• abc [he/him, comrade/them]
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    4 years ago

    Truly that post should be used as the gold standard of posts henceforth on that site. Someone referred to outdoor cats as toxoplasmic homicide rats and I had to sign off for the day lmao

    • 90u9y8gb9t86vytv97g [they/them]
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      4 years ago

      They're literally killing off all the monk seals in Hawaii, the toxo gets in the water and they keel over and die.

      https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/toll-toxoplasmosis-protozoal-disease-has-now-claimed-lives-12-monk-seals-and-left

      Toxo only breeds in the bodies of domesticated cats.

      (edit: I should also note that monk seals are the most critically endangered species of seal, and the Hawaiian monk seal only lives in Hawaii. Once toxo kills them all, they're gone.)

      • abc [he/him, comrade/them]
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        4 years ago

        Damn. Yeah, toxoplasmosis is no joke. Slightly unrelated but still relevant, my grandma fuckin died because she got a stroke and then - while in recovery at home - got scratched by one of her young cats and developed cat scratch disease, which then infected her liver.

        • 90u9y8gb9t86vytv97g [they/them]
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          4 years ago

          That's horrible, fuck. There's fears toxo affects humans in ways we don't understand yet too. Man that's a shit way to die, I'm sorry to hear that.

          • abc [he/him, comrade/them]
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            4 years ago

            Yeah I was really upset about it when it happened over a decade ago, but as I've grown older I've come to the realization that she probably would've preferred being taken out by one of her beloved cats rather than suffering another 5-10 years with the after-effects of the stroke. Glass half full or something, I guess.

    • Melon [she/her,they/them]
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      4 years ago

      I love cats. I love them more than dogs. My cat still killed a pet bird yesterday that was in our family for years by somehow getting a paw inside the cage.

      Bird lives matter too.

        • Melon [she/her,they/them]
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          4 years ago

          My family has never bothered to name most of our birds. RIP unnamed diamond dove, now only one diamond dove survives

          (Yes I do feel terrible about having a stronger attachment to Minecraft pets than the real birds my family has had throughout the years)

          • 90u9y8gb9t86vytv97g [they/them]
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            4 years ago

            Diamond doves are beautiful birds! Did you have some sort of aviary for them or just kept them in a cage?

            • Melon [she/her,they/them]
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              4 years ago

              The bird is caged, and I am aware that it's downright evil to have a bird all by itself without anyone or anything to socialize with. I might just get a little mirror so it doesn't go insane.

              • 90u9y8gb9t86vytv97g [they/them]
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                4 years ago

                Mirrors can have some weird effects on birds, they'll get into obsessive or aggressive behaviors with them, I'd search around about that.

                That's parrot advice though, I can't say about doves.

                Really I'd just look out for a bigger cage on local marketplaces/ buy one off of Amazon and give them some simple toys. Check out r/PetDoves, there's a number of threads and examples of people's setups there.

    • joshieecs [he/him,any]
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      4 years ago

      i do wonder if a toxoplasmosis pandemic is resonsible for a lot of dumb human behavior. like does it really affect people, seems like no one has a clear answer!

      • abc [he/him, comrade/them]
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        4 years ago

        Well, you'll be glad to know that with climate change - the parasite has been found in places like the artic, which were once too cold for it to thrive

      • CarlTheRedditor [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        Or maybe it doesn't do much of anything at all to humans and what we're seeing is attributable to just plain old greed.

        Or long term effects of lead poisoning. Now there's something that we know affects humans.