Liz Weinberg

Nine people standing in a row in front of a vast glacier with jagged mountains in the distance

Woman standing on a rock in front of a glacier running through a wide valley, with dark moraines and arcuate ogives on the surface of the ice

I haven't seen enough Juneau Icefield Research Program on hype on BlueSky!

Are you a student interested in polar science? Are you a researcher imagining future field work? Are you an educator looking to teach the best and brightest?

JIRP is for you! Deadlines are soon!

www.juneauicefield.org 🧪⚒️

Oooh an EXCELLENT choice

ok yes this is a good good choice

brb gotta google

elmo is wearing a chef 's hat and holding a glass of orange juice Alt: elmo is wearing a chef's hat and saying that's a big word for elmo

Today's #scicomm / science question: what are your favorite science/ecology/climate words? For their beauty, their utility, their awe-inspiration, or simply because they're fun to say? 🧪🦑

Some of mine: solastagia (neologism), pyrocumulonimbus (awe+beauty+horror), albedo (important+fun to say)

Thank you! Just messaged you 🪼🪸

Thank you! I just emailed you.

Ooh thank you! I love "super fast biological systems" as a field of study

thank you!

a close up of a sea anemone with a lot of tentacles Alt: a close up of several sea anemones in different colors (white, yellow, brownish orange) waving their tentacles

Science and marine life folks! Does anyone on here study sea anemones (or know someone who does)? I'm particularly interested in talking to someone about the biomechanics of their tentacles and stinging cells. 🧪🦑

Also hi @lisasheffieldguy.bsky.social it was wild to come across your name when I was just casually looking for info about giant green anemones

the paper describes two nestling birds that were consumed by giant green anemones at the base of Haystack Rock: a cormorant in 2013 and a glaucous winged x western gull in 2003. It also postulates that this probably isn't entirely uncommon.

Anemones! They're opportunists I guess

screenshot of a scientific paper heading, reading: contributed papers. giant green anemones consume seabird nestlings on the oregon coast. authors: Lisa Sheffield Guy, Lisa Bullis Habecker & Gretel Oxwang

WHAT

(this paper isn't new, it's a decade+ old, but also still WHAT WHAT WHAT) 🧪

Hey, I know books are expensive and money is tight right now.

But if there's a brand new book you really wanna read — including my own Lessons in Magic and Disaster — you can help get the book into way more hands by requesting it from your local library!

It's easy! Check your library's website.

Quite the opposite, which is why I really feel for whoever had to do this

wait no I take it back, upon further review some of the scats were "moist upon collection" and got frozen, not dried out

reading a study about coyote diets, and my condolences to the person who had to do this part: "Prior to extraction, we homogenized the scat (hand-mixing it from outside of the collection bag for 10–15 s)"

The scat was dried out at this point and they presumably were wearing gloves, but still

🧪

ohhhh I love this (the picture and this tactic of yours) so much

walking up to my computer sideways in a slight crouch, eyes averted, trying to trick myself into writing

ohhh yes very much so

a black and white image of half a raccoon's face VERY CLOSE to the camera

Currently reading a study about mesopredator (raccoon, coyote, skunk) cognition and please enjoy this photo of a raccoon in a box scientists built for it to press buttons in

(study is Stanton et al, Variation in Reversal Learning by Three Generalist Mesocarnivores) 🧪

Bethany Brookshire for Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains An engrossing and revealing study of why we deem certain animals “pests” and others not—from cats to rats, elephants to pigeons—and what this tells us about our own perceptions, beliefs, and action…

Heyyyyyy if you're in Takoma Park next Thursday and want to support a small bookstore, head to People's Book, where I will be talking with @haruspex.bsky.social about my BOOK at 6pm on 9/25!!!

peoplesbooktakoma.com/event/animal...

Political violence is abhorrent. I have not celebrated Kirk's death.

But Newsom calling for his followers to "continue Charlie Kirk's work," someone who praised stoning gay people as "god's perfect law," who called for men to "take care of" trans people like they did in the 50s and 60s, is not it.

a ridiculous looking pigeon. It is mostly white with a few dark feathers on its wing and tail, and a few golden feathers in its ruff. Its ruff is the bizarre part—it has fluffy-looking feathers sticking out all around its neck in a collar that makes it look like it's wearing a Elizabethan ruff.

This is your regular reminder that Jacobin pigeons exist, and they ARE coming to steal your husband 🪶

(photo via WikiCommons: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_...)

at their core, trans rights, abortion rights, and vaccine rights are actually all the same issue: they’re all about bodily autonomy, and the willingness to concede any of them puts the others at risk.

YES those are so good!

Ohhhh I would like to hang out with those squirrels

Another thing I love about this paper is that squirrels were apparently reluctant to do the cognitive test after they'd been captured and tagged, so instead the researchers spent 2 months learning to identify individual squirrels by sight

I assume this is because squirrel behavioral studies don't often require researchers to actually capture the animals, which means the squirrels are truly choosing to participate (without, of course, understanding that they're part of a study). But it nonetheless delights me.

screenshot of study, reading 2. Material and methods. The study was conducted on the University of California at Berkeley campus, with a population of marked, free-ranging fox squirrels, as described in earlier studies. Forty-five individual squirrels (17 female and 28 male) participated in the study.

And "Caching for where and what: evidence for a mnemonic strategy in a scatter-hoarder," Delgado and Jacobs:

(bonus for this one: each squirrel received 16 nuts. fair payment!)