Oh my god oh my god oh my goddddd the local aquarium has three new born otters and they CHIRP

What in racialisation www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

Something lovely for the weekend! A 1,800 year-old Roman glass flask shaped like a mouse! Squeak squeak! 🐭❤️ 📷 by me www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti... #Archaeology

Sources are the raw material of historical analysis, but their evidence is often qualitatively or quantitatively lacking – and sometimes entirely absent. The new volume of SMC explores the vast territory of missing evidence in the study of ancient cultures: uhh.de/csmc-smc-50

I have a weird question for the #bird people on here. Do you think someone could tell that a book was pooped on specifically by a sparrowhawk (or perhaps hawks generally) just from the feces? I'm looking at a 16th c. case where witnesses claim books were pooped on specifically by sparrowhawks!

pynding, f.n: dam. (PUEN-ding / ˈpyn-dɪŋ) Image: Lambeth Apocalypse; England, 13th century; @lampallib.bsky.social MS 209, f. 7v. #OldEnglish #WOTD

My latest for @hyperallergic.com looks at a new article in JRA on Berenike, Indo-Roman trade, and of course some pet monkeys which may have had pet piglets or kittens? 🐵 Really this is just amazing research showing us the extensive connections between the Mediterranean and India. #GlobalAntiquity

The latest issue of JAOS has been published, #145.4 (2025). This will be the last one under the old name. Starting next year, the journal will appear under its new name, JASPA: Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia. lockwoodonlinejournals.com/index.php/ja... @aspa1842.bsky.social 1/

JUSTICE FOR BOODS

New articles in 出土文獻 on the soon-to-be-published Tsinghua "horse" manuscripts (in vol 15), 5 manuscripts detailing how to evaluate, train, treat, and handle horses.

Duck — Tlatilco workshop, ca. 1000 BCE

Happy Manul Monday!

This auction is live NOW! Bid bid bid! app.galabid.com/creatives4su...

John K. Fairbank’s flashcards. #sinology

'Skeleton Wearing a Top Hat Playing the Shamisen for a Small Dancing Yōkai' (circa 1870) Kawanabe Kyōsai

Everyone’s favourite - the ‘Wolf and Twins’ mosaic from Roman Aldborough (Isurium Brigantum) depicting the legend of Romulus and Remus. Dating to the 4th century AD, the mosaic is now part of the collections at Leeds City Museum. 📷 My own. #MosaicMonday #RomanBritain

Following last week's monochrome elephant, this is another common type of depiction in Roman mosaics. From the Great Pavement at Woodchester, moving around Orpheus. 1/2 #MosaicMonday @classicalalan.bsky.social

An entire universe in a ceiling: in the Beijing Ancient Architecture Museum 北京古代建筑博物馆，a preserved Ming dynasty caisson ceiling from the Longfu Temple. 隆福寺. Concentric rings house stacks of buildings. A star chart, the cosmos, in the centre.

Medieval Pet Care www.medievalists.net/2023/11/medi... #pets

Bee-elzebub: new horned ‘Lucifer’ bee discovered in Western Australia

R.I.P. Nakadai Tatsuya, one of the giant figures in history of Japanese cinema news.yahoo.co.jp/pickup/6558551

My new article is out! A Daoist mountain synced pilgrimages with crane migrations—governing landscapes and conserving biodiversity for centuries. Rethinking nature/culture today. Read open access: doi.org/10.3390/rel1...

In Icelandic we have 'Ókind' for monster. But the translation is un-sheep. So everything not a sheep is dangerous.

Entirely thanks to this image, I've been on a tangent looking for a complete version of this Chinese divination text (related to 28 lunar mansions & their animals) - 演禽三世相法 purportedly written in the Tang but the popular printed tradition starts in the late Ming #woodblockwednesday

Rather beautifully, Professor Mahmood Mamdani's dedication in "Neither Settler Nor Native" is to his trail-blazing son, @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social. He quotes the revolutionary Chinese writer Lu Xun's famous concluding lines in "Hometown": 「其實地上本沒有路，走的人多了，也便成了路。」 -魯迅，故鄉 #everynightapoem

I have a lot of thoughts about the tensions discussed in this article. I may actually be writing my next book about these tensions. But for now I'll just say that this is an important case to read about and grapple with if you care about animal issues and politics. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Something lovely for the weekend! Magical amber animals from the Mesolithic. Carved between 10,000-7,000 years ago. Amber can generate static electricity⚡️ For their ancient owners, these small animals could give off sparks in the dark and make hair stand on end, as if by magic✨ 📷 me #Archaeology

In ancient China, cats were more than companions. They were living barometers. If a cat washed its face, rain was said to follow; if it munched on grass, storms loomed. These beliefs turned feline habits into omens, weaving superstition with skywatching. 1/2 #caturday

Fantastic Beasts and How They Kill You www.medievalists.net/2022/10/fant... #Medieval

Strongly same vibes

In this Chinese #painting, a monkey pokes at a beehive perched precariously on a cliff branch, while three others wait, poised to help as bees swirl in chaos. It’s more than mischief. It's metaphor. In folk tradition, the words for “monkey” (猴) and “bee” (蜂) echo the sounds of 1/2

dnuhshcaD ドンフスクッダ < 1909 いぬ @ dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/841587/1...

😍 Boston, you are beautiful. #NoKings

‘According to the philosophical account Taylor draws on, the articulations of poetry are as fully capable of disclosing the existential significance of human life as the words of philosophers or saints.’ Stephen Mulhall on Charles Taylor’s ‘Cosmic Connections’: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In Jiangnan’s silk-rich valleys, silkworm cats (蚕猫) guard more than just cocoons. They protect a legacy. Passed down through generations, these feline guardians keep rodents at bay, ensuring the safety of precious silkworm seeds. But their role isn’t just practical; 1/2 #caturday

BREAKING: I've just learned that there are teeny-tiny chameleons called stumped-tailed chameleons and they look like this AND I CANNOT HANDLE IT

Emperor Huizong of the Song (1082–1135) may have faltered as a ruler, but his artistry was unmatched. In his paintings, cats often stalk butterflies, a scene both tender and symbolic. The word for cat (māo) echoes mào (耄), meaning old age, while butterfly (dié) sounds like dié (耋), 1/2

This is a fantastic video about cat acting: youtu.be/AycqebrmBkM?...

A “Music for 18 Musicians”-type piece, but made up of interlocking recordings of players in handshake lines saying “good game, good game, good game, good game…”

In this piece on "genre borrowing" I study why netizens use Sima Qian's "arrayed biography" (列传) form to write biographies of Li Wenliang & how the narrative devices of this ancient genre align with the logic of digital culture. Open access! @asc.upenn.edu journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

…..a tomb figurine in the form of an auspicious aquatic creature in the form of a human-headed fish? 🥹 I love him so much??

Colloque – Comparaison(s) est-asiatiques – Humains et non-humains 17 & 18 octobre 2025 (ENS Lyon) afec.hypotheses.org/11317

publication day for my *Documents géographiques de Dunhuang*, a social and cultural history of geographical knowledge, and probably one of the only medieval history books published in France during the ephemeral Lecornu government, which you can freely download here: books.openedition.org/cdf/20307

A haunted house story from the point of view of a loyal dog, Ben Leonberg's film delivers an uncannily great performance from its canine lead actor.

My favorite actors are not human

Our friend the Serra Do Araçatuba Flea Toad is another tiny from southern Brazil! They are less than half an inch long when fully grown! They are a member of a genus of toads known as Saddleback Toads, named after a saddle shaped bony patch covering their spine! (photo by Luiz F. Ribeiro)

Imagine the Last Supper reimagined in a Ming Dynasty courtyard: Christ at the center, not in Jerusalem, but beneath carved wooden beams and fluttering lucky clouds. In this early 20th-century painting, Peter wears a flowing blue hanfu, seated on a three-legged stool beside lotus blooms rising 1/2

Happy to announce the launch of the Digital Library of #ChineseClassics! A comprehensive #collection of over 500 texts, being the result of 20 years of research and the work of 500 scholars.

Coming (quite) soon reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/sons-of...

CfP for an exciting animal panel at the upcoming Association of Art History Conference (University of Cambridge, 8-10 April 2026). A great opportunity for Chinese animal / art scholars! 🎨🐝🐸