Its been a long time since I’ve drawn a terror bird and I think I should remedy that. this was all done with the hard brush and it gives of an interesting look. I think I’ll be offering this in my commissions.
this is just the flat colors I’ll shade it some time soon, I just wanted to post something this week because I’m not going to be able to post for a few days.
Okie dokie, you guys know how much I love muzzle training and how important it is to me.
Recently my mother was talking with someone, and the wire basket muzzle I own came up in the conversation. The person was apparently disgusted, repulsed, I would put such a thing on my dog. Making statements of “why would you use that,” and “why not use one of those thin ones” (thin one being a Gentle Leader).
To the general public, muzzles and dogs in muzzles have such a bad stigma. They are seen as things only aggressive dogs wear; and if your dog is aggressive, you must be a bad pet owner in some way.
This is so not true. And more often than not, the exact opposite.
Muzzle training is SO beneficial, every dog should be trained to wear one. “But my dog isn’t aggressive, she doesn’t need one,” that may be true! But think of it this way: how many folks were put in swim lessons as kids by their parents? A heck of a lot, me included. Some kids that lived by a lake, some that had their own pool at home, some that lived nowhere near a body of water. Why? For if a dangerous situation arose where they found themselves in water, they’d know what to do and how to calmly swim to safety.
Now, for dogs, like recall and crate training, muzzle training is their swim lesson. Dogs who don’t have a drop of aggression in them will benefit just as much as a dog who wants to bite everything in sight.
But muzzling is not limited to aggression, there are numerous reasons a dog may need to be muzzled:
Pain - dog’s are more inclined to bite when in pain
Fear - when flight and freeze are no longer options, fight is
Trash eaters - some dogs eat things on walks, and during their training the owner can have the added security of the muzzle
New introductions - to people or animals, should things go sideways
Post-op protection - many folks turn to basket muzzles over the traditional cone of shame
Travel - in some communities a dog must be muzzled on public transport or even if riding freely in your own vehicle
Sports - several canine sports require a muzzle for part or all of the sport
I’m sure there are many more, so feel free to add on.
And let me put this out there, not all muzzles are created equal. It’s took four open-basket-type muzzles to find one that fits Canon properly. They come in various styles and materials. Leather, metal, cotton, nylon, plastic, and biothane to name a few. It may take one try or four, but there’s a good chance with all the options that there’s a muzzle style and material that will work with every dog.
Now, the muzzle the individual was upset over? Take a look:
(Flower crown to make it less “scary”)
This is the wire basket I finally found that works for Canon’s nose length, allows him to pant, drink, and take treats, and is comfortable. This is for vet visits. Canon is not aggressive towards our vet or the staff, he adores them and thoroughly enjoys going. BUT, her waiting room is small. Very small. The exam room door is smack against the waiting room chairs, and it’s nice to have Canon muzzled should we walk out and BAM! A dog. In this case, his muzzle is worn for, oh, five minutes tops.
And the “thin one”? Look below:
This is not a muzzle and it will not protect your dog or others. Gentle Leaders and head collars are training tools that the leash clips to, to guide the dog by their head. I (personally) do not know of any muzzles that function in such a manner. And if a head collar is closed so tight the dog cannot open it’s mouth, it’s being used incorrectly.
So, I hope that opened up someone’s mind to muzzles! They are wonderful tools and come in so many styles, materials, and colors. I hope more people open up to them and make them a regular part of their dog’s gear.
Happy training from my dogs and I, to you and yours!
Muzzles are wonderful. Without a muzzle, I would not take the chance of having Ivan near other dogs, as he can be so unpredictable about who he likes and who he loathes. With the muzzle, everyone is safe and he has been able to make a few chosen dog friends. Other uses: crowded trails and Vet visits where something painful is being examined. There are times when the muzzle stigma actually does good things: we need a little space to work around other strange dogs without going over threshold, and most people will grant that space without question when they see the muzzle.
Sharing the muzzle love.
Friend of mine got caught in a tornado warning with visible funnel clouds. Her trailer park had a storm shelter… she was allowed to bring her dogs in because she muzzled them.
You never know when an occasion with arise where you may need one. It won’t always be predictable.
Pod wears a muzzle to prevent any potential quarrel over the lure and to prevent him from running off with the lure, as the thin line may cut the other competitors. Many of the whippets we run with have associated the muzzle with running, so they love it! 😂
I firmly believe that as long as you train your dog to be comfortable with a muzzle there is absolutely no problem with them.
A dog who bites is a dog who’s life is in danger. Wearing a muzzle prevents bites, which prevents the behaviour from being praticed, which allows CC&D C.A.T B.A.T etc type training to be done. A muzzle is the opposite of a scary thing. It is a sefty tool. As long as you take the time to get dogs accustomed to them they’re not even an advertise.
I've been meaning to message you since the moth appreciation post because like I need to talk/know more about that moth that lays eggs in water? What the f-ing what? That is mental. I didn't know we had aquatic moths! (I currently have lots of Garden Tiger babies at home for a uni experiment. I love my fuzzy babies.)
Hello, Friend! Isn’t that ridiculous?? I only recently learned about Petrophila moths [link], too, and when I read that about their caterpillars, my mind practically exploded. Nature is so weird. But these moths with aquatic caterpillars caught my notice for a totally different reason initially: they are jumping spider mimics.
You can see from these photos that they’re not very large. If you weren’t really paying attention, you may not even notice anything unusual about them. The first time I saw them, I definitely didn’t notice that they were spider mimics. But one night, I went to a talk about moths, and the presenter talked about these and I thought it was awesome! She had a mercury vapor lamp set up outside after the talk for us to see some moths, and a Petrophila showed up. I was super excited! When I went to add the photo to iNaturalist, thinking I’d seen something new, it turned out I had already seen them at least four times.
You may not even be able to see how these are spider mimics. They don’t really *look* like spiders, do they? But remember, our eyes are much different than insect eyes, and we have the benefit of seeing things from far away. We can see this isn’t a spider. But imagine you are a small predatory insect or a spider, and you are in front of this moth looking at it. What will you see?
Jumping spiders above are Dimorphic Jumper (left) and Bold Jumper <3 (right)
Anyway, back to the aquatic caterpillars. I’m sure you know that most moths and butterflies have perfectly normal caterpillars who eat leaves, make poops, and turn into perfectly normal moths and butterflies. So finding out that one type refuse to play by those rules just seems super weird. But is it, really? Or is it just weird because… well, we have an idea of what caterpillars are supposed to be, whether or not that idea is accurate?
For example, look at some other insect orders with complete metamorphosis (they have larvae, pupate, and then become adults). Flies are a huge group. Where do fly larvae live? You know about maggots and food, but what about mosquitos? Those are flies too, and their larvae are aquatic. What about parasitic botflies that grow in animal tissue? What about gall midges who parasitize plants? Caterpillars will grow up in equally diverse habitats (although, I don’t know of an animal parasite… yet). Same with beetles–larvae will live on plants, underground, in water, in wood…
But let’s look a little closer to moths and butterflies, since most caterpillars are fairly predictable in terms of habitat, and the exceptions aren’t very well known. Here’s a phylogenetic tree showing the evolutionary history of insects. In this tree, branches that are closer together are more closely related.
Note: I found this tree in an image search, but I was unable to locate the original source. I would love to credit it if I can! Let me know if you have seen this in a book before.
In this tree, I have circled the branch including Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies). Look at who else is in that circle: Trichoptera (caddisflies). Below are a couple examples of caddisflies. Chances are you have seen them before (they are pretty ubiquitous near ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers!), but had no idea what they were.
Caddisflies are also very difficult to identify. The one on the left is in the Macrostemum genus (zebra caddisflies), but the one on the right… uh… I’ll get back to you on that one.
There are a lot of moths that look pretty similar to caddisflies, so it’s easy to see that they are closely related.
Left to right: Yellow-headed Lichen Moth, Belted Grass-veneer Moth, Bluegrass Webworm Moth
These look so similar, in fact, you may ask how they even grouped them into different orders. This is easy to answer if you know your scientific names AND Greek! Moths & Butterflies = Lepidoptera (Lepido = scale; ptera = wing) Caddisflies = Trichoptera (Tricho = hair; ptera = wing)
Since I have an electron microscope at work (the “nano” in my username refers to my background in nanotechnology), I felt obligated to illustrate this. The white bar on each image shows the magnification. “um” refers to “micrometer,” or 1/1,000 of a millimeter. A human hair is typically about 100 um wide. (If you have questions about electron microscopes, let me know! These things are fun!)
Typical Lepidoptera (Moth & Butterfly) Wing
Above: Images of the scales on an American Snout Butterfly wing obtained with Scanning Electron Microscopy. Compare the scales in the middle of the wing to those on the edge of the wing.
Typical Trichoptera (Caddisfly) Wing
Above: Images of the hairs on a caddisfly wing obtained with Scanning Electron Microscopy. Note the similarities in the how the caddisfly hairs and butterfly scales attach to the wings.
Looking at these images, it’s pretty clear that they are different. But you have to look *very closely* to notice this difference, and when you look even closer than that, you start to see similarities again.
Guess where caddisfly larvae grow up! If you don’t already know about caddisfly larvae, oh boy, they’re fun!
It may be hard to tell, but I took this photo with an underwater camera. Caddisfly larvae build little cases by cementing together stones, pine needles, sand, or a variety of other things. You can sometimes identify the larvae based on what materials they use and what shape the cases are in. An interesting aside: if you raise these, you can get them to build their cases out of whatever you want. At least one person got creative, and I’m happy to see that she is still selling caddisfly jewelry over 20 years later!
Caddisfly larvae are exclusively aquatic. Moths and butterflies are slightly younger than caddisflies, so they have had more time to evolve their own method of development (mostly on land). I believe the Petrophila moths are one of the older moth genera (but definitely not the oldest!), so they could be like Cetaceans (you know, whales and such who had gone *back into the water* after they realized they were cooler than land mammals).
I have not yet had the honor of witnessing a little baby Petrophila scooting along the bottoms of ponds, eating algae and whatnot, so I don’t have my own photos to share, but there are a couple on their bugguide page [link] (just click the link for “caterpillars” to filter out all the adults). They more or less look like a normal caterpillar, except … a little wetter than usual. The females will go completely underwater to lay their eggs (they will carry a little air bubble with them, apparently). And typically moths don’t live too much longer after laying eggs, so who knows if they ever fly again. I’m sure the fish don’t mind finding them!
I hope I satisfied your desperate yearning for aquatic moth secrets! The closer you look, the weirder nature gets. Jeez.
Posted June 22, 2018 (finally!) All photos are mine except the caddisfly jewelry, phylogenetic tree source TBD. Everything was seen in Texas except the caddisfly larva was in a stream near Crater Lake in Oregon.
Good post OP.
Spider mimic moths mess me up. They, like, printed a lossy jpeg of a spooky spider on their wings, which is the camouflage solution a seven year old would drum up for a make-your-own-butterfly project five minutes before it’s due. But evolution did this for millions of years. Twice.
Also I once pulled a caddisfly larva out of its trash hole and its legs were way longer and spindlier than I expected on a larva, which filled me with existential dread over my understanding of life on this planet. They’re top quality buggos all around.
You know those little things that keep bread bags closed? Well, the internet would like to tell you about them. If you’re not doing anything too important right now, I think you should visit HORG (that’s the Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group) and explore a beautiful, obsessive, hilarious taxonomy of occlupanids.
![wtf-scientific-papers:
“ [Good vibrations by the beach boys: magnitude of substrate vibrations is a reliable indicator of male grey seal size]
Bishop et al. (2015)
”](https://78.media.tumblr.com/a54ed9a97174cb2b071e600a6d965b55/tumblr_pa29hqcAy51vrmq96o1_500.png)
Primarily a natural science blog, but may also occasionally feature other neat general science things.
