Seen this on Facebook reels it looks like an opossum/cat hybrid but I don’t know if that’s possible, I cannot find any information and comments are off….

It has calico cat coloring, cat like paws and I’m so confused

A spider resting beneath a silk platform may be doing more than waiting for its next meal. In laboratory recordings, Australian jumping spiders alternated between prolonged stillness and brief episodes of retinal movement, twitching and curled legs. When researchers disturbed their sleep, the spiders later increased their REM-like activity, suggesting that these episodes form part of a regulated biological need.

The findings come from a University of Bonn-led study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. First author Nadja Geiger, Daniela C. Rößler and collaborators examined the spider Portia fimbriata using video recordings and behavioral experiments.

Their results strengthen the evidence that spider sleep has an organized structure, while leaving its underlying brain activity unresolved. The team housed individuals in 12-centimeter-wide plastic dishes and filmed their movements over several days and nights.

Looking for UK specific crepuscular animals and facts about them!

I was wondering if anyone knows any animals local to/native to the UK and any information about them. I'm doing some pieces for a local art project with the theme 'crepuscular' as opposed to nocturnal specifically, but so much of the information and the animals that come up when I look it up are in North America. I know that there must be a lot of insects and perhaps deer, rabbits etc. that are in the UK that could be included, really curious about any information anyone has! Thank you!

Pheasants are pretty good. Blackbuck are great with their angry eyebrows.

Hi all. I’m asking this on behalf of my wonderful aunt who has this little guy turn up in her yard around a week ago.

She mentioned that she’s never seen any bunnies before, and that it seems reeeeally small. Nobody in the surrounding area is missing a pet bunny, so we’re not sure if it’s just a kitten, but we can’t see a mother. Can anyone tell us if this is a wild bun? Thank you!

I would like to know more about wolverines.

the Bednarld's Wolf: The wolf was domesticated by humanity and everything changed; before the world's enormous wolves evolved, they could become huge and very rideable dogs, A huge, muscular, and rare but furry dog is like a companion pet, but when exploring in nature it becomes more primitive and a cousin of mastiff species; the special one is the enormous cousin of the smaller Tibetan mastiff.

Warm regions near the equator may have offered crocodile relatives a refuge when an asteroid ended the age of non-avian dinosaurs. Their long-standing preference for warmth could have placed surviving populations where suitable climates endured through the catastrophe and its prolonged environmental aftermath. That possibility emerges from research tracing their changing geography across nearly a quarter-billion years.

The study, led by University College London researchers and published in Science Advances, combines fossils with reconstructed climates and evolutionary relationships. Its central finding challenges the familiar image of crocodiles as unchanged survivors. Their ancestors changed enormously in shape and lifestyle, while largely retaining a preference for warm environments.

“The asteroid did not make the whole planet equally hostile to every group,” said lead author Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza of UCL Earth Sciences. His team found that tropical and subtropical climates remained suitable in most simulated impact scenarios. Those results identify a possible survival mechanism, rather than proving precisely where every surviving population lived.

Can someone explain what exact conditions might have caused cephalopods such as octopuses to evolve? Also, what are they adapted to ? They're such weird creatures, very smart but very short lived, they don't make sense to me. Usually smart creatures need quite a long time to develop neuronal systems

An anatomical neck did not necessarily give ancient vertebrates the freedom to look around. Models of several early tetrapod relatives suggest their heads remained surprisingly restricted, even after the skull separated from the shoulders. The findings challenge the assumption that greater head mobility drove one of the major changes associated with the transition toward land.

The study, published in Nature, combines fossil measurements with mechanical tests on living lake sturgeon. First author Dana Korneisel, now a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University, worked with an international team including Penn State biologist Tom Stewart. Researchers at Carleton University, the University of Ottawa and the University of Washington also contributed.

The authors propose that changing demands on the shoulders offer a better explanation than a newly flexible head. As front appendages took on a greater role in movement, separating the shoulder apparatus from the skull may have become advantageous. Substantial neck mobility, their analysis suggests, generally developed later, rather than arriving automatically with that separation.

I’ve heard it pronounced: “o tar EYE id” and “o TAR ee id”. The OED says accent on TAR, but the marine mammal people I know put the accent on EYE.

Any opinions?