Dreams of Darkness and Hope @moopsy-daisy - Tumblr Blog

Happy isopride!

New banner for this month (and maybe forever if it sticks)

Wanted to show off the amazing color diversity of isopods! All of these are cropped images of isopods, with little to no color adjustments. (I can list all the species I used if you’d be interested! And try to find the original image sources again..)

great-and-small

One of the things I really like about Tumblr is there seems to be a healthy appreciation for invertebrate biology here, which I don’t always see as much on other social media websites. Tumblr users overall seem to love bugs, and it’s important to me that every person who loves bugs knows the name Charles Henry Turner. If you’re not yet familiar with this man, I’m delighted to introduce you to one of the most remarkable minds ever born of this earth, and a true pioneer in the field of entomology and animal behavior.

Charles Turner was born in the United States just a few years after the end of the civil war. His brilliance was evident from the start, and after graduating valedictorian of his high school class he quickly went on to earn his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in short order. While in school, Turner’s relentless curiosity became his greatest advantage. He was drawn to and fascinated by topics that were largely ignored by modern science at the time, namely the cognitive behaviors of insects and other invertebrates. While many of his colleagues believed insects to be mindless automata acting on instinct alone, Turner felt deeply that the brains of these oft overlooked animals were far more complex than the scientific community suspected. He performed extensive experiments to test his theories and found overwhelming evidence of problem solving and individualism among organisms as small as ants and spiders.

By the time Turner earned his zoology pHD in 1907 he had published dozens of papers in highly esteemed journals and had even co-authored a book. It is likely that Turner was the first African American to earn a pHD from the University of Chicago. With such a sparkling academic reputation and enormous body of research, one would expect this candidate to have no issues obtaining a professorship at a prestigious school. Though by every right Turner should have been head of science department at a top university, the systemic racism that permeated academia meant that doors a white man would have walked through were locked and bolted shut for Charles Henry Turner.

Turner did not allow this prejudice to dim in any way his blindingly bright passion for knowledge. He took a job as a high school teacher, and continued to perform and publish research on his own all while he instilled his students with a love for zoology. He published more than 70 papers in extremely respected journals and he remained passionately curious for the entirety of his life. If I tried to list here all of the incredible discoveries Turner made in his lifetime it would take me days to sufficiently express the impact he had on the field of invertebrate behavior. His experiments were so ahead of their time that entomologists today marvel at his research and wonder how much more we would know if Turner’s work had been given the attention and respect of other scientists working at the time. Turner’s mind was about a century ahead of those entomological contemporaries who had no interest in giving him a seat at the table. His tombstone simply reads “scientist”

Like many people of color throughout history, Turner’s exceptional contributions to our world have been unfairly overlooked by many. His name has historically been left out of entomology textbooks and courses, despite laying down groundwork that is still used today. I really recommend that anyone interested in entomology or even biology in general read up on Charles Henry Turner and his works. This is an excellent article that discusses his many challenges and triumphs in the field.

leolaroot

mx-misty-eyed

rb to give a snout-out to the gays

thefantasmagorium

wonderful whimsy work from - Quentin Stipp

succubusboyfriend

practicing self care less out of self love and more for the sheer logical reasoning of it’d be kinda stupid of me to expect myself to be able to function without proper maintenance

succubusboyfriend

“oh i don’t deserve rest and relaxation, i haven’t done enough, i haven’t earned it” and my car’s breaks don’t deserve break fluid because they aren’t breaking well enough to earn it. that’s what you sound like!!!!!

reasonsforhope

If you do not schedule time for maintenance, your equipment will schedule it for you

jornymiyu

I finally finished an older wangxian print 😭

herpsandbirds

Purple Glossy Starlings (Lamprotornis purpureus), family Sturnidae, order Passeriformes, Jos, Nigeria

photograph by Kim Choji

beardedmrbean

One more in the W column for Japan.

supersoftly

Link for extension :3c

dragon-in-a-fez

I think companies with lots of desk workers should install this by default

weaverofink

jadzia dax is everything. she's hot. she's the station gossip. she cleans house at tongo with the ferengi every week. she drinks cocktails at 8 in the morning. she's 300 years old. she's 28. everyone wants her. she has a worm