Hoard of Shinies @ankewehner - Tumblr Blog

I feel like starfish are one of those animals that are treated as very “normal” by people but absolutely shouldn’t be. Like they’re a wheel of repeating heads connected by a central stomach. They walk around using thousands of tiny sticky hydraulically powered tentacles. They have an eye on the end of each arm. Instead of having a mouth they just have an opening where their entire stomach can be pushed out to engulf prey. And they’re just allowed to exist like this. It’s not illegal or anything.

augustdementhe

#i feel like we should stop basing eldritch monsters on octupus and start basing them on starfish instead

^ Seconded.

gon-iii

物語の終端

2017年、三溪園。

早起きして出かけた三溪園。

fuckyeahchinesefashion

Every time OP dances, her parrot flies along with her. OP says she never trained it on purpose and her parrot just loves doing this naturally. Sometimes it’ll just hop right onto her face. (cr 月下郭城)

naamahdarling

Help I love him so much

#budgies

rosieandthemoon

owl cigarette box, 1915

badassdemonsword

You couldnt come up with a jollier name for a bird if you tried

minmos

this thang has one of my favorite ebird descriptions of all time

drachenmagier

More glow?

More glow.

whumpster-fire

A Concise Explanation Of the Differences Between Speculative Fiction Genres

Epic Fantasy never addresses where the food supply for the gigantic fortress or army comes from, or how the same noble family has been in power for thousands of years. Whereas Gritty Fantasy also never addresses any of those issues, but the characters call women whores every other sentence.

If it's High Fantasy, the wizards have colleges / guilds / academies. If it's Low Fantasy, there are like four or five wizards in the world and most of them are kind of lame. Tolkien is grandfathered into high fantasy / exempted because the bad guy is a demigod and so are the wizards. If it's Urban Fantasy, the wizards live in [Real City], [Real Country] and smoke gas station cigarettes instead of "Pipeweed." If it's Sword and Sorcery, the level of magic is somewhat negotiable: what is not negotiable is that the main character can wear a shirt or pants but not both (robes may be allowed).

If it's Dark Fantasy, the primary fantastical elements are vampires or werewolves or skeletons or something else that you can find in the median haunted house that's rated lower than PG-13.

If it's Science Fantasy, that means it's Fantasy. It contains too little science for the publisher to get away with calling it Soft Sci Fi and this is an extremely difficult bar to fail to clear, so the amount of science it contains is probably zero, at best vaguely gesturing in the direction of a scientific concept once or twice. It may have been intended to be "sci fi" at some point, but the author understood / cared so little about science that their editor just begged them to give up and call it magic.

But that brings us to Sci Fi. This is usually a little simpler. If it's incredibly obvious to literally anyone what scientific topics the author is bullshitting about / claims to understand but doesn't, it's Soft Sci Fi. If that is "Every single scientific topic," it's probably Science Fantasy (see above), but if the author argued with their editor and refused to call enough things magic / reflavor the space ships and ray guns, it might be a Space Opera Instead. If a basic high school level understanding of science is required to identify the areas where the author is bullshitting, it's hard sci-fi. If it requires a high school level science education but the reader got a "B" or higher average, it's really hard sci-fi.

If a fantasy work actually addresses where the large but realistically sized fortress's food supply comes from, or a sci fi work requires a college level education to identify what topics the author is bullshitting about, it's a bunch of google docs / spreadsheets / maps / blog posts that has never actually been published as a completed work in any form.

taraxippos

I think this is the single funniest artfight rule. Like....I guess?

taraxippos

xanaxfarts

Tile flooring at the Oceanário de Lisboa, an aquarium in Lisbon, Portugal

mad-hare

in love with this Norwegian trotter named Express Go that’s won 7/7 races so far, is only 14.2hh, and has taught herself to duck down her head to give herself super speed (and lengthen her stride I guess)

elodieunderglass

She trots like haaland runs

isthehorsevideocute

THERE'S ACTUALLY A BIOMECHANICAL REASON FOR THIS!

In natural movement a horse's stride can only reach as far as their nose. You can observe it in this video, but when she lowers her head and pushes her nose out further, her stride actually gets bigger! She has learned that when another horse is gaining on her she can do this to make herself faster!

homeofhousechickens

Oh baby fight

homeofhousechickens

Its amazing how much they can grow in a few weeks :) Cellphone is still on the left and Terabyte on the right.

homeofhousechickens

Very important to duel your brother every single day.

viralfrog

rae-xoxo00

omg the girlies

astra-the-dragon

omg the girls are saviiiiiiiing wiiiildliiiiife

highlyillogicalandroid

Not all heroes wear capes. Or trousers.

poppy-tarts-stuff

Not leaving this in the tags

asukam

I saw this on insta and someone commented asking her how she knew they were in there and she said that she saw the mama duck with only one duckling and thought it was suspicious so she stopped to check and hear them quacking down there... :') <3

uncomfortablecliche

the way the momma duck sped up once she saw her babies yayyyy

reasonsforhope

For when you need a reminder that there really is goodness in the world

And for whenever someone mistakenly tells you that humans can only hurt nature -

We are part of nature. And we are uniquely equipped, in many ways, to help heal the planet we are part of - so long as we keep choosing to help, and to heal, this planet of which we are a part

avoid-avoidance

what if Grace’s earnest desire to learn all he can about his new home Erid runs into a serious snag, when he finds out that almost all levels of existing Eridian formal academic institutions are intertwined with the cultural practice of thrumming — which Grace is not biologically capable of participating in

and so Grace ends up implementing an “Opposite Day” routine with his first classes of young Eridian students, where he periodically assigns a group of his kids to create and deliver to him an in-class presentation, human-style, on any topic of “Eridian common knowledge” of their choosing

imagine how hyped the little pebbles would be to bunch up in front of the classroom’s clear Xenonite barrier and chatter about, like, the differences in local postal services across Erid, while their cool alien teacher — who’s teaching them the basics of super advanced new concepts that even the really old and smart Eridians don’t fully understand yet!! — sits utterly rapt and LOCKED IN, taking copious notes and peppering them with questions