Nerd Shit!

Liverwort enthusiast / Algorithmic content hater / Unrepentant hypernerd

[the-marquette-interchange]

Important Ecology Sites are like "unexplored pristine wilderness in the mountains of an uninhabited tropical island it takes weeks to reach by boat"

Important Geology Sites are like "that one spot on the side of the highway"

is this anything?

[lemonsweet]

Smiley face french fry from memory

[lemonsweet]

I don't know why you guys are so afraid it's just a memory

[the-marquette-interchange]

niko the seal.... memories from before The Concreting

[herpsandbirds]

Paper Nautilus or Argonaut (Argonauta argo), female emits ink as it jets away, family Argonautidae, order Octopoda, Bali, Indonesia

photograph by Mehmet Salih Bilal

[thalassata]

tsuki tsausage

[mossworm]

Diplomoceras (the clippy) and Pseudocenoceras

[official-cephaloposts]

official cephalopod post

[the-marquette-interchange]

let's bite things with mama!

Attribution: By Channel City Camera Club from Santa Barbara, US - Leopard Seal and pup by Jeff Lipshitz, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106117167

[the-marquette-interchange]

I've been thinking about musk oxen. In discussions about Arctic wildlife I consistently forget they exist, and then when I remember them- it's kind of cool thinking about giant herds of the beasts just grazing across the apparent wasteland.

The strangest thing about them is that they're more closely related to goats than to actual oxen, and are pretty much the largest caprine animals on Earth.

Among animals like the moose and elephant seal, I feel like these guys would be a great example of Pleistocene megafauna if, you know, they had gone extinct in the Pleistocene. Instead we get to wonder over them on the modern day Internet!

Also, the babies are really cute... "let's eat lichen with mama!"

[evies-grace]

what a lovely lady

[quezify]

the noble oarfish for anon

[silky-selkie]

Puffball mushroom

[sealdev]

You are precious

[the-marquette-interchange]

I think that the drive to prevent bird strikes on windows could lead to some beautiful concepts, aesthetically.

What I mean:

Stained glass covers for tall windows in public buildings

Those diamond-pane windows from gothic architecture

Murals and art made with patterns in frosted windows

of course, the usual less invasive patterns are going to be used in most windows, but please tell me y'all see the vision!

[sh4rkguts]

[the-marquette-interchange]

Vertical escape tactics and movement potential of orthoconic cephalopods

Measuring locomotion tactics available to ancient sea animals can link functional morphology with evolution and ecology over geologic timesc

I feel like the wider Internet needs to know about this paper. I don't even remember how I found it, but I do know that I found it whimsical enough to read the whole thing for fun.

TL:DR: An academically useful reason to build silly little squid rockets.

Basically, orthocone cephalopods (squid-like prehistoric creatures with long, upright, cone-shaped shells) were prey animals in their prehistoric ecosystems. Their shells were a good adaptation against small-scale attacks, but to escape large predators, these cephalopods would have had to move very quickly in short bursts.

However, they could not have moved horizontally at any useful speed. The buoyancy of the air inside their shells was distributed in such a way that they would be knocked off-balance by a strong horizontal force. They would then spend more energy on getting back upright than on actually moving.

So how did they move? Researchers proposed that cephalopods escaping predators just went straight upwards. How did the researchers test this? They 3D-printed models of the squids and shot them out of a university swimming pool.

Imagine being a student going for a swim when you see the pool is "closed for squid launch" or similar :D

[gaynaturalistghost]

Everybody else is looking up at the big beautiful waterfall. Not me. I’m looking at the mud around the bottom. for liverworts.