Blessed Images

numbat family!

 

Where do you find all these wondrous blessings??

 

Some rattie blessings:

Spoiler: lorge

 

When I am feeling very out of sorts, or just plain bored, or whatever, I go to YouTube & Google Images and type the names of animals I really like into the search bar. That's really it! And of course when you start out searching for one animal, you always get shown related animals because people on the internet tag things badly, but that's okay because most animals are super cute and if they're not they're ugly-cute.

(This activity is Highly Recommended for any time that you are not feeling as good as you would like to feel. I can't guarantee that it will fix a bad depression flareup or deep grief, of course, but since it can still distract you, it's one of those things that never hurts to try.)

Thylacines are my #1 favourite of course, but I don't post a lot of them to here because I've already posted most of my faves and there's also a lot of pictures that are sad, which is not what this thread is for.

I also watch Wild Kratts and Dr K's Exotic Animal ER (WK makes my morning commute on BART more bearable, and this weekend while I was sick I binged on Dr K) and these shows introduce me to new adorably weird animals to google. I got stuck on fossas toward the end of March when I watched all the Madagascar WK episodes.

 

Sidenote and completely off topic - have any of you watched much of Coyote Peterson's stuff? I keep getting recced him, but when I go all of his vids seem to be 'BITTEN/STUNG by a (insert name)!' Like, dude, if you're provoking animals into attacking you, you are not a good person.

Please tell me I've got it all wrong?

 

Oh, I can answer this actually! In every single one of those, it's always an animal captured and released, usually with a lot of care and gentleness, and he does have a few where if he can't get the (usually a bug) to bite/sting him, they just release it so it isn't too stressed out. (The capture process is also incredibly gentle most of the time--I don't think I've ever seen someone lovingly handle a wasp before.)

He has a fair number of videos that aren't about that at all, but the whole conceit behind them is to show people what that experience would be like and why they shouldn't provoke those animals; almost every video is like 1/4 the bite/sting and the other 3/4s are talking about the animals in question, how humans should (or shouldn't) be interacting with them in their environments, how to identify them to steer clear properly, and what sort of medical care they should seek in the event the worst does happen. It's also one part an attempt to show that yes it will hurt and yes it can be a serious medical condition, but a lot of these are animals that won't kill you and deserve to have their space respected in the first place, so it's trying to dispel some of those fears.

The thumbnails and titles are super clickbaity, I won't deny that. But the purpose behind them is education first, shock value second.

 

Many animal video titles are pure snark. People who have servals and bobcats that are obviously happy and loving and well-cared for get stupid comments about how the animal is just waiting to turn on them or how terrible they are for taking care of this critter which in many cases was not even born in the wild and wouldn't know what to do with itself out there, so you see videos titled "Bobcats Hate People!" that are baby bobcats being aggressively lovey while mamma is trying to write in a book (just like any other cat) or "Serval Attack!" that is that hug-leap thing pet servals do.

Also you'll see titles like "Cutest Bear Attack" that are obviously not animal attacks at all. (Spoiler alert: it's a baby bear that keeps grabbing this guy's leg by the side of a road.)

Spoiler: my one and only anti-rec, spoilered because it's not happy place stuff

The only people on YouTube that I would recommend avoiding are Big Cat Rescue. This is a happy place thread so I don't really want to go into the reasons for that, but if you really want to know, The Truth Is Out There. Google "Carole Baskin". But not on a day when you want to feel good about Life, the Universe and Everything.

 

Also most of the brave wilderness videos are not actually bite or sting videos but wandering about looking for neat critters to catch show and release. The bite/sting videos are just the most popular so they tend to pop up at the top of searches.

Most videos contain a bit showing the little dudes getting released back where they found them except in cases where they find an invasive species then they get handed over to an appropriate group for research/keeping.

And if you go through the channels main page you can find plenty of wilderness exploration and tide pool videos with zero chomping.

 

Heres my boyfriend buried under every pillow and several of the stuffed animals in my living room

 

baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaby coyote :)


If you haven't encountered/read the blog The Daily Coyote (www.dailycoyote.net) before, you really should.

 

also baby coyote.

The same one, in fact. I hadn't checked in on that blog in a long time; I used to read it every day!

 

a more recent picture of the aforementioned coyote :D

 

This video gives off an intensely positive vibe

 

https://twitter.com/OmahaZoo/status/901517764287803393

baby snow leopard playing with her mamma

 

bffs

 

pibbbles