I have 2 cats who occasionally participate in recreational battle. While they play appropriately, their romping can be disruptive during early morning tea and contemplation and sometimes I need them to curb their enthusiasm. Enter the Get Along Tent.
When they start going a little too HAM I will toss a throw blanket over a chair. All of a sudden that is the most novel item in the room, and the boiz must Explore It before returning to their ritual violence. This can take anywhere from 5 to 20min, giving me plenty of time to finish my tea in peace.
As a feline behavior consultant I often recommend these types of strategic environmental enrichment to my clients! Some of my other favs are:
The Ball Pit (laundry bin or box filled with balled up paper and/or treats)
Trash Kittens (various paper-based items filled with treats, egg cartons, cereal boxes, toilet paper rolls, etc. for them to explore)
The Dispensary (same as above but filled with Nip/valerian/silvervine/cat mint)
Thunderpaws (a large sheet of packing paper/tissue paper/newspaper or similar laid out on the ground, creative scronching optional. This one is always a winner)
Meet one of the most colorful residents of the ocean’s midnight zone. ✨
The remarkable coloration of the psychedelic jelly
tipped off scientists that they had found a previously unknown species. It was named in honor of Claudia Mills for her dedication to studying the ocean’s delicate drifters.
While most jellyfish alternate between a swimming stage (the medusa) and an attached stage (the polyp or hydroid), Crossota jellies spend their entire lives in the water column between 1,000 to 4,000 meters (3,300 to over 13,000 feet) deep.
Unlike many jellies, we can see obvious differences between males and females. The eggs in the females are large and globular, while the male gonads are shaped like sausages. Crossota jellies reproduce sexually and give “birth” to live young. The baby medusae stay attached under the mother’s bell until they are ready to launch.
Check out last year’s Top 10 video to learn more about these dazzling deep-sea denizens directly from our MBARI researchers: https://mbari.co/toptenvideo.
Okay so i know this is silly but uh im worried abt a lady bug i put outside for context this was my first time bug relocating (i used to have a really bad phobia slowly overcoming) and so it was a shaky n long process and the ladybug took a very long time and some coaxing to get off the paper and im scared i injured it or that the stress induced by the process may have done more harm than good. Not only that but we have a winter storm watch and so im unsure if leaving it in the house (warm) wouldve been better but idk if it couldve found food either? Also how would u recommend relocating bugs just in general to make it as painless for the bug as possible
It’s not silly! I’m glad you’re overcoming your fear. As far as whether it will make it outside, it really depends on the species. Some only live a year and mostly die in the fall/winter anyway. Some live 2-3 years and have no trouble finding a nice place to settle in for the winter. They go into an inactive state so they don’t have to eat or drink much when there aren’t many resources. It’s perfectly fine to put them outside, they’ve been surviving outside for a long long time and don’t need our help. Ladybugs and most other beetles you’d encounter are pretty tough and can handle quite a beating before being damaged enough not to function, so I’m sure it was just fine! But ideally, handle them as little as possible. The cup and paper method for relocating bugs is perfect :)
It’s a cute, cute game and I love all of it, but it has some serious flaws. For instance, at one point in the game, the player is supposed to get some sort of a picture of a secret compartment that has a red button in it, and they don’t, so there is a point where the player is going around for hours in the dark with a flashlight, not seeing the object they’re looking for at all.
And, like, that is the most obvious way the game could’ve gone wrong! But no, instead it goes wrong in this direction:
The player, for some reason, decides to think of a secret compartment as a red button.
The game is, in a very stupid, literal sense, pointing to something with a red button, and telling you that’s the button.
You point your flashlight at this red button, and your light goes out.
You think you’ve found the button. But it turns out the thing that was pointing to the red button wasn’t actually a red button. It was just a light.