(don't) Push the Red Button

so. um. the good news is we found your boyfriend. the bad news is that, well, we sort of…dug him up…in the middle of a car park. in leicester (buckley et al. 2013). leicester, yeah. sorry. they demolished the friary he was hastily interred in when henry viii dissolved all the monasteries. you know how it is. and as it turns out, well, shakespeare was…sort of right about him. scoliosis, yeah, sorry (appleby et al. 2014). if it makes you feel any better we analysed his bones and it turns out he had a pretty high-protein diet before he died (lamb et al. 2014). and he drank so much wine that it changed their chemical composition, which we didn't know could actually happen before we analysed him (lamb et al. 2014), so he was having a good time, at least. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Appleby, J., Mitchell, P.D., Robinson, C., Brough, A., Rutty, G., and Morgan, B. (2014). The scoliosis of Richard III, last Plantagenet King of England: diagnosis and clinical significance. Lancet 383, 1944. 

Buckley, R., Morris, M., Appleby, J., King, T., O’Sullivan, D., and Foxhall, L. (2013). ‘The king in the car park’: new light on the death and burial of Richard III in the Grey Friars church, Leicester, in 1485. Antiquity 87, pp. 519-538. 

Lamb, A.L., Evans, J.E., Buckley, R., and Appleby, J. (2014). Multi-isotope analysis demonstrates significant lifestyle changes in King Richard III. Journal of Archaeological Science 50, pp. 559-565.

Adding to the post for science - I had a professor who focused on isotopes as part of her research and it was the coolest thing. The basics of it is everything we eat changes our body. And things like bones, hair, scales and feathers can be used to track what something eats and when.

For animals we generally track nitrogen and carbon. With that we can find out things like where the animal came from: like with one study they able to test 100-200 year old ivory and figure out old migration paths of African Savanah elephants. If compared to another animal and it is a certain amount we can figure out what sort of prey carnivores eat without ever seeing them eat it. Same with herbivores and plants. This is huge for conservation efforts since some species are selective in what they eat, and they will starve if they lose their food source.

So basically I gave a crash course on isotopes to say apparently we can also test oxygen isotopes for alcohol consumption. Neat

nothing pisses me off more than when i see a fic on ao3 talking about reach. "this ship isn't here but i added them for reach" "this fandom tag isn't necessary but i'm adding it for reach" "reposting for reach" STOP IT!!!! this is not tiktok this is not twitter this is an ARCHIVE this is not how it works!!!

i will not deal!!!! that is not how any of this works!!!!

tags by @magicalmanhattanproject

you can report these fics to Policy & Abuse as improperly tagged. Tagging fandoms unrelated to a work is against AO3's TOS & tag wranglers will remove incorrect tags if the work is reported.

[ID: first image is an altered screenshot of an AO3 tag listing, reading, "the [redacted] tag is not necessary but i wanted reach so. deal." End ID.]

fish horse👍

African bush elephant Loxodonta africana

Observed by nancylightfoot, CC BY-NC

His Undulations

You ever think about how weird hippos are ecologically speaking?

There's literally no other megafauna on earth that spends the entire day lounging around in water, mostly just socializing, only to come onto land to feed at night.

I remember when I used to do education programs on hippos, most people assumed they ate aquatic plants, and that that's the whole reason they were in water. Meanwhile, hippos are basically just giant nocturnal cows that eat only grass.

The unique ecology of hippos also has huge impacts on their environment.

All their travelings from water to land create trails that expand and divert waterways, creating new habitats. It's actually pretty similar to what beavers do, just with a bit less purpose behind it.

Hippos bring a TON of silicon from their grass diet back with them to water in the form of poop. This change in nutrients can have both good and bad effects.

During drought, hippo poop can cause dramatic drops in fish diversity (x), but over longer periods of time and in large water bodies, hippo poop benefits fish communities. The overhunting of hippos in rivers that feed some of the African Great Lakes may be a big factor in the nutritional decline of those water bodies (x).

Basically, less hippos means less poop, means less diverse aquatic ecosystems.

Ever seen a Golden Tiger sneeze?

(Source)

This is a striped hyena appreciation post

A 5200-year-old pottery bowl from Shahr-e Sukhteh bearing what could possibly be the world's oldest example of animation. It shows 5 images of a wild goat leaping, and if you put them in a sequence (like a flip book), the wild goat leaps to nip leaves off a tree. Museum of Ancient Iran

I would be the worst spy of all time because on one hand I overshare like hell, but on the other hand I also have THE shittiest memory so it’s really a lose/lose scenario for everyone involved.

guy interrogating me: What’s the passcode?

me: Ah fuck. I think it might be 792.....4?

me: Actually no I think it starts with a 2.

me:

me: Yeah I usually just rely on muscle memory for it. Do you think you could get a keypad in here? That might be faster.

guy interrogating me: who do you work for?!

me: Okay, so this is super embarrassing. I know he told me his name when we first met but I forgot and at this point it would be weird if I asked him for his name again, right? So I just kind of go with “sir” whenever I have to talk to him. It might be David though. He looks like a David.

me, after being extracted: bad news guys, I totally blew Dave’s cover.

my boss: Wait, what?

me: Yeah, like they had knives and shit and it was kind of stressful so I just told them that my contact’s name was David Johnson. Really sorry about that.

boss: We don’t have a David Johnson working for us. Are you thinking of James?

me: 

me: Good news, guys, I did not blow James’ cover!

Enemy 1: So, how did the interrogation go?

Enemy 2: We got nothing. All they did was ramble on about their childhood trauma for two hours.

Enemy 1: Hmm. maybe lower the dose of the truth serum next time.

Enemy 2: We didn’t use truth serum.

:/

MARVEL'S GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY ( 2021 )

i watched one (1) video on how to draw hands that changed my life forever. like. i can suddenly draw hands again

these were all drawn without reference btw. i can just. Understand Hands now (for the most part, im sure theres definitely inaccuracies). im a little baffled

for those of u asking for the vid!

'Rainbow pool' at Congaree National Park - result of decaying vegetation, especially cypress cones and needles, that release their natural oils

don’t talk to me I’m releasing my natural oils

The largest population of life on earth is inverts, making up 25% all life on earth. At least. Beetles make up 40% of all KNOWN inverts with 1-2 million different species. We estimate we don’t know of another at least 2 million, but potentially up to 30 million more invert species! A study in the US (North Carolina) estimated there to be up to 124 million inverts an acre!! It’s estimated to be about 200 million insects per human on earth. And without them none of those higher order animals and even plants would exist. Vote inverts!!!