ITS APRIL 13 YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS
FETCH ME NEIL
Game of Thrones Daily

titsay
hello vonnie

Kaledo Art
Xuebing Du

tannertan36
Sweet Seals For You, Always

pixel skylines
styofa doing anything
Jules of Nature
todays bird

shark vs the universe
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Show & Tell
Claire Keane

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
No title available
dirt enthusiast
sheepfilms
Misplaced Lens Cap
seen from Sweden

seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom

seen from Poland
seen from United Kingdom

seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from Sweden
seen from United States

seen from France

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Sweden

seen from United States
seen from Switzerland

seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Brazil

seen from United States
@scotszoologist
ITS APRIL 13 YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS
FETCH ME NEIL
A brief appreciation of Peter Falk in Columbo, by Joe Dator in The New Yorker
HELP. THERE'S A WEIRD LITTLE GUY IN HERE.
my first ever short for Titmouse's 5 Second Day event about... well, a weird little guy!
why have i been disgraced
Around 50-85% of the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere comes from phytoplankton
phytoplankton appreciation post 💚
Thank you @bentothuglife ! Natural history used to be a bit more loosey-goosey
See I love this though, because this is one of the few pieces of medieval natural history where, as batshit insane as it is, the reasoning behind it does actually make sense.
See, barnacle geese live in the UK, but they don't breed here. They travel to the arctic to have their babies and don't return until they're fledged.
So, from the medieval perspective— given that most medieval brits weren't really in a position to go down to the arctic and check out the wildlife— barnacle geese a) vanished every summer and b) didn't seem to lay eggs or have babies. They just showed up at the same time every year, already basically grown.
Enter the goose barnacle.
The goose barnacle, supposedly, has a similar pattern and colouration to the barnacle goose. I can't really see it myself, except that they both have white patches, but medieval people apparently could.
Crucially, however, the goose barnacle likes to attach itself to driftwood, meaning that branches would regularly wash up on UK beaches covered in them. People at the time (not unreasonably) assumed that this meant that the barnacles grew on trees, whose branches later snapped off and fell in the water.
So, we have all these geese who vanish every summer and then emerge later in the year as full grown adults. And we have all these barnacles that apparently grow on trees (where birds like to live) and have a similar colouration to the geese.
So like, it's insane from a modern perspective, but you can see how they got there.
But ALSO, because your barnacle goose was born from a barnacle, many people at the time argued that it was technically a fish in the eyes of the Catholic church. At a time when nobody was allowed to eat meat significant chunks of the year, this was a useful myth to believe in.
The church, incidentally, did not agree with it. Not because they rejected the idea that barnacle geese spontaneously generated from barnacles— they were all in favour of that— but because, in the words of one writer “if anyone were to eat of the leg of our first parent (Adam) although he was not born of flesh, that person could not be adjudged innocent of eating meat”.
I think the goose barnacle - barnacle goose visual similarity is most apparent when you compare big groups of them, which is how they would normally be seen
The quailhogs of the wheatworld are fierce pack hunting predators that, despite any hopes and dreams they may have to the contrary, don't get much bigger than a guinea pig.
I started watching Columbo and felt the need to study him like a bug … so I did ……
my most sick and twisted fantasy
love the genre of discourse that’s like “the world used to be [thing it never was] but now society is [I’m over thirty]”
evergreen post
Who wants to see my rabbit launch himself at my face this morning
Slight sound warning i got surprised
Is this rabbit playing? Yes :)
Brotherhood of The Orb
my favorite genre of bird picture
Paintings by Bob Eggleton
i like when wikipedia pages for bands have that little chart at the bottom where you can see how they’ve been ritualistically cannibalizing their drummer every 3-5 years since 2007
types of band member timelines on wikipedia:
the main character and his rotating cast of bandmates
at least three different lineups with completely different people
the same group the entire time except one of them dies :(
trying out three or four different bassists until finding the right one
Nekrogoblikon my beloved