[gremlininho]

a little birdie told me

[todaysbird]

a rare closeup of a black swift, found throughout north america and small parts of south america. swifts are rarely seen up close; they spend more of their life in air than any other species of bird - they eat, drink, mate and sleep while in flight. they are incapable of perching like other birds; they must cling to vertical surfaces.

(x)

[teaweltzer]

Attack 17 on @adxmanial

[lesbianshepard]

[lesbianshepard]

the context is the final line Martial 5.34 if anyone’s wondering:

To you, father Fronto and mother Flacilla, this girl

I commend: she was my sweet and my delight.

Little Erotion must not be frightened by the dark shades

and the monstrous mouths of Tartarus’ hound.

She was due to complete the chills of a sixth midwinter, no more,

Had she not lived that many days too few.

Now let her frisk and play among old friends

Now let her chatter, and so lisp my name.

And let the soft turf cover her brittle bones:

Earth, lie lightly on her: she lay lightly on you.

[mysticalcoffeequeen]

When you thought it would be easy peasy lemon squeezy but it turns out to be difficult difficult lemon difficult.

[switchnx]

Wait that’s actually really good, gonna pop this out of the tags

[itsreallystupid]

[teaboot]

[strawberrycatcrowbar]

[vexheart]

There is no amount of money, oil, or gold that is worth more than having bees, trees, and clean water.

[depsidase]

[exhausted-undead]

labyrinth! please zoom in on this or i'll get turned into a goblin

oh also!! happy 40th anniversary to this film because Holy Shit

[dogpuppy]

[nwmo]

NEW FISH JUST DROPPED

[cannibalcaprine-deactivated2024]

I KNOW that playing God is morally wrong, but holy HELL, it looks fun.

[ninjakittenarmy]

Why is it playing God? We aren’t violating any natural laws. God set the parameters of the universe to allow these things. There’s nothing wrong with it, there’s no hubris in learning more about how to manipulate the universe around us.

[cannibalcaprine-deactivated2024]

We made a whole-ass fish.

[ospreyonthemoon]

The reason this was accidental BTW is because they used paddlefish eggs as a negative control group for a breeding experiment on sturgeons because the scientists, quite naturally, assumed that they were SO unrelated it would be genetically impossible for them to mate. Like. I cannot stress enough to you how these creatures last related ancestors were

140 MILLION YEARS BACK.

If you don't know how far that is, that's basically the start of the cretaceous. Let me simplify that for you even further. Chimpanzees and humans seperated, what, 5 or 6 million years ago?

This is basically like if humans could hybridise with THESE THINGS.

This is the sort of thing that should be impossible. They used those eggs to be ABSOLUTELY 100% SURE NOTHING WOULD HAPPEN.

And then THEY GOT FISH OUT OF IT.

Like. You can quite clearly understand why they didn't think anything would happen. WE ARE MORE RELATED TO BLUE WHALES THAN THESE THINGS.

THE AMERICAN PADDLEFISH AND THE STURGEON ARE SO COMPLETELY UNRELATED THAT THIS IS NOT PLAYING GOD. IF ANYTHING THIS IS AN ACT OF GOD.

THE SCIENTISTS HAD NO BLAME IN THIS BECAUSE NOTHING LIKE THIS HAD EVER HAPPENED BEFORE

It sort of goes against the rules of genetics a bit.

[ospreyonthemoon]

Oh i forgot to add

THESE THINGS, FOR HYBRIDS, HAD A REALLY HIGH SURVIVAL RATING. LIKE 70% OF THEM SURVIVED.

To put that into perspective, getting a blue whale and a squirrel and trying to hybridise them is more sensible, and that wouldn't produce anything but getting you banned from science. Most animals that aren't plants can barely hybridise two degrees away from each other.

BUT THESE TWO ENTIRELY UNRELATED FISH create PERFECTLY HEALTHY HYBRIDS.

the scientists literally had to do the tests AGAIN just to be like "okay this is real right. This is actually like, not a fluke, this works right" and it worked again. They just Can!

[jackofacetrades]

So for those who don't know what the original fishes look like, this is an American Paddlefish:

And this is a Russian Sturgeon:

So honestly, saying the hybrid is "weird looking" is a bit fort de café when you see its parents. I think the sturddlefish looks cute.

[marlinspirkhall]

"these creatures last related ancestors were 140 million years back"

(glances at fish)

Yeah that's exactly what I thought you'd look like, you Mesozoic fuck

[thriceandonce]

#Holding a red squirrel in my left hand and a blue whale in my right desperately hoping to make a purple squale (via @dykepuffs)

[kedreeva]

placental mammals (eutheria) diverged from marsupials around 100 million years ago. whales and squirrels (rodents at least), being both placental animals, would have diverged at or after that time, meaning sturgeon and paddlefish still have 40 million years more separation.

before the sturddlefish, a purple squale would have seemed more likely- and since that's ridiculous and obviously no one would think that's possible except as a joke, that should speak to HOW impossible this situation seemed, and why they thought obviously this will be perfectly fine. If you took squirrel eggs (the gamete) and tried to use whale sperm to fertilize them, you could reasonably expect that to not work. That should be a good control. The eggs would definitely not actually be fertilized, and even if sperm somehow made it into the egg and some kind of development started, you would expect them to not make it to term and definitely not make a whole ass new animal that's perfectly fine actually.

And yet there is a purple squale in your fish tank, in fact there's like 100 of them and everyone is saying you played god but this was not what should have gone down, this was never the plan. This isn't you playing god, you think, this is god having a laugh at your expense.

[thewickwheat]

Have you seen this dog? Now you have!

Redraw of the art I created as a generalized character showcase for references and the like back in 2023~

[au-meme-endroit-deactivated2021]

[clownboybebop]

*street shot of zohran mamdani clad in nasty lil suit and hard hat* five months ago i was elected mayor of new york city. in that time, we have managed to COMPLETELY defeat the Staten Island Minotaur at no additional cost to the new york taxpayer

[kaijuno]

[starry-eyed-darling]

[small-bambi]

Harrison Wood Hsiang

[389]

Laura Dern & Sam Neill in Jurassic Park (1993)

[mysharona1987]