Joan Tierney
Claire Keane
we're not kids anymore.
ojovivo
Jules of Nature
No title available
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
taylor price
I'd rather be in outer space šø

Origami Around
hello vonnie
Misplaced Lens Cap
sheepfilms

romaā

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One Nice Bug Per Day

Kaledo Art

oozey mess

pixel skylines

ellievsbear

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@thefirsthoras
Joan Tierney
according to An Immense World, apparently giant squid eyes are, like, UNREASONABLY large, even for something their size living at those depths. the next largest eyes on earth, blue whale eyes, are less than half the size, and swordfish, who live at similar depths as giant squid and have the largest eyes of any fish, have eyes that could fit inside a giant squid's pupil.
eyes hit serious diminishing returns wrt resource costs vs vision quality as they get bigger, so the question became: what the FUCK do giant (and colossal) squid need to see so badly that they couldn't see with swordfish-sized eyes that's justifying that massive energy cost? that nothing else in the deep ocean needs to see so fucking badly??
turns out the one strength eyes that big really have over much smaller eyes is: seeing large glowing objects in water deeper than 500 meters from an appreciable distance.
sperm whales are the primary predator of giant squid. sperm whales don't glow. BUT! water that deep is full of bioluminescent creatures-- these creatures light up when bumped into. something a sperm whale's size is continuously bumping into those critters, it's just surrounded by a glowing field all the time when it's swimming at those depths, visible from a distance-- if you have the right eyes-- as a massive glowing shape. so basically the only reason to have eyes the size of soccer balls is if you live in the deep ocean and your life depends on having a heads up when a hungry sperm whale lurking around
and also I gotta say, the imagery... the huge lurking threat betrayed only by the ambiguous glowing shape of its movements through the water, is really evocative, if spooky deep-sea games aren't already using that to make things extremely ominous then they should really start
Hereās HSTHETE, the 24 hour comic I drew this year!Ā Thanks to everybody who followed along on twitter this weekend as I posted these pages <3
PS: if you liked this, thereās a whole book of these comics available now!
Iām reblogging this 7-year-old comic of mine because, not only is it somehow still circulating, it just passed 400,000 notes??? Thank you, several hundred thousand internet strangers, for keepinā this olā goat girl goinā so long
(Also hi, Iām still making fairy-tale-flavored lesbian romance comics and have a new one coming out very soonā¦)
ok so
everyone knows about this meme, right?
but does anyone else know the woman who made the food? no? time to educate!
This is āMother Maryā, the owner of Blackberryās mother.
She made all the cakes for the restaurant while it was open. Chef Gordon Ramsay tried her red velvet cake, and spoke this meme-able line:
He then called Mary over, complimented her food, and gave her a peck on the cheek.
Look how happy she was to hear that!!!
anyways, I hope she has been able to continue her love for baking since the restaurant closed down.
For these who donāt know: The restaurant she worked at closed down but she left before that and opened her own bakery, thatās apparently very successful!
Xanthi, Greece
*listens to your thoughts*
šWhat if i lightly touched your heart and we're both listening to our connected stethoscopes? š
ACAA*, my latest for New Scientist
*a cartoon about abbreviations
iām giving up personhood to become a full-time abstract concept
No transphobes allowed, only transborbs.
Check out my stuff!
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you know what? I want dragons with ontogenetic niche partitioning.
niche partioning is a concept from ecology wherein groups within a species expand into different ecological niches so they're not competing with one another, right? so for example, sexual niche partitioning happens when sexual dimorphism means that one sex eats different things / occupies different spaces / etc. as another within the same species. you have one species that occupies multiple niches within the ecosystem.
ontogenetic niche partitioning is when this happens as a result of developmental changes. paternal care tends to obliterate this partitioning--hard to have your juveniles eating something different from your adults if the adults are feeding them!--so we just don't see it very often in mammals or birds, but it's quite common in other species, especially invertebrates. for example, a caterpillar and a butterfly are examples of classic niche partitioning, even though every butterfly will occupy both niches over the course of its life. you don't have to have a big fancy chrysalis transformation to engage in ontogenetic niche partitioning, but those transformations are a pretty big sign that it's happening in a given species.
anyway, it's most common in vertebrates among fish, lizards and snakes these days, especially monitor lizards, where juveniles will occupy a different (often arboreal or otherwise sheltered) niche from adults and hunt different prey until they get big enough that the juvenile niche. there are some good reasons to think that some dinosaurs might have engaged in ontogenetic niche partitioning, especially the bigger species, too. we think sea turtles might do it, although that's hard to say because we don't know very much about sea turtle development once the hatchlings go back to the sea.
the neat thing about ontogenetic niche partitioning is that it allows a given ecology to host a much larger population size for a given species than would otherwise be the case, because the total space occupied by that species is spread across a lot wider niche space. this is especially relevant for, say, a large carnivore that eats livestock.
basically, what if dragons are just the very oldest, reproductively mature members of their species, and the common wall lizard or whatever is just a juvenile that might or might not survive long enough to reproduce? imagine if dragon eggs are very small with big clutches of little insectivorous hatchlings that are eaten by anything that comes by, any of which might have the potential to become a great fire-breathing monster if it lives long enough.
imagine that dragon society. do people know that the hatchlings and the dragons are the same species? (they might not: there are real examples of people mistaking ontogenetically niche separated groups for independent species in their own right.) if dragons are sapient but the sapience takes time to develop, what does that say about the nature of sapience itself? how does a society work and transfer wealth if you remove parental care?
so many possibilities.
Okay, we got a new one, boys.
Close enough welcome back Chekov's gun.
Prev you canāt bury this in your own tags
I also like the idea of showing something as a problem before itās shown as a strength. Almost every character trait has two sides, and by showing the ābadā side first, it sets things up to not only make sense, but to also be very satisfying.
MY FINGERS BARELY EVEN TOUCHED YOUR STUPID FUCKING AD STOP REDIRECTING ME TO THE APP STORE
LET ME SCROLL I DONāT WANT TO MOVE THINGS IN YOUR STUPID GAME
u/Fine-Dog-9874
@kittybroker
The black hole absorbing all that meets itās path! Not even the market is safe from itās overpowering reach! Get sucked into this kitty for exactly 0 dollars today!
i gotta be real with you guys im just sort of stunned tumblr has been running an open-front ZenDesk form for tumblr TOS reporting this whole time that doesnt require any kind of validation except a fucking email address. this one fact alone explains every single "why did so and so get banned for no reason" event of the past X years. however it is equally baffling that i didnt notice it before now. i would say it is baffling they implemented it in the first place but like i said, the management of their website is verifiably not well
Jonathan Joss was an Indigenous, gay man who was murdered on the first day of Pride month as well as Indigenous History Month. He died protecting his trans husband. Homophobia and racism arenāt marks of the past, and this is a heart breaking reminder of that.
Praying for a safe journey back to the spirit world, Uncle ā¤ļøāš©¹š¦
Today is the anniversary of the death of Jonathan Joss (King of the Hill, Parks and Rec). Jonathan Joss was an Indigenous, gay man who died protecting his transgender husband, on the first day of Pride month. Today we remember him and how he protected his family.