Paper Parrot

The story behind what you just saw.

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Someone in Switzerland filmed what could be the cutest traffic jam on earth.

Valais Blacknose sheep. White coats. Black faces. All over the road. In summer they live high in the Alps. In September they get walked back down to the village, washed, and shown at the local sheep festival. Cars wait. The flock does not.

[📸: @ swiss_voyage via IG]

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A scientific study found city raccoons are already showing the first signs of self-domestication. Shorter faces. Less fear of people. Evolution ?

People are calling them trash pandas. The hands are the problem. They open latches. They remember which bin had food. Cute until 3am.

This one lives in Seoul and picked the highest shelf in the room like rent was included.
[📸: @ meerkatchief via IG]

[Paper Parrot @paperparrot_]

These bee is not dead. It clocked out on the flower.

Male bumblebees do not go home at night. The nest is for queens and workers. So the boys sleep where they ate, jaws locked on the petal so they do not roll off. Cold or empty, they can look gone. Give them sun and they start the shift again. Internet calls it a nap. It is a bed.

[Paper Parrot @paperparrot_]

A seal in a Moscow oceanarium got the zommies and turned itself into a ceiling fan.

Seals can sleep with half a brain still on. This one used the other half for the bit.
No wonder People call them sea dogs. Dogs do not do this in the living room.

[📸: @ crocuscity_oceanarium via IG]

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Everyone else at the virtual G7 had a camera on. Trump’s box stayed black.

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Wildlife photographer Myeongho Seo caught an Adélie sitting on two chicks at Cape Hallett, Antarctica.

They lay two eggs and build the nest out of stolen pebbles. Both parents trade shifts. The chicks cannot swim yet, so this pile of stones is the whole house. The species is named after a French explorer’s wife. The pebble crime is their own idea.

[📸: Myeongho Seo IG]

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Scientists identified new penguins species for the first time in 100 years

Scientists already knew the birds on the Kerguelen Islands. They just had them filed under gentoo. Whole genomes said otherwise. The southeastern gentoo, Pygoscelis kerguelensis, split off hundreds of thousands of years ago. You cannot see it. The DNA can. Internet called it a patch update. The last new penguin was named in 1921.

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29-year-old single dad who grew up in foster care adopts 5 siblings so they won't have to grow up separated.

Robert Carter was 12 when foster care split him from his own brothers and sisters. At 29 he refused to let it happen again.

He was already fostering three boys in Cincinnati when he found out they had two sisters in other homes. He was the only parent willing to take all five. Marionna, Robert, Makayla, Giovanni, and Kiontae. Adoption finalized October 30, 2020. He said the next morning he woke up relieved.

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Wildlife photographer Miguel Bellido caught a giraffe folding six feet of neck just to kiss her calf.

[📸: Miguel Bellido (@ mikebellidowildlife) via IG]

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Female grizzlies guard their cubs from the males. A boar will kill the babies to force the mom back into heat so he can mate with her.

That is why “mama bear” means what it means. She is not cute. She is on duty.

[Shot by Kelsey Schulte at Katmai National Park, Alaska.]

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The world’s smallest deer is about the height of a house cat and still grows antlers.
That’s a pudu. Males get little spikes, not racks. The northern ones live in the Andes of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The southern ones are the Chile and Argentina deer people get mad if you forget. They bark when scared. A deer. Barking. At your ankles.

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Mountain goats are not goats. Closest cousins are antelopes. The internet still calls the babies zoomies.

These two were doing laps at Mount Rainier like the cliff was a living room.

[📸: Hannah (@ hannahs_ventures) via IG]

[Paper Parrot @paperparrot_]

A scientific study found city raccoons are already showing the first signs of self-domestication. Shorter faces. Less fear of people. Evolution ?

People are calling them trash pandas. The hands are the problem. They open latches. They remember which bin had food. Cute until 3am.

This one lives in Seoul and picked the highest shelf in the room like rent was included.
[📸: @ meerkatchief via IG]

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@sama 10 years later

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A videographer caught black swans and their babies floating through a flooded forest

Black swans raise their cygnets as a pair. The babies cannot fly yet, so the parents keep them tight on that green water. The “grass” is duckweed sitting on a flooded stand of trees. Spots like this in China pull crowds because it looks edited. It is not. It is a family crossing a painting.

[📸: Merab Beridze via IG]

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She sat up like a person and fed her cub.

Bear moms do that. Rear up, hold the baby, keep it close. Same animal people joke about as a “mama bear.” This is the part they mean. Not a fight. Just a mother who will not put the kid down.

[📸: @eradigital. IG.]

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Most armadillos cannot do this. The three-banded one can curl into a perfect ball.

Same armor that stops a predator. Same body that turns into a bowling ball for fun.

[📸: @feral.goddesss / Conservation Ambassadors.]

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Female grizzlies guard their cubs from the males. A boar will kill the babies to force the mom back into heat so he can mate with her.

That is why “mama bear” means what it means. She is not cute. She is on duty.

[Shot by Kelsey Schulte at Katmai National Park, Alaska.]

[Paper Parrot @paperparrot_]

Adult bobcats do not have many enemies but in Arizona, they climb cactus to claim their kingdom, stay out of reach of coyotes and mountain lions, watch for prey and get off the ground.

The desert looks empty until a cat is sitting on a saguaro like it owns the place.

[Credit: @pandoraplantt on Instagram.]