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Authors set out to correct under-representation of female sounds – and found some surprising revelations

When we hear the beautiful call of a bird from a high bough, we’re told it’s likely to be a male – singing for territory, or belting out tunes to woo a female. But as the annual dawn chorus reaches a crescendo this spring, a new guidebook is urging us to think again – and turn our ears to the hidden world of female birdsong. The songs, sounds and sights of female birds have historically been overlooked in field guides and sound archives. In 2016, just 0.01% of the bird sounds in the global Xeno-Canto sound library were labelled female. Another sound archive was just 0.03% female, according to a 2018 study. But the new book – The Sound Approach to Birding 2 – aims to correct this under-representation and properly explain female birdsong. Female birds sing for territorial displays, to ward off other females and to attract extra males, according to Lucy McRobert, a writer and researcher who studied the issue for the guidebook. The book comes with its own library of 300 sounds from 200 species, accessed via web or app. The clips are drawn from the larger online archive of Sound Approach, a birdsong project founded in 2000 with confirmed recordings of females for 41% of species found in the Western Palearctic, a biogeographical region encompassing Europe, north Africa and most of the Middle East...

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/19/hidden-world-of-female-birdsong-book

maygi0w0

botanyshitposts

it’s crazy to me that every seed in existence is a little chemical computer taking readings of temperature and moisture and minerals and all that to see if it’s able to grow yet and they’re doing crazy stuff like going into full dormancy and waiting for species-specific conditions etc etc and some seeds will do this in the size of a dust particle (see: orobanche) and some will pack in extra starch and food and do it in the size of a coconut or something… just dissected this flower seed at work that was a woody two-compartment capsule with one embryo per compartment, the whole seed a little smaller than a dime, and I swear to god it had a full soybean’s worth of embryo and food packed in there. it’s just unfathomable to me

botanyshitposts

sometimes a seed strikes me as being like a little spaceship with on-board life support and stuff. all that’s inherently certain about a seed’s existence is that its parents survived nearby, presumably, so if all goes well it’ll be set up for some kind of success falling where it falls, but ideally the seed won’t see those exact conditions, because being too close could also hurt the seed’s chances of survival… as could being too far away, like if it ends up in a different habitat or ecosystem and the right conditions never happen. The whole food-on-board strategy was a huge buff when they patched it in after ferns and other spore-bearing plants, but it’s still basically outer space, right? Just deploying a hundred ships to different planets in the same star system, hoping it’s not so different down there that it’s unsurvivable? like every seed is a chance and different plants are putting different amounts of food, effort, and strategy into those chances. so you get a million different seeds from a million different species and they all look and act different from the ground up. you know what I mean, man. you know what I’m sayin

marine-gifs

Deep sea crabs. Filmed in the Pacific Ocean. From Into the Abyss: Worlds of the Deep - The Twilight Zone (2023).

thoughtportal

Finally, an open hardware printer you can actually understand, repair, and upgrade

Open Printer is an open-source, repairable inkjet printer designed for makers, artists, and anyone tired of throwaway hardware. Built with standard mechanical components and modular parts, it’s easy to assemble, modify, and repair. You can print on standard sheets or paper rolls and choose between black or color cartridges, refillable at your convenience.

This project aims to reclaim our everyday tools. As such, it features no proprietary drivers, no cartridge DRM that locks you to a single vendor and is designed to never become obsolete. The Open Printer is built for longevity and customizability, ensuring that it remains fully under your control.

wtf-scientific-papers

Gilbert et al. (2025)

markscherz

No you don’t understand. This is the actual graphical abstract for an actual paper published in the journal Cell, one of the top three journals for all life science (at the same level as Nature and Science). Incredible.

idontthinkweboughtenoughbodybags

some more of my favourite diagrams from scientific papers

Fish RM, Geddes LA. Conduction of electrical current to and through the human body: a review. Eplasty. 2009 Oct 12;9:e44. PMID: 19907637; PMCID: PMC2763825.

lindagoesmushrooming

crafting-and-tea

Reconciliation means meeting a landscape on its own terms.

Authorities report progress in controlling pests – the yellow ant invaders – that are threatening the charismatic crustaceans

Fix The News is the world's leading solutions journalism newsletter. We share hidden stories of progress with readers from 195 countries. St

tenmillionpoundsofsludge-deacti

I need to be the most fuckable person on this public transport

tenmillionpoundsofsludge-deacti

artifacts-and-arthropods

The Spectacled Salamander: when threatened, this salamander curls its body into an aposomatic defensive position that exposes the markings on the underside of its tail and legs

Salamandrina perspicillata, commonly known as the northern spectacled salamander or Savi's salamander, is a peculiar species that can be found only in Italy.

Above: the northern spectacled salamander in its defensive position

When the salamander feels threatened, it often displays a defense mechanism known as the unken reflex -- it curls its tail up over its body and arches its back, exposing the bright red markings that run along the underside of its tail, legs, and cloaca. These aposomatic markings serve as a warning to potential predators by signalling that the salamander is noxious or unpalatable.

Above: gaze upon the belly of the beast

When it curls itself into that defensive pose, the salamander's tail and body often form a complete loop, with the tail draping over its nose.

Above: this guy might be trying a little too hard

The males of this species have also been known to assume an upright position while searching for a mate, standing on their hind legs and using their tails to support themselves.

Above: the photo at the top shows a male northern spectacled salamander standing on his hind legs, while the photo at the bottom shows a female in a more typical pose

The northern spectacled salamander is a very small species, with a total length of just 80-90mm (about 3 to 3.5 inches) from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail. According to this article:

It prefers cool, shady habitats rich in natural refuges: broadleaf woodlands, moist valleys, and stream edges with little current. It can be found among leaf litter, under logs and stones, in rock crevices, old dry-stone walls, caves, and natural cavities.

It is especially connected to microhabitats with abundant vegetation cover and the presence of temporary water reservoirs—environments that ensure the survival of both terrestrial adults and aquatic larvae.

The adult males are completely terrestrial, dwelling only on land, but the females nest and lay their eggs underwater. The hatchlings then remain in the water for 2-4 months before emerging onto land.

Sources & More Info:

The Salamanders of Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa: The Northern Spectacled Salamander

Herpeto Savona: Salamandrina perspicillata

Newts and Salamanders of Europe: Unken Reflex

The Tailed Amphibians of Europe: Genus Salamandrina

Field Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of Britain and Europe: Natural Enemies and Defense

lakesbian

[standing up boldly] I don't think pearl actually fumbled rose though

lakesbian

everyone makes the joke posts about how if they fumbled a bbw to a soundcloud rapper they would also start eating their own organs but i don't think pearl actually fumbled rose under any definition. pearl inspired some of the most positive changes in rose's life and rose spent thousands of years loving being with her while also fully convinced that she was undeserving of her. you have to place the whole thing with rose dating greg in context of the gem timescale. it's canon text that rose was occasionally dating earth men during the course of their time on earth, not as some sort of monogamous break-up situation where she would leave pearl each time, but where her gem relationship with pearl was one long ongoing thing, and humans were the cute little aliens she sort of objectified and treated as a novelty to occasionally date before she got bored of them/they died/whatever. rose presumably did not in any meaningful way drop pearl for greg, she just deprioritized spending time with her--which pearl was fine with at first, because she was fine with being deprioritized for novelties that might only last a few years while she'll last for thousands. pearl became upset and envious after she realized that rose actually cared about this one in a way more comparable to how she cares about pearl. but this didn't happen because she fumbled rose by any reasonable stretch of the term. this happened because even after reinventing herself once thanks to pearl's idea, rose still believed that she hadn't really changed, and hated herself, and saw herself as unworthy and undeserving of the people around her, and was very suicidal. she was so enamored with greg and with humans because she saw them of being capable of changing & growing in a way that she believed she was fundamentally incapable of. and so she decided to kill herself through the route that involved what she perceived as reinvention into someone beautifully capable of that growth. pearl just simply could not have done anything about rose still privately having those hang-ups or about the fact that they're both gems. I Do Not Believe It Was Pearl's Fumble When Her Wife Killed Herself

boniidee

🐰connverseee!!!! I love them so much if you can’t tell eueueueu

pansy-picnics

“it’s not over.”

this was designed as a print for my upcoming shop! i have no official launch date right now, but if you’re interested, i’d love it if you’d follow me so you can stay tuned on any updates!!! :Dc

apleye

They!!

todropscience

UNMASKING THE BLUEBOTTLE REVEALING FOUR DISTINCT SPECIES THROUGH GLOBAL CITIZEN SCIENCE

For over two centuries, the Portuguese man o’ war (Physalia spp) was considered a single, cosmopolitan species, drifting across the world’s oceans and stinging unsuspecting swimmers. But new genomic research has overturned this long-held view, revealing that Physalia is not one species, but at least four: P. physalis, P. megalista, P. utriculus, and a newly described species, P. minuta. Researchers sequenced the genomes of 151 specimens from around the globe and found strong reproductive isolation between genetic lineages, even when their distributions overlap. This evidence aligns with historical descriptions from the 18th and 19th centuries, which proposed several species that were later dismissed due to limited data.

Crucially, the study integrated over 4,000 photographs from iNaturalist, using citizen science to match distinct morphologies with genetic lineages. These images, contributed by amateur naturalists, swimmers, and lifeguards, allowed researchers to confirm physical differences that earlier taxonomists could not consistently observe due to preservation challenges. The result is a rare success story in which modern genomics, historical records, and participatory science come together to clarify the taxonomy of one of the ocean’s most recognisable creatures.

The discovery not only rewrites the story of Physalia but also challenges assumptions about biodiversity in the open ocean, reminding us that even the most visible marine life can hold hidden complexity, and that everyone, from sailors of the past to today’s citizen scientists, has a role to play in uncovering it.

Reference: Church et al., 2025. Population genomics of a sailing siphonophore reveals genetic structure in the open ocean. Current Biology.