Cicada

hello, do you know why you're here?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

wish lion's mane jellyfish would stop doing that

[coastalqueerlive]

doing what?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

i was going to say doing THAT

but apparently this photo is fake which is an enormous burst of relief to my already fragile, suddering psyche.

sadly though THIS photo of a barrel jellfish is real

don’t like that

[getgoodloser]

Yeah sure that photo is fake, but what ISN'T fake is the fact that the largest lion's mane jellyfish found was about 36 meters long. The average blue whale is about 25 meters long btw.

[getgoodloser]

Here if you'd like to see it:

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

we DO NOT TALK ABOUT TENTACLE LENGTH that is VERBOTEN

[wolfy8tyu]

damn, the girth on those tendrils tho

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

WE DO NOT TALK ABOUT TENTACLE GIRTH

[snowthesprite]

Idk what the fuck yall talken about but I see jellyfish and by god do I love dem on bread.

Some of my favorite jellyfish (sorry if I go on a tanget and vear off jellyfish)

are the Stygiomedusa gigantea, which I believe is also called the blanket jellyfish, but like dude look up a video of it moving it is chilling and fantastic! This thing is 10 meters long, so not the largest here, but ohohoho look at my love

It is a deep sea jellyfish and is one of the largest invertebrate predators known. However, according to Cambridge, it has been consistently recorded in the twilight and sunlight depth zones down south so do with that what you will :)

If we want to keep going down the large and length category of ocean creatures, allow me to introduce the current longest recorded ocean animal. A deep sea siphonophore that clocks in at around 46 meters; my beautiful death halo

Technically siphonophores are hundreds upon hundreds of tinier organisms that grouped together to make a bigger one, but for all intents and purposes, this is one animal. Some of them are incredibly beautiful!

However there is also ones not so pretty, main one was something I saw a month or so ago and it looked like someone had fused like a dozen human limbs together and they were flailing to move and jesus christ yall can go mentally scar yourselves.

Man I can’t find a good picture but Deepsea Oddities has a really good video on them (and on other ocean related things… mostly deep sea)

[jenn-the-mostly-harmless]

Oh hey, I drew a siphonophore mermaid awhile back, or as I like to call her (them?) a siphonosiren.

[luetta]

[centennialcicada]

climate conference in Colombia gives everyone hope!

its gonna be in Tuvalu (and sweden) next year which is CRAZY cus theres only like 11,000 total people in that country. THeyre probably gonna have a crazy population boom

they didnt invite the us, china, indionesia, and a bunch of the other oil guzzling sluts so they didn't have to compromise with them

god blesssss

[centennialcicada]

everythings a popularity contest dont you think thats silly?

[thesilliestpotato]

I was looking for references and stumbled across a series of paintings from 1930s by Soviet painter Alexander Samokhvalov called "The young women of metro construction"

[haydeninwonderland]

[ratbugs]

grey wall jumper feasting on a bee fly

[sitting-on-me-bum]

"Two water fleas (Daphnia sp.) with embryos (left) and eggs (right)."

Marek Miś

Suwalki, Podlaskie, Poland

Nikon Small World Photomicrography Contest

[etcstims]

Playing on his wheel | source

[statsillness]

medical / bloody stuff 🩸🫀 with love, STATSILLNESS. nmbm, f2u

[staticfinch]

(Volume up for millipede steps)

Heard them before I even saw them!

[holespoles]

Felibberto Scarpa, The Cat Who Went to the Ophthalmologist (1953)

[wasp-with-a-computer]

[j-tee]

Bug party

[carfuckerlynch]

hey does anyone have that poem. about the author seeing two boys cuddling on a hotel lobby couch, where he refers to it as something like an island of safe anonymity or smth. its been 5000 years my college boyfriend had it written out and pinned to his wall

[carfuckerlynch]

THANK YOU @witchoflight it is indeed "on traveling together" by Kayleb Rae Candrilli

[rebeccathenaturalist]

The Guts of Predatory Cats Can Destroy CWD Prions

The prions that cause chronic wasting disease in deer are nearly indestructible. So it's good news to learn cat guts are their mortal enemy.

Okay. So. You know how some people want to finish exterminating all large predatory mammals so they have less competition for deer and so they don't occasionally lose livestock? And you know how native deer species in North America have been hit increasingly hard with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in the past couple of decades due to overpopulation thanks to the eradication of large predatory mammals that normally keep them in check?

We already have evidence that reintroducing predatory mammals to their native ranges not only knocks deer populations back to a healthier level, and now we've discovered that apparently the digestive systems of cougars and bobcats are lethal to CWD prions. Prions are among the most difficult pathogens* to eliminate; you have to heat them up to about 1,800 degrees F in order to thoroughly destroy them. And prion diseases like CWD are almost universally fatal.

So to find that these wild cats can safely eat CWD-infected animals AND significantly reduce the chances that the prions will be spread to other deer is a pretty big deal, especially since some other animals like coyotes and crows do pass prions undamaged through their digestive systems. And it's just one more example of why an ecosystem needs all of the species that have evolved in it over thousands of years, not just those are convenient for humans to have around. The spread of CWD is directly related to the overpopulation of deer, and it's likely that continuing to reintroduce large predatory mammals to their native range will help quell this awful prion disease.

[dailybugfacts]

Any new beetle species stomping their cute feetsies around?

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TODAY'S FACT IS

Did you know that Excastra Albopilosa is a relatively recently discovered species (2024)? Like many other longhorn beetles, its antennae are longer than the length of its body. Unlike other longhorn beetles, it is furry. The fur comes through in such a way that it appears to have been killed by a fungus, likely to deter predators.

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Photo by James Tweed