here’s my four year old pile of dirt

Origami Around

ellievsbear

Product Placement
Sweet Seals For You, Always

pixel skylines

@theartofmadeline
we're not kids anymore.
AnasAbdin
Not today Justin
occasionally subtle
sheepfilms
will byers stan first human second
Monterey Bay Aquarium
One Nice Bug Per Day

shark vs the universe
d e v o n

roma★
hello vonnie
almost home
todays bird
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seen from Singapore
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@avisuchian
here’s my four year old pile of dirt
TUMBLR! Tomorrow, September 3 2016, is once again INTERNATIONAL VULTURE AWARENESS DAY!
If you are already a vulture PRO, it’s all good, keep scrollin’, baby. NOT A VULTURE PRO? THEN READ ON, FRIEND. VULTURES: SOME ARE LIKELY GOING EXTINCT, RAPIDLY: As you are aware, vultures exist. But did you know that many species of vultures are so critically endangered, that researchers are worried that some might be extinct before the turn of the decade? It’s 2016, bud, so that’s in only four years. Horrifyingly, a handful of vulture species have dropped by a staggering 90% since the 1980s. The White-Rumped Vulture alone has lost 99.9% of its population since the 1990s. You know all those “You were a child of the 80s/90s if you remember ____” memes floating around? Slap some vultures in there with the words “the most abundant raptor in the world during your childhood is now one of the most endangered”. That’s right folks, in the span of your lifetime, this bird has gone from several million, to less than 9,000. Other species have seen similar declines. SO WHO CARES, THEY ARE GROSS/UGLY: First of all, how dare. Vultures are my beautiful children. But seriously, vultures are very important no matter how beautiful (or.. ugly…) you think they are. Vultures are wicked good at eating carrion, and unlike most other scavengers, vultures are a dead-end for many diseases. What this means is that when a vulture eats a carcass that has botulism, rabies, tetanus, anthrax, fusobacteria (linked to colon cancer), clostridium, (and many more), the vulture’s digestive system KILLS these diseases/bacteria, and does not pass them in its feces. One article suggests that vulture digestive systems can kill in excess of 12,000 species of bacteria that are found in rotting carrion. Not only do vultures provide this “service”, but scientists are hopeful that by studying how vultures digest these notoriously hard to kill nasties, that it will benefit humanity directly. I DON’T EAT CARRION, SO I WON’T GET THOSE DISEASES ANYWAY: Well no, m… most of us don’t eat carrion, but guess what? We all drink water and share the same planet. Several types of these bacteria can filter down into the water table if not “cleaned up” by vultures. And while I’m sure some of you drink chemically treated municipal water, many people still rely on wells, especially in rural areas where there is more likely to be wild animal and farm animal carrion. Plus, rabies: It’s a thing. Ever since most of the vulture population in India has been wiped out, there has been a rabies breakout. Rabies is scary, do you really want to play around with that nonsense? Not me. Eat all the carrion, PLEASE, vultures. Even if vultures were not so valuable to humans and the environment (though they totally ARE), they are worth saving anyhow. We screwed this up, let’s dang well fix it. OKAY, I’M DOWN WITH SAVING VULTURES. HOW DO WE DO THIS? Like many conservation issues, this is tricky and the answers are not always easy. Migratory or “wandering” birds in particular are tough to help because they can fly hundreds of miles in a day, and in doing so, cross international boundaries. If you have listened to world politics at all lately, you’ll know getting two countries to agree on something (especially something as “lowly” as helping vultures) is.. well, it’s tough. Vultures may have a lot of protection in one country, then fly across the invisible boundary, only to be poisoned in the next. In Africa, habitat loss, poisoning, poaching (kill the vultures so that their circling won’t lead authorities to rotting, poached animals), power lines, and illegal trade are wiping vultures out at an alarming rate. In India and other regions, much of the same, but also mixed with the devastating use of antibiotics in cattle which is extremely fatal to vultures. If you can, spread the word. Here are just a few of the organizations* trying to help vultures: https://peregrinefund.org/projects/asian-vulture-crisis https://www.rspb.org.uk/joinandhelp/donations/campaigns/vultures/ http://www.save-vultures.org/ http://www.vulpro.com/ http://www.4vultures.org/ If you can’t donate (I feel ya– I know that all ages and demographics love vultures! And not all can spare money) then that’s okay. Do something for International Vulture Awareness Day. Tell someone how cool vultures are, or draw a little vulture doodle. There are a lot of really neat species to choose from. Do a vulture interpretive dance at the mall, and tell people about vultures. Yell from the rooftop, from your twitter, facebook, or tumblr, about vultures. Wear some vultures on your BODY (by which I mean a shirt. Not actual vultures. Actually, I really need to get this. Look at their faces ❤ ). Tag stuff with hashtags like #IVAD and #internationalvultureawarenessday and #lovevultures and make it trend, or whatever social media magic is these days.
Down with rabies, hug a vulture! (d.. don’t, don’t actually hug a vulture. Unless it’s a plush vulture. Oh snap- that’s right, you can totally buy a plush vulture and help vultures with your vulture.) Also. ❤ Not Ugly ❤ :
(Cinerous Vulture) * - I’m not affiliated with any of these organizations, I just want vultures to stay on this planet
Dawww
Callulina sp. by Stephen Zozaya Udzungwa Mountains, Tanzania.
Owls Are Flying Cats
That’s why everyone is fond of owls…
Owl, Kestrel, and Sparrow (aka these naughty children) enjoying their day with Loki, the Silkie rooster.
Charles Knight
(Bitis gabonica) Gaboon viper
My first four illustrations for the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs: Oviraptor, Pinacosaurus, Protoceratops and Velociraptor. We are seeking to raise money to fund an expedition across Mongolia that will recover poached fossils, educate children about paleontology, and hopefully make a significant dent in the damage done to some of these rural communities by greedy fossil poachers. Perks for donating include awesome dinosaur swag featuring the above illustrations and many other things, including a once-in-a-decade opportunity for a fully-detailed painting by me of any dinosaur for a $1200 donation.
Check out the campaign page here!
Red Tailed Hawk in my backyard. It’s amazing how large compared to the house finch below.
Here’s another one! I’m definitely doing productive things with my life :)
Whales are artiodactyls: “Okay sure, that seems right.” Birds are dinosaurs: “NO! NO! DON’T RUIN MY CHILDHOOD! COLLAGEN FIBRES! IT CAN’T BE AAAAAAAAAAAAAA”
And both you and I and everyone else are all lobe finned fishes.
This cute tiny chicken was sculpted by my friend Melody Peña ( @reptangle ) and produced by Windstone Editions! They will be available sometime in the near future as blank “paint your own” sculptures. They already have a really cool line of other animals (mostly fantasy creatures) sold as Paint Your Own, as well as professionally painted collectibles. Well worth a peek. I painted this one to look like my barred rock hens, Moa and Chickadee. Chickadee, see above, wasn’t so sure about the tiny rock hen. She bit it a few times to make sure it wasn’t edible. I love chickens so much. I am going to paint an army of these.
When your crocodile knows its name🙂 #crocodile #alligator
Think that’s an alligator, and it’s VERY cute
I’M??? IN LOVE???
@taigas-den
i hate when scientists are like ‘this planet cant have aliens on it because there’s no water! the atmosphere is wrong! theres not enough heat to sustain life!’ because dude theyre aliens, nobodys saying they need any of those things to exist
we’re so humanocentric it’s infuriating. just because we can’t live there doesn’t mean nothing can! like, never mind aliens, we do this with our own fucking planet! scientists used to think nothing could possibly live at the bottom of the oceans, because “all life needs sunlight to survive, of course!” yet what did we find when we invented submarines that could go deep enough? the barren wasteland the scientists were expecting? fuck no! the bottom of the sea is teeming with all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures even wackier than anything they ever came up with in star trek! when we discover aliens, we probably won’t even fucking realise it, because they’ll be so different from what we’re used to as ‘life’, we won’t even recognise them as living beings
things are heating up in the alien fandom
Another thing that bothers me is when scientists stumble upon a huge black hole or something and say shit like “it’s impossible, it shouldn’t exist, it breaks the laws of physics”…Buddy, do you know who made the laws of physics? HUMANS. HUMANS WHO HAVE NEVER EVEN LEFT THE SOLAR SYSTEM. It isn’t “breaking” anything. Maybe instead of saying it’s impossible to exist, you should look at these old laws from a different perspective. Science is an ever-changing field that’s full of discovery, but sometimes scientists are SO STUBBORN! I understand not wanting to have to rethink years of research but COME ON.
The problem with this discussion is that it’s based on false premises, i.e. that scientists are conservative people who view physics laws as religion and anything contradicting them as heresy. That’s a popular view often shown in fiction and in the popular press, and tends to make non-scientists feel good about themselves (”I may not know as much as them, but at least I’m not as close-minded”). It’s also a very inaccurate and insulting view of scientists.
While one can never generalise things across an entire group of people, and there are indeed scientists out there who are somewhat ossified (and in the end of the 19th century, it’s true that the science field in general was rather calcified. The public has just failed to notice scientists have moved on from this point of view), the vast majority are extremely forward-thinking and would like nothing better than being proven wrong in some cases. Science advances as much through its failures as through its successes, and it’s in fact the very basis of the scientific method to be ready to expose oneself to being proven wrong (that’s the meaning of having falsifiable theories: a theory is scientific only if it contains the seeds of its own potential destruction). When a scientist sees something incompatible with their previous knowledge, they don’t exclaim “that’s impossible!” but “that’s curious…”. Cracks in current theories are usually where new knowledge is hidden, so scientists actually actively look for them.
What the general audience mistakes as conservatism is actually a combination of traits that are vital for scientists to be able to do actual scientific work:
The threshold of proof is very high in science. Humans can easily be misled, our brains are specialists in fooling themselves, anecdote is not data, so don’t expect a scientist to take your tall tale at face value. To be worthy of scientific examination, a phenomenon must be repeatable, independent from the observer, and if possible noticeable in controlled conditions. While it’s true that some discoveries (like some animal species) have started as hearsay, a typical scientist will need more before they go on a wild goose chase for the Yeti;
Our current scientific theories (with “theory” used in its scientific meaning, which is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation”, i.e. quite the opposite of a hunch or hypothesis) are extremely successful and have large amounts of data backing them up. This is especially true of General Relativity, Quantum Field Theory, and the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. These theories have been repeatedly tested and found correct, sometimes down to 10 figures or more after the decimal, both through observation and experimentation. If you want to claim that one of these theories is wrong, the quality of the evidence you are going to have to give will have to match the quality of the evidence in favour of these theories. And if the only evidence against them is your misguided ideas about how the world should be, whether due to religious belief or plain ignorance, don’t expect scientists to have a lot of patience listening to you;
While scientists value imagination, they are careful with trying to extrapolate too far from what is already known, and wild speculation is frowned upon, as it’s far too easy to fool oneself into expecting things that won’t happen. Scientific research is like walking in the dark: you make small steps and try to feel your way around. You don’t make long jumps and hope not to hit a wall or fall into a hole. Unless you have good reason, based on previous knowledge (like moving in an area you already know), to know that the direction you’re going is the right one.
So to take again the examples shown by the previous rebloggers, a scientist will never say: “this planet cant have aliens on it because there’s no water! the atmosphere is wrong! theres not enough heat to sustain life!“. At most, they will say: “This planet cannot support life as we know it (i.e. carbon-based water-dependent life)“, and that’s a perfectly correct statement. Could it support other types of life? Who knows? So far, we haven’t observed any other type of life, so it’s impossible to actually answer the question without a fair amount of speculation, and as I wrote, scientists prefer to leave speculation to others.
As for the “it’s impossible, it shouldn’t exist, it breaks the laws of physics“, it’s actually laughable that anyone could think a scientist would ever say that! Maybe in a bad Hollywood movie, but in real life? In real life, cosmologists and particle physicists are actually eager to observe stuff that cannot be explained by their current theories. General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory (and in particular the Standard Model) are extremely successful, but also desperately incomplete (and in the case of the Standard Model, rather inelegant), and actually completely incompatible with each other. Which is a shame, as some of the things we’d like to know depend on having a theory to bridge the two. That’s why scientists are eager to discover something that cannot appropriately be explained by these two theories. Such a crack, as I wrote above, would provide hints as to a better way to describe the universe.
So stop propagating this false image of the scientist as a kind of high priest that thinks they hold the truth in their hands and shout down any kind of alternative as heresy. That’s not how scientists are, that’s not how science works, and it reflects more on your own lack of understanding of science than on any imaginary scientist’s failings.
My friend made this crochet eurypterid and I think it’s pretty cool.