Microblog post: "The animal handlers at the Oregon Zoo Took Elephant around to meet some other animals. The sea lions were her favorite.". Photo of a elephant looking at a seal behind glass under water. Simplistic drawing of a elephant: "Pröööh :DDD". Simplistic drawing of a seal: "Blubb :DDD"

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[–] 58 points 2 months ago* (8 children)

Fun facts:

  • Seals are far more closely related to raccoons and cheetahs than they are to elephants.
  • Elephants are far more closely related to sea cows and hyraxes than they are to seals, raccoons, and cheetahs.

Hope that makes your day nicer.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    Is there a visual graph for navigating animal genomes by "hopping" between them? Or like an ancestry tree?

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  • [–] 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    You're thinking of a phylogenetic tree, and whereas I can't think of "jumping" between various points in a way that's pragmatic, there is something like OneZoom. (Edit: Be careful if you have motion sickness.)

    Ideally you're just looking at a tree of the taxon at the lowest level you can, in this case class Mammalia. (Technically infraclass Placentalia, but it's cooler if you look at mammals as a whole.)

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    Here's a game that challenges your knowledge of taxonomy

    https://metazooa.com/

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    🐩 Animal #1119 🕊️
    I figured it out in 12 guesses!
    🟧🟧🟧🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟩🟩🟩🟩
    🔥 1 | Avg. Guesses: 12

    That was fun, but I wouldn't be able to do this without Wikipedia.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    🐟 Animal #1119 🐺 I figured it out in 18 guesses! 🟧🟨🟩🟩🟨🟩🟩🟨🟩🟨🟨🟩🟩🟨🟩🟩🟩🟩 🔥 1 | Avg. Guesses: 18

    https://metazooa.com/ #metazooa

    Today's was unusually hard. I usually get it way faster. Fucking birds.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago*

    🦁 Animal #1119 🐌 I figured it out in 11 guesses! 🟧🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🔥 1 | Avg. Guesses: 11

    That's a cool game, but I skipped too many biology classes, so I also needed wiki's help to complete it

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  • [–] 57 points 2 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 52 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I don't want to be a dink but, like, the photo is right there! And in that photo is an animal without tusks. So why did the cartoonist draw a walrus? Walrus aren't sea lions.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    This is sort of good I guess for some enrichment, but I went to the Vancouver aquarium a decade ago and it was sad. The dolphins /whales in the tank just did the exact round trip of their environment over and over, with same twist , rollover and turn every time. I watched for half hour and it was an unbroken loop of the exact motion. Those animals were losing their minds in there. When family came to visit and insisted on going I just dropped them off and said call me when you are done and just drove around Vancouver for an hour. I couldn't see that again.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Is that glass even transparent where the sea lion could see the elephant or is it one-way glass?

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  • [–] 26 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    No, the sea lion can see out. That's the fun, they can actually interact with the people, if they want to. Some do, some don't.

    These kinds of tanks are common in big aquariums like Sea World.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago

    Sea lions don't have tusks.

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