The Good Boy

The Good Boy Uncovering the weirdest, wildest, and most unbelievable facts from the animal world.

09/01/2026

Grandpa just wanted one nice photo with his cats. The cats had other plans. 😂🌸

A ringtail is about the size of a small cat, related to the raccoon, and it lives where almost nothing else bothers to: ...
09/01/2026

A ringtail is about the size of a small cat, related to the raccoon, and it lives where almost nothing else bothers to: canyon walls, cliff faces, the vertical parts of the desert.

Getting up is not the hard part. Coming down is.

Their back feet can rotate 180 degrees, thus allowing them to retain contact with the rocky walls upon descent. The foot turns round and the grip does not change, so descending a cliff is mechanically the same problem as climbing one.

Then there is the other technique, for gaps too narrow to climb at all.

They can manoeuvre vertical spaces by ricocheting between surfaces, or by pressing all their feet against one wall and their back against the other.

Climbers call that chimney stemming, and they teach it on courses.

The long ringed tail, the thing the animal is named for, is the counterweight that makes all of it work.

At first glance, it looks like the tree is covered in leaves.Look closer.Those are monarch butterflies.During migration ...
09/01/2026

At first glance, it looks like the tree is covered in leaves.

Look closer.

Those are monarch butterflies.

During migration and overwintering, monarchs can gather in dense clusters on trees, sometimes covering entire branches while they rest.

One butterfly is easy to miss.

Thousands together can completely change what a tree looks like.

📷 Hazel Rodriguez/USFWS

A parasitic wasp called Dinocampus coccinellae begins this relationship by laying an egg inside a ladybug.The wasp larva...
09/01/2026

A parasitic wasp called Dinocampus coccinellae begins this relationship by laying an egg inside a ladybug.

The wasp larva develops inside the beetle, then eventually emerges and spins a cocoon between the ladybug’s legs.

And that is where the story gets weird.

Instead of walking away, the partly paralyzed ladybug stays over the cocoon like a bodyguard. When disturbed, it can twitch and help protect the developing wasp from predators.

Researchers found that cocoons guarded by a living ladybug survived better than unguarded ones.

So this is not just a parasite growing inside a host.

It is a parasite that turns its host into a guard after leaving it.

In May 2022, James Gunn adopted a rescue dog named Ozu.Ozu had come from a hoarding situation involving around 60 dogs a...
09/01/2026

In May 2022, James Gunn adopted a rescue dog named Ozu.

Ozu had come from a hoarding situation involving around 60 dogs and, according to Gunn, had barely known human contact. Adjusting to his new home was not easy.

“He immediately came in & destroyed our home, our shoes, our furniture — he even ate my laptop.”

Gunn had recently begun writing Superman.

And somewhere in the middle of living with this extremely difficult new dog, he had a thought:

What if Ozu had superpowers?

That idea brought Krypto into Gunn’s Superman script.

Gunn later said Ozu changed the shape of the story while Ozu himself was changing Gunn’s life.

By the time Gunn introduced Krypto publicly in October 2024 — Adopt a Shelter Dog Month — Ozu had come a long way too.

As Gunn put it:

“Btw, Ozu today, is, fairly often, a very good boy.”

Superman may have Krypto.

But Krypto has a rescue dog who ate a laptop to thank for this version of him.

📷 James Gunn on X

A lobster grows by repeatedly throwing away its own skeleton.When its shell becomes too small, it molts — crawling out o...
09/01/2026

A lobster grows by repeatedly throwing away its own skeleton.

When its shell becomes too small, it molts — crawling out of the old one and forming a larger shell underneath.

And then it often eats the shell it just left behind.

There is a practical reason. The discarded shell contains calcium that can be recycled to help harden the new one.

But all that molting creates a problem for scientists trying to work out how old a lobster is.

Unlike animals that keep permanent hard structures with clear annual growth marks, much of a lobster’s external growth record disappears every time it molts.

That is why NOAA still describes the exact age of an individual American lobster as difficult to determine, even though scientists believe some may approach 100 years old.

Researchers have developed newer techniques that count growth bands in internal structures associated with the lobster’s gastric mill, and those methods have shown promise for estimating age.

So the funny part survives — just with a little more nuance:

a lobster repeatedly sheds one of the most obvious records of its growth, then eats the evidence.

📷 biographic.com

A baby Baird’s tapir looks almost nothing like the adult it will become.Calves are born reddish-brown and covered in pal...
08/31/2026

A baby Baird’s tapir looks almost nothing like the adult it will become.

Calves are born reddish-brown and covered in pale spots and stripes — a pattern that helps them blend into the broken light and shadows of the forest floor.

Then the camouflage starts disappearing.

The markings begin fading after a few months, and by roughly six to eight months, young tapirs start looking much more like miniature adults.

Same species.

Very different outfit.

How many did you find?The answer is four — one adult American woodcock and three chicks, all blending into the leaves, t...
08/31/2026

How many did you find?

The answer is four — one adult American woodcock and three chicks, all blending into the leaves, twigs and forest floor around them.

A warthog covered in ticks has a problem.It cannot reach much of its own body.Banded mongooses can.In Uganda’s Queen Eli...
08/31/2026

A warthog covered in ticks has a problem.

It cannot reach much of its own body.

Banded mongooses can.

In Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park, researchers documented warthogs deliberately lying down when mongooses approached.

Then the mongooses climbed aboard.

They moved across the warthogs’ bodies picking off ticks and other parasites — turning the much larger animal into a feeding platform.

And the warthog cooperated.

Lying down leaves it in a vulnerable position, but the payoff is a cleaning it cannot easily give itself.

The mongooses get something too:
food.

So neither animal is doing the other a favor for free.

The warthog gets parasites removed.

The mongooses get lunch.

📷 newsroom.wcs.org

For fish and freshwater mussels, a river is not just water.It is home.Across parts of the eastern United States, some wa...
08/31/2026

For fish and freshwater mussels, a river is not just water.

It is home.

Across parts of the eastern United States, some watersheds support especially rich communities of freshwater fish and mussels.

But a 2026 peer-reviewed study found that some of those same areas also overlap with places where data centers have relatively high water-scarcity footprints.

Data centers can use water directly to help cool their equipment, and indirectly through the electricity generation needed to keep them running. Those demands can add pressure to freshwater systems, particularly where water is already limited or heavily used.

That raises a question that has very little to do with what happens on a computer screen:

What happens to the animals already depending on those watersheds?

The study does not show that a particular data center has already caused a particular fish or mussel population to decline. Instead, it identifies places where data-center-related water stress and freshwater biodiversity overlap — areas researchers say deserve closer attention.

The servers may be miles away from the wildlife.

But the water and energy demands keeping them running can still put pressure on the freshwater habitats those animals depend on.

📷 stockcake.com
📷 rcrwireless.com

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