🔬🪴🦠

goblin disguised as a science enthusiast. Rangeland Science major! lots of posts about plants and bugs and natural sciences. earned a B.A. in Psychology (minor’s in philosophy and studio art) in ‘14.

[sweetpeauserboxes]

[hobbitpenguin]

My two happy places - studying penguins in the rainforests of New Zealand and doing anything with my amazingly sexy and perfect partner @awkwordalex 🥰

[todaysbird]

The skull of the extinct South Island Giant Moa, the largest species of moa (all 9 are now extinct). A species of ratite (as are ostriches and emus), the moa was a large, flightless bird endemic to New Zealand. Measuring up to 6ft 6 inches tall and weighing over 400lbs, the bird had few natural threats. It is believed the moa was largely hunted to extinction, along with chicks facing predation from introduced dogs.

[byjove]

Devil’s Hole pupfish are so mysterious to me. Why are they blue? Why are they so beautiful? They live in a mysterious yucky geothermal pool with no end in sight with at least two sets of human remains at the bottom. Every time there is an earthquake, they flee into the depths of the cave and start fucking en masse. Their population fluctuates between like 35 and 550. Sometimes they randomly stop breathing for up to two hours and just sit there.

[byjove]

look at these handsome gentlemen

[cipheramnesia]

such good dogs

[skull-bearer]

Wasn't that the place where when there was a tsunami in the gulf of mexico the water level rose by sveral meters? Suggesting there is some kind of connection between this little lake in Death Valley and the ocean?

[byjove]

Partially. There’s a mini tsunami and the pool violently splashes around pretty much any time there is an earthquake in the upper ring of fire region. The water stays at exactly 91° year round because it’s a deep geothermal pool. It is weird. Couldn’t explain to you why it happens. Luckily, a statement was put out saying the pupfish were fine after the most recent Mexico earthquake. I don’t know how they determined that. Can only imagine they picked up all 160 members of the species one by one and gently asked them how they were feeling. Like I said, the earthquakes make them breed. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s like the human baby boom after WW2.

[everythingfox]

Perfect spot

(via)

[airbus-a380-800]

do you want to see a random species of bird

[todaysbird]

is that even a question

[foundbytheforest]

Alright, we’re into two classes that have updated, waiting for the other two which I assume will happen in a few hours so I’m heading to bed.

Need to see these due dates for things cause I naively thought since the first class had everything due Sunday that it made sense most would follow suit and that is not the case (chemistry due on Friday’s) and then last years’ biology syllabus appears to say Wednesday’s for discussions and “end of week” for everything else— does that mean Sunday? Friday?

I just need to figure out what I need to plan for around work so I can have the most needed days off every week to finish up/study/submit everything on time. I’m thinking I’m just going to have to schedule everything a day ahead so I don’t have to worry.

[starlet-sky]

[beautyunderthewaves]

Firefish Goby Appreciation 🤍💛🧡❤️💜

[skinks]

women in STEM. women in BRANCH. women in LOG. women in TREE. women in BUSH (both kinds.) women in FOREST CLEARING. we’re everywhere these woods are ours

[sock-ness-monster]

How dare my environmental biology professor say something like "Now, we all know now that the Appalachian Mountains and the Scottish Highlands are part of the same mountain range, and were connected much more closely millions of year ago. I like to think that maybe that's why so many of the people who came over here and settled in the Appalachians hundreds of years ago were of Scottish heritage. The Appalachians reminded them of their mountain ranges. It felt like home to them. And they didn't know it, they couldn't have, but it was their home. A part of it that had been separated, but still their home." Sir it is 1:30 in the afternoon yiu can't just say things like that and expect me to think about other things the rest of the day.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I recently finished reading Marcia Bjornerud's Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World. In it, she explores how geology introduced us to the idea of deep time, where we consider our place in the world not merely in the few thousand years of human civilization, or even the couple hundred thousand years of our own species' existence, but instead the seemingly unfathomable stretch of 4.5 billion years in which the Earth has been spinning.

It's not just a matter of making us humble, though that's certainly a piece of it. More importantly, I think, is the context we find ourselves in when we see ourselves as one young species existing at about two-thirds of the way through the Earth's window of opportunity to support life. That's right: life has existed for a little over four billion years. And in another two billion years, the sun will have expanded enough to evaporate all the water on the planet, rendering life as we know it impossible. Anything that might survive that won't be able to get through the increased greenhouse effect as the Earth's surface heats up dramatically.

Sure, that can be depressing to think about. But it's not two billion years from now. We are in this moment now, with most of us are so finely focused on profit for the now (or just surviving paycheck to paycheck) that the idea of delayed results is practically anathema. Obviously we can't just force everyone to expand their understanding of time. A lot of people have to get over the fear that if they don't acquire and everything they can get right now, they won't have enough in the future. Look at how many argue against investing resources into the collective younger generations because something about “Well, they shouldn't get handouts and nobody gets anything for free”; asking them to look at the cumulative positive effects of a more highly educated population of adults in the future won't break most of them out of their selfishness.

Bjornerud is asking us to step out of our little time bubbles into a scarier, more exhilarating worldview in which we are not the pinnacle of evolution or the chosen species—a timeline that is nearly terrifying in its immensity. But we face that existential fear because just as time has stretched on for billions of years before us, so it will stretch on after us for billions of years, and some of those billions will still feature living beings.

It takes courage to do this. And there's also a certain level of compassion and empathy that is required to really consider and act on the reality that what we do now WILL have repercussions for the future (to say nothing of the impacts today.) The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) concept of considering how today's decisions will affect those seven generations from now is just one example of people consciously choosing to exercise that empathy for people and other beings who don't even exist yet. It means we have to stop centering ourselves in every choice we make, and make sacrifices not only for those we don't know and aren't related to, but whom we will never get to meet.

We are setting this planet up for massive changes that will have ramifications in the thousands—and in some cases tens of thousands—of years. That's barely a heartbeat in geological time, but still time enough for a mass extinction that could include our own species. Will enough of us find our courage and compassion to fight for a future we won't live long enough to be part of? Will we challenge our stubbornly myopic tendency to sacrifice everything on the altar of Profit Now? I'm ever the optimist, and I think it's still possible. Part of that is rethinking how we think of time and its passing, and Timefulness invites us to do just that.

[antlershade]

i am not scared at all of deep dark woods. first of all there are awesome things in the big misty forests for example: animal,

[jokerlives]

Photographer Wu Yung-sen, a deep sea diving and photographing marine life for four years, on a recent blackwater dive he chanced upon a rare larval Wunderpus octopus, totally transparent.

[notebookist]

um, excuse me? this is a library on campus and i can read here anytime i want? i'm gonna need a minute

[turtlesandfrogs]

So a friend of ours lives with her dad on a couple acres a short drive away, and we're going to collaborate to a) grow a huge garden and b) improve and restore habitat around the garden.

So I started looking up the vulnerable/threatened/endangered species and looking at insects because that one story about that one guy sustaining and restoring the habitat of that one butterfly and saving it from extinction is pretty inspiring, alright?

Anyway, one interesting thing that kept coming up was that a lot of these are endangered due to habitat loss- not only because of development & and agriculture, but also because forests are encroaching on what used to be maintained as praires through intentional fires.

Because the native peoples here maintained and stewarded the land, and one of their tools for that was fire, and when the colonists and colonial governments came, they put a stop to intentional burns and also throughout the 1900s and into this century, have tried to stop fires from natural causes, too. So praires that support so many species are disappearing, while dried out brush and dead wood is accumulating, which leads to hotter, bigger, more dangerous wildfires- which in turn can now wipe out entire populations of praire species since habitat has become so fragmented.

It's just wild to me, because for so long the messaging was "plant trees to save the environment" while in this case trees themselves are part of erasing important habitat. Context matters.

And it's also a great reminder that this land wasn't wild, empty, and untouched when settlers came here. The land was cared for, maintained, and stewarded by the native peoples. And our government's choices have lead directly to degradation of habitats and increased risks of natural disasters like wildfires.

[turtlesandfrogs]

It also makes me think about how people seem to think you remove the invasive species, and that's it, you're done, the habitat will return to the way it should be.

But when that habitat was actively, basically, gardened, with harvesting and encouraging some species and removing others the whole time for thousands of years- of course is not going to be OK if you just walk away AND prevent other people from having a relationship with the land!

[vikobelo]

lithuanian fish. thoughts of my childhood.