Myka-El/Visual Journal

@michaeldihdsnii

The materials posted on this blog – textual works, images, sound and video recordings – have been credited to the creator and/or the original source (see the caption on each post). None of the posts is mine unless stated otherwise. If you are the artist, author and/or copyright owner of anything posted on this blog and would like to have your work removed, please send me a message and I’d immediately remove it. Curated by: Michael Hudson II//Jamaica

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nubbsgalore

for a typical forty ton humpback to breach the ocean’s surface – and breach is taken to mean at least fourty percent of its body is out of the water – it needs to reach speeds of at least thirty km an hour. reasons for the behaviour remain debated, with theories varying from mere pleasure, to courtship or shedding the skin of parasites. it’s not uncommon for an adult to make multiple breaches, with the most recorded atone hundred and thrity jumps in ninety minutes.

(to learn more on the humpack’s journey from hawaii to alaska, see this post. see this post for freediving with humpbacks. click pic and or link for credit: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x)

nubbsgalore

reindeer are the only mammals whose eyes are known to change colour, going from a gold in the summer, when the sun is a constant presence in the arctic, to a less reflective blue in the near perpetually dark winter months.

in dark conditions, muscles in your irises contract to dilate your pupils and allow more light into your eyes. when it’s bright again, the irises widen and the pupils shrink. the same thing happens in reindeer, but the arctic winter forces their pupils dilate for months at a time.

this constant effort to stay dilated ends up blocking the small vessels that drain fluid out of the eyes, which causes pressure to build up. this in turn compresses the collagen fibers that make up tapetum - a mirrored layer that sits behind the retina (seen in the second photo).

when compressed, these fibers in the eye reflect blue wavelengths of lights instead of the yellow which accompanies a typical spacing of the fibers, as in summer. (photos x, x)