Through beautiful photographs of bats in action and fun facts about how bats are fascinating and helpful friends to humans, Tuttle helped turn the tide in favor of bats. Mexican free-tailed bats are not only cool because of their value to human industry and healthy ecosystems as pollinators and free organic pest control. They are also cool because, like other bats, their hands are wings and they are the only mammals capable of powered flight. Mexican free-tailed bats also happen to be the fastest mammals on Earth, achieving speeds of up to 100 mph without diving. They can also do cool things like see with their ears using echolocation and find their pup amidst a crowded sea of pups by just its smell and call. Here in Central Texas, we are now mostly on board with bats, and are more concerned for their well-being. Bats across the world are threatened with disease, habitat loss, clashes with wind turbines, overharvesting for food, and continued bad press that exaggerates disease threats. As bats make up one-fifth of all of our mammal species on Earth, and amazing ones at that, it’s critical that we work to protect them. If you pulled the bat card, it has a lesson for you about taking a leap. Like many of their fellow bats, Mexican free-tailed bats use echolocation to detect their prey and navigate their surroundings in the dark. They emit loud, high frequency shouts, listening for the echoes to tell where an object is and what that object is like based on what the echoes sound like and how long it takes them to return. The bat is telling you that it may be time to take a chance on the unknown. Take a leap into the dark. Let your intuition be your echolocation to help you navigate on your journey. CONTRARY If you chose the bat upside down, it’s signaling that you may be having a hard time letting go of something that doesn’t serve you. It may feel scary to let that thing go, but stay tuned in to your gut. I know it’s hard to see your way around in a transition, but be brave and be present so you can do what you need to do and get where you need to go. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/4db3853e-8c7f-430a-8e81-d897216c5f38/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.02.44+PM.png DIAMONDS Scorpion Have you ever seen The Far Side comic where two scorpions are chatting on the rim of some poor soul’s shoe, who is presumably knocked out or dead because you can see the bare feet lying prostrate in the background? In it, one scorpion says to the other, “There I was! Asleep in this little cave here, when suddenly I was attacked by this hideous thing with five heads!” I’ve always liked that comic, and since moving to Texas, where it’s a good idea to check for scorpions in your shoes, I think of it often. Although only about 25 or the 1,500 some species of scorpions carry toxins that are potentially fatal to humans, all scorpions have a stinger that can afflict pain and a wide range of unpleasant symptoms. Scorpion stingers carry two types of venom: a less energy-expensive pre-venom and a full-on venom. When presented with a mild threat or a small prey item, scorpions can quickly release a pain-inducing pre-venom to scare off a predator or subdue a small meal. If a threat persists or the prey is larger, they can follow up by releasing the more potent and protein-rich main venom. In addition to their impressive and complex toxicity, scorpions have some surprisingly tender qualities. Unlike other arachnids, scorpions produce live young, a practice known as viviparity. After birth, the baby scorpions, called scorplings, ride on their mother’s back until their first molt. The image of the mother scorpion carrying its young has led many cultures to associate scorpions with motherhood. The most charming scorpion characteristic of all has to be their mating dance. The steps vary from species to species, but it generally goes like this: a male scorpion approaches a female. She may respond with some aggression at first, raising her tail to club him or even trying to sting him. If things go in the right direction, the male will grasp the female’s pedipalps (claws) and go in for the cheliceral massage, where he’ll massage her mouthparts with his mouthparts. If successful, the female becomes less aggressive and the male starts to walk her around. The dance can last for minutes or hours. During that time the male will then deposit a packet of sperm on the ground called a spermatophore and lead the female to it. She’ll gather the spermatophore into her genital opening to complete the mating ritual. Males of some species will then dash from the dance hall, because if they stick around too long, their mates may decide to eat them. If you pulled the scorpion card, you are being asked to dance. Sure, you’re the leanest, meanest fighting machine out there with multiple types of toxins for different occasions. But even the baddest of them all need time to open up, get sensitive, and express themselves. Put on your favorite song and take a dance break alone or with someone you love. Take advice from the scorpion (and Otis Redding) and “Try a little tenderness.” CONTRARY If you pulled the scorpion upside down, perhaps it’s time to glow! Scorpions possess an amazing trait that is still a mystery to science—their exoskeletons fluoresce in UV light. There are many theories for why this trait exists, ranging from no reason at all (the glowing stuff is just an accidentally cool byproduct of metabolism), to communication with potential mates, to UV light detection so the scorpions can better avoid light (and in turn hide from predators). Specimens preserved in alcohol eventually cause the alcohol itself to fluoresce. Even fossils hundreds of millions of years old have been found to still react under UV light. You’ve spent plenty of time tucked away in somebody’s tennis shoe and camouflaging against the desert floor, but it’s time to light up! Maybe this means putting yourself out there with a presentation at work or a project at school, trying out for a play, or putting on an art show. Don’t hold back—it’s time to shine! — J B J https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/b07577dd-a024-4709-addb-4c63d2d35348/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.02.38+PM.png DIAMONDS Duck-Billed Platypus I was about to write an essay about weird platypus facts when I found the following message in my inbox. G’day, It has come to my attention that you were going to write (yet) another essay about how platypuses are weird. I have been a platypus my entire life and let me tell you: there’s nothing weird about us. Ever since I was a wee platypus I’ve been trying to explain this to other mammals (echidnas excluded—they already get it). As monotremes, we platypuses split off from other mammals about 160 million years ago. So yeah, things are going to be different between us. Let’s start with reproduction. We lay eggs. Weird for a mammal, you say? Unusual, yes, but if you consider all of the many animals that lay eggs and the fact that egg-laying is the original animal way, I believe you’ll agree that this is probably the least weird reproductive method out there. Next, you’re sure to point out that we lactate, like you, but how we don’t have nipples. Well, we don’t need nipples, okay? We just ooze milk from the pores on our abdominal skin and our babies lap it up. No problems there. Have you ever thought that maybe it’s actually weird to have nipples? I’m not judging, but this is a two-way street is all I’m saying. We male platypuses bear the brunt of the judgmental comments. Platys are just like birds and reptiles, efficiently using a single opening called a cloaca to urinate, defecate and for females, lay eggs. But people really get hung up on the fact that we males have two-headed penises which emerge from our cloacas. Relax. It’s normal. These baby platypuses don’t make themselves! I will say that you always think it’s cool that we male platypuses have poisonous spurs on our hind legs and are one of only a few venomous mammals out there. You are correct. It is definitely cool. Then come the bill and the webbed feet—and okay, sure, these do make us look like we’re part duck, but we’re not. Our bills are flexible and covered with thousands of electroreceptors that help us find prey underwater and gather up tasty cheekfuls of worms, crustaceans, and insects. Then we come to the surface to enjoy a good mashing with the grinding plates in our mouths before we swallow them down. I think you’ll now agree that if you must judge us at all, we’re more impressive than we are weird. If you ever find yourself in eastern or southeastern Australia, I hope that you’ll come pay us a visit. Please share this with your friends and family so that they too may see the error in calling those who are different “weird”—unless they’re talking about hagfish. Then it’s probably okay. Ta, O. anatinus This email taught me more than just cool facts about the platypus. If the platypus waggled into your world, it’s telling you to pay attention to other perspectives. Maybe some new important viewpoints have come into your life recently, or you’re shifting and growing your own perspective in critical ways. Maybe you need to reach out to someone for a new perspective about a project, situation, or a life move. Either way, keep exploring and staying open to different ideas that could help you find a surprising breakthrough. CONTRARY If you picked the platypus card upside down, it’s reminding you to consider how you may be limiting your perspective. We can get used to seeing the world in one particular way, which makes it challenging to see it any other way. It feels good to grab onto certainty in this uncertain world—but what would happen if we leaned into uncertainty? If we recognized that our perspectives are limited? What if we brought that glorious uncertainty into every opinion, every interaction, and every action on this earth? When considering perspective, remember that the platypus is at an intersection of bird, reptile, and mammal traits, and humans are at intersections of different cultures, identities, and histories. Remember to consider intersectionality. If you are part of a dominant culture, listen to people from other cultures and, whenever possible, offer them a platform to share their perspectives. Keep learning, stay open, and love each other. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/9188ff32-b3e2-4ac8-986b-4f32f0624ea1/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.02.31+PM.png DIAMONDS Horseshoe Crab Delaware, oh Delaware, the second smallest state in the US. Ever since you were slighted in Wayne’s World, I’ve always thought there had to be something spectacular about you. Thanks to some Animal Facts Club research, we’ve found it: Delaware’s got crabs! Horseshoe crabs, to be specific. Which actually aren’t crabs at all, but arthropods that are more closely related to spiders. But regardless! The point is that Delaware Bay hosts (drumroll please) the largest concentration of spawning horseshoe crabs in the world. Every spring, millions of horseshoe crabs arrive on beaches up and down the Atlantic Coast of the US to mate and lay eggs. The massive gathering of horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay makes that location a key feeding and resting ground for migrating birds. It is estimated that up to 1 million birds from about 30 different species stop here in the spring to refuel on horseshoe crab eggs during their long journeys. Horseshoe crab eggs also sustain numerous species of fish and are a seasonal staple of loggerhead sea turtles. The horseshoe crabs that are born in Delaware Bay are part of an impressive ancestral lineage. When you consider geologic time and the origins of animals, we modern humans are brand new critters, evolving in Africa a mere 300,000 years ago. To find the origin of horseshoe crabs, we need to go back in time past the first modern humans, past the evolution of flowering plants, past the first dinosaurs, past the first trees, all the way to the Paleozoic era, some 450 million years ago. Horseshoe crabs have survived virtually unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, a span that included multiple extinction events that wiped out huge percentages of life on Earth. In short, horseshoe crabs are built to last. Their tough armor-like shell, called a prosoma, conceals six pairs of legs, a mouth, nervous system, heart, and excretory glands. They have a total of ten eyes distributed around their body—including on their shell, tail, and near their mouth—that are primarily used for sensing light and finding mates. Their mean-looking tail, or telson, is actually a harmless appendage that helps them steer in the water and flip themselves over if the surf turns them upside down. Horseshoe crabs are also the royalty of the sea, you might say—they’re literally blue-blooded. Their copper-based blue blood has remarkable antibacterial and anticoagulant properties. Unfortunately for the horseshoe crabs, large numbers of them are harvested for biomedical research because of this. Horseshoe crabs are said to have saved more human lives than any other animal because so many medical tools and gadgets are tested using their blood. Their numbers are thought to be decreasing due to harvesting for research, habitat loss, beach development, and overharvesting as bait for fisheries. The horseshoe crab has been slow to change over their time here on Earth. If you pulled the horseshoe crab, perhaps it’s reminding you to slow down. Sometimes we humans rush around all day long. We rush through our breakfast and eat lunch at our desks while we work. We try to complete every task on our list and read every email and scroll through every social media feed. Think about the ways in which you rush and how you might be able to slow down. Maybe tackle the most important tasks first and be okay with not getting through everything. Or try saying no to some things you don’t need to do and taking that time for something restful or regenerative. I once heard something to the effect of, “You need to be there for your breakfast, because your breakfast is there for you.” Show your breakfast that you appreciate it by giving it your full attention. Then see where that slow, intentional approach takes you throughout the rest of your day. CONTRARY If you pulled the horseshoe crab upside down, it may be reminding you to beware of judging others by their appearances. A horseshoe crab’s large telson looks like a weapon, reminding beach goers of stingrays and scorpions, when in fact it’s harmless. Are you making any assumptions about others, or are others making assumptions about you? Show those who look that your sword is nothing other than a walking stick, and consider that the same may be true for others. — J B J https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/329915fa-a586-4d07-9f48-b703cf8fdf41/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.02.23+PM.png DIAMONDS - Make it stand out Poison Dart Frog When I visited poison dart frogs at the zoo as a kid, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from somehow sticking my hand in their terrarium, touching one, and poisoning myself. As it turns out, poison dart frogs in the zoo aren’t actually poisonous. Wild poison dart frogs are thought to get their toxicity from the insects they eat, which likely get their toxicity from the plants that they eat. So no toxic food, no toxic frogs. Poison dart frogs are a great example of aposematic coloration in the animal kingdom. Their flashy colors serve as warning signs to would-be predators, advertising their toxicity. There are more than 100 species of poison dart frogs living in the tropical forests of Central and South America—and thanks to their toxicity, they look amazing. In addition to being beautiful and deadly, poison dart frogs have cool behaviors. Parent frogs do a lot to help their babies grow up safely—including something called “backpacking.” Both the male and female frog parents sit among a pile of tadpoles, who then wiggle up their parents’ legs and onto their backs. The parents then carry one or more tadpoles from the wet forest floor to a little water-filled bromeliad or other watery home where they complete their development. Sadly, many species of poison dart frogs are declining in the wild, with some at risk of completely disappearing due to the destruction of their rainforest habitat. Protecting rainforest habitats will go a long way toward helping these little friends out, who are not only amazing in their own right, but harbor in their venom the potential for the development of painkillers and other medicines for humans. If the poison dart frog hopped into your cards, it may be telling you that you need to clearly communicate what you want and need to those around you. Be like the poison dart frog, who shows its predators who it is and what danger awaits them. Imagine yourself as a tiny but powerful frog, and speak up! Even the smallest creatures deserve to have a voice and get what they need—whether it’s a raise at work, a hug from a friend, or a piggyback ride to your rainforest bromeliad. CONTRARY If the poison dart frog appeared upside down, it’s asking you to examine your life and identify any toxic elements. Are you experiencing any negative relationships, activities, or addictions? Like the poison dart frog, we are what we consume. If we’re taking in negativity and toxins, we can become negative and toxic ourselves. Spend time with the people who lift you up, are fun to be with, and encourage you to be your best self. Go on a walk, look at some trees, play with a pet, make a smoothie, learn something new—do things that nourish your mind, body, and spirit. Toxicity works well for the poison dart frog, but not so much for us human beings. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/ab003a2b-c42f-4044-928c-0bee05750ac0/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.02.17+PM.png DIAMONDS Virginia Opossum As human beings we like to categorize, compare, and form opinions about things. Pandas are cute. (Easy.) Dolphins are smart. (Definitely.) Raccoons are crafty. (Can’t argue with that.) But what do we even do with the Virginia opossum—an animal that both attracts and repulses on so many levels? I’ll tell you what we do. We open up our hearts and minds, that’s what, and accept and appreciate the opossum for what it is. Which is amazing. The Virginia opossum is the only marsupial north of Mexico. North America’s marsupials actually went extinct about 20 million years ago. Then, thanks to the Isthmus of Panama popping up and connecting North and South America about three million years ago, two species of marsupials managed to make their way back north to Mexico and beyond. We’re happy to have Virginia opossums, not only because it’s exciting to have a wild marsupial in the mix, but also because they are cool and do a lot of good for our ecosystems. Opossums have a prehensile tail and opposable big toes that allow them to navigate life in the trees and on the ground. They also have cool predator defenses like involuntary fainting, spewing putrid green stuff from their rears, and making gnarly, hissing, scary faces. Opossums are resistant to rabies and pit viper snake venom, and can turn a tick infestation into lunch. They also help to clean up roadkill, recycle nutrients, and control disease-carrying tick populations. If you chose the opossum, it is reminding you that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Opossum ancestors were around 70 million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth. As the only marsupial representatives in the Americas, they are holding their own with other placental mammals. Even though they have one of the smallest brain-to-body ratios of any mammal, they are highly successful at living alongside humans. Take a tip from the opossum and don’t get too wrapped up in self-improvement or wishing you were more this or that. Instead, appreciate the unique and special being that you already are. CONTRARY If you chose the opossum upside down, it has a message for you about being thorough. The opossum’s impressive battery of defenses covers all the bases from intimidation to faking their own death. It may be time for you to go above and beyond with a project or investigation. Don’t rush through it—take your time and make sure that you’re dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s. This kind of meticulous work may feel excruciating, but it will pay off. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/79b432fd-163b-4002-b758-3a34d575dbf9/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.02.11+PM.png DIAMONDS Ruby-throated Hummingbird Who doesn’t love a tiny but mighty critter? Hummingbirds may be the tiniest, mightiest, and most lovable of them all. More than 300 species of hummingbirds span the Americas from southern Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, with most species living in the tropics. They have adapted to a wide variety of habitats, from lowland deserts and tropical rainforests to the cold, thin-aired Andes tundra. Hummingbirds have some of the most impressive tiny facts. Hummingbirds are in the order Apodiformes, which comes from the Greek word for “without feet.” Their tiny legs are so small that they aren’t much good for anything except perching. The tiniest bird of all birds is the bee hummingbird from Cuba, which weighs less than 2 grams (= two $1 bills). Even the relatively reasonably-sized ruby-throated hummingbird, which nests in the eastern US and up into Canada, lays eggs merely the size of a black bean. Hummingbirds have a special, high energy way of flying that involves beating their wings incredibly fast (up to 80 times per second in the case of the amethyst woodstar) in a figure eight motion. Hummingbirds accomplish some amazing aerial feats, including flying upside down and backwards, hovering, and performing acrobatic mating displays and impressive migrations. The ruby-throated hummingbird completes a yearly roundtrip migration of around 1,000 miles, which likely includes non-stop flights over the Gulf of Mexico. Their energy-demanding way of life means that they need to get and save energy wherever they can. Eating is a really big deal for hummingbirds, as you can imagine. They spend their time going from flower to flower, sipping nectar and snacking on tiny insects. Some travel up and down mountains to follow flower blooms or aggressively defend flower patches to get enough sugar to survive. If they haven’t eaten enough or it’s cold outside, hummingbirds can go into torpor at night, a kind of mini-hibernation. This slows down their metabolism and allows them to conserve energy until they are awake to feed again. In 2011, a couple of scientists blew everybody’s minds by discovering how hummingbirds drink nectar. Before then, we had mathematical models that guessed at how the tongue brought the liquid into the mouth, but nobody had shown how it worked in real life. These scientists hand built transparent flowers with nectar inside, set up a high-speed camera, and pressed play while the hummingbird drank. In the slow motion video, you can see both prongs of the hummingbird’s snake-like forked tongue unroll as they hit the nectar and then, packed with liquid, roll back up toward the bird’s mouth. A hummingbird can repeat this about 18 times per second. It is amazing and inspiring to think that we are still making simple and profound discoveries about these creatures. If the hummingbird buzzed into your cards, joy must be close by. These fast little jeweled creatures inspire joy and wonder, but you have to be paying enough attention to notice them. If you’re too wrapped up in worry or negative thoughts, you’ll miss their telltale wing buzz that signals you to stop and try to spot and enjoy these speedy wonders. The hummingbird teaches us to open our eyes to the joy near or around us. CONTRARY If the hummingbird appeared to you upside down, it is letting you know that you must get to work to get in touch with joy. In the same way that the hummingbird’s iridescent colors are instantly revealed when it steps into the light, so you may only need to make a small shift to uncover your joy. It may be a shift in perspective to see what’s been there all along. Or it may be a bigger shift to change your life in a more substantial way. If joy is not a priority for you, work to make it so. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/de2c14b8-aaf9-4279-92e2-836d7d470038/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.02.04+PM.png DIAMONDS Star-nosed Mole Star-nosed moles are the only one of 39 species of moles that live in marshes and swamps. They range from southeastern Canada, northeastern US, and down through the Appalachian Mountains into Georgia. This small rodent has a nice round body, barely-there eyes, short, thick fur, and big paws and claws for a life of digging through tunnels underground. They eat worms, aquatic insects, fish, and mollusks. As for their mating habits, we don’t know much about them, but we do know that they form pairs for about a year. Also, they can smell underwater by blowing bubbles and inhaling them back again, which is pretty cool and unique. Well, that’s about all I’ve got for star-nosed moles. See you next time! Oh, what’s that? You’re wondering about that starburst-like thing in the middle of its face? I guess we can talk about that. That star is the sensory appendage that a mole uses to get a picture of its world. This appendage is made up of 11 pairs of symmetrical little tentacles that are each covered in 25,000 touch receptors called Eimer’s organs. Eimer’s organs contain three types of receptors, including one that is unique to the star-nosed mole and may allow it to detect microscopic texture. Together this tiny ~1-centimeter appendage contains five times more touch receptors than the human hand and is the densest concentration of touch receptors known for mammals. This amazing appendage and the brain space that is dedicated to it have allowed this basically blind little mole to earn the title of the fastest eater among mammals. The mole presses its star against the tunnel floor over and over so fast that it can touch 12 places each second. As it touches, it makes what researchers describe as an almost visual map of its surroundings. When it touches a prey item, it only takes the mole 120 milliseconds to figure out what it is and eat it. That’s less than half the time it takes us to blink. If you bumped into the star-nosed mole in your cards, it’s telling you to sense your world in the darkness—your dream world. Research has shown that dreams help us process negative emotions. Parts of the brain that are activated during vivid dreaming states include the amygdala, which plays a role in remembering and processing emotions, and the hippocampus, which deals with the connection between short-term and long-term memory. Our most vivid dreams happen during REM sleep, so try to give yourself enough time in bed to achieve deep sleep. Easier said than done sometimes, but if you can, it’s basically free therapy. Once we wake from our dreams, we may have already forgotten them or will forget them soon after waking. Keep a journal and pen by your bed to write down whatever you remember. You can also set an alarm with some light classical music for before dawn to try to wake yourself soon after REM sleep. Journal away and see what you learn. CONTRARY If the mole appeared upside down, it’s telling you to slow down and pay attention to your senses. The star-nosed mole forages at about its sensory speed limit, meaning that it’s moving so fast that it sometimes moves past a prey item before having time to identify it. What are you passing by when you’re in your head or absorbed in a screen? Take time to focus on and explore your senses. Next time you’re waiting for the bus or a person, instead of scrolling on your phone, try listening to the sounds around you, feeling the air on your skin, and smelling the smells. You might be amazed by what you notice. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/7ee6f1a7-f15a-41cb-8e81-37fa5038f896/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.01.58+PM.png DIAMONDS - Make it stand out American Bison Waaaay back when—before the 19th century—you could be hanging out on the wide open plains of North America and see herds of big, stocky, hunchbacked, wooly bison. Imagine such enormous herds of the largest land mammal in North America that you couldn’t see the start or end of ‘em. They’d be chewing on grasses and such, wallerin’ in dirt to keep the pests off, and performing their mating rituals during the rut. Even though bison can weigh as much as a small car and reach up to 11.5 feet long and 6.5 feet tall, they can also jump fences and run up to 35 mph (faster than the fastest human). Back then, bison were a big deal on the plains. They shaped the landscape by spreading the seeds of plants that got stuck in their thick fur and planting them as they stepped. They created sources of water for other critters through the depressions in the ground they made when they wallowed. They supplied food and fertilizer through their droppings. Indigenous people of the Great Plains relied on the bison for food, clothing, shelter, glue—almost everything—and revered it as a sacred animal. In a crummy turn of events in the 19th century, settlers decimated the bison population. They shot them for food and for hides and sometimes just for fun. They shot them to make room for their farms and horses. They even shot them to destroy the economies of the Indigenous people of the Great Plains and force them to concede to life on reservations. They took what was an estimated pre-Columbian population of more than 30 million bison and by the late 1800s, knocked it down to fewer than 1,000. Ever since the decimation of bison, folks have been trying to bring them back. Yellowstone National Park is the only place in the US where bison have lived wild since prehistoric times. Most of the bison around today are raised for commercial purposes. Only about 19,000 of the 500,000 bison in North American today live in conservation herds as “wild” bison. Of those, half have likely been hybridized with cattle. If you chose the bison card, it is signaling abundance. Welcome abundance into your life by practicing gratitude and generosity and being ready to receive it. But be mindful—the story of the bison demonstrates how abundance can quickly turn to lack when greed, hatred, and ignorance rule. CONTRARY If you picked the bison card upside down, it has a message for you about shaping your environment. Bison sculpted the North American plains ecosystems and human civilizations. What role do you play—both positive and negative—in sculpting your own environment? Consider what you can do to make it a better place for plants and humans and other animals now and in 100 years. — A S http://www.animalfactsclub.org/spades daily 0.75 2024-08-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/bfdcd0ea-d64b-49c4-9c29-8e9ebe4c442a/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.09.34+PM.png SPADES Ivory-billed Woodpecker I’ve always been a very rational person. When I heard about God as a kid, I envisioned an Old Testament-style God with long white hair and a long white beard driving a spaceship. I figured that if space was all that was out there, then Heaven had to be somewhere in space, and so that’s where God must be too. I only ever pictured God from behind, working the control panels with space out the front window and chatting with me over the radio. I liked it, but this God concept didn’t age welI, leaving me in adulthood with only a tenuous grasp on any sort of structured belief system. I remember when the extinct ivory-billed woodpecker (aka the Lord God bird) was resurrected in the glorious, swampy woods of Arkansas in 2004 and the hope and skepticism that swept through the birding community. The ivory-billed was (and maybe is) the largest woodpecker in the US. It lived in the pine forests and bottomland hardwood swamps that used to blanket much of the southeastern United States and Cuba. As forests disappeared from logging in the mid-nineteenth century, so did ivory-billed woodpeckers. Thought to have been driven to extinction more than once, the world had given up all hope by the mid-1900s and once again pronounced it extinct. The US had lost its largest woodpecker and much of its beautiful, wild home. Or so we thought until 60 or so years later when a kayaker in Arkansas claimed to see an ivory-billed woodpecker fly out of those magical swamps right in front of his face. A couple of other folks also reported seeing an ivory-billed in the same area. An amateur birder/professional acoustics researcher spent 1,500 hours in search of the bird, capturing a few blurry seconds of video footage as evidence. Biologists poured into the Big Woods in Arkansas to confirm the sightings and then poured over the blurry video pixels to analyze size, movement, and markings to prove the existence of the extinct bird. While there were skeptics, the general consensus was that the ivory-billed was no longer extinct, and it was moved to the critically endangered list. We are still waiting for evidence that will convince everyone that they are out there. With armies of scientists and photographers only turning up a few sightings and some blurry Yeti-type video footage, the questions raised include: where are they? How is it possible that we can’t find them if they’re there? And how can we believe in the existence of something we can’t see? Ivory-billed woodpeckers ride two worlds: life and death, dark and light, real and imagined. They raise babies and make life out of dead and dying trees. They soar in the sun over the treetops and glide in the shadowy forest. They are both of the biological and the mythical. Maybe they’re out there dipping between worlds—appearing for fleeting moments in ours and then disappearing into other realms through the portals they’ve cut in trees. Or maybe they’re just residing quietly in that swampland, waiting for someone to bring a decent camera with them on their next kayak trip. I’ve turned from a Lord God bird skeptic into a believer since the woodpecker came back online 15 years ago. By believing it’s out there, I feel hope for the protection of that special land and for the recovery of other animals. It also means that we can have fun going on kayak trips to try to spot one. Who knows what other cool critters we’ll see along the way? The ivory-billed has also helped me believe more broadly in things unseen. Adult me says that God probably isn’t driving a spaceship in space, but maybe there’s another place God could be. Maybe God is you and me and the ivory-billed woodpecker and the beetle grubs it eats and the tupelo trees in the swamps. Maybe God is just the whole dang world. If you are lucky enough to spot an ivory-billed woodpecker in your cards, I hope you brought a camera. Like the ivory-billed, we humans also ride two worlds. We are both destroyers and saviors, both all-knowing and blind. We can royally mess stuff up, but we can also be its saving grace. We can’t know everything, but we often can’t accept that we don’t know everything. The ivory-billed woodpecker is telling us to act as if we don’t know what kind of amazing beings dwell in the forests and deserts and oceans on this earth. Don’t wait until something’s possibly extinct to conserve the land or learn about it. This may translate to your personal life, such as not waiting for a relationship to get almost beyond repair before you start working on it. Or letting a dream die because it seems impossible. Or maybe it means getting to know the nature around you and figuring out your favorite animals that are threatened with extinction, where they live, what they need, and what you can do to help. It’s harder to bring things back from the brink. Consider how we can do the work now to make things better in the future. CONTRARY Have you been working hard on a project or idea and aren’t seeing the fruits of your labor? If you picked the woodpecker upside down, it is signaling that now might be the time to consider whether you need to continue on as you’re going, pivot, or desert it all together. You may simply need to be patient. Or maybe it’s time to talk to trusted friends and mentors about the project and whether a different approach might be more successful. On the other hand, it could be time to table it all together and consider other projects. Before you decide anything, take time to search your gut. Be patient. Ask for help. Maybe that ivory-billed woodpecker sighting is just one more kayak trip away. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/ebbfccca-9a22-4117-ab39-1c8a4354485d/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.09.28+PM.png SPADES Texas Horned Lizard Old timers—well, even middle timers—talk about the days when Texas horned lizards, or horny toads, ran rampant all across Texas. When you could pluck the state reptile straight out of your own backyard. Those were the days. Texas horned lizards have since disappeared from large swaths of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma due to a combination of factors, including habitat loss and fragmentation; pressure from the pet trade; and impacts to their main food source, harvester ants, due to invasive red imported fire ants and pesticides. Although they are not threatened with extinction across their range from the southern US and into Mexico, they are listed as threatened in Texas and as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need in Oklahoma. The good news for horny toads in Texas is that these beloved critters hold a special place in the state’s cultural and natural heritage. Conservation organizations are banding together to support horny toad populations by releasing captive bred lizards in an effort to reintroduce them to areas where they’ve largely been lost, like Central Texas. Why spend all of this money and time on an animal that’s not even endangered, you might ask? Folks want to make sure that the horny toad steers clear of extinction not only for the sake of the horny toad, but for other Texas critters too. The charismatic horny toad serves as an effective catalyst for creating new generations of conservationists. They’re cute, cool, and pretty easy to catch. And catching horny toads in your backyard is not only fun—it’s a gateway to appreciating animals and their habitats and the environment in general. And what a gateway critter the horny toad is! They’re like tiny, cute dinosaurs that start out about the size of a penny and grow up to 5.5 inches at most. These highly edible critters also have some impressive ways to avoid getting eaten. Their first line of defense is camouflage. Their mottled coloration helps them blend in with the dusty ground, and their horns break up their body outline, making them harder to see when they aren’t moving. If a predator does see them, they can puff up, hiss, and lunge to try to scare it away. If that predator’s a coyote, dog, or bobcat, they can also squirt foul-tasting blood from their eyelids into the animal’s mouth and face. Cute. Tough. Inspirational. If you came across the Texas horned lizard, it has a lesson for you about pluck and grit—about defending yourself and getting back up when you’ve been knocked down. Back in 1897, the people of Eastland, Texas entombed a poor living horny toad in a cornerstone of their courthouse as part of a time capsule, along with a Bible and a newspaper—testing a claim that horny toads could hibernate for 100 years. When they demolished the courthouse 31 years later and unearthed the time capsule, they found the horny toad—still alive.* They named him Old Rip and boy, was he a sensation. Although Old Rip died of pneumonia less than a year after his resurrection, he lives on as the supposed inspiration for Warner Brothers’ Michigan J. Frog and through yearly festivities in the town of Eastland. Consider where in your life you could use some of Old Rip’s grit and longevity. CONTRARY If you chose the horned lizard upside down, it may be asking you to think about your own defenses. Horny toads have some impressive defenses that help them survive, and they break out different defenses depending on the threat. They’ll run away from a rattlesnake, but stay still if threatened by a whiptail snake. They’re no dummies—they know they can’t outrun a whiptail. Think about your own defenses. Have you cultivated some survival techniques in certain relationships or situations in your life? Do they still serve you? Do they bleed into other relationships or situations? The horned lizard is asking you to pay attention to your defenses and make sure that they’re being used appropriately and effectively. — A S * Alledgedly https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1e62903d-3deb-4d53-adf4-90f3a428f825/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.09.22+PM.png SPADES African Bush Elephant In some ways elephants are just like us. Like humans, elephants evolved in the forests and savannas of Africa. As long-lived, largely migratory animals, social bonds became important for survival and complex communication evolved to navigate group life. Like us, elephants (specifically the African bush elephant, African forest elephant, and Asian elephant) spread out across Europe and Asia around the same time to settle distant lands. Both of us evolved into intelligent, emotional, and social beings. In many other ways, elephants aren’t like us at all. This is important to note, because using humans as a goal post for animal behavior can lead to misunderstandings and a lack of empathy and appreciation for animals that are different from us. Humans have been sharing countless observations that demonstrate how smart and sensitive elephants are for a long time. Science seeks to carefully quantify these behaviors in an attempt to officially explain their intelligence. Do they really mourn? Can they really problem solve and use tools? To test elephant intelligence in the past, scientists administered experiments that failed to consider the unique senses and life histories of elephants. We tested them as if they were humans and then judged them on their performance. Today, the scientific world is only beginning to understand and appreciate the intelligence and emotional complexity of elephants and many other creatures. Here’s what I know about elephants: They are enormous. The African bush elephant is technically the largest land mammal in the world, weighing up to 13,000 pounds. The largest elephant on record is estimated to have weighed a staggering 24,000 pounds—or the equivalent of 12 bison (aka the largest mammal in North America). They are herbivores that spend from 12 to 20 hours each day foraging and eating hundreds of pounds of grasses and fruit and such. Evidence from two African bush elephant matriarchs suggests that they only sleep about two hours a day in the wild and enter REM sleep (aka dream time) every three to four days. Elephants exhibit empathetic behavior and have been known to comfort each other when they are upset and also help injured friends and family. They take an interest in their dead that can look a lot like human mourning. They have been known to stand around, explore, and place soil and leaves on top of their dead. Their trunks can hold more than three gallons of water, take down a tree, smell, breathe, and snuggle a baby. Elephants make a wide variety of calls, including infrasound calls that can travel up to 2.5 miles but are inaudible to human ears. New research suggests that they also communicate through seismic waves passing through the ground between their feet. All three species of elephants are in danger of disappearing. In the early 1900s an estimated ten million elephants roamed Africa. Only about 415,000 African elephants remain and we’re losing them to poaching faster than they are being born. In Asia, there are now only 40,000 to 50,000 elephants left in the wild. Asian elephants are endangered due to habitat loss and persecution by farmers when they clash over crops. Here’s what I don’t know about elephants: What it feels like to see a wild elephant. What grief feels like to an elephant. What elephants think about us. If you picked the elephant, it’s asking you to think about memory. Elephants can remember individuals from the smell of their urine alone and remember the location of watering holes that are 30 or more miles apart. The memories of experienced matriarchs have been shown to be critical to the survival of their groups during times of drought. Our memories are important for all kinds of reasons, including impressing our friends and family with animal facts and also healing and growing. Recalling memories can give us insight into our current feelings, relationships, and life choices. Sometimes the memories that surface in our dream worlds and the memories of our parents and ancestors can also help us learn and heal. Give yourself space and stillness to notice dreams and memories that are surfacing. What are they telling you about where you’ve been, where you’re at, and where you need to go? CONTRARY If you picked the elephant upside down, it’s sending you a signal that you may not be in touch with your memories and emotions. Try keeping a journal and, if you have them, revisiting old journals. You may want to work with a therapist or practice mindfulness work like meditation to get in touch with your emotions and work through any stuck emotions. If you’ve been wanting to get into meditation, but find it intimidating or hard to stick with, try closing your eyes and tapping into a visualization for just a few minutes to get started. I’m sharing one below with an elephant, but you can substitute any animal, environment, and scenario of your choice: Close your eyes. You’re in a dark, mossy forest under a full canopy of trees. The leaves are gently moving in the breeze and the light is just barely filtering through. There are plants growing on plants growing on trees and the soil is rich and fluffy and so dark that it’s almost black. You smell the rich earth, sun-warmed tree sap, and moisture on the leaves. You see an elephant curled up on the soft ground like a dog napping on a carpet and it looks up at you sleepily, inviting you to come over. It opens up its curl enough to create a perfectly you-shaped spot right in its sideways lap. You lay down in the space that’s still warm from where it’s trunk was resting. You both adjust positions until you are nestled in with the elephant and its head is positioned so that its long eyelashes are lightly brushing your cheek as it inhales and exhales. You inhale and exhale along with it, smelling its warm, musty skin and feeling the rhythmic touch of its soft lashes. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/700fecea-7e26-4614-8f6d-c22639f6202f/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.09.17+PM.png SPADES Arctic Tern Arctic terns may look unassuming. They’re mostly white and grey, with a long forked tail, sharply angled wings, barely there legs, a bright red bill, and a black cap. They weigh about as much as a deck of cards and reach up to a foot-and-a-half long. These little unassuming birds happen to do something really amazing—they make the longest annual migration of any animal on Earth. Every year, terns breed in the Arctic and Subarctic and then spend winter in the Antarctic. On average, they travel 44,000 miles round trip every year. As relatively long-lived birds, this means that a 30 year-old tern will have traveled the equivalent of three trips TO THE MOON AND BACK in its lifetime. This might sound like a pretty exhausting existence, but the Arctic tern lifestyle is pretty appealing. As a human, getting to fly across the world sounds exciting—the views! Also, Arctic terns experience more sunlight each year than any other creature on Earth. Goodbye, seasonal affective disorder! If that isn’t appealing enough, a big part of a male’s courtship routine involves feeding small fish to a female and continuing to feed her throughout the nesting period. Yes, please! If the tern has flown into your cards, it’s reminding you that you are on a journey. Consider where you are on a physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional path. Is there one of these elements that you have been pushing aside? Is there another that has been receiving the bulk of your energy? Consider where you could put energy toward health, healing, and growth, and take a tiny next step to do so. CONTRARY If the tern has appeared to you upside down, it is reminding you to Live. In. The. Now. If you were to draw lines to approximate the Arctic tern’s round trip migration over the Atlantic Ocean, you might see an infinity symbol. We are at one point in the journey of our lives and our lives are one point in the journey of our souls and molecules. But if time’s not even linear, then maybe being at a certain point isn’t even accurate (belated disclaimer: uninformed physics and metaphysics speculation time!)? Either way, right now, we’re humans! And yes, we’re all actually 99.9999999% empty space, and if you got rid of all that empty space we could each fit in a particle of dust—but it feels pretty important to be a human. Don’t forget to make the most of your fleeting journey as a human by being present in the moment. Maybe it feels like a great moment. Maybe it feels like a crummy moment. But gosh darnit, it’s what we’ve got. Don’t waste your time obsessing over the past or worrying over the future. Just enjoy that summer in Iceland while you can and don’t worry about all the miles you’ll need to fly—that part will happen when it needs to happen. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/b08d9278-4519-4792-b7ef-fee2a54d5a87/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.09.11+PM.png SPADES Komodo Dragon Komodo dragons only live on a few islands in Indonesia and nowhere else on the planet—and they are intense to say the least. First of all, Komodos are enormous (technically the largest living lizard). The males can reach up to 10 feet long and weigh about 150 pounds. Because they can eat 80% of their body weight in one go, a Komodo has weighed in at up to 300 pounds with a belly full of undigested deer, water buffalo, or other prey. Komodos are also fairly fearsome hunters, fighters, and cannibals. Adults are so fearsome that when their baby dragons are born, the babies immediately make a break for the treetops and stay there for one to two years. They’ll also roll themselves in feces to avoid getting cannibalized. In addition to eating each other, Komodo dragons eat carrion and hunt other live prey. They rely on stealth, speed, and strength to ambush their prey and use their razor sharp teeth to tear it apart. If you’ve ever seen a picture of the inside of a Komodo’s mouth, you might be thinking, “Um, I don’t see any teeth.” Komodo teeth are almost entirely covered with gum tissue—but they’re there. And they’re gnarly. When these dragons bite their prey, they release venom into their saliva through ducts located between their teeth. The venom makes its way into the wound and quickens blood loss and death. It’s not all blood and gore for the Komodo dragon, however. Apparently they can also be lovely, sweet creatures. I stumbled across an article about a dragon named Krakatoa in The St. Augustine Record. There’s a photo of Krakatoa (described by a handler as being very much like a puppy dog) at his eighth birthday party with a paper party hat and a relaxed look about him. He’s poised to tuck into a sheet cake made of meat and decorated with dead mice, while a group of eight year-old kids look on as part of the celebration. Eight year-old humans celebrating the birthday of an eight year-old dragon? We should do this kind of thing more often. If you wandered across the Komodo dragon, it’s asking you to think about other ways of sensing the world. Komodos experience the world very differently than us. They rely strongly on their sense of smell. They stick out their long forked tongue to taste the air and then touch the roof of their mouth, which houses their Jacobson’s organ, to create a smell picture of the world. Komodos (and most lizards, frogs, salamanders, sharks, and some others) also have a parietal eye, sometimes called a “third eye.” It is a light-detecting photoreceptor on the top of their heads that can’t form an image, but helps regulate circadian rhythms and is useful for escaping when a predator swoops down from above. We humans also have this third eye—ours just evolved to be buried in our brain in the form of the pineal gland. What are we missing with our limited senses? What similar views of the world do we share with other animals, like the Komodo, which use their tongues to smell as a dominant sense? What does it feel like to have a parietal eye on the top of your head? Imagine yourself as a Komodo dragon on one of their three tropical islands in Southeast Asia. Close your eyes and smell the deer a mile away in the humid air with your tongue. Sense light and shadow through the parietal eye on the top of your head. Your way of experiencing the world is just one of billions and trillions of ways of experiencing the world. Think of all of the animals together on Earth right now and imagine all of the ways the world appears to them. Our way is just one example. CONTRARY If the Komodo appeared upside down, it’s asking you to work smarter, not harder. The Komodo dragon spends a lot of time chilling and waiting for the opportunity to pounce on prey, and its venom makes its job even easier. If you’re facing a challenge that feels daunting or you feel like you’re running around in your life trying not to drop the ball left and right, consider the dragon. Can you come up with a smart solution to work with more ease? Can problem solving be your venomous saliva? Take a walk or sit under a tree and see if nature can’t clear your mind and help you brainstorm a way to a productive but chiller you. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/59a4cb4d-c230-4372-a5f2-513437325fbc/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.09.05+PM.png SPADES Bull Shark Peter Benchley’s Jaws, the fictional book-turned-Steven Spielberg movie about a great white shark that wreaks havoc one summer along the shores of a New England beach town, bears some striking similarities to a true story of an actual havoc-wreaking shark. Except instead of taking place in the 1970s, it took place in 1916. And instead of doing damage along a fictional coastline, it did damage along the Jersey Shore all the way to upstate New York by way of a creek. And instead of being a great white shark (which like most marine animals has adaptations that allow it to live in saltwater, but not in freshwater like creeks), some believe that it was—dun-dun-duuuun—a bull shark. The bull shark’s ability to not only dabble in freshwater, but to spend real quality time there, is part of why they have earned such a dangerous reputation. Bull sharks have special glands and kidney adaptations that allow them to osmoregulate, or balance their body salts, in both freshwater and saltwater. Bull sharks are so comfortable in freshwater that they have been found in the Amazon River in PERU.* Two fishermen even claimed to find one in the Mississippi River in ILLINOIS in 1937. Some of them also live in Lake Nicaragua, which they reach from the Pacific Ocean by swimming upstream against the current of the San Juan River, arcing into the air like spawning salmon. Bull sharks are members of the requiem shark family. In Catholicism, a requiem is a mass for the dead. Sharks and death are often lumped together in our scare tactic-loving culture. It’s true that bull sharks are aggressive and inhabit the same shallow waters that swimmers do—a dangerous combination. However, it’s worth looking more closely at the statistics around bull shark attacks. Each year, fewer than 20 people die from bull shark attacks worldwide. In comparison, about 20 million bull sharks die from deaths related to the fishing industry each year. The human activity of shark culling to reduce shark attacks has not been shown to reduce the number of attacks as it intends to do—but it almost certainly does have unintended consequences for the health of marine ecosystems. Due to these human activities, the bull shark is now classified as near threatened with extinction. If you chose the bull shark, it has a message for you about flexibility and endurance. When it comes to geologic time, sharks are running a marathon compared to humans’ 100 meter sprint. Sharks are older than TREES.** They’ve been around for 400 million years and survived FOUR mass extinctions.*** Instead of bones, sharks have flexible cartilage for a skeleton, allowing them to swim super fast. The bull shark’s ability to adapt its salt intake depending on its environment is another example of flexibility, allowing it to live in the Amazon River if it feels like it. You don’t need to be a shark to be flexible and play the long game. Is there somewhere in your life right now where being more flexible could make things better in the long run? As Jules likes to say: hook your future self up today. CONTRARY When you flip a shark upside down, it goes into a state called tonic immobility that looks a lot like hypnosis. Orcas have been seen taking advantage of this in the wild, in at least one case flipping a great white shark over and killing it. One of the most dangerous animals to humans on Earth can be subdued by simply flipping it over. If you pulled the shark upside down, it is reminding you to think outside the box for solutions to challenges in your life. If you always take a similar approach to solving a problem and it no longer seems to work, take a moment to think creatively and find another solution. It may be simpler than you think. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/6ff7f265-7057-45dc-9bd7-060639209cac/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.08.58+PM.png SPADES Hagfish Sometimes it’s hard to love an animal whose face you don’t understand. The hagfish is one such animal. Try as you might, that face is not going to get any easier. Many things about the hagfish, besides the face, are challenging. It’s a fish with a skull (okay), but no jaws or backbone (hmm). Looking at the hagfish, you might think that it’s just an evolutionary blip—a short rest stop on the road to something much more impressive. But when you compare today’s hagfish with the hagfish of yore, it doesn’t appear to have changed much in 300 million years. So that weird, wormy body does seem to be working for them in some crucial ways. Hagfish are really good at eating and at not being eaten. They spend much of their time boring into dead carcasses on the sea floor with their keratinous tooth-like structures. Since they don’t have jaws, they use a few quick moves to tie their bodies into a knot to create torque and get some power behind their bite. Hagfish can also go a long time without eating and instead absorb nutrients directly through their skin, giving them a lot of flexibility in the meals department. Hagfish have some scrappy strategies to avoid being eaten themselves. Their ability to tie their bodies into a knot is not only an effective eating strategy, but also allows them to slip away from would-be predators. They can also unleash some real Ghostbusters-worthy slime on predators if needed. When threatened, hagfish can exude a combination of mucus and protein fibers from pores along both sides of their body. The protein fibers unravel with the motion of the ocean, expanding the mucus up to 10,000 times its original volume in less than half a second. The slime can clog the gills of the predator—like a shark—after it bites the hagfish, giving the hagfish time to escape. But isn’t it a problem that the hagfish already got bitten by the shark, you ask? Yes, but the hagfish has a super saggy, blood-filled skin sac as an external body covering that is only loosely connected to its other insides. This means that a shark can bite and hit skin, but miss vital muscles and organs, allowing the hagfish to slime another day. Hagfish are known for burrowing themselves into a whale carcass and, at times, eating so much that they need to digest before they can wriggle their way back out. If you chose the hagfish, it’s not telling you to do that. I just wanted to add that as another fun fact. The hagfish is actually telling you, “You do you.” Maybe others think your slime defense is weird and gross. Sure, that may be true—but before you buy into peer pressure and adapt to more “normal” behaviors, consider the power of your unique abilities. This hagfish slime, as gross as it is, both helps hagfish survive and contains fibers that, when dried, are super strong threads with lots of potential for future fabric applications like artificial tissues and more. Your uniqueness is more valuable to you and others than you might think. CONTRARY Want to eat, but don’t have a jaw? No problem. Just tie your body in a knot so that the firm, flat part of the knot is right about where your jaw should be and voila! The rest of your body is now your lower jaw. A little too easy. Maybe you don’t think you have the right tool for the job or the right skills to get what you want. If you chose the hagfish upside down, it’s letting you know that you have more resources and abilities than you are aware of at the moment. In the same way that you didn’t think a knotted-up body could serve as a jaw, you may not be seeing your own hidden talents and resources. Consider what you might already have in your possession to problem solve your way out of a situation or propel yourself toward a goal. It may be something that is right in front of or inside of you, but that you’ve overlooked or haven’t considered. The hagfish inspires us to work with and appreciate what we’ve got. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/85a9dc48-2707-4c5e-8572-905407a64794/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.08.52+PM.png SPADES Brown Pelican Sometimes it’s hard to love an animal whose face you don’t understand. The hagfish is one such animal. Try as you might, that face is not going to get any easier. Many things about the hagfish, besides the face, are challenging. It’s a fish with a skull (okay), but no jaws or backbone (hmm). Looking at the hagfish, you might think that it’s just an evolutionary blip—a short rest stop on the road to something much more impressive. But when you compare today’s hagfish with the hagfish of yore, it doesn’t appear to have changed much in 300 million years. So that weird, wormy body does seem to be working for them in some crucial ways. Hagfish are really good at eating and at not being eaten. They spend much of their time boring into dead carcasses on the sea floor with their keratinous tooth-like structures. Since they don’t have jaws, they use a few quick moves to tie their bodies into a knot to create torque and get some power behind their bite. Hagfish can also go a long time without eating and instead absorb nutrients directly through their skin, giving them a lot of flexibility in the meals department. Hagfish have some scrappy strategies to avoid being eaten themselves. Their ability to tie their bodies into a knot is not only an effective eating strategy, but also allows them to slip away from would-be predators. They can also unleash some real Ghostbusters-worthy slime on predators if needed. When threatened, hagfish can exude a combination of mucus and protein fibers from pores along both sides of their body. The protein fibers unravel with the motion of the ocean, expanding the mucus up to 10,000 times its original volume in less than half a second. The slime can clog the gills of the predator—like a shark—after it bites the hagfish, giving the hagfish time to escape. But isn’t it a problem that the hagfish already got bitten by the shark, you ask? Yes, but the hagfish has a super saggy, blood-filled skin sac as an external body covering that is only loosely connected to its other insides. This means that a shark can bite and hit skin, but miss vital muscles and organs, allowing the hagfish to slime another day. Hagfish are known for burrowing themselves into a whale carcass and, at times, eating so much that they need to digest before they can wriggle their way back out. If you chose the hagfish, it’s not telling you to do that. I just wanted to add that as another fun fact. The hagfish is actually telling you, “You do you.” Maybe others think your slime defense is weird and gross. Sure, that may be true—but before you buy into peer pressure and adapt to more “normal” behaviors, consider the power of your unique abilities. This hagfish slime, as gross as it is, both helps hagfish survive and contains fibers that, when dried, are super strong threads with lots of potential for future fabric applications like artificial tissues and more. Your uniqueness is more valuable to you and others than you might think. CONTRARY Want to eat, but don’t have a jaw? No problem. Just tie your body in a knot so that the firm, flat part of the knot is right about where your jaw should be and voila! The rest of your body is now your lower jaw. A little too easy. Maybe you don’t think you have the right tool for the job or the right skills to get what you want. If you chose the hagfish upside down, it’s letting you know that you have more resources and abilities than you are aware of at the moment. In the same way that you didn’t think a knotted-up body could serve as a jaw, you may not be seeing your own hidden talents and resources. Consider what you might already have in your possession to problem solve your way out of a situation or propel yourself toward a goal. It may be something that is right in front of or inside of you, but that you’ve overlooked or haven’t considered. The hagfish inspires us to work with and appreciate what we’ve got. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/5249e75f-dca2-4e88-b483-8fae65b647dd/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.08.45+PM.png SPADES American Alligator On a hot summer night in 2009, I was alone on a boardwalk deep in the Everglades National Park. The glow of Miami’s nightlife was only smudging out a slice of the ink-dark sky. Facing south, you could see all of the stars. The stars were coupled with a near plague of fireflies, haphazardly communicating with each other using their bioluminescent abdomens and criss-crossing flight patterns. I pointed my flashlight beneath the horizon and four hundred alligator eyes reflected my light back at me. They began moving toward me in silent unison. The gliding eyes, the diagonal flashes of the insects, and the broad sections of the Milky Way struck me with a profound sense of deep time and synchronicity. I wondered how long this particular dance had been going on and was struck with awe by the scale of such a timeline. American alligators hit me with this same awe every time I see them lying on a bank, gliding through a marsh, or silently peering out of the water at the world above: they are fascinating windows into deep time. Crocodilians entered the scene more than 240 million years ago when their lineage diverged from that of birds. Ancestors that look very similar to present day crocodilians arose between 80 to 90 million years ago. One ancestor, Sarcosuchus, grew up to 36 feet long, weighed more than 8 tons, and ate dinosaurs for breakfast. Then, some 65 million years ago, the KT extinction event occurred, resulting in the extinction of about 75% of animals on Earth at the time, including non-avian dinosaurs. The ancestors to present day crocodiles and alligators survived. Today there are 23 species of crocodilians inhabiting almost all of the tropical regions on Earth. Crocodiles and alligators (which appear to be very similar creatures, save for a few distinguishing characteristics such as the U-shaped snout and bluish-gray skin of the alligator, versus the V-shaped snout and olive green skin of the crocodile) are members of the archosaur lineage—as are today’s birds. Archosaurs (which also included both dinosaurs and pterosaurs) split off from the larger reptile lineage (namely lizards, snakes, and turtles) about 245 million years ago. Crocodilians are therefore more closely related to birds than they are to other reptiles alive today. The American alligator is a rare conservation success story. Populations across its range were nearly decimated by the mid-1950s due to hunting and habitat loss. In 1967, American alligators were listed as federally endangered under a law that preceded the Endangered Species Act. Thanks to hunting restrictions and other conservation efforts, including captive breeding, they made a full recovery and were removed from the Endangered Species List in 1987. Today they have healthy populations across the southeastern US. But are these survivors from deep time safe from the effects of climate change? The sex of an alligator is determined by hormones and by what temperature the eggs are kept at during the thermosensitive period of incubation. Eggs kept at around 91 degrees Fahrenheit produce males, while eggs kept above or below that temperature typically produce females. With a sex determination system that relies on the environment, hormone-mimicking pollution and a warming climate could affect alligator reproduction. If you pulled the alligator card, this may be signaling the benefits of dual ecosystems. Alligators live an amphibious lifestyle, spending time in and out of the water. Do you have a place for refuge and a place for action? Maybe this is calling your attention to the need for boundaries between work life and personal life, for creative time versus social activities? What binary construct is on your mind these days, and how are you balancing the two worlds? CONTRARY If you pulled the alligator card upside down, maybe this ancient leviathan is asking you to look back through time and forward into the future. How little or how much have you evolved? Are you challenging yourself to grow in new and important ways? Are you staying true to your roots? Where do you want to go from here? — J B J https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/5fe17551-f08e-426b-bf0e-9fbd66eaba08/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.08.39+PM.png SPADES Black Widow Spider Female black widow spiders have one of the more villainous reputations in the animal kingdom, right up there with werewolves and velociraptors. Their sleek, shiny, tar black exoskeletons; the Ferrari-red hourglass symbol stamped on the underside of their bulbous abdomens; and their gangly, jointed legs all reinforce their creepy reputation as deadly killers who hide in the shadows. But the problem with this reputation is that it oversimplifies the beautiful complexities of these amazing animals. Black widows are arachnids, like all spiders, scorpions, ticks, and mites. They are famed for their uniquely toxic venom and are considered the most venomous spiders in North America. Male black widows are much smaller and browner than their female counterparts. Female widows are the ones that present the most danger with their larger venom reserves and beefier biting muscles. These spiders have one of the most potent venoms by volume known to people, but their bites are seldom fatal to humans. The black widows’ diet usually consists of other small invertebrates, but they’ve been known to trap and consume small mammals and reptiles at times. Contrary to common belief, only females of some widow species perform acts of sexual cannibalism and consume the male after mating. Despite their highly toxic venom, casual attitude toward cannibalism, and resemblance to Dracula, the black widow is a fairly docile creature and a master of mixed messages. Their ability to create and weave beautiful, incredibly strong and functional webs using their own tools and designs has crowned them as creators and communicators in cultures worldwide. If you’ve pulled the black widow card, perhaps she’s suggesting you pay attention to your audience. Black widows use aposematic coloration to warn predators of their highly toxic venom. They build their webs horizontally and hang on them from below, flashing their red hourglass to birds and other suspecting hunters above, while showing nothing but their infinitely dark exoskeleton to those below. There are times to show your colors and times to conceal. Read your crowd. This can prevent unnecessarily hurting people’s feelings or boring people at parties. It also builds healthy social skills and can strengthen relationships. CONTRARY Black widows typically inject their prey with enough venom to paralyze it, then inject enzymes that liquefy its insides and drink the juices from the corpse. When under threat from larger, inedible animals, the spider can bite and release no venom or just enough to sting (and cause nausea, severe abdominal and back pain, and paralysis of the diaphragm, which can make breathing a challenge—so no big deal). If you’ve pulled the black widow upside down, perhaps she is signaling the strength in pulling your punches. Sure, you may have the deadliest venom in the country, but what good is releasing it all into an animal you can’t even eat? —JBJ https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/b10ceccc-cc33-4988-8101-8316d784aed2/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.08.33+PM.png SPADES Loggerhead Sea Turtle Caretta caretta, where you been so long? For a long time, nobody knew where exactly baby loggerhead sea turtles go after they’re born. Loggerheads, the largest shelled sea turtle on Earth, are born on temperate and tropical shores across the globe. From around April to August, mature females (ages 18 to 37 and up, depending on the population) drag their hefty selves out of the ocean and onto beaches, where they lay about 100 to 130 eggs in a depression in the sand. After around 45 days, tiny 2-inch-long loggerheads hatch and make their way to the ocean. Then, a decade or so later and a few feet longer, they return to the coastal waters off of their natal shores. The years in between are known as the “lost years” due to the black hole of knowledge that exists surrounding their whereabouts. Scientists and loggerhead lovers alike wondered: where do the hatchlings go and what do they do for those several years out at sea? Folks knew that the journey of loggerhead hatchlings involves booking it as fast as possible into the deep ocean where predators are less plentiful, then taking a round-trip ride on ocean currents. Radio transmitters existed to better track animal movements, but none were small enough to attach to a wee sea turtle. Thanks to developing technology and the ingenuity of a biologist and her manicurist, scientists finally MacGyver’d tiny enough radio transmitter backpacks out of an old wetsuit, manicure acrylic, and hair extension glue. They put them on some young sea turtles and discovered something cool. Before this research, we already knew that turtles born on the southeastern US coast catch a ride on the North Atlantic gyre to the Mediterranean and back for an 8,000 mile round trip migration. They use an inherited map to guide them along Earth’s magnetic field and take advantage of ocean currents in the gyre to travel faster and with less effort. What surprised researchers when they tracked the young turtles’ movements was that instead of simply circling around in the gyre as predicted, at least some of these little turtles duck out of the current to hang out in the calm, seaweed rich center of the gyre: the Sargasso Sea. They seem to spend their time on mats of Sargassum seaweed, warming themselves in the sun and growing nice and big and strong. With females laying a few clutches each season of about a hundred eggs each, you might think the oceans would be totally overrun with loggerheads. Unfortunately, it’s tough out there for a turtle. Habitat loss and degradation by coastal development, beach driving, and plastic, water, noise, and light pollution take their toll on nesting turtles. Newborn hatchlings that get drawn toward artificial light instead of taking a direct route to the sea, for instance, are at greater risk of dying due to exhaustion and predation. Once turtles are out to sea they risk getting killed or injured by fishing lines and traps and ingesting plastic objects like balloons that they mistake for food. These risks are so great that loggerheads are threatened with extinction. If you chose the sea turtle, it’s asking you to embrace and nurture the ways in which you continue to grow. Loggerheads take their sweet time riding ocean currents and hanging out in the Sargasso Sea before becoming adults. Are you feeling like you should be further along in some ways than you are? Take a break from the current to spend some time in your Sargasso Sea to nurture yourself and your development at your own pace. Celebrate the fact that we never stop learning and growing, even if we seem to be just laying on some seaweed in the sun. CONTRARY As part of efforts to keep loggerhead sea turtle eggs from getting eaten by predators, well-intentioned folks put wire cages over nests. It turns out that the metal cages mess with the magnetic field around the eggs and may affect hatchling’s magnetic maps and cause problems with navigation. If you chose the sea turtle upside down, it’s asking you to gather all of the information about something before diving in to help. Sometimes you might think you’re helping, but if your actions are uninformed, they may have unintended consequences. If you’re trying to help a person or group of people, make sure that you ask them what they need instead of assuming you already know. If you’re trying to help other animals or the environment, research things you can do to help. For instance, cutting out single-use plastics and making reusable decorations instead of buying balloons are fine steps to take if we’re thinking about loggerheads. — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/bd96044b-8344-4fb7-a29e-9d93ae36776e/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.08.26+PM.png SPADES North American Porcupine I love to be surprised by an animal. Take the sounds of the North American porcupine. Some of you may already be familiar with “Teddy Bear the Porcupine’s Halloween Feast,” a YouTube sensation from 2013. In this brief video, Teddy Bear the porcupine happens upon a basket of small pumpkins and proceeds to tuck right in. For the entire video he’s munching and mumbling a series of cute, breathy squeaks and squeals that at times sound like a human baby. The sounds are surprising and cute enough to make you watch an entire video of a porcupine eating small pumpkins. You may not be surprised to hear that the porcupine is the second largest rodent and the only quilled mammal in the United States. Or that it has some cool predator defenses, like 30,000 quick-releasing quills that continue to work their way into a predator’s body after the attack. If a porcupine feels threatened, it will first clack its long, yellow rodent teeth in what a gentleman named Darvil on YouTube calls “battle chatter.” It can also release a stink that resembles really intense human body odor. If all else fails, porcupines can run backwards into the offender, release their barbs into its body, then make a quick getaway. (Well, not that quick. They’re actually pretty slow, lumbering, bow-legged critters.) What you may find surprising, however, is that their quilly defense can sometimes backfire on a porcupine. Porcupines like to spend a lot of time in trees. If they slip and fall, they can injure themselves with their quills. Other New World porcupines have evolved a prehensile tail that helps keep them from falling out of trees. While the North American porcupine lacks a prehensile tail, it has a layer of topical antibiotic on its quills that helps prevent infection should self-quilling occur. Mating also comes with its surprises. Female porcupines are only fertile for eight to 12 hours each year, so mating time is pretty intense. A female will release vaginal mucus and urine to let males know that she’s getting ready to mate. Males will track her down and fight for access. The winner will guard a female and projectile urinate on her to induce estrus (aka fertile times). If she doesn’t like him, she may make indignant-sounding squeals, shake off the urine, and even threaten him with her quills until he leaves. If she does like him, she will raise her tail over her back to cover her quills and mate with him. Seven-ish months later, she’ll give birth to usually a single porcupette and together, they will make a prickle (the name for a mom and her porcupettes). If the porcupine waddled into your world, it has a clear message for you: protect yourself, but don’t wreck yourself. Balance self-preservation with vulnerability. Your beautiful, bountiful soft fur says, “Hey, check me out, nice to meet you!” But the thousands of black-and-white spines mixed in warn, “We’re doing things on my terms.” You’re all party in the front and all business in the back. Consider your life and how vulnerability and self-protection manifest themselves in your actions and relationships. Are you feeling protective of a project or idea and scared to share it with the world? Or are you feeling some trepidation around opening up to a person? On the other hand, is there a relationship or situation where you could be putting up some stronger boundaries to protect yourself? CONTRARY When porcupettes are born, their quills are soft. They later harden into a weapon. If the porcupine appeared to you upside down, it is telling you to be careful not to harden too much yourself as you age. An upside-down porcupine is hiding its quills and revealing its vulnerable belly. Don’t forget to maintain a sense of wonder, curiosity, and play as you grow up and take on more serious responsibilities. How can you add a little lightness and play into your life? — A S https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/5fb576d3-803a-4e7c-be96-df69e32aef05/Screen+Shot+2024-05-30+at+3.08.19+PM.png SPADES - Make it stand out Four-eyed Fish I don’t know when or why we started collecting tautonyms—the scientific names of animals where the genus and species name are the same—but it’s been fun and we’ve amassed quite a list. If you look out for tautonyms when you’re reading about animals, you’ll be surprised at how many you come across. An early and treasured member of our collection is the four-eyed fish, or Anableps anableps. Anableps live in the muddy waters of mangrove forests in Trinidad and in the northern parts of South America. They get their name from the fact that their two eyes actually function as four eyes. The top and bottom of each eye is separated by a membrane and each eye has two pupils. The top of the eye is tuned to wavelengths that work better for vision above water, and the bottom is tuned to wavelengths that work better below. This allows them to swim around at the water’s surface, keeping half an eye out for danger above and half an eye out for danger below. Anableps belongs to a group of fish known as “one-sided livebearers.” Individuals are thought to be either left-handed or right-handed and only able to mate with a member of the opposite sex that has opposite handedness.* The male has a specialized anal fin called a gonopodium, which serves as his sex organ to impregnate females. If the male finds a complimentary-sided female who wants to mate, she’ll move a scale flap and they’ll mate. The female will then carry the eggs inside of her for a few months and give birth to about ten live young. If Anableps swam into your cards, it may be telling you to juggle different perspectives. Are you focused on the details, the day-to-day, the mundane? Expand your vision to see the big picture and how you fit into it. Look into the past for insight and direction, while keeping your focus on the present. You may also need to juggle your own perspective with a partner or family member’s perspective. In all of these things, just remember: clear four eyes, full hearts, can’t lose. CONTRARY Sometimes it’s hard to focus when there’s so much going on around you. If the four-eyed fish appeared to you upside down, it’s time to dial in your attention to the things that most need it. If you’ve been procrastinating or avoiding a project or situation, make an effort to exercise discipline. Maybe you’ve been wanting to make progress on a personal project, exercise regularly, eat healthier, spend less time with your phone, or get into birding. Pick one thing that could use more of your time and attention, schedule it into your routine, and stick with it. Remember to be patient with yourself throughout the process and to always appreciate what you have and where you’re at in this moment. — A S http://www.animalfactsclub.org/intro daily 0.75 2024-05-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/3d6e0977-2244-43fe-8366-93efeab4f819/AFC-card-back-black.jpg Intro http://www.animalfactsclub.org/jokers daily 0.75 2024-05-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/69a8b3f5-c469-420c-84ac-b72def0efd56/Screen+Shot+2024-05-31+at+2.20.23+PM.png JOKERS https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/15e76b49-0b28-49b3-9464-77bca8dbeb38/Screen+Shot+2024-05-31+at+2.20.32+PM.png JOKERS http://www.animalfactsclub.org/shop daily 0.75 2020-10-23 http://www.animalfactsclub.org/shop/rivernacular-book monthly 0.5 2026-02-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/393922d6-cdc1-4800-9420-de5a82cc0f92/Screen+Shot+2025-11-29+at+9.19.17+PM.png Shop - RIVERNACULAR BOOK - Screen Shot 2025-11-29 at 9.19.17 PM.png http://www.animalfactsclub.org/shop/2025-afc-calendar-preorder monthly 0.5 2026-01-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/5b94e9b8-74c6-488e-af6e-312c245588cf/Screen+Shot+2025-11-29+at+8.27.33+PM.png Shop - 2026 AFC Calendar PreOrder - Screen Shot 2025-11-29 at 8.27.33 PM.png http://www.animalfactsclub.org/shop/afc-sticker monthly 0.5 2024-11-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/86b0957b-5013-44d0-b07a-1c808655d629/woodpecker+sticker.jpg Shop - AFC Sticker http://www.animalfactsclub.org/shop/2024-afc-tees-2xl monthly 0.5 2024-11-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1722270232335-JMF0W8B3HFJ0S0UVFHKS/IMG_2571.jpg Shop - 2024 AFC Tees http://www.animalfactsclub.org/shop/2jcb8idj3a9l4mv97bv4i89u0kx1a3 monthly 0.5 2024-11-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1717183477811-9S8TIYAX0I2HFD64WFKD/AFC-card-back-black.jpg Shop - AFC Playing Cards (Deck of 54) http://www.animalfactsclub.org/shop/alligator-giclee monthly 0.5 2024-11-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1702411785944-474G1JE1ZCT2CVJ8HFW4/15x50.jpg Shop - Alligator Giclee http://www.animalfactsclub.org/shop/flying-gator-print-green monthly 0.5 2025-11-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1700710578831-SO9V1DHTC8CS0PGFFCF9/flyingalligatorgreens+copy.jpg Shop - Flying Gator Print https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55785d95e4b01bea7bb78df5/1700710669886-5OX7V345DYTZYIV4I553/flyingalligatorpink.jpg Shop - Flying Gator Print http://www.animalfactsclub.org/new-products daily 0.75 2015-11-11