Σκιάς όναρ άνθροπος

~Kaz.~ ~Greek.~ ~Languages nerd.~ ~PhD Ancient History and Linguistics, specialising in ancient ritual and magic.~

[lionfloss]

Dewdrop Bonnet

[lionfloss]

prev tag mentioned if you click the source the next photo shows the mushroom to scale and that honestly deserves a shoutout <33

[fallingforleavesandpumpkins]

[fluentisonus]

actually this is maybe the most haunting curse tablet from bath

[fluentisonus]

steam rising off the roman baths in bath

[fluentisonus]

steam rising off the roman baths in bath

[arcusxx]

[angel-kiyoss]

Octopus filmed changing colours while sleeping.

[fierceawakening]

i wonder what they are dreaming about

[plum-soup]

Changing colors duh

[max1461]

What’s really cool about this is that cephalopod (octopus, squid, etc.) intelligence evolved completely separately from intelligence in tetrapods (which includes primates, dolphins, crows… basically any other intelligent animals you can think of). Cephalopods are very, very far away from us on the tree of life. For context, you and a starfish are more closely related than you and an octopus. The last common ancestor of humans and cephalopods was the so-called Urbilaterian, the hypothetical first animal with a left-right symmetric body. This animal almost certainly had, at most, an extremely simple nervous system, without anything resembling a brain.

All this is to say that the fact that this octopus appears to be dreaming means one of two things. Either

a) dreaming is a very, very old thing indeed, going directly back to the Urbilaterian. This would mean that almost every animal, from insects to starfish to sea slugs to newts, is likely to have the ability to dream in some capacity or another (unless they have specifically lost it by evolutionary simplification).

or

b) dreaming evolved entirely independently in cephalopods when they developed greater intelligence. This would suggest, at least, that there’s something very fundamental about dreaming related to intelligence itself, which causes it to emerge independently when sufficient intelligence arises.

Needless to say, either of these outcomes would be really very cool.

[bleubeard]

“But how can you miss someone when they are right beside you?“ She asks. “You can,” I say, “you can. When they are beside you but they are not yours. When they can leave without a moment’s notice and you do not have the right to ask them to stay.”

— Sue Zhao  (via fantasmaglorywrites)

[feral-ballad]

Yves Olade, from Bloodsport; “When rome falls”

[litaratura]

Michael Cunningham, The Hours

[sosuperawesome]

Gregory Fromenteau on Instagram

[euripideez-nuts]

She grows up feeling wrong, out of place, too dark, too tall, too unruly, too opinionated, too silent, too strange. She grows up with the awareness that she is merely tolerated, an irritant, useless, that she does not deserve love, that she will need to change herself substantially, crush herself down if she is to be married

Hamnet - Maggie O’Farrell

[aestheticbiopolar]

[da-rk-ac-ad-em-ia]

[wednesdaywrote-deactivated20260]

[desology]

[happyheidi]