your friendly neighbourhood cryptid

welcome to rock bottom! side acc where i make posts about funky creatures and also sometimes non-creatures! sea creature enthusiast and whale lover. feel free to drop silly little guy requests in the asks! main acc @wallisii

[themesopelagiczone]

hey! who the fuck is that guy?

i'm that guy. hi. it's me. i like birds and fish and creatures and stuff.

i reblog tons of art and pictures and info related to the environment, aquatic life, and biology but i'll also post my own earth facts - hopefully daily, but no promises there.

i tag animal death and gore, but you can always ask me to tag other triggering subjects. you can also request creatures through my ask box, and i'll do my best to answer any questions through my ask box as well! feel free to submit friends as well. life gets busy, so i might not be able to post as much as i'd like.

i am NOT a professional in any field, and have NOT gone to any post-secondary schooling for anything related to biology or oceanology in any way. i'm just some guy that really likes this kind of stuff. i try to do as much research as possible, but my earth facts may not always be factual. i'll link any and all resources used when i do post.

some of my tags:

twilight zone talks — posts i make that aren't facts

earthposting — my own facts (i also keep count in the tags)

facts! — umbrella tag for my own facts and facts from other people

aquatic — aquatic animals & water-related things in general. i'll try to tag with species names as well, when i can figure out what the creature is

terrestrial — land animals & non water related things (e.g. plants, birds, rocks). again, i'll try to tag with species names

art — super awesome swag cool art!

asks — asks i get. my ask box is always open! please talk to me please i swear i'm actually really fun

𓆟 𓇼 ⋆｡˚ 𓆝⋆｡˚ 𓇼 𓆛˚｡ °.𓆞 ·˙‧̍̊ 𓆟

[littlestpersimmon]

Free Ornamentation IV. This work is dedicated to the public domain 🐌

[4nimal]

I turned them into individual transparent pngs if anyone wants those premade!

(Op lmk if you want me to take this down, I'd totally understand—on the other hand, I'd love to do it for the other public domain pieces you've done if that's ok!)

[themesopelagiczone]

Have you heard the news? On August 4th, a study was published identifying Vibrio pectenicida as a causative agent for sea star wasting disease. After ten years, we finally found a causative agent! Scientists are hopeful we can use that to identify healthy sea stars vs sick ones, to try to breed more healthy ones in captivity. We might have a chance at building the sunflower sea star population back up!

YES! oh my god you read my mind. i was just making my way through that study and i was gonna post when i finished it but you beat me to it!!! absolutely insane fantastic news!!1 peace and love on planet earth!!!

here’s the study

[pathetic-gamer]

giant redwood trees really are so cool, they just have something incredibly special going on. it's hard to describe if you haven't seen them

[pathetic-gamer]

a certain je ne sequoia, if you will

[protectoursharks]

The shape of a fish's caudal tail can tell you a lot about how fast the fish moves! A rounded tail is the slowest and a lunate tail is the fastest! The lunate tail has the most optimal ratio of high thrust and low draw, making it the fastest.

Ichthyology Notes 2/?

[pnglove]

hi! do you have any fish pngs? I love your work! it's so high quality!!

thank you so much! I love fish so this was fun to make!

[life-on-our-planet]

This is the first confirmed live observation of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, at depth in its natural habitat. Pilots filmed the young cephalopod at about 600m near the South Sandwich Islands as the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s remotely operated vehicle SuBastian descended through the water column on a dive aiming to discover new marine species, in partnership with Ocean Census during the #SouthSandwichIslands expedition. ©Schmidt Ocean Institute

[themesopelagiczone]

hey. hey don’t cry. schmidt ocean institute just got the first footage of a live colossal squid filmed in its natural habitat at 1,800 ft depth ok? it’s a juvenile only one foot long ok??

futurism | good news network

[azaraampora]

I’ve never made a meme before, but everyone is raving about this angler fish so I decided to add in my input as a bioecologist 🧫

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

It's amazing how much of our knowledge of "animal behaviour" is based on very old studies that just went "we half-starved these animals and put them in a tiny box together and just assumed that whatever they did reflects their natural behaviours and social structures"

[blorbologist]

"Let's give ectotherms the same tasks as endotherms! And when they don't complete them on the same timeframe declare them basal and stupid!"

"Let's base 90% of our tasks on visual stimuli because we, As Humans, think that’s the most important thing ever!"

"Let's test social animals in isolation, thus extremely stressed and scared!"

"Huh, how convenient that animals most like us are 'smartest'!"

- signed, a very tired behavioral ecologist

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Sometimes someone tells me "self-aware animals are ones that pass the mirror test" and it makes me so so tired. And then sometimes they'll even say something like "cat's can't pass the mirror test" and I have to just leave because cats absolutely do know what their own reflection is and how it relates to them as an individual and if they're not passing your test to determine that then frankly that's your test's problem.

And like, the sheer number of animals (especially reptiles and insects) that are just declared to have no social structure and no parental care and then decades later it's like "oh, these spiders do care about their babies!" Yeah i think the guys who wrote about how they didn't might've been somewhat intellectually lazy maybe. The amount of reproductive information that's awkwardly forced into a "males of all species go looking for mates and females of all species are passive recipients who just say 'yes' or 'no', all sex is for reproduction and any homosexual behaviour is one of them getting confused or deceived" is ridiculous.

The assumption that while humans have very mutable and contextual social heirarchies, all other social animals must have incredibly rigid ones and half of what they do is "for dominance", and then people get confused when they "show dominance" to their animals and their animals don't like them. (It's because you're being a bully! Dick behaviour!) The absolute surprise and joy when people document nonhuman animals playing, a normal thing that it's frankly weird that anyone would assume is exclusive to humans in the first place. It's fucking ridiculous.

[memorycycle]

people on the subway train are alwaus looking at their phones well we should look to eachother and build a community that lives on trains and be like a siphonophore that uses the train as a shell . and float through the pelagic zone and share the seas nutrients such as small fish and crustaceans among our linked bodies

[pngblog]

[pngblog]

Good God this got to like 6000 notes in under a week

[januarycitrus]

grammatically correct owl

[themesopelagiczone]

it is VERY IMPORTANT that everyone is aware of the absolute girlboss that is wisdom the laysan albatross, the world’s oldest wild bird! she’s 73 and still returning to midway island to lay eggs each year.

scientists estimate she’s flown at least 3 million miles in her lifetime and laid 50-60 eggs, with 30 chicks fledged. for the past two years her mate hasn’t returned to midway island, and she’s been seen participating in courtship dances with albatrosses several decades younger than her.

wisdom has recently just laid a new egg!

cornell lab | npr

image: dan rapp, usfws

[themesopelagiczone]

after TWO CENTURIES, seven of the world's the last wild horses have returned to kazakhstan! some horses have been reintroduced to china and mongolia, but this is the first time they are back in kazakhstan. przewalski's horses used to live in the grasslands of central asia, where horses were thought to be first domesticated. there are plans to reintroduce forty horses total in the next five years.

the guardian | bbc

[corrodedparadox]

My other car is a rainbow trout

[ofishal-fish-posts]

official fish post

[protectoursharks]

There are four types of fish scales!

Cycloid scales are thin, overlap, and flexible. They're found on primitive teleosts (like minnows and carp).

Ctenoid scales have small, backwards pointed scales (known as cterns) make the fish more hydrodynamic and faster. They're found on Advanced Ctenoids (like perch and sunfish).

Ganoid scales are thick, diamond-shaped, and mostly non-overlapping. They're found on Chondrostei (like sturgeons and paddlefish).

Placoid scales are spikey and tooth-like with nerves. These are found on Chondrichthyes (like sharks and rays).

Ichthyology Notes 3/?

[ofishal-fish-posts]

official fish post