Tiny Ecosystem With A Carbon Filter

Hello darlings! 🏳️‍⚧️ Aquariums/ animals/ husbandry/ dinosaurs/general naturey posts here. FILTER TAGS #bones for taxidermy and dead stuff, and #bugs for bugs/ bug-like arthropods Thanks for stopping by! My main blog is @a-few-good-taters

[marinolta]

[cadere-art]

Gift for my most beloved husband of two black capped chickadees.

[inatungulates]

Lowland bongo Tragelaphus eurycerus eurycerus

Observed by robinfjellstrom, CC BY-NC

[pangur-and-grim]

HUGE isopod party on the apple slice today

[192929020202020]

[snailkites]

Crested Caracara being allopreened by two Black Vultures! This is such an interesting behavior and one that's typically one-way (preening by vultures to caracara). Here you can see the caracara either attempting to reciprocate but getting rebuffed by both vultures, or telling them to stop for now.

[Video source]

[worrywyrms]

♥️🌱✨🪶

[passengerpigeons]

do u ever think about corn sweat; and the fact that a large percent of corn grown in Illinois, iowa, etc is grown for ethanol and biofuel; and how solar power would be so many times more effective per acre than this; and how like 90+% of so many rare ecosystems in those states was drained for farm and suburbs (in many cases previously farms).

[passengerpigeons]

AND you could still have native plants around and even under the solar panels.

[passengerpigeons]

When you see what they did to the Midwest you'll want to fucking kill the corn lobbyists with your bare hands

[nobrashfestivity]

Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾 北斎, Two bats flying, c. 1830-50

more

[himynameisemail]

[plant-that-tank]

Shrimpy time lapse!

[dimetrodone]

Pelecinid pals

[great-and-small]

Yeah that place is good but it’s always soooooo crowded

[c-53]

Wild caught clownfish will be like ‘hm you see, the anemone you got me is a slightly different color and tentacle width than the one I had back home, so I will not begin hosting it. I’ll be a sort of wandering ronin for the rest of my days.’ And then a captive bred clownfish will be like ‘ok so I have this curved rock I found and I just sit above it and it take care of me 👍’

[c-53]

Some of my favorite clownfish hosts

[cipheramnesia]

#mybrick

[beifongkendo]

Dinosaurs 🦕🌿, leaf artwork by Raku Inoue

[pterribledinosaurdrawings]

2 people have now suggested this post to me, and it is good. good leefs.

[thagomizersshow]

So much of paleontology is "what did this beaked thing eat?" And then your best guess for years turns out to be so so so wrong.

Like Gastornis was thought to be a carnivore for decades and then carbon isotopes were like, "nah this thing was basically a giant goose honk honk".

Art by Ja Chirinos

Oviraptor was thought to be an egg eater, then much ink was spilled about whether it ate mollusks, and now it's thought to be an omnivore, but mostly a fruit/seed eater like a parrot.

Somehow this Adobe Stock image is the only art of an Oviraptor eating plants I can find. How is that?

And even birds with some teeth are getting in on these dietary mysteries.

Longipteryx was first thought to be a kingfisher-like hunter of aquatic prey, but it has since been found with seed contents in its guts, making it another surprise frugivore.

Photo by Xiaoli Wang

[approximateknowledge]

once you learn enough about evolutionary biology you start seeing ghosts everywhere

[approximateknowledge]

after the end cretaceous extinction event, basically all megafaunal niches were suddenly empty; and most got filled in some way. proboscideans instead of sauropods, carnivorans instead of theropods, ungulates instead of ceratopsians and hadrosaurs etc...

but the thing is: only *most* got filled to some extent

not all

because there used to be dragons

and now their niche is just *empty*

it's like i can feel the gap they left, in everything from open grassland ecosystems to isolated islands; the world we know is shaped by the absence of a truly big flying predator

no bird could ever fill their niche, because of plain and simple anatomical constraints

because they cannot use their wings to jump

birds could never be azdarchids

they could never be dragons

there are no more dragons

but there used to be

there used to be...

[verysupersilly]

The mighty Tomistoma schlegelii.

I usually talk a lot, but the beauty of this crocodile manages to silence my loquacity.