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 cuterâ 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 anythingâ 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!
I first saw this in a book when I was a child and was just able to find this low-quality scan on google, but it remains the only image I have ever seen pertaining to this beautiful animal. I would love to see what it looks like in real detail, especially with all three jaws intact. Even the only *drawing* is a damaged one? Is it just found that rarely?! :(
Something I find incredibly cool is that theyâve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldnât figure out what they were for for the life of them.Â
Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said âOh yeah sure thatâs a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.âÂ
âWait youâre still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???â
âWell, yeah. Weâve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.â
Itâs just.Â
50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, weâve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply havenât found anything better to do the job.Â
i also like that this is a âask craftspeopleâ thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all âthe fuckâ about someoneâs ear âdeformityâ in a portrait and couldnât work out what the symbolism was until someone whoâd also worked as a piercer was like âuhm, heâs fucked up a piercing thereâ. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok
One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks canât get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.
I read something a while back about how pre-columbian Americans had obsidian blades they stored in the rafters of their houses. The archaeologists who discovered them came to the conclusion that the primitive civilizations believed keeping them closer to the sun would keep the blades sharper.
Then a mother looked at their findings and said âyeah, they stored their knives in the rafters to keep them out of reach of the children.â
I remember years ago on a forum (email list, thatâs how old) a woman talking about going to a museum, and seeing among the womenâs household objects a number of fired clay items referred to as âprayer objectsâ. (Apparently this sort of labeling is not uncommon when you have something that every house has and appears to be important, but no-one knows what it is.) She found a docent and said, âExcuse me, but I think those are drop spindles.â  âWhy would you think that, maâam?â  âBecause they look just like the ones my husband makes for me. See?â They got all excited, took tons of pictures and video of her spinning with her spindle. When she was back in the area a few years later, they were still on display, but labeled as drop spindles.
So ancient Roman statues have some really weird hairstyles. Archaeologists just couldnât figure them out. They didnât have hairspray or modern hair bands, or elastic at all, but some of these things defied gravity better than Marge Simpsonâs beehive.
Eventually they decided, wigs. Must be wigs. Or maybe hats. Definitely not real hair.
A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, âYeah, theyâre sewn.â
âDonât be silly!â the archaeologists cry. âHow foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!â
So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.
She now works as a hair archaeologist and I believe she has a YouTube channel now where she recreates forgotten hairstyles, using only what they had available at the time.
Okay, I greatly appreciate the discussion here about the need for interdisciplinary work in academia, and the need to reach outside of academia and talk to specialists when looking at the uses of tools, but somehow people always have to turn this into a âgotcha!â where the stuffy academics get shown up (even though this very thread shows some archeologists reaching out to craftspeople to ask about how tools are used because they recognize the need for that knowledge and expertise).
âA hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, âYeah, theyâre sewn.â
âDonât be silly!â the archaeologists cry. âHow foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!â
So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.â
Did they? Did they really? The archeologists all laughed at the plucky hairdresser and then she proved her theory by simply recreating the styles?
See, what actually happened is that Janet Stephens (the hairdresser/hair archeologist in this post), who published an article about her theory in The Journal of Roman Archeology in 2008, spent about 6 years of research pursuing her idea that perhaps Roman hairstyles were sewn hair and not wigs. She did both hands-on experimentation sewing the actual hair, and more traditional research reading through a ton of sources. This is coming from an interview done with Stephens herself:
âLots and lots of reading, poring over exhibition catalogs, back searching the footnotes to the reading and reading some more! It helped that I am fluent in Italian and, in 2006, I took a German for reading class. Working in my spare time, the research took 6 years.â
âI am an independent researcher, but my husband is a professor of Italian at the Johns Hopkins University, so I have library privileges there. We are friendly with colleagues in the Classics/Archaeology department and at the Walters Art Museum. They were kind enough to send me articles and clippings, read drafts and help with some picky Latin, though I try not to impose.â
Wow, so people in the Classics/Archeology department and at the art museum sent her articles and clippings and HELPED her with her research as opposed to laughing at her in their gentlemanâs club! Itâs almost like people working the archeology/art history these days arenât all stuffy old white guys from the 1950âs!
Stephens also presented her work at the Archeological Institute of America Conference, and according to the interview I cited above, it was apparently well received: âIt seemed to create a a lot of buzz and people said they enjoyed it. Itâs not every conference where you go to the poster session and see âheads on pikestaffsâ!â
Like, thereâs plenty to be said about the ivory tower and the need for interdisciplinary work, and the racism/sexism etc. that newer researchers are working against, but framing this story as âhairdresser totally shows up the archeologists with her common sense!â is needlessly shitting on the academics involved here (and the humanities in general have been struggling to maintain funding at many universities in the US, they donât need to be further attacked), as well as greatly over-simplifying and downplaying Janet Stephensâ achievement. I think itâs more respectful to acknowledge the six years of work that she put into the project than to tell the story like she just sewed some hair and then all the archeologistsâ monocles popped out.
I want to point out that the original post actually fundamentally misunderstands the original article. This was not a case of the archaeologists not recognising the artefact type and a leather worker identifying them, this was a case of the artefact being so unexpected in this context, that it was almost missed. Here is a direct quote from the article:
âThe first three found were fragments less than a few centimeters long and might not have been recognized without experience working with later period bone tools. It is not something normally looked for in this time period.â
The archaeological team almost missed them because these bone fragments were both tiny and unexpected as â[the] technology [was] previously associated only with modern humansâ. As in, Neanderthals had not been shown to have even been capable to make these artefacts before that point. I donât think people quite understand how big of a deal this is - this is about the equivalent of finding pottery in a modern human group about 20 000 years ago (they havenât but thatâs the level of *that shouldnât be there*)
This was identified *by the archaeologists working on the project* because theyâd found them before. They fully knew what these artefacts were in the first place, they just didnât expect to find them there.
Then to prove it, they replicated the use-wear by buying a modern tool off the Internet and doing microscopic analysis. There was not a single modern leather worker mentioned in either the article linked or the actual paper put out. That is absolutely something that would have been acknowledged in both of the papers.
This paper was revolutionary in our understanding of Neanderthal crafting capabilities, recognisied by brilliant and diligent archaeologists and this entire narrative of incapable stuck up archaeologists is an insult to their work.
The women who recognised that the blades were being stored out of reach of children were also archaeologists. Janet Stephensâ research is part of a legitimate branch of archaeological research called Experimental Archaeology. Experimental archaeology has been practiced academically/professionally since the 80s. Iâm a hobbiest in a lot of historical crafts and have been the person that a colleague turned to when struggling to identify an artefact. We were able to figure out what it probably was because I knew what use-wear to look for and how to find parallels.
The narrative that archaeologists are opposed to interdisciplinary work is very frustrating as so many of us, including myself, are strong proponents for it. We are very happy to talk to any and all professionals who will talk to us and highly value modern parallels (sometimes a bit too much, actually)
Sorting some files.
This was an internal work-related document that I made for a design job in 2016.
I was working with this company to design science lessons in VR, and I was the Biology expert, the concept artist, and also the lesson writer/designer. It was a small team.
Snyway, we had all these activities on arctic animals, and I made this for the product management team to explain seal reproduction.
I never really had a job title at this job, but I was the person they called in to explain weird stuff like seal reproduction and deep sea fish to corporate types.
Other places to see my posts:
INSTAGRAM / FACEBOOK / ETSY / KICKSTARTER Â
canary yellow refers to the bright yellow of certain varieties of domestic canaries, popular cage birds.
domestic canaries were bred from the wild Island Canary, a finch native to the Canary Islands.
the Canary Islands are an archipelago owned by Spain.
their name comes from the fact that they used to have a lot of dogs there back in the old days. I think thereâs still probably a lot of dogs there today too.
as an aside, canaries are one of my favorite examples of the oddities of domestication. we have done far more to them than just making them more yellow.
weâve made them white, black (well, gray), and red. we got the red ones by hybridizing them to an endangered finch and crossing back to canary, essentially just having stolen that birdâs red genes.
we have made some plump and given others silly hair.
weâve made them frilly. weâve made them tall.
and weâve also made these things. why did we make these things?
It's always so weird to come down from the biology heavens to see what the average person believes about animals, plants, ecosystems, just the world around them. I don't even mean things that one simply doesn't know because they've never been told or things that are confusing, I'm talking about people who genuinely do not see insects as animals. What are you saying. Every time I see a crawling or fluttering little guy I know that little guy has motivations and drive to fulfill those motivations. There are gears turning in their head! They are perceiving this world and they are drawing conclusions, they are conscious. And yet it's still a whole thing if various bugs of the world feel pain or if they are simply Instinct Machines that are Not Truly Aware of Anything At All????? Help!!!!!! How can you look at a little guy and think he is just the macroscopic animal version of a virus
I think thatâs a good way to look at it! Emotions likely evolved to benefit us: doing things that help us survive feels good, unknown things are scary to protect us, shame and sadness makes us not do something again, things like that. Itâs weird to think that animals, who clearly react to things, would not have any sort of feeling on things, and simply factually react to stimuli. âOh, my foot is being chewed to the core. This is bad, I guess. I should try to get away, so the bad thing will stop,â except also not really as thoughts but like, instant response, somehow.
Humans are different from other species of course, but sometimes we need to remember that we are but animals and also have instincts, and other species are more similar to us than we think
Oftentimes I see people just make shit up about bugs and other invertebrates. People will say stuff like "actually it's been scientifically proven that insects are physically incapable of cognition" with no source, and then you look it up and in fact there is tons and tons of literature reporting results on this exact thing. A while back after getting into an argument with people online about wasps, I decided to try compiling sources on invertebrate cognition out of spite and I had to take a break at some point because there is so much literature out there, it is actually overwhelming. Just with fruit flies alone, there's studies on how they form stable social networks and fight to establish hierarchies; how they make group decisions and act differently in crowds; how they pay attention to what other flies are doing and teach and learn from each other, even with other species. When subjected to pain out of their control, they can develop depression and respond to SSRIs to the point that they are literally used as animal models to study how to treat depression in humans. And that's just like, one animal!
Even with all the research there is though the truth is that we just haven't studied things like cognition, perception, behavior, sociality, etc. for the vast majority of invertebrates (i.e. the vast majority of animals). Most behavioral research (honestly, just bio research in general) is focused on vertebrates -- particularly mammals -- and the research that has been performed for invertebrates has still only been done for a small handful of species and lineages. Fruit flies are one of the single most studied organisms in the world (and there's still a lot we don't know about them). If idk, clams felt emotions, do you think you would be able to tell by just looking at them? (I have no idea if they do or not, I don't think anyone has studied this. we do know scallops can see.) But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and given the small glimpses of insight we have gotten into the vast world of unknowns, I think yeah it's pretty obvious that there is way more going on with a lot of animals than people think. Scala naturae my behated
Scent marking through urine spraying is known to aid mate selection, territory marking and chemical communication in terrestrial, but not in
Male boto (Inia geoffrensis) urinate into the air, and another male will go to where itâs coming down and get it all on his face. We donât know why they do this.
Why arenât there more people constantly talking about flatfishes. This is an animal that lives its whole adult life on its side so it has to move one of its eyeballs around to the other side. Are there people who donât even know this or is it one of those things everybody just takes for granted so they never stop and think about how completely nuts that is.
I bet people donât even know that some of them are pretty
That some are so specialized they practically evolved into flatworms
Or that some can change their color patterns to try and match their surroundings
Or that all of them are predators
Or that some of them, like the many popularly eaten species of halibut, get big enough that if they really wanted to, they could probably eat you too!!
This is a good shot of a big one swimming, presumably before photographer Audun H Rikardsen disappeared mysteriously
Lake Mendota in Wisconsin is transformed by the changing seasons â covered by ice in winter, and by algae in summer â and a new study shows
Lake Mendota in Wisconsin is transformed by the changing seasons â covered by ice in winter, and by algae in summer â and a new study shows how these cyclical shifts are putting the lake's bacteria into evolutionary loops.
Led by researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, the team behind the study analyzed 471 lake microbe samples collected across 20 years, looking at genetic variations within and between species through time.
The data showed thousands of bacteria species evolving through the generations, then evolving back to a virtually identical state as the seasons shifted. As microbes live just a few days, we're talking about genetic evolution crossing thousands of generations within the span of one year.
