Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
@joshlukedavis.com
11K followers 790 following 3.3K posts
Science writer, editor and author @ the Natural History Museum, London | Queer animals, birds and embroidery | he/him | ✏️🏛🦦 | joshlukedavis.com
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joshlukedavis.com
I guess it's probably time to re-introduce myself!

Hi everyone! I'm Josh, and I work at the Natural History Museum, London 🎉 where I write about natural history and badger curators into letting me nose about their collections.

I also wrote an entire book on ✨queer✨ nature! 🙌🌈🦆
A picture of me stood behind a bench. I'm staring at the camera smiling, with one arm out to the side in a relaxed pose. I'm wearing glasses and a sweater with a stags head on it. In front of me are various animal eye balls in jars.
joshlukedavis.com
And the winner of this year’s ✨Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year✨ goes to Andrea Dominizi!

Awarded for their poignant picture of a longhorn beetle seemingly watching the destruction of its own forest. Or maybe the beetle is a symbol of resilience, surviving against all the odds 📸🧪🪲
A longhorn beetle stands on a log in focus at the bottom left corner of the frame, as a logging machinery is pictured blurred in the background.
joshlukedavis.com
🎉AND HERE IT IS!🎉

This year's ✨Wildlife Photographer of the Year✨ is won by Wim van den Heever's rather haunting image of a brown hyena emerging from the darkness in the abandoned mining town of Kolmanskop, Namibia! Just in time for spooky season 📸🧪🐕
A brown hyena with stripes on its legs stands at the bottom right corner of the picture, as an abandoned house towers in the background during the night.
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
patriciajaydee.bsky.social
The rikishi are taking-in the town and doing what we all do when in London.
Seeing the sights, admiring the parks, shopping on High Street, taking tea at Fortnum's, using the olde phonebox, eating Chinese, and having a terrific time.
joshlukedavis.com
"accidental", as if we don't know you
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
mongabay.com
Scientists have documented the first-ever record of an oarfish in Sri Lanka, a 2.6-meter (8.5-foot) specimen caught off the country’s western coast.

The find expands the known distribution of oarfish into the Indian Ocean, offering a new baseline for studying this rarely seen deep-sea species.
First oarfish sighting in Sri Lanka highlights citizen science in marine protection
COLOMBO — In the shadowy depths of the ocean lives a ribbon-like giant crowned with a fiery red crest — long mistaken for a sea monster. Rarely glimpsed alive, the oarfish holds the record as the…
news.mongabay.com
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
leohickman.carbonbrief.org
The Telegraph has just published *yet another* correction to one of its net-zero articles.

By my count, that is now the ELEVENTH such correction since Labour won the election (and covers 14 separate articles).

I have now added the latest one to my epic thread which is tracking these corrections...
leohickman.carbonbrief.org
"We are happy to correct the record."
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
debbietann.bsky.social
We are being sold a false story that nature is the enemy. That newts, bats, snails and spiders are somehow responsible for the so-called housing crisis and a blocker to economic growth. This is a deliberate lie - using a cynically chosen group of species that could be found in a witches cauldron.
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
dendrochronicle.bsky.social
Ardura Community Forest, Mull 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 The Mull & Iona Community Trust engaged us to find out the age of oaks which had been felled in the 1960s when the Sitka spruce plantation was created by the Forestry Commission. They were mostly around 200 years old.
#dendrochronology #ThickTrunkTuesday #Mull
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
gabrielmilland.bsky.social
Nothing, but nothing, shouts "lazy PR takes advantage of lazy journalist" like demanding something be taught in schools.

Bonus lazy-points to this example for ignoring the fact that it's already in the KS1 national curriculum.
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
dsquareddigest.bsky.social
You will absolutely never guess what the context is for this rather ominous passage

www.thenational.scot/news/2553640...
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
k-hermit.com
A starfish that reproduces in the most insane way possible... it rips off its own arm, and a whole new body grows from it.
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
kiabugboy.bsky.social
The Crinoid hat video is up on my channel!
youtu.be/ZdPTYamnqQA
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
aldonanana.bsky.social
Grammar selling an AI writing agent to students and an “AI detector agent” to teachers… 🫩
An Al detector agent is also available that provides a score to indicate the likelihood of the text being written by a human or Al-generated.
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
rockyrex.bsky.social
This is Australia, but you could apply it anywhere.
joshlukedavis.com
oh I reckon that depends! I don't find them too bad because I'm not usually making a set so they don't have to match 😌 (I imagine it's much different if doing commissions though!)
joshlukedavis.com
my professional opinion is that no one should ever bother making plates because it is stupid and takes ages

(check back on me in six months when I've forgotten the pain and suddenly think making plates is a great idea and why don't I do this more often etc)
A view down onto a hand thrown plate on a potter's wheel, surrounded by a tray full of clay trimmings.
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
biodiversitypix.bsky.social
🥚 The birds of the British Isles and their eggs.
London ;F. Warne, 1920.

[Source]
Historical illustration from 1920 titled "The birds of the British Isles and their eggs," featuring two species. The top depicts two Razorbills with dark brown upperparts and white underparts, resting among grass and cotton-like flowers. The bottom shows a Richardson's Skua standing on a rock, dark brown with white belly, and a group of similar birds in the background on cliffs. Both birds are detailed with natural coloring and realistic postures, highlighting their typical habitats. The image serves as an educational depiction related to British bird species and their eggs.
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
tkingfisher.com
This is true and they are super endangered by poachers who shovel them up by the hundreds and sell them at flea markets and shit. You should not buy the plants and if you happen to kick the poacher in the shins on accident, no one will hear about it from me.
mossworm.bsky.social
still amazing to me the number of movies, games, etc. which have Venus Flytrap-based creatures in some form compared to the actual native range of Venus Flytrap, which is like, the great untamed jungles of a few wet pine savannas in North Carolina
map illustrating the native range of Venus Flytrap plants, just a little half circle around coastal North and South Carolina in USA
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
wildwestcats.bsky.social
I can't doodle worth a darn but I can cross stitch! I finished this earlier this year. Pattern from London's Natural History Museum: www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/cro...
Cross stitch of a Giant Squid. Squid is in shades of orange. The two longest tentacles are held up in a semicircle while the rest dangle below. There is some white detailing on the ends of the longest tentacles and top of the fins. Stitched on navy blue Aida fabric.
joshlukedavis.com
yesss! this was a design I made for the NHM during lockdown to keep people entertained 🥰
Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈
tweetisaurus.bsky.social
After we published the new specimen of #Spicomellus a few weeks ago, we were contacted by George Blasing, who said he'd bought some on the commercial market, and wanted to return it to Morocco. It arrived last week. Thanks George for doing the right thing in the name of science!