Hello,
As everybody knows, content discovery on Lemmy can sometimes be a bit tricky.
To help smaller communities to get more activity, I launch this thread for people to promote the communities they are active one.
One important criteria: please only promote communities that have been at least one post in the last 7 days. And if there is none, feel free to post there and then promote it here!
Animals:
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] (I promise this is about the animal, not the conservative American news network) [email protected]
I have been told before
!communityname@instancename.comstyle links do not work for everyone and that[link name](/c/communityname@instancename.com)works for others, so:[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Feel free to add more, these are just the animals I personally like enough to have sought out a Fediverse community for them
I block sports related stuff like I do other things im not interested in so when purusing all I don’t see it and almost blocked superb owls
I do kinda wish [email protected] had gone with something else, as I’m not much into the Reddit copycat stuff, and it confuses people longer than it entertains them, but it was established before I got here.
I like to think it’s a bit different than the Reddit version as well. Much less memes and reposted stuff without context. I like to do longer form articles when I get the chance and people show interest. I’ve done some articles about owl anatomy and some ELI5 on some scientific journal articles. The Owl of the Year tournament ran for like 2-3 weeks in December and everyone had a blast with that, and I plan to do it again.
If there’s anything specific you want to see or learn about, just let me know.
I just like the owl pictures when I scroll all :)
I do enjoy the great variety of animals one sees scrolling All these days. Not just cats and (surprisingly few) dogs, but birds, opossums, raccoons, and bats. Sometimes I get some cute pics of other beasties when I’m going through my animal rescue feeds and I like there’s good places to share those as well.
yeah its a good balance to like politics or memes. animals. nature scenes.
I definitely appreciate when someone posts a long-form article about the animal in question, even if I don’t always have the energy to read it.
It’s fun to get a deeper dive into things more than just basic facts.
The lead scientist that discovered owls can hunt using only their ears later went on to do more groundbreaking research on whale communication. It was interesting to learn about the test enclosures and the methods used to see how much vision vs hearing played into hunting. There were also some great stories about how training owls is as much fun as training cats.
I’ve also read some papers on how other birds of prey hunt. They analyzed different vectors of attack and studied where the birds focus their eyes when they are attacking.
Just lots of insights on anatomy and behavior in general like how they time extending their talons and the orientations of the toes to maximize catching prey.
Even egg laying and hatching or growing feathers are all complex and amazing processes, and it’s a miracle all these things evolved to work the way they do.
The amount I’ve learned about owls this past year is crazy, and I still come upon new things all the time.
I’m a bunny person, not an owl person, but from your comment owls suddenly sound much more interesting… thanks for sharing!
I also realize I anticipate expending mental energy for clicking and reading a scientific article, but just reading your comment wasn’t intimidating at all and was neatly incorporated into my day as “just wasting time online” except, you know, actually learning about something. Even if it’s not that applicable to my not-a-birdwatcher life. Just realized this is how certain YouTube channels get big, by presenting interesting information in a more accessible way. Or a more entertaining way. Wondering if I can hack this to my advantage somehow so I learn more instead of wasting time online lol.
I really got started here by posting the few owl pics from my travels that I had, but that wasn’t too many. I didn’t want to let the community die down again though.
A lot of my interactions with owl have been by visiting wildlife rehabbers, as owls are typically very illegal to own or display without proper licensing. I wanted everyone else to have a chance to see an owl, so each day I looked at the licensing information for each state and found a rehabber to highlight, one open to the public at least a few days a year if possible, and featured one of their rescues that people could go see. I had a few people that had visited some of these places chime in, and a few learned there was a place near them where they could actually see an owl, and one person even signed up to work as a volunteer at one of the places I showed them.
That all got me a lot of sources to pull new info from. They all share great photos, rescue stories, medical and rehab procedures, near behavioral stories, and so on. Whenever I learned something, I just shared it with the group. It made me curious about new things, so I went and read up on them. People asked questions in the comments, and I needed to learn answers to not leave them hanging. That got me curious about even more technical things, so I got into the scientific research papers.
I’ve heard before that if you want to become an expert in something, just go around acting like you’re the expert. People will come to you with things and you’re going to want to answer them so you don’t look like some dope. But then after you answer them, that knowledge is yours forever. After more and more rounds of this, it starts to be more than an act.
It helps that I love reading and research and that I value teaching. Knowledge is one of the most important things anyone can be given, so I’ve worked hard to learn how to explain things and to not make other people feel dumb for not knowing things. As I make myself smarter, that opens the door for me to pass new knowledge down as I become able to explain it to my audience. The primary audience for my stuff is me. No one pays me to do this, so I’m not burning myself out learning whatever. I learn what I want to learn, and as it amazes me, I share with you all, so I could do this forever.
It’s fun for me, and I want it to be fun for you all. I try to make it so you can just look at pictures and be happy, or you can go to these places in person, you can sponsor your local rescue, or you can learn so many facts you want to be a volunteer or researcher or rehabber yourself. We all start somewhere. A few years ago, I never paid owls much mind. Now I know all kinds of anatomy and body functions and find them to be absolutely fascinating and diverse animals. We all just need that spark of curiosity.
Here is a free research paper PDF I found you may like.
It focuses on pet rabbits specifically. I wanted this one I saw on how interacting with owners affects rabbit welfare, but I couldn’t find a free copy. This one though has handling instructions, dietary guidance, medical examinations, anatomy, medical conditions, and housing requirements. There are technical terms, but the simplest way to approach it is to read a paragraph or section, google the terms you dont know, and then make a post explaining what you read while pretending you’re teaching it to some junior high kids. If you can do that, you have a good post that should teach people something new and interesting, because you found it new and interesting, and it’s something they probably don’t know because you didn’t know it, and you’ve spent more time on rabbits than most people will have spent on them. By aiming at a junior high-ish level, you’re speaking them them pretty much as you would to an adult, but being mindful to not use all these big words you just learned without explaining them. If you write stuff they don’t understand, they won’t read it. But if you share your delight at learning new things, they will catch that excitement too. Not always, but enough.
The end of research papers always site sources as well. This one has over 40 references, and you can google them and some you will find free to read. Keep following the references and you’ll never run out of content.
That’s my process that works for me. If you like it, steal the whole thing or any parts you think would be helpful. Everyone should always be learning, no matter what subject, and I like encouraging that.
This is too long so I’m stopping now. 😅
I’m always around, or check in on [email protected] where other creators hang out and discuss growing Lemmy and our communities for advice.
Do not feel bad about writing a lot. I love reading enthusiastic paragraphs about something I also find interesting. It is why I am here on Lemmy/Kbin instead of Mastodon.
I need to read that linked PDF. I also need to reread this one.
Favorite sentence in an academic paper.
I am on Fedigrow! Waiting for some more otome game news to come out so I can post it on [email protected], and frantically trying to complete some life tasks so I can go play some otome games and make a post myself about my thoughts on one. We originally had some people on [email protected] at kbin.social which died and left me, a non-mod, the only one posting, and then I found out that kbin.social was having issues to the point a lot of the posts I was making were not even making it to kbin.social. So I started over and definitely need to generate content.
I am curious if you know about personal knowledge management ([email protected]) or digital gardens ([email protected]). I think you might be interested in both of those things, even if their Fediverse communities are not that active. I want to find posts to make them active.
Your document had a lot of great stuff in it I didn’t know!
That’s a lot of buns!
Moth pupae seems oddly specific. I wonder what are the circumstances for them eating bugs or carrion.
I had a rabbit once, and it did make a lot of those things. I never thought anyone would have to sit there and chart them, but I suppose that’s important to know for someone. The lab intern must have gotten that responsibility…
I don’t know much about otome games beyond the basics of what they are. All the kbin links just took me to error pages, but they do look to have crossed over to Beehaw. Reading some of these plot points with no context can be very interesting though! 😆
I’ll have to check out those other communities you’ve mentioned. I do end up with other things to talk about and don’t always know where to take those conversations.
I debate if I should post other, non-owl stuff under a different name, as I somewhat feel I don’t want to risk compromising the group if people don’t like other things I talk about, but that gets to be too much like this being a job, and I don’t think I’d like that. That’s also why I don’t just mod my own sub. I didn’t come here to work, I came here to nerd out.
Raccoons [email protected]
Capybaras [email protected]
Thanks!