@theartofmadeline
Xuebing Du
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oozey mess
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
★
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
noise dept.
wallacepolsom
if i look back, i am lost
$LAYYYTER
Sweet Seals For You, Always
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One Nice Bug Per Day
YOU ARE THE REASON
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
izzy's playlists!
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
seen from Malaysia
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@wikidragons
??????
they told us about this in my intro biology course? like apparently being a Sphere maximizes your surface area to volume ratio, which leads to losing less heat. so the colder the climate, the more Sphere animals become.
I can’t stop thinking about crocodiles for some reason so here’s some cool pictures I found of probably the second largest one in captivity, his name is Utan:
isn’t he beautiful
listen to the SOUND when he bites
and that’s not even a real power bite, that’s mostly just heavy bone falling on heavy bone from his jaws and the air rushing out from between them
2000 pounds of Good Boy
you get me
I honestly expected like 5 notes, what HAPPENED here
More tags on this ridiculous post:
Wait, thats the 2nd biggest crocodile? Then what does the biggest one look like?
That would be Cassius, a very old Saltwater crocodile who is estimated to be around 114 years old and lives at Marineland Melanesia in Green Island, Australia. His official measurement is 5.48 meters, which makes him the largest in captivity currently. Because Utan is only slightly smaller and much younger, (only in his 50s), he will likely break Cassius’ record eventually. But for now, Cassius holds the title:
He is NOT, however, either the largest crocodile ever captured in Australia OR the largest ever in captivity.
A slightly larger crocodile has been reported (though not yet comfirmed) to have been captured at 5.58 meters.
And while the famous Brutus of the Adelaide River was estimated to be just slightly larger than Cassius at 5.5m, he was driven out of his territory by a younger and even larger crocodile, who as a result has been given the name, The Dominator. He is estimated to be just over 6m.
This is Brutus, with an appropriate caption:
It is believed that he lost that arm in a fight with a Bull Shark.
The Bull Shark lost.
THIS is the crocodile who kicked him out. The Dominator:
And that’s STILL not the biggest.
The largest living crocodile ever reliably measured was Lolong, who for the 1.5 years between his capture and his death was the largest crocodile ever held in captivity, at a whopping 6.17 meters (20 feet 3 inches) and 1075 kg (2,370 lbs). He had been feeding on both humans and very large livestock in the Bunawan creek in Agusan del Sur in the Philippines. It took 100 people all night to drag him to shore during his capture.
And here’s why:
Also, to prevent credit from getting buried on a separate reblog, I have been informed that the above image of the crocodile with the cartoon eyes and halo was made by @rashkah! (And it is wonderful and I would like to thank him for its existence, because it perfectly captures my feelings about terrifying giant primordial reptiles.)
@theonewhocheeps
Holy fuck
As far as Brutus is concerned I was led to believe that he lost that arm when relatively young.
Since then Brutus developed a habit of hunting and eating Bull Sharks.
Here’s him with a prey.
And if you thought that you’ll be safe if you just stay out of Australia then think again!
Meet Gustave the Nile Croc.
This crocodile became almost legendary for both it’s size and the habit of hunting both livestock AND humans.
So how big is Gustave?
No one is sure. Since he was NEVER captured.
His estimated size is of at least 5,5m but some give him over 6m.
The terrifying parts are:
1) He is still growing having only about 60 years.
2) Adult crocodiles often perform a gesture of submission to him - something usually done by young crocodiles toward adults - Gustave is just THAT BIG.
3) His sheer size makes it difficult for him to catch agile prey Nile crocs tend to feed on - hence why he developed a habit of hunting either larger prey like Hippopotamus or creatures which are not good at spotting danger in the first place like livestock and humans.
And this is NOT ALL.
Gustave actually has a noticeable scars on his body - he was shot at east 3 times and stabbed with a spear or something similar at one occasion.
He lived to tell the tale - my question is:
What happened to that one dude who attacked Gustave with a spear?
*Crocodile Dundee voice* Mate, that’s not Gustave:
THIS is Gustave:
And he is the PERFECT CROCODILE. He is the perfect example of what I mean when I talk about (as I do) how the morphology of extremely large crocodiles adapts to the changing physics of their bite.
This is a typical adult Nile Crocodile:
And THIS is a god among his kind:
This is it, folks. The Final Form. THIS is what peak performance looks like.
Crocodiles and physics have an interesting relationship. Crocodiles have, by a CONSIDERABLE MARGIN, the strongest bite of any animal on Earth. EVER. Scaled up estimates (based on Nile and Saltwater crocodiles) give the extinct Deinosuchus an estimated bite force MORE THAN DOUBLE the recently updated Tyrannosaurus bite estimates. Living crocodiles have bite forces measured in the range of 5000 pounds per square inch, for an individual around 15-16 feet. It is estimated that modern crocodiles in the range of 18-20 feet would have bit forces around 7-8000 psi or more.
That’s a problem.
Because a crocodile’s skull is only designed to handle so much pressure. Go beyond that limit and the force of impact when those jaws snap shut could literally shatter their own skulls.
But evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting crocodiles, so PHYSICS ISN’T GOING TO STOP THEM. What ends up happening in the skulls of these extremely large crocodiles is they will increase dramatically in mass to compensate for the increased forces. A crocodile’s skull is almost exclusively solid bone, with only minimal space for nasal passages, a surprisingly advanced brain, and some slightly porous looking framework that helps the bone distribute the force over a larger area. The effect is by far the most pronounced in Nile crocodiles, which most regularly feed on larger prey and need to make use of all that power.
Compare, 26 inch skull:
vs 29 inch skull:
Both of those are Nile crocodile skulls (or rather, replicas thereof).
And just for fun, here are the skulls of completely different (and very extinct species), Deinosuchus:
and Purussaurus:
The bigger the crocodile (within a given species), the more massive the skull needs to be to compensate for that UNBELIEVABLE bit pressure. This is one way to see from a distance whether you are looking at a normal sized crocodile:
and a truly extraordinary individual:
One of the things about Gustave that’s so impressive is how healthy his teeth look. A lot of large crocodiles, in their old age, have very worn down and often missing teeth. They do replace them many times over a lifetime, but when they get very old this slows down. Gustave, at least in every picture taken of him, had teeth that were in very good condition.
Even crocodiles much smaller than Gustave’s reported size (probably similar in size to Dominator or Lolong) tend to have smaller or more worn teeth:
than the pinnacle of his kind:
Lolong! It means Gramps or Grandpa, because he’s a relic of an ancient world where crocs more massive than he was walked the earth. His body is on display somewhere right now though I forgot where.
Every time I see this post there’s more crocodiles. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
@sugarstitchplush
@i-am-burning
How could this post mention a few prehistoric crocs but forget to mention the Sarcosuchus?
I’m no expert so I won’t try to mention any biology factoids other than these guys were massive. X
i told ya we’ve canceled discourse n we’ve moved on to homesteading skills
it’s just choppin wood and harvesting vegetables and herbs from here on out
amen!
unironically this
Please hit me with more homesteading concept drawings
Good reference material here.
what is it about capybaras that attracts groups of small animals to them? Its not just mammals either its like birds and turtles and frogs too
look at this shit
They radiate peace
capybaras are friend shaped
I love this post
This is actually a cool thing I know about!
In the wild capybaras live in large groups so naturally a female capybara will take care of not only her own offspring, but all of the other offspring in the group. So capybaras are super great mothers who will adopt pretty much anything and take care of it.
Lots of places that rescue different animals will give a group of baby animals to a capybara to raise if they have one.
Like puppies
Ducks
Deer
Emus
They are just super calm animals so they’re naturally great at mothering or just existing in a group!
mom shaped
The smallest mammal that ever lived could be sitting right on your shoulder, and you’d hardly know it. Batodonoides vanhouteni (model pictured) lived about 50 million years ago in what is now Wyoming, and was so small that it could climb up a pencil. It also weighed as little as a dollar bill! Several slightly larger species of these mini-mammals lived between 55 and 42 million years ago, but they are now all extinct. Its closest living relatives are modern-day shrews and moles. Photo: randychiu
I love this Model! It’s in the California Academy of Sciences and it’s part of a display of the largest and smallest land mammals! Here’s the whole display, with Batodonides in the case labeled “Smallest”:
The Big Boi with him is a Paraceratherium , which lived in most of what is now Asia some 30-16 MYA, and was the largest land animal ever to live, weighing in around 33,000-44,000 lbs.
I really love this display, becuase there is so much love and attention paid to these models, and that every kid that comes up them marvels over how each contains a heart and lungs and brain just like they do. It’s really lovely.
I’m loOSING my goddamN SHIT right now are you fucking SERIOUS sbout that tINY ASS MOTHERFUCKER LITTLE MAMMAL THAT SMALL SND DFELICATE AND COMPLETE AS A LIVI G ORGANISM I FUCKING CAAANNNTT
I love them
Reference Sheet: Gemstone Cuts
Me in my house welcoming you with excitement
1.mood
2.fun fact this bat isnt being eaten; like, its roosting there for the night. this is Nepenthes hemsleyana, a pitcher plant species in a mutualistic relationship with the local tiny bat friends Kerivoula hardwickii (Hardwicke’s woolly bat)!! it works like this:
- the pitchers are shaped to make a special distinctive reflection of the bat’s echolocation. so like, the bats can hear where the pitchers are and go to them for roosting.
-the bats enter the pitchers and sit on this special rim inside that holds them above the water line so they dont get eaten on accident.
-up to two teeny bat friends can fit in an average pitcher at a time lmao
-the bat friends poop when they sleep and the plant eats the poop when it falls into the digestive fluid
-bat friends get a safe place to sleep, pitcher plants get food!
IM SORRY FOR REBLOGGING THIS TWICE IN ONE DAY BUT I WAS READING THE STUDY AND IT GOT BETTER
This is lovely! Pitcher Plants get such a bad rap they don’t reserve.
This Armadillo girdled lizard biting its tail looks like a mini dragon (Source: http://ift.tt/2gbfi42)
totes adoraboros
Cool animal + clever pun = obligatory @copperbadge tag 😁
It’s a tail as old as time.
A pair of sea unicorns from Rudolf II’s Bestiarium. Probably extrapolated from a narwhal tusk.
Those are some freaky fingers.
IT’S NOT ‘PEEKED’ MY INTEREST
OR ‘PEAKED’
BUT PIQUED
‘PIQUED MY INTEREST’
THIS HAS BEEN A CAPSLOCK PSA
THIS IS ACTUALLY REALLY USEFUL THANK YOU
ADDITIONALLY:
YOU ARE NOT ‘PHASED’. YOU ARE ‘FAZED.’
IF IT HAS BEEN A VERY LONG DAY, YOU ARE ‘WEARY’. IF SOMEONE IS ACTING IN A WAY THAT MAKES YOU SUSPICIOUS, YOU ARE ‘WARY’.
ALL IN ‘DUE’ TIME, NOT ‘DO’ TIME
‘PER SE’ NOT ‘PER SAY’
THANK YOU
BREATHE - THE VERB FORM IN PRESENT TENSE
BREATH - THE NOUN FORM
THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE
WANDER - TO WALK ABOUT AIMLESSLY
WONDER - TO THINK OF IN A DREAMLIKE AND/OR WISTFUL MANNER
THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE (but one’s mind can wander)
DEFIANT - RESISTANT DEFINITE - CERTAIN
WANTON - DELIBERATE AND UNPROVOKED ACTION (ALSO AN ARCHAIC TERM FOR A PROMISCUOUS WOMAN)
WONTON - IT’S A DUMPLING THAT’S ALL IT IS IT’S A FUCKING DUMPLING
BAWL- TO SOB/CRY
BALL- A FUCKING BALL
YOU CANNOT “BALL” YOUR EYES OUT
AND FOR FUCK’S SAKE, IT’S NOT “SIKE”; IT’S “PSYCH”. AS IN “I PSYCHED YOU OUT”; BECAUSE YOU MOMENTARILY MADE SOMEONE BELIEVE SOMETHING THAT WASN’T TRUE.
THANK YOU.
*slams reblog*
IT’S ‘MIGHT AS WELL’. ‘MIND AS WELL’ DOES NOT MAKE GRAMMATICAL SENSE.
SLEIGHT - DEXTERITY, ARTIFICE, CRAFT (FROM ‘SLY’) SLIGHT - VERY LITTLE, FRAIL, DELICATE
IT’S ‘SLEIGHT OF HAND’.
CAN I ADD TO THIS TOO?
IT’S NOT ‘COULD OF’, THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE WHATSOEVER. IT’S ‘COULD HAVE’. SAME APPLIES TO ‘SHOULD HAVE’.
And this is why my students look at me as though I’m the devil when I try to tell them that no i’m not lying this really is a thing
IT’S ‘COULDN’T CARE LESS’ NOT ‘COULD CARE LESS’ IF YOU COULD CARE LESS THAT MEANS YOU CARE
VOILA - ROUGHLY TRANSLATES AS “LOOK AT THAT” (VOI-LA)
VIOLA - AN INSTRUMENT SIMILAR TO THE VIOLIN
WALLAH - MEANINGLESS GIBBERISH AND YOU JUST MADE SOMEONE CRY
HOW ABOUT THESE?
CLOTH - A PIECE OF MATERIAL LIKE COTTON
CLOTHE - TO PUT CLOTHES ON SOMEONE
CLOTHES - THE THINGS TO MAKE SURE YOU’RE NOT NAKED
ALSO IT’S FREAKING “REIN IN YOUR EMOTIONS” LIKE WHAT YOU WOULD DO TO A HORSE NOT “REIGN IN YOUR EMOTIONS” BECAUSE THAT IS THE TIME OF A RULING FOR ROYALTY THE IDIOM IS BASED OFF OF HORSE STUFF!
oh we doing this?? bet!
fiancé/fiancée are loan words from french and are therefore gendered (yeah i know it sucks, blame latin). the former is masculine, so used for male/masc people. femmes use the latter.
in the same vein, widow = femme, widower = masc
(sorry, i’m not currently aware of any gender neutral terms for either of the above terms except maybe betrothed or affianced for engaged people or the bereaved for the Left Behind, but they sound so horribly outdated so idk)
speaking of veins!
vein = blood vessel that carries blood back to the heart, or, in the way i used it above, having a distinctive style or tendency
vain = self-absorbed, conceited
conceited = self-absorbed, vain
conceded = withdrew, gave up, forfeited (i.e., “conceded the point”)
ancestors = those who came before (harriet tubman is my ancestor)
descendants = those who came after (i am a descendant of harriet tubman)
supine = face up, prone = face down
affect = to impact or change (or, in a psychological context, one’s expression of emotion as demonstrated through facial expression, tone of voice, or body language)
effect = the result of a change (or, in verb form, to influence, as in “to effect change”)
preceded = went before (”she preceded him into the room” means she went into the room before he did)
proceeded (i happen to loathe this word but whatever, it’s my issue) = to move forward or to begin or continue a course of action (”she proceeded to jump” is a horrible and jarring way–my issue, sorry–to say she began to jump)
rein = to curb, as in “rein in your emotions”
reign = to rule, like a king (also, a ruler’s period of rule, i.e., beyoncé’s reign is far from over)
shudder = like a shiver, usu. in revulsion or fear
shutter = to close, as in a business when it’s bankrupt. also, a type of window covering
bear with me = be patient with me (alternatively, there is a large ursine animal with me)
bare with me = naked with me
“no one” is two words
so is “a lot”
it is “deep-seated,” not “deep seeded.” the latter applies to gardening.
it was mentioned above, sort of, but the abbreviation of could have is “could’ve.” see also “should’ve,” and “would’ve.”
crap i forgot:
discreet = inconspicuous, low key
discrete = separate, individual
//Absurdly helpful for people writing royal characters and/or characters who interact with royalty and members of the nobility.
[x]
Citizen is simpler and more beautiful~ but just in case anyone needs this.
DUDE BUT THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL PEOPLE
in medieval times you ONLY addressed a king/queen with “Your Majesty”, NEVER “Your Highness”. To address a king/queen with “Your Highness” was considered an insult.
Here’s a more extensive list of titles and what you would call a person/their wife/their mother/their children
… So when Cinderella’s stepsister Anastasia curtsied terribly and addressed Prince Charming as “Your Grace”, it was UNSPEAKABLY RUDE?
Let’s talk about Nightjars
they are these wonderful tiny predatory birds
With great camouflage for multiple environments
And lovely plumage dependent on their species
BUT BEST OF ALL IS THEIR MOUTHS, which look small then their beaks are closed (they’ve even got cute lil’ whiskers!)
BUT ARE ACTUALLY HUUUUGE
BEST BIRD
i am here for this bird
WHAT IS THIS ELDRITCH HORROR!!!
Didn’t you read? It’s a Nightjar.
@lotsandlotsofbirds
@gallusrostromegalus I don’t think you know me, but I thought you’d appreciate these quality birbs.
I do! They’re my main inspriation for the mothman in Seattle Bites.
@lunardeercat
My go-to advice for any “how to draw [x]” type question is usually to study photo references …of course, when it comes to dragons and other mythical creatures, this presents a bit of a problem.
Since you can’t look up real photographs of dragons’ talons, the next best thing is to find photos of similar structures on similar animals. This could vary depending on your dragon’s design, but as a starting point I would recommend looking at human hands, lion/cat paws, bird talons (especially birds of prey), and lizard/alligator feet.
(Photo sources: human, lion, eagle, alligator)
When you’re looking at a photo, try to break it down into component shapes – starting with the largest, overall shapes, and then moving towards smaller, finer details.
For hands, I usually start with the palm, then the shape of the fingers all together as one piece (often broken in two by a line denoting the knuckles), then the last joint of each fingertip, then each of the individual fingers, and finally the small details like finger nails, wrinkles, etc.
Here’s an animated version, in case that helps you visualize the process better:
After studying the creatures you’ve chosen to base your dragon on, you can blend their traits together to create something new.
Hope this helps!
i just found this website that can randomly generate a continent for you!! this is great for fantasy writers
plus, you can look at it in 3d!
theres a lot of viewing options and other things! theres an option on-site to take a screenshot, so you don’t have to have a program for that!
you can view it here!
Totally gonna use this for making my worlds
the link is broken
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/game-programming/polygon-map-generation/demo.html
:)
thank you!
@voidguide
For my followers who write things 😘
Re-blogging to use later
I just read all of your art tutorials and they seem super helpful! I was wondering if you had any advice on how to draw clothing?
Yeah! here are some tips on drawing fabric and clothing that I sent to a friend a while back:
Hope that’s helpful. Thank you so much, @yosugayhomomura !
Source More Facts
Yes this could have to do with the fact that Freya the Norse Goddess of love, beauty and fertility drove a chariot pulled by cats.
So, if I ever get married, I fully expect a catmobile.
One of the other reasons why they gave cats to each other was for their valuable skills as mousers. Cats were able to control rodent populations around their properties.
Also, Norse myths are thought to have the earliest literary descriptions of the Norwegian Forest Cat. They were described as large, strong cats that drew Freya’s chariot and were so heavy that not even Thor, God of Thunder, could lift them from the floor. (Source)
They kinda live up to the legend, too. Your average Norwegian Forest Cat is twenty pounds of solid muscle, with claws large and strong enough to climb solid rock. They’ve been known to attack bears when defending their territory. And yet they’re one of the cuddliest breeds out there, particularly noted for being patient with small children.
I have a Norwegian mix, and can attest that she is the cuddliest cat but also insane enough to try and fight a bear.
@seestramattie
i love mythology in any place of the world. It’s all just great!
