side blog for abirdsfreedom

the "and stuff" is light science, as in true but said in a joking manner/ meme format

[maureen2musings]

Flying squirrel, Hokkaido, Japan

kazyida

[onenicebugperday]

Ok this isn't a bug but I need to share - LOOK at these absolutely minuscule precious little poppies

White pygmy-poppy, Canbya candida, found in Southern California

Photos by keirmorse, mojavedon, and pokemon_master

[johnny-depp-is-loved]

in the end we are all creatures in need of love and comfort

[twoblogger-deactivated20260714]

It kind of fucks with me that somebody killed ötzi the iceman because ötzi himself is like whatever but the silent presence of human hands that drew back the string of the bow that shot the arrow that killed him is crazy. the idea that there were various people involved in that situation and while one of them has had his last hours painstakingly reconstructed and studied to no end, the others now only exist insofar that an arrowhead had to get into his shoulder somehow. imagine killing someone and then suddenly your entire existence is only a vague shadow implied by the fact that you killed them. much to consider

[twoblogger-deactivated20260714]

Testing the mummified bone marrow of ötzi to figure out his ancestry whole time there’s definitely another person, maybe more than one, standing in the room with us but I can never see or speak to them because I only know them through the assurance that they were there too in the form of one single arrowhead. I hate prehistory so much it’s unreal

[angel-derangement]

I hate it too tbh

[natureisthegreatestartist]

What's this? The red-lined bubble snail (Bullina lineata), a marine gastropod. Bizarre and beautiful, yes?

[dogpuppy]

[heartnosekid]

african peach moth (egybolis vaillantina) | source

[byjove]

I do not agree with veganism as a moral standard. If it is your personal moral stance, that is fine. If you think humans eating meat is inherently immoral, I don’t want to deal with you, you’re hopeless. Vegan ideology behaves more like a sect of evangelical Christianity than a dietary choice.

[literallycrashingoutrn]

Veganism is better for the environment, but claiming that it's a morally superior choice ignores cultural and economic factors that make people eat animal products.

[byjove]

It is not inherently better for the environment. That is the thing. When you begin trying to explain that local, sustainably sourced animal protein is better for the environment than imported plant proteins that are farmed 3,500 miles away using slave labor, they start tuning you out. Down is better for the environment than polyester stuffing, leather is better for the environment than pleather. We should work on making animal agricultural practices more sustainable instead of trying to shame everyone into eating plant products that are also farmed unethically and unsustainably.

[blignick]

[bunjywunjy]

this is actually HILARIOUS because both domestic rabbits and domestic cats practice dominance-related social grooming but for wildly different reasons.

if you're a rabbit, the boss rabbit is the one who gets groomed by its subordinate rabbits.

but if you're a cat... the boss cat is the one that grooms the other cats.

BOTH these idiots are going "aw yeah, it's good to be on top >:) "

[creditednature]

Trail cam captures from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, posted to r/trailcam by user Yooperwild

[ben-shapiro-onlyfans]

wikipedia is a gem

[laineysbucketlist]

If I’m correct, this is from the article “list of common misconceptions” which happens to be one of my favorite Wikipedia articles

[mctreeleth]

https://xkcd.com/843/

[luckhaver]

The whole article is a wild ride.

[unadulteratedpiratepizza]

W...was this up for debate?

[hellsite-yano]

[mctreeleth]

It's the first Tuesday in February, time to have a click around the Wikipedia list of common misconceptions!

[weiila]

The first time you see how cashew nuts grow, you’re gonna think somebody’s posting a joke picture or a weird art installation.

[whitetigerdemoness]

ok but you say this….then don’t give us pictures 

[weiila]

LOOK AT THESE RIDICULOUS THINGS

[brigdh]

And it gets even weirder!

The shell of the nut itself:

contains a resin that’s so toxic just touching it causes burns to the skin, similar to poison ivy. Which is why cashews are never sold unshelled, because processing them requires safety measures like this:

How humanity ever figured out to eat this nut is beyond me.

[rowandriftwood]

In case you ever wondered why cashews are so expensive. Now you can wonder why they aren’t more expensive.

[animatedamerican]

what i’m wondering now is how anybody ever found out that you could eat cashews

[nymph1e]

OK but you seem to underestimate how scarce food could get for people, and how desperate they become to try anything. If eating it raw kills you? try cooking it because we’re gonna starve to death anyway. Cooking it kills you? Try cooking it a different way. Touching it is painful? Try washing it, or extracting the inner bit and washing that.

There’s this plant that’s eaten by aboriginal people of australia around where I live. Only certain parts of this plant can be eaten, and even then only if those parts are cooked exactly right, kept at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time. And it has to be exactly that amount of time as both undercooking it AND overcooking it are deadly.

The history of food is a history fraught with countless, terrible deaths because we are so stubborn that when faced with starvation, we will fucking eat poison again and again until it’s not poison anymore.

[note-a-bear]

Some Paleolithic chef “I know like five people died already, but I think I got it this time.”

Some different, starving, Paleolithic person “fuck it bro. Gimme the nut.”

[auroralynne]

Ok but cashews are not just the nut. The fruit is edible (and delicious). I know because i’m from a region that it’s rich in cashew trees. They smell amazing. But here in Brazil we have a few plants that are poisonous until cooked, like mandioca (the root used to make tapioca) and tucupi, an Amazon plant that has to be cooked for seven days(!) to be edible.

[weiila]

STAHP THIS MADNESS HOW DID THIS HAPPEN

[petermorwood]

There’s an old saying – “Hunger is the best sauce” – and human history is a succession of “try eating X or die from not eating”. The various ways of making X safe to eat must be a saga in themselves.

Haggis is nothing, that’s just a big sausage using the less-usual parts of a sheep. I vaguely remember (probably from a Discworld book) a line that goes something like: “There’s nothing that a man with a big enough mincer can’t put in a sausage…”

Black pudding (blood-sausage) is nothing, that’s just refusing to waste protein; Masai and Mongols did the same, with the advantage that their approach didn’t even kill the animals or indeed cause more upset or damage than a really enthusiastic vampire bat.

Scrapple is nothing, that’s just another refusal to waste food - meat scraps and off-cuts - in a way which doesn’t even involve a great big mincer.

(Scapple, BTW, isn’t food; it’s writing software from the Scrivener people.)

What makes me pause is stuff that’s clearly and obviously gone off. I suppose that applied to everyone who first smelt fermented fruit (wine, eventually) or milk on the turn (cheese or yogurt, eventually), but those are now acceptable to many cultures though still a no-no to others.

It’s the extreme versions that make me wonder “who was brave / hungry enough to eat THAT?” THAT includes stuff like casu marzu and Milbenkäse, which are insane versions of blue cheese, or fishy horrors like surströmming and hákarl.

(Here’s a report from someone who tried the last two in order to compare them. TL;DR = Don’t.) All these and many more are now “regional delicacies” but almost certainly originated from a choice of eating them or eating nothing.

If hunger was indeed the best sauce, there must have been a lot of sauce involved…

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

i am delighted to inform you of the existence of the Rosefinch, which is a real actual bird that exists!

I would like to add,, strawberry finches

They’re dating🥰

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

[peach-foxgloves]

No one ever tell me anything bad about the person who runs this account.

the person who runs this account, Katie Gouldin, is an evolutionary biologist who has an EXCELLENT podcast called Creature Feature which compares and contrasts the weird behaviors of man and beast! she is super cute and funny too!

[lavender-lily]

oh thank GOD

[andypantsx3]

just want to add i love how much she hates elon

[yeahokayillreblogthat]

yeah okay ill reblog that

[baddywronglegs]

She is also credited by the Audubon society with coining the word “birb”

[madlori]

Also source for probably the best reaction image in history:

[wowwforever]

monster that wants to eat your flesh : Okay, that's what most carnivores do. Not scary.

monster that wants to drink your blood : Okay, that's what mosquitos do to me. Not scary.

monster that wants to specifically eat your bones : whadda fuck

[morkaischosen]

#giant African land snail if it was evil as opposed to a being of pure heart and utmost virtue

hey tumblr user ravnervn, I now have additional questions, such as, bwah?

[ravnervn]

Giant African Land Snails eat bones in order to get calcium for their shells, but are also among God's most innocent of creatures and thus contain no malice. Hope this helps.

[spiderpanic]

[henrykathman]

Thanks to my brother for telling me about this story. [Alt text below]

Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows

Brown Swiss in Austria has been discovered using tools in different ways – something only ever seen in humans and chimpanzees

[Alt Text: Original comic created by cooltimeonline. A man laying on a therapist's couch, talking to the logo of the Guardian, "Oh the Guardian, I'm just feeling real low." The Tv shows a picture of the cow from the article and responds, "COW TOOLS CONFIRMED," gaining the man's attention, who says, "Oh shit, for real?]