nerdy white girl who knows that black lives matter

She/Her. Utterly boring. Loves cats and sci-fi. Defund the police.

[mirandaputsherbestbuttforward]

Visit Original Link

So I was linked to this post by @lilcooldude04​ and I had to try my hand at it.

(If someone wants to do a better Liara impression, let me know and I’ll edit it in).

[lavenderfables]

Too many shows trying to be Game Of Thrones, not enough shows trying to be Galavant.

[everythingfox]

Juniper

[catchymemes]

[onetwistedmiracle]

the lesson here is invite your grandparents to do your fun hobby stuff with you, because they may well exceed your wildest dreams and make amazing memories with you

[loonyblobs]

[calellon]

[changan-moon]

How to see whether a Chinese handmade teapot is well done or not - quality of the spout is an important standard. 

cr: 承启 建水紫陶

[amemait]

that last teapot is like witnessing an eternal and important truth

[ms-demeanor]

I just watched this with the sound on and i really recommend it because the utter silence of the last teapot is both perfectly predictable and totally remarkable.

[bunjywunjy]

I've seen a lot people shocked about how big moose are. They are not deer sized. A baby moose generally starts as big as a medium pony or a large whitetail deer. A big moose weighs multiple tons, is bigger than all but the largest horses and stands head and shoulders taller than all but the largest trucks, is disturbingly fast, and has the survival strategy of "if it lives, smash it into paste on the off chance it's a threat". They ain't some nice forest spirit. They're what happens when an ungulate decides to have a go at the Hippo's title of worlds most dangerous herbivore. And it's awesome to behold FROM A SAFE DISTANCE

truth! another fun not-deer animal that we have to deal with here are elk, which are about the same size as moose but a LOT pointier.

DO NOT APPROACH THIS ANIMAL. it will gore you so hard your ancestors will be impaled

[crazy-brazilian]

[smazeny-syr-extra-motz]

Cant believe they fit 3 acts into one minuteq

[bunjywunjy]

Bunjy,

You are always so nice about answering everyone's questions about biology and giving us wonderful updates on Wexter and I wanted to thank you. However I also have a biology question of sorts. I don't know why, but ever since I learned how big moose are, I've always wanted to punch one. Now obviously I'm likely only going to get one shot at this before being gored to death by the moose. So do you think an upper cut or a right cross would be more likely to knock out the moose in one punch and let me survive?

in all complete honesty?

a moose is massive enough that no human alive can generate enough force to actually hurt them with a punch of any kind. give up.

and this is because, like other large ruminants, their sheer bulk is so overwhelming that the amount of force your puny little human arms can generate just dissipates into their flesh before it can do damage! (unless you get them directly in the eyeball, anyway! DISCLAIMER- DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU WANT TO DIE BY HOOVES.)

you would have to smack a moose upside the head with a 2x4 or a cinderblock before it deigned to notice your presence, and to actually knock one out would require catastrophic-car-crash-level forces.

[is-the-bug-video-cute]

I noticed you recently mentioned that an octopus may enjoy being handled, and as a marine biologist I think it’s worth mentioning that people should NOT handle an octopus in the wild. All of them have venom. I believe only two species are known to be deadly, but octopus venom is not well studied at all and you never know what kind of reaction you might have. Or the personality of a given octopus. I, knowing the risks, handled two Octopus rubescens individuals in the field. One was very sweet; she crawled into my hands and curled up and didn’t want to leave. The other crawled onto the back of my hand and bit me. I either had a very mild reaction to the venom or the individual spit very little. I had minor pain, minor swelling, and it took an entire month to heal all the way. Other people bitten by the same species have had severe pain and swelling, dizziness, vomiting, and necrosis of the wound. I would not handle one again. Now when I find one in the tidepools, I let it hang out in my net in the water to let anyone around see for educational purposes, and I offer up my hand to allow it to touch me if it wants, but would not let it crawl on me. Lovely, curious creatures, but it’s not worth the risk with the venom. You never know if you could have a severe reaction

Very important info here!

[combusting]

In case anyone is curious, this is bite after about 8 months. Small, but an absolute itchy pain in the ass during the month it took to heal over. Not a deep wound at all but still scarred. A good reminder to cautious about wild animals no matter the size and how good your prior experiences have been—different individuals, different personalities.

Edit: here you can read a publication on cephalopod venom. The full text version is free!

[shiftythrifting]

[gallusrostromegalus]

For those of you that are wondering, please have one of the fiest pieces of radio comedy ever:

[jaynavajasso]

the first time i watched this i laughed so hard i nearly puked

[orwellsunderpants]

THIRD BASE

[lordkevington-deactivated-deact]

Since I was 8 and found out about this for the first time my family has always followed up on someone saying “I don’t know,” with shouting “THIRD BASE”

[j-sprrr]

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

That animatronic video is great for people who may not be as familiar with the game of baseball, too. The different positions, and such.

[bunjywunjy]

I love your blog and your space asks but please pray tell what's the moon boom that jumpingjacktrash mentioned?

have you ever looked up into the night sky and wondered, why the moon is?

well, you're not alone! scientists and learnéd scholars across the ages have been baffled by our celestial neighbor.

WHY, is our Moon so proportionally fucking huge? (it's more than a quarter the size of the Earth! that's COMPLETELY FUCKING INSANE AND BLOWS EVERY OTHER MOON IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM OUT OF THE METAPHORICAL WATER)

WHY, is the Moon made up of much of the same materials as the Earth?

and WHY, is Earth's magnetic field so massively overpowered that it can shield the surface from interstellar and solar radiation, allowing life to develop and paving the way for you to even ask these questions in the first place? (that one might not sound related, but I promise you it is so just bear with me)

well, it all comes down to the Theia Impact Hypothesis, or, OPERATION MOON BOOM.

in this fair solar system we lay our scene, four and a half billion years ago.

here, we focus on the third planet from the Sun, which is, surprisingly, NOT Earth.

not yet.

no, this unnamed rocky world is slightly smaller than Venus, and is formed of mostly-molten rock that's still settling into itself as our nascent solar system sorts itself out.

ENTER STAGE LEFT, THEIA.

Theia is a rocky planetoid about the size of Mars, on a wild and unstable orbit around the Sun that regularly brings it within spitting distance of our unnamed third rock! and today, it will get A Bit Too Close.

the two planets slam into each other with wild disregard for road safety, disintegrating their outer layers into a massive debris field that will take hundreds of millions of years to settle and fusing their planetary cores together into a single rough oblong of molten iron! BAM! WHAPPO!

but settle the debris does, as gravity takes a gentle but firm hold of this huge mess and gradually reshapes it into two familiar faces...

ENTER STAGE RIGHT: EARTH AND MOON.

that's right, you're standing on top of the alchemically-fused corpses of, not one, but TWO planets right now! our newly-reborn Earth and its singular orbiting satellite are formed from the same debris field and share a lot of similar material. and because the Moon was Made, and not a domesticated planetoid that wandered too close and got trapped in the orbit of a larger body, it's just ludicrously HUGE compared to its partner.

and getting back to that magnetic field thing, the whole reason Earth Can Have Big Field Pls is because Theia dumped so much extra iron into the Core that it generates a MUCH more powerful field than our neighboring planets, even the ones that are just slightly smaller than Earth!

the only reason that life can exist at all is because Theia took one for the team and reshaped the solar system.

so the next time you look up into the celestial dome and spot our closest neighbor, raise a salute to Theia, gone but not forgotten.

[gsjsnsnqkkwnw]

[gayk-47]

obsessed with the fish eye lens

[graceking]

I love these comics by Nathan W. Pyle.

[patrickdiomedes]

Here are some more good ones

[the-ali-express]

LET ME ABS O R B

[ultramarineblues]

@diseonfire here have some more

[erdsthenerds]

Perhaps I prefer fewer revolutions and more minerals is a mood

[gaslightgallows]

We own things but have hidden them.

[obsidian-flame]

REQUEST MUTUAL LIMB ENCLOSURE

[wayward-delver]

Crocodiles swim way faster than you think.

(Footage taken from Queensland Australia)

[thecuckoohaslanded]

I can’t stop thinking about crocodiles for some reason so here’s some cool pictures I found of probably the second largest one in captivity, his name is Utan:

isn’t he beautiful

listen to the SOUND when he bites

and that’s not even a real power bite, that’s mostly just heavy bone falling on heavy bone from his jaws and the air rushing out from between them

[specsthespectraldragon]

2000 pounds of Good Boy

[thecuckoohaslanded]

you get me

[thecuckoohaslanded]

I honestly expected like 5 notes, what HAPPENED here

[thecuckoohaslanded]

More tags on this ridiculous post:

[cn123017-deactivated20181204]

Wait, thats the 2nd biggest crocodile? Then what does the biggest one look like?

[thecuckoohaslanded]

That would be Cassius, a very old Saltwater crocodile who is estimated to be around 114 years old and lives at Marineland Melanesia in Green Island, Australia.  His official measurement is 5.48 meters, which makes him the largest in captivity currently.  Because Utan is only slightly smaller and much younger, (only in his 50s), he will likely break Cassius’ record eventually.  But for now, Cassius holds the title:

He is NOT, however, either the largest crocodile ever captured in Australia OR the largest ever in captivity.

A slightly larger crocodile has been reported (though not yet comfirmed) to have been captured at 5.58 meters.

And while the famous Brutus of the Adelaide River was estimated to be just slightly larger than Cassius at 5.5m, he was driven out of his territory by a younger and even larger crocodile, who as a result has been given the name, The Dominator.  He is estimated to be just over 6m.

This is Brutus, with an appropriate caption:

It is believed that he lost that arm in a fight with a Bull Shark.  

The Bull Shark lost.

THIS is the crocodile who kicked him out.  The Dominator:

And that’s STILL not the biggest.  

The largest living crocodile ever reliably measured was Lolong, who for the 1.5 years between his capture and his death was the largest crocodile ever held in captivity, at a whopping 6.17 meters (20 feet 3 inches) and 1075 kg (2,370 lbs).  He had been feeding on both humans and very large livestock in the Bunawan creek in Agusan del Sur in the Philippines.  It took 100 people all night to drag him to shore during his capture.

And here’s why:

Also, to prevent credit from getting buried on a separate reblog, I have been informed that the above image of the crocodile with the cartoon eyes and halo was made by @rashkah!  (And it is wonderful and I would like to thank him for its existence, because it perfectly captures my feelings about terrifying giant primordial reptiles.)

[sometimesihavequestions-deactiv]

@theonewhocheeps

[theonewhocheeps]

Holy fuck

[simon-newman]

As far as Brutus is concerned I was led to believe that he lost that arm when relatively young.

Since then Brutus developed a habit of hunting and eating Bull Sharks.

Here’s him with a prey.

And if you thought that you’ll be safe if you just stay out of Australia then think again!

Meet Gustave the Nile Croc.

This crocodile became almost legendary for both it’s size and the habit of hunting both livestock AND humans.

So how big is Gustave?

No one is sure. Since he was NEVER captured.

His estimated size is of at least 5,5m  but some give him over 6m.

The terrifying parts are:

1) He is still growing having only about 60 years.

2) Adult crocodiles often perform a gesture of submission to him - something usually done by young crocodiles toward adults - Gustave is just THAT BIG.

3) His sheer size makes it difficult for him to catch agile prey Nile crocs tend to feed on - hence why he developed a habit of hunting either larger prey like Hippopotamus or creatures which are not good at spotting danger in the first place like livestock and humans.

And this is NOT ALL.

Gustave actually has a noticeable scars on his body - he was shot at east 3 times and stabbed with a spear or something similar at one occasion.

He lived to tell the tale - my question is:

What happened to that one dude who attacked Gustave with a spear?

[thecuckoohaslanded]

*Crocodile Dundee voice*  Mate, that’s not Gustave:

THIS is Gustave:

And he is the PERFECT CROCODILE.  He is the perfect example of what I mean when I talk about (as I do) how the morphology of extremely large crocodiles adapts to the changing physics of their bite.

This is a typical adult Nile Crocodile:

And THIS is a god among his kind:

This is it, folks.  The Final Form.  THIS is what peak performance looks like.

Crocodiles and physics have an interesting relationship.  Crocodiles have, by a CONSIDERABLE MARGIN, the strongest bite of any animal on Earth.  EVER.  Scaled up estimates (based on Nile and Saltwater crocodiles) give the extinct Deinosuchus an estimated bite force MORE THAN DOUBLE the recently updated Tyrannosaurus bite estimates.  Living crocodiles have bite forces measured in the range of 5000 pounds per square inch, for an individual around 15-16 feet.  It is estimated that modern crocodiles in the range of 18-20 feet would have bit forces around 7-8000 psi or more.

That’s a problem.

Because a crocodile’s skull is only designed to handle so much pressure.  Go beyond that limit and the force of impact when those jaws snap shut could literally shatter their own skulls.

But evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting crocodiles, so PHYSICS ISN’T GOING TO STOP THEM.  What ends up happening in the skulls of these extremely large crocodiles is they will increase dramatically in mass to compensate for the increased forces.  A crocodile’s skull is almost exclusively solid bone, with only minimal space for nasal passages, a surprisingly advanced brain, and some slightly porous looking framework that helps the bone distribute the force over a larger area.  The effect is by far the most pronounced in Nile crocodiles, which most regularly feed on larger prey and need to make use of all that power.

Compare, 26 inch skull:

vs 29 inch skull:

Both of those are Nile crocodile skulls (or rather, replicas thereof).

And just for fun, here are the skulls of completely different (and very extinct species), Deinosuchus:

and Purussaurus:

The bigger the crocodile (within a given species), the more massive the skull needs to be to compensate for that UNBELIEVABLE bit pressure.  This is one way to see from a distance whether you are looking at a normal sized crocodile:

and a truly extraordinary individual:

One of the things about Gustave that’s so impressive is how healthy his teeth look.  A lot of large crocodiles, in their old age, have very worn down and often missing teeth.  They do replace them many times over a lifetime, but when they get very old this slows down.  Gustave, at least in every picture taken of him, had teeth that were in very good condition.

Even crocodiles much smaller than Gustave’s reported size (probably similar in size to Dominator or Lolong) tend to have smaller or more worn teeth:

than the pinnacle of his kind:

[muchymozzarella]

Lolong! It means Gramps or Grandpa, because he’s a relic of an ancient world where crocs more massive than he was walked the earth. His body is on display somewhere right now though I forgot where.

[lookatthesefuckingbirds]

[hellenhighwater]

Okay, vaguely related, but a friend of mine was once taking some snowy owls to canada to be released--they’d been injured while in the states, taken to the avian rehab facility where he worked, and were healthy again. But at that time of year, most  snowy owls had migrated back north to canada. So he drove to the border with three crates of screamingly angry snowy owls in back. He got to the border, declared his cargo, and immediately found himself in Big Trouble With Canadian Border Security. 

(There was nothing wrong with what he’d been doing, it had all been cleared in advance and he had all his paperwork in order. But nobody told the border guys that.)

They demanded that he take the owls out of the crates for inspection. He refused; these were very, very angry, agitated wild birds. They asked him lots of questions. They finally asked why he was taking the owls to canada, and he explained that that’s where they’re from.

The customs agent demanded “WELL, how did Canada’s owls even get to America in the first place?!”

My friend responded, “Sir. They can fly.”

The customs agent let him go.

[lululeninn]

dream job