Original

Random fact: They did a study on courtship and mating behavior of American alligators at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm in the early 1980's. This study revealed that, among other things, the majority of alligator sex is gay

Male/male 1 is when the larger male gator topped, male/male 2 is when the smaller male topped

average ao3 "sort by categories" result

“Sir, I can has fish?? Thank you, kind Sir!”

Translation:

[weasel? comes up to a fisherman]

Fisherman: Friend, what do you want? [weasel sniffs at a closed bucket with fish] Hungry for some fish, aren’t you? Maybe I should give you a fishing pole? Eager beaver. Let me open it. [weasel is busy digging under the bucket. fisherman gently pokes it] Hey, there is a lid up here. Come on, pick any you want. [weasel grabs a fish and runs away] Hey, no “thank you”? Well, you’re welcome. 

I’m NEVER going to get tired of watching Russians interact with wildlife

Naturalists have got to be one of the groups of people most susceptible to being tricked by the fae. Travellers these days are much less likely to follow a mysterious light or the smell of roast beef into the forest. Meanwhile, find me a naturalist who would not completely lose themself in pursuit of:

The Fae better be fuckin ready to be tagged and fitted with a Radio Collar for Science then, I got new hiking boots and no other ideas for research grant money.

it’s called fashion, sweaty

I said this before but people are really getting the wrong message about koalas. When we who like animal science say that koalas are wretched and horrible we mean that they are fascinating and wonderful. It is brilliant that a mammal evolved into this idiot teddy bear that eats poison all day and screams and falls asleep. Can’t we talk about an animal being wretched and degenerate without everyone saying “so they’re useless and can all die, then?” That’s not the point. An animal doesn’t need to be smart, or nice, or even in any way pleasant to be in the presence of to be amazing and special and worthy of existence. Who would ever want the planet to stop having hairy tree goblins that just hang off a tree branch spewing diarrhea while a laughable pea brain rolls around behind their asshole baby face.

What is not to love about a thing so soft and so small yet so terribly terribly vulgar

creatures like the koala and the ocean sunfish are scientifically important because they help us understand just how badly a living organism can function and still survive

That rabbit/hare post is messing me up. I’d thought they were synonyms. Their development and social behavior are all different. They can’t even interbreed. They don’t have the same number of chromosomes. Dogs, wolves, jackals, and coyotes can mate with each other and have fertile offspring but rabbits and hares cant even make infertile ones bc they just die in the womb. Wack.

These

are more genetically compatible than These

and that’s why morphology-based phylogeny has Issues

@aviculor

The problem is perspective. People always think dogs are the ‘standard’ animal, the metric to use for whether or not two organisms “look like” they’re related. When in fact they’re a massive outlier due to the fact that we fucked up this lineage of wolf beyond recognition with selective breeding. It’s why people always say “breed” when they mean “species”, especially when talking about groups like lizards which can’t even be defined cladistically since some of them are closer to snakes than each other. To say nothing of fish.

I once read an article that emphasized there is no such thing as a fish. Sharks and rays, lamprey, lobe-finned fish like lungfish and coelacanth, bichir and sturgeon, and of course the multiple infraclasses of more “modern” fish groups are all only very distantly related to one another. They’ve maintained semi-similar body structures only because there are limited ways to efficiently move through water as a vertebrate. 

This

And this

Are more distantly related from one another than you and I are from a lungfish

Which is absolutely fuckin wild.

Not only that, but all of us air-breathing land vertebrates, all the lizards and chickens and people and frogs, are closer to one another than those three “fish” are to one another as well.

these

are genetically closer than these

and…

these

are genetically closer than these

and my personal favorite, it really fucks with people…

these

are more genetically similar than these

Whale penis

What

What

What

Please explain

Alright, buckle up. Hans Egede’s account of the sea serpent is one of the sea serpent yarns. And depictions of it have gotten increasingly spectacular:

Now, the classical rational explanation was that Egede saw a giant squid:

However this assumes a) that the sea serpent image is a faithful representation of reality, and b) a behavior that nobody else has ever reported in giant squid.

But what did Hans Egede actually see?

Well for a start it wasn’t Hans, it was his son. So it’s already a second hand account. But that’s splitting hairs, they’re both Egedes.

Second, the famous image of the serpent does not reflect what was really observed. See this map?

The serpent at the bottom there? The famous depiction? That’s a dramatization. What Egede actually saw is the tiny little serpenty thing drawn mid-left side. It’s easy to miss what with the big serpent picture grabbing your attention.

This was accompanied with lots of cetaceous blowing and spewing and whatnot.

And this serpenty wormy thing does look a lot like… well… a whale penis.

With the spouting coming from the whales themselves, leading to the image of the spouting serpent.

You can spend your life at sea and still see things you’ll be unfamiliar with. Sometimes you’ll see a turtle trailing debris and think it’s a sea serpent. Sometimes you’ll see a whale penis and think it’s a sea serpent.

For the complete story please see Paxton, Knatterud, and Hedley (2005) Cetaceans, sex, and sea serpents: an analysis of the Egede accounts of a “most dreadful monster” seen off the coast of Greenland in 1734. Archives of Natural History 32(1), pp. 1-9.

Actias dubernardi - Chinese luna moth

Wild Scandinavia: Finland

"She will take it back some day." -Pink Floyd

slowly but surely

Harpea’s Cave, Navarra, Spain

Oh sure, when nature draws a perfectly triangular cave it’s “a syncline-anticline fold” and “used by shepherds as a shelter since ancient times, but when I do it suddenly it’s “bad worldbuilding.”

There’s a quote that I can’t remember well enough to do a search to find, but paraphrased it’s this: Writers have a more difficult job than God because God is under no requirements to make their work believable.

You have been blessed by the Forest Gods. You will now have good luck for the next 6 months, simply by seeing this post. You are also protected from Slender Man, Bloody Mary and Jeff the Killer. You DO NOT NEED to reblog this post, you are already Protected. This being said, do not feel discouraged, you are free to reblog this if you wish.

In short, we present IMMUNITY STAGS.

I literally just accidentally read a post about a haunted hospital. This was amazing timing.

I just want majestic deer on my dash…..

Nature and water.

Majestic deer

I’m so mad that a t4 bacteriophage actually looks like that and that it’s appearance isn’t made up

this is how they look in all the models

this is how they actually look

like they really fucking look like that. in real life

viruses are literally such bullshit they have the nerve to look like this and they aren’t even ALIVE

A swim through a Finnish pond

The areas that were covered with thick ice sheets in the ice ages that ended some 12,000 years ago are covered with lakes and ponds of many sizes, many of which are a beautiful blue or green colour, though in the case of spotted lake (see http://bit.ly/29kJQzp) something more surreal can result.

Loz

Image credit: Audionautix

http://bit.ly/29xKHcs

Mojave Bouquet & Desert Candles by Floris van Breugel