祝日 / Permanent Vacation
styofa doing anything
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#extradirty
Product Placement
Peter Solarz
Not today Justin
Game of Thrones Daily
d e v o n
todays bird
roma★
i don't do bad sauce passes
titsay
taylor price
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trying on a metaphor
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Misplaced Lens Cap
blake kathryn
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Brazil
seen from Australia
seen from United States
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seen from China
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seen from Malaysia
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@catsrule1030
Made a pair of earrings for a friend! They were so tiny and I think they came out so good! (No shuttle for reference cause I forgot before I gave them to her)
Used size 70 thread, pattern is Sand Dollar Pendant adapted by Kendra Goodnow
https://hhtatting.com/free-patterns/free-tatting-patterns/
The tribes of Tumblr appeared to worship Apollo as their primary patron deity, most often under the epithet Apollo Sphairahemon ("Apollo the Ball-Thrower") as a god of prophecy and sport. His name was typically invoked to celebrate a user blessed with uncommon prescience. Moments of prophecy were considered highly sacred and were often recorded, and such texts are sometimes accompanied by an artistic depiction of the god — either his traditional masculine image or, unusually, in the form of a young woman, which appears to have been an earlier style before a conservative shift toward more conventional iconography — preparing to cast a round rubber ball that our scholars believe was used in the sport known as "dodge ball". Much as other cults regarded his arrows as bringers of disease and health, this community believed that being struck by this ball would bestow prophetic visions.
Some icons are reproduced below:
An earlier depiction (c. 2020) of Apollo as a girl clad in a simple tunic and playing with other children. Figures are smiling and the image is brightly colored, indicating a celebratory outlook toward knowledge of the future.
A later piece (c. 2022) that resembles the traditional appearance of Apollo. References to childhood and play are omitted, and the god carries a more frightening aspect; perhaps this icon represented grim omens rather than good tidings.
alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
under 18, AI is a net positive
under 18, AI is a net negative
18-29, AI is a net positive
18-29, AI is a net negative
30-45, AI is a net positive
30-45, AI is a net negative
46-60, AI is a net positive
46-60, AI is a net negative
over 60, AI is a net postive
over 60, AI is a net negative
Question 2/3
How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?
Frequently (multiple times per month)
Often (multiple times per year)
Occasionally (a couple times per year)
Rarely (once every couple of years)
Never :(
Question 3/3
If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?
under 18, more inclined
under 18, less inclined
18-29, more inclined
18-29, less inclined
30-45, more inclined
30-45, less inclined
46-60, more inclined
46-60, less inclined
over 60, more inclined
over 60, less inclined
Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!
🫶
What is a cat if not a silly little guy that follows you around 24/7, making funny faces and shedding on your clean clothes?
I was high off my ass last night and had this dream where I was in this dense ass forest and sitting there was a tall woman. She was so tall I couldn’t see her face but she was wearing gold and I was like “uh…hi?” And she said “I made you, do you know that?” And I nodded and she was like “I hear your thoughts. Why do you hate my creation? Why do you try to destroy yourself? I made you perfect as you are. Please don’t break my heart”. Then she started crying and it flooded and I woke up with fucking heart palpitations like what does it Mean™️????
polar opposite of this post
inspiration struck and would not let me go until i drew this
This is really beautiful!!!
Knowing how stuff works at the municipal level is a fucking curse because you can do your best to relay information to the community and they still assume the worst of you.
To the average person, it looks like we're just tearing up all the parks for development. But there were meetings and posts and announcements, and there was community input and awareness programs and we did our absolute best to keep everyone in the loop but some people still fell through the cracks.
So they think we're destroying all the parks.
"Why did parks and rec get rid of the fence at this park??? All parks should have fences!"
The fence was damaged and we thought it might be more convenient to open up the area so that people using the shelter didnt have to walk all the way around to get into the playground. The fence was damaged because people would climb it as a shortcut. (I personally disagree that all parks should have fences.)
"Why did they tear down the playground at Miller Park? It was perfectly fine- they wouldn't have to tear it all down if they bothered to maintenance it like they're supposed to."
Playgrounds are suggested to be replaced every ten years to keep up with accessibility updates. Likewise, it was decided that while we're updating the playground it would be a good opportunity to address the safety concerns brought to our attention in the past decade.
"THEYVE COMPLETELY TORN APART WILLOW RIDGE PARK! How dare they take away our precious few greenspaces and line their pockets with kickbacks from high density housing???"
-deep breath-
If you had bothered to go to any of the four public meetings, read the announcements, or looked at the giant sign in front of the park, you would notice that we are remodeling the park to include a wetland restoration area to address the flooding issues, which was voted on by the neighborhood it is adjacent to.
Yall are gonna feel real silly when these projects turn out to be massive improvements.
So apparently the Mac and cheese you can manufacture in your settlements in fallout 4 has no radiation and heals just as much as purified water for a fifth of the carry weight so anyways I’ve set up a pasta farm so I can run through the wasteland crunching down on uncooked Mac and cheese so fast that nothing can kill me
It started with cantrips, which is why it took people a while to notice. The first few events were people on the news talking about how they’d been needing a light and then suddenly they’d waved a hand and said words and there was light. No one really believed them but as more reports were verified suddenly more people came forward with even less believable stories of what everyone really didn’t want to call magic. Even though it was pretty obviously magic. Spectral floating hands grabbing things that were out of reach, whispered messages that reached their friend seated too far away to hear them.
An EMT who whispered a word and suddenly saved a dying man.
Then the darker stories started filtering in.
Words spoken in anger causing explosions. Poison spewing forth from a hand gesture. One person gave a retort so witty that someone was hospitalized.
Everyone was scared, but the nerds started to figure it out fastest. It sure wasn’t the scientists who were doing the equivalent of crying on the floor in the fetal position in their respective labs while reports poured in globally of these occurrences. A growing movement online started spreading lists. They had all the blessings people might have gotten and regardless of how many people scoffed no one could really deny that every instance of magic correlated to a website listing the cantrips in Dungeons and Dragons. People pooled their collective resources to help quantify what was happening and facts started to emerge.
Everybody got one. You had to be at least thirteen to use the magic. That pretty much summed up the only other common denominators. Otherwise it seemed completely random, the magic didn’t line up with any existing character traits. You just unlocked one piece of magic each. People with aggressive cantrips were almost loaded up into camps for suddenly being so dangerous- however many hit points real humans had it was apparently not a big number. A lot more deaths occurred than anyone could feasibly track and the global population panicked.
The legislation for the camps got struck down. There were riots and confusion and for a while everything was pretty chaotic. Firebolts and Eldritch Blasts went off from sheer exuberance as much as anything else. Amidst the rioting were people just living their lives, not using their cantrips. It took a while for things to settle down, but humans can get used to most anything if given enough time.
Almost everybody scanned the list to figure out which they got, but someone with Chill Touch just enjoyed frostier beverages than most even if it made you think about death more to drink something after the skeleton hand had been wrapped around it. At least it looked cool. Most people didn’t really do anything other than play around. A youtuber who had gotten Shape Water suddenly surged in popularity as she pivoted her channel to creating beautiful patterns with colored water. Other online personalities quickly followed and those with combat focused magic set up backyard target practice to show off. Some fires resulted as well as numerous noise complaints and a law was passed limiting where people could practice magic. It was virtually unenforceable but the people in charge were trying to keep a grip on the situation.
Noticeably the largest subset of the population that used their magic were those who had gotten Spare the Dying. Every government turned out the call that such individuals would receive a generous stipend for taking to the hospitals and stabilizing the sick and injured. Death rates dropped substantially, but it was still only a cantrip. Cancer marched on, but many got to live after miraculous recoveries.
Months passed and things started to become a little more normal. There were still debates about what had caused it and how to regulate magic but day to day life settled down. Speculations over what the long term ramifications would be continued as well as why those cantrips. Wizards of the Coast refused to comment for the first six months, closing its doors to the rioting and keeping them closed. At the end of six months they abruptly published a new line of cantrip cards with all kinds of utility and no combat usage whatsoever. The internet exploded and the government wasn’t pleased, but nothing happened. No one got any new magic. People wondered if those under thirteen would manifest the new stuff, but no one did. They just blew out their thirteenth birthday candles and got handed a cantrip like everyone else.
A year later a mechanic in rural Canada was peering into the engine of a busted car. He realized he needed some lubricant and instead of reaching for his can he waved a hand and splattered the car with Grease that had burst from his hand. He was a calm sort of fellow so he called up the local news and said there was more magic. They asked first what cantrip he had- folks who received Prestidigitation had made a number of false alarms on receiving additional magic. The mechanic told them his cantrip was Infestation which he’d never had cause to use after figuring it out.
The press descended and demanded a demonstration. Most people had read up on the basic rules of magic at that point, so everyone understood when the mechanic said they’d have to wait until the next day. A media storm went up the next day with headlines blaring that first level magic had been unlocked after the passing of the lunar new year.
A wide contingent had been waiting for this opportunity. The spell list went out again amidst less panic but more chaos. There was a rash of identity thefts no could trace and eventually people realized Disguise Self posed a significant challenge to daily life. Celebrities had trouble convincing people they were who they said as random citizens took their faces on numerous joyrides. A scandal broke when it turned out an A list actor had hired someone else to play them while they went on vacation but the details were kept very hush hush.
Hospitals called out desperately for anyone with healing magic and most of those blessed with Cure Wounds and Healing Word answered. People with Goodberry formed community food kitchens and for the first time it seemed like hunger could actually be eliminated. Veterinary offices and zoos made special positions for those who could cast Animal Friendship and Speak with Animals.
A celebrity chef hit the jackpot with Purify Food and Drink and made a whole spinoff series where she went dumpster diving and made five star meals out of rotting leftovers. Several people changed careers entirely to lend their services to study ancient texts with Comprehend Languages. Even one hour a day led to huge leaps in discovery and understanding of ancient civilizations.
A small murmur of worry followed the new influx of skills and power. What would happen when more magic was unlocked? The amount of people now running around with dangerous combat spells was even greater than before. Would people have to worry about necromancy? New crimes were being invented faster than laws could keep up as magic was put to novel and interesting uses.
A year passed and everyone waited with bated breath for the lunar new year, but nothing happened.
But I’m pretty sure I figured it out. We got handed cantrips. And we waited a year for first level spells. I’m pretty sure it’s one more year, and then things will really start to get interesting.
Inspired by this poll. If you enjoyed my writing consider leaving a tip on my Ko-fi!
WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH HAGFISH SEX?
(a post I am not putting under a read more so that anyone who reblogs it can have the full text available regardless of what I do to my blog specifically in the future)
TLDR: We don’t know. Let me get that out of the way. We very much Do Not Know. I am going to go into detail about a number of studies, the conclusion of which, when taken together, is ‘we need to do more studies in a way that may not currently be possible.’
Now come with me on a journey where I say that again but take over 5000 words to do it.
The cold, wet facts: what we can be reasonably sure of about hagfish sex
Hagfish gonads are located in the peritoneal cavity, a space between the membrane that surrounds the internal organs and the membrane that lines the abdominal wall. Pictures of hagfish gonads can be seen in Gorbman 1990, Powell 2004, Martini 2013, Weinrauch 2015, Muramatsu 2024. While it starts as a paired organ, one gonad withers early in development, leaving them with a single functional gonad.
The gonad is very long. In immature hagfish, the whole gonad is undeveloped and undifferentiated – there is gonadal tissue present, but it’s not making any gametes, nor has it developed the structures to do so. At some point in their lives, which is currently assumed based on growth patterns to be several years after hatching, the gonadal tissue begins to develop. For the most part, when the anterior (towards the head) two-thirds of it develop to maturity, the tissue produces eggs. When the posterior (towards the tail) third develops to maturity, the tissue produces sperm. In some individuals, gametogensis occurs outside of these boundaries. This seems to be more common in larger hagfish, and one proposed explanation is that as hagfish age, gametogenic tissue expands past the border of undifferentiated tissue that usually separates the anterior and posterior sections of the gonad in order to increase the quantity of gametes the organism can produce.
In a very small percentage of the population (exact numbers are unknown and almost certainly vary based on subfamily, genus, and species, but in the larger and more recent population surveys of several species in the genus Eptatretus the incidence is estimated at below 1%), the entire gonad develops to maturity, with the anterior two-thirds producing eggs and the posterior third producing sperm simultaneously. Whether these individuals are self-fertile, or fertile at all, is currently unknown. In other individuals, there appears to be no gonadal development even after reaching the sizes that are assumed to indicate sexual maturity – however, it’s unclear how many of these individuals are actually adults who have not and will never sexually differentiate, as opposed to above averagely large juveniles or adult hagfish in a part of their reproductive cycle where their gonads look undeveloped to the naked eye. Some hagfish gonad developmental stages being difficult to distinguish from each other without a microscope is an important fact that will become relevant repeatedly.
People studying hagfish reproduction frequently sort hagfish into different stages based on the size and development of their gonads and gametes. In hagfish that produce eggs, these stages are primarily defined by the size of the eggs, which start small and numerous and then grow and reduce in number until a fully developed clutch of usually around 10-30 eggs is ready to be fertilized and laid. In hagfish that produce sperm, the stages are primarily defined by the size of the testicular follicles.
What exactly hagfish reproduction looks like behaviorally is mostly unknown. We don’t know how they fertilize their eggs or where those eggs are laid. Inshore hagfish (E. burgeri) are believed by some to have a synchronous spawning cycle, and the population has been reported to synchronously develop mature gametes and predictably migrate in association with this hypothesized mass spawning – however, the actual spawning has never been directly observed. Mature hagfish just seem to move en masse from the shallows to deeper waters, and when they come back, the females that were formerly full of mature eggs don’t have those eggs any more. An additional piece of evidence for the synchronous spawning hypothesis is that the only known protocol for collecting hagfish eggs for laboratory use, described by Ota K.G., Kuraku S., & Kuratani S. (2007), involves collecting mature wild E. burgeri at a specific time in the year and leaving them alone in tanks to do their unknown thing until eggs appear. The predictable, cyclical nature of their reproductive cycles allows evolutionary developmental biologists and other scientists to obtain hagfish embryos for study even without the knowledge of how those embryos come to be. In all the other species of hagfish I was able to find detailed reproductive data on, hagfish in most if not all stages of gonadal development were present in nearly every collection, which suggests that they are not synchronous spawners.
Hagfish are mostly deep water animals that live on and near the sea floor. They do not have complex eyes, but they do have eye patches that are sensitive to light. That means that they are affected by a major problem with studying life in the deep sea. Even when humans can get past the challenges of reaching the hagfish in their environment, in person or with machines, if we expose them to light so we can observe them we invariably alter their behavior. A sudden big light somewhere that’s too deep underwater for sunlight to penetrate is, understandably, alarming and disorienting for the animals that live there. We are very dissimilar organisms, and it makes collecting information about living hagfish difficult.
The studies: The sequence of claims that did or did not make it to the public and institutional consciousness about hagfish sex
We’ll start with a population survey of Pacific hagfish (E. stoutii) published in 1990 by Aubrey Gorbman, whose work is still cited on several government-run fishery websites and in multiple papers and books on hagfish. Gorbman assessed 100 individual Pacific hagfish and concluded that prior assertions that hagfish display protandry (all individuals differentiate as male first and then become female later in life) was based on misdiagnosis of developing ova as testicular follicles. He claimed instead that hagfish display protogyny and every juvenile will begin to develop ovarian tissue in the anterior section of the gonad when approaching sexual maturity. In some hagfish, ovarian tissue development proceeds through all of the identified stages, resulting in a sexually mature hagfish who produces eggs. In other hagfish, ovarian tissue development reverses and the posterior portion of the gonad develops into testes while the partially-developed ovarian tissue in the anterior of the gonad degrades, resulting in a sexually mature hagfish who produces sperm (but might still contain identifiable ovarian tissue in an early developmental or degenerating state, and permanently retains the “vascular and connective tissue framework” (317) used to support development of the anterior section of the gonad in that juvenile stage). And in a small portion of the population, the entire gonad develops into a reproductive organ that simultaneously produced ova and sperm. He based the claim of juvenile protogyny on the observation that all hagfish in his sample below a length of 20cm contained what he identified via microscope histology as differentiated ovarian tissue. Some specimens from 16 to 24 cm long contained intermixed ovarian and testicular tissue in the same section of the gonad, which he viewed as evidence of a transitional phase, as he did not find any larger hagfish with intermixed tissue. He did, however, find 3 hagfish with gonads that had fully developed along their length into ovarian tissue that produced eggs in the anterior and testicular tissue that produced sperm in the posterior.
In 2001, Davis et al. published their examinations of a small number of Atlantic hagfish (M. glutinosa). (they also did some experiments with injecting lamprey hormones into hagfish but I am interested in how hagfish sexual development works without encounters with scientists doing cyclostome HRT so I am only counting the results from the first part of the experiment). Their sample size was VERY small, and so I don’t think it’s reasonable to take it as reflective of wild populations, but what interests me about this study is that despite the small sample size they still identified multiple hagfish that contained both mature ovarian and mature testicular tissue. They also identified some hagfish with intermixed ovarian and testicular tissue, but lumped those in with the hagfish with undifferentiated gonadal tissue in their data set so I have no further information what that looked like or how many of them there were. But it’s worth noting.
In 2004 Powell et al. published an experiment measuring hormone concentrations within the gonads of M. glutinosa. Unfortunately they also made some choices with how to sample the gonads that interfered with their results. Their results indicated that estradiol and progesterone levels seem to fluctuate seasonally within hagfish gonads regardless of whether they produce eggs, sperm, both, or neither. However, all samples taken prior to November 2001 were only from the anterior region of the gonad (you may recall one of the known things about hagfish gonads is that usually a developed anterior produces eggs and a developed posterior produces sperm – if you only sample the anterior portion of the gonad of all your hagfish you will almost exclusively end up with ovarian or undifferentiated tissue and you won’t have a full picture of what’s happening in the organism, and if I am reading their graphs right that is exactly the result this produced) and when they started sampling the anterior, middle, and posterior section of the gonad, they found that the middle portion was usually indeterminate tissue, so they didn’t include that data in their analysis. I think that is a meaningful piece of information about the structure of hagfish gonads, but at least they mentioned this at all rather than keeping it out of the paper completely.
Overall, due to the limitations of their sampling methods and the fact that this experiment didn’t run for long enough to see if the hormone fluctuations were a consistent annual pattern, I don’t think this is sufficient evidence for a synchronous spawning cycle, especially because hormone levels did not seem to be connected to the stages of gamete maturation. Hormone levels actually seemed to be more connected to age as estimated from size – the smallest hagfish had the highest amount of progesterone and estradiol at nearly every month in the study. When combined with Gorbman’s hypothesis that all juvenile hagfish go through a period of ovarian development, this offers interesting possibilities. In lampreys, the other surviving group of agnathans, estrogen plays a role in the spawning cycles of both lampreys that produce eggs and lampreys that produce sperm. Lamprey ovarian tissue also has a higher amount of estrogen receptors than lamprey testicular tissue. (Sower & Baron 2011) Hagfish and lampreys diverged a very long time ago and their exact evolutionary relationship has historically been contentious due in part to the fact that hagfish, in the course of their evolution, shed many identifying vertebrate traits, such as having a bony spine. (Kuraku & Kuratani 2006, Ota & Kuratani 2006, Ota et al. 2007, Marlétaz et al. 2024, etc., ‘where do hagfish fit on a phylogenetic tree relative to other vertebrates’ is one of the most heavily researched things about them) However, they are confirmed to use several similar hormones and hormonal pathways which are common to vertebrates. Because of the structure of hagfish gonads, it would make sense to me that if high levels of estradiol and progesterone in juvenile hagfish play a role in the sexual maturation process for all hagfish regardless of sex, it might trigger some amount of ovarian development in all of them, even if they don’t all go on to produce viable eggs. However, this is idle amateur conjecture. Additionally, Atlantic hagfish and Pacific Hagfish belong to two separate lineages of hagfish (Myxine and Eptatretus) which are estimated to have diverged before the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. (Kuraku & Kuratani 2006 say Cretaceous, Brownstein & Near 2024 say Triassic.) That’s a long time in which to develop different reproductive strategies, so we shouldn’t treat Atlantic and Pacific hagfish as interchangeable.
In 2013, Martini and Beulig make the claim that observations of protogyny in hagfish were likely a misdiagnosis of different timelines of sexual development. They suggest that hagfish have a gonochoric genetic sex system (the genome of hagfish is of interest to evolutionary developmental biologists, among others, so a few hagfish genomes have been cataloged, but I found no evidence that a genetic sex system has yet been identified. This doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist, just that it’s not a settled matter), and animals who will produce ova simply begin gonadal development earlier than animals who will produce sperm, creating a population of juveniles that, in earlier stages, only have ovarian or undifferentiated tissue. They also point out that immature hagfish ovarian tissue can sometimes be mistaken for undifferentiated hagfish gonadal tissue and vice versa. As evidence they submit the observations that the sex ratio of undifferentiated, female, and male hagfish in their study sample shifts as the hagfish get larger, changing from mostly undifferentiated or female at smaller sizes to closer to a 1:1 ratio of males and females at larger sizes, and that all hagfish in their study above a certain size could be identified as male or female upon macroscopic examination.
I do not uncritically accept their conclusions. The main issue I have is that while they do seem to have performed some microscope histology on some of their samples (this is my interpretation of the statement on page 2 that “Staging was verified by histological examination of representative members of each stage,” which to me indicates that they verified their overall ability to sort hagfish through macroscopic examination by confirming their diagnosis via microscope histology performed on one or more individual hagfish per stage), they didn’t do it on all of them, and they primarily categorized the hagfishes’ reproductive organs by macroscopic analysis, as in, by observing them with standard human vision. Several of the papers I read, including this one, note that early ovarian development can only be distinguished from undifferentiated tissue under a microscope. This means that if all hagfish do undergo some amount of ovarian development prior to sexual maturity as Gorbman and Powell et al. believe, the methods used in this study would not catch it. It would have been helpful for clarifying the mysteries of hagfish sexual differentiation if they used a microscope to check hagfish with testicular tissue for the telltale leftover vascular and connective tissue in the anterior section Gorbman described. It would have been particularly helpful considering that the preceding 3 studies had a low volume of hagfish with testicular tissue and some did not have any hagfish at the later stages of testicular tissue development at all, while Martini & Beullig acquired multiple hagfish in every stage of testicular development. This is a different species in a different part of the world from Gorbman’s study, but they are at least both genus Eptatretus, which makes them a little more comparable.
Fleury et al. (2021) seem to share Martini and Beulig’s conclusions about hagfish sexual differentiation to the point of also not doing microscope histology on immature hagfish gonadal tissue and diagnosing different reproductive stages through macroscopic histology alone. As such, while their study had by far the biggest sample size and included both Pacific hagfish and black hagfish (E. deani), I am not sure their numbers are as trustworthy as those provided by people who performed microscope histology on hagfish gonadal tissue. However, the sheer volume of hagfish involved in this study (thousands) means that microscope histology of all of them would be significantly more demanding than in the smaller studies, and diagnosis of mature hagfish gonads by macroscopic analysis is usually more reliable than diagnosis of immature gonads, so the information definitely isn’t worthless. It’s just not as comprehensive as I would like it to be.
There are issues with all of these studies. The first 3 I listed have very small sample sizes. This means, among other things, it’s completely possible that the conclusion that all juvenile hagfish contain ovarian tissue could have been an accident of sampling where they only managed to catch juvenile hagfish that were developing ovarian tissue, not because all hagfish do but because those specific ones did. This is one of the reasons it’s good to have a large sample size, because these sorts of coincidences can get louder and more likely the smaller your data set is. It’s also possible that the researchers in the first 3 studies were wrong about what they were seeing, as this is a recurring problem in hagfish gonad analysis. They could have misdiagnosed undifferentiated tissue as ovarian, and they could have been sampling from areas of the gonad that decreased the likelihood of identifying testicular tissue. It’s possible that the researchers who later dismissed the claims of protogyny in hagfish came to these same conclusions. It’s also possible, because they were affiliated with actual educational and scientific institutions and I am not, that these later researchers were able to examine more of the data from these past studies (more pictures of tissue than appear in the published papers, for example) and disagreed with the histological analyses these conclusions were based on.
However, if that did happen, they didn’t publish that information, and they haven’t responded to my emails yet. And the information they did publish on their methodology and the reasons for their beliefs about hagfish sexual differentiation isn’t enough to convince me. I am fully open to the possibility that Martini & Beullig and Fleury et al. are correct that hagfish sexual differentiation is genetic and hagfish are largely gonochoric with, as in many other gonochoric animals, a smaller percent of the population being intersex. However, I don’t think they’ve collected or provided the data necessary to settle that claim. I don’t think anyone has.
There are also several genera of hagfish. They split a very long time ago, and have over 80 identified species spread between them. They may all seem similar, as the hagfish bauplan needs little improvement or variation because they are perfect organisms, but it would be fundamentally absurd to assume that what’s true for one species of hagfish must be identically true for the rest. If we get a full picture of the reproductive developmental cycles of one species of hagfish, we will still only know how it works for that species of hagfish.
I do find it interesting that nearly every study, even those with a small sample size, apparently managed to capture individuals with both ovarian and testicular tissue. The exception is that Fleury et al. didn’t find any black hagfish with both ovarian and testicular tissue, but they also, as established, weren’t doing microscope histology, and black hagfish are weird for other reasons. Both Fleury et al. and multiple fishery websites (I haven’t yet been granted access to the population surveys that these claims are based on, but it seems worth mentioning because it matches up with Fleury et al.’s results) report a trend of catching notably more female black hagfish than males. No one is sure if this reflects the population-wide sex balance or something about the capture method results in more females than males. Black hagfish live much deeper than E stoutii, with some reports putting their range at up to 2,000 meters deep, which makes it less likely that we’re gathering samples that represent a full picture of what their lives and populations are like.
It would be, at this point, impossible for everyone who has published a hypothesis on hagfish sexual differentiation to be right. But due to the variations in methods used in the studies and the limitations of studying deep sea animals, it’s not easy to determine which hypothesis is most likely to be correct.
Why are people saying they change sex?
You may note that none of the studies I cited claim that hagfish change sex as adults. That’s because I haven’t been able to find any studies in the past 30 years that make that claim or provide physiological evidence for it. The prevailing modern models of hagfish sexual differentiation in papers published by researchers working with hagfish are protogyny or gonochorism. However, many fishery websites, aquarium websites, and other science communication sources report a range of sexual differentiation strategies (protogyny, protandry, serial bidirectional sex changing, environmentally influenced sex differentiation, gonochorism). Presenting a hypothesis without detailed information on the limits of our actual knowledge is an unfortunately common situation in science communication, made even more unfortunate by the fact that it’s possible that the beliefs about hagfish posted on fishery websites are representative of the beliefs about hagfish that are informing policy decisions about commercial fishing of hagfish. Incorporating inaccurate beliefs about an organism’s reproductive strategies and capabilities in decision-making about what level of human-inflicted mortality populations of that organism are able to withstand is not great, historically.
The structure of hagfish gonads does seem to have at least some similarities to structures seen in vertebrates that are known to change sex (see Cole 2002, Maxfield & Cole 2019, and Langston 2023), namely that all individuals possess a gonad with a section with ovarian tissue potential and a section with testicular tissue potential separated by a section of tissue that usually is not involved in gametogenesis, but can become gametogenic later in life. However, there are multiple other factors that do not add up. One is that the social structures of hagfish are different. Many vertebrates that change sex bidirectionally seem to live in pairs and have a high mortality rate due to both short lifespan and high predation risk. It is hypothesized that these pressures makes changing sex an advantageous ability, because it increases every individual’s chances of being able to reproduce with any conspecific they might meet in their fleeting lifetime. (Pla & Piferrer 2021) Hagfish seem to occur in high densities, and most species are hypothesized to have lifespans better measured in decades rather than in days. Furthermore, hagfish are currently believed to reproduce relatively infrequently and none are known to produce a large amount of gametes per reproductive cycle, meaning that taking the time to switch off gamete production in one section of their gonad and switch it on in the other might end up decreasing the overall amount of reproductive chances they have in their lifetime rather than increasing it. While the structure of the gonad could facilitate some degree of species-wide sexual fluidity, it could also facilitate a primarily gonochoric population containing a percentage of intersex individuals with a fully developed gonad. For these reasons, more evidence would be necessary to make a claim that hagfish sexual differentiation involves changing sex, as a one-time event or serially.
I think it’s possible that part of the confusion around hagfish reproduction is due to a larger issue surrounding understanding hagfish in general, which is that people tend to think of hagfish as ‘primitive’ even though their lineage has been around and evolving just as long as everything else alive today. While they did diverge from the rest of the vertebrates a very long time ago and can therefore provide valuable insight into the timeline of the development of various traits in early vertebrate evolution, they aren’t actually frozen in time. They (and the other surviving agnathans, lampreys (also a very cool group of animals, with significantly less mysterious reproductive cycles)) have survived hundreds of millions of years of sharing environments with the proliferating jawed vertebrates. Please consider the advantages of jaws. Contemplate the majesty of the noble hagfish, which not only gets by without but occupies a massively ecologically valuable niche in a challenging environment. Consider the suite of adaptations necessary to enable this. Yet there is a history of people automatically assigning hagfish traits that are assumed to accompany a ‘primitive’, basal, or less sophisticated state, and sexual differentiation strategies outside of gonochorism have historically been one of those traits. Less so these days, but some people are still citing those older sources when they talk about hagfish.
This is particularly frustrating because it’s not untrue that we can use hagfish as a reference point when trying to understand the history of vertebrate evolution. However, it’s not because they’re a fixed window into the past. It’s because we have areas of study like ‘evolutionary developmental biology’ and ‘comparative genomics.’ Understanding hagfish sexual differentiation could tell us more about the history of vertebrate sexual differentiation in general because similarities and differences from other vertebrates may indicate information about our last common ancestor, which was a very long time ago.
So they don’t change sex?
I would say ‘probably not,’ but I would say it with caveats. One, we know very little about alive hagfish, full stop. A lot of what we ‘know’ about hagfish is guesswork, and much of that guesswork is proven wrong when people find ways to actually check. Hagfish are assumed not to move much, but we aren’t really doing catch and release with them and tracking their movements, we are mostly fishing them up and dissecting them and making conjectures based on where we catch a lot of them (it’s difficult to keep a tracking collar on an animal that regularly ties itself in knots.) Hagfish are primarily thought of as scavengers, but have been observed actively and successfully hunting apparently healthy prey while ignoring accessible carcasses. (Zintzen et al. 2011) Hagfish are assumed to live in a dull and empty sensory world, but they have a unique body-wide chemoreceptive system that we know very little about. Two, you can make conjectures about what an organism seems likely to be doing based on other facts about it, but you don’t actually know for sure until you test your hypothesis directly, because nature and evolution are not strictly logical. I can say that it seems like an inefficient allocation of resources to turn different parts of the gonad on and off throughout every individual hagfish’s life based on the observed population density of hagfish and what we’ve observed of their reproductive cycles as compared to the circumstances of animals that are confirmed to possess the capacity to change sex, but there are many traits and behaviors I think are an inefficient allocation of resources that are scientifically validated to occur in living things. Evolution didn’t ask me my opinion on such matters.
What follows is idle personal conjecture and not to be taken as solid information. If hagfish do have a flexible sex determination system, I think it most likely that the flexibility is exclusive to the juvenile stage rather than a permanent ability in adult animals. It’s possible that Gorbman and Powell et al. were correct that all juvenile hagfish go through a period of ovarian tissue development, though if you look at the recorded size ranges in Martini & Beullig and Fleury et al. and take size as an indicator of age (which works best in juvenile hagfish and starts to become problematic when they’re mature, but we don’t currently have a better way to estimate hagfish age), it doesn’t look like every hagfish develops a fully mature ovary and then some later go on to develop a fully mature teste as in true protogyny. The size ranges of hagfish with ovarian tissue and hagfish with testicular tissue are fairly similar, and if all hagfish developed a mature ovary before developing a mature teste, you would expect to see a lot more small mature females and a higher minimum size for mature males. But it’s difficult to observe a dynamic sexual system in organisms that are dead. These samples provide snapshots of a single point in a hagfish’s life, leaving the stages of development before they were caught mysterious and terminally closing the possibility of future development. So even though true protogyny seems unlikely, there remains a possibility that some amount of ovarian development happens in all hagfish.
This next idea is based on very little, but it also seems possible to me that sexual differentiation in some hagfish may not be controlled genetically, but environmentally. This happens in a lot of different animals. If that is the case, it could be very difficult to figure out, because environmental factors that influence sex are varied and we don’t know what factors hagfish may be sensitive to. My pet hypothesis based on nothing is that many species of hagfish appear to be colony animals, so I wonder if juveniles could potentially be responsive to the sex balance of the local population. Because they likely rely heavily on their chemoreceptive abilities to understand and navigate their environment, I believe it makes sense to assume that hagfish receive and respond to chemical information about their local conspecifics in addition to information about nearby predators and prey. They may be able to detect population-wide sex balances, and that information may affect their sexual differentiation.
(As an aside, another piece of idle personal conjecture about the way chemoreception may be a part of the mysteries of hagfish reproduction is that I think they may be able to determine information about the fertility status of specific other individual hagfish. This would facilitate reproduction in the absence of synchronous reproductive cycles. Hagfish don’t seem to produce a large amount of sperm or eggs compared to many other oceanic creatures, so it would be problematic for their individual and species-wide fertility if they didn’t have other means of heightening the likelihood of successful fertilization. Chemical signaling is a very widespread strategy for communicating reproductive information, so it seems like a reasonable possibility that chemoreception plays a part here. This is not a certainty. It would be difficult to confirm. There are many barriers to studying the sex lives of deep sea animals.)
HOWEVER. We don’t know where hagfish lay their eggs or how they fertilize them, we don’t know how the juveniles might differ in their habits and preferred environment from adults, we don’t know what factors control or influence their sexual differentiation to what degree. As much as I personally enjoy learning about different strategies of sexual differentiation, we must be careful not to form hypotheses based on what we personally think is cool. So this is not me saying that hagfish definitely work this way, this is idle speculation. The only thing I am confident saying about this is that I think we are approaching the limits of what dead hagfish can tell us about alive hagfish, and fundamentally this question is not going to be fully answerable without observations of living animals over time.
What would it take to settle this?
If I were to run an experiment to test whether hagfish change sex or if their sexual development is responsive to environmental conditions, I would need multiple difficult things. One, I would need a protocol for effectively keeping hagfish healthy in captivity to the point that they could endure regular biopsies, which we don’t really have, currently. Their average lifespan in captivity is much lower than their assumed average lifespan in the wild. Part of that is that it’s difficult to keep deep-sea animals on the surface. The conditions are very different, we’re only capable of replicating some of them, and we don’t always know which conditions are necessary for animals to thrive, let alone thrive to the point of reproduction. However, another factor is that many people possess outdated beliefs about hagfish biology and do not provide for several identifiable needs and natural behaviors, such as not giving them substrate to burrow in and housing them in empty tanks, which is likely stress-inducing due to the constant feeling of exposure. This is probably related to the bias that suggests the less an organism resembles ‘complex’ and ‘highly evolved’ creatures such as humans (a common species of highly derived lobe-finned fish), the less meaningful its needs are. I am not surprised at the mortality rate. (If you contact me I will advise on hagfish-keeping for free and that is a real offer.)
Two, I would need years. Ideally I would watch hagfish develop from hatching to several years into sexual maturity. Current estimates put hagfish sexual maturity at around 4 years, but these estimates are mostly come from growth rates based on plotting the sizes of dead hagfish or, rarely, measuring growth over time in laboratory conditions with husbandry issues that the researcher running the study admitted could have affected the outcome. (Yamagutchi 2025) And, again. 80 currently identified species of hagfish with a divide between the two major genera dating back to before the K.T. event. They probably don’t all mature on the same timeline. So we don’t know exactly how long this will take. I don’t think there are many institutions willing to provide that kind of funding on that kind of fluid time scale for an organism that doesn’t exactly have charismatic megafauna status. (Do you think more people would like hagfish if they were bigger? Should I open a crowdfunding project to engineer a 10 meter long species of hagfish? Let me know.)
Three, I would need a lot of hagfish, and a lot of lab space. The conditions required for hagfish to mature and the conditions that might affect sex differentiation are unknown, so it would be best to have a multitude of tanks with varied qualities. Furthermore, while I have thoughts on how to improve hagfish husbandry, realistically this experiment is still likely to have a significant mortality rate due to the unknowns in raising hagfish to maturity. The fact is that it is not currently possible to replicate every single feature of the entire deep sea on land, so the setup is certain to be found wanting even if there was an infinite hagfish research budget. However, as there are many complications, risks, and current technological impossibilities in tracking wild animals through the deep sea and repeatedly biopsying them, maintaining hagfish in laboratory conditions that would allow the identification, prolonged observation, and repeat sampling of specific individual hagfish still seems like the easiest way to obtain meaningful data.
I do see why no one has run this experiment yet, though I think it would be valuable to do so. Given the importance of hagfish to the ecology of nearly every ocean on the planet (see this post for a little more on that), the fact that there is an ongoing commercial demand for their flesh, and the fact that many quirks of their biology may render them vulnerable to population collapse in unique ways, learning more about hagfish sex isn’t something that we should give up on.
Sources:
Brownstein, C. D., & Near, T. J. (2024). Colonization of the ocean floor by jawless vertebrates across three mass extinctions. BMC ecology and evolution, 24(1), 79. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-024-02253-y
Cole, K. Gonad morphology, sexual development, and colony composition in the obligate coral-dwelling damselfish Dascyllus aruanus. Marine Biology 140, 151–163 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/s002270100681
Davis, J., Meservey, S., Agulay, A., Wishinski, J., & Macnevin, L. (2001). Sexuality And Embryogenesis Of The Atlantic Hagfish," Myxine Glutinosa: SEAH". https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/46195/noaa_46195_DS1.pdf
Fleury, A. G., MacLennan, E. M., Command, R. J., & Juanes, F. (2021). Reproductive biology and ecology of Pacific hagfish (Eptatretus stoutii) and black hagfish (Eptatretus deani). Journal of fish biology, 99(2), 596-606. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfb.14748
Gorbman, A. (1990). Sex differentiation in the hagfish Eptatretus stouti. General and comparative endocrinology, 77(2), 309-323. https://doi.org/10.1016/0016-6480(90)90315-D
Kavanaugh, S. I., Powell, M. L., & Sower, S. A. (2005). Seasonal changes of gonadotropin-releasing hormone in the Atlantic hagfish Myxine glutinosa. General and comparative endocrinology, 140(2), 136-143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ygcen.2004.10.015
Kuraku, S., & Kuratani, S. (2006). Time scale for cyclostome evolution inferred with a phylogenetic diagnosis of hagfish and lamprey cDNA sequences. Zoological science, 23(12), 1053-1064. https://doi.org/10.2108/zsj.23.1053
Langston, R. (2023). Histological evidence of sequential hermaphroditism in Hawaiian sandburrowers Crystallodytes cookei and Limnichthys nitidus. Environmental Biology of Fishes, 106(1), 61-78. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-022-01373-y
Marlétaz, F., Timoshevskaya, N., Timoshevskiy, V. A., Parey, E., Simakov, O., Gavriouchkina, D., Suzuki, M., Kubokawa, K., Brenner, S., Smith, J. J., & Rokhsar, D. S. (2024). The hagfish genome and the evolution of vertebrates. Nature, 627(8005), 811–820. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07070-3
Martini, F. H., & Beulig, A. (2013). Morphometics and gonadal development of the hagfish Eptatretus cirrhatus in New Zealand. PLoS One, 8(11), e78740. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078740
Maxfield, J. M., & Cole, K. S. (2019). Structural changes in the ovotestis of the bidirectional hermaphrodite, the blue-banded goby (Lythrypnus dalli), during transition from ova production to sperm production. Environmental biology of fishes, 102(11), 1393-1404. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-019-00914-2
Muramatsu, B., Suzuki, D. G., Suzuki, M., & Higashiyama, H. (2024). Gross anatomy of the Pacific hagfish, Eptatretus burgeri, with special reference to the coelomic viscera. The Anatomical Record, 307(1), 155-171. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.25208
Nozaki, M., Ichikawa, T., Tsuneki, K., & Kobayashi, H. (2000). Seasonal development of gonads of the hagfish, Eptatretus burgeri, correlated with their seasonal migration. Zoological Science, 17(2), 225-232. https://doi.org/10.2108/zsj.17.225
Ota, K. G., & Kuratani, S. (2006). The history of scientific endeavors towards understanding hagfish embryology. Zoological Science, 23(5), 403-418. https://doi.org/10.2108/zsj.23.403
Ota, K. G., Kuraku, S., & Kuratani, S. (2007). Hagfish embryology with reference to the evolution of the neural crest. Nature, 446(7136), 672–675. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05633
Pla, S., Maynou, F. & Piferrer, F. Hermaphroditism in fish: incidence, distribution and associations with abiotic environmental factors. Rev Fish Biol Fisheries 31, 935–955 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11160-021-09681-9
Powell, M. L., Kavanaugh, S. I., & Sower, S. A. (2004). Seasonal concentrations of reproductive steroids in the gonads of the Atlantic hagfish, Myxine glutinosa. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A: Comparative Experimental Biology, 301(4), 352-360. https://doi.org/10.1002/jez.a.20043
Sower, S. A., & Baron, M. P. (2011). The interrelationship of estrogen receptor and GnRH in a Basal vertebrate, the sea lamprey. Frontiers in endocrinology, 2, 58. https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2011.00058
Weinrauch, A. M., Edwards, S. L., & Goss, G. G. (2015). Anatomy of the Pacific hagfish (Eptatretus stoutii). Hagfish Biology; CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL, USA, 1-39. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Greg-Goss/publication/281845044_Anatomy_of_the_Pacific_Hagfish_Epatatretus_stoutii/links/611b04d10c2bfa282a4d8d94/Anatomy-of-the-Pacific-Hagfish-Epatatretus-stoutii.pdf (this is a direct pdf download)
Yamaguchi, Y. (2025). Growth, Feeding, and Age of the Inshore Hagfish, Eptatretus burgeri. Zoological science, 42(3). https://doi.org/10.2108/zs240097
Zintzen, V., Roberts, C. D., Anderson, M. J., Stewart, A. L., Struthers, C. D., & Harvey, E. S. (2011). Hagfish predatory behaviour and slime defence mechanism. Scientific Reports, 1(1), 131. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00131
I'm instituting a new policy of "if I can't easily read your crusty scanned PDF then I'm sending it back to you, telling you to get your shit together and save your .docx as .pdf, and causing snakes to manifest inside your house"
this but also if you are in accounting and you have an Excel file please do not save it as a PDF or take a screenshot of it and then paste it into another Excel file
I take it back whatever you have going on is way worse than what I was dealing with holy shit
@thesummoningdark hello?????
yeah no this is a real thing an actual human being said to me
Good afternoon to everyone in the notes having a horrible time! Y'all are fighting demons I never knew existed!! I think every person that makes you do stupid time wasting shit like this because they refuse to learn basic computer literacy should be fired!!
Sometimes on guard duty I have to put my foot down about something and every so often the person I'm speaking to will say some shit like "You get off on this, don't you?"
And while I understand they MEAN to say "you're on a power trip" or "you are taking this rule too seriously", I am always, always struck by the temptation to go, "Yep. You got me. All my life I've been slowly training towards the ultimate sexual high of forcing a thirty-something tryhard in a backwards snapback to remove his dad's preowned Ford F-150 from the dollar store fire lane. Nothing revs my engine quite like forcing guys named Dustin to submit to regional traffic laws. Ooh, are you gonna be a dirty boy and leave it idling too?"
fuckin dipshit
there's a lot of talk about reading comprehension and one thing i think is the biggest barrier to people on this site getting better at it is simply... rushing. rushing to share something you haven't understood, rushing to have an opinion without taking the time to think about it, rushing to declare that you don't understand something
take these tags, on somebody else's post (condolences pip)
the thing is. this is what i would call an inside thought. nobody would have known you didn't get it if you didn't tell them that. if you recognised that it was important but didn't have the headspace to process it, you can reblog without commentary for others, or to come back to later. or you can save it somewhere and wait until you DO have the capacity to read it over a few more times, ponder it, consider what it might mean, figure out how to understand it, and THEN reblog it
but no. rushing to reblog while it is still opaque. rushing to admit to ignorance rather than spend the time to achieve understanding. perhaps hoping that somebody will break it down for you more simply, though to my mind it was quite simply phrased in the first place. never stopping to take the time first
comprehension is not always instant! sometimes it takes a bit of time for something to percolate after you read it; sometimes you need to read it a few times; sometimes you realise you don't have the context for it and either go and get the context or accept that it's not for you right now
please just simply slow down. you don't always have to respond to everything within a second or two. it is okay if it is not an instantaneous understanding. we all need to get more comfortable with thinking more slowly and more deeply and more carefully, and not letting our instant split second responses drive us all the time, because they are a barrier to genuine reflection
went to a new optometrist today wearing my squid facts ‘save our freaks dont mine the deep’ shirt from @sarahmackattack that has a strawberry squid on it. and i wasn’t even thinking about it but the optometrist walked in and he was like ‘oh what does your shirt say’ so i showed him and he was like ‘oh that’s neat!’ and then i thought he might like to know about strawberry squid eyes since they have weird eyes and he is an optometrist and all. so i was like ‘yeah it’s actually a real kind of squid called a strawberry squid, their eyes are really cool because they have one big yellow-green one and one small blue one’ and he kind of gasped and went ‘oh my god that’s so interesting i wonder why they have that. do you know what their retina composition is like?’ and i watched as he minimized my chart on the computer and started looking up images of strawberry squid and then he googled ‘strawberry squid retina composition’ and he was like ‘sorry we’ll get to your eye exam in a moment i just really want to find out’ LMAO 10/10 optometrist experience will be returning
under US law, it's illegal for anyone who's not a member of a recognised native tribe to own an eagle feather. the penalty is a $100,000 fine.
14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."
and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.
so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.
on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.
probably a good thing I don't intend to move back there anytime soon. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on bird crimes.
@freedomisscaryshit I'm fucking dying I think you forgot the word "feathers" in your tags?? or do you just wish you could grab whole ass eagles that land in your yard??
As an Indigenous person, it continues to astound me that there are such strict laws (written by White people) in our name, laws against...picking up things just found on the ground. Like, stop pretending this is "for" us. We don't want this.
so, for clarity, that's not what this is. the law against possessing feathers is an anti-poaching measure, derived from a North American treaty protecting certain migratory bird species from hunting. that treaty has an exemption for indigenous people to allow tribes that use eagle feathers in ceremonial or religious practices to continue doing so.
i used to collect feathers (illegally) as a teenager and the thing is that it's incredibly important for feathers from wild birds to be illegal to possess because it ensures that they never become fashionable to wear. the reason we passed the migratory bird act was because the american and european fashion industry was driving species to extinction in a timespan of years. not just decades. the ecological devastation of exporting birds for hats was absolutely insane and people were watching wetlands and forests and meadows just empty out in realtime. look at the wikipedia article for the plume trade.
the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.
these laws, as harsh and ridiculous as they seem, saved flamingos, spoonbills, egrets, and all kinds of hawks and eagles from extinction. the minute these laws weaken and people can make money off killing them again, they're fucked.
I want to also add that this extends to the birds themselves, their eggs, AND their nests.
As far as I know, Indigenous folks also do have to apply for a permit still on an individual level. A random person can't roll up, claim to be from whatever tribe (even if it's true), and keep feathers and stuff from the birds protected by the treaty with no proof or permits.
This is also true of exceptions made for breeding, hunting/depopulation, falconry, and scientific/educational purposes! Educational facilities can apply for permits to keep parts or whole animals (alive and taxidermy). While I was in grade school, my mom found a great horned owl on the side of the road that had clearly been a victim of car-strike. She was able to call around and get permission to take it to a taxidermist, to be mounted for my elementary school. That owl is still on display there! My college had a taxidermy class, and I've transported several window- or car-strike birds I've found to them to be used for classes/archiving the pelts.
Falconry is, at least in my state, a 2+ year apprenticeship before they are allowed to have their first bird. They can keep a certain number of certain kinds of feathers for the purposes of imping (wing/tail repair), but are not allowed to keep "keepsake" feathers once the bird is no longer in their care. It's really strict and kind of hard to get into.
And for falconry, some of the birds are bred, and some are wild caught. So there are exceptions there for breeding for this, and presumably for zoos and other conservation/education facilities that do breeding.
Some species, like the Canada goose and some other water fowl, ARE protected, BUT also have a hunting season and regulated take. This requires a hunting license to do. Taxidermists who work on legally taken MBTA-protected species I believe also have to have a permit to do so. Some places, like airports, have permits to clear hazardous birds from the runways/airways; most places are not allowed to mess with, for example, a nesting Canada goose. Shutting down air traffic for a month over a Canada goose nest would be extremely disruptive to many many many people. Getting a Canada goose or several Canada geese sucked into a jet engine is probably not ideal. So, they have permits to chase off or even sometimes depopulate birds causing issues at the airport.
If you're interested (or worried), you can read the MBTA here!
someone found a dollar this morning
Nobody said it was some sort of good luck money bird, but I'm not taking any chances.
*I* didn't say it, but
it may have been mentioned
@jessicamdawn said: #the neighborhood Peahen has been mostly MIA lately #so this is partly hoping for money #and partly hoping for her health
If you're in the northern hemisphere, ms. Neighborhood is on a nest of eggs somewhere! If there are males anywhere in her normal range, she'll return with chicks or die trying. If there are no males, eventually she'll give up (hopefully) and return a lot thinner. If you see her again, bring her some high protein and/or high fat treats to help her recover, like tuna, black oil sunflower seeds, dried mealworms, whole corn, suet nuggets like for wild bird feeders, and small bowls of wet game bird feed are high on the list.
T-minus who the fuck knows how many hours until Penny Beach Trip 2K26 cause you know her ass is gonna be up at the crack of dawn devil whispering about "I wanna go to da BEEEEEECH"
Pray for us
She literally vibrated herself to sleep. The goals for this year are as follows (mostly dictated to me by Penny)
1. Catch our own fish
2. Cook that fish
3. Eat that fish, preferably in a sandwhich
4. Find a treasure
5. Eat a coconut
6. Sand
7. Catch penny BEFORE she crashes any proposals this time(this is a mom and dad goal)
In fair North Carolina we lay our scene, tiny feet slap against the vinyl flooring as they race down the hall way at the ass crack of dawn, a small but powerful voice screeching "ITS BEACH DAY!!!"
Okay 2 donuts and a breakfast sandwhich later and NOW we're really on our way to the beach. We're bring Boomer this time as well which Penny Rose thinks is HILARIOUS. We've been in the car maybe 25 minutes and I've already been asked "What is Boomer up to?" Approximately 572 times
Questions answered thus far:
1. Why is frog? (Fog)
2. Why do mommy and daddy not control the frog?
3. Why is the weather different here then at the beach?
4. Why does it take so long to get to the beach?
5. Why can't penny drive to the beach?
6. Why can't we use fans to blow the frog away?
7. Why are Grampy and cozy not in the car with us to go to the beach?
8. Where is the beach?
9. Will it be sunny or froggy at the beach?
10. What was the noise?
Along with countless others. You could not imagine the google search tabs I have open right now. I am the Hank Green of this car.
I called Cool Ranch Doritos Gamer Fuel ONE TIME and now every time we step foot into a gas station Penny shouts "I NEED GAMER FUEL!"
It is not the warmest beach day, frankly it's a little cold. Has this stopped penny rose? Never- .5 seconds in and she's face down in the ocean screaming
Oop time for shells
Penny has created a new concoction
Grilled cheese sandwhich with strawberries and blueberries right on it. Right on the ding dang sandwich. She has attempted to get everyone to try it. Her father and I are the only ones who have been brave enough.
My husbands review: "I don't know if these are the best flavors but they are for sure the most flavors"
Penny, at the tippy top of her lungs
HEY MAMA LOOK THIS SHELL IS BLACK LIKE YOU!!!!
(The words she is looking for is goth but I got the picture)
Oh by the way we got Penny a Camp Snap so she's also documenting her own journey I can't wait to see the photos
We must feed the beastie again lest she become "a fussy monster" as she refers to herself
This bougie ass child , for dinner, Penny has tried:
Chipotle cream chicken (thumbs up)
Lobster bisque (ate most of the bowl)
Mahi Mahi ( liked this a lot)
Crab stuffed flounder ( asked for 2 more bites)
Chicken club (did not like, bacon too "gushy" in her words)
Bow tie Alfredo (acceptable, not her favorite)
Penny gave a bunch of flowers she picked to a random woman on the beach and then took her photo so that's how we're ending our day over here
She some how ended up in the bed ON TOP of me and then woke up at 6:30 AM - downed 2 bowls of cereal and half a bagel and sprinted into the ocean (with a very sleepy dad trailing behind her)
Her poor grandparents did not believe us until they saw her Naruto running town the beach as the sun rose
Tried to get on a strangers surf board and while the lady was very kind and going to teach her we did have to have a conversation about boundaries
Brought me a shell with a whole ass lil guy in it. A FRIEND she exclaims. We explain that we can't take friends from their homes, that would be like an alien plucking her from the earth. AN ADVENTURE! She counters, but understands that we must gently put him back in the sea in wist he came. "I'm sorry for the adventure friend" she says with a small kiss to the clam who is sent back to the ocean.
Penny made a friend at dinner. They're doing summersaults while we wait for our food.
Penny: what's that
Me: (not thinking, making a horrible mistake) kinda looks like sea grapes!
Penny ( immediately goes to eat said maybe sea grapes)
Me: Penny no you can't eat them
Penny: ... why? They're grapes
Me: (hot and exhausted) they came from the OCEAN!
Penny: .... fish come from the ocean and we eat them?
Me: Penny just put it down, I'll get you some Cheetos, deal?
Penny: alright fine deal.
Penny got to order her own bagel this morning. She chose a chocolate chip bagel with honey walnut cream cheese. She rates this a 11/10
The spoils
A collection of photos from Penny Rose herself for you!
Tried a scallop for dinner
"This tastes very good but is very gooshy so one bite is enough"
Pizza at 9:30 pm cause a tiny voice in the darkness said "my tummy is so empty again" 😂
6:00 AM, from the edge of the bed in the shadows
"The sun is coming up - so if you could just open your eyes we could start the day please?"
When we attempted the "don't move and maybe she won't notice us" tactic she crawled into the bed like something out of a horror movie and just stated louder " I SAID THE SUN IS COMING UP SO IF U COULD JUST OPEN YOUR EYES WE COULD START THE DAY PUH-LEASE!!"
Procured the goods
Anyone who sees a 4 year old in a hot pink and lime green bathing suit singing Kpop Demon Hunters AT the ocean while punching at it while her ghostly apparition of a mother stands at the shore line mind your business she's living her best life
Walked pasted like an oddities place and Penny yelled "MAMA THERES LIKE SO MANY SKELETONS IN THERE YOU GOTTA COME SEE THIS" which everyone thought was 10/10 hilarious. It is always very silly to hear the smallest sweetest twinkly little voice just yell LOOK AT ALL THIS DEAD STUFF
Standing knee deep in the ocean at 8:30 PM trying to catch something with her bare hands, determined to "catch us dinner" (we've already eaten dinner)
"Why is there green stuff on the eggs?"
"It's just seasoning, a choice the chef made"
"Oh do they have a soos chef?
"I mean probably?"
"Okay.... can I talk to them about their choosing green stuff?"
"No baby"
"CHEFS CAN TALK THO!"
Dance party on the balcony so we can wave to all the bachelorette parties walking back from the beach and they can watch a 4 year old drop it low
BYE OCEAN SEE YOU NEXT YEAR 👋
Tatting did work out after all! Making a lil bookmark from Four Dozen Tatted Bookmarks by Robin Perfetti
