Who am I? What am I? @scotszoologist - Tumblr Blog

yorgen-sh

The Chinese shoe manufacturer decided to demonstrate the indestructibility of their shoes

scarlettohairdye

And also the indestructibility of that woman's ankles

bogleech

if this lady were coming to get you to death would you survive

only maybe

no

Voting ended onJul 14

abby-howard

A couple scenes from a little gay vampire story I was kicking around a couple years ago! I sometimes do little pencils-only scenes for things and never post them. But I was looking back at these and was like why not? They're cute!

I have a whole story for these two, but just for funsies, something to do every now and then when I need to let loose.

abby-howard

(she will eat them though)

molabuddy

a little personal response / tribute to "here's the life i've always longed for" by Anna Haifisch. the original means so much to me, and even though it's hard, I feel like every day i'm making more steps toward finally being on the other side of that fence <:)

chongoblog

ITS APRIL 13 YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS

FETCH ME NEIL

chongoblog

el-ffej

A brief appreciation of Peter Falk in Columbo, by Joe Dator in The New Yorker

mernolan

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!

newtonpermetersquare

why have i been disgraced

probablyasocialecologist

Around 50-85% of the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere comes from phytoplankton

xwxda-m1n3n-g035-nyahxwx

phytoplankton appreciation post 💚

Thank you @bentothuglife ! Natural history used to be a bit more loosey-goosey

cheeseanonioncrisps

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”.

scotszoologist

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

sparrowlucero

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.