AJHQ Needs to Cite Their Sources

Hey Jammers! Sorry I briefly broke my promise of 2-3 posts a week– it's been a difficult week for me.

But here I am! With content for you! :D

If you saw my last post, you will have seen that I edited the text of the online safety quiz to change the answers. It was just a small addition to an otherwise normal post... but in all of the time I've been blogging, this was the first time I've been able to use the Animal Jam text font, DigitalDelivery.

You see, early in the history of AJ Stream, I managed to track down the names of the two main fonts used by AJHQ: TikiIsland for titles, DigitalDelivery for body text. 

I figured out how to download and use TikiIsland, as you can see in my blog's header, but every single font site I went to said that DigitalDelivery cost over 100 dollars to download.

So how did I do the edit? Did I finally cave and spend 100 dollars on a font?

Nope! No way would I pay that much. Instead, I discovered a free download link on the Animal Jam Archives, courtesy of Snowyclaw. It's been there a while, but for some reason I've only found it now. So from this point on, you'll see more edits from me involving DigitalDelivery! Not every day, of course-- those kinds of things take a while ^^;

Speaking of the Animal Jam Archives, I've been thinking: since there are only a handful of AJ blogs with regular updates at this point, it would probably make sense to put them on a sidebar on this blog to make them more accessible, right? I'd still keep the blogroll tab of course-- this would just make things easier.

Ok, actual AJ update time! I looked through every store I could to see what kinds of things are on clearance. I could only go on land, cuz I have no ocean animal at the moment, so you should still check beneath the waves if you're interested.

Jam-Mart Furniture:

Diamond Shop (den):

Aaaaand, that's it for all the land clearance items! I guess there aren't that many right after a new seasonal update.

I also checked the pets/animals part of the Diamond Shop, but it doesn't look like any of those are on clearance either.

Moving on, I got a fan letter from my biggest supporter, AJHQ:

Aww, thanks AJHQ!! I don't know where I'd be without my fanz <33

So I don't really ever talk about AJ boxes because I'm more interested in the game itself than the merchandise, but it looks like a different kind of AJ box, so I clicked on the 'Learn More' and it took me to a page with general info about it, nothing new, but then I scrolled down to find...

AN ANIMAL FACT!!!!!!! WOW, ANIMAL JAM REMEMBERS THAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE AN EDUCATIONAL GAME!!!!

If you can't read it, the fact says "Did you know that the fat-tailed dwarf lemur can increase its body weight by 75g (about 40%) at a time?" 

How do they do that, I wonder? Do they eat 40% of their body weight at one time? Do they pull weight out of thin air?

It has a (Learn More) link right after it, so I clicked it, hoping it maybe went to a web page of one of AJ's educational partners so I could learn more...

...and it just went to the main page of The Daily Explorer. -_-

YOU GOTTA CITE YOUR SOURCES, AJHQ!!!!! 

Because AJHQ has betrayed us, I shall take the liberty of elaborating on the vague fun fact above:

According to the Duke Lemur Center, the fat-tailed dwarf lemur gets their name because of their ability to store fat in their tail to last them through hibernation.

They live in Madagascar, and are the only primate known to hibernate. In fact, they can hibernate for up to seven months! Why? Well, you might know that some bears hibernate to avoid the cold conditions of winter, but winter is very mild in tropical Madagascar. It's theorized that fat-tailed dwarf lemurs are avoiding the drought that often comes with those kinds of winters.

Now, back to the fun fact at hand. Before hibernation, a fat-tailed dwarf lemur needs to eat a lot of their favorite fruits and flowers. This lemur strategically begins their hibernation in the wet season when their favorite foods are the most abundant. 

When they eat before hibernation, they eat 40% of their body weight, which would be like you eating 48 pounds of food at once. The lemur stores the energy from that food in the form of fat in their tail!

A common misconception is that hibernation is like sleeping, when in fact they are very different states. During hibernation, a fat-tailed dwarf lemur's breath, heartbeat, and digestion of food slow down– they may only take one breath every 15 minutes! For non-hibernating animals like humans, this is nearly impossible.

What would it be like to hibernate for months at a time? :0

I'm kind of annoyed at AJHQ for not focusing on the natural world enough, especially when the educational part of AJ was part of what inspired me to start caring about the Earth in the first place.


Before I go, me and julieblap did an impromptu "screenskit" in honor of Online Safety Day:

Ah, safer internet day. Surely one of the most exciting holidays of the year.

See you in Jamaa!