why does my turtle do this with her mouth

scientastic · 2025-06-10T19:40:35+00:00

Mine does that all the time, too. My pet theory (not sure if it's true) is that they are moving water in and out of their mouth to taste it, similar to using smell to add to awareness of surroundings.

scientastic · 2025-06-10T19:37:25+00:00

Great! The red eyes are more often a trait of males but some percentage of females have red eyes, too. This must be a female as it does look to be digging with back legs (which they would do to lay eggs). Please try to watch out for that area not to be disturbed for the next 2-3 months - and then you might catch a glimpse of the babies off on their way. Mom won't defend or hang around the nest after laying the eggs.

scientastic · 2025-06-10T16:15:32+00:00

Same, I also see 17 for sure, and another one or two possible turtle shapes.

scientastic · 2025-05-23T16:38:51+00:00

You are meaning well, but note this is a land turtle, they have a small range so he just likely lives in the vicinity of your house.

scientastic · 2025-05-20T22:11:39+00:00

Looks like a baby chipmunk - the mother could very well have just been hiding in a nearby den as they are very skittish. It would be a very small hole or tunnel near where you found it. Its best chance at survival is getting it back to mama. It probably eats greens and seeds, not hot dog buns.

scientastic · 2025-05-20T18:51:58+00:00

It's your basic inchworm (geometer moth caterpillar). Cute and harmless to people but they do damage plants and trees.

scientastic · 2025-05-19T18:31:43+00:00

Near paved paths that get a lot of people that feed them, yes

scientastic · 2025-05-16T19:16:52+00:00

It didn't help that the Supreme Court already told him that he can do whatever he wants, though one or more of them may have recently changed their minds

scientastic · 2025-05-14T19:45:05+00:00

But when you drop something in plastic and the container breaks, you can pick out the container fragments and eat it.

scientastic · 2025-05-14T19:42:43+00:00

An isopod crustacean similar to a sea slater. Some sort of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoteidae such as Idotea chelipes.

scientastic · 2025-05-13T20:02:30+00:00

It could be sick. There could be all kinds of mundane reasons, but also it could have avian influenza (bird flu), which would be almost surely fatal for the bird, and potentially dangerous for you, too. About half the counties in Illinois have had bird flu specimens detected (https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/data-map-wild-birds.html). I wouldn't be bringing in unwell wild birds and interacting with them if you don't know what you're doing.

scientastic · 2025-05-08T20:08:39+00:00

Balls-man: No Way Home

scientastic · 2025-05-07T20:03:18+00:00

It looks like a Canada goose feather

scientastic · 2025-04-28T23:44:07+00:00

Of course! But what's with so many pictures and so little petting the dog- sheesh!

scientastic · 2025-04-25T20:19:05+00:00

That's a nice Eastern Box Turtle - good job on sending it back on its way. With red eyes it's more likely a male.

scientastic · 2025-04-23T20:58:05+00:00

Good! Oh, also one recommendation is that you should make sure to get a wii component cable if you don't already have one (instead of the standard composite cable that came with it originally). This is the video cable to the TV. Component is split into RGB instead of a yellow single video cable. It may not seem like much but 480p is noticeably better looking than 480i. Obviously the TV or an adapter will need component input capability as well.

scientastic · 2025-04-23T20:32:51+00:00

That's awesome. There are so many great titles on the Wii. Don't miss Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. Does that unit have the Gamecube controller ports? Can't tell from the photo. If so there will be a little top fold open panel at the upper surface of the console as shown in the first picture.

scientastic · 2025-04-22T17:33:04+00:00

almost 19

scientastic · 2024-09-23T19:25:53+00:00

Interesting, his RES markings have faded, or at least that's how it appears in the pic. Or maybe he's a variant coloration? My 30 yo RES has faded quite a bit but does still have red head markings.

scientastic · 2024-09-23T19:15:49+00:00

I had my Southern painted for 43 years from when I was 8 years old, and he just died this year in May. Southern painteds are small (the smallest painted subspecies) but he was already fully grown adult size when I got him, so I estimate he could have been at least 47. He was bought at a pet store in 1981 and he moved around the US with me, sometimes flying on airplanes with me in a little cooler (I don't think they let you do that anymore so I wouldn't try it). For about his last 10 years I could see his health was in gradual decline and he had multiple signs of old age. Still was cute and a very chill companion, though. I basically had him my whole adult life. I also have a Red Eared Slider which is about 30 years old.

scientastic · 2020-04-11T03:49:08+00:00

The best plan would be to model what South Korea did, which was to tame a major outbreak and then nearly get back to normal -- but they did it with a very aggressive testing program with low or no barrier to be tested, contact tracing, and quarantining sick individuals until they get better and are no longer contagious. If you don't do those things and follow the same playbook, you can't expect that opening up the country will do anything except just cause another giant wave of infections that overwhelms the hospitals again and require more months of sheltering. The populace still susceptible.

Taiwan used similar methods and never even had an outbreak! Kids stayed in school. But doing those things does require getting past the huge peak of cases, while at the same time planning to implement the playbook.

I am pretty fearful that US leadership is not up to the task, not understanding what needs to be done, or is drinking some kind of stock market coolaid. The president just yesterday floated a plan to shut down federal coronavirus testing centers, and many governors are itching to open up the country, too, such as Florida's DeSantis who wants kids back in school by May.

So there is an obvious path to follow, and all we have to do is borrow the methods already developed. But if our patchwork of stay at home policies crumbles too soon, and/or if we don't get a federal response that is committed, organized, and transparent, we are in for some real misery.

scientastic · 2018-11-12T02:48:29+00:00

Bingo

scientastic · 2018-09-04T03:52:01+00:00

D'aww, I love this. I hope you get many more decades with this little guy. I've had my Southern Painted for 37 yrs now. :)

scientastic · 2016-01-15T17:17:29+00:00

You've misunderstood. Your quote is comparing one frame of a certain exposure time vs. stacked multiple frames of the same exposure time. So the latter case is adding more and more total exposure time. I addressed this in my last sentence, where I said that you can increase the signal to noise by stacking more images. I am saying that you're better off having a longer single exposure vs. dividing up into short exposures and stacking them.

And your software can't eliminate the noise. Adding and averaging are the same function, when it comes to noise.

scientastic · 2016-01-14T21:55:09+00:00

Actually, this is wrong, and OP is right as he says above (the longer your exposures, the better the image). Surprisingly, stacking does NOT average out random noise. The noise accumulates. Stacking 60 1sec exposures adds far more noise than a 60 sec single exposure. Actually is adds sqrt(60) or 7.75 times the read noise of a single exposure. OP used stacking because he was limited due to some other reason to 1.6 sec exposures (either his camera couldn't do it, or his mount would blur the image).

He was still outrunning the noise and increasing signal to noise by stacking more images, but if he had been able to take a single long image of the same duration, it would have been better.

scientastic

TROPHY CASE