Jim Waymer

The grumpy little ghost of Central Asia, the Pallas’s cat

Hummingbird chick hatching

Fun fact. The Monarch butterfly migration is one of the longest-known, multi-generational insect migrations on our planet. Every fourth generation lives 8 times longer than the previous generations and travels 10 times farther.

Dodo birds went extinct because they trusted humans too much. they were very social, and humans hunted and ate them. Endemic to Mauritius, when Dutch sailors arrived in the late 1500s, the dodos would calmly approach people out of curiosity, making them very easy to hunt. Humans did hunt and eat them (they were a convenient source of fresh meat for sailors), and the birds were described as social and curious. Their exctintion was accelerated by invasive species that humans accidentally (or intentionally) brought with them: rats, pigs, cats, dogs, and monkeys that ate dodo eggs and chicks (dodos nested on the ground). The last confirmed sighting of a dodo was around the 1660s, less than 100 years after humans first arrived. Their slow reproduction (only one egg per year) made recovery impossible.

Tom trying to save Jerry from dinosaurs

Baby chicks frequently sleep on their belly, often spreading their wings and legs out flat. This normal, "dead-looking" pose allows them to rest comfortably, often stretching their necks out, and indicates they feel secure and warm.

A family of wild Pallas’s cats filmed in the grasslands of Qinghai Province, China, shows they look grumpier as they get older