Reader of Entrails

@haruspex.bsky.social

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Zoo pathologist 🧪💀🧑🏻‍⚕️ She/her 🏳️‍🌈
Unsettling animal facts & inadvisable humor.
Posts are my own and do not represent current, past, or future employers.
My day job: https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/zoo-animal-deaths

Posts Replies Media

Reply to

Hillary Monahan

The two kinds of carriers for the two kinds of cats: 1) The carrier must be military grade, opened in another room, and kept out of sight until the last possible moment. 2) Spare banker box left opened will spontaneously fill with cat. A flap of cardboard can be bungee-corded to the top to secure.

Reply to

Popehat

I wish the feral 5% were so low. There’s a paper out there about how many men would use force to engage in unwanted sex if they could get away with it, and the answers from men’s own mouths were over 30% admitting they would. And 14% still would even if the question used the term “rape”.

The crime. The criminal. Friggin gremlin ambushed my defenseless cheddar sourdough. Real bread is so rare in our house that I forgot this jerk is Not to Be Trusted™️ around full-test baked goods.

I have excellent news! It’s Lap Cat Day! About once a month, my ridiculous feline himbo stops bouncing off the walls and swearing at birds long enough to curl up in a lap.

I have cheated via strategic placement of his favorite blanket. It is a cunning plan that he has not yet grown wise to.

Fawn update: still extremely cute! (Mom is just out of frame.) Fun facts, deer lack a gall bladder. (So do horses. Cattle have them tho.)

Reply to

Wobbologist (they/them) 🏳️‍⚧️

Name: Kali (she/her/Dr.) Field: Conservation Veterinary Pathology (zoöpathology) Hobbies: SciComm, books, cooking, biking, doing nature stuff Random: I was electrified twice in utero. My friends say it explains a lot.

Y’all, I was sent a free sample of a “booty mask”. Usually, I let my undies mask all that’s needed down there, but no. Someone invented a product specifically for tautening the tush. Perking the peach. Re-embouncing the booty-skin. And then someone *wrote this copy & instructions*. Please enjoy!

🧪 My favorite lagomorph is not a rabbit or a hare, but a secret, third type: PIKAS. They are smol, round alpine critters that gather flowers and also shriek in rage and defend territory with vicious murder. 🥹😍 So ofc, I had to help write about their pathology. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Reply to

Mel Gillman

What gorgeous art! Thank you for laboring on this wonderful topic! Please enjoy my happy mug with a rosette of L. cinncinatus.

Some Important Things Happened™️ and… yanno what, here is a little fawn who scampered past me this morning on my bike ride to work. Pardon the blur, that kiddo was HUSTLING.

🧪 Spinal abnormalities are pretty common in snakes, but this little friend (juvenile eastern rat snake) is probably fine, just nervous at having been caught in a gov’t building without appropriate ID. The kinky posture is a defensive display, & adults do this as well. Not damaged, just anxious!

🧪 Today we are going to talk about skink cancer. “Don’t you mean skin cancer?” I do not. Please remind your skink friends to get their regular colonoscopies. Colon cancer is pretty common in many reptiles, and I’ve seen a bit in skinks, plated lizards, and ESPECIALLY in Gila monsters.

Friend, I can tell you would like some of these pistachios, but lingering outside of my window and staring in while I eat them is a creepy choice, and I’m going to need you to do better.

Happy spring everyone! With rising temperatures, keep an eye out for signs that your cat has melted.

Lil inchworm joined me for Zoonosis Training. Thanks for your company, friend! 🐛

Just finished this and Y’ALL. I loved it so much. It’s monstrous and funny and sweet and queer. It’s a whole vibe. It is very much its own thing, but I especially recommend for fans of T. Kingfisher (esp the gothic/horror or Paladin books).

I worked my whole life to get to this day. My monster has escaped into the world. SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN is out now! Shesheshen is a shapeshifting monster with a big problem: she's fallen for a human. This human is so kind and thoughtful, but also? This human is hunting her.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell: 9780756418854 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Bookswww.penguinrandomhouse.com A Most-Anticipated Book of 2024: LitHub, Polygon, Apple, Goodreads ⭐

This pic from Science Friday live at GWU tickles me pink. You can tell by my hair. Just Ira Flatow and me being delighted nerds about wild creatures! Life goals!!! (Major thanks to @panic.gay for the SciFiBi jacket that made me feel so rad! And all that pre-show hype!)

🧪 What do you do if a scientist retires and leaves you his “whale baculum” that some random field scientist gave him forever ago? Well, first, whales don’t have bacula. So you try to identify it. This is a walrus baculum, largest of any extant species! 🧵

The crime | The criminal

🧪 I made a friend today! Meet Mercury, the red-tailed boa. He’s both very handsome and delighted to play dress up as the fanciest hat. 🐍 Boas have tiny claw “spurs” on either side of their cloacas that are the vestigial remnants of hind legs.

Like, look how utterly charming this guy is!!! He just chilled with me for several hours.

If you see this, you are invited to post kitty.

If you see this, post kitty.

🧪🪲 This one was even better than I remembered. Don’t forget to put mesh over the tubing to prevent the patient from scampering into it! This is from a study to make sure isoflurane is safe and effective at providing anesthesia for pet mantises. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34687518/

Just a happy cat in the sunshine. Hope your day is as good as his!

🧪 🦎 I just read a very serious paper about reproductive system imaging in chameleons, and I need you to know that this was Figure 1.

We are up to TWO delicious sweet potato gratins*. (Vegan, gluten free, soy free, may contain nuts. Processed on equipment that also took off my fingertip, but like, I rinsed everything really well after. And wore gloves.)

Welp, I’ve blooded the new mandolin. I don’t usually have kitchen accidents, but this is better than things burning, which is more common for me 😆.

Reply to

Matt

Though we must remember that many things from The Deep we think of as blobby don’t look like that at their native pressures. Decompression is a cruel mistress. Most folks wouldn’t recognize the below as a blobfish without its comically distorted features.

Hey Siri… you ok, hun?