Tavishi Oops... kinda fell of the face of the Earth. I'm in the middle of the British countryside doing a brief placement at a zoo? Anyways. I am BACK. Trust, there will be a post about my zoo experience veeeeery soon. However, I have been cooking this post for a few weeks now, so this has to come first: . . . Everyone has a few go-to, half-assed, overused jokes. Every time I see a "road work ahead" sign, I say, "I sure hope it does!". My brother's go to crappy joke is, "The

international SEAL day !!!

Tavishi My second term of university comes to a close, and yet again, I can't decide on what to write about. I'm starting to notice a pattern, because this is exactly what happened at the end of last term. So far, this term, I've had 3 modules: Integrated Physiology I, Integrated Physiology II, and The Moving Animal. IPI and IPII are just anatomy and physiology, but a lot more in depth, and has the fun of comparative anatomy. Our labs for these have been less microscopy, and

Tavishi I like birds. A lot. I also like games. The two combined gets you Birdle, but I don't like birds that much. i won't reveal the answer. i will absolutely pretend like I know what it is (I gave up.) The middle ground game? METAZOOA ! I love Metazooa, and I've put all my RVC friends onto it, too. Basically, it's taxonomy wordle. Not to flex, but.. this is me flexing. Anyways, I am consistently tripped up by the absolute hell that is bird taxonomy. There are too many bir

Tavishi The RVC library is my dream. As someone interested in a fairly niche area of biology, I've grown accustomed to finding online versions of textbooks because they're either, a, 300+ dollars, or b, not available in any libraries near me. The RVC library, though, has every textbook I could possibly want. Not only do they have my favorite general biology textbooks (Vander's, Albert's, Lehninger's, etc.), but they have all the highly specific veterinary textbooks I'm intere

Tavishi I was talking to my friend Russell about what I'm thinking about writing about for Kradigan this week and mentioned wanting to write about thrombus and embolism formation. In response to this, Russell said, "oh, like the shapes with the parallel sides?" Apparently, Russell was trying to troll me, because he then insisted that rhombuses are not parallelograms. Fun fact: rhombuses are definitionally parallelograms. Russell has forgotten math (as a MATH MAJOR). First, t

Tavishi I've developed a new hobby: weightlifting! It kinda started as a joke, but I've rapidly gotten really into going to the gym and bodybuilding this past month. I now go to the gym 4-5 days a week, and have like an actual routine. Good news; I've definitely gotten stronger, but I still have a long way to go. First thing I noticed is how as soon as I stop paying attention to my nutrition, my diet becomes woefully devoid of protein. Lately, I've been legume and yogurt maxx

Tavishi The other day, my friend sent me a video of a walrus popping its eyes out of its sockets and asked me if it's supposed to be doing that. TLDR; yes, they can. Don't stop reading though because I have no hobbies other than talking about pinnipeds, and if y'all stop reading I'll be very sad. Anyways, walruses have a couple cool adaptations that let them do that. First off, y'all need priming in eyeball movement. There are seven extraocular eye muscles. First, the levator

TAVISHI I cannot deny it anymore. I am an American. My geography is god awful, and this is me taking accountability for it. RVC has a LOT of international students, and I quickly realized that my European geography knowledge is terrible, despite me having taken AP Euro last year (sorry, Mr. Estes.) Anyways, I genuinely could not locate Belgium on a map which is frankly, embarassing. In order to fix this, I'm making myself do a European geography Anki. It's still not really st

Tavishi This is the first year that I haven't done science bowl since 2019, and it's actually really sad. I didn't realize I would miss my competitive nerd buzzing sport this much, but it is where I have obtained most of my closest friends. I sound like someone who peaked in high school, but goddamn it, I peaked in high school. caught these two strays Anyways, the science bowl community was so tightly-knit that it unironically had its own slang. For example, the term "biking"

Tavishi It's truly shocking that I'm starting off 2026 with a pinniped post, but I read a cool paper about sealpox and I was kind of hooked, especially considering that I'm currently reading about chicken pox in my pathology textbook. Fun fact: I've never had chicken pox! I am not someone who could ever really be content studying macro or microbiology; my field of interest really marries the two quite well. Anyways. Sealpox is caused by a parapoxvirus, right now classified as

Tavishi I'm a big fan of small creatures, especially insects, and even tinier, my dog. Anyways, one of the smallest pinniped species, and the smallest phocid (eared seal) species is the Caspian seal, Pusa caspica . There are three seals in the genus Pusa - the Baikal seal ( P. sibirica) , Caspian seal (P. caspica) , and Ringed seal (P. hispida) . Of these three species, the Baikal seal and ringed seal are the most popular in general, generally for their usage in memes. pitifu

Tavishi I have spent the last week agonizing over choosing a topic to write about in my Kradigan. I had too many ideas, and have learned about too much cool stuff. I love university; even when I feel like I've learned the content, it feels like there's always more to dig into. Going to a specialized animal school makes this sort of thing even worse, because there's just infinite possibilities to learn and explore my interests. I learn and function like a corvid. I collect lit

Tavishi When I tell someone I'm interested in marine biology, the general assumption is that I love warm-water tropical animals. While I do love a good turtle or dolphin, my interest is piqued more by cold-water strange animals. When it comes to pinnipeds, I'm especially fascinated by the Antarctic species, or the lobodontine seals, including the crabeater, leopard, Weddell, and ross seals. Unfortunately for me, this means if my future follows my goals, I'm going to live in t

Tavishi College continues to go swimmingly! I've started to run into the issue of having too many events I want to go to and too little time. Thankfully, I have time management skills (I CAN do everything I just need to lock in!!!!). Jokes aside, I did have to skip a suturing practical with the Surgical Society that I REALLY wanted to go to... I did, however, do all the pre-reading beforehand (I cannot help but read about whatever I'm about to do before I go in.) I thought I

Tavishi I love being able to understand the minutia of how an enzyme or tiny little protein works, and how that echoes into greater pathological conditions. Currently, the class (module is what we call it here) that we are working through at school is Inheritance, Genetics, and Evolution. This is great and really scratches my microbiology itch. One of my favorite classes of enzymes are methyltransferases, which are enzymes which add methyl groups to things. A methyl group is

Tavishi I am now in my third week of college (second week of actual classes) and am in the process of trying every single club possible. I am so desperately lost and so excited about everything. i have moved into the anatomy museum until further notice. So far, I've joined Anatomy (but not getting their emails?), Pathology, Parasitology (or, well, trying to join? I don't know how to contact their administration.), Nerd (I'M NOT ON THEIR EMAIL LIST BUT I FILLED OUT THEIR FORM

Tavishi As you might know, my favorite animals are pinnipeds (wheee!!). When I was researching colleges, I also was researching the...

Tavishi Ok so. I was supposed to take a break from posting because, well, moving into college. Hiatus done, I'm back. I've been in college for literally 4 days, but I'm so pumped about the stuff I've been seeing and learning that I need somewhere to dump it all! This post is just me nerding out about the RVC anatomy museum! My college boasts a huge collection of animal skeletons and plastinated specimens, which is super cool. Everything's organization is kinda scuffed, but a

Tavishi Embryonic development is so cool. I always imagine it in those cool timelapse videos of like butterflies emerging from...