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• Post #4434720

  night walk mammal tally - 4-5 raccoons - 2 skunks - 1 cat enjoying the catmint in a garden - 1 rabbit #parkdale #toronto #UrbanWildlife

• Post #4156303

  Have some oribatid mites for #MiteMonday. These tiny detritivorous soil-dwelling mites look kind of like shiny poppy seeds. The plates on their sides are called pteromorphs ("wing-shaped") and are a feature of certain groups. #bugstodon #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #Acari #Acariformes #Oribatida #Poronota

• Post #4120074

  really wonderful quotes in this article about beaver coexistence professionals (https://baynature.org/2026/07/22/explore/it-gets-me-out/what-it-takes-to-become-a-beaver-coexistence-professional/): > "California used to be a joke at the beaver conferences because it represented one of the more backward approaches to beaver management in the world" > "'Nobody grows up being like, 'I really want to work with beavers'" > Beaver conflicts, and deaths, conce...

• Post #4078559

  Apropos of nothing 😇 , there is a species of recluse spider, _Loxosceles coheni_, named after legendary Canadian singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen. From an Entomology Today article by one of the scientists (https://entomologytoday.org/2021/01/08/new-species-recluse-spider-named-for-leonard-cohen/): "I have been listening to Cohen’s music since a rather young age, especially more so during the recent years, which certainly helped with working during the cold, dark, and long winters o...

• Post #4066921

  @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org More on this from Dr. Sehgal at The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/replacing-gas-stoves-with-electric-stoves-greatly-reduces-asthma-symptoms-287753 Original (quite readable) study: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaip.2026.06.039

• Post #4018310

  #WeevilWednesday: some people have been confused about how female hollyhock weevils (_Rhopalapion longirostre_) use their long snouts, so here you go. Her mouthparts are at the end of the snout. She chews a tunnel down into the heart of the flowerbud. Then she turns around, extends her ovipositor (at the end of her abdomen), and lays eggs down the hole. The larvae have a safe place to grow, with plenty of food! #bugstodon #insects #weevils #Coleoptera #Curculionoidea #Brentidae #Apioninae

• Post #3943854

  will my gts instance be done migrating in time for #Monsterdon? i guess we'll see

• Post #3935371

  A bunch of those generic viral "good news" sites are sharing this February 2025 Signal Hill story about a ten-year-old boy in Japan collaborating with one of the American entomologists who showed butterflies remember what they learn as caterpillars (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001736) to prove, amazingly, that butterflies pass on these learned memories to their offspring. However they all say less than the original story, and you really have to listen to it/read the transcrip...

• Post #3871739

  So much discussion of Kessler Syndrome and space pollution, so few references to PLANETES (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes), which I think is the only fictional work I've seen that pretty much revolves around space junk and its implications

• Post #3823505

  everything sucks and is terrible but i did go down to the lake and see a juvenile red-winged blackbird doing the thing where it hops up to some bit of food and opens its beak and flutters its wings hoping the food will go in and then it runs to the parent who just flies off exasperated, so there's that

• Post #3794731

  #MiteMonday: I chased this sidewalk mite around a bocce ball court in a park for ages because I thought it was one of the iridescent blue-green ones, only to find out it just had some green stuff on it. 😐 It looks kind of like lichen but I have no idea how lichen would even grow on a mite. It's probably some random paint or powder or algae-filled water that dried on it. #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #Acari #Acariformes #Erythraeidae

• Post #3596460

  So I don't think I mentioned this on here, but a couple weeks ago, walking to the grocery store, I was surprised to find a couple of *beautiful* metallic green sweat bees peeking out of burrows in a rather weedy, neglected, half-bare corner of yard, right by the sidewalk. Today I saw them again and was taking pictures when one of the residents was coming home. I was like, "Did you know you have BEES" and pointed them out to her, and she was very excited! She mentioned they make sur...

• Post #3335107

  Today's whirligig mites are eating: - small fly (midge?) - plant bug nymphs - another whirligig mite #DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #bugstodon #arachnids #mites #Acari #Acariformes #Anystidae

• Post #2500849

  From @davidgerard: https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/05/06/openai-chatgpt-goes-goblin-mode-let-none-say-model-collapse/ > OpenAI even put specific instructions into the system prompt for Codex, their AI coding model, to try to get it not to talk about creatures: [GitHub (https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/models-manager/models.json#L55)] > > > Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is a...

• Post #2244178

  current earworm: the indoor centipede song https://youtu.be/3W3R3EElMho (note, video contains footage of house centipedes, so just listen to the audio if you're skittish)

• Post #2188741

  The linked story about digital forensics & AI is great (https://mastodon.social/@FabMusacchio/116529625252630872), but one of the best ways to tell if an image/video is doctored, CGI, or AI-generated isn't mentioned: FIND THE ORIGINAL SOURCE. Quite often tracing the source shows that it was originally from an AI slop account, computer graphics artist's channel, ad agency portfolio, or parody site. Or it is genuine but taken out of context. I use tools like TinEye, Googl...

• Post #2046954

  GROUND BEES (I think they are #Colletidae?) #HighPark #toronto #bugstodon #NativeBees #bees #Hymenoptera #Anthophila

• Post #1902577

  Garden update: - rain barrel in operation (I did have to half get inside while another person held the tap still, but after leaving it empty for a few days it was less gross than expected) - mosquito kill bucket set up (based off @colinpurrington's instructions here: https://colinpurrington.com/2024/08/bti-honeypot-traps/)

• Post #1880352

  It's time to send Billy Joe Armstrong to bed and wake up Justin Timberlake, until Oct. 1, when they will switch places

• Post #1774599

  So, heads up, I'm seeing this post announcing palantirwatch.org being boosted a lot: https://indieweb.social/@perlman/116487195727382898 However, the site seems to be vibe coded and, while I've just picked stuff at random, most claims are lacking sources and/or just plain wrong. I think it is all generated by an LLM. - For example, the "Court Dossier" page mentions a 2019 case "Kik v. Palantir", about a "former partner" suing them for stealing fraud-detec...

• Post #1758949

  randomly came across the most cursed photo (Wikimedia: https://w.wiki/MLy3)

• Post #1741273

  #MastoAdmin / #FediAdmin question: is it possible to replace custom emojos? E. g. if I want to replace one with a redrawn version. Can I just delete the existing one (on the custom emoji page) and upload the new one with the same shortcode?

• Post #1673102

  check out this good pigeon nest I saw. one was busy bringing sticks to add. I yelled "ever seen a baby pigeon?" at two intoxicated people passing by, and pointed out the pigeon nest to them. I tried to impress upon them that it was a really good nest, by pigeon standards. *I'm* keeping Parkdale weird, what about you?? #pigeons #parkdale #toronto

• Post #1638307

  Mite fight! #DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #mites #RedVelvetMites #SumoMites #MiteBehaviour #Acari #Acariformes #Trombidiidae

• Post #1632606

  #DailySpiderPic: night spiders! A couple big _Larinioides_; a silky _Clubiona_ leaf-curling sac spider; and a running crab spider. Most of the spiders out and about now were born last year and overwintered. They are reaping a plentiful bounty of midges (family Chironomidae), which have begun to emerge. #ArthroBeauty #bugstodon #spiders #Araneae #Araneidae #Clubionidae #Philodromidae

• Post #1378707

  test post please don't ignore; like/boost/reply to test federation **edit:** okay we're back, please ignore

• Post #1349894

  remember if you see a spaceship on the feed press the doorbell so the lock-keeper can let it into the atmosphere

• Post #1132044

  This infographic about how to pick up a snail is going viral, but it was AI-generated and numerous biologists have chimed in to say it is wrong. (I previously boosted it, but have un-boosted. The post author has been informed, and *edit: has deleted the post!) Source: https://g.co/about/jb9fd7 Biologists countering: - https://functional.cafe/@kupac/116129641965242964 - https://ecoevo.social/@ubi/116129816353041890

• Post #1042033

  I also encountered something I'd never seen before. This spruce(?) tree had little red patches on it which turned out to be remarkable profusions of juvenile _Bryobia_ clover mites! _Bryobia_ are in the spider mite family Tetranychidae, and I have seen photos of the silk-making spider mites, like gorse mites and two-spotted spider mites, aggregating like this on their webs. But the subfamily Bryobiinae does not make silk and until now I had never seen them swarm like this. They formed...

• Post #1035902

  i don't particularly care for public displays of affection but the male cardinal is feeding the female seeds which i find inutterably cute #birdeing