the end of an era

Walter Wick working on various I Spy books, from his instagram

Link in bio. What will he learn?

regular lobsters start out as just little lobsters but spiny lobsters start out as these beautiful weird larvae that also evolved to ride on top of jellyfish. This jellyfish is too small though!!!

imagine some other guy evolving specifically just to annoy you. what the fuck

iirc thats like a whole thing for many different organisms. seeing a jellyfish and going yup thats a chair.

The berry pickers creed

I will leave unripened berries untouched

A ripe berry need only be negotiated with, not fought

I will reasses my surroundings after every step, for my new perspective could reveal a berry patch previously hidden to me

The plant gets excited and happy when a barry is picked

The bug is not to be feared or killed, but gently celebrated, for it facilitated in the creation of the beloved berrys

I will not allow myself to be bullied by sharp thicket and I will retrieve even the most protected barry

Any conspiracy theory about people going missing in National Parks is automatically silly to me. Like "Why are National Parks such a hotbed of disappearances???" because they're full of idiots. You've got thousands of people who've never pissed outdoors in their life wandering around the woods/desert/mountain with zero experience and zero gear and zero understanding that this place can kill them. You don't see as many disappearances in wild areas because people don't go to them unless they have some background knowledge. Whereas you get tour buses full of old folks and suburban families shuttling people into National Parks 365 days a year. If you took the same amount of buffoons and dropped them in the actual wilderness the disappearances would be significantly higher than at the parks. Use your brain.

Some fun stuff from the notes:

I met a girl last semester who volunteered at a national park for several years and she told a story of the time a facility that rehabilitates bear cubs had a lady pull up with a Black Bear in the back seat of her car because she had hit the bear with her car and drove an hour to the rehab facility with the bear in the car with her. They had to make a post that was like "PLEASE DO NOT BRING BEARS TO US. BEARS WILL KILL YOU"

target audience

it occurs to me that i am also the target audience

Coyote found a squeaky toy I accidentally left outside. Turns out coyote love squeaky toys too. 

(Source)

does anyone else feel kind of slutty refilling soap bottles

I just don’t get it. How can our society act so goddamned normal about seahorses. How can anybody so casually accept that that’s a fish???

This is one of nature’s most anatomically perverse of all beasts. A FISH, like a carp or a bass or a beta is a fish, but it bent its body straight up only to bend its head permanently back down. It stretched its skull into a pipe. It tapered its tail like a lizard, specifically like a chameleon. It can also move its eyes independently by the way, you know, like a chameleon. Fun fact, it can change color to express its mood, like you know whatever does that. It doesn’t properly swim anymore. It buzzes its few remaining fins like an insect’s wings to float itself around at a snail’s pace. It lives its whole life clinging to coral branches or seaweed, which means it decided to become a “tree dweller” in an environment where gravity didn’t even matter anyway. The males get pregnant. They make noises at each other by rubbing some of their neck bones together. Every day, EVERY DAY a mated pair does a little dance and a little neck bone song so they remember which two seahorses they were. They’re a beautiful precious obscenity. Nothing so adorable ever made such a strong case against a logical creator.

They have as little skin and meat as they could get away with. Their skeleton is almost all they are.

This thing is one of the most successful hunters on the planet. Because their mouth is fused shut, except for the tip, they can create a powerful suction force in front of that one little opening in order to draw in prey. 

Lions have a 20-30% success rate on their hunts, depending on daytime and if they’re in a group. Great white sharks, anywhere from 40% to 80%, depending on the size and skill of the individual. Dragonflies, which are one of the most successful terrestrial hunters, can hit about 80-85%. Seahorses? 90% success rate, sometimes more. Only a fraction of their prey escapes that powerful vacuum. They’re incredibly precise. 

If you touch them, they feel hard, because of the skeleton underneath their skin. Their tails are being studied to make coiling bridges, because of how strong that interlocked structure is. Different species range in size from over a foot long, to barely an inch. 

Behold: not just a fish, but a wildly successful predator! 

horsey

don’t forget their majestic cousins the sea dragons! these are the leafy and weedy sea dragons

and the newest seahorse family member, discovered in 2015, the ruby sea dragon ❤️

Yeah that’s when someone tried to straighten the seahorse back out and it still didn’t look right. The more they bent and mushed it in their hands to look like a fish again the worse they fucked it up until finally they just left it and walked off and hoped nobody would ask who did this

(I love them so much)

Oh, so it’s actually the ruby sea dragon on a string! Got it.

i doubt that someone hasn’t already brought them up in another reblog but anyways. don’t forget about pipefish! relatives of seahorses which are literally as physically close to a worm on a string as any real animal could get, imo

guys i need you to realize that smoking ANYTHING will cause damage to your lungs. inhaling smoke is just inherently bad for you im sorry.

lungpilled healthmaxxer

So Fox News ran a story about how they think libraries are turning into drug-infested sex dens and I am shocked, shocked that I was never offered any drugs during my 15+ years working in libraries.

Where do they think the sex is happening?? Every single aisle is lit in that horrible LED lighting. The teens don't even make out here anymore.

As a state certified librarian I can assure you that you just have to go into your local library and ask if they're participating in the new Fox News Hysteria program smh. If they're not, you'll just have to renew your library card and use the fun and valuable resources they're offering right now, such as wifi hotspots, museum passes, dvd lending, mid level adult erotica, ebook lending, and printing! 😔

PUT YOUR HANDS UP IN THE AIR

Let! That! Baby! Eat!!!!!!

Perfect tags

@catboybiologist

This is one of my favorite videos of all time and I will always reblog it when I see it

I HAVE BEEN LAUGHING AT THIS FOR LIKE 10 MINUTES STRAIGHT OH MY GODD

Except I can never NOT parse the “hieroglyphs” on the far right as reading “I dig that ass.” Which still works, TBH.