darling

baby, why don’t you come over? 🍷

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

Beaded cloisonné hermit crab by Amy Kopperude.

the midwest princess!

now that i am a real adult i am starting to realise. media lied to me about the availability of rooftops to go hang out on. every day i wish i could be hanging out on a rooftop somewhere looking cool as fuck

biologist here! why are plants green? well they suck up air from the sky (blue) and mix it with the sunlight (yellow) i fucking love science.

Every time I see this post I fly into an incandescent rage because it’s VERY ALMOST TRUE and it FUCKING SHOULDN’T BE and I HATE the way op explains it

me going to bed tonight

It’s not just that the leaves will break down on their own (and enrich the soil while they’re at it!). During the winter, all sorts of insects use leaf litter for shelter, and they’re the first food available to larvae in early spring. Leaves also insulate the plants under them during the winter, which is important if you’re in an area prone to frost heaving.

One of the best thing you can do for native pollinators in your area is Leave the Leaves!

My mom stopped raking her leaves when she found out about this but her neighbor used his leaf blower to clear out her yard the first year she decided to try. So she started posting a Leave the Leaves sign in the yard each year with an explanation about why it’s good and two winters later only one house still rakes their lawn each year.

We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the biodiversity in the neighborhood since. We have birds that we haven’t seen since we moved into the city from living rurally and those birds are starting to nest in the trees and gardens in spring. The swallows and bats are back at night. The single woodpecker we would only occasionally see visits daily and even has a friend that has joined it. We have more squirrels and rabbits and shockingly fewer moles and voles. We heard an owl outside last fall.

Leave the leaves indeed.

wish i could call in bitchy to work

sorry boss can’t work today. i woke up and i feel like a total cunt. can’t be trusted with customers

sex isn’t real it’s something chappell roan made up to sell songs 🙄

simply dont monday

Detroit zoo: Bear cubs Jebbie grizzly bear and Laerke polar bear playing

Looked up context for this video and Detroit Zoo (AZA) lost one of their two newborn polar bear cubs and the mother rejected the survivor, and Jebbie was found wandering orphaned in Alaska so they’ve been moved in together for companionship! certified cute video

㋡🥀

what do red pandas even do

I MEANT AS SELF DEFENSE STOP THE HATRED im sorry red pandas

does this answer your question

DUA LIPA performing at the 66th GRAMMY Awards (February 4, 2024)

Late night doodles of my OC, Indigo.