Result from the Tiaojishan Formation stream, or rather Yanliao biota stream. This incredible assemblage was on my mind from the very start of doing these pieces, not just because it has tons of fascinating critters but because a big portion of the vertebrates here appear...
to have been at least partially arboreal. Tons of small pterosaurs, feathered dinosaurs, mammals and even a few lizard show adaptations for living in the canopy. With weirdos like Yi or at least two lineages of gliding mammals. Few formations offer a glimpse into this world...
that is usually omitted from the fossil record. The outcrops of the Tiaojishan Formation and the rest of the Yanliao biota are known from Northern China, especially Liaoning but also Hebei and Inner Mongolia. These incredibly well preserved fossils were preserved in lakes in...
which fine volcanic ash quickly covered up carcasses. The surrounding forests have been assumed to be subtropical for a while but a new publication actually even compares them with tropical moist montane forests. The flora was dominated not by conifers but Bennettitales which...
made up more than 30% of the flora. These plants, that were probably close to angiosperms, had flower like organs and give this forest a little more color. Besides that we have ginkgos, ferns and other gymnosperms. But the true diversity lies with the inverts...
Over 700 species have been described so far (here only a selection), often with color preservation articulated bodies. We also have bizarre leaf mimics, giant fleas and the largest mesozoic spider, Mongolarachne. When it comes to the vertebrates an interesting aspect is the very small fish...
assemblage, with two lampreys and one or two ray-finned fishes. Instead a large diversity of salamanders filled many aquatic niches and a docodont with beaver tail joined them too. On land, small dinosaurs and mammals can be found. So far missing are any really large animals probably due to a taphonomic bias for small animals to be preserved more easily. The vertebrate size chart is a collaboration between me and Discord member Avery, who also did the inverts. Plants where assembled by JW.
Full size can be seen here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1X_ypdI4M00FkkVSr6lKImNEZzS-BCjK2
does anyone have that gif of a penis growth ad thats a guinea pig that stretches out rly long and a girl says “hot!” and the guinea pig spins around pls i need it
You literally cannot find this type of community interaction on twitter or instagram or any other app. Look at the support, the gratitude, the absolutely incomprehensible shared knowledge of this most cursed, most rare gif.
Couldn’t get over “the ancient Egyptian site of Philadelphia” so I looked up the origin of the name of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to see if it was developed independently or named after that Ptolemic Egyptian city, because “the city of brotherly love” didn’t seems like a particularly Egyptian or Ptolemaic value but who knows
Anyway it was a secret third thing: Philadelphia PA was named after a Hellenic Turkish city.
The Turkish city of Philadelphia was named after the king Attalus II Philadelphus, who according to ancient historians earned the title Philadelphus “he who loves his brother” because of his loyalty to his older brother the king during his reign. Attalus II was the army commander under his brother’s reign and he rejected his army’s proposal to stage a coup and make him king, and when his brother was reported dead in foreign battle, Attalus II married his brother’s widow Stratonice and ascended to the throne—and when it turned out his brother was alive, Attalus divorced Stratonice and ceded the throne to his brother again without a challenge.
For his loyalty he earned the title Philadelphus which he carried on after his brother died and he became king.
Philadelphia in Egypt was named after a completely different guy, pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus, and, well,
“They call me Philadelphus because of my loyalty and duty and my refusal to take the throne from my brother until it was my rightful and natural time. They call you Philadelphus because you married your sister. We are not the same”
Intelligent alien species based on bugs but specifically those moths that don’t have mouths and only live for a week after they pupate. This species’ whole conscious life is actually in the larval phase; larvae are the ones considered people, larvae are the ones with conscious and complex brains who build society, and each instar of the larva is treated as a different phase of life. Larvae become emotionally and socially and cognitively mature without ever becoming sexually mature. When they pupate, they metamorphose into something different and strange and close to mindless, with no mouth and no digestive system, whose only instincts are to mate and then quickly die. Metamorphosis is treated, functionally, like a person’s death, and the imago phase is a kind of proto-afterlife of majestic flight and the continuation of the species. Birth and death inextricably intertwined. Sex is not something people do during their lives, it’s a thing that is done as an imago after you’ve passed on from your life but before you return to the soil in death. Resultant eggs are collected by family members to raise. I think this would be fun.
Original illustration of King K. Rool (in his Kaptain K. Rool persona from Donkey Kong Country 2) alongside Screech (the antagonistic parrot from the Screech's Sprint level of that game), drawn by Steve Mayles, character designer for Donkey Kong Country and creator of King K. Rool.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: winkysteve
On the Nintendo Today app, one of the selectable themes is the Donkey Kong theme. The theme has an Easter egg whereby on the 30th of each month, the animation actually differs based on whether that is the last day of that month, or whether that month also has a 31st day.
Both animations start off identically, with King K. Rool playing dead on the ground, with the text "The Month is Over?" However...
Left: on a month that does not end on the 30th, King K. Rool wakes up suddenly as the text disappears, signifying that there is still one more day left.
Right: if the month does end on the 30th, the text fades into "The Month is Over" without a question mark as King K. Rool remains dead.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: PortalSMario
Found in southern Africa, bladderhoppers are a type of grasshopper. In their final molt, males acquire a hollow, inflated abdomen which is used for sound amplification. Their calls can be heard by potential mates up to 2 kilometres away. Females reply to male calls with their own sound, which is much higher pitched and sometimes not even audible to human ears.
Female Bullacris sp.:
Photos 1-4 by suncana, 5 by peters5001, 6-7 by alexanderr, and 8 by muonmo
hm. dont usually put my own two cents for theories but somethings been kind of annoying me recently so yeah. ralsei thoughts.
i really dont like the idea that ralsei is a specific object. especially not with newer stuff from chapters 3 and 4.
For starters, most people that try to figure out what ralsei is in the real world are basing it off of this appearance
however, I feel like there's plenty of evidence to point to this not being his real form, right? People have already pointed out that his original shadowed form isn't fully consistent. It's possibly the most obvious when you compare his singing animations in both forms. His hat form makes what was later 'revealed' to be his ears look more like hair?,
Ears don't really split the same way that hair does, and theres other examples of hatsei having this kind of spikyness to his 'ears' that hatless ralsei doesnt have.
even the fangamer plush makes his ears spiky!!
its a pretty major part of how hatsei looks, and its certainly been talked about before. And then comes chapter 3+4. And we have plenty of evidence that ralsei is a shapeshifter, and I have seen literally nobody talk about it????? huh?????
Oh, and the hat casting a shadow on him makes no fucking sense because he goes onto wear SEVERAL hats in chapter 3 and he's normal????
also I know its like. A funny bit, but HE TURNS INTO A HORSE
WHY THE FUCK WOULD KRIS'S HEADBAND TURN INTO A HORSE???? WHY WOULD A GREEN CRAYON TURN INTO A HORSE???? WHY CAN HE DO THIS????? THIS ISNT A COSTUME THATS NOT HOW THEY WORK????? WHERE WOULD HIS BODY GO.
not to mention that changing shapes was literally his ability in the legend of tenna game???? he plays it off like 'oh every character has abilities i can turn into a box' but he can also turn into a dog? since ralsei was the only one who read the manual it very well could be an ability given to him since the real Ralsei is also a shapeshifter.
It would also explain why ralsei draws himself in his hat form
thats closer to what his natural form is. Dont have any screenshots on hand right now, but he's got two lines in chapter four (if you leave him lying on the ground for too long, and right before they find the first fountain) about how much longer he can 'keep this body for' that make it very obvious that he's only using a form that looks cuter to appeal to us. Him being a shapeshifter would also explain things like
His face being a deliberately made abstraction would also make this interaction make a lot more sense. Pre chapter three, I assumed Ralsei based his face on Asriel to either try appealing to Kris or as fanservice for the player/red soul, however, now that we've slowly started learning more about Ralsei, it's beginning to seem more like Ralsei just wants to have a face and more distinct appearance, like the lightners do. However, because of how dark worlds work, he can only base it off of what already exists, with that already existing 'model' being Asriel, although with modifications to make himself cuter— pink horns and eyes, and his usual glasses. It's why Kris is always quick to point out differences between them, and why Ralsei is embarrassed at being told that they look similar, he didn't have a choice other than be based off something that already exists.
Alright, so Ralsei is a shapeshifter. He still has to have some equivalent in the Light World though, since that's how Dark Worlds work. He was literally about to tell Susie what he was before getting interrupted, and Toby Fox is deliberately dancing around the topic.
However, I think the answer is actually pretty obvious. Ralsei is a being of 'pure darkness', which is why he can exist in any Dark World, unlike Lancer and Rouxls, who need to be objects that 'belong' in their respective worlds. His form is made up by the original dark fountain, and he describes himself as a 'Prince of the Dark'. Characters in the Dark World know about what happens to and around their real world equivalents, but Ralsei in particular seems to be especially aware of all of Susie and Kris's actions and movements. He doesn't need to be brought in by Kris like Lancer and Rouxls do, and he always appears in the Dark World a few moments after Susie and Kris do, while somehow almost always having pretty intimate knowledge of how the world came to be. Ralsei is also the most adamant on being depended on by Lightners, even more than people like Tenna. He talks about how a Darkners role is to be used by Lightners and to make them happy, and his character development in Chapter 3 especially goes into how he wants to be needed and how he's afraid he's slowly developing his own personality, and why he believes darkners shouldn't do that.
So, taking all of that into account, I feel like the most obvious answer for what Ralsei is is a shadow.
He's a literal prince of the dark. It explains why he can shapeshift, since shadows can be made to look like anything— I'm specifically thinking of things like shadow puppets, and why when he gets knocked out he seems to literally disappear, returning to the shadows. A shadow is also the most dependant on light, shadows literally cannot exist without light, or they'll just be darkness. It even explains his empty room.
His insistence that his only role is to help the Lightners, the way that people can never find anything notable about him (asking swatch for specials his suggestion for Ralsei is based purely on how he dresses and Queen literally forgets to get him a cage), and his ability to be in any dark world (since there's literally nowhere without shadows) all seem to point towards Ralsei being a shadow.
Ralsei being a shadow also means he's literally with you in the dark, could probably straight up not exist if the world was plunged into darkness, and also makes him a weaker version of a titan (explaining the 'prince' title. not quite king, but noble nontheless).
Carpocrinus and some totally normal not freaky snails
The snails are kleptoparasitic platyceratid snails that steals undigested food from the crinoid's anus.
Alt: The scene depicts Silurian carpocrinus sea lilies with radial arms attached to a central cup suspended on a stalk like a flower, hence the name sea lily
On it are inconspicuous looking coiled snails, but these platyceratid snails are a menace to Paleozoic crinoids as they steal their food and individuals with a parasitic snails are often malnourished
someone reblogged one of my posts and added that "clam shrimp are nearly microscopic", I'm not sure what you're mixing them up with but clam shrimp are kind of smallish medium. lentil size to raspberry size. here is an average size one and a very big one
I see people often summarizing bug ferrets as being "an ADHD sophont" which is strange to me. They are very good at focusing on multiple information streams, not easily distractable. Their information-dense media invokes a kind of fragmented attention response in humans, because comparison to a bug ferret, WE have the focus disorder.
I still can't reply to things because the blog is still glitched :/
A lot of things are ADHD traits. "ADHD" encompasses a huge range of experiences that all share disordered attention, as in, the person's capacity to focus impairs their functioning in daily life. It's all just about failing to meet hegemonic standards of behavior, but like autism, it also encompasses a lot of disability. I'm sure there are a subset of people with ADHD who experience better multitasking abilities than their neurotypical peers, but I have trouble believing it's the majority. It is certainly not my personal experience... executive dysfunction makes hard to start doing a single task, and then hyperfocus makes it difficult to switch between tasks...
Here's the thing, I've also had this pointed out about bug ferrets like an accusation-- i.e., how problematic to make a stereotype of ADHD people into an alien! When that isn't my intention, and from my perspective seems like the projection of someone else's internalized stereotype. On the other hand, I get responses like yours, where bug ferret society seems like a fantasy of better world for them, who I then disappoint when I talk about the major flaws of bug ferret society. It's a strange position to be in. I've yet to find a good balance between letting readers come to their own conclusions, responding to criticism, and being an annoying "erm actually" type. Unfortunately, over-explaining things is deeply rooted in my personality.
There's a couple video games where you play an octopus but none that take advantage of everything you could actually do. This is an animal group that practically evolved to be platformer mascots with way too many moves to remember.
Cling to and climb any surface
Grab and reel in things from a distance
Hold and use multiple objects simultaneously
Swing stuff around and throw it
Grapple attack
Jet propulsion when you're in water
The same move is a water gun on land
Ink cloud in water
Long range concentrated ink gun when you're on land
Sharp powerful beak to cut things open/damage enemies
Squeeze through small openings
Blend perfectly against any solid surface
Without a surface to camouflage against, just mimic an object
Venom (almost all octopuses have venom not just blue rings!)
Take shells/pots/other hollow objects as temporary armor
Rapidly change color to mesmerize other creatures
Intimidate different enemies with special shape and color combos
This is all just what any typical octopus species can actually do in real life before you add video game exaggeration, at which point you can have the slingshot physics of Octodad or treat the camouflage as just going totally invisible (though that wouldn't be as fun as having to factor the environment into different disguises). Add fantasy/science fiction elements like Splatoon and you can just go nuts. "Spellcasting" through various sequences of color change? Elemental ink types? Mesmerizing expanded to remote mind control or taming/recruiting different wildlife??
I know you're gonna suggest games or media but listen, I know each and every time an octopus has been a game protagonist and not a single one of them portrays even half of these traits. Venom alone has just never been acknowledged as a typical normal octopus thing at all!
