rainstormdragon reblogged
The colors have been punched up but this apparently is actually a thing?? Oils from the leaves and bacteria create a film on the water!
rainstormdragon reblogged
did you know that the well-known factoid that male anglerfishes degenerate after attachment until they’re basically just a pair of testes is false? i knew of course that they don’t just become “growths” on the female because I’ve handled dozens of attached pairs and every male I’ve ever seen has been very much obviously a whole and complete second fish, but I sort of assumed there was internal degeneration, perhaps muscle atrophy, etc. i can’t believe no one ever corrected me on this but this just doesn’t happen. in obligatorily parasitic species, the male actually continues to grow and increases considerably in size after he attaches to the female, because the two of them can only reach sexual maturity together. me, an octavia butler fan: is this the height of romance??
what is true is that attached males do have hugely enlarged testes proportionate to the rest of their bodies & organs, and that they receive all nutrition from the female’s bloodstream so their stomachs are always empty, though their own gills seem to still be functional, as are their fins and muscles—you can even induce movement and swimming motions on recently dead attached males. I can only assume that at some point someone said that basically the only biological function a male anglerfish needs to perform is sperm production and this got taken out of context and luridly exaggerated over time. he’s not just a pair of testicles! he’s her forever partner! one flesh one end!
there’s a type of creature that lives six miles underwater in the sunless void and it’s hatched in two bodies and unless they find each other and fuse into a single chimaeric whole they can never grow up properly. hello? hello??
That's extremely cool! also, distracted and enraptured by the writing style at the second link.
rainstormdragon reblogged
bundyspooks
8 of the world’s most bizarre flowers:
1.) Swaddled Babies
2.) Flying Duck Orchid
3.) Hooker’s Lips Orchid
4.) Ballerina Orchid
5.) Monkey Orchid
6.) Naked Man Orchid
7.) Laughing Bumblebee Orchid
8.) White Egret Orchid
shinywaka
Orchids kinda don’t wanna be flowers, huh.
rainstormdragon reblogged
when I think about boquila trifolioata I feel like a medieval peasant in the dark ages simply having to accept the world as it is and that’s just not an experience you get much these days. like yes it is a vining plant that mimics the leaves of the plants it grows on. no we don’t know how
rainstormdragon reblogged
gazing in wonder at the wikipedia page for meander
Out of all the terminological categories in the English language, geological terminology is the most intensely poetic; who could fail to be moved by metamorphism and orogenesis? There is something awesome and mythic about it.
Anyway as I was reading this article I recalled a dim, possibly inaccurate memory of Chinese mythology where four dragons transformed themselves into the four rivers that flow through China.
I've been taking walks beside the creek. The creek has "an erosion problem" as it was once described to me. I notice on one bank the creek cuts underneath the roots of the trees and threatens to collapse the bank, and on another it deposits a low, broad beach of broken stones and mud.
The recent history of humankind would mislead us to think that erosion is a linear process of degradation, but the article for meander tells me that rivers move, the loops in their channels steadily rolling along the river's length, like the slithering of a snake over a time scale of thousands of years...
A river is a kind of dragon.
rainstormdragon reblogged
i have some questions yet i find myself too afraid to seek answers
dear god not the tumbleweeds
completely justified response if you haven't encountered tumbleweeds firsthand (because most of us are only familiar with the loony tunes version) but in reality....
so the thing about tumbleweeds is they are in fact incredibly invasive. they cause millions of dollars of damage every year, and create serious traffic accidents and agricultural disruption. (they're also highly flammable, because of course they are.) the town in question was piled so deep, residents had to call 911 after being trapped in their homes. bulldozers and emergency workers had to be brought. it was wild.
tumbleweeds are also heavier than they look--they're made of wood after all. and they're big (most varieties top out at 4 feet, but there are larger ones that can reach up to 6 feet across. you know how the Emu War sounds absurd and fictional until you realize emus are 6 solid feet of clawed, beaked, avian dinosauric FUCK YOU? yeah, this is like that
in summary, tumbleweeds are thorny, pollen-filled, fire-spreading assholes (and they can spread radiation from old nuclear sites), which means we are dealing roaming packs of stabby, poisonous, radioactive fireballs of death that can appear out of nowhere coming at you top speed down the middle of the highway!
the more you know :D
in conclusion, please have this photo of the only tumbleweed i have any fucking fondness for (the South African Brunsvigia bosmaniae), solely due to the fact it's fucking PINK
is it as evil as all its cousins? probably! do i care? that just makes it sexier! and the bulbs contain hallucinogenic properties, which makes perfect sense from a single glance:
(For balance one has to assume the protesters are not ones you would feel inclined to join in with)
corvid ass website
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Anonymous asked:
im sorry seals molt? my association with that word is insects so i am confused and intrigued
They do! I’d say most species of animals sloughs off “old” parts of their bodies at some point of their lives in some capacity. The word “molting” is used as a catch-all term for this process, although exactly what body part they shed and how they do it varies from animal to animal. Arthropods grow an entire new exoskeleton and shed the old one, but for most other animals, this process only involves shedding the outermost layer of their bodies, the pelage and/or their first layer of skin. Reptiles are quite famous for this because they sometimes manage to come out of their old skins and leave them almost fully intact as if they were kigurumi pajamas:
Mammals tend to mostly only shed fur or hair, growing thicker fur during colder months and losing it in favor of shorter fur during warmer months. How obvious this is depends on the climate, though. It’s quite perceptible in mammals that live in the arctic whose fur changes color depending on the season:
But even the difference between the summer coats and winter coats of domestic dogs can be palpable if you live in places with colder climates!
(I’m quite fascinated by this because I was born and raised in a tropical country and my dogs look the same all year round heh)
But back to the seals. Pinnipeds don’t really use their fur to keep warm like other mammals do, but they still have it, and they have to shed their old coats and grow new ones accordingly, which they do once a year!
In elephant seals, this process is so sudden and so extreme it’s called catastrophic molting. They don’t only lose their fur, but also a layer of dead skin all at once and this forces them to stay on land for a full month without swimming (and therefore, without hunting and eating) until the process is fully done. Because molting requires redirecting blood flow towards the skin instead of to their vital organs as usual, if they swam in the cold waters they’re usually accustomed to while molting, they’d freeze!
Bonus fun fact: despite having lost their fur during the evolution process, cetaceans like whales and dolphins also go through a molting process where they lose a layer of dead skin, which they scrape off by rubbing against rocks and rolling on sand banks.
It’s been recently discovered (as of 2020!) that the reason whales migrate annually from arctic waters to tropical waters is the exact same reason elephant seals spend a month on land: to molt! It’s much easier for a whale to keep warm while shedding its skin in warm waters than it is in cold waters.
rainstormdragon reblogged
please join me for a session of gentle weeping in celebration of the beauty of our shared world
rainstormdragon reblogged
Dude has a death wish
Delighted to announce this bird is real and is a corvid.
Truly the family that just keeps giving.
I haven’t seen it in the notes yet, so afaik, here’s the source of that video! So now you can see the funny poison bird much more clearly.
It was taken by a biologist that studies birds so it seems like he knows what he’s doing. For the most part. Here’s his caption:
You all know that he 100% licked his fingers after handling that bird
I can’t leave this in the tags, I’m sorry.
Naturalist Energy
rainstormdragon reblogged
Plants what now
There needs to be more research done into this, and as of now we can't say why the sounds happen but. WHAT.
I knew they could hear noises but apparently they MAKE noises too
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Gullfoss Falls at Sunset - Iceland [OC] 4032x2248 - Author: Xtianpro on Reddit
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x / Landscape With Fruit Rot And Millipede, Richard Siken
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Ahhh! This is so cool!
rainstormdragon reblogged
“Ice circles,” a rare natural phenomenon that occurs in slow moving water in cold climates. They are thin and circular slabs of ice that rotate slowly in the water.