Happy January, in keeping with the situation. I’m still thinking about mice. On some level I’m always thinking about mice. None of my Animal Crossing villagers are mice, unfortunately, although we were recently joined by Ketchup, who is a duck meant to look like a tomato.
Please enjoy this educational thread about dormice, which used to be kept as pets, from my colleague and pal Jason Bittel. And be safe out there.
xo
k
PS- The spelling bee is happening tonight, if you want to come hang.
The Romans also ate dormice. Here is a dormouse-fattening jar, AKA a glirarium, a specialized clay jar with ventilation holes and ridges along the inside for its ill-fated denizens to run around. (Wikimedia Commons via Atlas Obscura)
Shortish
Revealed: all 27 moneys held at NASA research center killed on single day in 2019 (The Guardian; Oliver Milman; United States of America)
BC mink farmer destroys 1000 animals after positive COVID-19 tests (National Observer; Dirk Meissner; British Columbia, Canada)
A bid for the USDA, not FDA, to regulate GE animals for food (Successful Farming; Chuck Abbott; United States of America)
Longish
Llamas are having a moment in the US, but they’ve been icons in South America for millennia (The Conversation; Emily Wakild; the Andes)
The online world of #herping (Fenix; Michelle Delgado; the internet)
This rescue moose was also 2020 (The New York Times; Carl Safina and David Rothenberg; United States of America)
Will climate change make animals darker—or lighter? (Science; Sam Kean; the global scientific community)
Becoming animal (Guernica; Kimi Eisele)
Stuff from me:
My most recent work.
Ending the pandemic means vaccinating the whole world—but the US is focusing on itself
In 2021, a new wave of evictions could also fuel a rise in COVID cases
Also I edited Scale-Up Economics for Cultured Meat: Techno-Economic Analysis and due diligence
The last word:
All images in The Quick Fox are used under Creative Commons licensing. Efforts have been made to ensure that photographs of living animals or natural scenes have been taken ethically, in responsible pet ownership conditions, at AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums or under safe, non-damaging conditions in the wild. If you see an issue with any image we share, please notify me.