🐸 Happy National Frog Month!! 🐸
Appreciate the good lads of your local bog!
R-Return to the witness stand.
To Whom It May Concern:
Hey followers check out this fat ass mouse!
heathen!
it’s a pika!
they’re not mice (rodents), they’re lagomorphs (bunnies).
they live on top of mountains, because they’re from back in the ice age, and only mountain tops have the appropriate climate anymore.
they don’t hibernate in the winter,
so they spend the summer gathering flowers and hay
they dry their crops in the sun
and then store them in underground burrows to eat all winter.
they also hop around and shout “meep meep meep” at you
A pika? wait, as in…? Are you fuckers telling me that Pikachu was a god damn RABBIT this entire time!?!?!?!?!?
Actually, probably!
I can’t speak to the intentions of the original creator but there are several species of Pika (Pronounced ‘Pike-ah’ jsyk) the one pictured above is the American Pika, native to my elevated back yard of the Colorado Rockies.
The Northern Pika (Ochotona hyperborea) is native to Northern Asia and has a swath of it’s range in the mountains of Northern Japan, where it has been nicknamed The Japanese Guinea Pig, which is about as taxonomically incorrect as calling it a mouse- they’re closest to rabbits.
Another fun fact: Pika call to each other (really, yell at each other to STAY OUTTA MY YARD) with a high-pitched call that…
…Really does sound like it’s saying “Pi! Pi!” doesn’t it?
FRIENDS
In a simple experiment, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to find out whether a rat would release a fellow rat from an unpleasantly restrictive cage if it could. The answer was yes.
The free rat, occasionally hearing distress calls from its compatriot, learned to open the cage and did so with greater efficiency over time. It would release the other animal even if there wasn’t the payoff of a reunion with it. Astonishingly, if given access to a small hoard of chocolate chips, the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive — which is a lot to expect of a rat.
The researchers came to the unavoidable conclusion that what they were seeing was empathy — and apparently selfless behavior driven by that mental state.
“A New Model of Empathy: The Rat” by David Brown, Washington Post
OH MY.
this just in: rats are more humane than humans
I’ve been thinking about this for literal years. So, finally, I decided to draw it.
If someone’s already done this, I’m sorry.
Knickle real.
@lesbiiantesttube you had a part in this so im tagging you in it
gummycore
