So I was told that Human Planet had a segment about pigeons in the Cities episode that I might be interested in and I was honestly so underwhelmed. I haven’t finished the episode so maybe there’s more pigeon stuff but I feel like all I saw was more Birds Of Prey Are The Only Cool And Acceptable Birds and pigeons are Trespassers In Our Urban World Who Shit On Everything And Are Useless On Top Of It. Which isn’t true and I’m so tired of this being framed as some horrible burden that humanity must face. Pigeons are the victims here, not us. 

Hate of pigeons didn’t start until the 20th Century. Before that was about 9,900 years of loving them. The rock pigeon was domesticated 10,000 years ago and not only that, we took them freaking everywhere. Pigeons were the first domesticated bird and they were an all-around animal even though they were later bred into more specialised varieties. They were small but had a high feed conversion rate, in other words it didn’t cost a whole lot of money or space to keep and they provided a steady and reliable source of protein as eggs or meat. They home, so you could take them with you and then release them from wherever you were and they’d pretty reliably make their way back. Pigeons are actually among the fastest flyers and they can home over some incredible distances (what fantastic navigators!). They were an incredibly important line of communication for multiple civilisations in human history. You know the first ever Olympics? Pigeons were delivering that news around the Known World at the time. Also, their ability to breed any time of year regardless of temperature or photoperiod? That was us, we did that to them, back when people who couldn’t afford fancier animals could keep a pair or two for meat/eggs. 

Rooftop pigeon keeping isn’t new, it’s been around for centuries and is/was important to a whole variety of cultures. Pigeons live with us in cities because we put them there, we made them into city birds. I get that there are problems with bird droppings and there’s implications for too-large flocks. By all means those are things we should look to control, but you don’t need to hate pigeons with every fibre of your being. You don’t need to despise them or brush them off as stupid (they have been intelligence tested extensively as laboratory animals because guess what other setting they’re pretty well-adapted to? LABORATORIES!) because they aren’t stupid. They’re soft intelligent creatures and I don’t have time to list everything I love about pigeons again. You don’t need to aggressively fight them or have a deep desire to kill them at all. It’s so unnecessary, especially if you realise that the majority of reasons pigeons are so ubiquitous is a direct result of human interference.

We haven’t always hated pigeons though, Darwin’s pigeon chapter in The Origin of Species took so much of the spotlight that publishers at the time wanted him to make the book ONLY about pigeons and to hell with the rest because Victorian’s were obsessed with pigeons (as much as I would enjoy a book solely on pigeons, it’s probably best that he didn’t listen).  My point is, for millenia, we loved pigeons. We loved them so much we took them everywhere with us and shaped them into a bird very well adapted for living alongside us.

It’s only been very recently that we decided we hated them, that we decided to blame them for ruining our cities. The language we use to describe pigeons is pretty awful. But it wasn’t always, and I wish we remembered that. I wish we would stop blaming them for being what we made them, what they are, and spent more time actually tackling the problems our cities face.  

I just have a lot of feelings about how complex and multidimensional hating pigeons actually is

ALL OF THIS

And also pigeon poop was a very valuable fertilizer before we had other options, people would hire guards to stop thieves from stealing their flock’s poop.

#LovePigeonsAgain2016

Late night, reblogging, so bear with me here… Thank you for posting much of my thoughts over the past year and a half! I am known by many as “that guy who keeps the raptors”. Yes this is true, I do keep and handle raptors for educational purposes, but what many fail to realize is, I am fascinated with pigeons. My interest with birds began with the obvious, the raptors, corvids, and parrots. Then I discovered pigeons. These wonderful little birds with big attitudes and the incredible ability to thrive among people.  The organization I work with got its first pigeon a little over a year ago. She was a rescue with nowhere else to go. I was quickly drawn to her character and attitude about life. We rarely handled her, but we did spend time with her. She grew attached to our volunteers very quickly because their were no other birds she could socialize with in our facility. 

We never intended to train her for educational programs. It was a job reserved for our raptors. It was our pigeon who decided she would be a part of what we were doing. One day, when we entered her enclosure to change water and food, she decided to fly to my hand and perch like our raptors do. 

No training, no treats, just the reward of being with us. 

What we hadn’t noticed for the couple months prior was her watching us. This brilliant little bird had been watching us every day as we trained and worked with our raptors. Finally she decided she didn’t want to be left out any longer. She made her place on our hands.

This occurred several times before we finally put her on a glove and brought her into the public. Needless to say, she was right at home. She fluffed up and preened the entire evening while people gawked and asked us why we had a pigeon on one glove and a hawk on another. 

Since then, we’ve added 5 more rescued pigeons to our growing flock. And our pigeon (Tybalt) has become a mainstay ambassador for our programs. Each of our pigeons are incredibly fun to watch and interact with. Pigeons simply don’t get enough love. They are marvelous creatures incredibly suited to life alongside people both physically and mentally. 

Raptors my have been my introduction into birds, but pigeons opened my eyes to a new appreciation for them and the fascinating world of bird cognition.

NOT ONLY are pigeons very amazing, worth our respect, and INTERESTING (did you read any of that stuff above?), but they are beautiful too! Look how lovely:

Photo by .jocelyn.

They have a complex and fascinating social structure, both within a flock and with other individuals:

Photo by Ingrid Taylar

AND THEY ARE JUST SUPER CUTE, HONESTLY:

Photo by Musical Photo Man

Not chickens, but I feel compelled to spread this gospel.

hmmm. this is making me rethink my new york pigeon hate

and, AND, haven’t you ever wondered why city pigeons come in a magnificent rainbow of unusual colors?

Most wild animals all look alike within a species, with TINY, RARE individual variations in terms of rare color morphs, unusually big or small animals, different facial markings and other subtleties. But there is no evolutionary benefit to having species where everyone looks slightly different, and in fact, it’s beneficial for species to be similar and consistent, with a distinctive aesthetic. Especially if you’re trying to blend into the environment - a black wolf is all very well, but it looks positively silly in the summer tundra, where its grey/brown/brindley cousins blend in. A white deer has a great aesthetic - and a very short lifespan in the forest. Distinctive Protagonist looks are rare in the wild, simply because natural selection usually comes down heavily on them.

To humans, most wild animals are visually indistinguishable from each other.

As a result, most wild animals are like

“Oh it’s obvious - you can tell the twins apart because Kara has a big nose.”

Wild animals usually have a pretty consistent aesthetic within their species. It’s important to them!

SO WHAT IS GOING ON WITH PIGEONS?

Look, in one small picture you’ve got a red color morph in the center, several melanistic dark morphs, a few solid black birds, a few variations on the wildtype wing pattern, a PIEBALD, a piebald copper color morph…

Like, there are LAYERS UPON LAYERS of pigeon diversity in most flocks you see. Pure white ones with black wingtips. Solid brown ones with pink iridescent patches. Pale pinkish pigeons.

WHY IS THAT? When other wild animals consider “being slightly fluffier than my brother” to be dangerously distinctive in most circumstances? BECAUSE CITY PIGEONS AREN’T TRULY WILD.

MANY OF THEM (POSSIBLY MOST OR ALL) ARE FERAL MIXES.

THEY WERE ONCE BELOVED PETS, SPECIAL MESSENGERS, EXQUISITE SHOW-WINNERS, AND PRIZED LIVESTOCK.

THEIR PRETTY COLORS WERE DELIBERATELY INTRODUCED BY HUMANS.

AND NOW THEIR HUMANS DON’T LOVE THEM ANY MORE.

See, pigeon fanciers bred (and still breed!) a huge array of pigeons. And the resulting swarms of released/discarded/escaped/phased out “fancy” pigeons stayed around humans. What else were they going to do? They interbred with wildtype pigeons.

Lots of the pigeons you see in public are feral. They’re not wild animals. They’re citizen animals. They’re genetically engineered. And now that’s what “city” pigeons are.

These “wild” horses are all different colors because they’re actually feral. Mustangs in the American West are the descendants of imported European horses - they’re an invasive domestic species that colonized an ecological niche, but they are domestic animals. Their distinctive patterns were deliberately bred by humans. A few generations of running around on the prairie isn’t going to erase that and turn them back into wildtypes. If you catch an adult mustang and train it for a short period, you can ride it and have it do tricks and make it love you. It’s a domestic animal. You can’t really do that with an adult zebra.

No matter how many generations these dogs stay on the street and interbreed with one another, they won’t turn back into wolves. They can’t. They’re deliberately genetically engineered. If you catch one (even after generations of rough living, even as an adult) you can make it stare at your face, care about your body language, and love you.

City pigeons? Well, you don’t have to like them, but they’re in the same boat. They’re tamed animals, bred on purpose, living in a human community. Their very bodies are marked with their former ownership and allegiance; they cannot really return to what they once were; if you caught one, you could make it love you (in a limited pigeon-y way.) They have gone to “the wild,” but not very far from us, and they’d be happy to come back.

So next time you see a flock of city pigeons, spare a moment to note their diversity. The wing patterns. The pied, mottled and brindled. The color types.

All of it was once meant to please you.

I am now on Team Pigeon.  Thank you.

@lotsandlotsofbirds

This is why I don’t even attempt to release pigeons Wildlife Rehab sends me.

“Most” of them are not released/escaped domestic birds and their descendents.

**ALL** of them are! EVERY single one! 

What are being called “Wild Type” in the above article are PERFORMANCE MIXES! Homer, tumblers and rollers who have either escaped or gotten lost or scattred during a performance.

These look wild because they are bred for a flight skill or behavior rather than color or pattern, so they haven’t really changed much visibly. 

True wild Rock Doves only exist in and around Turkey where the species is native.

Everywhere else on earth, pigeons are the literal equivalent stray puppies with wings that humanity abandoned. If we did not feed them on parks or make our garbage available, the entire feral population would literally all die out.

THAT is how much “wild” pigeons depend on humans.

They have the cognitive capacity of a five year old human toddler.

They have a human social structure of extended family.

They have been taught to read in english! In three different scientific studies, their pattern recognition is THAT good!

They are being used to study Alzheimers because their brains deteriorate in EXACTLY the same way as humans suffering the condition.

Our society, our roads, even our internet was built on the backs of racing homers.

A huge portion of psychology and learning development studies owe their advancement to pigeons.

Pigeons with a large enough sample to learn from are proving as accurate at catching breast cancer as doctors!

Humanity has had an existence long love affair with pigeons that just sort of arbitrarily died off about 50 years ago, because we are annoyed now by how we made them.

The pidge do not deserve this!

They are wonderful, and we owe them so much respect!

ACTUALLY my esteemed colleague, if you are referring to me as being the person to call the wing-barred grey morph of the pigeon a “wildtype,” I DID NOT AND WOULD NOT DO SUCH A THING. I AM NO RUBE, NO UNWASHED PUMPKIN FROM THE COUNTRYSIDE. I AIN’T MAKING ANY SUCH STATEMENT AND NEVER WOULD. I FREQUENTLY LAUGH WITH SCORN UPON BLACK WOLVES FOR THEY ARE NOT WILDTYPE, and “variations on the wildtype wing pattern” should make that PERFECTLY CLEAR

Home cookin’. A fear submitted by Marika to Deep Dark Fears - thanks! The new Deep Dark Fears book is available now, with fifty unpublished comics and fifty favorites! You can find it at Amazon, B&N, IndieBound, iBooks, Google Books, your local bookstore, and wherever books are sold! For those of you outside the US, bookdepository.com is offering free worldwide shipping!

@harnaamkaur and I are tired of your shitty gender roles. We shot this series for @theparallelmag to challenge what people are “allowed to do.” She has a beard due to a medical condition. She loves it and kills it! As for me, I just want to wear a skirt sometimes cuz I think it can look dope! The fact we socially relegate these fashion and styling attributes to certain genders just seems so frivolous and dangerous when you consider how aggressive people get when their confronted with these things that don’t fit into their understanding of how the world works. At the end of the day, just be yourself and love yourself and don’t judge others who are living that way. Think outside the parameters that we are lead to believe are absolute and see the world as it is! Much love to all of you! 📷: @sophieephotos 💄: @kateoffthewall 👔: @roxannechanelmurray

I love their aesthetic so much!

I wonder if, in superhero universes, the villains ever get contacted by those “Make a Wish Foundation” and similar people.

I mean, the heroes do, of course they do, kids who want to meet Spiderman or Superman or get to be carried by the Flash as he runs through Central City for just thirty seconds.

But surely there are also the kids, who - because they are kids and sometimes kids are just weird - decide that what they really, really want is to meet a supervillain. Because he’s scary or she’s awesome or that freeze ray is just really, really cool, you know?

Oh, man, that would absolutely be a thing. The heroes would be so weirded out by it. The villains with codes of ethics would totally band together to force the villains without one (should they be the one requested) to do their part for the cause.

But imagine the person who has to track down the villains and organise everything?

Like, the first time it happens, no one actually thinks it’s possible, but one of the newbies volunteers to at least try. They get lucky, the kid wants to meet one of the villains who is well known to have a personal code of ethics (eg one of the rogues), and it takes them weeks to track the villain down to this one bar they’ve been seen at a few times, plus a week of staking out said bar, but they finally find them.

So they approach the villain, very politely introduce themselves and explain the situation, finishing with an assurance that, should the villain agree, no law enforcement or heroes will be informed of the meeting.

The villain, assuming it’s a joke, laughs in their face.

At this point, the poor volunteer, who has giving up weeks of their time and no small amount of effort to track down this villain, all so a sweet little girl can meet the person who somehow inspired them, well, at this point the employee sees red.

They explode, yelling at this villain about the little girl who, for some unknown reason, absolutely loved them, had a hand-made stuffed toy of them and was inspired by their struggle to keeping fighting her own and wasn’t the villain supposed to have ethics? The entire bar is witness to this big bad villain getting scolded by some bookish nobody a foot shorter than them.

When the volunteer is done, the villain calmly knocks back their drink, grips the volunteers shoulder and drags them outside. The bar’s patrons assume that person will never be seen again, the volunteer included. But once they’re outside, the villain apologises for their assumption, asks for the kid’s details so they can drop by in the near future, not saying when for obvious reasons. They also give the very relieved volunteer a phone number to call if someone asks for them again.

A week later, the little girl’s room is covered in villain merchandise, several expensive and clearly stolen gifts and she is happily clutching a stack of signed polaroids of her and the villain.

The next time a kid asks to meet a villain, guess who gets that assignment?

Turns out, the first villain was quite touched by the experience of meeting their little fan, and word has gotten around. The second villain happily agrees when they realise it’s the same volunteer who asked the other guy. Unfortunately, one of the heroes sees the villain entering the kid’s hospital and obviously assumes the worst. They rush in, ready to drag the villain out, but the volunteer stands in their way. The hero spends five minutes getting scolded for trying to stop the villain from actually doing a good thing and almost ruining the kid’s wish. The volunteer gets a reputation among villains as someone who can not only be trusted with personal contact numbers but who will do everything they can to keep law enforcement away during their visits.

The volunteer has a phonebook written in cypher of all the villain’s phone numbers, with asterixes next to the ones to call if any other villains give them trouble.

Around the office, they gain the unofficial job title of The Villain Wrangler.

The heroes are genuinely flabbergasted by The Villain Wrangler. At first, some of the heroes try to reason with them.

Heroes: “Can’t you, just, give us their contact details? They’ll never even have to know it was you.”

The Villain Wrangler: “Yeah sure, <rollseyes> because all these evil geniuses could never possibly figure out that it’s me who happens to be the common thread in the sudden mass arrests. Look man, even if it wouldn’t get me killed, it would disappoint the kids. You wouldn’t want to disappoint the kids would you?”

Heroes: “… no~ but…”

The Villain Wrangler: “Exactly.”

Eventually, one of the anti-hero types gets frustrated, and decides to take a stand. They kidnap the Villain Wrangler and demand that they give up the contents of the little black book of Villains, or suffer the consequences. It’s For the Greater Good, the anti-hero insists as they tie the Villain Wrangler to a pillar.

The Villain Wrangler: “You complete idiot, put me back before someone figures out that I’m missing.”

Anti-hero: “…excuse me?”

The Villain Wrangler: “Ugh, do I have to spell this out for you? Do you actually want your secret base to be wiped off the map? With us in it? Sugarsticks, how long has it been? If they get suspicious, they check in, and then if I miss a check-in, they tend to come barging into wherever I am just to prove that they can, even if they figure out that they’re not being threatened by proxy. Suffice to say, Auntie Muriel really regretted throwing my phone into the pool when she strenuously objected to me answering it during family time. If they think for even one moment that I’ve given them up, they won’t hesitate to obliterate both of us from their potential misery. You do know some of the people in my book have like missiles and djinni and elemental forces at their disposal, right?”

Anti-hero: “Wait, what? I thought they trusted you?!”

The Villain Wrangler: “Trust is such a strong word!”

Villain: “Indeed.”

Anti-hero: “Wait, wha-” <slumps over, dart sticking out of neck>

The Villain Wrangler: “Thanks. I thought they were going to hurt me.”

Villain: “You did well. You kept them distracted, and gave us time to follow your signal.” <cuts Villain Wrangler free>

The Villain Wrangler: <rubbing circulation back into limbs> “Yeah well, you know me, I do whatever I have to. So I’ll see you Wednesday at four at St Martha’s? I’ve got an 8yo burns unit patient recovering from her latest batch of skin grafts who could really use a pep talk.”

Villain: “… of course. Yes… I… yes.”

The Villain Wrangler: “I just think you could really reach her, you know?”

Villain: <unconsciously runs fingers over mask> “I… yes, but, what should I say?”

The Villain Wrangler: “Whatever advice you think you could have used the most just after.”

Villain: <hoists Anti-hero over shoulder almost absently> “….yes.”

The Villain Wrangler wasn’t lying to the Anti-hero. They know that the more ruthless villains would not hesitate if they thought for one second that the Anti-hero would betray them.

But this is not the first time the Villain Wrangler has gone to extreme lengths to protect their identities.

Trust is a strong word. The Villain Wrangler earned it, and is terrified by what it could mean.

My first official deadpool headcanon is this. This this this.

Okay but this whole concept actually makes a lot of sense, because villains are a lot more likely to be disfigured/disabled/use adaptive devices (bc ableist tropes), so of course, say, a child amputee is going to be more interested in the villain with a robot arm who almost destroyed New York than the heroes that took him down.

Also, imagine one of the kids gets better, and a few years down the line becomes a villain themself, except their crimes are things like smuggling chemo drugs across the border for families that can’t afford treatment, or stealing from corrupt businessmen to make donations to underfunded hospitals (idk this turned into a Leverage AU or something) and every time the heroes encounter her, they’re like “oh no. she’s getting away. curses. welp, nothing we can do.” Though it isn’t that she can’t take them on; bc of course once the villain from way back when found out what she was up to, he started helping/training her. 

“I thought they just hired someone to dress up and pretend to be you,” she says, amazed, when he reveals himself. “I didn’t think they actually got the real you!”

Every year the Villain Wrangler gets a very expensive gift basket from the pair.

and for the kids who don’t get better the villains are there too, they show up to every funeral, they bear too small coffins on their shoulders and the heroes stand aside

they are fierce with grieving families assuring them that their child will not be forgotten, and they don’t balk at negative emotions, they don’t tell people to be strong or “celebrate their child’s life,” because these parents have every right to their grief and anger

and the lost children are never forgotten. flowers appear on graves during birthdays and anniversaries, heroes find pictures of those kids and they carefully take them down and ensure they’re delivered to the villain’s cell, and a few villains can be seen with friendship bracelets wrapped around their wrists the cops have learned not to try and take them off

“Little lynx kitty! https://t.co/poKj7DBucy”

Not a lynx, a caracal. Here’s a comparison…

The caracal’s moustache, eyebrows and ear-tips are a giveaway even from birth…

…and it looks like the ears grow before the legs…

…which soon follow…

If Elves had cats, they’d look like caracals.

I’m sorry to interrupt but that comparison picture of the caracal and lynx is clearly a wedding photo and I’d like to take a moment to wish the joyous couple every happiness.

They are right. Elves should have caracals for pet cats! Who’s with me? Also congrats to the married couple.

Carakittens!

I want the shoebill version. That looks effin amazing.

Agreed. Shoebill for the win. 

This beautiful Swedish lady sings an ancient Viking song. Now watch how the cows respond. 

It is often argued that everything our ancestors did and said gets stored into our brains. Their experience and knowledge gets passed down from generation to generation. This may explain why we know or react to certain things without having any prior knowledge.

Kulning is an ancient herding call used in the Scandinavian region. The call is a high pitch tone that can reach long distances. The herding call sounds more like a haunting and sad melody meant to echo through mountains and alleys.

It was getting late and foggy on a magical night last month when Swedish artist Jonna Jinton wanted to try kulning. She wanted to find out if the animals would answer to the call their own ancestors heard when the women called them. Kulning might just be one of the most beautiful and enchanting sounds ever made.

Never in my life have I so badly wanted to be able to download the audio from a video.

*whispers* vidtomp3.com

No offense, word scientists, but octopi is a terrible name for a group of octopus. Especially with octoposse on the table.

He has to see how pretty he is 😁

you think this look just *happens*?

when white actors play PoC suddenly it’s “oh they just wanted the best actor” and “race doesn’t matter to the character” or “they need the star power” no matter how much proof you show about how Race is important to the character or hell the entire story

But when it’s the other way around White people will become ancient anthropologists, have a degree in geothermal studies and astrophysics and pull out ancient real world documentation to tell you why this fictional story set in a world with time travel magic and demons needs to be all white cast because it’s based off of a old 14th century time that has a fairy tale about a goat monster in Ancient Rome during the summer of 1348 and how they were white because the Teutonic plates had shift 2 degrees north.

#;-; THAT IS SO CONFUSING (– @all-the-ships-all-of-them )

It so is? Like it’s just ridiculously confusing and complex.

WHICH IS WHY PEOPLE WHO SAY IT’S SIMPLE AND COMES DOWN TO “MALE OR FEMALE”/”MALE, FEMALE, OR INTERSEX” NEED TO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND ACCEPT THEIR SLAPPING PEACEFULLY INSTEAD OF SENDING ME DOZENS OF ANGRY LETTERS

This has gotten more attention than expected so I figure I will put it here as well.

My favorite is that there’s a good chance that people so insistent on the existence of a binary may be intersex and never know unless: they don’t get a first period, develop unexpected secondary sex characteristics during puberty, or struggle with infertility later in life, or GET KARYOTYPED

These are also very human-centric! There are vertebrate animals that don’t use chromosomes as their sex-determination system (reptiles and some birds can also use the environment to determine sex) and there are vertebrate animals that use different chromosome arrangements. 

Birds for example, don’t use XX/XY, they’re ZW/ZZ. In birds, the egg determines the sex (not the sperm) and females are the heterogamous sex (with ZW chromosomes).  There is plenty of room for variation, too - a ZZW bird who presented as female successfully laid and hatched her own eggs (x)

Platypuses, meanwhile, have a system that resembles both XX/XY and ZW/ZZ in function, but the form is a little baffling. Platypus males are XYXYXYXYXY, and females are XXXXXXXXXX. 

Clearly, there is nothing perfect, universal or holy about XX/XY - and anyone who insists there is has demonstrated that they don’t know anything about biology.

And it’s a fluid system even once you grasp the idea of chromosomes - we know that you can hack sex in lizards to create “superfemales” (by incubating an egg with “male” chromosomes at a temperature that hatches “female” babies). Superfemales present as females and can lay viable eggs. You can do it with lizards that happen to use the XX/XY system, and hatch fertile males with XX chromosomes. You can do this with chickens as well - take a “genetically male” fertilized egg and incubate it at the perfect temperature, and you can hatch a “male” chicken that will lay eggs for you. The difficulty is that this only works some of the time in chickens - the cooler temperatures that hatch female chickens tend to kill the male embryos that don’t transition, which is wasteful. Otherwise, this would revolutionize the poultry industry.

So now we know that XX/XY is like the Windows 7 of sexual determinism (lots of people use it, but would be silly to call it the only operating system in the world) how fixed is “sex” anyway? Well, most of us know that clownfish can change sex - if there are changes in their social structure, the dominant female can transition from a reproductively functioning egg-fertilizing male to a reproductively functioning egg-laying female. Bio textbooks say that clownfish “don’t have” sex chromosomes, but I think it’s more likely that they do, but that they don’t have any function. At any rate, the change is down to hormones, which change in response to the social environment the fish is in.

So are hormones, then, the Thing That Totally Definitely Determines What Men and Women Are? Not really. Before puberty, human children don’t have many sex hormones circulating in their bodies, and human children are often quite clear about their own gender. Humans who have had ovaries removed, or who go through menopause, no longer have waves of “female” hormones sloshing around - but we still call most of them “women.” Humans who have had their testicles removed or their androgens depleted (usually because of testicular or prostate cancer, which can feed on hormones) are usually still called “men.” And ovaries produce natural levels of testosterone quite happily, because they need to - just at lower levels! Pregnant humans often have particularly high levels of testosterone. Weirdly, “male” partners of pregnant people often drop to lower levels of testosterone than usual - their pregnant partner’s hormones influence their own biology. But a cisgender father of a fetus does not stop being a male just because he has less testosterone.

Pregnancy gets weirder, too - decades after the fetus has moved out, a pregnant person who once harbored an XY fetus will have XY cells in their body and brain. If you looked at, say, Molly Weasley, you’d be able to find “male” tissue in her brain - where her body traded for some fresh young stem cells from her fetuses, and used them to replenish her own older tissues. So a cisgender person born XX can exhibit microchimerism later in life and never know it. But having XY tissue in your brain doesn’t make you a man. 

Okay, so what about gender roles? Surely those are clear - surely those are necessary for sex and sexuality and the Natural Order and all those things?

Well, we also know that animals practice a range of gender roles. Again, a lot of it is more obvious in fish, reptiles and birds, partly because sexual dimorphism tends to be more pronounced in these animals. But there are plenty of species in which you get multiple “types” of sexes. The most common is the territorial/satellite male arrangement, in which there are multiple distinct types of males, with different genetics, behavior, life history, physical appearance and courtship strategies. 

Ruffs, a type of sandpiper, have distinct territorial and satellite males, plus “faeder” males that were only recently discovered to be male; faeders are identical to females in appearance and most behavior, and plenty of previous sightings of lesbianism in ruffs were probably faeder/female matings. Satellite and territorial males top faeders, but as faeders also top satellite and territorial males, researchers have interpreted this as “ruffs are perfectly aware that faeders aren’t the same as females, and none of them give a shit.” 

Above are some different forms of masculinity in ruffs. The bird on the top left is a female; the birds below are the different male types. In the picture on the right, the independent and satellite male are vying for the attention of the female; the faeder is the brown one on the left. The territory belongs to the territorial male, who will defend it from other territorial males, but he doesn’t attack the satellite and faeder males, because they aren’t in competition. (Imagine your OT4.)

Outside of that, gender roles aren’t as important as humans pretend they are. There isn’t really a Breadwinner/Housewife divide in the animal kingdom because most animals don’t practice capitalism. Performative masculinity only benefits species that gain an evolutionary advantage from it. Non-human mammals don’t find mammary glands to be sexually arousing. Mostly, animals just try to survive in complicated, complex environments that are constantly trying to kill them. The rules are: 1) adapt to changes in environment by being resilient, adaptable and diverse; and 2) successfully pass on the genes that succeed in your environment. You don’t need to be “fit” or fierce or have lots of bright plumage - those are not your objectives and may, in fact, distract you. You don’t even need to mate, or be fertile, or have children of your own - you just need to make sure that your traits survive, and hopefully help your species after your death. There is nothing in the rules about the superiority of special genital configurations, which animals are allowed to touch the color pink, and who gets to grow a beard.

Tl;dr : every time a human tries to come up with a hard-and-fast rule about what “sex” or “gender” or “male” or “female” means, there is a bird somewhere that has quietly devoted the past 2 million years of its existence to proving that person wrong.

Where are you?

(Inspired by this)

Nonbinary Characters in Webcomics

Happy Transgender Day of Visibility!

Here is a selection of nonbinary characters from a range of comics. For more comics with nonbinary characters, look through our tumblr tag and our tagpacker. Reblog with your own nonbinary characters or your webcomic favorites!

Eth from Eth’s Skin

By Sfé R. Monster (@sfemonster) and Kory Bing (@korybing)

Under a sickle moon on an empty stone beach Eth mistakes a selkie skin for their own and ends up having to make a journey to a distant cove in order to put things right.

Norn from Demon Street

By Aliza Layne (@alizabug)

A comic about some kids who find their way into a strange and magical world, and the things they meet.

Ezra from Ambrosia

By Jon (@tangledbeasties)

An angel and a human take a road trip fuelled by revenge.

Fieldmouse from Rechargeable

By Bilvy (@bilvee)

A webcomic about queer Australian criminals in the year 2100.

Lemme and Sinh from Job Satisfaction

By Jey Barnes (@prawnlegs)

A slice of life comic about queer nonbinary demon summoners.

Various Characters from Those Spaces Between

By Kez (@misterloki)

A collection of short comics for anyone who has struggled with gender identity - you are not alone and you are no mistake. (complete)

Neve from Ignition Zero

By Noel Arthur Heimpel (@noelarthurian)

An urban fantasy comic about a group of friends who get mixed up with faeries and spirits.

Grasshopper from Sharp Zero

By @robotsharks

Elliot, a delinquent indie rock musician, gets caught up in the world of vigilantism through an unexpectedly stupid accident.

Ace from Rock and Riot

By Chelsey Furedi (@cheriiart)

A webcomic following the tales of two opposing teenage gangs in the 1950s with an LGBTQ theme.

Neely from Dead End

By M.Mork (@moustachebandit)

Welcome to the daily mindless grind of Dead End, a purgatory between our world and the next.

Tam from Mooncakes

By Suzanne Walker and Wendy Xu (@angrygirlcomics)

A (queer, Chinese-American) paranormal romance.

Vaari from Sea Change

By Marijade (@funrobot)

A webcomic about a pirate, a princess and the open sea.

Lucy and Tetsu from Never Satisfied

By Taylor Robin (@ohcorny)

The story of apprentices competing for the position of magician representative for their city, serving directly under the king.

Angellus from ChRIStIS

By Carro (@goddess-in-green)

Growing up is hard. Being a teenaged half-angel is a whole other ball game.

Amparo from The Hazards of Love

By Stan Stanley (@snakewife)

The story of a queer teenager who made a few bad decisions and has found themselves in a world very far from Queens.

My kids on a list of GREAT STUFF!

This is a great list! But I want to say that I only ink Eth’s Skin! That comic is 1000000% @sfemonster‘s! I’m very honored I get to work on it, but please don’t give me any credit for it! It’s Sfé’s comic!

Can I just say something about Sam Wilson. Just give me like two minutes.

Hes a para rescue-man or PJ, most of you probably know that. Which means that one he was in the Air Force AND part of Special Operations, and two he is a badass motherfucker let me tell you.

PJs, are the only Department of Defense specialty specifically trained and equipped to conduct conventional or unconventional rescue operations. These Battlefield Airmen are the ideal force for personnel recovery and combat search and rescue. Sam would have regularly risked his own damn life to rescue other people, his literal function would have been personnel recovery specialist, with emergency medical capabilities in humanitarian and combat environments. PJs deploy in any available manner, to include air-land-sea tactics, into restricted environments to authenticate, extract, treat, stabilize and evacuate injured personnel. PJs participate in search and rescue, combat search and rescue, recovery support for NASA and conduct other operations as appropriate.

Pararescuemen are among the most highly trained emergency trauma specialists in the U.S. military. They must maintain an Emergency Medical Technician - Paramedic qualification throughout their careers. With this medical and rescue expertise, along with their deployment capabilities, PJs are able to perform life-saving missions in the world’s most remote areas.

As a PJ he would have been trained to go into literally every type of terrain and situation to rescue fellow airman and even soldiers from other branches, heres how:

8 weeks Basic Military Training when he first joined (this isnt even part of PJ training yet), that means intensive physical training, training in drill movements and formations, etc. Basic is 8 weeks of constant physical and mental challenge.

And then he would have going to his technical training to actually become a PJ.

He would have had to go through the The PAST - Physical Ability and Stamina Test, and have scored a 100 and here are the requirements for that;

Sam would to have had a high school diploma or GED, and 15 college course credits in relevant subjects to even QUALIFY for Indoctrination courses. Fuck yeah, he is educated. Can we please not overlook that anymore???

This 10-week indoctrination course would train Sam through extensive physical conditioning. Training accomplished at this course includesphysiological training, obstacle course, rucksack marches, dive physics, dive tables, metric manipulations, medical terminology, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), weapons qualifications, PJ history and leadership reaction course.

After the Candidate Course there are two different professions with two different pipelines (but similar) to follow depending on if you want to be a PJ or CCT.  Here is the PJ pipeline of training;

- U.S. Army Airborne School, Fort Benning, Ga. - 3 weeks: Here he’d learn the basic parachuting skills required to infiltrate an objective area by static line airdrop.

- U.S.A.F. Combat Diver Course, Panama City, Fla. - 4 weeks: Heres where Sam would become a combat diver, learn to use SCUBA and closed-circuit diving equipment to covertly infiltrate denied areas, conduct sub-surface searches and basic recovery operations. The six-week course provides training to depths of 130 feet, stressing development of maximum underwater mobility under various operating conditions.

- U.S. Navy Underwater Egress Training, Pensacola Naval Air Station, Fla. - 1 day: He’d how to safely escape from an aircraft that has ditched in the water. The one-day instruction includes principles, procedures and techniques necessary to get out of a sinking aircraft. -  U.S. Air Force Basic Survival School, Fairchild AFB, Wash.- 2.5 weeks: Sam would go through a two-and-a-half-week course that teaches basic survival techniques for remote areas. Instruction includes principles, procedures, equipment and techniques, which enable individuals to survive, regardless of climatic conditions or unfriendly environments and return home. -  U.S. Army Military Free Fall Parachutist School, Fort Bragg, N.C.- 5 weeks: Remember that parachute from TWS??? Yeah, heres where he learned that (probably??). The course instructs trainees in free fall parachuting procedures. The five-week course provides wind tunnel training, in-air instruction focusing on student stability, aerial maneuvers, air sense and parachute opening procedures.

-Paramedic Course, Kirtland AFB, N.M. - 22 weeks: This 22-week course teaches how to manage trauma patients prior to evacuation and provide emergency medical treatment. Upon graduation, an EMT-Paramedic certification is awarded through the National Registry. Sams a certified EMT responder as well. - Pararescue Recovery Specialist Course, Kirtland AFB, N.M.- 20 weeks: Qualifies airmen as pararescue recovery specialists for assignment to any pararescue unit worldwide. The 24-week training includes field medical care and extrication basics, field tactics, mountaineering, combat tactics, advanced parachuting and helicopter insertion/extraction.

And then by fucking god he would have graduated his training and donned the maroon beret, he’d be one of the most highly trained combat medics in the world, he’d able to handle the most stressful situations with fucking ease. He would have done ALL this after probably being told he couldn’t, that he was just a kid from a rough neighborhood, and he would have rubbed it in everyone who told him those thing’s faces. 

He WANTED to go through all that shit you just read because Sam badass Wilson CARES about people. He lost his best friend SAVING people. He was picked as a test pilot for the EXO-7 Falcon along with Riley. 

THEN, theres literally what happens in the movie. Sam holds his own just like everyone else does, if not better because hes only human. Hes competent, smart, and for fucks sake hes compassionate and REAL. 

So for the serious love of fucking all that is holy can we please STOP PRETENDING HE DOESN’T EXIST??? Stop erasing POC characters???Sam is a goddamn real-life hero and this fandom and myself included needs to stop pinning him as the plucky sidekick or ‘all hes good for is emotional support’ because he can take care of his damn self.

If anybody else out there is interested in further research on PJs and their every job on deployment, National Geographic Channel has a series called Inside Combat Rescue that follows some of these teams on the job. It’s pretty interesting to look at what these particular teams do – mostly helicopter rescue of injured soldiers and civilians, from the episodes I’ve seen – and consider how different it might be for people like Sam and Riley, going in with a pair of wings and little else. Would they have been providing early air support to get to wounded and clear the area so the helicopter could come in to evac? Or would they actually have been able to evacuate people themselves with just their wings? Was their wingman all the support they had? Was one of them responsible for providing protection and covering fire while the other mostly carried medical equipment? It already looks pretty intense for actual PJs who are going in as a full crew in a helicopter; I can’t even imagine the level of danger and the extreme expertise needed not just to do this job but to do it with a pair of wings strapped to your back. (I’d have loved to see the learning curve for mastering how to fly with those.)

If you do not turn the sound on you are dumb and we feel bad for you.

Welcome back

Rat Queens #6

nice. poor Dee. But also I would love a panel with Braga and Human Dave :D