Hello! I do continually use this blog! But here are my other accounts if you want to follow.
Instagram: RollTheBones
TikTok: RollBones
Flickr: StrangeBiology
I'm also working on a book about carcasses, so I have a few accounts dedicated to that process:
Twitter: BestCarcass
Tumblr: @CarcassAfterlives
Facebook: Carcass: The Afterlives of Animal Bodies
Instagram: CarcassAfterlives
You can read my writing here.
so no head
I've given four talks now on TikTok/vertical video for science communicators. Here are some of the reasons I recommend the platform--and some reasons I don't.
I was looking for photojournalism fellowships, funding etc, and I found this one related to animals. I thought I'd share it in case someone wants it, although I won't apply:
You: -Have a photo research/photojournalism project in mind involving animals/animal welfare -Can commit to "two to three hours per month during the planning and promotional stages, as well as time in the field" over the course of 6 months -Want free training and "funding to cover project costs and a stipend for the duration of the Fellowship, totaling $6,500 CAD." -"Embrace vegan values and a non-speciesist philosophy."
Due April 30, 2024.
Note: The last point doesn't work well for me considering my journalism ethics and goals, so it's not for me, but I respect that it works for some people who don't mind leaning into advocacy. IMO the photo book produced by this organization, Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene, is full of amazing, deeply meaningful photos, and it's worth looking at them and considering such a viewpoint. (Found it while looking to see if anyone else had done a photo book of dead animals! There's not much on that front!)
If anyone knows of a photo fellowship opportunity like this without such a strong philosophical angle, let me know and I will consider applying! Or if you find one that has a contrasting point (like, pro-meat and fur? IDK) I'll share it and not apply, as well.
I'm asking over on Instagram and Facebook why people follow my accounts tied to Carcass: The Afterlives of Animal Bodies. Feel free to go over to one of those platforms and comment, or just read what other people are saying! TW, those accounts get more graphic than this one.
I'm asking for similar reasons that I made this post, to get some feedback regarding maybe making a photo book of dead animals. I plan to categorize and chart the responses.
Just conceptualizing a photo book, like I conceptualized my general audience science book Carcass: On the Afterlives of Animal Bodies all those years ago. Carcass should be on shelves by 2025, published by MIT Press.
I thought a photo book would be fun since I have thousands of photos of carcasses with enough fascinating context that I can write detailed captions of them, as well. A photo book of animal remains is, of course, uniquely challenging in comparison to a text-based book because...well, it really is lifting the veil.
Update about this if anyone has any thoughts:
I'm pitching this book as an idea for a startup competition and I've been talking to my photography mentor (who Wyoming pays for and who shot the cover of the last National Geographic!!) and I'm thinking I want to angle this more towards an environmental angle as it may...soften the weirdness of it, and give it a more noble purpose?
Maybe the title should be something like Afterlives: Photos of Animal Remains and Stories of Human Impact. Or What Remains: Our Environmental Impacts Told Through Animal Bodies.
The deer caught in the fences are sort of universally a sign of bad human impact on animals, but many of the rest are complex and require a bit of explanation. For example: a pile of deer at a hunter dump, a field of sheep who died during an abnormally intense winter, animals at a slaughterhouse, roadkill, etc.
Any thoughts on the title, the direction, etc? My agent is already interested and my publisher has the right of first refusal, so I'm not looking for help with publishing, just pitching the funding of the book.
“It’s not healthy for some of these deer to be carrying rocking chairs on top of their head,” says Balfourd. No one knows exactly what producing these huge antlers is doing the bucks’ overall health, but experienced hunters say it’s easy to see that some of these deer have trouble keeping their heads up, with all the weight they’re carrying. And the concerns endemic to any farming operation where large numbers of animals are congregated in relatively small places — prevalence of disease (in this case, chronic wasting disease) and increased use of antibiotics and other drugs — apply here, too.
Highplains whitetails feeding after dark (x)
I like how the term "biblically accurate" has come to be used to describe weird creatures that appear to have supernumerary body parts, especially eyes, it's not exactly historically accurate but we're in a new dawn, regard the biblically accurate cervine before you, and be not afraid
Learn from my mistakes: never try to draw anything symmetrical. I’ve drawn many mammals but neglected to learn how to draw bird wings, and now I’m glad I have a sense of it.
Six-winged seraph angel.
Some pics from a recent bone hunt with @weaselle! Hopefully not too gross?
Hike in Morgan Territory.
Kiriban, baybee! 切りの良い番 means "a good number."
Back in the day you'd post milestones as a kiriban and like a drawing of your favorite followers hugging your fursona or something.
I've been here for 11 years and I'm sure the actual people who actually read this blog are much fewer than that. But whatevs.
Incidentally, I've only been on TikTok for 4 years at RollBones and I have 209,000 followers there, but Tumblr is still a special place to me!
I'll write your name on my skin, as a promise that we'll never be apart again
louisa - lord huron
Skull of a two-faced bottlenose dolphin prepared by Enault & Auclair-Kraniata osteology.
Edit: owned by a museum in France.
I asked an expert on humane livestock slaughter how we decided on certain methods of slaughter as more or less humane than others, from a scientific perspective.
He pointed me to this document (PDF) from the European Food Safety Authority called “WELFARE ASPECTS OF ANIMAL STUNNING AND KILLING METHODS:” Scientific Report of the Scientific Panel for Animal Health and Welfare on a request from the Commission related to welfare aspects of animal stunning and killing methods.
It's long, and old (from 2004) but it's a pretty useful document summarizing a lot of the science of why certain methods of killing may be more or less humane.
You can test a method, for example, by hooking an animal up to an EEG and monitoring its brainwaves after stunning it, or delivering a fatal blow (functionally killing it, but it won't always die instantly following a fatal injury, so you can still monitor it.)
Other ways of monitoring and measuring suffering include recording: how many times does an animal vocalize (moo, grunt etc) after being put in a chute? If it moves, does that matter, or is that a post-mortem or unconscious spasm? Does it immediately collapse, does it blink when you touch its eye (corneal reflex)? Is the animal permanently brain-damaged (which is a good thing when you want it to die fast!) or is it only a little knocked out and immobile, with the potential for recovery if you were to not bleed it out? (Which is bad in that circumstance!) A scientist can test that by testing a stunning method on a group of animals and then seeing if they recover. Those individual animals are likely not happy if they do return to consciousness with a hole in their heads, but such is science.
Anyway, while the testing might sound gruesome, I thought you'd like to know that slaughter regulations are pretty serious and well-studied. And those regulations seem pretty consistent among everywhere I've seen (EU, Norway specifically, the US.) With some minor differences here and there.
Perhaps we will discover better ways to slaughter meat animals in regard to their welfare, or perhaps we will find one day that our preferred method wasn't as good as we thought! There might also be people doing things in very bad, unintentionally cruel ways because of silly, disproven myths (but, if someone is legally selling meat, any US slaughterhouse is required to have a USDA rep see every death.)
I don't want to imply that every animal death goes perfectly well, or that it's even acceptable, or that the meat industry is perfect or good! But I do want to share that there is scientific precedent for why people kill livestock the ways they do, and you can read the studies in the aforementioned document. There are tons.
PS. If you have any interesting insights on the science of humane slaughter, I'd love to see them! Or, even, just tell me how it's done in your country, the role of the government, etc.
